Even though the GIF format loses the clarity of an image, it's still a good way to do simple, platform independent animations. There are at least 70 frames in this, so I wouldn't post all of them--but I will put a few up in PNG format for those interested in the details. 

 

This pauses on the finished figure for a minute, then repeats.

 

The original impulse for this illustration was a screenshot I paused to take while adventuring with this character in DDO. I enlarged the screenshot and cleaned it up as much as Photoshop could while preserving as much of the image detail as possible. 

 

To give some perspective on the scope of the challenge, I've included crop from the original screenshot--enlarged but not resampled. All of those great screenshots I've saved from my games present this same problem; a great scene, but at a disappointing resolution. 

 

In the GIF progression, I started with this--the line drawing made from the base image. The purpose here was not to block out the character, as it would in a normal illustration. Here, the object was to define the key shapes and prepare masks for use in the painting needed to make an illustrated version of my DDO snapshot.

 

My goal was to preserve as much of the original scene as possible, so using the vector masks and the smudge brush, I cleaned up the edges of my base figure. I was able to reconstruct the engraving details on the back armor plate using filters and adjustment layers. 

 

On a sword, there are often several different types of metal. The blade needed the appearance of steel, with a sharpened edge, while the cross guard had to be clad in gold. There is also an engraved design at  the cross piece. I even worked in details from the background to  make sure the reflections would appear normal once the figure was placed into the scene. 

 

It's difficult to get a good screen shot of a DDO character's lower body, so the boots were hard to improve on. I did not want to lose the wear patterns on the leather. 

 

As much as I liked the soft grey of the character's in game armor, it simply looked better once I changed it to black leather. 

 

I've never known what purpose these leg bands were supposed to serve, beyond adding some character to the armor. I never particularly liked them until I put some texture on them. 

 

The addition of metallic trim and leather texture made a huge difference, though the texture does jump out more at this resolution. You run into weird things like this in digital art. Particularly when working at a resolution suitable for producing good  sized canvas prints. 

 

Like the boots, the hands were difficult to get a good screenshot of in DDO--not that the character model had great hands to begin with. I could not have painted them from scratch without a good model, but this is where DAZ usually comes through for me. 

 

Once satisfied with the hands, I finished the detail work on the sword hilt and pommel. The original pommel was oddly shaped and lit, so I modelled a new one in Photoshop using the 3D tools, then touched up the metal to give it reflections and color to match the gold on the cross guard. 

 

Since I was posing and rendering a figure in DAZ4 to complete the hands, I used a portion of the render to help flesh out the neck--in particular getting the detail behind the ears. The Genesis figure in DAZ is a bit weird at the shoulders, however, so I had to finish the skin there using a photo from my stock pile. 

 

At this point, Avonlea was ready to be put back into the full scene.