@Nug said:
@ JR: Thanks man. I’m glad you like it. Let me talk about this with you… If you don’t mind. I tried a little of your lighting style here. Towards the end, layer hierarchy got conflicted and it became a pain to work with. In your opinion…Whats the best way to work around such? This piece has around 170 something layers give or take. And many multiples of certain insignia/ pattern. I found myself several times going through the numbers of the piece under the items tab until I found the right piece to move. Is there a better way? The face in the smoke was also a pain to try and pull off as well, and to be honest I’m not happy with it. I’d love to see some others try and pull it off. Do you ever get to a point when working on something that you think you maybe… uhhh how to word this… either you’re trying to hard to make something work, or you’re over looking something crucial/ simple that you could use to make it the way you invision? It looks like a simple piece but off and on I think I may have more time in this than any other I have. I don’t know man… I’m not sure if its just where I’m trying to make the machine do stuff it’s not supposed to do, or if just where i’m not used to the style and i’m missing something. It just seems there should be an easier way than what i had to do. If you need the text to help clarify some of my issues I can hook you up with that. Any advice would be greatly appreciated as to what you may have done differently.
Okay, lets see.
1. Layering and dealing with large layer numbers:
Really I don’t know a way around this. When I did the video version of Rainbow Wings (with was over 200 layers per image and ten thousand layers combined) I wrote down the item number from the item select screen (you know when you’ve selected which item you’re going to use a layer box will come up over it) and what it was layered onto and what number that was of that item. It helped me keep it all organised, but it is a real pain in the backside that’s for sure.
2. Getting things to look the way you envision:
Yeah, I feel like that all the time. And unless you envision things entirely in a heromachinable manner (i.e. item specific), you’re never going to get things to be exactly right, but that’s ok, because when you push the ‘machine to its limits you can find what you can or can’t do and that’s how you come up with some of the best effects. I certainly think the smoke face works well, but I can understand why you might not be happy with it. I’ve had people comment on my work saying how brilliant it is and I’ve just felt completely meh about it.
3. What I might have done differently:
Ok, going back to look it over again, the first thing I saw that I would change is the glow behind/ in front of the smoke face. I would make the colour more transparent (not by much, maybe 10 points) and then either make it smaller or (and you might hate this suggestion due to layer difficulties) mask it onto an item that suggests dispersing smoke, a background aura or item-right energy maybe. Second thing, did you use the second shading circle, the one that if you make colour 1 transparent it removes the central colour. That is what I used to get the atmospherics on my Lili and Danni pictures. If you make that the top most layer and size it right you can get some very nice atmospherics. The only reason I ask is because I can’t properly tell, the background of the picture is black and there are a lot of other glow effects going on. Last thing I’d do is low-light her hair. What I mean by that is add shading to the hair to make it look like it is being hit by the candle light. I know it will be more layers, but trust me it will really make the picture pop, because at the moment you’ve got some awesome candle glow effects and they show up on the skirt and top but not the hair, and it makes the hair look a bit flat. That’s all I can see at the moment.
Hopefully this helps. I apologise if some of this stuff doesn’t make much sense, it’s nearly midnight here while I’m typing this.
Either way, keep up the good work man.
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Sorry I didn’t give you props in the last message but i started typing it many hours ago, and got caught up in life stuff before i could finish it. Much love!
You all know who you are… for anyone else reading 
I appreciate the chat JR!
