Exactly! Another good example.

I have no problem with all this. It's their duty to correct people on the proper usage of their name; otherwise, they could lose it forever. Cases in point:

Escalators. That used to be a proper noun -- I think it was the brand name of the leading manufacturer of those things; I'm not even sure what the generic term would have been.

Trampolines. Same as above.

Yellow pages. Used to be there was only one Yellow Pages, but a bunch of other companies put out similar phone books with yellow pages, and now all such books are generically called yellow pages, and the original company -- because they weren't diligent about protecting their name -- now has to call itself Yellow Book.

Names in danger of losing their trademark if they're not careful:

Wite-Out. People use white-out as the generic, but it's really correction fluid. Brand name is Wite-Out.

Kleenex. Generic is facial tissue.

FedEx. Used to be Federal Express, but people used the shortened FedEx to mean to ship it quickly ("Can you fedex this to New York?") that they changed their name and assiduously protect the shortened version, too.

Rollerblades. Generic is in-line skates.

Another I'm not sure about:

Weedwacker. I can't remember if it's one word or two, but it's a brand name of a particular kind of gardening tool or spray. It's becoming a generic for those yard trimmers.

There are more, but these are the ones I remember off the top of my head.

Oh, yes, and the generic for Xerox is photocopy.

Obviously, you must give the client what they want, but what they seem to want and what they've asked for are not very consistent. :)

Way too much depth for a child's drawing -- and I mean both versions. Children typically draw two-dimensionally. As someone has already said: stick figures and such. Might have been COLORED by a child, but not drawn.

I would use the path tool, using as a guideline for the points two lines slowly pulling away from one another. Not sure if that would be precise enough for you, but if you keep the bezier curves consistent, this process should be able to yield what you want.

I recommend any Wacom model -- they have some wireless models available.

Quote - Also, even though it is a total crapshoot, a number of magazines ship with CDs of content including stock images you can use for free.

But read the terms before using. Most will allow free use only for personal work, not commercial.

Attached Link: http://www.bluevertigo.com.ar/bluevertigo.htm

Looks like you're using a Poser figure as a base. That should help.

Attached Link: http://www.furiae.com

It's better that way, anyway, because the colors will depend on the ambient lighting and ethnicity. There's no one palette that will serve all your needs.

But if you'd like to see a great tutorial on skin, there's a really good one at furiae.com.

Um, no. I don't understand.

Take a look at the actual image:
http://www.giddykippa.com/images/header_back.jpg

It's not really popping out -- the background is really just part of the image.

So the thing to do is to incorporate the background into your title/header image, and make the main graphic element go beyond the fake border of your main area. :)

PAINT?! You can't be serious. Paint sucks big time and can't do anything above the very basic stuff. You must mean Painter.

If you DO mean Painter, it and Photoshop are two very different programs that serve very different needs. If you are more of a photo manipulator or if you like painting very smooth airbrushed style images, then Photoshop is for you -- it is much more versatile for editing graphics and not at all bad for painting. Painter, on the other hand, is best for painting in a style much more like a painter does with traditional media -- it emulates the various brushes and different kinds of paint and canvas textures much better than Photoshop.

If asked which actually does more, I would say Photoshop -- but I do most of my own work in it myself. But Painter is still a very good program.

Are you asking if there's an automated way to do this? I usually just open all the files and drag each image as a layer onto a single file.

Try a background of a gradient blue (light at top and dark at bottom) on one layer. Then on another layer, paint with white. For foreground clouds, try yet another layer on top of the two previous ones, paint more clouds with white, and set the layer to screen.

I can't really give any suggestions better than that without actually trying the brushes myself. :)