My 2nd Skin : Comments and suggestions welcomed!!

warning : nudity.

Well as small few of you know, I created a skin a while ago. I will include an image of it just for laughs. But alas I wasn't happy with it and decided to create another. So, here it is.

I'm having trouble with the eye shading, cheek shading and hands. Silly little things you'd think would be easier than matching seams! It's taken me DOZENS of attempts at the face, I am still unfinished (and the lashes hide a lot of sins!) But I am happy so far. Any suggestions on the skin itself, especially the tricky parts I mentioned would be greatly appreciated as I'm hardly a pro. :]

First skin attempt: /109/c8/230895/1.html

Over all, the shading and highlighting on the face looks like it's going in good places. Some of those places I really wouldn't try to overwork, like the cheeks and forehead. Be careful of over blowing the contrast between highlight, neutral skin tone, and shadow. I would soften the highlighting on the middle of the forehead a little. Try and sharpen it on the upper nose bridge and lips because those areas are much less broad than the forehead. The same goes for shadows. Places that fold into creases gain shadow very quickly. A lot of your shadow areas like the nostrils and eye folds don't have enough shadow in them. Try to punch these areas out with contrast. This will give you details that are missing in those areas, and that will move the overall look of the face away from a loosely airbrushed feel to a sharper more realistic feel. Look at the details of the eyelashes and try to match that in the eyebrows and lips. I realize prim textures will always be much crisper than avatar textures, but you will need to push the envelope on the avatar textures to get closer to that crispness.

Again, the body has good shading and highlight placement (maybe too much highlight on the belly and in the crotch area), but it suffers from that washed out loosely airbrushed feel. Don't be afraid to draw hard lines into the texture and gradually soften them. I keep looking at the aureoles and belly button and blinking my eyes to bring those areas into focus. They should have more detail than they currently do. The texture resolutions will support more detail there, and it helps to have a knowledge of where to add the most amount of detail and where it's good to hold back. The belly area is one of those places you want good detail to enhance it's subtleties. Many skin artists rely too heavily on broad, simplistic, and often overblown highlight and shadow there to give detail when it is more a matter of visually communicating looseness or tightness in the skin texture (much more subtle). The breasts depend largely upon how tweaked the appearance sliders are in that area. You will lose detail if the breasts are blown out to huge proportions.

It looks to me like you are using a 100% painterly approach to skinning (no photo sampling). That is fine, but be aware that the skin has grain and minute folds to it. A lot of these details can be overlooked with this skinning method unless you are very attentive to small details. If you are not already doing it, try working on a master file that is at least four times the surface resolution of the final upload size and a 2 to 1 ratio in pixel dimensions (i.e 1024x1024 to 512x512).

I hope this critique inspires you, and that it's not TOO hard hitting. I'm trying to be fair and honest. I would expect nothing less from someone critiquing my own work.

Thankyou VERY much for your critique! I do agree with many of your points there. I will continue adjusting, adjusting, adjusting.

I guess my painterly technique stems from feeling inspired by Kara Eagle's Karamia skins, which do seem brushed very much so but just seem to glow, and I think they look amazing. I think different people most definately have different tastes when it comes to skins and I am trying to make my skins realistic, but not to the max. I have incorporated some pictures, but I use them more as a template to paint on. I've noticed I need to make the bellybutton darker and as you said, use hard lines to create that definition. You hit the nail on the head - I am definately scared of that, and it shows! The nipples need to be more defined too, even though I did want the edges to blend into the skin a bit more, which my boyfriend suggested and I like that effect.

I'm tempted to tone the hands down a bit more too >.< Should I give in?

Any more suggestions/comments from anyone = Great.

Thank you!

I really do like the subtle gradients in your skin. Sometimes skins have a bit too much contrast. Well done Trixie! And thanks for the kind remarks. ;P

Thank you :]

You've done an amazing job Trixibelle. I love the softness of the skin and the wonderful highlights you've given her. I do however feel that the texture is too smooth in certain areas. I would put in crisp detail in areas such as collarbones, shoulderblades, navel, nipples, knees etc. You would need to blend these sections in gradually so as to preserve the luminous look and feel of the skin which in my opinion is excellent.

Great work!

Okay! Updated progress. Things I have changed:

-- Defined nipples (slightly), defined collarbone, darkened the bellybutton (as suggested)
-- Changed highlights in the breasts slightly
-- Lightened the chest a bit to make it blend more into the highlights of the stomach
-- Enhance the cleavage that was barely noticable before
-- "Thinify" the highlights/bones in the hands, and also mute the pink in the hands slightly
-- Add real eyebrows xD I was going to keep the blonde eyebrows in a seperate skin just for blondes if they liked it that way, but I don't think the brown is too dark - Blondes would be a ble to take it.
-- Darken the nostrils and define the outer edge slightly
-- Colour the cheeks using highlighting and shadow to show off the cheekbones a little more
-- NEW LIPS. :]
-- Decreased highlighting of the forehead (as suggested)

I'm sure there's more, but I can't think of them at the moment. I have included an updated image of the skin nude, and an image comparing the two torsos in a bikini, showing the difference in cleavage, hands etc.

Very nice work on the face. To my eye though, the rest of the body looks unfinished in comparison. Also, as Nam noted, the fine skin texturing is not visilbe in these photos. I'd like to see an extreme closeup of some random flat place on the skin so I could see the detailed texturing, if any. Overall, I'm impressed and if you can bring the level of detail in the rest of the body up to that of the face, it'll be a truly great skin.

Can we see some closeups of the knees, elbows, hands, and feet (front and back)?

I know for lots of people, it's all about the face. But I personally prefer skins that are finished scalp to toes.

I have been trying to go for a natural look on the eyelids, but they seem to be a very hard part of the skin to master. I've tried my best, and if I can't do better with my natural base than this then I will sell as-is. It's extremely hard. Somehow I feel adding the make-ups will be easier down the line, but if people want a "natural" look, would they want this?

It does look lovely with prim lashes. Hehe.

I all together gave up on adding makeovers into my skin packs. I have a few specialty skins with them, but all the rest are tabula rasa. Instead, I offer all the makeovers as custom mix and match orders. Displaying and maintaining all the options is a real PITA though! My incentive at the time was the possibility of new avatar texture layers. I'm still waiting for the FREQUENTLY REQUESTED HEAD TATTOO LAYER that would make the makeover ISSUE GO AWAY! I feel like an inmate on death row (convicted of wearing permanent makeup) waiting for Governor Linden's pardon.