Sinistral:

The Gurch wants us to get horny...?!  surely he can't mean.... No....

hehehe, you said Horny...

alright am finally getting around to starting this. here are a few of my plan scribbles. with extra messyness.

zimfin:

Great to see the ideas coming out not to mentioning some of the "regular" contenders from when I used to participate evey week.

In my defense I've been busy with a new job.  (And also I'm really really lazy)   

some great ides already....

Gix...lovin your concept....great character....

ivy....very cute little guy....makes yah go 'ahhh'....

robin...some great sketches....lookin forward to seeing which you develop....

byron + Jackdaw....nice sketches....my opinion is even tho they're similar, its very likely that your differing styles will show  between each work...therefore producing two awesome dino-rider pictures....whichll be sw33t....

came up with this guy while sketching tonight....

just a small start from me. have started to roughly plot out the image. will scratch around a bit more later. and by later i mean tomorow. ( it's 3:17am )

Tector- snailmail post and posty, love the idea for this one!

Rey- antlers definitely count, however you choose to interpret horns.  The head is looking quite reptillian already.

Robin- my that is just .....wierd.  a terrific start and great to see the inital sketches.  All the product of a sleep deprived mind no doubt (3.17 am! are you mad! Personally I need the beauty sleep. As much as possible.......)

xHaStex-  Cool looking dude and nice inital sketch.  A Devil in search of marshmallows.....

Ivy- a great cute 'whatzit' if ever I saaw one.  What sort of horns are you planning. Could be tricky to match with the rest of him (her? It?)

Malla- A lovely sketch there Nice and delicate.  I would say that the shoulders look a little narrow to my eye though.

gix- terrific idea.  nice to see an usual take on the theme.  Kind of reminds me of the Cantina band in Star Wars.  The mouth piece looks a bit big.  I would try narrowing that down a bit.

Byron and Jackdaw- as as already been said by xHaStex, go for it.  I'm sure that even if similar in concept the execution will be sufficiently different.  Besides we need more dinosaurs....

I'd also like to follow up Bryon's "who gets paid for what they do question".  That features high in the list of "I wish!" for me.  Pure hobby.  Do this for a living?  It would be like a kid who's allowed to play in the toy shop all day!

 Anyhow... Her's a small update on Sir Diceros bicornis, First Captain of the Royal Guard....

Sinistral:

Robin- my that is just .....wierd.  a terrific start and great to see the inital sketches.  All the product of a sleep deprived mind no doubt (3.17 am! are you mad! Personally I need the beauty sleep. As much as possible.......)

sinistral: actually i ended up going to bed at around 5am. just had to watch a movie (cloverfield). no beauty sleep for me, too hideous for that, i'd have to go into a coma to get any affect from beauty sleep

byron0512:

Gurch, did you get the email i sent you about channels?  if not i will stick it in this thread for all to see.

Hi there Byron, yep i did get your email, sincere aplogies to you,  i have been away at the weekend so haven't had opportunity to reply yet. Like everything you post ,It was very informative and useful, i haven't had chance to put it into practice but i'm sure it will prove handy when i do. Thank you very much for the tips you have sent. Please do feel free to post it here so that everyone can share in the knowledge.

Rey:

ok totally changing my idea only one question do antlers count? please say they do...

sure Rey, antlers are just fine, we class them as horns that were caught in a door slam.

Cheers gurch - was just making sure.

 Well if you think its ok for public consumption, here it is for all without any pics for a change.  Will post pics if someone REALLY wants me to.  My dinosaur has changed abit..... looking good I think.  Will post at the end of tonight work so far.  erm, think i will run over 4 hours though :(

I am sure others, particularly jackdaw, no alot more about photoshop than me though so will be able to shed better light.

Using channels with a drawing to make a layer from a scan that contains ONLY the pencil work and not the paper bit.

1) open the image (duh!)

2) Open up the channels tab.  It will either be hidden on the top left with other tabs, along with the brushes tab and perhaps a couple of others, or you can find it on the WINDOWS menu at the top left of the photoshop program window, sitting between VIEW and HELP

3) Either hold down CTRL button on your keyboard and left click the RGB channel, or else make sure the RGB channel is selected and then click the little icon at the foot of the channels panel that looks like a selection ring.

4) back on the layers pallet create a new layer.  You may now need to press shift and CTRL and I (SHIFT+Ctrl+i) buttons at the same time to invert the mask, you will only know when you perform the next step.  Alternatively go to the SELECT menu and choose 'inverse' which will do the same thing.

5) On the new layer, choose whatever colour you want for your pencil work to be and press ALT+DEL (alt and delete buttons together) which will fill the selection.  Did it work?  Great!  Did it all go black?  Go back to step 4 and select the inverse, you'll know for next time.

6) Prove to yourself you did it right, create a filled layer above the background layer and below the new layer you just created and make it a different colour.  If it has worked then your drawing will appear on whatever colour paper you selected.

7)  Changing colours.  Lock the transparency (click the little icon right next to the word LOCK at the top of the layers pallet)  Choose your new colour and finally click ALT+DEL button.

Added tip.  before you do all this, you can creat an adjustment layer (use the funny black and white half circle thing at the bottom of the layers pallet and choose 'levels' - shove the sliders left and right until you have quite a reasonably dark pencil line and make the white as bright as possible.  Leave the adjustment layer on and go through steps 2 to 6.  That way you will not get any of the grey shades that might come off the scanner light bouncing off the grain of the paper.

 ps - thanks sinstral for your 'hobby' comment.  Ever thought of trying to make a living from it?  Anyone got ideas of how hobbyists can break into the world of payment?

Its probably a lot easier in practice than it is to read about. Im sure after its you've done it a few times it easier.

I always fotograph my drawings as opposed to scanning them, and just this weekend messing about with my camera i realized it has a black n white setting..so i'm assuming it'll help give my images clarity and sharpness with out having to mess about with the levels beforehand.

(Although i do find that i quite like my photos which have rubbing out marks and/or the images on the page behind showing through and all other manner  sorts of other sweat, blood, smudges n smears for all to see.)