Presentation Work

Above - These three paintings are a continuation of my previous drawings. The ranger resting by the tree is not finished yet. I first blocked in colour and once I knew what colour palette to use I started to shape up my painting. I will spend some more time on this painting before the deadline. The other painting is thumbnail paintings that I will choose 1 or 2 to take to finish. The blades are the first designs of my object. Which will be the main characters weapon, short one handed blade. I will draw alternative ideas for the weapon. added an axe or bow.

Sketches for presentation

Object design____Final and Evaluated

                                         

Above - Here is the final outcome for my helmet design. I am overall pretty happy with it. I think with the research I have looked at, this could fit into one of Daarkens paintings. Looks more good than evil but with a little more time on this I could add more spikes and maybe change the colour scale for this design. 

Above - Here is a progress image of how I painted to get my final outcome. There is some parts missing but I did save a file while doing them parts. Looking back now I do like the look of the first helmet, maybe I should have stay with that look. I used a Gaussian blur for the backround to bring the helmet into focus. I also used the blur tool on some of the helmet so that the left bounce light was the focus point.

                       

Sadly I was in a bit of a rush to get this done as I have to show assignment on Thursday  Here is two pages of sketches for the helmet design. The idea I had in my head was a slick, but kinda spikey helmet. Fantasy look but could be use in real life. I decided that the design labeled (1) fitting the idea I had best. This is the design I took further into photoshop CS5. In these sketches I used a blue pencil for the first intital sketch, then tightened up the sketch with a 4B pencil. For the final step I use a black Biro pen to bring out contrast to the blue.

The sketches below are alternative idea's that I had but were not my first idea I had. But some of the designs I thought were pretty cool, so in my free time when I get the chance I will take one of them designs into photoshop.

                                                     RESEARCH FOR OBJECT DESIGN

The reason why I researched Daarken as my artist is because his fantasy paintings have always had the coolest looking bad guys. His Warhammer and magic the gathering paintings are a great example. As I have picked to design a helmet as my object design I focused more on Daarken designs for helmets. I love his work and style so it was great to use him as reference for this project. I decided I wanted to design a evil characters helmet, fantasy/sci-fi based.

Other research I looked at is the lord of the rings. Many great designed helmets, particularly the Orcs. Once I looked at the designs and established an idea which I want to design, I move onto the design of the helmets in my sketchbook.

Sketchbook____Concepts and Drawing as a tool

These two images are work I did in my sketchbook for the environment and creature concept. The teapot painting was an quick exercise at the beginning of the course. The reason why these are at the top of the blog is because I only just got the time to do this. Also I was not able to post anything new between my old posts which would be a lot handier if I could. All of these sketches are done very quickly, this is because I did not want to be focused on one idea. This work flow helps me think of new ideas and sometimes the accidental mistakes make it better. As you can see from previous posts and this one you can tell I was aiming to make the same idea throughout. Bug with two skinny legs. Simple I know but I didn't want to give myself a really hard concept to do for my first important assignment. For the next brief I will develope my idea's more and try a lot more various concepts. The next part of the brief is to design an object of choice. I have an Idea of what I want to do but I need to focus on my Zbrush work for this week as well as the object. 

I have been ask to describe drawing as a tool, to me drawing is like printing your thoughts and dreams onto paper. This does not mean it has to necessarily be on paper but any surface. You can put anything down on that piece of paper. Imagine the thoughts in your mind travelling through your arm, down your hand and into the pencil. If your only starting out imagine this. Learning to draw is like learning to drive. You got to go out and do it, each lesson gives you more experience and memory. You go out and physically take in what you are learning. The drawing lesson would be going out to your local park or town and drawing what you see. Draw everything you see, e.g a car, study how it works, what is it made from? how old is it?. All this will go into your memory for the next time you go to draw one. To the physical side there is a theory side. Just like driving you got to learn your theory. In drawing, this is grabbing a book or magazine. Read tutorials on how to draw and paint. Watch tutorial videos online, there is thousands available. This is how I taught myself to draw and paint. You will only get better if you go out and do it, draw everyday. Draw everything there is. If you are wanting to be a concept artist, you could be ask to draw anything so always be prepared for whats to come. 

Bug___Design Final and Process

Research for Bug design.

FENG ZHU

The reason why I have picked Feng Zhu is because he is one of the reasons why I even started digital painting. Ever since I seen his work on YouTube I feel in love with his style. I have followed his videos and blog for about a year now and I have tried to incorporate his style into mine.  His colour and use of design is what inspires me to make better art. Also he is a very good teacher and inspires many to get into digital painting and design.

Here is the bug painting process and how I painted it to my final outcome.

Above - I started working with values in grey scale. This is to help get my tone right with the image because I know later I will be using a new layer either set on overlay or soft light.. I had an idea of what I wanted for lighting because starting this image. The bug is hit with a spotlight effect on each side but the right side is warm and the left side is cold. This can relate back to my research of Noah Bradley, In his image he focused on cool and warm tones. At this point I am not thinking about colours because I know I will play about with Hue and saturation to get the colours right.

Now that I have got values down I can focus more on details and lighting. I was not overly happy with the lighting, I wanted the lighting to have more impact so I darkened the background and the bug to make the light look brighter. Using the dodge tool set on opacity 30% I lightly brushed the bug over the back to make bounce light. I also did this on the legs of the bug. Using the Soft airbrush set to Opacity 20% I brush over the leg were the light hits to give the look of a light flare.

Above - So far I have been working quite a bit on this design. This is part of the drawing for games brief which is to design a creature, an object (i.e gun etc) and an environment. I did some sketches in my sketchbook and took one of the idea's further. This picture is about 80% finished. As you can see I have added colour. I added a new layer set on overlay. I use the soft airbrush to paint down some colours. I did start with blue/green colour scale but I used the Hue and Saturation tool to get the colours right. I wanted the warm light on the right to be almost a focal point. I decided to change the face/head of the bug. I felt like this bug should not have eyes or a mouth and it uses it's tentacle to smell the enemy.

Above is the final outcome. I added a few details and cleaned up the illustration. I am quite happy with this image and I think it progress well. With the research of Feng zhu I think it has help with my knowlegde and skills to make this image.

Environment Final Piece____Evaluated

Here is the final outcome for the environment Assignment.

Description - The Dunlude Hills is were the settlers rest on their during across the mountains. This is the cave set at night time lit up by the cold frosty moonlight.

I am happy with my final outcome, I have really enjoyed the process of the design and how I have expanded my idea's into a solid painting. Below I have shown how I used the certain parts of my detailed thumbnails and put them in my final outcome. Each part is number accordingly to the thumbnails.

This should show my thought process easier and to show how I think about my idea's and designs. I was going to add a river/lake into my final image but I thought the moonlight would reflect light to much and draw the attention away from the focal point in the image which is number 4. I was going to add the river just below number 1 which I have shown in the image below.

The final outcome was completed in approximately 2 hours.All painted in Photoshop CS5

Digital Environment thumbnails___Detailed

Here is the sketches from my sketchbook took into further detail using Photoshop cs5.

With these thumbnails I ended up using different parts of each concept to make my final image. In each thumbnail the overall final idea is there but I when I picked number 3 to take to final I wanted more in the image. So I looked at each of the thumbnails and thought about what I could add to my painting. I have circled and numbered the parts in which I included in my final image. The parts are not exactly the same in my final image but you can see that this is where I got the idea's from.