Eyeballs...

[Ross Macintosh]

Soquili - That is beautiful! The iris is superb!
Your comment about a story gave me an idea. Wouldn't it be an interesting (kid's?) book to have drawn eyes like these - each colour with a brief story?? (I have more ideas than I'll ever have time to act upon. If anyone "sees" potential in that one - GO FOR IT!).

Regards, Rossy

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[Jonathan Payne]

I thought I would have a quick go at recreating Gary’s eye tutorial using the new features in Xara X.

Here is the result:

[Jonathan Payne]

1 Draw the background bevel
a Create a bevel
b Give it a cream colour
c Set the bevel to use the “Rounded� type

2 Add the basic shapes (see picture). Once you have drawn the basic shapes, the Arrange->Alignment... dialog can be used to line them in the centre of the bevel

3 Draw some lines from the iris to the pupil. You might find it helpful to draw these lines on a new layer.

4 Select the lines and click on the selection again to bring up the rotation handles. Move the centre of rotation to the centre of the eye. Select the top left or right rotation handle and drag it round in a circle – while you are dragging it round, keep on pressing the right mouse button to drop copies.

5 Apply the “Air brush� brush to the lines. Reduce the line width of the lines so eye looks good.

6. Apply the “Convex� pressure profile to the lines so the lines are thicker towards the outside of the eye.

After that I added some feathering to the pupil and I added a window reflection to create the final image.

[gwpriester]

Great update, Jonathan!

Odd you put the window highlight on the right side and mine was on the left :-) Must be a left hand, right hand thing. (I'm a leftie).

A few comments/questions, why is the eyeball cream colored? It looks jaundiced. I do think that a tiny, tiny amount of yellow, or blue is good however. I'm always impressed how much subtlety exists in the upper 1/8" of the HSV palette. Even when you think you are all the way to the top right.

The iris, while it should not be hard-edged, could be a little less soft.

I used Ross's suggestion of using a Fractal Cloud fill for the iris on my Eyebulb redux, and it produced a better, more realistic result (and quicker too), and then used a small amount of feathering, no wait, sorry I did not use feathering because it affected the transparency, I used a soft feathered gray O-shape around the iris to soften it slightly. I used several fractal filled irises with different colors and types of transparency.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Rarely So Humble...

[mattp]

Gary, I feel guilty about getting Jon to use a little cream colour on his superb eye picture - it was originally white but I thought it looked artificial... I take full responsibility for said defacement...

Anyway, stuck in the Xara mansions, us programmers all have jaundiced complexions anyway (if anyone could supply us with plans to this place, maybe we'll find the exit and get to see the sun again)

[gwpriester]

OK Jonathan, lesson to be learned here is don't listen to programmers when they tell you how to do what you instictively know how to do in the first place :-) (Sorry Matt, I couldn't restrain myself)

You're eyeball got me thinking, however, and I felt compelled to rethink my eyeball illustration.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Rarely So Humble...

[gwpriester]

Jonathan

I know what your jaundiced eyeball reminds me of, a cue ball. It's the same color. Maybe as someone suggested earlier in the thread, you could do a pool table filled with eyeballs?

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Rarely So Humble...

[arnold foss]

See, I told you it was a hook shot. But you never listen to EYE,... I mean ME!!!

[Klaus Nordby]

Jonathan and MattP - and whoever else works for Xara - can't you please put your emplyer info in your postings? It's kinda reassuring you Xara-people are watching!


K

[Jonathan Payne]

Klaus: I have set ‘Xara Ltd’ as my location so it should appear in panel to the left where the user name is listed (if it doesn’t I have messed up somewhere). I have previously avoided putting anything too prominent on my posts to show I am work for Xara Ltd as my posts are my views rather that Xara’s. As for Xara people watching the forum, I try to keep an eye on the forums (literally).

Gary: I know the cream colour is not really correct but I liked the effect it gave. Now you mention it, my picture does look quite like a snooker (or pool) ball – I will try drawing a snooker table if I get time (snooker being a far superior game to pool [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] ).