telophase | Chinese reading people?

Is there anyone out there in DW and LJ_land who can read enough Chinese to do a search for tutorials on digital painting in Chinese novel style (fantasy/historical romances, primarily, I think)? I do know there's a variety of styles encompassed within that heading, but the ones I'm talking about tend to feature finely modeled/blended skin tones and sort-of airy, less defined backgrounds. I'm also more interested in modeling the skin and facial features and the backgrounds, not in laying down the patterns.

Er, I'm not asking you to translate it, but to look for tutorials/walkthroughs/in-process/steps with screenshots or videos so I can study it and try to figure out how they're doing it.

THANK YOU.

Examples of what I'm talking about:

http://schumy330.deviantart.com/art/The-fairy-story-81313792
http://lilsuika.deviantart.com/art/Toph-Bei-Fong-119917871
http://shuangwen.deviantart.com/art/hongxiu-112626154
http://feimo.deviantart.com/art/lure-the-world-89630774 (hell, Feimo's entire gallery)
http://vnwallpapers.net/2009/06/2005-romance-novel-paint-17.html (A little rougher)
http://vnwallpapers.net/2009/06/2003-novel-books-cover-03.html (A little rougher)

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heise has some neat process pics:

http://heise.deviantart.com/art/Emperor-of-the-desert-21391378
http://heise.deviantart.com/art/Personages-forming-21300915

Mostly focuses on faces, which I personally think is the defining point of the novel style. In other aspects, it's much like painting realism.

Thanks!

I am so fucking retarded if I skip my morning coffee. I swear I looked at your subject line and thought "China has telepaths now?"

Seriously. I don't even KNOW.

Like a Ping Fen style tutorial? I could try...

The images on the two sites that come up in a Google search for "Ping Fen" aren't coming up for me right now, but I assume so. :)

Thanks!

Chen Shu Fen and Ping Fan (they translated her name for some reason on the below gallery). They're the real masters as far as I'm concerned--there's a fineness to their faces that's lost by a lot of their imitators. They're a husband-and-wife team that are the top novel cover illustrators in Taiwan. I fell in love with their art while I was there and bought a couple of artbooks, an illustrated story book, and a tarot illustration set. :)

They have a wider range than most of their professional imitators, too, so not all the ones in this gallery fit the kind of cover you're talking about (for some reason, it leans toward contemporary stuff), but anyway:
http://gallery.aethereality.net/list/artist/43/11/

Not having a lot of luck finding tutorials, but I found a couple things :|

Yeah - that's one of the styles I'm referring to, and they all seem to have a lot in common: a few lines from the sketch left in to define a few shapes, but the rest very softly modeled in color.

Thanks! I wasn't sure if there'd *be* any tutorials - I have no idea if the artists bother to put their techniques down, or if they're doing more sensible things like putting them in books to be sold, or doing work that actually pays. XD

Oh yeah, the last two links you gave are actually Ping Fan/Chen Shu Fen paintings, I think. The guys for sure. Pretty sure about the girls, but I can't view them large.

I got all hopeful when I found the first few links I just posted, but then I wasn't able to find anything better than that. Grumble! Maybe you know someone with better Chinese, or someone who owns Comickers 1 in Japanese. :P

I think Ping Fan and Chen Shu Fen used to be totally non-digital:
http://www.cgplayer.com/de/html/shangyechahua/20080612/177.html
I have a couple of their books where you can see it more clearly. But apparently in Comickers Art Style 1 (the Japanese edition; don't know about the English one--looks like they might be in Japanese Comickers 2, but I don't know...) they give a tutorial on how they use Painter.

Thanks to my googling for this, now I'm their Facebook fan! LOL.

http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=370630644 seems like 1/4 of a tutorial...
http://www.cgplayer.com/de/html/shangyechahua/20090802/295.html someone duplicating the image in this icon...
http://www.cgplayer.com/de/html/shangyechahua/20090806/299.html very small scans

I don't think my Chinese is good enough to get me any further :/

Thanks!

I've got the Japanese Comickers 2 book, but their tutorial is on a picture done in a different style (dark background, heavy, dramatic lighting). Arg!

The http://tieba.baidu.com link isn't coming up for me - the server keeps re-setting. Ah well.

That first cgplayer.com link looks really interesting - I've never played with that brush in Photoshop, and it looks like it might be useful. :D

http://hiphotos.baidu.com/%CF%F2%BA%BD/pic/item/d66b41a7205cd686d14358b6.jpg

That's the first pic of the tutorial. It's well worth looking at, I think. I can send more individual links.

Thank you! That would be wonderful (and speaking of wonderful, the modeling done on that face with just the two colors is amazing. XD)

For anyone else reading this: the site has some hotlinking protection on it, so you get a small icon when you click the link. Just add a ? after the ".jpg" and reload the page - that fools the site into thinking it's coming from on-site and will load the actual picture. :)

http://hiphotos.baidu.com/%CF%F2%BA%BD/pic/item/61d6aa01627870151d9583b7.jpg

http://hiphotos.baidu.com/%CF%F2%BA%BD/pic/item/8e6312df909c9400632798b7.jpg

http://hiphotos.baidu.com/%CF%F2%BA%BD/pic/item/605dcbfc19beddeefc037fb7.jpg

http://hiphotos.baidu.com/%CF%F2%BA%BD/pic/item/11dad243513acf0073f05db0.jpg

http://hiphotos.baidu.com/%CF%F2%BA%BD/pic/item/c67fea2494ebb7124c088db1.jpg

http://hiphotos.baidu.com/%CF%F2%BA%BD/pic/item/22a2a864063d66e3f73654b0.jpg

http://hiphotos.baidu.com/%CF%F2%BA%BD/pic/item/a2bb09d157abecc0572c84b1.jpg

http://hiphotos.baidu.com/%CF%F2%BA%BD/pic/item/a6716409074f6edc3bc763b1.jpg

http://hiphotos.baidu.com/%CF%F2%BA%BD/pic/item/5c7ae6dd7e638efc76c638b1.jpg

http://hiphotos.baidu.com/%CF%F2%BA%BD/pic/item/2b9c542c29acb7ff8a1399b2.jpg

There's more, but I must dash to PO. More soon!

hrmmm...try this?
http://tieba.baidu.com/f?z=370630644&ct=335544320&lm=0&sc=0&rn=30&tn=baiduPostBrowser&word=%B5%C2%D5%E4&pn=0

or this?

http://is.gd/5cvW2

Weird. :/

Nope, neither. The only think I can think is that I've got a VPN connection in to campus at the moment from my home computer, and campus might be blocking that IP range for some reason. I'll try them again after I'm off work and can restart my computer (which is the only way to make sure that the VPN connection is broken - sometimes it hangs on even after you tell it to disconnect.)

I tried to figure out how to get there from searching in Baidu but I couldn't, oddly enough. :/ Oh well.

Hmm, if you're going through the university somehow, they might be automatically blocking Baidu because it used to be such a popular source of pirated mp3s...I suspect a lot of campus and corporate networks had them blacklisted.

That's probably it, then - my VPN connection means I'm basically connected to the net through campus at the moment. And from what I understand, they roll over and show their belly to the RIAA at the slightest provocation. :)

I'll try again later, after work.

Chinese reading people?

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