Hey.

I think the reason your blob doesn't blend well is because you haven't AA'd him to the BG! You've only done the kanji.

You can AA him with the same colors your using for the kanji (not ideal, but you've got 'em, so use 'em), but I would darken both of them (the AA colors) a tad. There's just too big a jump between the black (and your dark green, I zink) and your darkest AA color.

Sorry for the extreme awkwardness of the phrasing of that last paragraph, not to mention this one, yes.

EDIT: you're != your

Edited by Hatch - 28 December 2007 at 8:45pm

Let's see what happens when we grayscale part of your image:


(zoom please)

Notice how similar the grays are that were your dark green and darkest AA color? Having them so close in lightness value like that defeats the purpose of AA, dig? The solution is to lighten the AA color, but it's sort of a balancing act, as you're going to try to reuse it for AA-ing from black, so yeah.

As far as technique goes, you should be breaking into your outline with your AA, and you should be doing internal AA. I edited a small section to illustrate:


(Yours, mine, anim)

Here's a couple of cool and informative posts about AA in the tutorials thread explaining the theory behind AA.

It's an improvement. Keep pushing, and don't forget internal AA!

Sorry for being unclear. What I mean is that if you want your piece to have an outline, you need to AA the outline externally to the background, outside the outline, as well as AA'ing it internally, inside the outline.