Speak for yourself, I would.

...Hashtag OCD

But yeah, that's pretty much it. The one concern I'd have if I was doing it would be making the fixed part look like it had the weirdly angular pattern thingie (I'm guessing it's caused by the compression rate, but then again it's just me guessing). You know, that thing that stands out like a motherfuck if you look at the top left corner. Or then I'd give in to the lazy and blur the entire background a little.

Just safe with lower and lower JPEG quality until the image format does it for you. =p It's not like you'll lose much since the image was already saved at whatever quality that was. Unlike photocopies, JPEG tends not to lose a lot on re-saving due to the nature of the format. (It's basically guaranteed not to lose anything if re-saved by the same program at the same quality.)

So...anybody have any tips for making good kaa eyes? I'm struggling on picking good colors and getting them to fit in with an image.

Aren't kaa eyes exclusively yellow, green and teal?
If you're planning on adding in youre own colors then read up a little summary on color theory to know what colors mix nicely and then pick colors that work well with whatever the predominant color on the image is.

In the original Jungle Book, they were blue, teal, and yellow. In The Jungle Book 2, they were more like green, teal, and yellow.

<<paletton.com/#uid=33h0X0kllllaFw0g0qFqFg0w0aF|This>> can help with that. It's what I use when I want to get some colors that work well together

<<hypnohub.net/post/show/19...ny_-jay_naylor-black_hair|What I did>> was to start with some black rings (I actually took the first frame of an "expanding rings" gif - I could have thinned out the lines for a more traditional look, but I thought screw it, I'll be "original") and then just picked four colors that seemed to work as a nice contrasting sequence. I never liked traditional color theory's complementing of colors with their exact opposites, and I think there's a personal balance between "contrast" and "feels like the same palette". I decided to go with "weird" colors (as in, uncommon in animal coloration) to imply being out of sorts (high-saturation green and orange) and "girly" colors (pale blue, pink). I guess what I'm saying is that you should just play around and do whatever looks right.

Anyway, then I used a technique I learned from a YouTube video about coloring comic books: Set your "ink" layer (the black rings) to multiply to make the white parts transparent like an animation cel, then make a new layer underneath and draw in your colors there. The advantages of this technique include perfectly preserving your black borders exactly how they were before coloring; and not having to be very precise when coloring, since any kind of janky edges will be completely hidden under the black lines.

Yo. A few people have asked me about how I do my animated manips. Most of my animated stuff uses <<processing.org/|Processing>>. A programming language/IDE with a lot of good support for graphics stuff.

pastebin.com/PCiRjEsX

This is the simple outline of an animation script. The animation code uses the t variable to see where abouts in the animation it is. With the output variable set to false the t variable moves from 0 to 1 over 2 seconds (or whatever period is set to in milliseconds) and then loops. Good for seeing how your animation looks. With it on it writes out x number of frames as images to the frames. Image one is at t0 the last one at t1. These can then be dumped into your gif maker of choice. Although processing also has a good quicktime movie maker that can take the frames

So to create a looping animation you need something that's the same at t0 as t1. There a few ways to do this. Using a sin wave will get you a nice curve that loops. I use them for glowing stuff in a few animations using the tint command in processing. You can also get looping rotating stuff by multiplying the current t by 2 PI (Processing uses radians) and using the rotate command

A good resource of cool stuff is openprocessing.org. It's a library of stuff people have made in processing and all the code is provided. <<www.openprocessing.org/sketch/156240||Here's a rotating image example which I'm sure will be useful to anyone wanting to do spirals>>. And if that doesn't help feel free to ask me :-)

So, I just got Photoshop CC 2014. Besides the stuff that Zko has already posted earlier in the thread, can anyone thing of a good place to go where I could learn a lot of the basics about photoshop?

is there a tutorial on how to do empty eye effect on pixl cause i cant download gimp and this tutorial is of no help to me so far

Someone wanted some tips on making empty eyes, so I thought I'd just post what I generally do here. Note this is for Photoshop (7.0). Also note I suck at explaining.

0. Make a duplicate layer of your image as a back-up. Remember to Zoom in to manip/redraw easier.

1. Identify the 'easy' and 'harder' shines. 'Easy' shines are typically entirely within the iris, with the color of the iris around/beneath it roughly the same color. 'Harder' shines are the ones at the edge of the iris, often inbetween the eye-white and the iris itself.

puu.sh/oIBWV.jpg

2. For the 'easy' shines, I use the Brush Tool and/or the Patch Tool.

2. a - 1) Patch Tool - draw a circle around the shine, then left click and drag the selected area to a nearby part of the iris.
<<puu.sh/oIEq4.png|Before>>
<<puu.sh/oIEtV.png|After>>
Note: Make your entire selection edge roughly the same color. So not like <<puu.sh/oIEDx.png|this>>, otherwise <<puu.sh/oIEFj.png|this>> or <<puu.sh/oIEHd.png|this>> may happen.

If you Zoom out now the small inconsistency shouldn't even really be visible. If you're like me though, fix that shit with the Blur Tool or the Smudge Tool.
<<puu.sh/oIEtV.png|Before Smudge>>
<<puu.sh/oIF1m.png|After Smudge>>

2. b - 1) Brush Tool - select an appropriate size (roughly a bit smaller than the shine itself), then alt+left click a spot on the iris close to the shine to select its color. Fill in the part of the shine that should normally be that color, then repeat until the shine is completely gone.
<<puu.sh/oIFuX.png|Before>>
<<puu.sh/oIFyN.png|Brush in #1>>
<<puu.sh/oIFBU.png|Brush in #2 (remember to select the color again to better match the gradient)>>
<<puu.sh/oIFHK.png|And again>>

<<puu.sh/oIFKX.png|Then Blur Tool it>>

3. For the 'harder' shines, I use any combination of the Brush/Patch/Blur/Smudge/Sharpen/Eraser/Clone Stamp Tools and opacity settings on layers/tools. Step-by-step instructions would not help here because I just alternate the fuck between everything randomly until it looks nice.

For example -

<<puu.sh/oIHgZ.png|Brush tool to make black outline of eye>>
<<puu.sh/oIHkv.png|More brush tool for more colors so I can use patch tool>>
<<puu.sh/oIHlD.png|Patch tool>>
<<puu.sh/oIHsd.png|Brush tool to make it darker>>
<<puu.sh/oIHv9.png|Patch tool again>>
<<puu.sh/oIHBd.png|Blur tool>>
<<puu.sh/oIInw.png|Multiple Brush tools>>
<<puu.sh/oIItl.png|Duplicate a previous later [Blur tool] and erase, then merge layers>>
<<puu.sh/oIIz9.png|Brush tool>>
<<puu.sh/oIIBX.png|Smudge Tool>>
<<puu.sh/oIIJS.png|Duplicate another previous layer and eraser -> merge layers again>>
<<puu.sh/oIIMD.png|Smudge it>>
<<puu.sh/oIIQL.png|Patch Tool because that dot was bothering me>>
<<puu.sh/oIJ6U.png|Smudge some more>>
<<puu.sh/oIJ90.png|Sharpen Tool>>
<<puu.sh/oIJeM.png|Little more Brush Tool>>
<<puu.sh/oIJoi.png|Smudge again>>
<<puu.sh/oIJtH.png|Tiny more Brush Tool>>
<<puu.sh/oIJur.png|One last Smudge>>

<<puu.sh/oIJyx.jpg|Before manip>>
<<puu.sh/oIJAV.jpg|After manip>>
Could I have used less steps? Probably. As I said elsewhere, I sorta suck at Photoshop.
Does it still look weird? Yeah. But I think you get the point.

I'm wondering if I should ask to have this thread sticky-ed?
So that if people want to look up the tips and tricks, they don't have to scroll forever to find it?

Am also going to do some studying on this thread, as I'm wanting to start manipping again but my skills have rusted a bit...but I might just be overthinking it when I try to make a manip. Just I see all the quality art/manips people make and it makes me want to do better.

How do I use gimp without having to read a wall of text?

The same way I learned it; try things. Even if you don't learn everything at once, get the basics down and then experiment with different features as you make stuff.

How did you figure out how to use a computer when you were a little kid without reading the manual? At least I assume that's what you did, that's how most everyone under the age of 40 did it.

Point being, click around and experiment and you'll figure out the most important tools/functions quickly enough. Later on when you start asking yourself "Gee, I wonder how I could do X..." or "Is it possible for me to do Y..." then you can consult the manuals (plural, there's a gajillion guides for it, forum discussions about it, etc.) for answers to those specific questions.