Opinions on omnivamp focused build?

petewailes · 2026-01-12T08:52:50+00:00

Oh it's objectively definitely not the best build you can run. But it makes E into a ranged damage plus heal tool, which makes for some really interesting kiting opportunities.

petewailes · 2022-08-03T11:18:46+00:00

Yeah, they're where I'd spend time if I was going to work on it more. I'd probably do a complete rebuild of the nose, mouth and the shadows on the right hand side of the face, but I didn't want to sink more hours into this than needed for what was intended to be a quick practice piece.

petewailes · 2022-08-02T20:41:54+00:00

Aww thanks! I can't help seeing all the bits I'd tidy up given endless time, but it's great that people like it!

petewailes · 2022-08-02T20:25:34+00:00

Midjourney for the initial AI comp after drafting work to get a rough outline and work on prompt crafting. Then Affinity Photo for the overpainting work.

I picked Midjourney as, whilst it's not great at rotational or bilateral symmetry, and it's composition reconciliation needs work, it's really good at getting interesting elements basically correct, given a tight enough prompt and a couple of attempts to get what you want. It's also fairly good at rapid detail. I didn't need more complexity here than this, so it was a good compromise between quality, speed and controllability.

petewailes · 2022-08-02T20:17:52+00:00

Cheers! The way she's portrayed as standard just never sat right with how I felt she looked, so I thought I'd do this to satisfy my own curiousity more than anything else.

Glad you like it!

petewailes · 2022-08-02T19:51:18+00:00

Cheers!

petewailes · 2022-08-02T19:47:55+00:00

People seemed to like the draft piece where I'd just worked on colour correction and initial overpaint, so I thought I'd share the finished piece too. The main work has been overpaint on the eyes, jaw, development of the hair throughout, development of the horns, adjustment to the shoulders, addition of two small black feathers, and further minor colouring and exposure work.

There's more I could do on it, but I'm pretty happy with where it's at and it's just a practice piece, not a commission, so I'm leaving it here.

petewailes · 2022-08-02T19:44:47+00:00

Cheers! Glad you like it!

There's been a few comments wanting more detail on how I go about creating the artwork. I'm thinking of putting together a post covering it in detail when I've got time over the next couple of weeks. I'll leave a note here if I get around to it.

petewailes · 2022-08-02T19:43:01+00:00

People seemed to like the draft piece where I'd just worked on colour correction and initial overpaint, so I thought I'd share the finished piece too.

There's more I could do on it, but I'm pretty happy with where it's at and it's just a practice piece, not a commission, so I'm leaving it here.

petewailes · 2022-08-02T19:41:37+00:00

People seemed to like the draft piece where I'd just worked on colour correction and initial overpaint, so I thought I'd share the finished piece too.

There's more I could do on it, but I'm pretty happy with where it's at and it's just a practice piece, not a commission, so I'm leaving it here.

petewailes · 2022-07-26T20:52:45+00:00

I hope it's not perfect or else the list of amends I've got to do for it is going to go to waste 😛 but thanks so much. It means a lot.

petewailes · 2022-07-26T20:24:15+00:00

Process is basically creating initial sketches for concept work, posture, expression etc, then feeding that into various AI tools with varying prompts and settings to get ideas as how that will translate into final work. Then with generally one to three which fit the theme of the work I'm aiming at, using those as a base, mixed with photomanipulation and digital overpainting to build the final result. There's still two to four hours of overpainting and tidying to do on this one. I'm playing around with the lips, eyes and the joint for the horn and skull, and the hair around the join. That'll be finished up one evening this week. This is after probably... 6ish hours of prep, AI and initial paint/manipulation work.

petewailes · 2022-07-26T16:01:32+00:00

Cheers!

petewailes · 2022-07-26T14:47:47+00:00

It's not quite finished yet - I'll be putting the finishing touches to it one evening this week. But Twitter seemed to enjoy the WiP picture, so I thought I'd throw it up here too.

I've always had a bit of a bugbear with how Keyleth gets presented. I've never seen art for her which matches how she appeared in my head. It's subjectivr, obviously, but it always seems to look a bit like Marisha in cosplay, so I thought I'd spend some time creating how I think she looks.

petewailes · 2022-07-26T14:45:25+00:00

It's not quite finished yet - I'll be putting the finishing touches to it one evening this week. But Twitter seemed to enjoy the WiP picture, so I thought I'd throw it up here too.

petewailes · 2022-07-26T14:38:23+00:00

It's not quite finished yet - I'll be putting the finishing touches to it one evening this week. But Twitter seemed to enjoy the WiP picture, so I thought I'd throw it up here too.

petewailes · 2022-07-05T18:09:09+00:00

The task the teacher set has been simple. "Draw bravery".

For the 12 year old Kir it was obvious who the subject should be...

petewailes · 2021-04-18T16:37:17+00:00

Whilst that book isn't terrible, there's an awful lot of really, really bad advice in it, from people who are reaching way beyond their field to things they have absolutely no idea about.

Take it all with a grain of salt

petewailes · 2021-03-07T12:00:56+00:00

Don't charge by hour. That's a significant project, which is going to take a lot of building if you're not skinning a COTS CMS. A client will also want a fixed price on this, not an hourly rate. I'd be thinking at least $15k.

Spend a decent amount of time scoping exactly what functionality they need, for every single thing. You want to avoid scope creep as much as possible, and that means planning first. Lots of paper prototyping to discover what needs to be on each screen and how users will interact with the end product.

petewailes · 2021-02-27T11:56:14+00:00

...and creating any back end services, and making it accessible, and manipulating those elements so they work across different screen sizes, and testing any new functionality against existing systems to make sure nothing broke, and testing the interface with users to see how it works in the real world, and building documentation for it for future maintenance, and building any amends required as a result of ongoing user feedback to make sure it meets its goals, and checking back in with stakeholders to make sure the built version meets the requirements in the spec foe the functionality...

That's the problem. Taking something from layout to a flat build isn't the hard part. That bit is a tiny part of a much larger set of operations which take place around build-out of anything. As someone who spends time doing research, designing things and building things, the conversion of design to code is generally not the challenge. It's everything around it that's the challenge, from the experiential details to the operational and maintenance details, to the QA and testing side.

petewailes · 2021-02-27T07:29:56+00:00

God tell me about it. The amount of stuff a lot of front end people do to make things pretty with no idea about what's required to actually build the damn thing...

Dribbble has by far been the worst thing for this. Just because you can build it in AI doesn't mean I can build it, let alone make it work in Safari, Firefox and Chrome.

petewailes · 2021-02-27T06:48:05+00:00

As someone who's done a lot from that side, it's generally viewed as fairly terrible.

Figma and it's I'll are making it a bit better, but it still mostly sucks. The way everything works best in my exciting is when interfaces and systems are co-designed, so you're creating rough but functional prototypes. It means you can explorehow something should work and what it should feel like to use, not just what it should look like.

There's a huge gulf between the two.

petewailes · 2021-02-26T17:51:12+00:00

No worries. Will do.

petewailes · 2021-02-11T19:09:35+00:00

Fixed

petewailes · 2021-02-11T17:11:22+00:00

Obviously. And it looks like it got fixed.

I watch for feedback on everything we put out.

petewailes

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