Revolving Around Evolution

Revolving around Evolution
Frequently Asked Questions

Main Fanart Kiss Dolls Sims Skins Updates Links

Sy
Er.. who exactly are you?
Can I contact you?

Art Questions
Can I put your art on my page?
Do you take requests? Commissions?
Sy's Version of a How to Draw (Or a Rant about Drawing Obsessively)
What programs do you use?
How do you color your art?

Sim Skin Questions
WHERE ARE THE SIMS SKINS? I LOVE YOU! GIVE THEM TO ME NOW! I'LL THREATEN YOUR LIFE!

Sy Questions

Who ARE you?
Good question. I'm Sy short for Chrissy, occasionally Chris and I'm... me. Which I suppose is always good to know.

Can I contact you?
      I'm shy. But I like people. At least in theory. I constantly forget to sign on stupid messanger things so... whatever.
      You can e-mail me at curisud@yahoo.com but I can be really bad at getting back to people. A good subject helps.
      <

Art Questions

Can I put your art on my page?
Yes.

But before you had all these conditions and....
Yes. They're gone now. Post, crop, alter and steal to your heart's content. Well I supose taking my art and calling it your own is pushing it, but I doubt you can get away with that anyway.

Do you take requests? Commissions?
I really don't have the time and effort to take requests. If you'd like a commission e-mail me with what you have in mind and we can talk. Please please please make the subject line Commission. Even if I haven't updated in a forever, there's probably a large chance that I'll be willing to do commisions.

Sy's Version of a How to Draw (Or a Rant about Drawing Obsessively)
      I could tell you all the measurements, how many heads tall people are, how far apart to draw the eyes, blah blah blah. But I'm not. If your interested in that there are plenty of online tutorials as well as anatomy books. Yup, that stuff is good to learn. I think it's absolutely necessary, at some point in an artist's life. In fact I'm having a real life hissy fit because my figure drawing teacher hates anatomy.
      The most important thing to drawing in my mind is practice. If you want to draw well, draw everything and draw a lot. Observe from real life and draw it. Don't worry about your final product, this is a matter of process. Stop worrying about 'mistakes' and draw. Doesn't matter if it isn't pretty or even if it looks right. You can always redraw from your sketches for aesthetics. The idea is to get the concepts down: the shape of vase, a sense of space and texture, maybe even shading. If that's too much to worry about, don't. Just draw it, or focus on one thing like creating depth or the way the shadows really look. The process of drawing imbeds things in my mind.
      Draw the 'simple' things like cylinders, spheres and cubes. Arms are just funny shaped cylinders, the same concepts of shading and illusion of depth are used. I draw people, architecture, chairs, whatever I can find whenever I have spare time in classes. If there's nothing around there's always my hands or feet (two of the hardest parts of anatomy), just think of all the different movement and perspective you can get. While waiting around, I draw stuff. While ignoring teachers (not a practice I recommend) I draw stuff. While sitting in the car, I draw stuff. It doesn't matter what the stuff is. Just that I'm drawing stuff from life. Because drawing spoons teaches me draw shiny curved armor.
      I also draw fast. I often draw people milling around and people move. If I mess up I just change the line. If the person gets up and walks away, I'm on the next page finding something else to draw. My goal after all, is not to create a masterpiece but to make notes of my observations: catch the mood or essence of a person, the way the light falls, a piece of material folds, whatever it is that interests me on the subject. I fill up a 100 page sketch book of real life sketches in about two months (which I still don't think is enough) and that's not counting the art I do for my art classes and fanart.
      Other suggestions (besides drawing your hand off) include classes, read books on drawing (anatomy, color theory, perspective, whatever you can find), observe art you like, and the attempt find someone to give you honest critiques (hard to find and sometimes hard to emotional handle but absolutely priceless).

What programs do you use?
Currently I'm using Adobe Photoshop 6.0 (for most stuff), Corel Painter Classic 1.0 (for faking water color and other mediums) and my handy dandy Wacom graphics table (which isn't a program- but oh well).

How do you color your art?
      This is a miserable short descripition, but I'm not really sure what to add detail to so it will stay short for now.
      This is probably a little outdated as I haven't done much CGI lately as well as I constantly try different approaches. Also my painting (still life boring stuff) probably had a massive impact on me so this will probably change the next time I sit down to do a CGI that I haven't already started. This is my evolved style, so many of the older CGIs use similar techniques, but probably not the same.
      First I scan in my pencils or inks. If it's a pencil sketch, I outline in a slow tedius process with Photoshop. That is one of the primary reasons I try inking. Next using Photoshop's layers (I love layers!) I set all my base colors. I create texture and shade with the airbrush tool (and make sure I have clean edges! Clean edges are a must!). For more shading I add an additional layer on top of all the colors for cast shadows and highlights. I use multiply (shadows) and screen (highlights) using one color everywhere to help tie the picture together. Never, ever Burn or dodge, it warps the color! I hate burn/dodge with a passion. Then... um... I post it.
      Another hint with CGing: Hard and soft edges are good! I've seen a lot of CGI with only soft edges. Everything's so fuzzy. This annoys me to no end (I suppose their are instances where it works but I believe in breaking rules only on purpose). Hard edges are your friend! They tell the viewer where things end, what overlaps what and break up one distinct shape from another (foreground vs background/hand over clothing). Without at least some hard edges you're going to lose a lot of the illusion of depth. The same goes when you use only hard edges, take a look at graphic designs that use only two colors. No depth. It's not bad all the time, but if you're going for depth you need both. Soft defines the different planes on one object, hard where the surface stops. Look at stuff in life. HARD EDGES!
      Alternative to Photoshop: I'll color it/fix it up/mess around in Painter Classic til I get something I like.

Sims Questions

WHERE ARE THE SIMS SKINS? I LOVE YOU! GIVE THEM TO ME NOW! I'LL THREATEN YOUR LIFE!
Gone.
Last I checked Marvel had some issues with Sim Skins of their characters on some other sites. In order to reduce chances of having the joy of dealing with lawyers, I simply removed the page. I didn't want to have to risk my entire Evo site. I'm not distributing them any longer. Sorry.

E-mail Sy.

Standard Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men: Evolution or any of the associated characters. Marvel and probably some other people I'm currently feeling too lazy to look up own all the nifty copyrights of just about everything. The only thing I lay claim to is my babbling and the fact that I personally did the art.