16 million color Arm Drawing:
1. start with the wire frame. The blue sections are no part of
the skin. they are in the outline
2. Add
some medium flesh colors (note: I usually work in grayscale, BUT, with the q2 palette, I
like to start with a color in the palette so my turn-out will be easier to convert)
3. Now
the muscles outline is up to you. I suggest look at your own arms, if you have at least
some muscle, you can get an outline from there. If you don't, I suggest you look at some
other skins, muscle books, and start some daily exercises. ;) Of course not all of us are
a muscular as the Q2 model, so you will have to "add" muscles to you own if you
want to use that method
4. Increase your color depth to 16million. In Paint Shop Pro, select the RETOUCH button.
From that set your Retouch Mode: Lighten, Size: 5, Shape: Round, Opacity: 30.
5. Draw on the arm a simple out line with those settings.
6. now
that you have a simple outline, change you retouch to DARKEN. and add some shading.
7. Switch
back to LIGHTEN and add some more lighting, then back to darken and add more shading.
(Optional) make a copy of what your drawing and load the q2 palette to that just to get an
idea of how you arms are coming along.
8. now,
the fun part, change the size of your retouch to 1, and start adding the details
(switching between lighten and darken while in this process).
9. After
you get it all looking like you want it, load the Quake 2 palette. I suggest you download
my custom palettes, and load the browns or the flesh palettes for quake 2.
10. If when you loaded the palette, the colors just don't look right, you should do some
pixel for pixel corrections by selecting the color you want and drawing that straight onto
the skin.
11. now
for the other side, just copy and paste, then mirror onto the other side.
You will
noticed that it is not EXACTLY in the lines, so just copy the closest edge and paste it
over.
12. That should be your finished product. If you don't like it, remember, it takes time
and practice. And for the back, just run the same steps as before, but of course, do not
draw the same thing. ;)
13.
special details: people like veins and they are easy to add. In 16million colors, choose
you retouch with all the same settings with SIZE 1 or 2 (depending on the width of the
vein) and just run curved or off-straight lines in areas were you want them.
14. Draw the vein itself in lighten...
...and
then draw around that with darken.
15. and
load the palette...complete.
Finishing the Arms, the back/inside:
Start
with you existing arm, and darking the inside areas (the middle area below the top is the
armpit)
Using a size 5 darken does best.
Switch
between Lighten and darken, and use size 1 to make the hands and ligaments
Fix the
edges to fit the model skin, and load the Q2 palette of course.
Put
them all together fixing any problems that come along.
And
there you go...