Now, let's see if I can get the local hobby shops to bring me these things (since shipping might cost me a lot, I hate living in Europe, lol).
Thank you for the response and for the advice :D. Unfortunately that thread looks quite inactive, it doesn't get a lot of love :(. I will post my work, hopefully someone will be around.
I try to give it love when I can. If you have just general question, don't hesitate to ask me via PM. I may or may not have an idea on how to do this.
When i sue glue like vinavil and i press the cards, the glue go all over and is a disaster.
How to solve this problem?
Use less glue?
In all seriousness, that is a real answer. It also depends on the type of glue (I'm not familiar with vinavil). If it is a thin, slower drying glue you could just wipe the excess away after you've set the pieces. If it is a thin, fast drying glue then use less of it so that it doesn't seep out. If some happens to seep out and dries taht way, take your sharp knife and just nip those nubs off. During the gluing process, my hands tend to be convered in glue as I'm constantly wiping away the excess.
Hello
I've been looking into making one of these abacus counters with my brother. I just have a few questions.
What gauge beads do I want to look for if I'm using those "sculpture doll needles"?
How should I layer the art for the card Psychatog? I thought I had an idea at first, but the more I look at the art, the weirder it looks and the more I second guess myself.
Sorry if my questions were answered earlier in the thread. There was a lot to read.
Thanks
Hello
I've been looking into making one of these abacus counters with my brother. I just have a few questions.
What gauge beads do I want to look for if I'm using those "sculpture doll needles"?
How should I layer the art for the card Psychatog? I thought I had an idea at first, but the more I look at the art, the weirder it looks and the more I second guess myself.
Sorry if my questions were answered earlier in the thread. There was a lot to read.
Thanks
Welcome to the thread, and MTGS. Sorry I didn't post sooner, my tablet was not cooperative this weekend. Anywho, about your first question. Not sure what you mean by "gauge" for the beads. You just need to make sure that your beads have an opening bigger than your needles. If you use the same ones I do, you just need a 1mm inner hole. The size of bead will also determine how many you can fit on a row. If you want 10 across, don't go bigger than 3mm in size. Mixing daisies and orbs would be best, but you can get away with 10 orbs. If you want 5 then less than 7mm wide is fine. I like mixing bead styles to make patterns in my rows. It's just better for the eye. Dr. Teeth is an odd one. Hopefully my description is good enough, mind you I'm assuming that you have unlimited copies and you can adjust my layering below.
Back area behind 'Atog (Furthest back)
His torso / his inner mouth / top of his head / eyes
Teeth / brow / "nose & cheek" area
Lips / "shoulder"(?) / thumbs
Forground wall
Fingers (forward most layer)
He has lots of pieces you can play with and layer within those layers. Hopefully that is useful description.
Thanks Serrot
I meant hole size when I said gauge for the beads. I don't know any terminology, but that sounded right in my head.
I got 10 copies of him but I could probably find more at my card shop if I screw up too much.
I'm going to have to do a lot of shopping before I get started with this but hopefully I wont ruin everything and can post it when its done
I couldn't figure out what that "shoulder" part was either lol
Blade angle does play a part, you want to make sure you blade stays perpendicular to the cutting surface. Once you start tilting it left and right, you begin to have some issues, more prominently seen when you cut smaller pieces. Try doing stab cuts (or saw cuts) using only the tip of the blade. Instead of dragging the blade across the card to cut it, you poke the blade into the card pull it out and trace the line that way. It takes longer but it helps keep the thin shard from tearing. Some people actually peel the card apart to work with a thinner piece of cardboard, but this mainly works with MTG as our cardstock is 2ply. I'm not sure about any other cards as I've personally not tinkered with them. If you cant peel them apart, maybe shaving a bit of the cardstock off to thin out the material for better cutting.
Question: how do you manage to cut really thin pieces of cards and keep them together? Especially with long, thin areas. I had issues with a card like that, when the cardboard simply started falling apart.
Does the blade thickness or angle have anything to do with it?
Blade angle does play a part, you want to make sure you blade stays perpendicular to the cutting surface. Once you start tilting it left and right, you begin to have some issues, more prominently seen when you cut smaller pieces. Try doing stab cuts (or saw cuts) using only the tip of the blade. Instead of dragging the blade across the card to cut it, you poke the blade into the card pull it out and trace the line that way. It takes longer but it helps keep the thin shard from tearing. Some people actually peel the card apart to work with a thinner piece of cardboard, but this mainly works with MTG as our cardstock is 2ply. I'm not sure about any other cards as I've personally not tinkered with them. If you cant peel them apart, maybe shaving a bit of the cardstock off to thin out the material for better cutting.
Two more things:
1. cutting from the tip to base of thin protrusions avoids having a pulling force on the thin piece.
2. be careful trying to remove thin pieces from the rest of the card. I usually first cut a circle around the thin part then remove it from the circle. Each time there is a curve, I will cut from the piece to the edge of the circle there so it is always pulling in only one direction. (would probably need a picture to make sense of that)
So, a few weeks ago the owner of my LGS asked me to do an Ugin filler card 3d. Having a 10 month old makes doing these rather difficult. With my wife and daughter being out of town over the weekend, I pumped this out with most of the work being done on Saturday (8 hours straight).
I think I still have enough cards to make another if my LGS wants another. There are a few issues with it, mainly due to me rushing the project, but overall I am rather pleased with the outcome.
That is exactly what that is. My Xenagos and Thassa (can be found in the link in my sig) are also the filler cards. My LGS saves them for me so that I can cut them. I really should get some new frame cards from them to use as filler. I've been working on a triplet set of EWits for more than a year that are the same thing as well.
That looks awesome. I really like your cuts, they're so damn clean!
It does have its issues. Foils are tricksy things. IF you notice the cut below the card's name, you can actually see the foil layer pulling a bit (the tiny ripples on the cut edge). I used a brand new blade when doing those cuts. I think I just applied too much pressure or moved the blade too quickly as I was on a tight deadline.
Just signed up to say that these, all of them in the thread, life counters and cards are beautiful. And you, Serrot, do some exceptional work, holy cow.
I would love to get into this as a hobby on the side of MTG, but alas my slight tremors don't allow me to be precise with a knife.
Question, for you, Serrot; do you do commissions, if all cards and such are provided? For a life counter, of say... Jace, Memory Adept, foil top and background, normal artwork?
Just signed up to say that these, all of them in the thread, life counters and cards are beautiful. And you, Serrot, do some exceptional work, holy cow.
I would love to get into this as a hobby on the side of MTG, but alas my slight tremors don't allow me to be precise with a knife.
Question, for you, Serrot; do you do commissions, if all cards and such are provided? For a life counter, of say... Jace, Memory Adept, foil top and background, normal artwork?
Welcome to the Forums. I am flattered by your kind words. I'm quite fond of all the works here, as I've posted in this thread since its inception (well, close to it).
I will have to say, don't be dissuaded by your slight tremors. My hands are far from steady. My hands jitter like I've had too many cups of coffee. Hard to believe, no?
Now, your final question is something you want to do over PM. Soliciting in the Art Subforum is against the forum rules. Please have a look over the Subforum rules to get better aquinted with how things work.
Just signed up to say that these, all of them in the thread, life counters and cards are beautiful. And you, Serrot, do some exceptional work, holy cow.
I would love to get into this as a hobby on the side of MTG, but alas my slight tremors don't allow me to be precise with a knife.
Question, for you, Serrot; do you do commissions, if all cards and such are provided? For a life counter, of say... Jace, Memory Adept, foil top and background, normal artwork?
Welcome to the Forums. I am flattered by your kind words. I'm quite fond of all the works here, as I've posted in this thread since its inception (well, close to it).
I will have to say, don't be dissuaded by your slight tremors. My hands are far from steady. My hands jitter like I've had too many cups of coffee. Hard to believe, no?
Now, your final question is something you want to do over PM. Soliciting in the Art Subforum is against the forum rules. Please have a look over the Subforum rules to get better aquinted with how things work.
Your hands jitter, too, eh? Your work could have fooled me, haha. My tremors are a bit extreme at times though, sadly, due to medication I take but mostly can be calmed. I suppose I fear that as I am cutting something thin, they'll kick in and royally screw me over. Noted on the PM advice. Also, I apologize for my final question, I admit I posted in haste for specific reasons but I will definitely read through the link you provided, if anything for myself so I can keep myself from becoming a hindrance to the rules.
Just signed up to say that these, all of them in the thread, life counters and cards are beautiful. And you, Serrot, do some exceptional work, holy cow.
I would love to get into this as a hobby on the side of MTG, but alas my slight tremors don't allow me to be precise with a knife.
Question, for you, Serrot; do you do commissions, if all cards and such are provided? For a life counter, of say... Jace, Memory Adept, foil top and background, normal artwork?
Welcome to the Forums. I am flattered by your kind words. I'm quite fond of all the works here, as I've posted in this thread since its inception (well, close to it).
I will have to say, don't be dissuaded by your slight tremors. My hands are far from steady. My hands jitter like I've had too many cups of coffee. Hard to believe, no?
Now, your final question is something you want to do over PM. Soliciting in the Art Subforum is against the forum rules. Please have a look over the Subforum rules to get better aquinted with how things work.
Your hands jitter, too, eh? Your work could have fooled me, haha. My tremors are a bit extreme at times though, sadly, due to medication I take but mostly can be calmed. I suppose I fear that as I am cutting something thin, they'll kick in and royally screw me over. Noted on the PM advice. Also, I apologize for my final question, I admit I posted in haste for specific reasons but I will definitely read through the link you provided, if anything for myself so I can keep myself from becoming a hindrance to the rules.
Yeah my hands jitter a bit, sometimes rather severely. I probably SHOULD be on meds, but I've never been a fan of 'em. They make me feel not like myself. I've learned to focus a bit to help ease some of the jitter of my hands. Jitter doesn't really affect my cuts, just the start of my cuts. Once the blades in the correct spot I can finish a cut. Starting it is always the problem.
@bokchoykn: Nice work you have there. I'm curious to see what you do with the new cards. Chronostutter seems like the most interesting of the bunch, art-wise.
I'm not partial to anything, but I like rounds better. The cubic ones will always look asymmetric because they can rotate.
With the round ones, you can't see that (because they're round, d'uh) and it looks cleaner, in my opinion.
Yeah, that was definitely an obstacle.
When I made that Deathcult Rogue, I wanted to ensure that the cubes remain somewhat parallel to each other. To do that, I had to place the rods close enough to the back, so the backmost card restricts the cubes from rotating.
On top of that, I wanted to use large beads (6mm) for the tens digit and small beads (4mm) for the ones digit. Because they're different sizes, that means the two rods had to be on separate layers. One rod is 4 cards higher than the other rod.
It's never going to be perfectly parallel, but the picture I linked kind of exaggerates it because of the lighting angle. Under normal lighting, it actually looks not too bad.
I'll post a couple pics at a different light angle. I'll do it later tonight when I get home from work, as well as the Doom Blade & Emancipation Angel I just finished.
But yeah, I definitely agree with round beads over square beads. I just found some square beads and wanted to try something different.
Nice work there. Good choices on which arts to do. The rounds just look better and it seems by what you say, are easier to deal with since you don't have to have the rods on separate layers. Your straight edge work is fantastic. Your overall cuts LOOK fine, but it's hard to tell since the black edging is really overbearing. I would have love to have seen all the edges colored in so that no stark white border edges are seen. With the overall bleed of the edges in the art, I think it would have made the pieces look bad.
Emancipation Angel: Clean cuts all around. Looks like you have some small pieces in there and the layering looks good. That bold black edging on the art is just bothersome. It looks like it bleeds into the art quite a bit. Might I ask what type of marker you used for this? Looks like a sharpie, but I honestly can't tell. Also, with light colored arts, a lighter edge helps to hide all the pieces. You also have an interesting warp up near the card name. Might I suggest gluing layers in parts then sticking them under a nice pile of heavy books while the glue cures a bit? Which is how I do it, since most glues can cause the cardboard to warp. Of the 3, this is your strongest piece IMO. The bottom edge has some "messy" gluing, easily remedied by wiping excess away while it is still wet. If you get glue on the cardface, take a damp toothpick (suck on it for a sec or 2 to wet it) and carefully scrape the residue off the face. Learned this technique from painting cards.
Doom Blade: I find that this one is an annoying piece to do. The angel makes for "easy" cutting. The black line-o-death? Not so much. The left side of the line's orange outer part is nice, the right seems to be missing the level of cutting that the left side had. It's not bad, just looks rushed (?). The uncolored edges around the artbox and text box make this feel like it is an unfinished piece. The layering is fantastic. Use slightly smaller beads of glue as you can see some of the seeping around the top of the black line-o-doom and on the top edge of the text box. Might I ask what type of glue you are using?
Deathcult Rogue: I think this is your weakest piece. Not due to your skill, but due to the fact that there is really not much to layer here. You did great on where you broke the art up on the Rogue himself. This piece does have more potential for layering and shaping so it feels kinda flat. This piece also suffers from the same issue as the Angel, visible black edges. The Cube beads also look like they took way more effort to get right.
Overall, great pieces. Keep it up. I don't know where you are in how many of these you've made before, but there is nothing wrong with what you are doing. The only things that needs to be worked on are procedural and not really skill based. The skill is there, it's just about tightening up the methods. Can't wait to see more work out of you.
It was a bit of a problem on Emancipation Angel, particularly on the front wing. Kinda frustrating, but I ran out of Emancipation Angels and didn't want to start over. I also had a layer of clouds which I removed because I didn't like the look, probably because of the marker bleeding. Any suggestions on what marker to use? I want to trace the edges with a marker but I find that even this one tends to bleed into the art sometimes.
For glue, I've been using Pro Art Rubber Cement. To be honest, I'm really clumsy when it comes to glue. I love using Rubber Cement because if I make a mistake, I can easily rub the glue off with my fingers and redo it. It's made of latex, so it doesn't soak into the cards.
I ran out of glue and bought some Elmer's Rubber Cement. It is a MUCH better product. It's stickier and I don't have to use as much glue to get the pieces to stick together.
With the last brand, I find that sometimes the layers aren't sticking together so I have to peel it and redo it, which risks damaging the art. As a result, I had to compensate by using more glue to the point where glue would spill out the sides when the cards are pressed together. It's easy to rub the glue out from the outer sides, but trickier if it spells to the inside of the art. Anyway, that problem became much less of a problem with Elmer brand. Hopefully it shows on future pieces. I glued together Gift of Orzhova last night, I'll post it later.
For Doom Blade, the fiery part of the blade is different on the left and right sides, just because that's how I intepreted the art. I wanted to include the orange glow as a part of the layer. It seemed more smooth on the right side and jagged on the right side. I dunno.
Deathcult Rogue is definitely the weakest piece. There's just less going on here. I chose this card because it looked easy, as I was still pretty new to all of this. I didn't want to get too ambitious while I was still working on my technique. I guess that's also why I sacrificed this card to the 'cube bead experiment'.
From your feedback, I guess my main issues are:
-The bleeding of the marker onto the art. Do I just need a different pen?
-The coloring of the inner edges of the art & text box. I left it alone on purpose. I think I prefer it that way, but maybe I'll try it once with tracing the edges on all of the boxes to see if I like that look better.
-The glue issue is hopefully solved with a better product and better technique.
Aside from that, I still need to get better at everything: knife/pen/glue.
Thanks so much for your detailed and honest feedback by the way. As someone who's trying to get better, I really appreciate it in a big way.
It was a bit of a problem on Emancipation Angel, particularly on the front wing. Kinda frustrating, but I ran out of Emancipation Angels and didn't want to start over. I also had a layer of clouds which I removed because I didn't like the look, probably because of the marker bleeding. Any suggestions on what marker to use? I want to trace the edges with a marker but I find that even this one tends to bleed into the art sometimes.
-The bleeding of the marker onto the art. Do I just need a different pen?
I have been using Bic Mark It markers, particularly "Tiki Hut Tan" and "Clound Nine Grey". They still bleed some, but it is much less intrusive than a hard black and the bleeding can sometimes be used for emphasis. My suggestion is to look for the palest colors available. I have noticed that as the markers get used and start drying up, they bleed considerably less, so be careful with new markers. I try to run the marker very lightly and quickly to avoid adding too much liquid (the speed and pressure required changes over time as stated before).
I also want to know what others are using, because my current choice seems a bit limited and other or better options would be useful.
Use less glue?
In all seriousness, that is a real answer. It also depends on the type of glue (I'm not familiar with vinavil). If it is a thin, slower drying glue you could just wipe the excess away after you've set the pieces. If it is a thin, fast drying glue then use less of it so that it doesn't seep out. If some happens to seep out and dries taht way, take your sharp knife and just nip those nubs off. During the gluing process, my hands tend to be convered in glue as I'm constantly wiping away the excess.
URGEDH Biovisionary.dec BShirei WBSelenia
The brain is the muscle that pumps stupid through the body
I've been looking into making one of these abacus counters with my brother. I just have a few questions.
What gauge beads do I want to look for if I'm using those "sculpture doll needles"?
How should I layer the art for the card Psychatog? I thought I had an idea at first, but the more I look at the art, the weirder it looks and the more I second guess myself.
Sorry if my questions were answered earlier in the thread. There was a lot to read.
Thanks
Back area behind 'Atog (Furthest back)
His torso / his inner mouth / top of his head / eyes
Teeth / brow / "nose & cheek" area
Lips / "shoulder"(?) / thumbs
Forground wall
Fingers (forward most layer)
He has lots of pieces you can play with and layer within those layers. Hopefully that is useful description.
URGEDH Biovisionary.dec BShirei WBSelenia
The brain is the muscle that pumps stupid through the body
I meant hole size when I said gauge for the beads. I don't know any terminology, but that sounded right in my head.
I got 10 copies of him but I could probably find more at my card shop if I screw up too much.
I'm going to have to do a lot of shopping before I get started with this but hopefully I wont ruin everything and can post it when its done
I couldn't figure out what that "shoulder" part was either lol
URGEDH Biovisionary.dec BShirei WBSelenia
The brain is the muscle that pumps stupid through the body
Two more things:
1. cutting from the tip to base of thin protrusions avoids having a pulling force on the thin piece.
2. be careful trying to remove thin pieces from the rest of the card. I usually first cut a circle around the thin part then remove it from the circle. Each time there is a curve, I will cut from the piece to the edge of the circle there so it is always pulling in only one direction. (would probably need a picture to make sense of that)
I think I still have enough cards to make another if my LGS wants another. There are a few issues with it, mainly due to me rushing the project, but overall I am rather pleased with the outcome.
URGEDH Biovisionary.dec BShirei WBSelenia
The brain is the muscle that pumps stupid through the body
Is this one of the advertisement cards that are sometimes tokens?
URGEDH Biovisionary.dec BShirei WBSelenia
The brain is the muscle that pumps stupid through the body
URGEDH Biovisionary.dec BShirei WBSelenia
The brain is the muscle that pumps stupid through the body
I would love to get into this as a hobby on the side of MTG, but alas my slight tremors don't allow me to be precise with a knife.
Question, for you, Serrot; do you do commissions, if all cards and such are provided? For a life counter, of say... Jace, Memory Adept, foil top and background, normal artwork?
I will have to say, don't be dissuaded by your slight tremors. My hands are far from steady. My hands jitter like I've had too many cups of coffee. Hard to believe, no?
Now, your final question is something you want to do over PM. Soliciting in the Art Subforum is against the forum rules. Please have a look over the Subforum rules to get better aquinted with how things work.
URGEDH Biovisionary.dec BShirei WBSelenia
The brain is the muscle that pumps stupid through the body
Your hands jitter, too, eh? Your work could have fooled me, haha. My tremors are a bit extreme at times though, sadly, due to medication I take but mostly can be calmed. I suppose I fear that as I am cutting something thin, they'll kick in and royally screw me over. Noted on the PM advice. Also, I apologize for my final question, I admit I posted in haste for specific reasons but I will definitely read through the link you provided, if anything for myself so I can keep myself from becoming a hindrance to the rules.
URGEDH Biovisionary.dec BShirei WBSelenia
The brain is the muscle that pumps stupid through the body
I made these a few years ago but stopped playing Magic. They're in the order that I made them, so they started out crappy and got gradually better.
The ones without beads haven't been glued together yet.
I'm gonna try to start up again.
Next projects: Dragon Style Twins, Chronostutter, Dromoka Warrior
URGEDH Biovisionary.dec BShirei WBSelenia
The brain is the muscle that pumps stupid through the body
BTW, I need an opinion. Round or Cube beads?
URGEDH Biovisionary.dec BShirei WBSelenia
The brain is the muscle that pumps stupid through the body
URGEDH Biovisionary.dec BShirei WBSelenia
The brain is the muscle that pumps stupid through the body
Yeah, that was definitely an obstacle.
When I made that Deathcult Rogue, I wanted to ensure that the cubes remain somewhat parallel to each other. To do that, I had to place the rods close enough to the back, so the backmost card restricts the cubes from rotating.
On top of that, I wanted to use large beads (6mm) for the tens digit and small beads (4mm) for the ones digit. Because they're different sizes, that means the two rods had to be on separate layers. One rod is 4 cards higher than the other rod.
It's never going to be perfectly parallel, but the picture I linked kind of exaggerates it because of the lighting angle. Under normal lighting, it actually looks not too bad.
I'll post a couple pics at a different light angle. I'll do it later tonight when I get home from work, as well as the Doom Blade & Emancipation Angel I just finished.
But yeah, I definitely agree with round beads over square beads. I just found some square beads and wanted to try something different.
Thanks for the feedback!
Here's Deathcult Rogue again with the cube beads. Not as symmetrical as round beads are, but not that bad.
Here's what I mean when I said the two abacus rods had to be on separate layers to keep the cube beads from rotating.
Emancipation Angel: Clean cuts all around. Looks like you have some small pieces in there and the layering looks good. That bold black edging on the art is just bothersome. It looks like it bleeds into the art quite a bit. Might I ask what type of marker you used for this? Looks like a sharpie, but I honestly can't tell. Also, with light colored arts, a lighter edge helps to hide all the pieces. You also have an interesting warp up near the card name. Might I suggest gluing layers in parts then sticking them under a nice pile of heavy books while the glue cures a bit? Which is how I do it, since most glues can cause the cardboard to warp. Of the 3, this is your strongest piece IMO. The bottom edge has some "messy" gluing, easily remedied by wiping excess away while it is still wet. If you get glue on the cardface, take a damp toothpick (suck on it for a sec or 2 to wet it) and carefully scrape the residue off the face. Learned this technique from painting cards.
Doom Blade: I find that this one is an annoying piece to do. The angel makes for "easy" cutting. The black line-o-death? Not so much. The left side of the line's orange outer part is nice, the right seems to be missing the level of cutting that the left side had. It's not bad, just looks rushed (?). The uncolored edges around the artbox and text box make this feel like it is an unfinished piece. The layering is fantastic. Use slightly smaller beads of glue as you can see some of the seeping around the top of the black line-o-doom and on the top edge of the text box. Might I ask what type of glue you are using?
Deathcult Rogue: I think this is your weakest piece. Not due to your skill, but due to the fact that there is really not much to layer here. You did great on where you broke the art up on the Rogue himself. This piece does have more potential for layering and shaping so it feels kinda flat. This piece also suffers from the same issue as the Angel, visible black edges. The Cube beads also look like they took way more effort to get right.
Overall, great pieces. Keep it up. I don't know where you are in how many of these you've made before, but there is nothing wrong with what you are doing. The only things that needs to be worked on are procedural and not really skill based. The skill is there, it's just about tightening up the methods. Can't wait to see more work out of you.
URGEDH Biovisionary.dec BShirei WBSelenia
The brain is the muscle that pumps stupid through the body
It was a bit of a problem on Emancipation Angel, particularly on the front wing. Kinda frustrating, but I ran out of Emancipation Angels and didn't want to start over. I also had a layer of clouds which I removed because I didn't like the look, probably because of the marker bleeding. Any suggestions on what marker to use? I want to trace the edges with a marker but I find that even this one tends to bleed into the art sometimes.
For glue, I've been using Pro Art Rubber Cement. To be honest, I'm really clumsy when it comes to glue. I love using Rubber Cement because if I make a mistake, I can easily rub the glue off with my fingers and redo it. It's made of latex, so it doesn't soak into the cards.
I ran out of glue and bought some Elmer's Rubber Cement. It is a MUCH better product. It's stickier and I don't have to use as much glue to get the pieces to stick together.
With the last brand, I find that sometimes the layers aren't sticking together so I have to peel it and redo it, which risks damaging the art. As a result, I had to compensate by using more glue to the point where glue would spill out the sides when the cards are pressed together. It's easy to rub the glue out from the outer sides, but trickier if it spells to the inside of the art. Anyway, that problem became much less of a problem with Elmer brand. Hopefully it shows on future pieces. I glued together Gift of Orzhova last night, I'll post it later.
For Doom Blade, the fiery part of the blade is different on the left and right sides, just because that's how I intepreted the art. I wanted to include the orange glow as a part of the layer. It seemed more smooth on the right side and jagged on the right side. I dunno.
Deathcult Rogue is definitely the weakest piece. There's just less going on here. I chose this card because it looked easy, as I was still pretty new to all of this. I didn't want to get too ambitious while I was still working on my technique. I guess that's also why I sacrificed this card to the 'cube bead experiment'.
From your feedback, I guess my main issues are:
-The bleeding of the marker onto the art. Do I just need a different pen?
-The coloring of the inner edges of the art & text box. I left it alone on purpose. I think I prefer it that way, but maybe I'll try it once with tracing the edges on all of the boxes to see if I like that look better.
-The glue issue is hopefully solved with a better product and better technique.
Aside from that, I still need to get better at everything: knife/pen/glue.
Thanks so much for your detailed and honest feedback by the way. As someone who's trying to get better, I really appreciate it in a big way.
I have been using Bic Mark It markers, particularly "Tiki Hut Tan" and "Clound Nine Grey". They still bleed some, but it is much less intrusive than a hard black and the bleeding can sometimes be used for emphasis. My suggestion is to look for the palest colors available. I have noticed that as the markers get used and start drying up, they bleed considerably less, so be careful with new markers. I try to run the marker very lightly and quickly to avoid adding too much liquid (the speed and pressure required changes over time as stated before).
I also want to know what others are using, because my current choice seems a bit limited and other or better options would be useful.
(Just noticed your marker link is incorrect.)