Posts Tagged ‘art process’

Dailies With Process February 7th

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Initially I planned on sitting on these a bit longer, but I think it’s going to be a bit before I do the final piece in the project. So, you’re getting a mix of dailies, fives fours, and process out of me with this post. All ArtRage 3 Studio Pro. Strictly roller, palette knife, and eraser, supplemented by layer duplication/manipulation.

First, I start of with something abstract, running a bit with the method/technique that I’ve used in the recent, mostly abstract pieces I’ve posted.


13 minutes.

I actually like where this is going (the dragon shape is damn near what you see here, less than a minute a couple dozen strokes into it), so it gets fleshed out a bit.

Next, I pop on some crude arms (didn’t like them for the above piece), and then place a lower-opacity copy of the whole image on top of itself, scaling it up and rotating it a bit. Once I hit the right opacity, I dropped it down into one layer, and started working with duplicate layers in varied opacities, blend modes, selective palette knife use, and selective erasing.


10 minutes (from the previous piece into this).

I like this. I know I’m not where I want to be with it yet, but it’s worth saving both as a step and as a potential rough for a more complete piece.

Now, In order to give it more perceived depth and detail, I create a separate piece.


7 minutes.

It’s fairly abstract, but has an industrial tech flair of sorts, and is dynamic enough that I think it will make for an interesting overlay with the previous piece. More layer duplication/manipulation occurs, and then I do exactly that. Finally, I have this:


4 minutes.

I have a pretty good idea of where I’m going with this, but I’m waiting to get my current batch of contract work done before tackling a finished piece out of it. Total process time from start until the end of the 4th piece? 34 minutes. Which brings us to the separate point to be made here– if you’re familiar enough and comfortable enough with the medium(s) you use, you can do exercises of a faster nature like this as well. The above shows that you can take something seemingly quick, abstract, and/or simple, and turn it into a building block for a larger, more complex piece.

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[Art] I Want Your Brains.

Monday, December 14th, 2009

That’s right. I’m going to put you to good use. YOU CAN BE A PART OF MY ART.

As an artist, much of the time music is heavily played while I’m working on a piece of artwork. Different music can induce different moods, which in turn can be reflected in said artwork. I have a number of good Pandora stations for this, but there’s a certain type of music that I’m lacking.

Some of you may have seen this “trailer” recently uploaded to YouTube:

This is an example of exactly the kind of music I’m looking for.

Sure, there’s a list of a handful of the artists/songs (though the last may be a soundtrack?) that they sampled from the trailer:

AudioMachine – Akkadian Empire
Groove Addicts – Zero Hour
Audio Network – Mars
AudioMachine – Lachrimae (VadoskiN DNB mix)
Wild Rumpus Music – Blame It on the Falling Sky 2.0
John Murphy – The Last House On The Left SCORE

However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I want epic, energetic, combat music. Instrumental, with perhaps a splash of intense choral vocals. Something that, when you close your eyes, your imagination is ripped wide, your body starting to pulse with subtle waves of adrenaline. Again, the video above is a good reference for the type of music I’m looking for.

Here’s what I need from you:

Artist/Composer – Song

There is no limit to the amount of suggestions.

I’m going to take all of the info I’m given, and feed it into seeding a new Pandora station, for playing when working on certain pieces of artwork. Potentially, they may get played while gaming as well, but the art is the important part.

In turn, I’ll present this to you, via Pandora station URL. I’ll likely also list what songs work for me, versus what songs don’t, so as to further refine the station, and to give you a better, more expansive idea of what I’m looking for.

Go. Go forth and bring me your lists. Actively shape and contribute to my creativity.

(The first comment with a new account has to be moderator approved, but any comments after that are auto-approved. Just an anti-spam precaution.)

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Daily w/Process Progression

Saturday, December 5th, 2009

Here’s the full process post for yesterday’s intended daily practice piece, started shortly before midnight, worked on intermittently, and finished this afternoon. All images are clickable for much larger versions.

In this case, I wanted to try out a new trick that Rooth shared with me for pulling the linework out of of an image that had been brought from Manga Studio into Photoshop. I opted to do something a bit more cartoon-stylized, and didn’t want to fuck with the feet, so I just worked under the auspice that something would be in front of them.

1) Linework, via Manga Studio, cleaned up in Photoshop.

2) Ported to ArtRage, did a quick paint-in of the background (under 2 minutes, as it wasn’t important).

3) Did a quick, rough render of the foreground.

4) Painted in figure color underlayers.

5) Subtle figure color tweaking/cooling via various layer types and opacities, with selective erasing.

6) Painted in face. More color tweaking/cooling.

7) Dropped face opacity to bring in linework subtly from underneath, and to soften the face a bit. Painted in midground.

8) Added various quick details to the foreground. Fleshed out face and bodysuit interior.

9) Ported it back into Photoshop. Used a mix of filter, overlay-type, and varied opacity layers of the image to help push/pull the depth and detail, with selective erasing.

10) Rendered in figure shadow via varied opacity black layers and a little bit of varied opacity mulitply.

Finally, I brought in a copy of the post-filtered, pre-shadowed image at a 13% opacity over the top, to soften the shadowing a bit. Drew in some quick lights inside the headgear/helmet, tweaked the in-helmet lighting, and called it "done"

Roughly 5 hours. More than I intended, really. At the point that I finished it, I was a couple of hours past the time I’d planned on investing in it, so as far as I was concerned, I was done. Lighting/shadowing is nowhere near perfect, but for a practice piece, I’m good with it. Aside from the linework being done in Manga Studio, this is all raw ArtRage with Photoshop finishing. No photo aspects pulled for texture or anything else.

I need to do some minor cleanup on the ones from last week, and then I’ll post them. Later this week, you’ll get a post on a relatively unknown, free piece of open source graphic/art software.

Time to make the donuts.

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Art Process: Thulean Dwarves

Saturday, December 5th, 2009

Here’s a character design for a different situation entirely. All pieces were rendered strictly digitally from start to finish, using Corel Painter X, with no utilization of photos for textures or any other aspect in their development. Also, as rough concept art pieces, these aren’t really supposed to represent finished works on any level.

During 2007-2008, I was doing various conceptual design work on and off for Red Juggernaut. One of the things I was involved with behind the scenes was fleshing out bits and pieces of their world setting. In this case they wanted a different take on a dwarven race, under the auspice of being evolved from the Australopithecus robustus. Or, as they were referred to in their setting of Terris, "Thulean Dwarves". Short, hairy, and not nearly as much facial diversity as a human would have. Initially it was suggested that they have a touch of similarity to the orcs from LotR, but that was scrapped.

First, I sketched up some basic options for body type, hair coverage, and head shape:

The preferred versions of each were picked, giving me a rough guideline of where to start.

The description of them puts them as a race living in the cold north, sharing some similarities to viking culture, that’s resorted to scavenging to to having fallen on desperate times. While seemingly savage to many outsiders, they’re actually fairly civilized. Here’s the initial 5-10 minute rough speedpaint that sent off, just to have somewhere ot start:

(This image is low res all around, so I’ve opted not to post the full sized version. If you really want to see it, click on the RJ Concept Art page link below.)

After the initial bit of feedback, I opted to experiment, and created a digital "paper doll" version, much like the ones that kids would have various different clothing options they could slap on. With this, I had the core template for the stance and body shape of the Thulean Dwarf, with extra detail put into the face, but the rest left open to be detailed with each iteration. This is the result:

Once we established that I was on the right track, I started slapping some different clothing items on them, working on maintaining a balance between being scavengers in a harsh, cold environment, and being showing some glimmer of civilization. My first shot at that was a bit too much on the basic side:

The next iteration was more along the lines of what they were looking for, but not quite there yet. On the one hand, it reflected more of the brutal northman scavenger look, it was still lacking some degree of the civilized aspect they wanted to show as well. So, while not directly on their concept art page, I’ve included it as a bonus piece for those curious to the process (and to be honest, there are some aspects of it that I was quite pleased with for what was basically a fast and loose speedpainting type of concept art):

After one more round of feedback, we came up with a "final" version, which gave the best feel for the race, and incorporated some aspects to reflect an alliance between them and the another world race that was more Roman-based. For concept art that’s not intended to be a "finished" piece, I was pretty pleased with how this came out, as was Red Juggernaut:

For those interested, here’s the direct link to their concept art page for the Thulean Dwarves. There you can find two other concept pieces for the race done by another artist (I’d guess they were the initial concepts before I worked on them– it was the first I’d seen them, and they weren’t presented to me for reference).

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Art Process: Boobie Wednesday

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Some of this is a more cohesive compilation from another post, so if some bits read familiar, that’s why.

“Boobie Wednesday” (or #boobiewed and the lesser used #boobiewednesday, which are the Twitter hashtags) is a theme started by two women on Twitter who wanted to do something to promote Breast Cancer Awareness. Every Wednesday, there’s an increasing number of people who change their Twitter icon to something breast/cleavage-related for the day. Additionally, a number of them submit photos for the blog, in support of cause.

You can find their blog and site-affiliated Twitter here:

http://boobiewednesday.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/boobiewed

FYI: While my picture below is safe for work, some images/photos that go onto the blog are NSFW, as they may contain nipples. So, if you work in a strict environment, you might want to look at the site at home.

I wanted to find a way to contribute (after all, who doesn’t like breasts?), and decided to do a piece of artwork in support of it the week of Halloween, gratis. The idea came into play that Tuesday, and I bounced it off of one of the two women who started Boobie Wednesday. She told me to go for it. In turn, I opted to do the whole of it on Wednesday.

As I’d just started playing with Manga Studio, I thought this would be a good exercise in learning the software a bit more. So, I did the initial render, up through colors under the linework, and exported it to a Photoshop format. As I’d saved it that way, I didn’t bother with saving it in the default Manga Studio format, and closed out the program. Little did I know that it was not a .PSD format, which would bite me in the ass in short order. I opened up Photoshop, and looked for the .PSD file, only to not see it. So I looked for all formats, and found that it had saved as a bitmap. While a minor nuisance, it wasn’t a huge deal, right? Wrong. I opened it up, and descended immediately into gratuitious use of the word “FUCK“. What happened?

The image had saved with all of the layers merged. In monochrome. Or, to put it more bluntly– all I had to show for that first 1.5 hours of work was a black silhouette on a white background. What lesson was hammered into my head? Make sure you have a viable copy of the file saved before you close the program out. Yeah, I won’t be doing that again anytime soon.

I walked away from the computer (so as to not give into the urge to punch a hole in the monitor). Came back. Started over from scratch in Manga Studio again.


(Click for larger version.)

So I recreated the original image to the best of my ability.

1) On the base layer, I used the pen tool to rough in the image with the default (I’m assuming non-photo) blue color for said layer.

2) Once I got to that point, I created a new layer, using the same pen tool, but with black, and did the inked linework.

I found the “export to another application” option or some such, and copied it to the clipboard. Opened PS, created a new document, and pasted the image into it. Only then did I go back to MS, save it to the default format, and close the program out. Having discovered that it saved as an opaque B&W layer (I’ve yet to figure out how to copy a layer just as linework, or for that matter, a multi-layered file), I used the magic wand tool, clicked on one of the black line segments, and then picked similar on the selection menu. This selected all of the linework. I then inverted the selection, and deleted everything else (the white).

3) Save the image, ported it to ArtRage, and painted in the underlayer of color. Did tweaks, played with layers, etc., until I got to the point that I was good with the image for details, textures, and such in PS.

4) Heavy layer creation/manipulation, filtering, opacity work. Integrated rough necklace idea. Addition of texturing via both photo and brush usage. Brought in a couple of photo overlay components on both subtle (skin/face/hair) and not-so-subtle (necklace/corset texture and clasps). More filtering and opacity work. Added more depth to the form via filters and erasing.

5) It was almost midnight, and I was pushing time, so I took a shortcut with the background. Found brick photo I liked. Altered it. Did a few layers of filtering with it. Then I did the shadows and lighting for all of it.

For what was ultimately 8ish hours of time from start to finish, I was happy with it.

What am I not happy with? I’m an artist, I’m my own worst critic, so I’m not happy with a lot of things. ;) I’d have liked the sleeves to have been more in line with the rest. I missed fixing a couple filter-related errors with the light and shadow on the face. While the brick wall works with the picture, I don’t like that I took such an overt shortcut to put it in there, but at the same time, it’s far better than a blank white background with this piece.

I’ve given them consent to utilize the image in any capacity, so long as it’s for the purpose of promoting Breast Cancer Awareness (this includes promotion of the blog and Twitter themes, as they were created for the same purpose). As such, they’re using it on a T-shirt, all the profits of which will go toward the cause.

For those interested, or simply curious, you can order it here, courtesy of the girls who founded Boobie Wednesday.

All proceeds go toward National Breast Cancer Foundation (it’s my understanding that there are other options for printing, for those who may wish a v-neck style shirt instead).

As a bonus, I’m posting the linework and giving permission for anyone to color said line work. Feel free to email me the colored pictures, I’d love to see what others do with it, and will post a compilation of them at a later date.

Thanks for reading. I hope this was informative.

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Thoughts & Insight (Part 1): A Glimpse Behind The Curtain

Friday, December 4th, 2009

(This is the first in an open-ended, ongoing series of posts I’ll be doing where I where I delve into personal introspection, philosophy, theory, and such. Oooooo… FANCY. Yes, this means I will likely ramble and tangent with some regularity.)

For those of you unfamiliar with my artistic background, I’m still relatively new to the digital medium. No formal training in it, nor any formal training for traditional art aside from 2 art classes between the age of 15 and 17 (one of which I failed the first time around due to wanting to work on my own projects, actually). I’ve found a handful of video tutorials online that have been useful, but for the most part it’s strictly been me just trying to figure out things on my own. For most of 2007 I almost used Painter exclusively.  If you saw the work that I was doing in early ‘07, or even in the middle of last year, you’d see substantial difference and visible improvement. For that matter, there’s a visible improvement in the work that I’ve done just in the last 6 months. It is, as it says, a process. ;)

My linework itself, when drawing something initally, is often very sketchy. Always has been. I think that, in my recent digital experimentation/learning, I’ve not been as focused with needing to clean up the linework. I will say this: going digital, for me, was very much learning a new medium from scratch.

Some of you will be familiar with a number, if not all, of the pieces of artwork that follow.

I’m going to being with some speedpaintings from early ‘07 when I was first trying to find my way around the digital medium (all in Painter).


(Click for full-size.)

Now a couple of the first finished pieces I did a few months later, that were still solely in Painter.

Now, the last batch of exclusively Painter finished work that I did was in mid ‘07. Here are 3 sample pieces from a Luchador project I did for some friends at that point:

I think the problem is that I’ve got two personal styles vying for the same production space in my head right now, and I’ve been trying to find a proper fusion for them. What actually put me into this rapidly evolving/changing learning overdrive was the Disco The Boy Detective piece I did here. I was working on ideas for Hyper, and when a one-off of Disco came up, The Muse shoved me in the passenger seat, and took over. 4 hours later I was staring at something very outside of my artistic comfort zone.

It wasn’t until I started participating in the Remake/Remodels on here earlier this year that I started to truly get a grasp on the tools at hand. Before that, I had been in the midst of a several month artist’s block. This piece was an absolute epiphany for me– causing something to click and jump-started things inside me (no, it was not a chestburster). Mind you, were it for an actual paid piece, I wouldn’t be comfortable with calling it “finished” at that point, but for 4 hours, I was thrilled with it. So I started doing other things outside of my comfort zone. At that point, I was doing my linework and initial colors in Painter, then porting it back and forth between Painter and Photoshop for layer filtering and such. My skillset and my style(s) were improving, evolving rapidly as I pushed myself outside of my comfort zone. I’m still very much in the midst of the early part of that, and as such, my style is wildly in flux. Every piece is trial and error, a learning experience if we actually choose to learn from it.

My “inking” is currently in flux as well, as I’ve not found a program that suits my liking for it yet. The linework in ArtRage is done with the regular brush at minimum size. I have yet to find a brush in PS that I can ink with that doesn’t look like it has pixel bleed issues. Painter probably had the closest thing I wanted, but it had the potential for getting a bit on the inconsistent side. While I’ve got a copy of Manga Studio EX, I have a love/hate relationship with it right now, as it’s not as readily accessible/intuitive for a beginning user.

I’ll go into my first foray of utilizing photograpic aspects in piece in another post, sometime in the next week.

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Daily With Process Tutorial

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Recently I decided that I needed to do at least some minor daily art project for myself for the sake of my sanity. Something that’s completely independent of any work or project endeavors. After some of the conversation and feedback I’ve gotten in a thread elsewhere over the last few days, I decided that I would start today, doing something raw, with complete disclosure of the process. Here it is, staight and to the point, so that anyone can follow it step-by-step with a piece of theirs, if they choose. The changes are subtle in the latter 6 steps– I may swap the images out with larger, clickable, linked-image versions in the next day or so.

I started off in ArtRage on a 4"x6" 200ppi canvas:

1) 10min Grayscale speedpainting on first layer (not background). This was a mix of the roller, brush, and palette knife tools.
2) Duplicated original layer. Dropped original layer to 40% opacity. Turned duplicate into overlay layer.
3) Created layer under first layer to establish color underpainting, just roller and palette knife. Created layer on top of other layers to establish minor linework with brush.

Then I ported the painting to Photoshop.

4) Duplicated color underpainting layer (still below everything else). Ran it through the watercolor filter, shifted it to a multiply layer, and dropped it to 14% opacity.
5) Selected the whole image, copied it merged, and pasted it on top. Filtered with poster edges, and changed layer opacity to 42%.
6) Pasted same previously selected layer on top. Filtered it with paint daubs, changed layer opacity to 25%.

7) Pasted again. Filtered it with dark strokes, desaturated it, shifted to overlay layer, and dropped opacity to 20%. Erased selectively to start bringing more pop to the image.
8) Pasted again. Filtered it with accented edges. Dropped opacity to 46% Erased much more of the layer, selective, just leaving certain areas that I wanted highlighted.
9) Pasted again. Shifted to multiply layer at 46%. A bit more selective erasing to accentuate the depth.

Finish version:

(Click image for full size.)

Just under 2.5 hours, if that. 12 layers, counting the blank background and the signature layer.

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