A new dragon

[Kathrin]

Hi together. It is fun to create some new creatures. I like my dragons.

For this I was inspired by a fotlia series of dragon.

 

Yours Kathrin

 

[CartoonMike]

Cute!

 

(Remember that you can change the color of the shadow FX. What would the yellow areas look like if the shadow was a purplish color [yellow's complement] or a darker green than the dragon's body [a "reflective shadow" so to speak]?

[Kathrin]

Thx. Mike - hope I understand you and will give it a try to change some colors. :-) lets do it tomorrow - my Kids have to sleep now :-)

[Kathrin]

So now I am ready, I am satisfied with the colors, but there are a lot of layers, sometime difficult to handle them :-)

[Kathrin]

What do you mean with Shadow FX?

[CartoonMike]

I like the new color scheme. :) Then I've always been a sucker for Purple/green/yellow combos, mostly because of reading so many comics. 

 

As far as "Shadow FX" goes, I use FX when I should've said "Effects." Either the Inner or outer shadow FX (couldn't tell which one you've used, looks like both). It's in the Effects Panel. There's a colour chip there that you can click on to display a colour chooser. The colour chooser has a noise option, that can create some pretty neat looks, especially when combined with a Gaussian Blur effect. So you could have one "look" for the yellow scales on the Dragon's belly and another for the wings. Hope that clears things up, if not, ask away. 

 

If you want to see what I mean, either message me with a copy of the AD file or post it here and I'll do some voodoo on it and repost the alterations.

[ronniemcbride]

I love the the color scheme. Very classic puff the magic dragon-ish  

[Kathrin]

Thanks a lot, Yes I tried the effects and worked a little bit with the blurring.

I do a lot of research - looking for other dragon paintings, the comic look I like most.

But I often have the problem with using the paths. I like open paths, but then I have the problem with colorfilling. It looks not ready. Then I create some layers down the paths, but the matching (path-colorfill) is not accurate.

Hm, I think I have to learn a lot and do some training.

[Sunset]

I like the original dragon in its greens and yellows, the shading is nice as it gives it a nice gentle 3d effect, especially on his arms. I think you will refine your shadows and shading as you work and it's important that you keep your own style whilst learning all these new techniques.  :)