Realistic Presets?

[sparticles]

Alrighty, well I have now just decided to begin making presets. Of course, I will not be taking any requests, seeing as I am not talented at this, and have exams and such coming soon. However, I am wanting to make some realistic type presets - mainly for a wolf character of mine who I've recently wanted to plan and make out a litter for. Sadly I don't have the best preset making skills, and often my presets don't look too realistic. Therefore, I was wondering if anyone could help me?

I have made a preset recently for a friend of mine, here he is;


In my opinion, he turned out alright for a first attempt, and my buddy seemed happy with it.

However, I have been wanting to improve my skills, and any help would be appreciated. Whether it be descriptions or tutorials, anything would help me out right now. So, I hope one of ya'll will be able to help me.

[Hooli]

In my opinion, he looks great!
But maybe you could blend in the markings/other colors a bit more to make it a little more realistic? That's usually what I do.

[AlphaEclipse]

Hello, Taylor! That is a beautiful preset you have there! Lovely job on it!

As for some advice, I'd have to say practice! Practice will help you improve over time with presets, even if you just play around with the settings included with the program you use for image manipulation. Hooli's advice on blending colors is useful too! In fact, depending on what program you use, you can also smudge and blur colors to enhance fine details, as well as give the colors a smoother transition.

On this forum, there is a preset tutorials section located in the member made tutorials board which you could use as reference for preset making. [link]

Be sure to take your time, and move at your own pace. Good luck with your presets!

[sparticles]

@Hooli - Thank you, I shall try that. With this preset I had done it, but only roughly smudged the edges. I'll sure try smudging the markings and such more to give it a better effect and such.
+floof

@AlphaEclipse - Thank you, Alpha. I'll surely start practising more and hopefully I can get my presets up to a good, realistic standard. The programme I use is Gimp, which does allow me to smudge, use softer brushes and such. I'll have a try on using the different techniques instead of keeping everything the same setting wise. Thank you, I'l go and check it out now.
+floof