-EDIT-112206-

Pouring through the old bottom Layer of my DA Gallery, and was a little bothered by how small a version this is... I've been used to 1280 for so long that 500px wide is pretty itty-bitty to me, now. So I went and hunted up the old workfile for this and saved a version at 1000 wide. Other than that, and the addition of the chop, I didn't change a thing.

Though I must admit, the temptation to make a tweak here and there is pretty strong... her anatomy is kinda embaressingly off, the composition is boring, and I was still quavering in mortal fear of backgrounds... but what the hell, it's still mine, warts and all. I can't go trying to edit all my old stuff, pretending I didn't make mistakes and so forth, and I take a little comfort in remembering that it IS old work, now, and basically out of the "official portfolio".

If nothing else, this also represents when I first fell in love with the power of the digital environment. Old bastard that I am (at 30), I'm still always a little starstruck by the simple "Undo" function. You kids *geezer voice*... you kids don't know what it was like when messing up meant REAL trouble.



It's only been 4 years since I started working with tablets, but now I can't hardly imagine doing it any other way.



-END EDIT-

Well... there it is. This is the first finished version of the image I've been painting all week. I say the 'first' version because I can still continue to make a number of changes at any time to the PSD and make a version which would look very different, even down to the line art, simply by turning off and on Layers or making Hue/Saturation Adjustments to various Layers. This, more than anything, is why I love Photoshop. You don't like her pink hair (thanks to Ozzyopolis)? Nooo problem, I can make it any color you can think of, and a few more besides. Black armor not working for you? I can change that in a matter of seconds. I've got a variant sword tip (you can see the orginal in the inks), a series of glows in the spine of the machine, and even several of the shadows are all on Layers that can be adjusted or removed.

Man, that's pretty freaking cool. Welcome to the new era of illustration (well, okay, none of this is really THAT new, Photoshop has been around for a decade). A mere 20 years ago no illustrator would even dream of having the levels of control that we can achieve so easily now. Imagine what we'll be able to do in another 20 years! Boggles the mind...

Yeah, all you longtime PS painters are yawning. This is old news to you, I'm sure. For that matter it's old news to me, since I've been puttering around with PS since v.4, but I never stop being pleased about it...

Anyhow, a few specifics:

Illustration time- est. 4 hours
Total coloring time- est. 15 hours
File dimensions, full size- 20x30 at 300dpi
Document size, closed- 287113 Kb (287 Megs)
Document size, open- 206M/935.9M
Number of Layers- 31

I'm sure I'm being clunky about my use of Photoshop, so any suggestions on what I can do to keep these big files from getting even bigger are always welcome. If you have any suggestions regarding color, texture or FX, feel free to add 'em in. I might even try 'em out.