In need of a little help from other artists^^;

[SeruOmen]

Hey, do any of you guys use Jasc Paint Shop Pro? I've been trying to find a way to make realistic looking drool for some of my pics, and its just not working out... I was wondering what tools you guys use in your various coloring programs to make drool look more realistic... any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks^^;

[Karbo]

I can't really help you with Jasc Paint Shop Pro, I use only photoshop 7.

But basically, I try to keep as much possible the same tool for the whole drawing. So I use a very basic brush ( the 2nd sort from the default list )

I usually color the drool with the same color as background but a little darker and with the edges brighter. Then I put little touch of pure white to make it shine.

Well that's all.. not a big help I'm afraid

[Francois]

If you mean dangly drool I may be able to help. I've had a few people say they liked my drool, but I'm not anygood at drawing. What I do, and what I've observed, is if there is no movement, a very thin straight down line with a small circular bead at the end. thicker drool requires thinker lines and ending beads. There may also be small beads along the length of the line. If you have a situation where something opens its mouth and there is saliva conecting two teeth, the same basic principle applies, only this time, if the teeth are not lined up vertically, bend the strand to account for the weight of any beads that may be there. If whatever you are drawing is breathing talking roaring, etc., this can be indicated. Im gonna draw a picture because no one wants to read this stuff.

[Strega]

Drool on fur or flesh just makes the area darker but with some very shiny spots. In PSP you can make the darker areas with a soft brush, dark grey or black, and low opacity. Drool also has very shiny spots which you can make with pure white, the same soft brush and high opacity, 60% or so. The most reflective spots are pure white, 100% opacity, and tend to be oval.

Strings of drool are harder. I choose a basic soft brush and set it to about 20% opacity. Then I draw in the strings using white, which because of the low opacity effectively makes a light transparent line. I go back and forth over the line or drool blob until I'm happy with the amount of opacity, then I use the dodge and burn tool on it until I decide it looks right. in PSP's case, you could use more white and gray (again, at low opacity) for dodge and burn. I also tend to stick my thumb and forefinger in my mouth and pull out some saliva, which I stretch between the fingers so I can get a look at it.

Sometimes strings of drool are straight, and sometimes they have beads along their length. It seems to depend on their thickness. Thick strings usually lack beads, and all drool strings tend to taper, thickest at the ends and narrow in the middle. I often draw a drop on the end, but I am not sure how realistic that is.


-- Strega

[Francois]

Yeah, like Strega says.
I drew a sequence of pictures and then realised that no one uses the program I use.

Oh yeah, one more thing that most people fail to do: If you draw something big, don't increase the size of the little beads by much, most people scale the drool up with the creature, which doesn't happen.

If it did, we'd have more macrofauna and the chance of the world being destroyed by a race of intelegent giant bugs significantly increases.

[SeruOmen]

The whole opacity thing worked awesome!!!! I don't have any type of instructions to PSP so I don't know what does what- everything I do is from messing around with things... for instance, using the retouch tool with the Lighten RGB or Darken RGB to show differences in shading.