Tutorials, links, tips

[Red Nile]

I'm interested in learning how to create sprites. I love the style of them, and from what I heard about how they're made, it sounds like a similar process to how I make signature banners.

But I'd like this thread to be a general sharing place for useful tips and links on doing what you do.

I started making signature banners quite some time ago. Unfortunately, the tutorial that first showed me the basics is gone now, a dead link.

One link I can share is the resource I use for the fonts of any text in my banners. A fabulous site, 1001 free fonts (http://www.1001freefonts.com/).

[Quakester]

Well I'm not much help on the tutorial side but here's where I got most of the sprites I used.

GSA (http://www.gsarchives.net/index2.php)

[Sebastian Kain]

Bah! You'll not be my competion!

pouts











J/K always willing to help those that want to learn the trade. I could use a assistant.. ;)

Eitherway..I'll provide you with some links to tutortials and sprite pages and even rip a few bases for you..(Mugen mojo wise) when i get home today..since that's where all my links are.

[Bluek250]

Red Nile's request is also one of mine. I'd really like some sprite tutorials as well.

[the_starcrosser]

*Wanders in* Ooo, cool!

Hmm. Since a few people have already asked me if i have any tutorials, which sadly i don't, maybe i can put out a couple tips on things that i've found really helpful, who knows, they might be useful to someone else too. *shrug* ;)

* The "Magic Wand" selector is your friend. When cutting/copying, coloring, erasing, moving, and any number of other important things, I find it really helpful to use the magic wand. It's my staple tool - looks like a dandelion puff on the tool box, if you don't know where it is. It selects by color, and you can select how specific or vague you want the selection to be by the number box when you're using it.
If you're daring or good with the mouse, also try the Lasso tool for freehand selecting.

* Coloring: Don't just brush on color with the pencil or brush, since sprites rely heavily on specific areas of flat color to show shape - use the Hue and Saturation command (Enhance> Color> Hue and Saturation) to CHANGE the color of your selected (with the wand or lasso or box) area. "Colorize" is useful for this. Make sure to check all three sliders to adjust the color, especially the saturation.

* Layers: don't be afraid to make several layers when puttin' things together. You can merge them later, or wait until they automatically merge when saving as a GIF.

* Swapping Parts: try swapping different parts from sprites to create new things that better express what you're going for. Heads, limbs, eyeballs, especially hair. Be a mad scientist. Also look for specific shapes for other things you need in other sprites - being original is good, but a chunk out of another sprite is already going to have the right dimensional shading so you don't have to figure it out yourself. Be creative, just look at random shapes. Somebody's hairbow could become the assault rifle you're looking for.

* Transparencies: be careful with transparent brushes, since a GIF will sometimes flatten your nice hazy color into a funky-looking solid one. Most sprites are all about flat, sharp areas of color, not blending and shading. Keep the edges of your sprite clean - also, try not to rotate pieces by hand too much, it'll make 'em fuzzy - 90, 180, 270 degrees only will keep 'em sharp.


Here's some links that may or may not be useful and might have already been posted, i forget. I got 'em originally from other spriters, some have the big ones i use, some have small animated ones that are also fun.

http://gsarchives.net/index2.php?category=all&system=neogeo&game=king_of_fighters_2001&type=sprites&level0=non-animated

http://gifsyndicate.com/

http://www.angelfire.com/nb/kofunlimited/gal2000.html


>_> ummm.... yes.... and stuff. Go! Fly! Do art!

[Poison]

I tend to make little palettes on the side of the pic with the colors I use. Like, when the original sprite has 4 different skin tones which I want to change, I make 4 squares with the original colors and make 4 new squares with the new colors next to them.

When you are done and save the pic, make sure the GIF information only saves as many colors as you actually use. If your sprite uses 16 colors total (including transparency) but you save it with the info for 256 colors, it'll have unnecessarily big filesize.

Make sure not to lose informations you'll need later.

If you want to add stuff like belts, tiaras, headbands, etc, use a new layer.

One pixel can change a lot.

[Sebastian Kain]

Here are some sprite sites...

http://www.gifsyndicate.com/

http://www.fightersgeneration.com/main.htm

and a tutorial

http://primeop.tripod.com/mugenboss/tutorials.html

[Red Nile]

Beautiful! Just the kind of things I was looking for, thanks everyone.

I already use the magic wand tool a lot when extracting images from their backgrounds for my banners. Very useful. I also find the smudge tool to be invaluable in smoothing out any pixellation that might happen from editing. And it also helps to smooth out pixellation that happens if you increase the size of a picture a bit, though it takes a fair bit of smudging to clean up an image when you do that. Any areas that look pixellated, just zoom in on them and run the smudge tool along the jagged bits, even if it's in the middle of the image. Looks bad zoomed in, but when you zoom back out it often looks much better. I did a bit of that when I increased the size of the sprite in Tsarina's banner that I did for her, for example.

Those tips are good. I'm not sure about creating new parts of my own, but I'll start out trying to mix and match existing sprites.

I'll probably start playing around with this a bit on the weekend. At a brief glance through a couple of those sites, I'm impressed at how good the "artjacking" looks, when I see some of the things you've changed around. :)

[Bluek250]

Links are greatly appreciated guys, especially that tutorial page, SK. Also, star_crosser, you have no idea how much I'd LOVE to edit those KOF faces. I take it Photoshop is the only way to go on those?

[Sebastian Kain]

Links are greatly appreciated guys, especially that tutorial page, SK. Also, star_crosser, you have no idea how much I'd LOVE to edit those KOF faces. I take it Photoshop is the only way to go on those?

I use an old version of Paintshop Pro, that came with Animation Shop. That's how I usually operate..

[the_starcrosser]

Links are greatly appreciated guys, especially that tutorial page, SK. Also, star_crosser, you have no idea how much I'd LOVE to edit those KOF faces. I take it Photoshop is the only way to go on those?
Yeah, it's really the best program out there for this sort of thing. I use Photoshop Elements, a "lite" version that came with my wonderful scanner. (Kinetix says it's a crappy program, but it has everything i need so i'm plugging my ears and saying "La la la laaa la".) I also have a couple old versions of photoshop floating around somewhere in my CD stacks. i suggest finding a way to NOT pay full price for shiny new photoshop, because that's about $600+. not happy. (remember kids! keep it legal! >_> )

if you find any other program that you can use, go for it! And tell us, too, we're all poor. Either way, i hope you can try it - We'd love to see your work! :D

[Bluek250]

Yeah, it's really the best program out there for this sort of thing. I use Photoshop Elements, a "lite" version that came with my wonderful scanner. (Kinetix says it's a crappy program, but it has everything i need so i'm plugging my ears and saying "La la la laaa la".) I also have a couple old versions of photoshop floating around somewhere in my CD stacks. i suggest finding a way to NOT pay full price for shiny new photoshop, because that's about $600+. not happy. (remember kids! keep it legal! >_> )

if you find any other program that you can use, go for it! And tell us, too, we're all poor. Either way, i hope you can try it - We'd love to see your work! :D
Oh, don't worry, I already have Photoshop.

[Red Nile]

Here's my first attempt at making a sprite for Verdant Mania. A bit rough in spots, I know. The main things I want to change are getting rid of the glove (haven't found a suitable hand to replace it, and my attempts to manually get rid of it didn't turn out so well), and I'd love to make the skirt a green and white plaid. But no idea how to do that, or how to deal with all the pleats. :)

http://ca.geocities.com/[email protected]/sprites/verd2.gif

Any tips from the experts, things you can see that need tweaking?

[Poison]

The glove part is easy, just color it like her skin and remove the edges that indicate a glove.
The plaid skirt... well, that's just work (and pretty impossible to do, it won't look good).

[Red Nile]

Yeah, I tried editing the glove once, and it looked like a mess by the time I was done. I manually got rid of a pair of shorts that were under the skirt in a similar way. I might give it another try...

[Quakester]

how's this?

[Red Nile]

Ooh, thanks Quakester!

[Red Nile]

Any tips on how you did that, Quakester? What tools did you use?

[Red Nile]

Realized I had the scarf the wrong colour, reversed the colours on it.

http://ca.geocities.com/[email protected]/sprites/verd4.gif

[Quakester]

Oddly enough, I just used MS Paint and eyeballed it. That's how I did most of my edits. Which is why Star and SK are so much better and why I stopped. ;)

[Red Nile]

Hee. Guess it's just a knack I'll have to work on. :)

[Red Nile]

I thought I'd dredge up an old thread. Rise, to live again!

So I briefly tried my hand at inking a little while back, but I was having a bit of trouble figuring out which tools to use. My self-taught photoshopping has mostly revolved around resizing, cutting, pasting, trying to make multiple images blend in together into a banner. Modifying the colours on an already coloured picture. When it comes to detail work like inking, I'm a n00b.

Those of you who use photoshop to ink, it doesn't look like you just use a freehand pencil tool. Though maybe you're just that steady with a mouse. :) Any tips on which photoshop tools you find essential to your inking, and maybe a brief description of how you use them to get the effects you want?

I'd love to learn inking, and also colouring...but I figured that inking would be the place to start. Particularly with Quake churning out more sketches than anyone around here knows what to do with. :D

[Solos]

The most common inking method is to use the pen tool. It makes really crisp lines and can be editted. I've had a go at it but i usually end up ruining the pictures personality. This is probably the best i've ended up with, it started off as my friend but it ended up female:
Pencil (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v376/TCI/douggirlpencil.jpg)
Ink (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v376/TCI/douggirlinksmall.jpg)

This guy seems to know his stuff (http://www.farlowstudios.com/inks.html)


I think that Veikira does it with the Polygonal lasoo tool, it makes his subjects look quite powerful and defined. If you look closely you can sort of see the points where he clicked.


EDIT: If you want to practice i suggest starting on some of GillBates' (http://www.mmoart.com/) pencils. They are really tidy so you can concentrate on practicing using the tools. I don't think he minds as long as you don't post what you do to it on forums.

[Belabras]

Wow, no wonder I suck at inking, I've been going about it all wrong. Thanks for posting that Solos!

[Quakester]

That was a great post, Solos! Maybe I can get the hang of inking now. If I do, MAN, do I have a ton of stuff to catch up on. ;)

[Red Nile]

That looks like a great tutorial, thanks Solos! I'll play with that, and with the polygonal lasso once I get the hang of the pen. :) If anyone else has good tutorials or tips on inking they'd recommend, please do post them.

Same with good colouring tutorials, actually. I think we've all noticed a lot of requests for inking and colouring lately, would be good to spread the skills around to others who are interested in trying it out. :)

There are plenty of tutorials out there...the hard part is finding the _good_ tutorials.

[Solos]

Colouring - this is what i do.

Set the ink (or pencil) layer mode to multiply.

On seperate layers underneath, fill in all the areas with a base colour. Each seperate colour should be on a different layer. Use hard brushes or polygonal lasoo tool. At an edge between too colours make the colour you've already filled in a selection (Ctrl+Click the layer) then invert the selection (Ctrl+Shift+I). This ensures there are no gaps. Change the background colour if the colour you are suing is similar to that of the background so you can see what youare doing. Make a new layer at the top called Colours and put a block of the flat colour next to where it is used for future use.
Here's a picture (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v376/TCI/rednilecolours2.jpg)

Set your brush to a soft edge, brush mode to multiply, brush opacity to 40, brush fill to 60. Choose the layer you want to shade then select it (Ctrl+Click the layer) then hit Ctrl+H to make the dotted lines disappear. In one strok brush all the way down the edge to slightly darken it. Choose a smaller brush and repeat. Do this 3-4 times so that the edge is darker than the middle then repeat with the other side. Once you have done this to all the layers, set your brush mode to Screen and add in the highlights. In the picture you can see how i added shadows on Red's breast from her arm and on her left foot from her leg. I just chose a small soft brush then went over the same area a few times so the edge of the shadow was more defined. Remember to zoom out frequently to check it looks right.
Picture (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v376/TCI/rednilecolour.jpg)

For areas of same colour which have different shading (e.g. her hat thing, the back of her left knee, breasts, shoulder) use the polygonal lasoo tool to select the area you want to work on. Then use intersect select (Control+Shift+Alt+Click the layer) to deselect any areas outside of the layer. Now if there isn't a line at the edge (see the back of left knee joint), go into Layer Mask mode which is the Rectangle with a Circle in it under foreground and background colours. the bit that isn't selected should go red. Use the smudge tool to blur the bit you want then come out of that mode and shade it as normal.
You can also try going into Layer Mask mode then using the brush to make a mask like i did on the highlights of this cape. (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v376/TCI/quakester.jpg) Also try the polygonal lasoo tool but give it a small Feather in its options.


Again this guy goes into detail on faces (http://www.farlowstudios.com/coloring/face01.html) and hair (http://www.farlowstudios.com/hair01.html).


That is what i do. Once you get some practice you can try adding shading and highlights for the individual muscles and stuff. Finished (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v376/TCI/rednilecolour3.jpg)

[Red Nile]

You rock, Solos. Thanks. :)

[Charon]

I'd just like to say I can teach anyone to make my crappy paint portraits.

The problem is, no one would want to learn. ;)

[Quakester]

And yet you still haven't made a crappy paint portrait for me. :p

[Lawmaker]

Very nice tutorial (both the Inking one, and Solos' Coloring one...)

Some good tips for anyone, skilled or not.

The Farlowstudios tutorial is really nice, and uses basically the same technique as Veikira's method, except with the pen tool instead of the selection tool. this provides a more "natural" line... Although depending on the time you take, Veik's selection tool method can be just as "smooth"... although i guess it takes longer, and requires a lot of fine editing. I'll have to go and try this later :)

Solos, thanks for your little coloring tutorial too. I love seeing the different methods of coloring... I really stink at coloring... at least "realistically". I do use a cel shading coloring method sometimes, but it's a real pain! ...that and I'm lazy.


Oh, and Charon.... your paint portraits rock.

[Red Nile]

This seemed a better spot for this than on page 26 of my banner thread. :) Here's the instructions on how to get your signature banners to show a random banner from a list of them, each time someone visits a page with one of your posts on it. People with Firefox will see the same banner every time, though they can force a refresh with Ctrl+F5.

These instructions are mostly Suburbanhell's, so credit goes to him. I just edited them a little bit.

Create a file called randomsig.php using wordpad, and insert the following code:

<?php
header("Pragma: no-cache");
header("Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0", false);
header("Expires: Sun, 18 May 1980 16:32:00 GMT"); //in the past
header("Last-Modified: " . gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s") . " GMT");
srand((double)microtime()*1000000);
$f[] = "urlforimage1";
$f[] = "urlforimage2";
$f[] = "urlforimage3";
$f[] = "urlforimage4";
header("Location: " . $f[rand(1, count($f)) - 1]);
echo("For NS4");
?>

In the space where "urlforimage1" is, place the full url of your current image, for example: "http://www.myimageishere.com/image.jpg"

Repeat that for every picture you want to put in there. Delete any of the $f statements that you don't use. Make sure to save as a regular text file. Next you need webspace that will support php, I used 100webspace.com since it was free, place the php on that and then stick it in your sig as an image.... voila it's done.

[Inertial]

*snagged*

randomization here we come.

[TopHat]

Thanks for the tip, Red. Maybe I'll get mine to work finally. :D

Edit: Sigh...failed again.

[Red Nile]

Your sig that isn't working is showing up as "php.htm"...it needs the ".php" extension, not a .htm extension, for one thing.

[sunstar]

I had posted a line art tutorial with 5 "step" example images
not sure what happened to it, but I could put it back together and post it here, if anyone is interested.

[D'Arkaine]

I had posted a line art tutorial with 5 "step" example images
not sure what happened to it, but I could put it back together and post it here, if anyone is interested.

I would love to see it sunstar.

[Akamaz]

I don't suppose anyone could be kind enough to turn this into a php file for me, as i seem to be coming across diffficulties about this


<?php
header("Pragma: no-cache");
header("Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0", false);
header("Expires: Sun, 18 May 1980 16:32:00 GMT"); //in the past
header("Last-Modified: " . gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s") . " GMT");
srand((double)microtime()*1000000);
$f[] = "http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v504/akamazY2000/guilochbanner.jpg";
$f[] = "http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v504/akamazY2000/akamazbanner.jpg";
$f[] = "http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v504/akamazY2000/Mikoto/dancerbanner.jpg";
header("Location: " . $f[rand(1, count($f)) - 1]);
echo("For NS4");
?>

[D'Arkaine]

I don't suppose anyone could be kind enough to turn this into a php file for me, as i seem to be coming across diffficulties about this


<?php
header("Pragma: no-cache");
header("Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0", false);
header("Expires: Sun, 18 May 1980 16:32:00 GMT"); //in the past
header("Last-Modified: " . gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s") . " GMT");
srand((double)microtime()*1000000);
$f[] = "http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v504/akamazY2000/guilochbanner.jpg";
$f[] = "http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v504/akamazY2000/akamazbanner.jpg";
$f[] = "http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v504/akamazY2000/Mikoto/dancerbanner.jpg";
header("Location: " . $f[rand(1, count($f)) - 1]);
echo("For NS4");
?>

I copied and pasted the code into a blank file and named it test.php - worked fine for me with no alterations. www.greenwoodsc.com/test.php

[Solos]

Animated Snow
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v376/TCI/Iciclesxmasanim.gif

You will need:
Adobe Photoshop + Image Ready
A foreground image
A Background


1)Crop your image and arrange how you want it to look in the final piece.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v376/TCI/icicleschristmas.jpg

2)Create a new canvas of the same dimensions as your image. Fill the background in black.

3)Create a new layer and choose the paintbrush tool. Set the brush size to 1. Now draw in some snowflakes with single clicks. Remember to make them show no obvious pattern and to get quite close to the edges or it will look odd when looped.

4)Make a new layer and change the brush size to 3. Draw some snowflakes on in the same way. You need much fewer this time and space them out more.

5)Hit Ctrl+A then Ctrl+C to select all then copy. GO back to your picture and hit Ctrl+P to paste into a new layer. Do the same for the other snow layer.

6)Arrange the layers in this order.
Big Snow
Foreground
Small Snow
Background

7)For the big snow move the layer down down half the total height of the image using the move tool and arrow keys. So if you have an 80 pixel high image move it down 40 pixels. Draw some more snow into the space on the top half of the picture. Move back up half the height of the canvas. Duplicate the layer by dragging it to the "New Layer" icon. Move it up by 1.5 times the height of the canvas (80 high, move up 120). Go to Layer>Merge Down.

8)For the small snow just duplicate, move up by height of image then merge down.

9)Switch to Image Ready by pressing the button at the bottom of the palette.

10)In the Animation Palette click the little number at the bottom of the picture and choose Other>0.05. Click new frame. In the second frame move the big snow down two times the height of your picture. Move the small snow down the height of your picture.

11)Click the tween button (looks like a bouncing ball). Set the number of frames however many you want (mine has 40 frames, that's 2 pizels of background movement per frame, 3 pizels of foreground movement). Click ok and it should create a load of transitional frames for you. Delete the final frame (it is the same as the first) then hit play and it should look smooth.

12)File>Save (this is the PSD file)
File>Save Optimised (this is the gif)


So where abouts did everyone get stuck from my crap instructions?

9

[The Widowed]

Solos, you are an inspiration to us all. :D

http://www.tritonius.com/MxO/EmeraldMatrix.gif

So I used Matrix code instead of snowflakes. Same principle. ;)

Okay...I still can't deal with layers (What's the difference between a raster layer and a vector layer, anyway?), so I just set up a whole bunch of different canvases for each depth. Five frames for the little tiny code in the back, five frames for the somewhat larger yet still small code in front of that, five frames for the mid-sized code in front of that, and five frames for the large code in front. Like so:

1 2 3 4 5 Tiny [To serve as the base canvas]
1 2 3 4 5 Small
[This "layer" reserved for Emerald Skye]
1 2 3 4 5 Mid
1 2 3 4 5 Large

Then, starting with the tiny frames, I just went up the ladder, using the magic wand selector on the black space(s) and inverting the selection to grab only the code. Just to make sure the locations of the code streams matched up from frame to frame, I put a tiny, practically invisible deep gray pixel at opposite corners of the canvas (0,0 and 239,239). Then I selected the corresponding Tiny frame and Ctrl+E to paste the selection: Small 1 first, then Emerald's cut-out, then Mid 1, then Large 1. Then I'd do the same for Tiny 2, then Tiny 3, and so on.

But the animation's still a bit rough, so I was thinking of adding more frames to the animation. I was also hoping to shrink the size to 25% or so...whatever's just large enough for an avatar. But when I shrink the frames, the lines get distorted, so I may have to edit the shrunken frames to get the desired look. Any advice you have on how to do this most smoothly would be appreciated. :)

[Solos]

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=general&Number=4326880&bodyprev=#Post4326880 :cool:

[Belabras]

Man, Posi has serious connections in the art department.

[Quakester]

Someone asked me where I got all my mega bases from. Naturally the site went down that very day. Well, now it's back and better than ever. So anyone who wants to give mega making a shot on their own, here ya go.
Megas aplenty (http://www.megaman-sprites.com/news/)

[Lawmaker]

Some new Articles on "making it into the art world" No actual art lessons here... but some good advice nevertheless.

ONE STEP: CRITICAL EYES by Jim Zubkavich (http://www.newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=56740)
ONE STEP: SKETCHING IT UP by Jim Zubkavich (http://www.newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=58440)


THis is apparently a Bi-Weekly column on Newsarama... I just stumbled onto it and thought I'd share.

[Gollum_ARG]

Here is a tutorial i found on Deviantart.com It is aimed towards working on Corel Painter but i think it works on other applications as well.

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/17861903/

[Gollum_ARG]

This is a great coloring video tutorial!

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/37149236/?qo=53&q=coloring+tutorial

[Dynamo-Man]

Coloring Black Costumes

Can anyone give advice on how best to color black costumes without losing the details in the color? I have some ideas, but I was just thinking maybe some of you may have some that I hadn't thought of.

[Jade_Dragon]

Coloring Black Costumes

Can anyone give advice on how best to color black costumes without losing the details in the color? I have some ideas, but I was just thinking maybe some of you may have some that I hadn't thought of.

Well, I don't have any professional advice as I've never really studied it. However, I've done a number of drawings of black or dark costumes in the past, just on what it looks to me like other folks are doing, and he's my take on it.

First of all, you don't want black to be BLACK. You want it to be dark blue, dark purple, dark green, some really dark color. Blue and purple are the ones I see most often, for "pure" black, but the main thing is to match the color to something else on the costume if you can. For instance, if I had a character with red with a primary color I might use a dark red for the "black".

Second, the best way to do a black area is to make it a negative. The black is the solid area, and then the lines are white. Make just the slightest black line to delimit the border between the colors and then leave a white area the thickness of a line. Then fill in the area with black. Shading, crosshatching, anything you want to do to give depth, that should be white lines, on the black background. You may also want to add white reflections on the opposite side from the shading.

I find the best way to do that is to draw the lines first with pencil, then outline the lines with black, and erase the pencil. Then I fill in the black areas.

Finally, when you add the color, use your dark blue or purple or whatever to fill in the shading and other lines. Sometimes for a black and white pic I'll use pencil for a grey shading. Then if there are reflection areas they will stand out from the greyer shadows.

[Dynamo-Man]

I ended up coming out with the "negative" effect by accident. Due to the anti-aliasing of the line art, when I slected an area on the line art layer, and then filled that area on the background with black, it came out like this:

http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/9783/fastlanecolorsampleoy9.jpg

I figure, if I do that, then clean the lines up with white, it will look good for the black parts of the costume. :)

[Jade_Dragon]

http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/9783/fastlanecolorsampleoy9.jpg


Yep, that's the idea. I couldn't have come up with a better example myself. Just give a little more "depth" to the lines, define them and widen them out where you want the shading, and it should look great. Then if you want to add color that should be easy, too.

[Gollum_ARG]

I ended up coming out with the "negative" effect by accident. Due to the anti-aliasing of the line art, when I slected an area on the line art layer, and then filled that area on the background with black, it came out like this:

http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/9783/fastlanecolorsampleoy9.jpg

I figure, if I do that, then clean the lines up with white, it will look good for the black parts of the costume. :)

Cool. IMO That would be worth a try. I don't think it would come out too neatly, though.
I think you are using photoshop or some software alike, so for a black costume I would go with something like this:

http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/14/flattingfastlaneza3.jpg
Here I used as the flat base color, a Dark grey (some use dark blue to represent black leather too). And then use a darker grey (close to black) for shadows and a lighter grey/white for highlights.
To lay your flat colors down easily, you should do this.
Open the file, hit F7 to open up the Layer window and set up something similar to the layers on the picture. Setting the Lineart layer on Multiply will make the white on that layer transparent, letting you color underneath.
I use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to laydown my flats.
http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/9490/flattingfastlane2sl5.jpg :P

If you just wanted to experiment like that. Just ignore this message. :P

I'll post something more similar to what I think you want to do later on.

[Dynamo-Man]

Actually, that helps a lot. I am using 2 versions of PS. I have 5.5 at work, and CS2 at home. I will have to do some experimentation here. :)

[Dynamo-Man]

A lot of chatter has been going on about how to learn/improve art skills. I submit for your viewing pleasure the homepage of one of my all-time favorite comic book artists (and a really cool guy to talk to), Scott McDaniel. I fell in love with his art during his run on Marvel's Green Goblin series, and went on to follow him for a while in DC's Nightwing (his best work ever, IMHO). His site has a lot of cool info and great art.

Scott McDaniel (http://www.scottmcdaniel.net/)

[D'Arkaine]

I was wondering if anyone knew of any good tutorials out there for energy type effects - like the auras in game.

I am wanting to get the auras around vind's eyes right. I have tried different things in the past, but have not been satisfied yet.

http://www.donnyd.com/images/temp.jpg

I have PaintShopPro and Photoshop (altho I am a photoshop newb)

http://www.donnyd.com/gallery/v/coh/vindicator/

http://www.creyindustries.com?i=16

[Dynamo-Man]

Just thought I'd post this. I found the site for one of my favorite artists. I just LOVE this style. And I have the first book he did. It's a great site. :)

Action Cartooning! (http://www.actioncartooning.com/)

[Gollum_ARG]

Oooh..nice stuff. Wicked cool style.

Two free Software I recommend....

Alternative to Illustrator: http://www.inkscape.org/ (This one is just great)

Alternative to Photoshop: http://www.getpaint.net/index2.html (Make sure you check the plugins sections for more stuff)

[NotaSpambotHonest]

Beautiful! Just the kind of things I was looking for, thanks everyone.