When it became evident that RPGamer was installing a whole new message board design (in the UBB standard, instead of the style we had gotten used to), you can bet we began to panic. But then, before we even had a chance to get noisy about it, this was posted.

You know, the RPGamer boardie community has this tendency to bash Mike Tidwell for any number of perceived slights: moderating, NOT moderating, putting in a new site design that messes with our layout, even allowing the site to crash! Sometimes I'm amazed he even puts up with us.

I've been meaning to teach myself at least the basics of Photoshop CG work for some time, but I had three things holding me back: no tablet, no scanner, and... no Photoshop. The first roadblock was a bit annoying but there was nothing stopping me from using the mouse (less precise, but oh well). And I could get plenty of pre-scanned line art from various sources, so the lack of scanner wasn't really a problem either. That left Photoshop, which there was no way in hell I would be able to afford a copy of. So imagine my pleasure at discovering a freeware CG program. Has a lot of Photoshop features, and although it's a bit of a hassle in places, I couldn't argue with the price.

So I downloaded and installed the sucker, opened up a few web tutorials that still seemed to apply, and then spent the afternoon practicing on Shade's B&W drawing of my alter-ego. Here's the result. I still don't like the shading (or lack thereof) on and around the wing, and in hindsight I wish I'd done some work on the horns too, but otherwise I think it's not half bad for my first try. Any advice/pointers/criiticism from the more experienced artists out there are always welcome.

[update: And in case you haven't noticed yet, I made an appropriate alteration to my default image.]