Special Effects

[Patrick Rangerwolf]

Howls,

I would like to ask how anyone here that does special effects in their art.  My characters are all wizards, so they are casting a lot of spells that involve energy beams.  There are also a lot of glowing weapons, and other magical situations.  Does anyone have any good ideas on how to make special effects work with dry techniques (I use colored pencils as my main medium).  I'm also not scared of computers as a tool, so if there is a good software that makes for great effects, I'd love to know about them.  Thank you very much, and have fun.

A furend and fellow artist

[ObliviousAlly]

I wouldn't know how to make effects with colored pencials and stuff, as I rarely use them cause I'm awful with them. However, if you have Paintshop Pro or Photoshop, there's limitless things you can use to make cool effects. There's also plenty of sites out there that give tutorials on that kind of stuff. I think there may  be some at http://www.polykarbon.com. And I'm sure there's links from there. And if you have either of the mentioned programs, there's a program called Eye Candy you can get (I think there's a free trial, as you have to pay for the whole program.), which is -really- good- and has all kinds of nifty stuff. Hope that helps a little. ^_^;;;

[Patrick Rangerwolf]

Thank you very much.  One of the things that I always liked in Anime was the nice glow that surrounded effects, such as fire, lasers, and other photographic tricks.  I learned how to do that with an animation camera, but I could never achieve that in my still drawings.  Thank you for the ideas.  Please send me more suggestions.  I always want to improve.

Does anyone have any good ideas on how to make special effects work with dry techniques?  (I use colored pencils as my main medium.)  When creating a glowing effect, plan beforehand how far the glow reaches, how bright it should be in various points, and what surfaces might reflect the light.

Most non-computer media do not look so great applying lighter colors onto darker to create highlights.  (I know there are exceptions and it all depends on this and blah blah blah.  I am saying that adding a yellow glow on an already black surface tends to fail in something like colored pencil.)  Hence, planning light and dark in advance is necessary.  Also, knowing what kind of light is helpful.  A softer and less focused glow will probably require more blending as it fades away from the source, while a focused beam could be drawn as a solid mass of light that is nearly consistent from source to destination.

Of course, shading, highlights, and other things connected to light sources are still weaknesses for me, so hopefully you can get more information from more experienced artists... or from your own practice and observation.

[Ravane]

For shines and sparkles why not use some carefully applied dots and stars in the area of the magic with a fine brush and white acrylic paint?
 You can pick up a nice set of acrylics for cheap too. ^^

How ahout experimenting with an air brush? For some fine sparkes and splatters of magic? Use white or luminous colours for that. ^^

Or, you could try the tooth brush effect. Take a tooth brush, dab it in paint (I'd use the colours I suggested in the air brush advice.) and brush your thumb over the bristles. This should send the paint everywhere in little spaltters. ^^
 I'd be careful with this technique, however, as it can be messy and a little uncontrolable.

Hope this helped.  

EDIT: Also, Adobe Photoshop is a brilliant program to use. I'd also invest in a tablet for easier control.
Here are some ineterstign didgital tutorials.

http://www.teamphotoshop.com/photoshop/tutorials/ps_tut_techniques.php

[Mousira]

I don't know how much it'd help, but I love to color with pencil crayons as well, but due to my scanner the colors always come in darker than I want them too. -.-
But, one techniques I saw someone use once, and tried using in my own (though, it didn't show when it was scanned....) is this: If the magic spell is a star/sparkle, use the main color you want it to be, then make some dark lines as a sort of shadow on it, but don't extend them past the halfway point of the original line. At the very tip of each point, draw a small circle/dot with a bright color. After that is finished, take a very light gray and make a streak from that circle/dot to the center of the star, sort of smudging them together. If you have metallic colored pencils, the person suggested I use silver on the opposite side of the shadows to give a slight highlight to them.
The problem with my scanner is that the silver comes in darker then the shadow, so my stars/sparkles look backwards. *sighs and shrugs* I don't know if that'd help, but it is an idea.
Oh, and for smoky spells I use a few different colors, very lightly, then color on top with the light gray to blend them (I show that through my genie picture in my 'Big Picture Update''>
I hope these work for you, if not, I hope they gave an idea or two. '>