Life drawing

Ice Battle

Debating on Dark vs Light when it comes to composition. Hmmm.

And ultimately went with light. However, I got ahead of myself and went to color too early. Value first, color later. Edit the shapes and positions, keeping to my original composition elements and the scene takes shape. Speaking of shapes, I turned the right soldier inwards to have him gazing back into the composition. This also forms a diamond with the creatures blade, our hero and the bright event in the sky.

NOW is the time for color, so I put down a couple of Hue/Saturation layers to get the overall look and feel. We're in an snowy area with golden light.

The main color and textures come in now. Our hero has a red uniform since red is a power color, and is as strong as the blood on the blade. If I didn't, then the eye would get stuck on the blade and have a hard time going anywhere else (although it makes a nice anchor in the middle of the piece). Textures and saturation layers were added to the creatures to give them an old metal or bruised flesh tone, and to kill off most of the black in the piece.

Lastly I add a photo adjustment layer to sculpt the blues back in and globally take down some of the yellow. Details are added on top of that and we have a finished piece!

Render

Video of the walker... walking.

http://youtu.be/jGB44uFJcOY
or
http://youtu.be/u42WRww8_VY

And a couple of pictures:

Keythong

Mostly done.

Photoshop painting WIP

Itchy bird... thing.

Fixes

As stated in a previous post, fixes needed to be made to the vehicle.

• A barcode graphic was added to the side of the vehicle and more scratches were added to spruce up the empty space.
• Tiling textures across the knees were edited to stop being repetitive. Smaller pits were added to vary up the surface to keep it from being boring. 
• Specular and normal maps were adjusted according for the above fixes. Specular maps were spruced up a bit to add more variety to the bare metal.
• After further study, the barrel on the back of the vehicle was off center and was adjusted to center.

Frozen combat: Process work

I'm starting another CG paining, and it all starts with process work- getting the foundations solid before pen work begins.

I start with a perspective grid that's pretty far off the final size of the page. If the grid is too close to each other then the angles will look weird.

Next we start with some compositional elements. I love the Rule of Thirds and the Golden Rectangle, so I put those in. This will help attract the eye to the right place in the piece without it seeming forced. Because I already have an idea of what I want to do, this is an informed choice. I put in some basic geometry to represent the ice flows this will take part on.

Now we add the combatants, both good and bad. Body flow works up as a triangle toward the top of the page, and the figures flow about the page, matching the compositional lines as shown above.

 Finally some atmospherics and the feeling of the piece starts to take shape.

More soon!

Lighting, posing, thinking

I'm in the middle of rigging up the machine I modeled, put some lights on it and voila!

Well see him walking in no time!

Learned a lot more as the project has progressed.

• Build smart the first go. Any revamps eat A LOT of time, and possibly make the next person's job harder.
• Watch for tiling. I see some of my scrapes and dings are too obvious on the legs. Those will have to be removed.
• Every surface needs to be interesting. Some of the larger areas will be spruced up.

Color comps

Some movie stills of "The Way Back"

Painting in photoshop.

Today I'm going to layout how I create a painting in photoshop.


First off, I create several color comps and chose one I like the composition the best. In this case I went with "Dark Journey."

First I need to set the scene, creating a shadowy underworld environment with some depth to it. I used a brush made from a cloud, and erased out using the same cloud brush until I got the misty effect I wanted.

Next, I added in a grim reaper-like character holding an apple (death holding life).  The skin has been roughed up to fit the character's nature, and making you wonder if that apple is a good idea. I made him sitting but didn't go too far into it since his lower torso will be hidden by his chair.

Now I add in some textures to his skin, apple and robe. I want to be careful here, since I don't want the skin textures and the robe textures to mimic each other, making everything blend together too much- each texture needs to tell a different story.

Death's stone chair is put in. This was a rock stamp brush with a variety of angle and spacing jitter added in. The layer is duplicated and set to multiply, while a different type of rock texture is overlayed in with the opacity greatly reduced.

More clouds are put in to hide the throne and the lower torso. Suggesting shapes is often just as interesting as rendering them, so it's fun to have both. Color is added in several layers. The first is a the specific spot colors added to the piece via layer set to color. A fill layer is also added with the opacity knocked back to unify the scene and a small red eye is placed in the skull socket to bounce the eye between it and the apple. In all the layers, holes were cut to make sure the apple was still vibrant.

A black gradient layer helps direct the eye to the important parts of the piece.

Finally I add in the background, a mysterious structure wrapped in fog, off in the distance, creating a third point of interest. 

Done!

Walker Texturing: Near completion

Some small edits still need to be done.

Color Comp

An experiment for a new piece. Still debating the time of day.

Color

The beginning of a long process.
Fill colors, scratch textures, rust and grime. All to come.

WIP and life drawings.

Walker "Brushfire" is finished

Rivets had to go because they were too expensive poly wise.

Walker: almost finished

Just a few more touches to go.

Fixes and edits

Pushed the contrast and added in some hard edges.

Three portraits