Detailing For Dummies ( Caw School 101 By the D)

[stacysmikeyboy]

From The D

I've been planning this topic for a while.. If anyone remembers a few years back, I made a topic called "The D's CAW School".

Disclaimer:

I am in no way implying that I am a better CAW maker than anyone else with this topic. I am also in no way saying that my ideas are rules and that this is what you must do. I am simply sharing my experiences with CAWing (which I've been doing for years and posting on here since SmackDown! vs RAW 2006) and trying to help others by giving them a foot up with some detailing ideas. These are suggestions only and I will not be held liable for terrible CAWs, because you've clearly not been reading this topic if that is the case.

So, here's the deal.. I'm going to post a series of lessons on detailing various areas, with and without transparency and detailing with and without textures. Ask any question and I'll post a tutorial on how I achieve a certain detailing technique or look.

Lesson 1

I'm going to share with you things that I don't share with anyone, because quite frankly I want to see better CAWs on the board. There will be people who think my CAWs suck, and that's all well and good, but the majority seem to like them, so here are some of the best tips I can give you.

The main designs I use for detailing are these two..

&

I may use others, but these are the main designs that I use. The reason being is that the circle can be whatever you want it to be, a line, an oval, a circle (surprise), and more importantly it's right at the beginning of the design 'wheel', or end as it were.

The tiger design is the most helpful logo in the game. Not many will have noticed, but that tiger is not a solid color. It has some opacity meaning that it has transparency built in. Therefore, if you make it black, not every part will be black, some will allow the color behind to show through. The CAW skins are insanely detailed (too much so for most) and there is no transparency built into the CAW mode for regular designs. So, if you stick a logo on a CAW's face like this..

And it stands out like a sore thumb.. However, if you add the tiger on top and make it slightly darker than the previous logo..

It blends right into the face skin, however you can still see that it is lighter. Not by a lot, but it is lighter. Your detailing should be subtle. You want to make the design blend right in to the point where you can barely see it. Now, I know you're asking "but D, if you can barely see it, what's the point in having it?" Well, it's quite simple my dear Watson. You won't notice that the design is there, but you will surely notice that it is gone. The only downside is that this can be quite layer hungry, however.. We have 64 shitting layers plus texturing! What more do you need?

Using this technique I am able to cover anything I like in designs (like AJ and Jeff Hardy's nose) but allow it to not look plastic and instead blend in with the rest of the face skin. For color, I always use '15, 150,' and then whatever shade you need. This is roughly the right color for the default skin tone (although that will need to be altered for altered CAW skin tones of course) and it's also very easy to remember.

Thus concludes lesson 1 and one of my most important tricks for detailing. I hope you find this useful and I hope you use it well.

Lesson 2 - Mouth Detailing

This lesson is for upper lip shading. Loads of guys have a skin coloured gap right above the top lip, or under their moustache. This works for guys with or without facial hair for upper lip shading. Think of guys like Jeff (obviously), Angle, James Storm etc.

The idea is as follows.. This is an 8 layer way of doing it. This way means covering the entire mouth area with a design and then detailing on top. Again, this uses circles and tigers and not a lot else. The colours are all based around 15, 150 for the default skin colour.

Layer 1: Covers the entire mouth and upper lip, making it skin coloured.

Layer 2: Another skin coloured design making the highlighted part. This needs to be ligher than the previous layer obviously.

Layer 3: Design covers the lips, so has to be lip coloured of course.

Layer 4: Tiger design (34) rotated. A bit darker than the upper lip.

Layer 5: Lip indent, skin coloured. This layer may not have been needed in hindsight, hah.

Layer 6: Same as layer 4, but on the other side.

Layer 7: Filtrum detail, lighter than the upper lip.

Layer 8: Middle part of the filtrum, slightly darker than the upper lip to give a sunken in look.

The only extra thing I did for Jeff's mouth was two more oval (circles made thin) designs either side, angled up to finish the look. If you're gonna' use this idea, some acknowledgement would be appreciated.

This can also work for the lower lip shading, just make the designs big enough to span the top and bottom. This idea can also just be used for the filtrum. Using two designs or more to create it can make all the difference, especially if the person has a wide filtrum. Just doing this detail on this Jeff helps the look infinitely. If the person has a narrow filtrum, you can get away with using an '=' on it's side, but if the detailing is obvious, I'd always use this method.