Hmm, this is enough material for a whole art textbook; I'm not sure how much you'd actually be able to say about each topic if they are all supposed to fit into a brief article. Maybe a description of how each poses a problem and where to start reading tutorials and such to teach oneself how to solve that problem? Just guessing. I'll be interested to see how it turns out, from my point of view as someone who writes articles but wouldn't really know where to start with such a broad topic as this.

Hmm, this is enough material for a whole art textbook; I'm not sure how much you'd actually be able to say about each topic if they are all supposed to fit into a brief article. Maybe a description of how each poses a problem and where to start reading tutorials and such to teach oneself how to solve that problem? Just guessing. I'll be interested to see how it turns out, from my point of view as someone who writes articles but wouldn't really know where to start with such a broad topic as this.

Ha, it's actually enough for several art textbooks. I've found multiple books on perspective, animation, and proportions... that I could name off the top of my head.

My target audience is people who are almost completely unfamiliar with art terminology and techniques, i.e. your classic Programmer Art-maker. My plan is to briefly introduce a subject, provide an example, list some key terms so the reader can search for things themselves, and a link or two to the best page(s) on the subject I could find in a half hour of Googling. This weekend I'll probably post what links I have in another thread to see if people approve or have better ones, actually. Crowdsourcing FTW

Heheh, I suppose you're right; I might have only one textbook worth of material in my head on all those subjects put together, but an expert on any of them could probably write a whole book about it alone.

But ok, I get the purpose now, and for that kind of audience brief is appropriate. *nodnod*

I've only tried a couple of times, but I find it difficult to control color in digital applications. Often I'll see a digital painting that has nice gradients or blending of colors that correctly convey texture, depth/shadow, mood, etc... When I've attempted this, my use of color is granular and it shows. I've seen people convey accurate visual expressions with only a handful of colors, which makes me think that there is some part of this process that I'm not picking up on.

Right now I can do some concept work by silhouetting and shading from there, but I would really like to be able to make it pop with color. What kinds of things can I practice? Or at least it would be nice to have that answered in the paper. :)

I've only tried a couple of times, but I find it difficult to control color in digital applications. Often I'll see a digital painting that has nice gradients or blending of colors that correctly convey texture, depth/shadow, mood, etc... When I've attempted this, my use of color is granular and it shows. I've seen people convey accurate visual expressions with only a handful of colors, which makes me think that there is some part of this process that I'm not picking up on.

Right now I can do some concept work by silhouetting and shading from there, but I would really like to be able to make it pop with color. What kinds of things can I practice? Or at least it would be nice to have that answered in the paper.

There are about 4 different color blending/shading styles, as far as I know... well, plus pointillism/geometric ones where you purposely don't blend the colors. I'd have to see an example of one you thought was really great to tell you which was used. The styles are:

- Cell shading where there are distinct color areas created with a lasso tool, though people sometimes blend them right at the edge

- Soft shading where blending tools and/or airbrush are used to work an initial flat color layer into cloudy or feathery curves

- Painter shading where splotches of multiple colors are applied to the same layer then partially blended together to mimic blending wet paint on a canvas, or low-opacity levels of color are built up with the paintbrush tool over a greyscale base, which is also a standard painting technique

- Architectural/false-3D approach which involves gradient fills and subtle use of feathered selections

@sunandshadow: Thanks, that was really helpful.

I went to look for example paintings that I liked, but then stumbled onto a concept cookie tutorial that was demonstrating painter shading: http://cgcookie.com/concept/2013/03/15/female-character-series-part-2-base-colors/

Time to practice.