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I can't really get too detailed as I've never used PaintShopPro, but I'm assuming that it has the same basic features as Photoshop.

I think of layers as sheets of clear plastic placed on top of each other, like they (used to?) use in cel animation. They let you paint stuff on an upper layer without affecting what's underneath. You can also turn layers on and off, duplicate them and move them around, etc, so they basically make image editing a hellava lot easier.

In addition to the normal Red, Green and Blue channels, each layer also has what's called an Alpha channel, which is basically a transparency map for the layer. You can edit this transparency map to make parts of a layer partially or fully invisible, which is also known as masking. Normally, the blending method for a layer is additive, but you can create all sorts of cool effects by changing it to subtract, multiply, darken, hue, soft light, etc. You can also add effects to the outline of layer shapes, like feathering, glows, drop shadows, etc.

OK, so that was a brief introduction to layers. Here are the basic steps of what I did to yout Aki picture.

1. Duplicate background layer to create an identical layer above it.
2. Create a "hide all" layer mask for new layer (Let's you directly paint on the layer's alpha channel).
3. Selected the new layer's mask and painted white on the morphed parts. This makes the new layer visible for these parts instead of the background image.
4. With the new layer selected, clicked on the "Unsharp Mask" filter. I forget the actual settings I used but "amount: 50%, radius: 40, threshold: 0-5" should give you a similar result.

My advice is to create a new layer before you start, so all of you "porphing" is done above the background image. It will then be easier to do tweaks at the end to get it to blend in better. Hope this clears things up a bit.

I want to give this a try myself as it seems like a good way to learn anatomy and practice shading. I'll probably have a few questions to ask you about that side of things.

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I like! I like!

All different, but all completely hot.

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Reason—–Most of the time it is very difficult to match the skin texture of the model being….erm…"Porphed" ( Good word. I like that ). Sometimes the unsharp mask thingy works well, sometimes it just enhances the orginal photo too much and makes what I've done look more obvious. Therefore some of the lasses have smoother looking painted bits. Reducing the density setting sometimes makes a better skin texture match

I understand that you could sit there all day trying to get the skin texture just right, when I'm sure we would all prefer you to keep cranking them out like you've been doing. I assumed that you would do your painting on a separate layer so you could apply whatever filters you like without affecting the original photo. Otherwise most paint packages let you paint a mask to only allow the filter to affect certain areas of the image.

That's what I did to your aki image.

Attachments:

• zy5hRM8H__akix_sharpened.jpg

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Man, did you have a rendering chipset implanted in your brain when you were a baby or something  :??

Morphs just doesn't do them justice, we need a new term. Someone come up with something better than "Porphs".

If I may just utter one word of criticism, is that the painted bits look a bit soft compared to the original photo. Have you tried running the unsharp mask filter once your done to help make it match better?

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Heh…did I just see a complaint about masculine-looking women on THIS board? :p

Ha ha. That's one thing you'll never hear from me on this board. I was, of course, just talking about the style, not the (very feminine) muscles  :-D.

Already been decided, but thanks for the input. Not much I can do; the strip eats up too much of my free time and doesn't pay enough of the bills. Last month's desktop only netted about $50 for the month…I have to find ways to streamline the production so I can focus on getting a second job.

Sorry to hear that. You're making a living from your artistic talent, so to me, you're already living the dream :wink:. I can see you getting a job in the animation industry. With Flash animation getting popular for mainstream TV shows, there must be a bunch of small studios starting up that could use your character design skills. Maybe we could see a PCC cartoon yet.

I'll be sorry to see the original style go, but at least you gave us some warning. Who knows, maybe the new style will grow on me.

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PLEASE GOD, NO!

Your original style rocks! Why change it? Surely, making characters "animation-friendly" just involves knowing which details to drop and you already do that exceedingly well. To me, the new sharp corners just make her look too hard and masculine. A PCC cartoon would be the best, and worth paying per view I might add, but in your current stlye please!

For the record, I'm not particuarly fond of the character design for Batman and Justice League either. Damn that Bruce Timm!

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The way you described that reaper, I could almost hear the bones snapping! Really cool stuff!

Your little teaser earlier got me thinking about this game where one person writes a story, but gets a different person to write each alternate paragraph/section. It's a bit different to the never ending story idea I've seen on other sites as the original author can always steer it back to their original vision if someone gets too off track, or he could just choose to go with it. It's amazing how the story seems to take on a life of its own, taking you places you didn't really expect.

It might be a good way to get some people, who are too daunted to attempt a full story, to start writing. Also, some of the more exprienced writers on this board can join in and show us how its done.

I guess the best way to manage it would be to reply to the most recent paragraph as quickly as you can (first come first served) to save your place while you actually write the next part. The original author would then reply with the next part, etc.

So, reaper since you inadvertantly spawned this idea, would you be interested in starting such a game?

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Some of your ideas also remind me RhinehartD's "Dawn" saga where the focus was on a college age girl with muscular development far beyond her years totally outclassing the other competitors at the Ms Olympia. So, basically I agree you are onto a good thing so here are some thoughts about your questions.

I guess you have to ask yourself, what drives the media. Like most things in this crazy reality of ours it is money, which translates to ratings, newspaper sales or whatever. So basically, if they think people will watch/read etc, they'll report on it. I'm pretty sure most elements in the media would regard Renne Toney's achievement as just a freak getting freakier and therefore not particularly newsworthy. So I guess the next question you have to ask is what angle would you need for a wider audience to become interested in the story.

The youth factor is always a good one and might be enough. I remember media reports about an 8-year old boy bodybuilder a few years ago. I've never seen any about a girl bodybuilder though. If anyone would be a contender it would be Victoria Larvie, who was 13 years old when she competed in the fitness section of the NPC National Championships. It would have been reported in the bodybuilding media, but I'm pretty sure it didn't make it to the mainstream.

To justify a wide media interest I think you would need a further element of contraversy. Women taking on men in a male-dominated field always seems to get headlines so there would definitely be interest by then. For her to get noticed before, you would need something else, like a connection to a celebrity, or getting work as a model, etc. If the muscle growth was sudden then I have a feeling that the story would be about getting help for the girl to reverse this terrible affliction.

You've raised some tricky questions here with no simple answers, but hope this helps with the discussion. Good luck with the story.

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Man, that's HoT. Stories like this are few and far between on this site, with the main focus being on muscle growth. So, yes please, continue!

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Awesome find. Flawless combination of beauty and muscular development.

You are fast outstripping Google as my preferred source of female muscle pictures :-D.

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