Agreed, that's much better, but the joints are still really odd. I think curving them and making them less white might make them look like part of the bamboo instead of an afterthought.
Definitely improved, now they don't seem to pop out so much but stay in the background, directing more attention to the drawing. Could be worth to experiment with adding some subtle noise on them.
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I make use of Wag's mountain brushes.
Agreed, that's much better, but the joints are still really odd. I think curving them and making them less white might make them look like part of the bamboo instead of an afterthought.
Gidde's just zis girl, you know?
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Bamboo does have whitish joints, but achieving that organic look must be tricky.
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I make use of Wag's mountain brushes.
Just make 'em black slabs, or purple, or whatever. All the decorations distract from the important things.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
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I much prefer the bamboo, but I think the green is still too loud and the joints stand out too much, but it's looking so much better overall, you're at the tweaking stage.
Of course lack of time in getting a proper illustration, I had half a page available in the Haunted Ryokan scene of the first adventure. The Innkeeper's Wife Ghost is being described on the page, so I thought having a ghost woman of some sort would make good content. And I couldn't find what I wanted, so I decided to do a pencil sketch and illustrate it myself.
This is entirely in pencil, 3 separate illos (each hand, and the main ghost) composited in Xara - my Yurei Ghost illustration of the angry and horrified Innkeeper's Wife... (if her arms, especially the right arm seems disjointed from the body, that's OK, she's a ghost... that was intentional.)
yurei-woman.jpg
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That gives me the willies right there.
And if you want I can take a picture of some bamboo out here in the desert where I live. It's not that green I assure you. It probably is in it's natural Bamboo forest but dead Bamboo might be just what you need for your story.
“When it’s over and you look in the mirror, did you do the best that you were capable of? If so, the score does not matter. But if you find that you did your best you were capable of, you will find it to your liking.” -John Wooden
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Well we don't need to worry about the bamboo background anymore. Just got the word from Steve Russell of Rite Publishing that he wants me to maintain the same trade dress with all Kaidan publications, so that same black background with subtle map details on it as in The Gift cover design. So now the In the Company of Kappa book looks like my other covers.
I guess I was going nowhere with the bamboo anyway. So this is the easy solution.
GP
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That ghost reminds me of Fatal Frame ... scariest bleepin' game I ever played.
Gidde's just zis girl, you know?
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She looks like one of my exes after I told her that 'it wasn't her, it was me' (j/k)!