AlexT wrote:Looks good, almost as i imagined these.
In future add a little comment on how u made particular pic and what parts\references u used\from where please - should be useful.
Thanks. Although, I hope almost meant better.
Alright, a short description on how generally these have been done.
The most part have been done with MS paint, some parts have been done with Adobe's (usually for turning or using magic wand)
I used various manga scans and the Seikai manga.
First get the right facial art/panel to be used.
In case of the Abh, it's more convenient to look for eye style to be natural or round pupils. Open forehead would also be convenient for the Alpha tiaras.
1. depending on need you will have to change the lighting(gamma) to get the right brightness
or even manipulate the color components (RGB)
2. now you need to clean up the picture, the part that needs to be transparent later
3. resize the picture to be combined with other pictures.
4. depending on your needs you may need to create masks. So you can manipulate certain parts differently
(photoshop's Magic wand tool does work but not always as wanted)
5. you may need to fix some odd pixels left from the masking
or make overlapping adjustments
Transparency can have bad pixels when you have transparent pixel where you don't want them.
In this case use some background color to fill these first. (use tranparency trick) Usually I use a darker white, but sometimes you might want something else for later.
examples
Imperial Admiral Almael:
The head is from another short story(there was no panel that fit) of the same artist from which I took my avatar
The head was incomplete, so I used 4 parabelums(curve tool) to complete the top then filled it with the approximate color
The head was also in a different angle and was wider, so I made partial scaling in order to avoid changing the proportions too much
To get the lighter hair style I created a negative. This does not always fit. Sometimes you might just need to fix the lighting, then remove the dark color.
Then I created a mask by simply 'close-off' the areas (and fill them with different color) and save the picture as a B&W picture.
Using transparency you grab the parts you want with the mask and combine them to a new picture.
As the hair is all over the forehead the Alpha needed to be concealed for the most part. So I made the free parts between the hair transparent and put the Alpha underneath.
Since I wanted the Alpha to have a blue crytal, I created the alpha with it beforehand using mask and color manipulation (fix/remove red&yellow).
Then I cut the wings appropriately and put them right in place (exactly overlapping the Alpha underneath) where they would emerge from the hair. Some pixel may need fixing, but that's all.
The uniforms have been taken and reworked in a similar fashion. I changed parts to make them look like the anime version.
Filled, extended or recreate parts.
Admiral Apos:
I took Elwood, Roy's father from Fire Emblem.
I did a facelift, complete the hairs from various panels.
Soda:
I took this from some side character. Merged it with the compressed top hairs from another character, mirrored etc.
Osman:
This one is also from some side character. I resized the body from...*searches*...Kago no Naka
eliminated the bishi
lol and put our talented agent in place.
the girl:
Another hairy job. lol Partial merged with another character, changed, mirrored, replaced color etc.
I completed her uniform with her own parts. Her arm/hand was recreated using same parts as well as other panel parts.
The only picture were I didn't scale any part except the computer crystal.
I originally wanted to create a uniform out of her clothing, but the basic colors were too bad. No tricks could correct the color problem.
Her father:
I have his face but I don't know the name of the story: the reincarnation of a (greek) goddess who turned to a tree(?name) when she was shocked(?reason) by Apollo.
I originally wanted Nagi, but he has no eyes and the only useable panel needed lots of reworking. (I can't believe how many main characters don't have front views...)
So I'm starting to create the body from scratch with my own design.
I think i'll try Lafiel and Jinto, let's see how they'll turn out...
Too bad i haven't made much progress with my color illustration -
...the only thing i can do well in color is Roil, mostly because i feel like i know every curve of it by now
Hohoho.
Well, when you do color I'm afraid you will be less pleased. Usually, some parts will look off due to the contrast. Details and color range will also become inprotant.
lol You are already married Captain!
Home
And it's expensive - you can buy M4 for almost as much. More important - that clip design is no good...because you can't open bottle of beer with it 
And it's very important if you're somewhere with hot climate and got thirsty - could be a life saver. Here's a little guide on how it's done (fun):
