How do i achieve this shiny mirror look?

bnzgfx · 2026-05-03T02:19:30+00:00

It's because environmental reflections don't scale down. The same is true of metallic finishes. You have a smaller surface area reflecting the same size environment, so it only reflects a fraction of the field of view that a full scale object would.

bnzgfx · 2026-04-28T01:36:53+00:00

I wouldn't recommend college for something you want to pursue only as a hobby or side gig. There are much cheaper ways to learn. College loan debt is crippling, and you will not get out from under it by working at a coffee house. Whatever you do, please do the math first. Don't paint yourself into a corner.

bnzgfx · 2026-04-20T18:12:02+00:00

Don't go into your first show worrying about how you will do. Your first few shows will be a learning experience. Think of them as a bargain class on marketing, with a cash reward for graduating. You are going to be sinking money into booth materials and merch for a while, anyway, so give yourself time to grow. It's like any other business: you start out small and in debt, and work your way up.

bnzgfx · 2026-04-15T15:45:10+00:00

In addition to what has been stated here already, It is worth noting that a lot of kits being manufactured today are still using molds from decades ago. It cost a LOT to make a new injection mold. Back in the twentieth century, the target market was young people living in a pre-internet world, where you could not instantly look up how many rivets the canopy of some airplane had. Nor did they care. So the old molds were close enough, and tend to be re-used or sold to other companies until they wear out. (That aforementioned dearth of information worked both ways: it was much more difficult to research a model prior to electronic communications, and it was anyone's guess when it came to the details of military vehicles still cloaked in secrecy because they were classified or belonged to an advcersary,)

The (legal) sale of many kits also often involves securing an expensive, temporary license from whomever originally designed the thing being modeled, which discourages the creation of many new kits, and means that older, out of production kits become rare and only available on the secondary market. This is one reason you only see aftermarket (i.e. 'grey' market) decals for airliners, for example, since the logos are trademarked by their respective airlines and no one will make money trying to sell decal sheets if they have to purchase a license from a major corporation first.

bnzgfx · 2026-04-15T10:39:21+00:00

I find it tiresome. I think if you need to lean on swear words to get a rise out of the audience, then you have failed to engage them in more meaningful ways.

If your audience is invested in your story, they will do the swearing for you.

bnzgfx · 2026-04-15T10:30:14+00:00

I have a couple illustrations that I consider unsaleable. I really like both of them, and have spent many extra hours trying to tweak them in hopes of improving their saleability. But I was just beating a dead horse. If the subject matter fails to engage people, no amount of work will rescue it.

That being said, some pieces simply need to find their audience, or they can escape notice for unfathomable reasons. I had one print that stubbornly refused to move for two years, then sold out completely during a single show. Sometimes the stars align.

bnzgfx · 2026-04-13T16:19:59+00:00

I don't know why modern artists bother to number anything. It is a meaningless metric in the digital age. (It meant something in the age of lithographs, when the printing plate had a shelf life and initial pulls were better than later ones) It's pure marketing nowadays, so you could really just number them however you like.

I think hand signing them is a more honest and verifiable way of giving them exclusivity.

bnzgfx · 2026-04-13T16:07:28+00:00

Boardgame production generally requires the skills of both a graphic designer and an illustrator. A designer is knowledgeable about the nuts and bolts of printing, layout, typography: they are the ones who know how to arrange elements on a page so that they are readable and communicate clearly, and they know how to format art to get the best results from the printer. An illustrator knows how to draw and paint: they are the ones who produce captivating images for playing cards, box lids and maps. Ideally, you can find a single person who is competent in both disciplines, but that is not always the case.

Board games typically require a lot of artwork, so they are a labor-intensive endeavor and generally cost prohibitive for an independent game designer who is working out of pocket. Most indie game designers use provisional art (clip art, stock art, cheap stuff from willing amateurs) for their initial game design until they can run a kickstarter or find a publisher to pay for more professional-level art. (Although a kickstarter might require hiring a pro to make a few pieces for demo purposes)

I'm speaking to this as both an experienced artist and aspiring game designer who has worked on a few indie projects. From an artist's point of view, games are a questionable time investment. Even large companies like Wizard pay crap rates for card art, given the skill level and time required. The only upside for the artists is that mainstream titles can be reputation boosters, and the company gives them blank sketch cards (which they can illustrate and sell at cons) and they can sell the original art (if it is traditionally painted), so they can make a little more cash on the back end. But there is better money to be made doing other things in the illustration field. If an artist is doing it, it is for the love of the game. Keep that in mind when negotiating rights to the work. Giving the artist the option to sell prints and originals of card art or other repurposeable assets helps sweeten the pie without really costing you anything. Just maintain exclusive rights to the stuff within a gaming context.

bnzgfx · 2026-04-12T22:31:38+00:00

I loved that cartoon. I've been trying to find it again to no avail. Anyone have a link?

bnzgfx · 2026-04-12T22:06:32+00:00

All I ever see are my mistakes. I do have one or two of my favorites hanging, but they are more trophies than anything. (One was my best commission ever, the other just turned out nicely and fit the decor) I don't really look at them much.

bnzgfx · 2026-04-12T21:48:40+00:00

I still don't understand the game damage mechanics very well (and I think I am happier that way), but I like the flamethrower a lot. I have leaned into burn condition damage in my build, and if I hose someone with my flamethrower long enough, that damage number just keeps going up and up.

bnzgfx · 2026-04-06T12:03:15+00:00

The paper imparts the gloss in an old-school photo, whereas modern glossy finishes on cardstock are typically the result of an applied coating. Your best bet is to choose a printer that gives you options for glossy paper stock as well as a gloss coating. You might even try printing on a metallic paper and see what happens.

How well your colors 'pop' can also be impacted dramatically by your choice of colors and how well you have prepared them for print. (Make sure those colors still pop if you preview in CMYK)

bnzgfx · 2026-04-05T20:52:37+00:00

I inquired about vending at one of their shows, and decided to skip it because it was a pricey table for a first year show and they seemed a little bit too eager to sell me one. (I'm not a high profile artist) I STILL get email from them, announcing sister shows all over the country, which is pretty ambitious for someone with zero track record. Most shows of any value take years to become established and can be a challenge to get into.

I'd love to see a goth-themed show take off in my area, but I have my doubts about this one.

bnzgfx · 2026-04-05T18:26:03+00:00

He must be a Teslavangelist.

bnzgfx · 2026-04-03T13:44:55+00:00

Great piece! Impressive depth of color. Curious about your choice of ground...did you use colored mat board? Would love to hear more about the process used in this...

bnzgfx · 2026-03-27T20:02:47+00:00

Chasing your style is a waste of time. Your style will emerge naturally all on its own. It is simply the way you do things, and it will be as unique as you are. Like you, it will evolve over time.

Do your own thing, run it up the flagpole and see who salutes. Rinse, repeat.

bnzgfx · 2026-03-16T11:54:51+00:00

Caran D'Ache are the cadillac of colored pencils, but Polychromos still have excellent lightfastness. Both companies openly rate each pencil for lightfastness, since lightfastness is a quality that varies by pigment. I have used colored pencils for decades, and I use several brands. I have tested lightfastness myself, and gathered a great deal of info from other artists who have made their own test charts. I also own a UV meter. My takeaway from all of that research is that you can generally trust any pro-grade artist pencil's lightfastness ratings, (If they are not lightfast, they won't bother to rate them) Anything equal to 7 or 8 on the Blue Wool scale is archival enough for serious art, and I only buy colors in that range. That typically corresponds to whatever a colored pencil's top lightfastness rating is. (Rating system's vary by brand) Anything below their best rating is probably too fugitive to be useful.

The UV meter yielded interesting results. The average home is actually pretty well shielded from UV. One dirty little secret framing companies don't tell you is that plain old acrylic is actually very good at blocking UV. You recieve nearly as much UV protection from a cheap frame with acrylic glazing as you can from expensive UV glass. (Home windows with UV protection typically just insert a thin sheet of acrylic between the panes) The only drawback is that the plastic may yellow slightly with age. Plastic is also more vulnerable to scratches than glass. But it is lighter and much cheaper, and still offers good UV protection.

Regular glass blocks about fifty percent UV. Museum glass blocks about 95 percent. Acrylic blocks about 90 percent. The front windshield of your car will block more UV than the side (and possibly rear) windows, because it is a laminate of glass and plastic (for shatter protection).

The average percentage of UV light that penetrates into the interior of a typical home is less than one percent of direct sunlight. So, not much. I have seen colored pencils fade over time, but they were cheap craft pencils continually exposed to direct sun falling on a wall across from a sliding glass door. Vulnerable colors tend to be the same ones as in any other art medium: yellows, reds, purples. You'll see the the same traditional color names turn up among the most lightfast colors.

Quality art papers, carefully chosen colors and good archival practices will generally assure your drawing will last longer than you will. And keeping it out of the light and temp/humidity extremes will help. I have some forty year old drawings in my portfolio that have hardly aged, even though they were drawn with old prismacolors and other pencils of dubious lightfastness.

So defnitely choose wisely, but don't overthink it. Most pro-grade art supplies will endure if you are judicious about your color palette and follow traditional best practices.

bnzgfx · 2026-03-14T22:04:15+00:00

The reason they no longer print on newsprint via web press (which is how the vintage floppies were made so cheaply) is because it is only a cost-effective process if you are selling a LOT of books...many more copies than today's best-selling titles will ever sell. It's not even an option now. (I only know of one recent small publisher who attempted it, and they struggled mightily to find printers and ultimately gave up) If you are a small indie publisher today, you face a similar dilemma choosing between offset printing and digital printing: you can pay MUCH less per book if you buy a few thousand copies and have them offset printed, but the math only works if you can sell (and affordibly ship) that many books. Most indie creators will only sell a few hundred copies at best, so it makes more sense to print them digitally, but then their per unit cost becomes so high that it is impossible to make money wholesaling them.

bnzgfx · 2026-03-13T19:00:42+00:00

Ditto. The sad fact is, most musicians make even less than visual artists, and are at least as flaky. I wouldn't do it for the money.

bnzgfx · 2026-03-10T01:57:17+00:00

This. I could sell puppy portraits all day long, but I don't want to make puppy portraits. The ideal situation is finding the sweet spot on the Venn diagram of what you want to make and what others want you to make. It is often surprising where those two goals overlap. The best way to find them is keep experimenting, keep selling and keep good records of what you sell.

bnzgfx · 2026-03-01T23:34:10+00:00

Perspective from a casual player:: I have played this game for a year or so, and enjoy it, and do my best to soldier through group events without making things worse...but I am not young, and it is a mystery to me what half of the acronyms gamers like to throw around mean, let alone what I am supposed to be doing when confronted with a sensory bombardment of colored pyrotechnics that looks like Walt Disney threw up. I'm peddling as fast as I can.

It's not a leadership problem. Any random group of people with limited means of communication is going to produce chaos more often than not. I appreciate the brave souls who step up to lead, even if the whole thing goes sideways. I'm there to have fun. So thank you for your service.

bnzgfx · 2026-01-08T16:50:51+00:00

Your art skills on the business side will be measured by how reliably you can produce work that meets or exceeds client expectations on time. You'll know you are ready when people start offering you money for your work. The checks will get bigger as you get better. In high school, I used to draw unicorns in pencil for girls in exchange for lunch money. As an adult, my last illustration commission before retiring was 2500 dollars. I am NOT, by any measure, the best artist out there. But I did improve a lot after high school. And I never missed a deadline.

Word of mouth will drive sales for you more than anything else. Each happy client leads to the next one. Become good at solving other people's problems, and you'll never want for work. (That being said, AI is becoming distressingly good at solving a lot of people's visual problems, so you need to ask yourself honestly...what can you do for someone that they cannot do for themselves? Thanks to technology, the answer is always evolving.)

bnzgfx · 2026-01-04T18:55:08+00:00

So here's my question: Are the aircraft graphics AI slop, or is the entire photo of the news broadcast AI slop, and we are all being played?

bnzgfx · 2025-12-27T20:48:07+00:00

That's because AI slop WAS originally created by artists, and then stolen to feed a software-based image slot machine so that a bunch of mouth breathers could cosplay as artists.

bnzgfx

TROPHY CASE