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.