SPECIAL BIRTHDAY RELEASE!!!

Ah, here we go.

The elusive half face, MvC, styled portrait. Whether it's for a screenpack that requires a half portrait, or the fact that you can use it for a standard MUGEN select portrait when combined and cropped, it's definately one of the more popular choices for a select portrait.

In this tutorial, I'll show you what I've done, how I've gotten here and tip and tricks of trade so you'd be well on your way to making your own portraits for your own characters.

This is Kyle Rayner.

This was my first portrait, scratched for Larammones' Kyle Rayner WIP way back when I first got into the MUGEN community. While it's a good portrait that I'm still proud of, there are things in there that make it a bit different from many others.

1) This portrait is scratched. So It was drawn over a MvC portrait and then filled in afterwards.

2) There aren't as many elements from other MvC portraits as there would be in my later work to keep that "Capcom" feel.

3) The portrait has "fat head syndrome" which I felt many MvC portraits had when two halves came to make a full face.

Things to keep in mind for transparencies.

The basic colors people tend to use for their background colors are:
RGB 255, 0, 255 or RGB 0, 255, 0 (pink and green, respectfully)

Avoid using 0, 0, 0 or 255, 255, 255 (black and white, respectfully) for bg colors since most people tend to use them for the actual portrait.

BREAKING THE BOUNDS

This is suppose to be Doomsday.

Crappy, eh?

This was one of my earlier "sketches" where I would develop upon a roughed out sketch of the character. But in trying to keep in the shapes and sizes of the MvC that were presented it didn't turn out well enough. The reason I went with a full face instead of a half face, was to make sure the face wasn't fat when together, but as well to allow for asymetrical elements.

***There are only a certain number of MvC portraits available that were made. You would be wise in ONLY using those as reasources unless you get persmission from whoever made another portrait that you want to use something from ***

So, what do we do? We break the bounds of what we were given.

This is done by Ckid2. The elements of the face have been changed from the norm as far as positioning to give the character the right look. The head in relation to the shoulders are not that of a standard portrait, but that's good cause it fits the character.

It's a step over my sketch since it actually looks like Doomsday. The only "problem" was that the bone structure and color didn't match that of the WIP that was being made (Deanjo).

This is what I call "modification of perfection". The hard work was already done... for me at least, so all that was left was to change a few rocks and make the texture and color match that of the sprite.

Also found the hair was different from what Deanjo was doing so that was changed too. This was it for the time.

BUT, when it came time to make the Unlimited signatures, there was a big cut off to the shoulder.

In this image I brought the top of the image up more so the head wouldn't be cut off. I recomend this so that when the need calls for it, you have a "full" portrait and not a cut off one.

Congratulations to Deanjo for having me make the biggest portrait that I've ever made.

The reason I went this far is that I went until the body was properly dropped on the sides without being cut off prematurely so I have enough to work with what I have. I also extended the head higher with more forehead.

Aside from Fat Head Syndrome, many portraits out there suffer from "Flat Head Syndrome" where there's not enough room on the top and the characters end up having a "Looney Toons' anvil on the head" head.

A TOUCH OF PYCHE

This is the original portrait found in Plastic Man's .def file.

Does it look like Plastic Man? Yes.

Is it using standard MvC parts? Yes.

Could it be better? Maybe.

I did this for fun at one point just to see what I thought our man Eel O'Brian would look like. At this point there was a portrait for the DCvM project that didn't quite have the resonation of the character to me.

Here I skinnied up the head and elongated the neck to give him that feel of rubber. I tried to keep the general look of Mambo's original and kept the giant smile.

Now I may be out of line, and maybe this isn't the version of Plastic Man that Mambo based his sprite work on. Always keep in mind that the portrait must reflect the sprites and vice versa.

DON'T FIX IT IF IT AINT BROKEN

Here we have:

The Blob by HyperCombinationFinish
Bishop by Sei
Bizzarro by Pyche

Do they look like who they're suppose to be? Yes.

That's fine. All 3 of the portraits use a common base. But if you if it already looks like the character or what you're going for, there's no need to overdo it.

The important thing is to get the image to the way YOU want it to be. To meet your standards and, like I said earlier, if it reflects the character you're making properly or not.

Guess the common base if you can. You can probably see the simularities, but try to pick out the subtle differences.

Let's pick a character. Let's go: Iron Lantern

You'll need a previously made portrait and then several layers that look like this:

Layer 4 - Additional elements
Layer 3 - Drawing/ sketch
Layer 2- Copied elements
Layer 1 - White
Background - The original portrait

I, myself, work in Paint Shop Pro 6. Which I find to be the best to work in pixel art. Most of the techniques used here should be interchangable with Adobe Photoshop.

First thing I do is make my layers.

I then floodfill the "white" layer with white paint and reduce the transparency to about 50% or around there.

I then go to the "drawing" layer and sketch out on top of the original portrait what I want.

I found in the previous image that i had made the helmet tight to his head. To adjust this I moved the helmet on the "drawing" layer out with the lasso tool.

I think added the rest of the body by guessing where it may go and how i wanted it to look.