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?
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.
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.
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