Cartoon Mermaid No. 2



Another cartoon mermaid but this time with something like real skin. I added a friendly dolphin to keep her company though the character is the same and the pose is different. I flattened her out like before, however, this time I added a "texture". Under normal circumstances that would make her look very realistic. (See the pictures in the 3D Mermaid page if you do not understand what I mean.) I found it looked weird if I flattened her too much. The texture ended up looking harsh and smudgy. I flattened the dolphin by the same amount just to keep things consistent. How does she look?

cartoon mermaid with texture


To finish the picture off I added a background image. You may remember this from some of my other pictures. I changed it in Photoshop to look like a watercolor. Since there's a cartoon mermaid in the foreground it seemed wrong to have a realistic background. I think the final effect is very nice. I also added a shadow under the mermaid's tail to help attach her to the ground. Otherwise she looked like she was floating above the background.

cartoon mermaid with background

Looking at the two pictures here I notice that I inadvertently created an optical illusion. The mermaid and dolphin appear darker in the top picture than they do in the bottom. This is because they are on a dark background in the lower picture. This effect is very powerful and is used by painters to balance the contrast in their pictures.







Click here to go from cartoon mermaid to mermaid silhouette.

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