Daedelus Workshop Study Group [Archive]

David Keen

February 28th, 2012, 12:38 AM

This is the first in a series of still life's that Eelis and I are working on. I enjoyed doing this piece, it was fun to focus on some pretty simple shapes and pay attention to the values and form. Mucking around with the depth of field was really relaxing and enjoyable.

Here is no. 1 of 3 more developed thumbnails. Half way through doing this one I started thinking that it looked a lot like a medieval shield and that it could be fun to try and make the jetpack something that can be used both for flight and for defence. With that in mind I'm going to muck around with that idea a little and tailor each thumbnail to a different theme or era. This is the first iteration of a pure medieval knight themed jetpack/shield.

@Rebelionature: Welcome to the party mate! As the other guys said you're more than welcome to join our little study group. As Wheels mentioned I've found it quite helpful to spend some time working up multiple designs before settling on one to go ahead with. Have another look at a couple more of your thumbnails and then pick your favourite from that batch, it can be pretty surprising what can grow from your least favourite thumbnail with a little extra attention. I also found that link that Wheels posted very helpful for developing my ideas.

@Eelis: Thanks for the feedback on the thumbnails man. I like the gadgety feel as well but I feel like the steam punkish look has been done a little to death so I won't put all my eggs in that basket just yet but will try and make sure that there are elements that are identifiable as real mechanical parts.

Your still life is looking really good! I chucked mine in my sketchbook as well as here just so I still have some new work appearing over there while the focus is mainly on the Daedelus pieces. From looking at both our pieces I think we'd both benefit a lot by paying closer attention to edge control. There are some fuzzy bits that should be sharp and some sharp bits that should be fuzzy in both our pieces. It may also be worth having a little play around with the levels at the end of rendering the piece just to bump up the contrast a touch. beyond that I think we've done pretty well on our first still life attempt. Let's keep them rolling!! Happy to move onto the two apples next?

Can't wait to see your jetpack sketches.

@Wheels: How's the Mucha piece coming along? Have you had an opportunity to spend any time on it between all the contract work? My being a hungry hungry hippo may have contributed to the missing banana incident..

Wheeljack18

February 28th, 2012, 02:10 AM

Hey guys, great to see you guys are keeping up the initiative and producing more studies on top of the jet packs.

On the still life Studies: Eb mentioned that it would be worth it to adjust the levels on a piece which is a good tool but because I am playing devils advocate and in the spirit of learning, I suggest that you guys try to execute your studies with as little tools / tricks as possible. As if you were doing it with real media in a studio. Digital is so flexible that it makes us lazy and creates a lot of bad habits. It can be very useful and a boon to the working artist but in the long run you will be better served by doing it the hard way but the right way. Keep in mind that this is only a suggestion but you should at least consider what I'm saying. Other options could include creating studies with say only 1 brush or if you are using painter, 1 medium and limit yourself to using adjustment layers or effects brushes etc etc. In the end of the day, you want to be able to accurately draw what you are seeing using any tool and not have to rely on a crutch. Rant over.

Eelis: The still life looks good. In the next one, I suggest you concentrate on more value range. IE: Darker darks and lighter lights. One technique you can try is to make a grey background to use as your mid tone and only use white and black to delineate the form.

Ebersol:
Banana Study: I like that depth of field exercise. You are right that the edges could be more defined but to be fair, the only part of the Banana that is in focus is the central portion of the body and the only edges there are textural as opposed to linear in relation to the form of the body. If you did much more to play with the edges, you would be more so going into the realm of interpretation instead of observation. Working from photos can be a real dilemma when doing this sort of exercise because so much of what you see is already filtered through the eye of the camera. This in turn limits our choices even further.

Jetpack Design 1: Looking good so far. Isn't it great what your mind comes up with when you allow it to explore a little? I'm looking forward to seeing some more designs and where you decide to take this. Just remember to keep it loose and " Dream on Paper" as Iain McCaig would say.

I hope to post some progress on that Mucha Piece soon as I feel guilty for not contributing more work to this thread. I just handed in two assignments to my AD and I've got another piece due by the end of the week so depending on how that goes, I 'll have something up soon.

Eelis Kyttänen

February 28th, 2012, 09:19 AM

I agree with Wheel. Photoshop holds loads of valuable tools, but it's easy to just resort to them, which in turn limits your progress. Personally, for 90% of the stuff (be it full-fledged environment piece or just a still-life study) I use one fancy textured brush (used it with the background of the banana) and the normal PS airbrush.

@wheel: You are absolutely right about contrasting things up more. I'll pay close attention to that with the apples.

@eb: I'll most probably release the stills to SB in bigger batches. Could indeed also keep an eye on the linework. I'll try to make the background a bit darker next time so the lightest areas are easier to distinguish.

Yeah, I agree that we did well with this one. :) Let's bring out those apples!

David Keen

February 29th, 2012, 07:07 AM

Hey guys here's the second still life, around 35 mins again. I didn't notice until I'd finished that the deep cast shadow from the left apple is a bit flat in tone and doesn't show any of the reflected light from the apple, this is causing that area to little a little unnatural. I'm glad I picked the error up eventually and will try and keep an eye out for this in the future.

@Wheels: You're totally right about the limiting nature of photo studies. Although I've enjoyed trying to interpret the depth of field it would be better to work from real objects. The only real advantage for now is that Eelis and I can work from the same images and critique each others which is pretty fun. You should get in on a still life sometime just to loosen up and play around, if time permits.

It was great to get stuck into the jetpack assignment and feel something growing from the initial brief. After you asked me to flesh out the background of the Guardian I've felt a real benefit from trying to contextualise the subjects of my pieces and get a greater understanding of their nature. I have a day off from uni tomorrow so I'll get right into some jetpack designs and try and get all the loose sketches done along with some extra bits and pieces. Iain McCaig is such a master. I need to watch his Gnomon character design DVD again, there is some seriously good information in there.

I hope all goes well with your commissions mate!

@Eelis: Shall we do one more in black and white and then have a look at some colour studies? Maybe we could do the "selection of fruit" image next to make things a little more complicated?

Eelis Kyttänen

February 29th, 2012, 11:59 AM

Yeah, one more black n white sounds reasonable. I'll try to make the apple one today! It's indeed probably for the best that we choose an image that has more variety in colour and shapes.

Eelis Kyttänen

February 29th, 2012, 07:21 PM

And here's my apples. I am aware that the background kinda ruins it, I forgot to paint it up first again and duh! Maybe I'll remember with the last black n white one. :)

Btw, the "hole" in our left apples is pretty unsettling.

Wheeljack18

February 29th, 2012, 10:17 PM

Hey Guys!

I needed to take a break from work and I have a little bit of progress to share on my piece. Just a few more refined comps. Playing around with color and Design. Any thoughts?

So what? No more Jet packs? You guys run out of Steam on me? JETPACKS!!!!

The studies are looking good and it's good to see you are keeping busy.

@Eb: I had the pleasure of meeting Iain McCaig a couple of years ago. He just exudes such a positive aura and immense energy that I can still remember it like it was yesterday. I also got him to sign one of my Gnomon DVD's and you can never watch them enough. Sometimes I just play them in the background and listen to the lectures. I wish I could share my stuff but NDA and all that jazz limits what I can do on that front. Someday...
I might get in on the studies too, I just have time constraints to work with so it's not a priority but I think it is always a good thing. Your studies are looking good, I think it is time to move on to color.

@ Eelis: Hey man good work. But don't kill yourself on the lack of a background. It's just a study. Notice the difference in the shape of your apples and how elongated they appear. I have a suggestion. Most of the work I have sen of yours are value studies and environments. I'd like to see you do a study using line only and focus on construction. When you model the form with line, it gives you a different understanding of the planes and construction that you would not get with straight value. Try it and see if it helps.

@reb: Where did you go?

Eelis Kyttänen

March 1st, 2012, 03:49 AM

David Keen

March 1st, 2012, 07:27 AM

Here is an update for the art director who seems quite out of sorts with the slow progress. :wink: The idea for this one is continuing to grow and I'm starting to like the direction it's heading. I'm beginning to settle a little more with the technical workings of the jetpack and will now just muck around with the aesthetics of the shield in future updates if that works with you wheels? It's been great fun to play with this stuff and now that the mechanisms are a little more solid I'll spend some time exploring how the joints would actually work and explore that side of things in some more 3D images.

@Eelis: The apples are looking good mate. Like wheels I'd be interested to see a pure line drawing as this will give you more time to focus on the proportions and construction. Line drawings can be a real help and relieve some of the pressure that comes with finishing a full painting with all the values and effects.

@Wheels: So far I'm liking elements of both the comps but am curious to see a bit of a blending of the two. I like the way the figure steps outside of the borders in the second comp and also am liking the border itself more than the first one. But I prefer the title on the first image and bringing some of the movement that the wavy background lines provide might help keep the background a little less symmetrical. I'm also not 100% sure about the really bright pink background, but it is very evocative of the 80's and suits the subject of the piece. Keep chipping away and we'll go from there.

I'm so jealous that you got to meet Iain McCaig! Lucky bugger! He's seems like such a stand up guy and has been a great inspiration of mine to work in concept art and illustration. Where was it that you met him? Which Gnomon DVD's do you have? I've got the character design and story telling series that focuses on the little mermaid but if there is anything else available I'd love to jump online and buy them. Speaking of great online tutorials have you bought any of Matt Kohr's paid stuff from ctrlpaint.com? Some of it is a little basic but I've found the "photoshop rendering" and "greyscale to colour" series' very helpful for reinforcing information from less concise resources.

No pressure at all about the studies, but I certainly didn't want you to be excluded from anything Daedelus. All the best buddy.

rebelionature

March 2nd, 2012, 01:51 PM

Sorry im still here! just been busy with work and its been hard to get time to sit down and do some fun stuff! but ill post asap im working on the first still life and it is really hard xD. ill see what i can do with some jet pack idea's...

Here's still life number 1! whooo... had to restart after PS decided to rage quit on me.

Wheeljack18

March 2nd, 2012, 06:40 PM

Hey Guys,

Here is another update on the Weird Science Pic. I could uses some art direction on this one. I'm fuddling with the color scheme ( I know, I should I figured that out prior) and I want to push that 80's feeling and give it more energy as well as a warm seductive feel. Combine that with the classical feeling of a Mucha piece. At least this is what I am going for. I still have more details and refinement to come but i'd be open to ideas and suggestions on design etc. Think " Wierd Science. In the back I'm going to put some design suggesting one of those cheesy static electricity balls in hot pink with lightning bolts. Al la " My science Project" ( it's another 80's flick).

Thanks Guys, and I'll comment on your pieces in another post.

Cheers.

Wheeljack18

March 2nd, 2012, 06:52 PM

Reb: Good to see you are still here! next time, try to just draw it and work on modeling the planes. Once you have a good understanding of that, then move onto value. So far so good!

Eb: HA HA I met Iain and you didn't! Nyah Nyah! Seriously, he was a cool guy an I hope to meet him again someday. I have all his Gnomon vids and No I have not downloaded any of Matt Khors's stuff although I'm familiar with his site. I've got a huge collection of Tutorials and vids. Quite a few from the guys who run this site but some are better than others. The Shield / Jet pack is an Idea I never would have thought of. Good one! So who wears this? Is he some sort of Time traveling Knight with kick ass gear to make fast getaways or hunt Dragons? Two thoughts, The jet arms look small and flimsy and might not be able to handle the force of the thrusters and how does the harness work? So next step for you is to work up a more refined concept. I want to see one that is 3D and not an ortho. Orthos would be good to accompany the final image but a nice rendering of the pack demonstrating texture and painting skills is what I'm looking for. The end goal is for this piece to go into your portfolio so take your time and have fun with it!

David Keen

March 5th, 2012, 01:46 AM

@Rebelionature: Good attempt there mate, I agree that still life's are extremely hard to do but they're a great way to work on your observation skills. As Wheels said have a look at a line drawing for the next one and see how you go with that. Once you've done an accurate line drawing the values should be much easier to do.

@Wheels: I love the rendering in this piece, the style works well with the Mucha inspiration but pushes far enough away to not just feel like a straight rip. Nice work! I feel like there is something wrong with the face at the moment. It may just be the bushy hair, but I feel her face is a little too small for her body. Perhaps have a look at resizing it and see how things go from there. As far as the colour scheme goes I think the pink works to invoke an 80's feeling but it is a too dominant in the piece at the moment. Perhaps by adding another shade of the greenish yellow colour to the background the piece will feel a little more balanced. Adding the static electricity-esque pattern to the background would also be a welcome addition and would help break up that space a little more and lead the viewers eye back to the main figure. The pattern work you've done with the border so far is really fantastic though and I can't wait to see what you do with another opportunity for pattern making. Great stuff buddy!

I'm always trying to expand my tutorial collection but the gnomon ones are hard to justify because of their rather large price. So far getting some from the TAD store has been a great, especially when they have sales going and a series only costs $8.

There is a jetpack related update incoming. I'll try and address some of the issues you pointed out, especially the jetpack arms. Thanks for the feedback mate!

Eelis Kyttänen

March 5th, 2012, 01:13 PM

Sorry for no updates on the lineart! I'm trying to figure out personal landscape picture, and it's eating my time a bit. I'll continue with this one as soon as I am ready!

Wheeljack18

March 5th, 2012, 02:24 PM

rebelionature

March 5th, 2012, 03:37 PM

Sounds good. Ill try to get an accurate line drawing of the next set and see if i can tackle blocking in values. I have a hard time understanding planes so it something i should focus on.

@wheeljack: I'm not really skilled enough to crit your piece other than to say i really like it!

Eelis Kyttänen

March 5th, 2012, 04:16 PM

Hey Eb, My wife said the same thing about the face . I'll play with it some more as well as I'm not too fond of the way I've framed it so far. Stand by for more updates and I'm looking forward to seeing more jetpack designs.

Eelis: No Updates ! WHAT?! lol ;) post up what you are working on and share it. I suggest that you wrap up the Jetpack or move on. Letting a gig linger just adds weight to your neck and drags you down. If you want to move on to something else, just let us know and we can move on. I suggest you just power through it and crank out something. Doesn't matter if it is super designed or Rendered. Just take the idea as far as you want to go and then call it done. Learn from it and move on. You like doing Environments and that is cool but you do need to broaden your portfolio if you want to do concept art. So why not, do one Environment and then one of something else and keep alternating. This way you get to work on both. For myself, I love character work. It's all I would do if I could but I recognize that I need to work on other things more and I try to do things that way to keep myself balanced.

So guys what do you think of the Study group so far? Is it working, isn't it? Are you losing steam? Was the Jet pack assignment boring?

I think it is going good so far. It's keeping me motivated and inspired and I am enjoying the feedback and our little community.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. Meant the still life linework! I actually already have a sketchbook page ready with some jetpack concepts, I'll get my hands on a scanner tomorrow so I'll get it posted here in 20 hours!

On the diversity dilemma, I agree. If you want to be a concept artist, you better know at least two fields inside out. For example, environments and structure/equipment etc. design. However, to get my foot to the actual door and get those first few jobs I've heard from various locations that a niche, focus, will be real helpful. So I am trying to establish myself as the "environment guy" when my tech hits the right point. :) That's why I have to distract myself from other works from time to time to scribble up some nice environment studies.

However, I can't ignore everything else because of that. I've got a bad habit of working a bit slower when the subject doesn't motivate me much, and that's something I should really get rid of. I'll finish this one, on the double!

This study group is damn great, and it's really helping me out since I kinda have to dwell in the areas I've not visited before. +everything that you mentioned Wheel. I definitely gotta say that I am not an ID guy (too much pedantic drawing), but Ebersol seems to have great going with it and I hope Re has too. I am definitely looking forward to the next job! Will be fun when we all are working on the same subject.

EDIT: Hey, page two already! Great going.

rebelionature

March 5th, 2012, 07:42 PM

Its very obvious to me now that i need to practice a lot more. I re did a line drawing of this loaf of bread so many times to even get it like this. Im posting it as is because i feel like as though ive hit a wall. I just hope that art is like working out... If it leaves you exhausted then that means that you are getting a good workout! I feel like i just ran 10 miles...

Wheeljack18

March 5th, 2012, 10:58 PM

Ok Guys, I think She's done. What do you think?

I spent WAAAAY too long on this piece but that is what happens when you go into an illustration without a plan. I find that this happens way more often when I work digital as opposed to traditional. Next time, remind me to put more time into prep and planning before I dive in. I messed around a lot with color but I ended up coming back to the the scheme I started with. I won't even share the " Barbie and the ROCKERS' version I made. The NEON pink still hurts my eyes. I went over the face and here is a post breaking down the proportion and she is roughly 8 heads tall with heels on so she's fine in that regard. I think her face looks small because of the Big 80's hair and the tilt of her chin. Your thoughts? I've been looking at this piece too long so my objectivity is lost.

Reb: Don't kill yourself but yest drawing is an entirely learned skill and only hard work will get you where you want to go. It can be a pain but nothing worth doing is easy so don't get discouraged. Just try to draw a bit every day. After a month or two, you will look back on your previous stuff and hate it because you know you can do better. This is how we progress. One thing I want you to try is to just draw simple shapes. Boxes, circles, pyramids, cylinders etc. I draw them all the time to warm up and they are the fundamentals of good drawing. Master those shapes and you will be able to draw anything. Have you ever worked on perspective exercises before?

Eelis: Lets' see those sketches and everything else! I'm glad you are picking up on the same positive vibes as it's going to make all of us better for sure!

Cheers!

David Keen

March 6th, 2012, 08:01 AM

Hey guys, great to see some really nice work going up recently! I'll have to apologise again for my lack of updates, university is really kicking my ass at the moment but I'll be settling into the routine again soon and plan to get a few hours of personal work in tomorrow. So far I think the study group is going really well. It's great to have a place that we can go and discuss each other's work freely without worrying about bumping sketchbook threads too much or any other forum etiquette related issues. Eelis has mentioned wanting to work on the same topic together which I would enjoy as well but we'll just have to make sure it's something that everyone is interested in to avoid the weekly challenge fatigue that inspired Daedelus originally.

@Eelis: Can't wait to see your jetpack sketches, let's get this one done and dusted and then move on to something else :)

@Reb: Nice job on the line work buddy. It's really tough working that way because we aren't able to trick ourselves into thinking the proportions are pretty much correct. I still find working in that way quite tough and I think you're attitude for improving your work is fantastic! I'm sure if you keep going with some regular studies you'll see a dramatic improvement in your work, this is one of the best things about having a sketchbook on CA. Keep up the good work! :)

@Wheels: Your final rendering looks really good mate. The work you've done on the background is especially impressive. Bonus points for incorporating the electricity ball and atom sign into the design, they invoke the theme very effectively. I still feel like her proportions are slightly off but as you say that may purely be due to the huge hair she's rocking. It's so hard to tell with some poses and is a very minor issue.

I sympathise strongly with the enthusiasm to start a piece getting the better of you issue, as you know I've encountered this quite a few times myself ;). I'll make sure to be tougher on you next time and make sure the major points are worked out in some comps.

What are you thinking for the next piece? Would you like to go ahead on something else now or wait to do a group assignment together? I'm not all that fussed either way and wouldn't mind throwing you a bit of a curve ball for the next one if you're up for it? How do you go finishing off everything for commissions? ttyl.

Eelis Kyttänen

March 6th, 2012, 01:29 PM

Here's the ID page, just three sketches. I beg your pardon for not being able to put more into this! Had all kinds of final school stuff and all. I am ready to move on now.

Wheeljack18

March 6th, 2012, 05:23 PM

Hey Guys. Its like we are waiting on Eb to wrap up the Jet pack. I'd like to see Eb wrap it up before we move on to a group project but in the meantime, we can move onto something else. I need to plug some holes in the Portfolio and I really need some Sci Fi content a la Mass Effect. I'm ready for that curveball EB. "Bring on the heat!"

Eelis: So your done with the jet pack eh? Well that's OK. How abut you share some of those landscapes with us too? What you have in the top design is looking good. The idea and design is clear and concise and ready to take to the next stage. Not bad for your first ID drawing. It's not as easy as it looks is it?

Eb: Thanks for the feedback Mate. I'm glad I finally completed this piece as it has been on my to do list for way too long. Getting it done feels good although all I notice are the mistakes. I've wrapped up 3 commissions with one to go and a storyboard gig has been placed on hold due to a client rewrite. So it's good. I wish I could share the some of the pieces as one of them I am particularly proud of. According to the AD, I can't post it until it is published in October.

Looking forward to our next challenge. Go Team!

Eelis Kyttänen

March 7th, 2012, 03:11 AM

Oh sure, ID is darn hard. Mostly because the precision needed, but yeah!

I'll try to post a few thumbs here later today. :)

The final render of your piece looks good! Congrats! Shame you can't show your commission stuff yet. :/

Sci-fi wouldn't hurt now that ME3 (and because my The next generation-marathon is still running!) is just around the corner. I suggest we brainstorm an idea while waiitng for Eb to finish up.

May I suggest, that we choose a same subject, but vary how we do it? For example, if the subject was "alien species" if one want's to do a portrait work and one more illustrative action-packed piece, it would be okay? Or does it make comparing et cetera too hard?

I'll try to come up with some ideas today!

Wheeljack18

March 7th, 2012, 10:54 AM

I'm game for whatever although I'm intrigue by Eb's curve ball threat.

I was reading over at Art order and I thought I'd share some of the tips from an AD over at WoTc who was interviewed.
SCWATSON :: By now, almost everyone is familiar with the mantra of putting your best work in your portfolio, and keeping it down to 7-10 pieces, and showing the type of work that you want to do …

JON :: This IS my mantra. I have been preaching that a general “illustration” portfolio is great when you want to have an untargeted message, but if you are serious about stepping up your game and what to wow an art director – build your portfolio around their needs! What makes for a good portfolio?

Another Article: http://theartorder.com/2012/01/30/transitioning-from-aspire-to-hire/

These are related more to an illustration career as opposed to a concept artist career but it is good information none the less.

Cheers.

Eelis Kyttänen

March 7th, 2012, 10:58 AM

Yeah, that's what I heard from Noah Bradley's art of freelance vid too wheel. Not quite something for me yet, but good to know this stuff before the time comes.

Wheeljack18

March 7th, 2012, 01:15 PM

Hey Eelis. Did you pay for the Noah Bradley thing or just watch the 30 min teaser?

Eelis Kyttänen

March 7th, 2012, 01:16 PM

Paid for the full record. :)

Eelis Kyttänen

March 7th, 2012, 01:43 PM

Alright, this is the thumbnail I am currently working out. Was picked out of the many "mountains & towers" thumbs. I am still trying to figure out size & distance & atmosphere fundamentals, so I guess a familiar subject is goody.

I am yet to define the architecture of the tower, will have to gather some reference first.

David Keen

March 7th, 2012, 07:06 PM

CURVE BALL INCOMING! Because you guys have been talking about working on a Sci-Fi Mass Effect style piece for the next topic I thought a tricky one would be designing a new race to fit into the existing Mass Effect universe. The current races are very different from each other and all fulfill a specific role ie Salarians are scientists & spys while Turians are soldiers and police. Think about the way the other characters appearance expresses their place in the universe and strive to create your own character in this model. Your character should both fit in amongst the other races while visually contrasting with other character designs. For the displaying of the final you should have a front and back view of the character in some kind of space underwear to show the anatomy of the race, some close ups on areas of interest ie space gills and a hero style illustration with the character all dolled up in n7 armour.

That sounds like a pretty large assignment to me so if you guys are unable to do the whole thing and would like to just select one area to focus on that's totally cool. Although I'd like to see Wheels and anyone else who's keen have a crack at doing the whole lot if time permits. I hope that brief suits what you guys were hoping to do next? I'm gonna try and wrap up the jetpack asap and get in on this one too.

@Eelis: Great to see your jetpack sketches mate, I agree with you that ID is extremely hard. I think it's much easier to get away with (or not notice) little errors in your perspective in a full illustration but with only the design your working on everything stands out like a sore thumb. I've been planning on getting Noah's Art of Freelancing vids as well. What do you think of the series? Is it worth it for someone who is still a ways off from actually applying for freelance work? The 30 minute preview was pretty engaging.

The thumbnail for the enviro is looking good. Not much I can critique on that one until you increase the size and start the next stage of detailing. I'm jealous of your natural skill with environments.

@Wheels: I know what you mean about only being able to see the errors in the work, I feel the same way about all my pieces but thankfully it's still satisfying to finally call them done. I'm very interested to see the commission work when the client allows especially now hearing you're happy with them, but with any luck by the time October rolls around you will have pushed your work that much more in this space that you'll look at the commissions from February and hate them. It's still odd to me that as artists we're eventually able to disentangle ourselves from our pieces and take great joy in how bad our old work is.

I've had that transitioning from aspire to hire article bookmarked for a while. It's a great one to go back and read again to get the excitement up and reengage with the things we need to be working on. I'll try and post some links to similar articles as I come across them as well.

What do you think of the Mass Effect assignment?

Wheeljack18

March 7th, 2012, 11:41 PM

Hey guys, here are some quick doodles for EB's ME challenge. I know next to nothing about the IP so I'm in for a learning curve. I want to see characters that are not Shepperds Minions but his equal or at least fellow officers. The 1st officer on the left I imagine as some alien that exists in liquid form and must inhabit a suit to interact with other lifeforms. Hence the N7 clone suit with a dome head. Not a lot of ideas are forth coming at the moment except that all the aliens I can see look very Star Wars Esque and none have hair. I see Kit fisto, Diner guy from episode 2, and a white Sebulba. They are all bipedal and humanoid. Just thinking out loud here...

Eelis: There is not much I can offer base don the thumbnail you posted. What are you going for? How is this piece going to push you? What did you get as Extra resource material that he talks about? I echo Eb's questions so I look forward to your response.

Eb: I think with anything, you have good pieces and bad ones. The key is to learn something and improve each time. And with time I am able to look back on a piece and appreciate it for what I learned or what was successful. That's where I find my pleasure in old works. Otherwise, onward and upwards! What do I think about this assignment.... Hmm. I don't have any aliens or sci fi in my portfolio so that is good and it should push me out of my comfort zone and add variety to my portfolio. It's still character work which I already have a lot of but I think I can use this as an excuse to beef up other areas with multiple iterations of the character.
You are the Art Director on this one EB so Bust my chops. I want each assignment to be portfolio worthy and to that end I'm not afraid of being told what is what. Give me some direction base don what I've shown as well as hep me out because I know Jack S#*t about the franchise besides playing ME 2 for about an hour.

Talk to you guys soon and I'm looking forward to seeing your work and ideas.

David Keen

March 7th, 2012, 11:42 PM

My very overdue jetpack update. I've spent the majority of the time just getting to grips with some of the subtle perspective issues that come from having a curved object. It's been great to keep chipping away at it and begin to feel more comfortable working on ID. I also spent some time playing around with sketchup for the first time which has really opened the door for me to using basic 3D models to block out larger perspective elements. It's nice to know that I can double check my perspective that way if I'm really struggling to envision it in my head.

David Keen

March 8th, 2012, 01:06 AM

@Wheels: I've found a couple of links for basic info on the major races in the Mass Effect universe, image (http://www.the-games-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/mass-effect-races.jpg) info (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Races_of_the_Mass_Effect_universe). Because you don't have stacks of first hand experience with the game this topic may simulate the commission environment more closely. Artists often talk about picking up a book cover for the third book in the series and the challenges that are presented by having to research all the back story and aesthetics of the previous work. I know you like a challenge :D.

I think your self critique of your sketches raises some good points. Looking at the other Mass Effect races it's easy to spot they're all bipedal so breaking that mould might be a good avenue to pursue. I like the idea of a creature that has evolved to rely so much on technology that they must use a suit as their avatar to interact with other beings. That could be pushed quite far to contrast heavily against the other races. Some of the armour elements on the far left character are good but there are similar legs are on the Salarians which could be confusing for silhouette recognition. I'd now spend some time looking at some animals and see if there are any features that inspire you for another round of thumbnails. Identify and list some characteristics that the current roster of races share and then break away from that and go with something completely different. A few examples would be the number of eyes or limbs, internal or external skeleton and organs, skin texture, traditional or non traditional weapons, technological evolution etc. So far a lot of the races are similar visually, so step away from these shared attributes and mix things up.

I think you're right that for the next topic we should get right away from character work as you and I both have quite a lot of it already. There are some huge holes in my work that need to be addressed with environments being the most under appreciated. I've got an opportunity to do some free choice oil paintings for University this semester so I'm going to try and combine that with the work that I'm doing for Daedelus. So far I'm leaning towards doing some Neo Classical styled images but depicting moments from modern stories. I'm not sure if I'll go all out and use historical looking figures for these images or just invoke the feel of Neo Classicism with the poses. It should be fun and I'd greatly appreciate input from the Daedelus crew.

Wheeljack18

March 8th, 2012, 01:36 AM

Hey Eb, Thanks for the feedback so far.

The Jet Pack is looking good. Are you done with it or will you take it any further. Sketchup can be a great tool and it can speed things up quite a bit but don't rely on it as it will become a crutch. You want to be able to draw it the old fashioned way first. personally find elipses the hardest thing to draw well in perspective so I bet the shield sides were a lot of fun. I'm holding off on critiquing the piece any more because I'm not sure if it is a WIP or not and how far you want to take it.

You don't actually expect me to read the whole Wiki Page you linked me to do you? I prefer to think that because I don't have too much XP with the series that I can bring a fresh perspective free from bias. I'll count on you guys to keep me on target so I don't make any glaring errors. By the way, what does N7 stand for?
I'm certain that the team working on the game made most of their design decisions based upon technical restrictions of the Engine such as the need to be Bipedal and possibly the fur angle too although I'm sure they could texture some fur onto the the characters to some degree. That might be more of a design aesthetic. I actually like the idea of an animated suit or some type of android / synthetic character. I like the 50's sci fi feeling of a bubble head guy but I don't think it fits the Edginess of the series very well. Think Mysterio in Space!

Next job will be an environment! How about that?

I love the Neo Classical period! I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with. We'll all pitch in to help no problem.

Eelis Kyttänen

March 8th, 2012, 09:59 AM

Bah! I had written a long response and then accidentally went to previous page. I'll try to keep this short.

Firstly, eb, the jetpack design looks real good, I agree with everything wheel said.

Secondly, the assignment sounds goody. I am not really a lorenuts person, but I'll see what I can do to shape it up within the boundaries. One plea though, may I just paint a pose with a neat background instead of more technical sideview/frontview stuff?

I think you don't know this Eb, but I am not even in an uni yet! (will get results in a few weeks), so I am way behind you guys, but even for me that lecture was really helpful.

It covers everything from portfolio building to contacting art directors, networking and marketing yourself. It is just one man's opinion on yes, but since he is such a newcomer to the industry he really sheds a nice light how it is for the beginners now days, and what are the most effective ways to get your foot in the door.

The resource section itself is an ever growing library of info, that's being updated on a basis with new information Noah comes across or his readers send to him. So everything not mentioned in the lecture will be stored there.

I'll try to get bigger thumbnail here soonish, as well as some neat colour sketches. + the next job!

Cheers.

EDIT: Neo-classical? Sounds great! Wheel, N7 is the armor the main protagonist wears.

Eb: Thanks for the compliments, but hardly natural. Just hard work! Still ways behind, but it's shaping up slowly but surely. :)

Wheeljack18

March 8th, 2012, 11:04 AM

I hate it when that happens. When I go about doing a long reply, I tend to write it another software and then copy and paste it into the reply. That way I can edit it, review it and not worry about losing it if I make a mistake.

No Ortho's for Eelis. Deal. Just knock out what you want to but I'll leave it up to Eb regarding the particulars.

Thanks for the feedback on the download. I think I may go ahead and get it.

Regarding N7. I meant what does the N7 stand for? Ie: is it a unit number or his rank?

Lets see some more posts.

Cheers all.

Eelis Kyttänen

March 8th, 2012, 12:28 PM

Yeah, I should really make that a habit too, writing in notepad for example.

Hmm, good point. I didn't know that either! Mass effect wiki describes it like this:

"The "N" designates special forces and the "7" refers to the highest level of proficiency"

Wheeljack18

March 8th, 2012, 09:32 PM

Not much to show for now but a couple of heads. I was just banging around some alien head portraits and here is what I came up with. Hey Eb, I have an idea, what do you say to giving me some more direction on this character? Have me make your character like you were the AD on this gig. Take a look at the heads and give me some direction on them too. Pick one or two and give me some ques to push the design further. Today has been one of those days...

Thanks Eelis for the tip. I think I might go and play some ME2 tonight to get some inspiration.

Wheeljack18

March 9th, 2012, 11:25 AM

Hey Guys,

A while back I mentioned that it would be cool to put together an influence map showing who our influences have been. Now I'm way older so I probably have more but still, I would like to see what you come up with. I find this exercise to be very enlightening and helpful and you might too.
Anyways, here we go...

Eelis Kyttänen

March 9th, 2012, 02:37 PM

Hey! That's pretty nice idea! I'll make one over the weekend. :) Sadly none of those names ring a bell for me, even though I am sure I've come across plenty of em. I should pay attention to the names more!

I like how you named propaganda as one of your influence factors. :D

Nice going with your character wheel. 5 and 3 kind have resemblance to certain races in ME universe, but 2th doesn't, and in my honest opinion it's the one that would have most grounds in the lore. Just a gut feeling!

I'll be working on the character tomorrow, meanwhile, I would like to post this (almost) final black and white landscape thumbnail I'm working on. It's bigger too! Hopefully you can give some critic up with this one. :)

The left corner will have some life too, I'll paint a dog in on the later stages.

I am mainly trying to nail on the graphic space and scale here. Also, I would really really really want to get rid of the "cramped" look my work usually has.

Wheeljack18

March 9th, 2012, 03:30 PM

Hey Eleis,

Here is a quit paintover to show how you could make your scene look less cramped. Always try to think about the law of 3rd and the path your viewer follows. What is the story and how can you use graphic shapes to tell it? I made some simple changes like expanded the screen and played with the scale a bit. I made a few quick notes on the screen in red too.

Thanks for making me feel old ;)! Are you saying Frank FRazetta doesn't ring a Bell? Norman Rockwell? NC Wyeth? I suggest you check out the artists and see their work, some of it is simply amazing. I am totally a product of 80's toy marketing and I think the influence map really tells my story. It's funny to look at that and I often wonder if other people can pick out my influences or not? Propaganda Art is amazing graphically and was once a very powerful tool for conveying messages to the public. I could write a whole paper on the subject and even took a few classes in university on it.

Eelis Kyttänen

March 9th, 2012, 03:39 PM

Thanks loads of the paintover man, it'll be real helpful. Especially the bottom right really, really delivers and I can already see how I'll play this thing out!

I've actually got that darn big book by Donald W. Graham, Composing Pictures that has all the composition related stuff inside. I should pay more attention to it's lectures, especially the base level. Some of the info inside it has been invalidated, but the basic stuff is clean.

Actually, I've heard of Frazetta before! I'll have to check those artists out yeah, pays to know the culture. I completely agree with how studying propaganda could be helpful. That stuff was made to affect people, so why not use it for some good stuff?

David Keen

March 9th, 2012, 09:26 PM

@Wheels: I'd like to take the jetpack one step further and polish it to a level that can be displayed in my portfolio. Seeing as most of the design work is already done that shouldn't be a huge stretch now. I agree with you that using sketchup too much to mock up all work would be very detrimental to my development, but I also find ellipses very difficult to portray accurately in perspective so for that particular task it was helpful. The sides of the shield sure were fun :| Feel free to critique what I've got so far to make sure I don't polish it all up with errors that I can't identify anymore..

Very good point that the design team would have been working within the restrictions the engine presented. That makes even more sense considering that all those creatures were in the first game which came out in 2007, some huge leaps in graphical fidelity have been made since then. I think you're probably right about space Mysterio, he would fit a retro sci-fi serial piece perfectly but might be relegated to quirky sidekick who tragically dies early in Mass Effect.

The character heads are looking nice, I'd like to see you push the 2nd design and maybe throw together another quickie for the synthetic, androidish guy. I like elements of the other sketches including the helmet on the no. 5 and the suit on no. 4, maybe you could combine those components on your and android character. Once you've mocked up the synthetic guys head we should move onto some silhouettes or sketches to show how the head's will fit with the rest of the characters body. Something to keep in mind for the next stage is how you can make subtle changes to the core characters to give them individual personality, maybe it could be skin patterns, fins or some kind of bulbous growths that play the role of hair.

I'm going to throw together one of those influence maps as well, it'll be fun to see the mutal inspiration we all share. There are quite a few on yours that will also be appearing on mine but I'll have to look up a couple of the comic artists that I'm not familiar with.

@Eelis: Hey mate, no worries about not doing the turnaround image. Just make sure you post lots of sketches of your character as he's developing so that we can share that process with you. Your environment is looking really good, Wheels has pointed out all the major things to work on at this stage so I'd tackle that stuff first. Once you've solidified the space I reckon you could push the shape of the building a little bit and get some more out of the design. I know it's only early days for this piece and you'd probably tackle that later on anyway but just something to keep in mind.

I reckon I'll get the Noah Bradley lecture soon, you've made it sound very attractive and I'm sure there is a lot to get out of it.

All the best with your school results man, I'm sure you'll nail it! What are your plans once you've finished up with school?

Wheeljack18

March 9th, 2012, 10:08 PM

Hey Eb,

here is a quick paintover of the shield. I pointed out some mistakes with the perspective by drawing the horizon and 2 vanishing points in Red. I pointed out that the jets use their own vanishing point which is incorrect. One thing to keep in mind when you do ID is to draw the boxes first as it is easier to tell if it is correct or not. When you are unsure, always draw the horizon and VP's and work it out. Make a ton of marks and think it through. I find it is helpful to subdivide the forms into halves and thirds if it s going to be more complicated. Another thing I suggest that you do in the finished version is to Ink the form first and color on a separate layer. It will help the image maintain a slick clean appearance. When you ink the elipses in PS. Use the Eliptical marquee tool to draw the line, go to edit, stroke and voila, you have a perfect curve. Next, free transform the shape to fit and erase the remainder. Also, when inking manually in PS, don't be afraid to draw through the lines and erase the waste. It helps a lot when drawing curves and intersecting lines.

You had to pick the head I hated the most! way to go EB :( I'll see what I can do but can you give me some more direction RE: Character?

Eelis: Your welcome for the paint over. :)
I'm not familiar with Donald Graham but I can not recommend Andrew Loomis's book creative illustration. I struggled with composition all through university and did not get it until I read his book. He breaks it down in a very understandable way and he gives you a lot of useful tools that can help you figure it out. Good to hear that you have at least heard of Frazetta. I'd be surprised if he was not on every ones list on this site, he was a very gifted illustrator.

I'm stoked to see your influence Maps and see where you are coming from. Eb, which Comic Artists are you unfamiliar with besides Ron Wagner as nobody knows him. That Gi Joe story that I posted the cover of has got to be one of the best examples of comic story telling you will EVER see. The story is called " Hush job" and it has no dialogue, it's just a pictoral narrative. Classic!

David Keen

March 9th, 2012, 11:15 PM

Wheels has raised a very valid point that I haven't really specified that nature of the character or what their species is most proficient at. It's a little tricky to find a role as most of the obvious ones have been tackled and filled by Bioware already but I why don't we proceed by saying that the species (The Sethlans) tend to focus on trade skills and are proficient with mechanics and electrics. Although they display a keen aptitude in these areas the other races think of them as less intelligent and far too wrapped up in their crafts and material possessions. Although the generally the Sethlans aren't great scientists or scholars they are quick to learn new things as they are shown to them and are extremely practical and therefore are very good at refining processes and efficient work. Their homeworld has a more toxic atmosphere than other inhabitable worlds so the Sethlans evolved to filter the air they were breathing for impurities and have thick, hide like skin which protects them from a hostile environment. The heavy, toxic air has also clouded their world with a thick haze so the Sethlans vision is excellent in low light, but they struggle with brightly lit areas. Because of their practical skills they aren't a slight race but range anywhere from a medium to very heavy build. Because of their fascination with technology the Sethlans have been keen to embrace mechanical enhancements and synthesised organs.

Does that help with the designing of the character? Would you guys like any more detail about a particular Sethlan to design or is a general race description ok?

@Wheels: I've got a long way to go with my perspective. Thanks so much for the crits mate. I made a mistake in working the shield out first and then bolting the thrusters onto that form without really thinking too much beyond “how do awesome jet engines look?”. That's a great tip about using the elliptical marquee to create clean lines, I had a quick play and found you can also access the stroke by right clicking on the circle and selecting stroke from the pop up. I'll try and tackle the jetpack again this afternoon and get everything looking right before progressing to the next stage. I've got a Carl Dobsky perspective tutorial that I haven't watched yet so I think I'll queue that one up for viewing today.

Sorry to have picked the your least favourite, always the way isn't it? Do you feel more of a connection with any of the other heads?

Wheeljack18

March 10th, 2012, 01:22 AM

Hey Boys we need some more of your work on this thread . I feel like a Hog!

Eb: Good job on the brief and I think that should be enough to go on but if you want to add more, be my guest. I've picked up a few more gigs so I'll be slow on this one too but I'll still be chiming every day. My favorite heads would be 3-6 with a special place for 3,5 and the helmet on 6.
So are you a big Mass Effect fan? You seem to know your stuff. In an effort to get up to speed last night I played the game for an hour or two until I got sick to my stomach. I'm the guy who can't play many video games because I get "the motion sickness". It's especially bad with the first person shooters.

Regarding perspective, I suggest you don't watch the video and break out the loomis and sit down with a ruler and just plow through the exercises. The only way to learn it is to do it the hard way and practice. Want an old school drafting tip? When you are working with a triangle, tape or glue a dime to each corner. This lifts the triangle off the paper and helps reduce smudging.

David Keen

March 10th, 2012, 02:25 AM

@Wheels: Hey mate, if you're leaning towards the other heads feel free to create an amalgamation of them for one of the characters. They are all valid designs I just thought the 2nd was the most different from anything else Mass Effect. I'm a pretty big fan of the series but sadly don't have the time to play the 3rd one with so much other stuff going on. It's a real shame that you get motion sickness from playing games, but not having that terrible addiction plaguing your personal and professional life is probably a good thing.

I'll have a look into the Loomis exercises, practice is my middle name. :)

David Keen

March 10th, 2012, 07:50 AM

Here's my influence map guys. Great idea Wheels, it was great fun to look at the work of my favourite artists and rediscover the time in my life I found their work and figure out the influence they've had over my artistic life. As with Wheels' my images are arranged so that the largest images indicate the artists who have had the greatest effect on me.

Eelis Kyttänen

March 10th, 2012, 01:32 PM

Righto! I am back!

I'll be pushing the changes in the overall space of the thumbnail right now, I'll also try to improve the architecture of the tower. Architecture interests me greatly, and it's something I would love to learn more from. Would've been probably one of the possible choices of schools if not for my abysmal grades from math.

Thanks for giving me a bit of freedom with the design, otherwise I'll try to follow you up as best as I can. I'll be scribbling some sketches tomorrow.

@wheel, shame to hear you couldn't play it more! It's an interesting game in many ways. I'll check out the Loomis' book on the subject too, never hurts to have varying perspectives on such a debatable subject!

@Eb Thanks! I am hoping so too. I'm probably trying to nail some freelancer gigs as soon as possible, meaning hopefully on the fourth year, earlier if a miracle happens and my quality somehow bursts up so that I can illustrate a professional-looking portfolio. Afterwards I'll have to check if there's any nice studio-work options available somewhere. As wheels mentioned, it would really give me loads of experience.

But all in all, at the moment I would just like to become a full-time freelancer at some point in time. Can't resist the urge to be able to move wherever I wish! *wink

Anyway, I'll also try to make up the influence chart tomorrow. Will most probably contain looooads of weird finnish names from our own realists. :D Stay tuned!

Wheeljack18

March 10th, 2012, 09:51 PM

Hey guys,

@Eelis. Looking forward to seeing that influence chart and those obscure Finnish painters you mention. Don't get ahead of yourself and pile up expectations so soon. You haven't even hit first year at post secondary yet so you have a lot of time. The key is to enjoy university and get the most out of it. ( BC Girls are hot ;) )Learn as much as you can and try to direct that learning with a career in mind and you will be successful. As Bruce Lee once said "Don't focus only on the moon or else you will miss all that heavenly glory..."

If you are interested in Architecture, Loomis has some good tricks on translating blue print to 3-d as well as I picked up a good primer book called Architectural Drawing Course by Mo Zell. Another resource are used book stores. Most people nowadays draw using software such as auto cad so old school drafting is becoming a lost art. I collect old art "How To" books and there are tons of books that were published on the subject in the 70's and 80s collecting dust in old book stores. It's one of the only places where you can learn that stuff. Another resource are text books from architectural schools. You don't have to go to the school to buy the textbook. I did a couple of architectural renderings back in the day for a marketing firm translating floor plans to 3d. Super Dry stuff. Anyways, I had a buddy who works for a builder checking code and he lent me his textbook which really helped me iron out the kinks. Architectural drawing really just boils down to good perspective and in many cases, not even that. It's all about practice, which I'm sure we'd all love to see and help you out with.That's what this group is all about.

@Eb: Can't wait to see those practice drawings. If I have my way, Loomis will be bigger than Bridgman on your influence map. He's a much better teacher. So is your influence map chronological? I ask because to me, it's funny that you would mention Jim Lee after Alex Ross. I wouldn't have guessed that Marko and Feng were such big influences on your work.

Mass Effect: Not being able to play vids for a long time is actually a blessing because they are a major time sink. Also, they are designed to be addictive and in fact create elevated levels of dopamine in the brain. There are a few IP's that I can't say no to like the Metal Gear series and before RE5, Resident Evil. I try to play lots of games to stay current and up on my pop culture. As a side anecdote, back in 05 I interviewed for a local game company that made products for the gameboy. During the interview he asked me what games I was playing at the moment and I told him MGS3 which had only come out 3-4 months prior. He looked at me and said "Haven't you played anything more current?" WTF!
So I guess the moral of the story is play lots of games but don't let them steal your life.

Eelis Kyttänen

March 11th, 2012, 02:55 PM

@Wheel: yeah, I guess I am just a planner like that. I don't stress about it and often I work way too much to achieve the goal, but the sadist in me likes that! Though, all of us have our borders.

That quote from Lee is great. And indeed, I'll probably get the most out of uni if I just keep in mind what I want out of it. Results arrive tomorrow or tuesday most probably, so I am really on my toes.

Oh yes, they might be hot, but are they intelligent? :O Hopefully I'll find some like minded people, because EC seems to be rather more artsy than I thought! But I ain't really worried about it.

Thanks for the tips on the architecture, I'll definitely see to it.

Speaking of architecture, I had to let out some steam today because I haven't been able to get the tower's background finished up (in thumbnail) yet, so I scribbled up some sketches and came out with a heavy WIP that might as well be the first cityscape I'll pull off!

It's easy to refine the city itself from that with the correct highlights and stuff, so I am focusing on clouds at the moment. Will probably try to hit this style: http://andreasrocha.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=24#/d2xwbix

I can spend ages tweaking those though, so let's see!

@Games: I think that like with everything, self-discipline is the way here. Some games can be pretty darn hooking, but with right mindset you can get out of it easily. For example, I played WoW in the past but never had troubles quitting

Mm, that MSG incident sounds lame. Could it have been that he meant the actual game series (which is pretty old) and not the game?

Anyway, I'll make the influence sheet right now.

Eelis Kyttänen

March 11th, 2012, 03:54 PM

Alright, here's my influence chart! It has no particular order or composition.

http://i.imgur.com/Q7M1y.jpg

Wheeljack18

March 11th, 2012, 10:57 PM

Bob F@#$ing Ross! YES! I love Bob Ross. He was the man. I'm old enough to have watched his show on PBS and I even have one of his books! BOB Freakin Ross.... He makes it look so effortless with his happy trees.

Those other painters look interesting as well as the old school Disney work. I'm intrigued.

You'll be fine at university and as long as you keep your "eye on the ball" regarding your end goal. Things will work out. BC Girls....I married one and yes many are intelligent. But it is just like anything, some are, some are not. Vancouver is a Big place so if you don't hook up with like minded folks at EC, you'll find them some where else. You may not fit in with the Artsy Fartsy types but you can still learn a lot from them and in many cases how NOT to learn from them. Get me?

It's too early to crit on the image you posted but I think it is off to a good start. Have you looked at any of Feng Zhu's tutorials on the subject of environments? I think they would be right up your alley and give you some useful tips on workflow etc.

The MGS incident WAS totally Lame. The guy was just power tripping and if it happened again I'd have a different response but that's business for you. Some clients are great to work with and others, not so much. Just learn from the bad experiences.

Keep Posting guys!

Hey Reb where did you go?

Eelis Kyttänen

March 13th, 2012, 07:35 PM

Yeah, I would really want to learn his wet on wet technique with oils someday. The thing I can't stand with traditional painting is the excessive waiting period while the paint dries.

Yeah, you got inside expertise on the matter! *wink, I'll trust that.

Understood! Gotta give them credit for the creative process-thinking which is an important part of the image too. You can always learn the tech, but creativity is a whole different subject.

Yeah, no problem. I'll try to bring out a finished (in my eyes) version later this week.

Mm, Zhu. I am not really a big fan of his environment works. The ID stuff is great though! I haven't checked his tuts out excessively though, maybe I'll give it another shot.

Sorry for a bit of inactivity. Wrapping out the final bits of high school at the moment, so that has kept me busy. Just a week more though and then that's finito!

Wheeljack18

March 15th, 2012, 06:22 PM

Not much but a few doodles working on those characters. Your thoughts my Art Directors?

Wheeljack18

March 16th, 2012, 05:21 PM

Shaking off some rust. Here is another round of sketches.

Wheeljack18

March 17th, 2012, 02:38 PM

Hey boys, what gives? You loosing steam on me?

David Keen

March 18th, 2012, 07:03 AM

Hey guys, sorry for the lack of contact for the last little bit. How's everyone going on the Mass Effect assignment? The cupboard is looking a little bare at the moment..

@Wheels: Sketches are looking good mate. I'm liking the look of the character you're developing, four arms are always better than two! I'm not quite sure how he'd be able to use each forearm independently though, in the next phase could you draft the arm structure up in closer detail and show the anatomy behind it? His facial structure is cool but I think you could push the mouth and jaw a little bit to make him look a little more intelligent. As it stands it looks like his mouth could only operate like a fishes, which communicates gold fish memory to me more than anything else. I think you could probably push the filtering of toxic atmosphere a little more overtly as well, that could be an interesting task to combine with working on the mouth. You've done a good job so far to evoke the feel of the Mass Effect universe in his armour design, it fits in well. I quite like the spacing of his toes on without boots on though and would love to see you incorporate some of that unique physiology into the boots a little more. Really solid so far though mate, just keeping building it up!

I'm gonna have a play around with this topic now for a bit of relaxation time so I'll throw something up later.

Eelis Kyttänen

March 18th, 2012, 08:02 AM

Sorry, I am still fixing the chaos that arrives alongside with the final exams. :( I'll try to sketch something when the time permits, but officially I'll be completely free (apart from a job) in two weeks.

David Keen

March 18th, 2012, 08:27 AM

Here's some really quick sketches just for fun before bed. I'll knock up another round of them tomorrow with a little more thought and research.

@Eelis: Good luck with your exams mate!

Wheeljack18

March 19th, 2012, 05:33 PM

Back to the drawing board! I have lost steam on this baby and to be frank I've been half assing my effort. Partly because I've been distracted with client work and personal stuff. Anyways, I've got a page of quick head sketches similar to what Eb just put up. Take a look and narrow down what you want to see and I'll do another round of iterations based off of that feedback. I imagine that in 2, 9, 8, 10 the creatures evolved a filter of some sort directly on the head like gills, or moss or hair or like what a whale has for a mouth. Otherwise, I envision that the filter system would be some type of garment a la Quarrian or an implant type filter. If these creatures employ physical enhancement via genetic or cybernetic technology then my idea is that for the arm, the aliens use a ball joint mechanism at the elbow with a cloned and reduced arm pairing. This in effect doubles efficiency and manual dexterity when performing electronic maintenance etc. Also he can hold up to 4 guns or 2 rifles at a time! How awesome is that?

I also did some old school pen sketches of guns and potential guns. Just trying to get back to basics and generate some ideas. Most of the guns are inspired by WW2 designs. Pick out some elements and I will continue to develop these too as I need more things like weapons design in my portfolio.

Eelis Kyttänen

March 20th, 2012, 02:53 PM

Guys! I'll just leave this here quickly, I AM GOING TO VANCOUVER! Will be back later.

Wheeljack18

March 20th, 2012, 03:08 PM

Congrats Eelis! When do you plan on making the move?

Eelis Kyttänen

March 20th, 2012, 04:58 PM

Thanks man. Most probably around the middle of August. :)

Do you know yet if you'll be moving there too?

Thanks Eb, I can kinda be more loose with these exams now though so I can hopefully boost a few sketches of that alien species tomorrow.

David Keen

March 21st, 2012, 11:02 PM

@Wheels: This batch is a huge step up from the last round, you've got some pretty exciting, varied designs here. I'd like to see you push 8, 9, 11, 13 & 15. I'd like to see you solve the problem of atmosphere filtration with a natural system if possible, I think that it presents an tricky design issue which will give you some mental exercise. I really like the idea for the arm, I'm looking forward to see a more anatomical study explaining how the ball joint mechanism will fit with the muscles and tendons of the two arms. More guns is always better!!

Speaking of guns your sketches for those are looking good. My favourites are 10, 14, 8, 4 & 16. The WWII influence is great and gives your designs a solid place to start from but I think they could use a quick round of Mass Effectin to fit in with the rest of the universe a little more, unless you wanted to make a series of guns that are specific to our new alien race? If you did decide to go down that path have a go at inventing a single weapon that is really unique and will take advantage of all the limbs that the Sethlans have. It may result in nothing interesting but you could come across a really fun, crazy design.

Keep it up buddy :)

@Eelis: Congratulations mate! That is fantastic, I'm very happy for you :D

Wheeljack18

March 22nd, 2012, 11:34 AM

Hey Eelis, No word yet on weather or not I'll be living in Van in August but I will be in the Area for about 2 weeks in the middle of August for a family wedding so maybe we can hook up during that time and I can show you around a bit.

Eb: Thanks man, Like I said, the previous stuff was not my best effort. I'll work up some more comps for you soon mr AD! Regarding the guns, You like all the guns that look like ME Guns! I'll work on those too. I like #5 which is a Delistle Carbine, a lesser known but super cool silenced .45 from ww2. I want to see if I cannot incorporate some design elements from that as well.

Lets see some more work from you boys here. This thread is starting to look like the wheeljack show.

Wheeljack18

March 23rd, 2012, 04:48 PM

Here's another round of head sketches. I took the 5 that Eb liked and did 5 more variations on that head. Take a look and narrow it down for me boys. Also, i have a sketch page explaining my idea for how the arm works. Fire me off some ideas about the attachment points to give them more character. It might not be necessary if the character is wearing a suit or clothing. But, it always pays to figure these things out.

Your thoughts?

For the faces, I am thinking that his species evolved some kind of filter over the orifices that lead to the lungs. Maybe some gills, a mesh filter, some kind of membrane or sponge. Hair in our noses is meant as a filter so I took it a little further with some ideas.

David Keen

March 25th, 2012, 05:08 AM

Hey mate, loving the progress you're making on this assignment. So far my favourites of this batch are: 1D, 2E, 3A, 4D & 5A - D. I think that #5 is your strongest overall set but there are some good ones in each. Did you have any favourites?

As far as the anatomy of the arm goes I like what you've done so far but would be interested in seeing a tiny shift in another direction. I found your original description of a primary arm which I would imagine having similar anatomy to ours and then a secondary arm that was cloned and attached a pretty cool concept. As it is it looks like the secondary arm would always have to been on the opposite axis to the primary arm, could you explore a way for the arms to move completely independent of each other? Great stuff dude!

I've started doing some concepts for my upcoming series of paintings, so if you guys could keep an eye on my sketchbook and give me some feedback that would be fantastic!

Wheeljack18

March 25th, 2012, 03:32 PM

He EB thanks for the feedback but as an AD you need to give me more regarding the heads. I want you to narrow it down to one head and give me a couple of suggestions about where you want me to go with it etc. Otherwise I could spend forever just noodling over the heads and not making any meaningful progress. You are the Art Director on the ME franchise, what do you want to see with this guy?

My favorites are 1E, 2B, 3C,3D,4A-E and 5C. At least those are the ones that are piquing my interest the most. The 4 lineup has some nice textures going on that are interesting.

So for the arm you want more organic as opposed to mechanic? I think the inherent problem is that the division is at the elbow. Our forearms only rotate and pivot so much in real life where as at least with a mechanical device, this guy can now rotate both the forearm and the elbow 360 degrees for both arms. As a race of technical minded people, I think that would be a beneficial upgrade. Imagine how much more one could accomplish with their hands?I don't want to go with two arms a side as that would bring him into a realm that has already been done. The joint can be skinned over and/or miniaturized. Your thoughts?

Also, what do you think of the two thumbs per hand concept. I think it goes well with the 360 rotation because he could grasp and manipulate pretty much anything from any angle.

Why don't you toss up your concept ere for us to crit. I think it fits into our mandate as a study group and again, I'm getting a little lonely here by being the only poster in a while. :(

Eelis Kyttänen

March 26th, 2012, 06:15 PM

Righto, sorry again for the delays! Let's see.

You can really notice my inexperience with faces here, because none of them has an actual face! I might continue 1. or 7. These were just a real quick weird idea throwoffs! The others don't really fit ME in any way.

Good job wheel! Glad you are keeping this active even though we haven't been able to contribute very much. :)

@eb Thanks! Also, post those concepts up! Would love to see 'em.

@wheel: Alright, that would be great indeed. Let's keep it in mind. :)

Offtopic: I'll be getting some oils later this week (have only done acrylics before) I am planning to buy an oil sketchbook instead of canvasses and such, and do a large plein air series of my hometown + surroundings before I leave in August. I'll try to remember to post some of 'em here. :)

Wheeljack18

March 27th, 2012, 12:02 AM

Good to see you posting here Eelis! I didn't know there was such a thing as an oil sketchbook. What do you use as a dryer and how long will it take? Me, I usually use Turpenoid as a thinner and dryer and my work is usually dry in 24-48 hours if not sooner. But for a sketchbook, how do you close the pages when it is wet?! Once you go to oils you will never want to use acrylics again but, I have seen some interesting mixed media pieces that use acrylic as an under painting. Also, you should try picking up gouache. You can do pretty much everything in gouache that you can do in either oils and Acrylic and it dries fast. Really good for plein air work.

For your concept sketches. Good first attempt. Perhaps you might find it useful to instead Not focus on the faces and just focus on the silhouette of the creature. Check out Feng Zhu's site. he has an excellent demo on the subject there that you should find useful. Read through EB's brief on the alien race and just scribble out shapes. Let your imagination roll and have some fun with it. Post those up and we'll give you some more direction from there. Sound good?

David Keen

March 27th, 2012, 08:18 AM

Here are a couple of pieces I've been working on, you'll probably recognise one Wheels ;). I'm uploading these images from another computer and can now see that the brightness and colour balance on my main rig must be way off as the dragon appears really muddy and dark. I'll have to take a look at that issue tomorrow. Do you guys know any relatively easy ways to calibrate monitors?

@Wheels: Hey buddy, let's lock down the direction of the Mass Effect assignment so you can proceed. I think you should push on with 5C, that one is the most striking of the batch for me. As far as the joint goes if your going down the mechanical path then I think you should reveal that to the viewer. I'd also think about adding a few other mechanical augmentations to tie the theme more cohesively across the character. I know that you mentioned a mechanical solution for the filtering apparatus a while ago but I wanted you to try and tackle that organically as it seemed a difficult problem to solve. I agree that two thumbs works well with the current direction you're heading and will continue to create unique features for this creatures race. I'll try and be more decisive in the future to avoid the never ending sketch process. I'd now like you to put together a full sketch of the figure combining all the elements you've been working on and we'll go from there.

@Eelis: Good to see your sketches on this one mate. I agree with Wheels that starting off with some silhouettes is the way to go. Once you've got a silhouette going I've found it's generally a lot easier to fill in the rest of the features and you may be surprised by the random stuff that will appear.

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=1448285&stc=1&d=1332665095

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=1449706&stc=1&d=1332848150

Wheeljack18

March 27th, 2012, 12:59 PM

I knew that you'd go for 5C! I just knew it! Don't you think it will make him look more like a villan? He's pretty scary... I'll try to work up some more comps soon. lol :)

Re: Monitors. Just google it and I believe there is a tutorial on this website on the subject. Just search it out and you should find it. It could also be the other computer monitor that is off. I personally hate looking at my work on other pcs because the variance is so wide it's discouraging. Laptops are the worst.

What do you want regarding a crit on these pieces. Are they studies? What is your end goal with these? Have you looked at the book " The skillful Huntsman"? Its a process/ concept design book that you might find inspiring on this subject.

Wheeljack18

March 28th, 2012, 06:16 PM

Ok EB,

Here is a couple more head sketches based on 5C. Does he look like a Sethlan to you? Any ideas on Color or the Hair? What direction do you want me to go Mr. AD?

Wheeljack18

March 29th, 2012, 12:57 PM

Hey Boys, Check this out. Wizards of the coast is holding an Art Test for their newest iteration of D&D. I think we should all give it a shot and make it a priority here on Deadelus. http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Feature.aspx?x=dnd/feature/arttest
Your thoughts?

Wheeljack18

March 29th, 2012, 01:54 PM

So here is another round of the Sethlan. This time we see his body. I'm thinking he is a worker/fighter. He carries around tools and wires so he can bypass doors or cut through bulkheads. Kind of like a combat Engineer skill set. Your thoughts, suggestions? how can I push it further and make him more interesting?

Eelis Kyttänen

March 29th, 2012, 02:11 PM

Höp! Darn, I had missed the brief! I'll work out some silhouettes tomorrow if I just can.

I'm probably fetching an oil primed pad so I can rip the pages out. If I get that sketchbook thingie you can separate the pages by some clips, or so I heard. :) I'll do the paintings real small and keep a white border around then so it is easier to handle. Not too small, but so that I can focus on the overall image instead of composition.

Good notes on mixed media & gouache. I'll definitely keep on trying new mediums, but for now I want to prepare myself for some extensive mountain plein airs when I get to Vancouver.

I might be a little slow with digital stuff because of the oil painting, but I am still rolling, slowly but surely!. :)

I am also hoping to be able to write some views on your sketches tomorrow (thanks for posting your concepts, eb!), still running little busy here. :)

@wheel: Darn, that stuff from artorder seems great! However, I am rather sure that I can't attend it full time for even just for the crits here. :/

I would like to propose however, that the next subject after this character one would be that test 2 with those exact guidelines, if it is okay for ya. :)

David Keen

March 30th, 2012, 07:27 AM

The D&D submission looks like a great exercise! I agree that we should all give that a go and try to get some pretty solid pieces that will at least look good in a portfolio application to Wizards. - Priority Updated! is there a submission deadline anywhere on that post? I didn't spot it but I may just be blind..

@Wheels: Your Sethlan piece is looking great Mike. The filtration system you've got on the upper part of his face looks pretty convincing to me, the only thing I worry about is whether he will be emotive enough for a race in a game like Mass Effect. Your thoughts on this? The full figure image is also looking good my only notes at this point are that the ripped pants might be a bit tricky in space and that while his split arms look cool the forearms look a little scrawny... How do they look slightly bulked up? I love all the gear you've put on him, definitely continue down that road and build on that idea, using the split arms to hold a rifle also looks very cool!

Re: my previous post, they are just studies at this point. I'll post some more meaningful stuff soon.

P.S. you've got me excited to draw orcs!

Wheeljack18

March 30th, 2012, 11:42 AM

That's what I was hoping you guys would say. Time to switch gears. I'm going to do a Gnoll cook! I didn't see a deadline posted either but I'll keep looking. I'm sure we could ask. eelis, you do what ever you want for the D and D thing. I'm going to tackle them all :)

I do want to polish off the Sethlan too, there just is not enough time in a day!
Regarding his face, I dunno, my art director wanted it so I guess his lack of expression is ok for the project....;) Besides, Snake Eyes doesn't have a face and can't talk and he is Mega cool. This guy can talk and his face can move,he just doesn't have any open orifices on his face.

The ripped pants are purely for show. I imagine him as a dirty, gruff, grease monkey, roughneck type of character. Usually knee deep in hydraulic fluid and pistons n stuff. I was going for a coveralls, feel to his outfit. About his arms... I'm not too worried about it, I bulked up his shoulders to offset the weight of the extra arms. Think about it and how anatomy works, I don't think he would be able to lift huge arms without some form of augmentation.

Give me some more thoughts on how I could trick out his outfit. More tools?, a Voltmeter type thingy, Bags for Demolitions?

Lets see those posts and Orcs! Although, just to be a pain, why not tackle a less popular monster race like a quickling or an owlbear. If you like The undead, try tackling a Wight or a Ghast. Everyone is going to draw an orc or a troll. I've always wanted to draw a displacer beast!

Eelis Kyttänen

March 30th, 2012, 12:14 PM

Alright. :)

I just painted with oils for the first time today. Dirty business, ain't something I'm going to do everyday. :D Will have to continue tomorrow though, since I couldn't really get anything done before I freezed to death.

The biggest prob is certainly mixing the colours atm.

Wheeljack18

March 30th, 2012, 04:33 PM

You'll find that painting with oils is not as casual as you might think. I find set up and clean up a pain in the butt. Plus, combine that with drying times and the expense of quality paint etc. It can be a lot of fun but I prefer gouache. It's easy to clean and set up, the paint can dry out on your palette and just add water and bam, you are good to go. It dries fast, you don't have to stretch or prime canvas etc etc. This is just my personal preference based on my experience. I'm looking forward to seeing your studies here.

What is your grief with mixing colors? have you tried using any thinners for glazing applications yet? Some act as a drying agent and can speed things up quite a bit.

Wheeljack18

March 30th, 2012, 06:23 PM

Hey boys, here's another one for you on the topic of scheister business practices in the vfx industry. http://vfxsoldier.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/the-paying-to-work-for-free-vfx-business-model/

I think this is a very interesting read, especially the discussion in the comments section. This is the type of BS you need to be prepared for when you get out of school and into the business. I can't tell you how many times I've been talked up by jack ass ' entrepreneurs" trying to sell me on their latest and greatest work now, pay you later scheme. or better yet, if it sells, you'll get an unspecified percentage. My advice, stay away from these deals and the two bit business men you operate them. It's a sticky wicket for certain.

Eelis Kyttänen

March 31st, 2012, 03:48 AM

Indeed wheel, I am starting to wonder if I should've gone with gouache or just kept on with acrylics instead.

Turpentine & it's potential combustion if not handled right scares the hell out of me!

I gotta ponder it.

About mixing, it's just that I haven't done enough work with traditional paints to be able to efficently mix the right colours yet. But that'll come with time.

Thanks for the link wheel. It is goos to learn about the potential scamming methods in advance. :)

That notion about worker's union was an interesting one. I wonder if organazing under the same banner could help to cue some of the exploits and etc.

Wheeljack18

March 31st, 2012, 12:45 PM

Try a product called turpenoid. Its supposed to be 100% environmentally friendly. i used to use it as a thinner and a cleaner. It smells better and I never had any problems. There are all kinds of oils out there and many many products so don't give up just yet. Frank Frazetta used the wrong kind of turpentine and it just about killed him and ended his career. It messed his thyroid!

You just have a lot to learn. I am biased about gouache but it is a proven medium for commercial work for a long time. I suggest you keep trying things and once you get to EC, you will be exposed to quite a lot. There are oil sticks! Who knew? It's all a process of trial and error and eventually you will find a medium that speaks to you.

About mixing, keep it simple and intuitive. That's how I do it. Use quality pigment to get the best results and keep your palette simple. Try doing monochromatic studies at first just to get the hang of the medium before you waste all that expensive paint. mental note. Yellow Ochre is Expensive!

I'm glad you read the article and found it useful. I don't think a union is the right way to go personally but I do think Artists need way more respect, especially in the entertainment field. I finished Mass Effect 2 and in the credits they list 4 concept artists. 4! there were probably 4-500 people involved in making the game yet they depend on4 main guys to develop the look and feel of the game. Games are an entirely visual experience and these guys are the foundation of that experience. They also have a hand in the marketing material etc. To me that's an important job. Now Mass Effect may not be the best example but the point is that artists play a huge role in the success of a product. Yet, many of the people who hire artists treat us like shit and pay us pennies on the dollar. That and once you mention rights and usages, a lot of these guys back off and go for a student who doesn't know any better. It sucks because they put you in a position where they won't pay you until you prove you are worth it but you can't get much work until you prove that you are worth it. So in many ways it is already a union with a seniority system pre built in. A lot of this applies to freelancers mind you. A studio job is the way to go if you want a steady gig with good pay etc. But studio isn't super rosey either. You miss out on all those royalties and swag.

I'm starting to rant. I'd better shut er down.

Let's see some more work fellas!

Eelis Kyttänen

March 31st, 2012, 06:09 PM

Bah! I did it again! Forgot that I shouldn't write long posts inside the browser because it is so easy to accidentally get rid of it and that's what happened again. :( Maybe this time I'll remember.

I'll be short and blunt, it's getting late!

Thanks for the input wheel. My concerns with the turpentine regard it's flammability, I just get nervous around that stuff even though I am taking all the required safety measure to store it from rags to bottles.

Gotta look into the turpenoid, seems like it is good stuff for cleaning brushes. Have to find a thinner too!

Indeed, should do some grayscale studies to get a hang of it. Have to wait for a bit for the temperatures to rise though! :D Don't have any nice gloves right now that I could afford to get soaked in paint.

Naw, you ain't ranting at all! This is very interesting stuff because market & marketing and so on is more than half of the job. It is especially nice to hear inside opinions from professionals working on the field! And to think some students graduate and enter that world with little if any prior knowledge of what they are up against..

I really owe to you and a few other artists hanging around the web, thanks!

Anyway, let's talk about painting for a second! For the past few weeks I've tried painting regularly, and some of that stuff have made into this thread too in the form of WIPs, but as observed I haven't actually finished anything. All of them (expect that tower and mountains one you paintovered, that's definitely still on the table!) have been fundamentally flawed to point where I should've just gone back to the base sketch again.

But now I've finally cleared the block somewhat and proceeded on with a guidance of this fancy graph!

http://www.binomynd.com/Temp/improvement2.jpg

So, I managed to do a quick 30 min-speedpainting

http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/091/a/3/horizon_by_mrorigano-d4ulz0f.jpg

And sketch a handful of handy thumbnails for a forest/mountain stream piece I've been planning for a long time:

http://i.imgur.com/iv3NC.jpg?1

I am also dribbling on with the character silhouettes, I am dragging on with it a bit, but it is keeping me so interested that I'll definitely push it through!

And bah, I haven't yet came around to give some views on the pieces you have posted have I? I'll get onto it tomorrow!

Less star trek TNG and more working. ;)

Oh, one last thing. Wheel, I've tried to track down the best newspaper (aka no yellow media) newspaper for BC/vancouver region, but no avail yet. Do you know which is the most serious one? Thanks!

David Keen

April 1st, 2012, 04:25 AM

Hey lads here is a bit of an update on the dragon sketch from the other day. Please rip it apart as I'd like this to be portfolio worthy and at the moment it's not quite getting there.. I always get a little lost doing these abstract backgrounds for character pieces and would appreciate any ideas for a solution to that problem. I am also aware that there are some pretty weird inconsistencies in the cast shadows and I'll need to sort that out as well.

Sorry for the brief reply guys, I'm just about to rush out.

@Wheels: Those darn art directors are such tricky bastards! :) I trust you that he'd be able to emote, the brow does express and awful lot. I think you should go all out on the outfit, give him a pile of extra gear and attach it everywhere. Maybe he could carry some of the raw materials and spare parts from different machines as well?

For some reason I'd thought that orcs were the only choice for that category but after re-reading I see its open. I'll try and pick something a little more unique, a wight might be pretty fun! Let's see your D&D roots come through!

@Eelis: When I oil paint I've been using an odourless solvent for brush cleaning and liquol as the thinning medium. Liquol will thin down your paints, help with colour mixing and also speeds up the drying process. Oils are definitely messy and trickier than painting digitally but with a few more sessions you'll start to develop you're own ways of working and figure out what suits you.

The landscape speedpaint is looking nice, I love the atmospheric fog obscuring the details of the building. Some nice thumbnails as well. Looking forward to seeing more character work as you get through it.

Wheeljack18

April 1st, 2012, 11:24 PM

Hey boys,

Lots of crit time and discussion to be posted today.

First off Eelis:

What kind of Newspaper are you looking for? Do you need it for a specific purpose?

Turpenoid is a thinner too, not just a cleaner. Like I said, I use it for everything and it hasn't let me down yet. Also, it is reusable. I clean my brushes in it, let the sediment settle and the remaining product will separate on top while the dirty oil gunge will settle on the bottom. Turpentine it for Dinosaurs!

What do you mean by your painting being fundamentally flawed? Can you be more specific?

Thumbnails look good, there is not much to crit on them at this early stage.

One thing is it seems like you are bouncing around with all these ideas and projects. I recommend you pick one and finish it and them move on to the next. Otherwise you just end up with a lot of unfinished pieces and you will eventually run out of steam. Just my 2 cents though.

The speed painting looks good. The color balance looks a little flat though. You could try adjusting it to make the image pop more.
The building looks like it is leaning over to the right. The vertical perspective looks ok in general but what I think the problem is that some of the structures have thick bases and thin pillars and the bases taper to the right up the structure. This gives the impression of a diagonal and leads your eye that way. My first impression was that the towers were leaning, especially for the one in the far background. Additionally, the swooping motion of the flying buttress type structures also lead the eye in that manner. Something to think about.

One quick trick that you should try to help with assessing the value relationships in your images in photoshop is to create a layer above your image, fill it with 100% black and then set the layer to overlay. This will give you a nice grey scale view of your piece and makes a nice resource for judging value.

The composition is heavily weighted on the right side. Flip the canvas horizontally and you will see what I mean. Perhaps you could put another smaller structure on the left or put more into the environment to help balance the composition. When I flip the canvas horizontally, nothing stands out as a problem. I think that if you balance the composition a bit more you are good to go.

Lastly, the trees in the foreground. Right now they are 2 triangular blobs of green that are not doing much besides framing the bottom portion of the image. Break up the shapes and ref real hill sides. Make their design point to or compliment the castle in the corner. I did a paint over demonstrating the design shapes of the trees in red, I then drew some green arrows to indicate where there are some negative spaces which could indicate and point the viewers eye. And finally, I drew a blue line to demonstrate how the viewers eye should flow through the piece. Looking back, the paint over image might not be the clearest demonstration of what I am talking about but if you have any questions let me know. One thing to look at is check out your Loomis. In the book Creative Illustration, there is an excellent lecture on Design and composition in the first chapter. Check it out.

Anyways, these are my opinions and observations on your piece. I hope they are useful and I apologize for the point form answers but its been a long week.

Eb, your crit is up next, I'll do that in a follow up post, either tomorrow or the next day.

In the meantime, I could use some feedback on the Keri Russell Pinup Study I just wrapped up. Take a look and tell me what you think.

Cheers!

David Keen

April 2nd, 2012, 09:15 AM

I've just got some thumbs for one of the upcoming paintings to post today. After reading this (http://muddycolors.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/abstract-world.html) post from Donato on Muddy Colours I felt assured in pursuing the very early thumbnail stage as more of an exercise in shape exploration and play. It was great fun to just go crazy with values and only vaguely consider the final painting at this stage in the process. I'll most likely post another couple of pages like this before picking a direction to pursue.

@Wheels: You've done very well on this your Keri Russell piece, the rendering of the figure is really top notch and it's a level up in your realism skills. I only have a couple of minor crits for the image. One is that the shadows on her dress are tonally quite close. The very dark areas of shadow and the regular shadows are a little too similar in value which makes the form a little confusing. The main area this occurs is in the folds draping from the knot under her chest. The highlight on the metal plate of the back cushion of the chair could also be dropped back a little bit as it looks slightly out of place in that big cast shadow. The only other thing I've noticed is that her left calf looks a little small compared to the reference and the curve could be made slightly more pronounced. Those are all pretty minor points though mate and I most likely wouldn't have seen them without checking against the reference. You've done extremely well with this piece, it's a credit to your ability to stick with an image and polish it to a very high standard.

Eelis Kyttänen

April 2nd, 2012, 01:56 PM

Hey boys,

Lots of crit time and discussion to be posted today.

First off Eelis:

What kind of Newspaper are you looking for? Do you need it for a specific purpose?

Mm, I am not sure how Canada's newspaper system works. Are there any that cover the whole country, or is it better to look into some that insight into the province? Either way, something "serious", politically neutral, if you just know one. :) Would like to know one just to get hang of Canada's current political/domestical/etc situation.

Turpenoid is a thinner too, not just a cleaner. Like I said, I use it for everything and it hasn't let me down yet. Also, it is reusable. I clean my brushes in it, let the sediment settle and the remaining product will separate on top while the dirty oil gunge will settle on the bottom. Turpentine it for Dinosaurs!

Yeah, turpenoid seems to be great, and it's non-flammable! I'll fetch some.

What do you mean by your painting being fundamentally flawed? Can you be more specific?

Thumbnails look good, there is not much to crit on them at this early stage.

I mean, most of those WIPs I've posted here for example. I've progressed with my standards and learnt to see new mistakes in my works. Especially in composition & colours. Even though I know those mistakes are there I am not yet capable of fixing them on the fly, so rather than trying to fix the existing work for too long I jump to another design (I've written a neat list of subjects to pick from!) and focus on fixing that mistake.

Do you think this kind of a way could help fixing the errors?

I could've just sticked with certain subject though and just backtracked.

I've got some colour stuff added to mid-left, I'll try to post it here a bit later.

One thing is it seems like you are bouncing around with all these ideas and projects. I recommend you pick one and finish it and them move on to the next. Otherwise you just end up with a lot of unfinished pieces and you will eventually run out of steam. Just my 2 cents though.

Ops, I kinda covered this in the last post. I am finding that I get more frustrated if I have to go back to start with a subject because of problems not fixable in the later stages. I think this kind of attitude isn't very good though, I'll look it through.

The speed painting looks good. The color balance looks a little flat though. You could try adjusting it to make the image pop more.
The building looks like it is leaning over to the right. The vertical perspective looks ok in general but what I think the problem is that some of the structures have thick bases and thin pillars and the bases taper to the right up the structure. This gives the impression of a diagonal and leads your eye that way. My first impression was that the towers were leaning, especially for the one in the far background. Additionally, the swooping motion of the flying buttress type structures also lead the eye in that manner. Something to think about.

One quick trick that you should try to help with assessing the value relationships in your images in photoshop is to create a layer above your image, fill it with 100% black and then set the layer to overlay. This will give you a nice grey scale view of your piece and makes a nice resource for judging value.

The composition is heavily weighted on the right side. Flip the canvas horizontally and you will see what I mean. Perhaps you could put another smaller structure on the left or put more into the environment to help balance the composition. When I flip the canvas horizontally, nothing stands out as a problem. I think that if you balance the composition a bit more you are good to go.

Lastly, the trees in the foreground. Right now they are 2 triangular blobs of green that are not doing much besides framing the bottom portion of the image. Break up the shapes and ref real hill sides. Make their design point to or compliment the castle in the corner. I did a paint over demonstrating the design shapes of the trees in red, I then drew some green arrows to indicate where there are some negative spaces which could indicate and point the viewers eye. And finally, I drew a blue line to demonstrate how the viewers eye should flow through the piece. Looking back, the paint over image might not be the clearest demonstration of what I am talking about but if you have any questions let me know. One thing to look at is check out your Loomis. In the book Creative Illustration, there is an excellent lecture on Design and composition in the first chapter. Check it out.

Anyways, these are my opinions and observations on your piece. I hope they are useful and I apologize for the point form answers but its been a long week.

Thanks, that was really insightful!

I also got some crits for the building from elsewhere, there seems to be a prob with perspective, because the frontside ain't following the two-point perspective rule. Gotta look into that.

Oops! You are right, pretty much weighted to the right side. I'll see to it.

Indeed, I still seem to have huge problems with flatness. I think most of that prob comes indeed from the problems with colour. I really, really have to look into creating depth more. Gotta dwell into that composition book again.

AND get a book about landscapes. I'll also look into that Loomis' book when the paycheck arrives. :)

The paintover was informative and backed up your points well, no problem. Thanks for taking time to do the crit, I find the bulletpoint-style easiest style of critique to fathom

About the trees, that's another subject I am looking into right now. How to paint loads of trees. Right now I seem to have this "mass" problem..here's another:

http://mrorigano.deviantart.com/art/Reference-Gorge-286940636?q=gallery%3Amrorigano%2F24499300&qo=1

I'll have to look into more professional work to figure it out.

Will try to figure out a way to break the negative space up, and make it more interesting. Right now it really is just a cornering, valuemass. :D

Man, that study is real good wheel! Your style for these is pretty neat, in my eyes some form of light cell-shading.

The only thing that popped to my mind about potential problems is that the head looks a bit too big, but I could just be seeing things.

@Eb, I found these points by jeff really useful when I was learning how to paint effective thumbnails:

"Use 3-4 distinct values to define the large shapes (not counting the sky) - right now most have only 2 values - light and dark
Be decisive about the shapes
Set the horizon firmly...wherever it is
Define the perspective and composition clearly - it should be apparent where the eye travels in the thumbnail

Those are some of the basic things the thumbnail should do. It should be clear what is a person vs. a rock for example. 6, 9 and 10 are the most successful, in part because they follow the above best.

So, hit them one more time and make them clear...not detailed but very clear on the composition."

About the thumbs: The maint point is on a character, right? In that case, I found the rightmost top and rightmost medium to be most effective. They have the best value-range at the moment. :) Let's see some more!

Eelis Kyttänen

April 3rd, 2012, 04:22 PM

Alright, here's the current version of the stream.

It is missing a dog from the bottom right corner, it'll have a light bulb or something to draw attention. I'll also emphasis another point of interest around the middle middle-right.

Will also have to emphasize a bit more the distinction between light and dark areas.

Wheeljack18

April 4th, 2012, 02:01 PM

Eelis:

Newspapers: There is a national new paper called the "Globe and Mail". There is also a national newspaper group which publishes the local "Sun". i.e. the Vancouver Sun, Calgary Sun etc. It's generally a more blue collar read with a big sports section and a daily Pinup "Sunshine Girl" for each market. I think Vancouver has a couple of newspapers and I've read " The Province" which is similar to our Calgary Herald which in my opinion is a decent newspaper. No newspaper is politically neutral even though they may claim they are so you are SOL there. Besides that there are a lot of various publications etc. There are 3 major broadcasters for television news and that's the CBC ( Government) CTV and Global. Google those and they have all the nightly broadcasts on their regional websites for you to take a look. There are also various French stations but they operate primarily in Quebec and New Brunswick. Living in BC you are more likely to come across a Punjabi or Cantonese TV station before a French one. Really the best thing is to talk to a lot of locals. Let me know if you have any specific questions and I'll try to help you out.

Regarding your process. The best word of advice I can give you is " if it is worth painting, it is worth planning". Slow down and work out one piece at a time. Learn something from each one and focus on a technique or goal until you have it down pat and then move on to the next goal. Slow and steady. Really, you must read Loomis. You used to be able to download his books online for free and with a little bit of digging around, I'm sure that you'll find them.

Your piece was not " Crazy" flat. just a little flat which can easily be adjusted in Photoshop. It does all come down to taste. Look at the work of John Constable. He was an amazing English landscape painter and his work wasn't always the most vibrant. He's best known for painting clouds. Just keep painting and studying, You will figure out what works best for you.
For Painting tree masses, just go ref your man Bob Ross. He was an expert at suggesting organic forms and mass.
Was that your deviantart account image? it looks fine for a study. Have you tried putting some serious hours into a painting/ study? I'm talking 20 -60 hours? It might be something to consider, especially if you feel like you are hitting a wall with these studies.

Score: Open source books on Drawing http://www.drawingbooks.org/

The new piece looks good. I want to see you push it further from being a study to being a finished painting.

Eb:

Ok Man, here goes with my crit.

First the Dragon piece. If you want this to be a portfolio image, you need to start over, go back to scratch and re think the design and composition. Right now you are exploring and searching for the image in this piece while you go which is the wrong way to go about it. You should work out all the kinks in your design before you go into the painting. Doing it your way can be done but you waste a lot of time and it tends to look stiff and overworked. Go back to the basics and ask the 5 W's for this illustration? What is the story here? What are you trying to say? Work out the composition, anatomy and color scheme prior to going into a final painting. Read through Loomis's creative illustration, he outlines best practice better than I ever could. Take a look at this you tube video of Mike Nash's process http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ_kUk9IjZg&list=UUPhQQWE3DECf0bcjaEcGdkA&index=6&feature=plcp painting Smaug the magnificent. Now this isn't best practice and technically it is an elaborate sketch. What I want you to pay attention to is how he works out the value and forms( for the most part) monochromatically first. Then he applies color as an overlay. This is similar to using the Under painting technique common in Oils. Once you work out the values of the image then you can add color starting with the local color for the objects and then the light sources and effects. This is a classical approach to painting and many pros still use it such as Alex Ross and it was why Frank Frazetta was able to bang out so many works so quickly. It allows you to apply color confidently yet methodically. Painting wet on wet ( direct application) is not for everybody and takes a while to master. Remember that you are still a student and you can't expect to just sit down and knock out a portfolio piece. It's placing unfair expectations on yourself and setting yourself up for a disappointing outcome. Start approaching your work like you would for any client. This means Thumbs, roughs comps, tight comps, color comps and then finals. Only after you've done that process a lot, will you then be able to pick up speed and confidence in order to bang out high quality images fast. We've got to learn to walk before we run.;) I find it's very misleading to see the work of other artists because they rarely let you in on their process and share their research and references. I think it gives us a false impression and puts expectations on ourselves that we should be able to bang out high quality work, from our head, at will. In reality, we really do have to put a lot of time and effort into what we do. There is also an artist Ego thing going around where there is this pressure to be able to draw everything from your imagination and do it fast and perfect on the first try. On a side note, I think this ego and false representation is part of the problem regarding why our work is so undervalued. If everyone out there is claiming that they can bang out high end work quickly and with little effort because they are so good. It brings down value of the work as a whole. It makes art buyers think that it is easy and cheap. We need to change that impression. That and even the guy who makes you sandwich is called an "artist'. Sorry, I went a little off topic there.

Regarding your thumbnails, I looked at the examples in the Donato article and you'll notice that his are much more detailed. There is not much that I can do to crit these as there is not enough information in them for me to interpret from an illustration perspective. I suggest that you do another round but using line instead of value because that is what I would do. If this process works for your creative mind then keep it up. In the end, it's all about the final product and nobody cares how you got there.

I know this isn't the most positive crit Eb but you said rip into me! Don't hate me.

Thanks for the Crit Fellas. It's always good to get an extra couple of sets of eyes to look at your work and I appreciate it. I'm undecided if I should go back into it or just leave it. I hate noodling on something for ages but if it is worth doing, it is worth doing right... At least you didn't have a problem with the hair. That sucked and took up most of my time! It's funny but the more I try to get "Painterly" with my work, the more realistic it looks. I should just accept it but I'm always trying to loosen up and focus on economy of mark making. Next time....

Eelis Kyttänen

April 4th, 2012, 02:52 PM

Thanks wheel! That coverage of Canada's news agencies was very welcome. :) So the "sun" paper ain't anything like England's Sun?

Yeah, I'll be giving a peek at Loomis' stuff now. Thanks for those pages. :) Currently going through Jack Hamm's Landscapes & Seascapes.

That DA study was indeed mine. Regarding the hours put into this, I already use around 3-4 hours per day. I hardly have time for more now because of a job and few others things to wrap up.

I kinda had a wall indeed a bit earlier, but I think I made over it, easier to lay things down now, perceive and such. Just common frustration, but nothing unpossible overcome. :)

I am trying not to burn myself out though. Sometimes smarter is better than harder. Have to especially avoid working too long with wrong ways. Should do more observation studies to avoid that. :)

The Stream painting is indeed in mid-WIP stage. So much to do! Let's see how it goes.

EDIT: I've recognized that I have started to write in here with kinda weird style with no complete paragraphs and such. I apologize for this type of behavior, I guess it originates from trying to answer many little things in a bullet-point style.

Wheeljack18

April 4th, 2012, 10:14 PM

I just thought that your grammatical errors were due to English being a second language to you. Communicate how works best for you but sometimes it is hard to interpret your meaning when you use point form dialogue. I know nothing abut England's sun but ours are all the same and I don't pick it up first if I have a choice.

Instead of doing one study for 3-4 hours. Why not do one study a week and devote all the available time to just that piece and see what you come up with.

Also I wanted to share a teaser trailer that is out for a short film that my production company worked on last year called Tasha. http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/53683/exclusive-first-look-word-and-trailer-short-film-tasha
The Trailer is finished but they haven't released it yet. For this one we ended up doing all the makeup effects for the Infected/ zombies and a cool tentacle practical effect that shoots out of an infected neck and get's squashed spurting out gobs of Black KY Jelly. Lots of fun.

Eelis Kyttänen

April 5th, 2012, 06:20 AM

Yeah, I'll try to focus on some real paragraphs from now on. Fun fact: the english proficiency test I had to take in order to apply was real, real tight call!

Good point. Could do some very nicely detailed life drawing for instance. First I gotta finish the stream illustration though.

I'll check out the link a bit later, but sounds darn cool. :)

Eelis Kyttänen

April 5th, 2012, 05:57 PM

And here's the next stage.

Things to do: fix the right bottom, clean up everywhere, stress the focal points. The dog is rather close to the bottom border yeah, but I couldn't imagine it being anywhere else. It needs some fixing though & shadows.

And darn this thing is gray! :D

http://i.imgur.com/r0E92.jpg?2

Wheeljack18

April 6th, 2012, 09:58 PM

Hey eelis. This piece looks good so far. Are you working from some reference? If you are, post it up so we can take a look. To fight the grayness, you can quickly make an overlay layer and fill it with a warm or cool color. Set the opacity to around 10% and play with it. At the very least it can give you a quick sense of what different colors might work and where. Compositionally, the piece leads your eye in a nice zig zag up and down. On my monitor, it is looking pretty pixelated so it is hard to make a detailed observation.

Keep posting fellas. Sorry for my lack of posts but I've just been swamped and I've got a trade show coming up in a few weeks so you won't be seeing much of my personal works for a little while.

Cheers!

David Keen

April 6th, 2012, 11:03 PM

Hey guys I should have some new stuff to post later today but wanted to finally respond to all your excellent feedback.

@Eelis: Thank you very much for your thoughts on the thumbs. I agree that the value range was looking very flat, stuck in pure blacks and whites and wasn't really describing the image very well. I'll get another round up asap.

I'm really glad that you're spending more time on your current stream image. Although it is great to work quickly and try to cover a lot of ground I often feel like the tough lessons truly sink in when you spend more time on an image and rework it until the mistakes are gone. By identifying the mistakes and moving on to another piece it is much harder to confront the issue and tackle it head on.

Speaking of the stream, it's looking good. Working in grey scale is an excellent way to improve and work on contrast, have you found it easier to create a more balanced image this way? I find colour very confusing so just focusing on the values can simplify the process a lot. The depth in this image looks greatly improved, I like the atmospheric occlusion around the centre of the image, very convincing stuff. At the moment the focal point is a little confusing though. I find my eye being drawn towards the very tip of the tallest tree because that area has high contrast and the triangular shape is foreign and interesting in this naturalistic image. Where are you wanting the viewer to be focusing on and in what order do you want them to consume the image? It can be very helpful as you build an image to think about those points and structure the piece accordingly. Zooming all the way out, closing your eyes and then seeing the first few spots your eyes land when look at the image again can be a surprising exercise.

I've whipped up a very quick paintover to show the image without the tip of the tallest tree and some higher contrast in the foreground. It's very inelegantly done but thinking about putting some more contrast in the area closest to the viewers eye may benefit the piece. I'd also suggest putting James Gurney's book Imaginative Realism on your list of books to pick up. He has some excellent tips for composition that have really changed the way I look at images. His blog gurneyjourney.blogspot.com is also fantastic and covers many of the chapters in his books, I thought this (http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com.au/2008/05/spokewheeling.html) article could be particularly interesting for you. I love the detailing and the painterly feel you're developing, keep it up and stick with it! :)

@Wheels: You harsh bastard! :D Haha, you're totally right. I started playing with the image just for fun, liked the progress and kept going but I did feel constrained by the pose and composition of the piece. I'm going to spend some time going back through some thumbs and sketches for a fresh dragon piece and bring what I've learnt into that. I've started reading creative illustration and have found the composition tips especially intriguing, I'll attempt to apply them to upcoming work.

You've raised some good points about the artist ego issue that is around in abundance. I hadn't thought before that the promotion of the process is easy devalues the work as a whole. You're totally right though, this stuff is hard and it should be acknowledged that very few people can sit down and create a masterpiece from nothing in one sitting. I'm not sure if some of that attitude stems from a fine art community that seems to thrive more on the mysteries of their conceptual minds and outlandish processes. Maybe some illustrators and genre artists feel they need to imitate this pompous mystique to feel as successful as gallery artists.

It's funny that working in a painterly style is so difficult. I find that often it seems impossible to render a piece to a polished level without erasing the fun spontaneous marks that were put down earlier. It's a fun balance to try and work on.

The teaser you linked looks cool, practical effects are so much fun for the viewer. Looks like you guys did a great job.

David Keen

April 8th, 2012, 09:22 AM

I've just got some thumbs for the new dragon image. Let me know about your favourites, so far I'm favouring 1, 3, 8 & 13.

Wheeljack18

April 8th, 2012, 04:52 PM

Hey guys,

Yeah Eb, I'm glad you didn't take the crit too personally. It's not easy being honest but really it is the best policy in the long run. I think the problem with any artist is the EGO. It goes way back and I think back in the 30's the devaluation of art began. That was a time when art for art's sake started which is all really bull shit. You had artists who install toilets in galleries, Guys like Andy warhol and his prints, Jackson Pollack and his paint dribbles. I don't NOT classify them as artists but their work generally was fast, or mass produced and highly conceptual. No longer are you buying the product but instead the artists idea. This is the essence of the devaluation problem. From there the notion that art is easy to make starts and the buying public doesn't know or care about the difference between a rockwell and a pollack. They do what they are told and almost always go for the most colorful piece.

For your Dragon I see you are starting to incorporate his ideas on informal subdivision. It's super helpful no?
My favorites are 1 and 13 although in both, I think you could use some more thought in the right side of the panel. Try altering the dimensions of the picture frame and inserting another story element. For example in 1 you could put a really small knight in the bottom right to give a sense of scale and an added story element. For 13, perhaps go with a widescreen format and insert a landscape element or a castle to add to the story. In both the dragon's posture conveys character which I think is important.

Looking forward to the next iteration.

I just finished up some art tests and we'll see if I can't get to some more stuff for daedelus this week.

Keep up the good work fellas!

Wheeljack18

April 8th, 2012, 04:57 PM

Also, I came across this add for work on CG HUB. Take a look http:///jobs/view/1356/

It's another, do a sample and we'll hire you if we like you gig but it might be a good exercise for you guys to try. I might do one too if I can make the time.

David Keen

April 9th, 2012, 03:39 AM

I've taken a few of the Awakening of Evarun thumbnails to a more fleshed out sketch. I didn't use any reference at this stage as I was more concerned with the placement of the different elements and composition than the anatomical accuracy, so there will be some errors. I'm currently favouring the first two sketches, they are more dramatic and visually interesting to me but I would be interested to hear your thoughts guys.

@Wheels: Don't ever worry about me taking a crit personally, I know you're only telling it the way you see it and 9 times out of 10 I agree with the feedback you're giving me. You make some more interesting points about the devaluation of art in the modern era that make a lot of sense. It's a shame that so few people show an appreciation for the skill and craftsmanship that went into art that I love but as you said if a colourful mass produced print matches the couch cushions then most people's objectives have been met.

I've have indeed found the early pages of Creative Illustration very enlightening. I need to make time to work my way through the whole book but that is of course difficult, especially as I like to keep my brief reading time before bed as a little break for my brain. You're right about incorporating another story element into the dragon pieces, it will give the images more focus and a clearer direction. I'll work on that over the next few days.

The CG HUB link is broken but things are so flat out with everything else that I probably wouldn't have time anyway. Thanks very much for the thought though. :) I'm looking forward to seeing you're work for D&D if you get the spare time.

Eelis Kyttänen

April 9th, 2012, 09:54 AM

Sorry for taking so long!

@Wheel: I used about a dozen pictures to reference small bits there and here. For example, this picture: http://www.mccullagh.org/photo/1ds-5/mountain-streem

The original inspiration came from this one: http://wildweasel339.deviantart.com/#/d4s80u6

Otherwise it is from imagination.

I tried out the overlay method you proposed and it gave quite an insight. As a result I added few dibs of more saturated colour into the key locations. I think it turned out quite alright that way even though as a whole the image is gray. Thanks for your input. :)

@Eb: Yeah, I have given alot of tought into the issue of overcoming problems in an image, and I tend to agree with you. From now on I'll try not to discard an image even if it has some fatal problems. I could always just go back to the base thumbnails and start all over. Would surely teach a lesson or two about dedication. :)

Bright colours are really confusing to me too right now. Thedecision to make this one so gray (and undramatic) wasn't actually a conscious decision, but rather an attribute than deprived from the basic idea to create a dull, soothing environment. (even though colours should be rather strong in such a cloudy weather, something to remember for the next time)

About the focal points. I had actually decided places for three focal points on the basic thirds scale, but as always my own workflow kinda backfired on me. Should have started detailing from those point, instead I just jumped around like a hectic rabbit, adding details there n here. In the final stages I however tried to fix this, and imho it turned somewhat alright. I also revisited the trees and actually referenced them. Tips should look alot more natural now!

I actually have both of Gurney's theory books, Imaginative Realism and Color & Light. Thanks loads for your input too! Was really helpful all around.

And with those words, I consider this finished. Please comment on anything you find amiss though, because I am sure there are loads of problems still.

I agree with Wheel about the first batch of dragons. From your second batch, all of em are a bit closed. Imho the first one has the most potential, for it has the best sense of drama. A bit of widening, better placement of characters and some neat background oughta do. I would like to do a paintover, but I am so shoddy at characters that it would be a mess. :/

@Wheel: That trailer was neat! What kind of art tests were you doing? Hopefully you'll have some time to make some personal stuff too.

And yeps, modern art, ain't it? What's it's purpose anyway? Go figure. I am betting on social status.

David Keen

April 10th, 2012, 08:13 AM

Hey lads, I didn't have a great deal of time today sadly so only got to do a quick sketch for the new dragon piece. I'm not too sure about the current placement of environment shapes but am mostly happy with where the dragon and knight are at the moment. We'll see tomorrow night when I get to spend a little more time figuring it out.

@Eelis: Thanks for your feedback on the dragon thumbnails, I agree with you about the first one pretty interesting hence the little bit of work to flesh it out. I'll keep playing with it and see how things go. Please feel free to do a paintover whenever, I clearly am not the most skilled with that stuff either but it's always fun to get an idea of what others would do with an image.

I really like where you ended up with your final for the stream. By adding that colour and doing some more detailing the the foreground my eye is drawn there a lot more than it was previously. Good to hear you have Gurney's books, they're pretty amazing hey? Keep up the good work man, you're improving very steadily! :)

David Keen

April 11th, 2012, 08:29 AM

Another quick update on the dragon guys. I'm still not quite set on the landscape want a more dynamic pose for the knight but I am happier with showing a little more of the dragon. I'll keep chipping away at it and see what is revealed.

*edit* I just noticed that this image is displaying a lot darker once uploaded to CA than it does when viewed in the folder. Have you guys encountered this at all before? Most of the subtle forms in the dark areas have been completely lost.

Wheeljack18

April 11th, 2012, 12:22 PM

Hey boys. Sorry for the lack of feedback. I'm just super busy and can't go into great detail but I don't want you to think I'm leaving you hanging.

Eelis: The piece looks great. It has a lot of atmosphere and mood. Call it done and move on to the next one. Give it a few weeks or months and then return to it to give it a critical look. You'll be surprised by what you see.

Eb: Sorry I can't give you a detailed crit here but to be short.
Faerun Piece: I like that you've got some detailed thumbnails but to me they all look like comic book panels instead of illustrations. How can you push them to be more dramatic? Right now they are all pretty much head on and take up the midground. Go and look at some N.C. Wyeth and think about pulling the camera back and moving around your horizon line.

Dragon: What I originally was thinking for this piece was for you to keep the widescreen format and place the knight in the bottom right corner. As if the dragon was looking over his shoulder or just rising up from a crevasse. For the next round forget value and focus on line and composition. Think critically about the gesture and characterizations for each player. Another thought, why not play with the horizon line in this one too and see if you can push the drama.

That's it for me.

Cheers!

Eelis Kyttänen

April 11th, 2012, 12:42 PM

Thanks! Yeah wheel, those moments are the best. You know, when you dig up that old painting/writing/etc after a few months and judge it by your grown experience..the sense of progress! I am sketching up thumbnails like crazy right now, let's see if I have some stuff here by tomorrow.

Eb: I'll give a few comments on the dragon later today. :)

Eelis Kyttänen

April 16th, 2012, 07:03 AM

Heh, I am real bad with promises, ain't I?

Anyway, eb, I agree with wheel about the dragon so I don't have that much to add. However, I see you wanted to give some emphasize on the size of the dragon? If you are up to it you could twist the perspective so that the view is upwards, this could also require making the canvas vertical. If done right it could have real dramatic effect. However, I don't think it fits if you were aiming for more serene aproach. :)

I wasn't able to draw much with my tablet last weekend, instead pouring time into some good ol' charcoal drawing. I managed to poke up one quickie 20 min speedpaint though! It was from reference.

http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/105/a/3/reference_snow_by_mrorigano-d4w8fvs.jpg

I could give more notion to the smoothing of lines next time even though this was a real quick one. Also, the colours are still too "photo like", I'll try to exaggerate them more next time.

Do you know any great sources which could explain how to effectively notice the slight colour changes in views? Be it a real view or a landscape.

Wheeljack18

April 17th, 2012, 04:09 PM

Looks good Eelis. Keep Posting your studies!

Eb, Any more progress?

Still swamped boys, I'll probably be back to normal in a week or so.

Cheers.

Eelis Kyttänen

April 20th, 2012, 04:40 AM

Thanks wheel, I'll try to get some more underway in the weekend.

I've had barely time to draw now that I am working in the evening shifts. Real hard stuff to inject some free time between working and sleeping, but it all counts towards the move in august.

Wheeljack18

April 20th, 2012, 11:58 AM

Don't feel bad about not posting much Eelis. Eb hasn't posted anything! Ha ha Eb. I just burned you!

I just wrapped up a hectic patch. The life of a freelancer I guess but it has been a successful month career wise. I completed 4 paintings in 3 days, 150 video game assets and a presentation board for a Mark's commercial in just over a week. Now I have to switch gears and focus on Rocket punch because we have a giant comic con next weekend and I still have to get promotional materials made and create prosthetic appliances and foam grenades. And I still a have a sketch card assignment and a private commission to wrap up. Sometimes, I can barely catch my breath or take a break while other times, I have nothing to do.
Sorry for the personal tirade but it feels good to wrap up last week and I just wanted to share. Hopefully I'll get permission to post up my work sooner rather than later and you guys crit the hell out of it for me.

On a side note, if you re looking to get promotional materials made, I used a company called vista print and got 1000 business card, full color double sided with a glossy finish plus a 6x 2.5' banner for $160.00! That's super cheap and the cards turned out great ad the banner is a little pixelated but that is my fault. If I went to a local print shop, it would have cost me double just for the banner. Food for thought.

TTYL

Mike

David Keen

April 21st, 2012, 02:58 AM

Hey guys, sorry for the lack of posts it's been a really crazy couple of weeks. I started yet another new job at my local art shop which has been awesome but also resulted in me spending all my earnings on supplies. I'm tossing up at the moment whether I should go to this (http://www.conceptdesignworkshop.com/index.php/sydney-overview.html) workshop in sydney in a few months. I'm only familiar with Kekai Kotaki and Robin Eley but they're both so insanely good that I'd go just for them. Your thoughts guys?

@wheels: I'm feeling the burn :) Sounds like everything is cranked all the way up to madness stations at the moment, push through mate!

@Eelis: I'll do a bit of crit on your last post later today, looks good though!

Eelis Kyttänen

April 21st, 2012, 01:10 PM

Glad to hear your business is rolling fine mike, so many paintings in so few days ain't an easy task. Freelancing sure sounds like hectic stuff! Don't worry about writing up some personal goings here, it is good to know how you chaps are enduring. :) Not to mention it is informative to get a sneak peek into the lifestyle I am pursuing, so no worries! I am sure Eb agrees too.

Whoa! That's real cheap. Just checked a few local places around, and all of em offer that many for atleast x1.5 higher price. Mind posting a scan of your card here? Would love to see how personal yours is.

@eb: Woo, an art shop? That's great! Atleast beats my job ten to one. :D Mm, use the chance, I say. Both of em are great artists, that trip could yeild alot of great info.

I just rounded up more than a dozen of thumbs. I didn't have any particular subject in mind, since I was just trying out new technique for coming up with thumbs. (and man, it really worked out nicely). Would love to hear which ones you like, I'll probably take one of these to a finished stage at some point. Will just do a few studies and speedpaints first.

EDIT: Now that I look at them a few hours afterwards I notice one fancy prob. I forgot to contrast the top ones again. Ain't such a problem though, the premise is laid and if I take one of them forwards it is easy to add up the black.

Wheeljack18

April 21st, 2012, 03:06 PM

Hey guys,

Eb your right, madness stations at maximum! Sleep, coffee and takeout = Check. rinse and repeat.

For that workshop, if you can afford it and have the time, why not go? I would if I was in the neighborhood. Didn't you already sign up for the CA thing at the end of may too? If you do go, take lots of pics and film the lectures if you can and share with Eelis and I. Hint hint. I've always wanted to work at an art supply store just for the discount but be careful about buying a ton of crap that you may never use. I once bought a really fancy sketchbook of hand pressed watercolor paper and It's so precious that I have never even opened it. What a waste!

Eelis: The business card is pretty much a photograph of a zombie makeup on one side, full color and glossy and on the backside is our logo and contact info. Plain and simple, full color through out. Like I said, it' super cheap but, you have to be aware that because you are outsourcing, you might not get perfect color and you need to triple check your proofs before you give your approval. Once you send something off either to a publisher or a printer, it's pretty much out of your hands. There are so many factors that come into play, I could probably write a whole essay just on the subject, do's and dont's etc.

I like the thumbnails but there are too many and they are not labelled for easy discussion. Pro tip: Always label your work. Number or letter each thumbnail so your client can easily identify them and facilitate discussion. Trying to explain I like thumbnail at the bottom 5th row 2nd from the left is confusing. Your left or my left? But if they were numbered, the client could say, I like 4,29,3 and 17. Work up those. The idea is to make it as simple and easy for the client as possible. Also, you don't want to to give them too many choices. It confuses things and extends the process which eats into your time budget. Maybe narrow it down to your top 3-5 (odd numbers work best) and let them decide. That is from an illustration POV. Anyways, its something to think about. What is this new technique that you are exploring? Why not share your methods as I'm always looking to add to my bag of tricks.

Cheers!

Eelis Kyttänen

April 21st, 2012, 03:16 PM

Yeah, sorry, I forgot to number em. Will get the fix'd one up in a few hours. If it had been a real client case, I would've limited the choices to 2 or 3 of course, but this would've been the preliminary stage for myself. :) The tip you gave is spot on nonetheless, thanks!

I really found myself digging this new tech out. I have sometimes hard time to come up with unique thumbnails, so this really helped out. Basically, you have the grid on seperate layer and below it a toned background of your liking. The trick is that you whip up a new layer between those two, choose up some real random brush that makes fancy marks and just paint below all the grid pieces. Then keep on honing the details and such, seeing the concepts in the random marks. This video sums it up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKTLnxzGxjo&context=C4bd9e81ADvjVQa1PpcFOIvvbX3e25OQ61XGxQ1n73 zs-0LwUL1Jk=

Eelis Kyttänen

April 21st, 2012, 03:30 PM

Here's the numbered update!

http://i.imgur.com/YH1Fk.jpg

David Keen

April 22nd, 2012, 11:06 AM

I reckon I will go along to the workshop, it's a lot of money including the flights to Sydney and accommodation but should be totally worth it. I'll make sure to grab as much video as I can, sharing is caring! I do indeed also have the greenlight summit coming up, it's going to be a hectic time for uni and all the workshops. Working at the art shop has been great! After doing hospitality work for the last 4 years it's a nice change to be in quiet little shop learning a heap about all kinds of materials. It's been so quiet during the university holidays that a few days they just let me sit out the back and read my novel, ridiculous!!

@Eelis, massive batch of thumbs there mate! There are some really fantastic looking ones in that batch but like the Wheelman says there are a couple too many. I had a look at the link for creating the thumbnails which was really cool, I hadn't heard of alchemy before and it is a lot of fun to play around with. Although I like that way of just putting down random shapes and developing an image out of that I think it's still useful to have some idea of what you're trying to depict before hand. Just going crazy is really fun and some artists seem to be able to pull something amazing out of that process but the thumbnails can end up looking a bit similar. So far my favourites are 13, 16, 17, 18 & 29, they could be developed into really cool pieces. Great stuff dude, I really like the direction that you're heading!! :D

@Wheelio: Your week was so huge! I'm so impressed that you managed to get all that done in such a short time. The feast or famine rule is in full effect.

I've got some more thumbnails for those Awakening of Evarun paintings. The first page is pretty samey looking which I'd like to work on. At this point I'm leaning towards #7 but I'd like to redraw it will some really extreme perspective looking up at the floating figure and to give him the reaching pose from the cut off #10 thumbnail. The background is meant to be of an enormous field of tombs and graves which I'd like to show as a crowded mass that grows up the sides of the ravine. I'll work on making that communicate more clearly in the next iteration.

The second page is the final round of thumbs for the first painting. At this point I'm pretty set on using the #5 composition but I'd like to work on the background a little bit and make it more interesting. So far the placement of the characters and their lighting is just about where I'd like it to be though.

Eelis Kyttänen

April 22nd, 2012, 04:40 PM

Just a quick update here before going to sleep, eb, I'll look into your post tomorrow! This is a real WIP, so most of the problems you see are most probably just wip-things.

Sorry for posting sooo much stuff lately, just feels good to get something done finaly. :)

David Keen

April 23rd, 2012, 09:23 AM

Here's the update on the second painting composition. I'm much happier with the way it's starting to come together now but I'll still tinker with the poses a little bit and make them more dramatic.

@Eelis: Great sketch so far mate, I really like the way you've placed the values in this piece. Keep chipping away at it and please keep posting stuff, I love having more to look at every day!

Eelis Kyttänen

April 23rd, 2012, 04:32 PM

Alright!

Thanks for the notion Eb, I'll try to get a new version up as soon as possible. :) Could you explain the story behind this illustration in a nutshell? I haven't got much experience with characters, but I think you can also lean towards dramatic ways by making the background more dramatic. It also depends on the story I guess, but for example if the rising creature is somekind of a god fella some real nice, upheaved clouds should do some fancy tricks. :)

Wheeljack18

April 24th, 2012, 01:42 PM

Eelis: I like compositions 1,2,4,13,17,23,24,25,33. For the WIP, I like it. I like it a lot and I'm looking forward to seeing you take it further. Sorry that I don't have more to add.

Eb: Lots of work here and it's good to see you are taking your time to work out your image. So there are 2 images here so I'll deal with each of them separately.

Ravine of Graves:
Ok so you're set on this vertical composition so what is next? Reference! You should not do anything else on this until you've done some research and shot some reference. Let the reference lead you and inspire you to take it to the next level and add those little details. Grab a camera and get photos of a guy on a stool posing as the floaty man. Try as best you can to recreate the composition.
Figures: Currently they are pretty stiff and I have some concerns about their gestures. Floating guy has both of his hand over his junk in a phallic gesture. Is he supposed to be holding something or giving something to the other guy? Take reference shots of this pose and experiment with the pose as much as you can until you find something you like. The character in the foreground looks like he is looking at the floating guys junk! Erm. What kind of " Fantasy" is this Eb? Again, reference this pose. Maybe put his left hand holding the sword by the hilt and his right hand is reaching out or shielding him. Even the gesture of the right hand can be expressive and indicate to the audience what is going on. Maybe crouch him over a little. Is he startled? Is he happy? Currently he looks very casual. Like " Hey What's up".
The Halo on the head is very symbolic image ( think 2000 years of religious images) so you have to be careful. Either work it and maximize its impact or lose it. Look up some Christian paintings of Jesus and saints to get some ideas and inspiration.
Vanishing point. Currently, the VP is right smack dab in the middle where the ghost is holding his dong ;) ( sorry, I couldn't resist pointing that out) So, uhm. That could be a problem. What is the focus of the illustration? Think about it and how you want your viewers eye to move about the picture plane. You have a vertical composition with few horizontal or vertical lines, perhaps you might throw in some more curves?
Ref mausoleums and creepy places like New Orleans etc.

Discovery composition:
I need more info but right now it looks like a discovery/ gotcha moment. I did a quick paint over and the main points are I tilted the horizon line a little, Tweaked the foreground characters pose to show more movement and separated is arms from his body. There are a couple of questions that need to be resolved for me like, where is the victim looking?, which direction is the knife shaped object supposed to be pointing and whether or not the dark shape in the bottom left corner is needed. Another tighter sketch is needed but so far so good?

Question: Are these images going to be printed? Are they meant as book covers or interiors? It's something for you to think about as that might affect your compositional choices too.

For me, I can post some of the AEG work I did last week but I can't say what it is for and I had to omit some elements until the product is released, so if you have beef with the negative spaces, there is a reason. These illustrations will all be going on cards so they are meant to be printed at around 2 x3" or less. Otherwise, I'll post up some other stuff as the permissions come in.
Thanks boys and keep up the good work!

Eelis Kyttänen

April 25th, 2012, 03:33 PM

Thanks both of you! Let's see how this turns out, this is the current state of it:

http://i.imgur.com/xkbDi.jpg?1

I'll probably add some life into it, just figuring out what. Also, needs more dark values on the front. Add up anything that springs into your mind. :)

Anyhoo, wheel, those AEG's illustrations are awesome! How did you construct the symbol's pattern? I always seem to have problems with that kind of repeating stuff. For some reason I instantly tought of Lembas when I saw the last picture. Heh, too much LOTR soundtrack for me. ;)

On a personal note, I am having fun trying to search for dog-friendly apartment in Vancouver. I really, really hope I'll get lucky with this one, but I still have plenty of time left so no worries!

Wheeljack18

April 25th, 2012, 03:51 PM

Hey Eelis,

The piece looks good and I would call it almost done. Definitely Do Not add more dark to the image. If anything add some light to the foreground area and spend a little more time on the hill in the right foreground. This will give it some more depth and POP. Go back to your Bob Ross and see how he does it. That and maybe some more light on the mountain tops. That way you will have some light lights and dark darks to get the full range of value. Remember that the snow on the white mountain tops is closest to the sun so they will be reflecting the most light.

Thanks for the feedback on the the AEG stuff. The bread is called Elven way bread so it is pretty similar to Lotr stuff so you got the right reaction, which means I did my job correctly. What problems do you have with symbols? That image is purely a graphic design exercise so I focused on balance and symetry. I just cobbled together some shapes into a flat graphic and the runes were a free brush download. All of the effects were added as blending modes in photoshop and the background was another rock texture. I could put together a tutorial if you think it will be useful.

Good luck with finding a dog friendly place. Not many people want to deal with pets because they are hard on property. Them and kids. Just keep plugging away until you find something or you can check into some sort of Dorm situation with the university.

I've got two tips for you guys today.

#1: Don't print your work out on a laser printer. It comes out dark and shitty. pay the extra money and go to a real print shop and don't waste your time and money.

#2: Mike's secret weapon for color theory. http://colorschemedesigner.com/#
If you need a little help or are in a rush, this site is excellent for helping you put together a palette for your images. I usually, pick my primary and then start playing with hue and color schemes. It saves time and helps you to shake up your sorry old palette and use different colors. Give it a try and you can download the scheme of choice right into photoshop as well. Great tool!

Eelis Kyttänen

April 28th, 2012, 02:25 PM

Hoi, sorry for being silent again! Work work work to no end over here!

I'll be posting an update and reply to you wheel in a few hours! Stay tuned.

Eelis Kyttänen

April 28th, 2012, 05:05 PM

Alright, here's the current iteration. Some way to go still!

http://i.imgur.com/gAx0i.jpg

Thanks alot for the alert about the darks mike, I don't know what I was thinking when I considered doing that! I'll probably enlighten the foreground even more and figure out some neat details to the right to balance it a bit. Not too much though, something real subtle. I'll also keep on refining the mountain's structure and compose some brighter highlights to the tops and key positions via various ways. I really really really want to add some life too, something real desatured! Trying to figure it up as I go.

Hey, glad to hear that was indeed the approach you were going for with the bread. As for the symbol, I have real hard probs with the pattern and it's consistency, for example in circular graphical element like this. With concept art of halls et cetera you can often play it safe with those certain tricks. Thanks for the information, I should really take more advantage of the photoshop's tools in the situations like that. :)

Yeippis, finding a suitable apartment that accepts dogs is hell. My best bet is to find a roommate and rent one of those a bit costier places. They generally have less restrictions about pets. And darn, I'll do whatever I can to get to live in the west end close to the stanley park!

But I am vigilant!

Heh, laser printers. I actually had to use one for the last three years because it was the only one school had. Way to show the digital stuff to already cautious teacher! Duh.

EDIT: Ey! Got nice suggestion from a fb group: A few goats and a herder.

David Keen

April 29th, 2012, 11:35 AM

Sorry to have fallen off the earth again guys, some more hectic days. Mike, thank you so much for the very detailed crit, it was a huge help and I am reworking the composition at the moment. Your most recent pieces for AEG are looking great! I'm very impressed mate. Eelis, your mountain painting is looking awesome. I especially like the work you've done on the clouds, and rendering out the snow capped mountain. I'll be back tomorrow with a more detailed reply about both of your work, I just wanted to touch base and let you know I've been checking the thread and am grateful for the feedback. Cheers lads!

Wheeljack18

April 30th, 2012, 10:14 PM

Hey Fellas,

Just wrapped up a big convention yesterday and hopefully things will settle a bit and I can get back to more daedelus work. Tip for working Conventions. I pads work great for showing off your work so if you got it, flaunt it. Tip #2, don't take no for an answer. Don't be a dick or pushy but if the guy who you should be talking to is not in his booth ( pee break or whatever) don't just say thanks and walk off. Get his name, his card if possible, find out if/when he is coming back. Chat up the guy who is talking to you. What's your role? What can you tell me about the company? etc and take it from there. Be polite and professional. If the guy is in the booth, get his card and give him yours and Always follow up to remind him. You never know....

Eelis: What do you mean about more desaturated Life? that seems like a contradiction my man. To be honest, you have a lot of contrast in the image and for a piece of concept art, I'd say you are done. Don't spend forever fiddling with an image as it will slow you down.Move onto the next one. But as a concept, add whatever you want and do multiples and play around but again, you must be fast and decisive.
If this is more of a fine art piece, then I wouldn't add the goat herders after the fact. In that instance you should always plan your illustration first and think about what you are trying to say. Is is a story about the herders? If so, then why figure them out last if they are the focal point? Maybe you would have come to better conclusions compositionaly in order to work them in. If they are not he focus, then why are they there? How do they serve the story/image? It's always best to plan these things out first, or at least have a good idea before you get too deep into a painting.

Regarding symbols etc: If you get a chance, take some graphic design courses or at least hang out with the graphic design dept people. Try to get as much info on anything and everything related to our trade. I know that by doing that, it has helped my career and allowed me to be diverse enough to handle almost any job that comes my way. Although I hate graphic design gigs.

Good luck with finding that apartment. Vancouver is a really big place and it is not easy to get around so try to get as close to school as possible. BC is super expensive so you don't want to have to pay for transportation if you don't have to. Otherwise, stanley park is nice. It's really Big too and you should be able to find something within walking distance.

Eb: No worries Mate! Thanks for the feedback on the AEG work and I'm looking forward to your next post.

That's it for me tonight fellas.

Over and Out.

Eelis Kyttänen

May 1st, 2012, 01:46 PM

Ops, I was quite vague with "desatured". Meant more along the lines "interesting eye candy which does not pop out too much" or "something to make comparisons with". Yeps, I am done now. Got a good advice from a peep who told me to scribble up a few fuzzy details to the dark areas too. Looks alot better now, here's the finished image:

http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/122/4/d/the_hiker__s_rest_by_mrorigano-d4yarqf.jpg

It is fun to compare it to an image I did just about 2 years back:

http://i.imgur.com/sFjZX.jpg?1

Also mountains, I promise the next image won't be about mountains.

But let's come down to a brief. I haven't given enough attention to the "meaning"-side of art. In this case, stories behind the pieces. I've just focused on the technical stuff, so in the future I'll try to keep em stories better in mind. As for this piece, I had figured I would do some characters to the foreground. Ended up with a hiker of sorts, it fit in quite well imho.

More on the good news: There seems to be fairly big annual convention in Vancouver, http://anomaly.cgmovement.com/
The art order recommended it, so I guess it is good.

Thanks for the good luck wishesh with the apartment, I'll need it. ;)

David Keen

May 3rd, 2012, 09:35 AM

Guys, I'm back from outer space! (sorry I couldn't resist that one) How is everyone? I'm so sorry that I haven't had the chance to dedicate some more time to Daedelus work, things have been pretty hectic. It's been great to keep coming back to the thread in my spare moments and have a look at all the great work everyone has been doing.

@Mike: Those AEG pieces are absolutely killer mate. Your rendering is becoming more and more consistent with each piece completed which is very impressive. I'll write a little comment on each piece to summarise my thoughts. Please disregard any criticism that conflicts with the areas you've had to block out, it may be that with those elements my points would be invalid.

Entish Fellow: I quite like the composition of this piece, that tilt trick you mentioned to me certainly does a good job at adding some drama to the image. I imagine you had pretty limited choice in the actual design of the creature, but to me having a more irregular trunk could have helped make him more natural and a bit less symmetrical. As things are his arms and the other tree limbs all sprout from around the same place on either side and make him look more designed than grown. The placement of the light sources works very well and I feel my eyes roving all around the images but focusing on the face and moving out from there. The extra detailing around the eyes has paid off, creating lots of visual interest in that area. My only other criticism would be that the colour palette could possibly use another element to accent the greens and browns. The leafy background is all a pretty consistant hue and could have been a space to explore a few more colour choices.

Sword Maiden: I love the lighting and effects in this piece. The energy crackling around the sword looks very convincing and seems to be a stumbling point for a lot of artists. The only thing that really jumps out to me about this image is that the drapery shapes look a little bit too regular in some spots which I always see in my work when I'm making it up from memory. Did you manage to get a reference for the clothing of this pose? Not really a deal breaker at all and it may be that the folds were falling that way but I've found that they're rarely very consistent with each other. The hands are looking excellent, a job well done with some pretty tricky foreshortening.

Ward: As Eelis said the graphic design side of this piece is very impressive! Creating patterns like this are something I find very difficult and you've done a great job making something that looks convincing.

Elven Bread: Nothing negative to say, it looks good enough to eat! Instantly made me think of Lembas bread as well.

Some good points about convention going. Unfortunately there really aren't many conventions run in my city but it's a side of the business that is very interesting to hear about. It's lucky there are so many good resources out there now concerning networking and building professional relationships.

Anything in the works for Daedelus at the moment? Seems like we need to pick up another assignment!

@Eelis: I'm not sure about the addition of the figure to your landscape mate. I find that it detracts a bit from the beauty of the scene and is demanding too much of my attention, preventing me from exploring the rest of the image. If you're deadset on having a figure in the piece for scale I'd be interested to see what you could do with a silhouette of a character on the far right side on top of the peak in the foreground. That way he'd be out of the main action of the focal point but would still provide extra detail for the viewer to discover. As Wheels said it's pretty dangerous adding extra elements at this stage of a painting, especially to one that is looking so good. I'd only add it if you think the composition really needs it.

It's pretty inspiring to look back at all the old work and see how far things have come. You've got me hankering to go through my archives now, although I'm pretty scared to discover what's in there.. That convention looks awesome! You northern hemisphere lads are lucky with all the talent that roving around up there. I'm jealous!

I've got a bit of an update on how things are going with the paintings. I've moved off of the computer and started working on the drawings to go beneath the final oil paintings. I've taken a couple of photos showing where the first two drawings are up to, the bend of the paper made it a bit tricky to take clear photo's though. I've noticed a few inconsistencies with the images after taking the photo's and being about to flip the images in photoshop. My first port of call will be fixing the skewed face on the figure the first image. By the weekend I will hopefully have finished the under drawings and bound the paper onto the masonite ready for oil paint!!

Wheeljack18

May 3rd, 2012, 12:42 PM

Wow Best Pieces of work so far EB! great improvement! See what all that extra reference and study does to help aid a piece? How does it feel to switch back to real media instead of digital? Good no?

Ok so for a crit let's see...

Discovery piece: This is the one with the guy laying down in it. Great improvement! Good Job and I like it. I'm only going to crit it because I know you want some feedback so I'm going to be picky.

Foreground character: There is something that seems off about his posture. Is he sitting? I ask this because of the oval shape to the front of his left elbow suggests that. Additionally, his spine and shoulders don't quite seem lined up right, it is as though his left shoulder is pushing forward which is weird because it is closest to the viewer. Lastly, the sharp point on his elbow is very distracting and I suggest you correct the forms there when you take it to the next stage.

Hero with the knife: Looks good. Just be careful when rendering the cloak and his hair because you don't want them to look unnatural. At this stage you might want to pay more attention to his left hand and right foot to fully realize them. It's easier to work these things out now than once the paint is on the canvas.

Laying figure. What's his story? He looks like he got hit with a stun ray as he is very stiff and looking straight up. If that is what you are going for then you nailed it. Otherwise, you might want to adjust his pose a little. His arm is at a right angle which almost never happens in real life ( I'm a first aid instructor) when you fall down. It's a powerful pose and I'd like to know more about his story so I an give more helpful feedback. Again with the left leg, you should completely resolve it prior to painting.

Background:
Very interesting combo bombed out cellar and glowing doorway. At this stage it is hard to make out the details and it might be worth your while to put some more time into the setting as well. What kind of room is it or was it? What materials was it made out of? How old is it?

Floating guy:
Again Great improvement!

I like how you resolved the foreground character and his cloak. His right arm seems off. If you look at it, his forearm is longer than his upper arm which is not correct, that and his hand is as big or bigger than his face. I see that there is a little bit of foreshortening going on but it doesn't quite look right. Maybe with his hand you could splay his fingers more to emphasize the gesture of surprise.

Floating guy. Like Norman Rockwell said, " If you get the head and hands right, they will forgive you for anything else". So with that, those two points are critical to this image and I'm not convinced that you can't do better. I'm not saying this to be a dick, I'm just trying to push you to work up those elements further and really try to capture the emotion and character of this interaction. It's got to be important or else you would not be illustrating it so really throw all you got at it. Lastly his shoulders are off and too small. I'd widen them and raise them up. Is he a ghost or a spirit? Will he be semi transparent?

Background:
Not much to say yet but already it reads better than in the last comp.

Great work Eb once again. I know you are eager to get to painting but remember your Loomis " If it is worth painting, it is worth planning". Take your time, work it through and I suggest that you take a few more pics of the final image and so some digital color comps before you go into paint. That way you will be able to tackle the final pieces with confidence and vigor and end up with the best results possible. How big are these going to be in the end?

Eelis:

Great job on the painting but I agree with eb about the figure, he doesn't make the piece stronger. If you must keep him, you might want to scale him down much more. When you think about it, he looks like an add on and has much less detail put into him than the mountains which doesn't make sense if he is in the foreground. He's not the focus of the image, the mountain is so why is he there? Sometimes, painting can be a logical exercise too. You've come a long way from that earlier piece you posted. Its good to be able to look back and see improvement eh?

I just found out about Anomaly too! I couldn't go as I was at the Calgary Comic Expo but maybe next year. I might also go to the GDC type event in Montreal in November as well as anything else I can find between now and then. It really depends on scheduling.

Response to Eb's Crits of my work:

Woodguard/ Ent: I totally hear you about the design but I really didn't want to go with the LOTR Ent look or vibe ( I HATE their tree beard, BAH!) To be perfectly honest, the turnaround on this piece was so quick that I didn't get to put much time into the design and I instead focused on graphic shapes and I liked the straight trunk because it gives the image force and character which was what the AD wanted. Regarding color, I try to follow the KISS ( Keep It Simple Stupid) principle when it comes to color. Too much can muddy up a piece real quick and I had to consider the practical application of the illustration ahead of the artistic interpretation. The image will be on a card which will only print at less than 2" x 3" so it has to read graphically. It needed to be colorful and POP and to be honest, I suspect that much of the detail will not translate into the final product. I kept zooming out and squinting my eyes. Altogether I like this one the best out of the series. It was way more fun and I think that enjoyment translated into the final image.

Sword Maiden: Your are right about the drapery. I worked it as best I could with the ref I had and I think I just ran out of Gas. It doesn't look terrible but the next time I'll do better. Regarding the hands, they were a pain in the butt. Luckily they turned out and all of the details and imperfections that bothered me were eliminated by the glow effects which worked out great. I like the sword too, I did that almost right away and it turned out really good.

Arcane Circle: The shapes are all simple graphic elements that I composited together into one symbol. The trick is to keep them balanced and simple. It's really easy to over crowd a design. Less is more when it comes to graphic design. If I had more time or was to do it again. I would have painted in more aging and cracks on the circle to emphasize wear and age.

Waybread: Sounds like I nailed it! NICE...

I don't' have any Daedelus work to show nor will I have any anytime soon. I'm actually procrastinating by writing this response. I got another 90 game assets, 25 sketch cards, 1 private commission, and 2 art tests to do already this month and hopefully another character piece, storyboard revisions and I'm meeting with an AD in a few days to discuss some product work and it's only the 3rd! I want to finish the Sethlan character and I will and I think we should tackle the D & D challenges too. I looked at some of the early submissions and I think we can do better and it will be a better exercise for you too. Let me know if you guys want me to give you an assignment.

That's it from me.
Cheers!

Eelis Kyttänen

May 10th, 2012, 02:41 PM

Sorry for loooong silence peeps, I'll try to answer yar crits tomorrow, thanks a lot for 'em!

Trying to get some new work up soonish too.

Wheeljack18

May 11th, 2012, 11:38 AM

No Worries Eelis. It's strange to see the thread so quite and I feel like garbage for not posting more to contribute to it but I gotta pay the bills first! Speaking of which, I got a line on a really cool gig and I need you guys to send me some positive vibes to hep me get it. I can't talk about it due to an NDA but send me the positive vibes none the less.

Thanks Boys,

Keep posting and I'll keep chiming in. Eventually, I want to finish the Sethlan concept and / or do some D and D Art Test material.

Cheers!

Eelis Kyttänen

May 12th, 2012, 06:00 PM

Ya, don't worry either wheel, work before leisure! Hopefully you'll get time to finish the sethlan or D & D project when the work permits.

/Sends auras full of positive budda vibas to mike!

Can't wait to hear about that one. :)

Onto your crits then peeps! So, yeah, I agree. Implantation of that character was risky stuff. I , however, felt that the picture was missing some sort of thing to actually look at. Just the scene was a tad bit boring. I got the same message from plenty of other peeps too, so I felt it was really the best decision. Now that I look back at it, I think you are about right, I should have put it into another spot. I'll keep this in mind for the next time: Plan more ahead even if the painting began as a speedy!

@Ebersol: Real good stuff with that traditional stuff eb. Looking forward to see more. Wheel gave some great crits, and I am inclined to agree.

Onwards! After I finished with that Hiker picture, I felt it was time for some harsh study triplet. First I came about with this bierstadt masterstudy....

http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/126/8/f/bierstadt__masterstudy_by_mrorigano-d4yp59w.jpg

Then a batch of thumbnails (for compositional practices, not to some invidual project):

http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/133/9/7/thumbnail_grid_2_by_mrorigano-d4zl7wz.jpg

And finaly, a fancy still life:

http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/133/7/8/stilllife_2_by_mrorigano-d4zmoyp.jpg

I'll tackle into a big environment piece now. I switched from oils back to acrylics for a while, and will be going to the nature to do some plain airs very soon. Trying to nail out some med-distance paintings, so I could finally do some bigger environment piece that doesn't have an escaping horizon, but instead a secluded forest cabin for example.

But ya, hoping to be able to get some beginnings here tomorrow!

Over and out.

David Keen

May 13th, 2012, 10:14 AM

My friends! Sorry for the radio silence again, it has been one of those weeks. I've been feeling incredibly guilty about not dedicating the time to Daedelus stuff, I'm getting so many positive things from my relationships with you guys and it seems unfair to neglect them. I got a little bit of free time today and after reading "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss I decided to do a little mock cover for the book. It was nice to just play around with the figure and pose for a bit with no real expectations. The hands and cloak shapes have been referenced but the main pose was imagined and therefore probably has some issues but catharsis of drawing was paramount today.

Wheels: Great crit as always mate. I haven't gone back to the drawings yet but I hope to revisit them tomorrow and I will try and address the issues that you pointed out. Just quickly though the laying figure is just a body that the cloaked guy has stumbled across. I agree that at the moment he looks too carefully laid out and needs a little more action in his pose. I'm glad to know that I can nail the stunned mullet look though :) You made some solid points about the floating figure in the second painting and they will be a top priority tomorrow.

I imagined that the small flaws in your AEG pieces were primarily due to the time constraints, late nights and a huge pile of work are tough weights to carry. Your work is feeling much more consistant to me at the moment and I'm looking forward to seeing the next round if you're allowed to show it.

@Eelis: Nice round of recent work mate. I've found master studies to be a great exercise, hopefully a little piece of their understanding sticks each time we do one and they're also a great way to warm up.

This round of thumbs is your best one yet! The images feel more complete to me and it's easy to identify the planes within each. The still life looks to have been a good exercise, I was just curious if you used a soft edged brush much in this painting though? Some of those transitions of light to dark can be made much easier using the soft brushes and they're something that I neglect to use far too often.

I'll try to get back to the Sethlan project soon so we can have something to work on together, but until then I look forward to seeing more of everyones work!

David Keen

May 16th, 2012, 01:20 AM

Guys, I just wanted to drop a quick note that I am going to that workshop in July that Kekai is a part of. I'm riding a bit of a spending high at the moment after burning through almost $1,300.00 is five minutes. Looking forward to seeing some more updates soon! :)

Wheeljack18

May 16th, 2012, 11:14 AM

Hey guys, great to see all the work that you have been posting. I'll get around posting something soon I hope.

Eelis: Thanks for the positive vibes! nice studies and it's good to see you branching out a bit from landscapes. next time, can you post the original so that we have something to compare it too? It would be helpful for us in order to provide you with detailed feedback. Other wise, great work and keep it up.

Ebersol: 1300 bucks! I hope it is worth it for you. Since you paid big bucks, don't be afraid to get in there and talk and network and ask lots of questions. It's real easy to just sit in the Background and just listen but just make sure you get your money's worth. Bring some work to show around or at the least a sketchbook and if you have them, cards. I found and Ipad with some images on it to be very useful at my last con. What about the Green light summit. Did you sign up for that too? I didn't because I couldn't commit to attending it because of work and family commitments. So for the last book cover comp, have you ever looked at the work of Robert Mcginnis or Mitchel Hooks? They were well known paper back artist's from the 60's and 70's. Their work might give you some inspiration on how you can continue to resolve this piece. I think with a little tinkering with the design and adding some background elements you could have a successful illustration. There are defineitly some issues with the pose but you can resolve that with reference. Good start.

Anways fellas, that's it from me for today.

Cheers!

David Keen

May 20th, 2012, 09:42 AM

Hey guys, I've been hard at work on the drawing for the third painting. So far I'm reasonably pleased with the way things are progressing but as always I'm very interested to hear your thoughts. I'm apologise for the rubbish image quality taking photos on my phone never turns out well.

@Mike: I should have clarified in my last post that the workshop was $1000 and my flights there are $300, but still quite the investment on my student income. I'll be trying my hardest to take advantage of the time with the artists and get some feedback on my work. Thankfully I'll have a little break from uni between now and then so I can get some more resolved pieces in my portfolio, at the moment there are a lot of sketches and not much else. I'll have my laptop with me for the sessions so showing them my work shouldn't be a problem, but an iPad does seem like a very elegant portfolio viewer. I did indeed sign up for the Green Light Summit, it should be kicking off very soon. It's a tricky time for participating in it with uni work coming to a head at the moment but it's all being archived and will be good viewing for when I have more time.

Thanks for the feedback on the Name of the Wind sketch, the artists you mentioned were very inspirational. I'm familiar with McGinnis' work but hadn't heard of Mitchell Hooks before and I'm now looking forward to exploring his back catalogue. McGinnis has some seriously amazing pieces though, I love the style from that period.

How's your work going at the moment mate? Still keeping busy with lots of commissions?

Wheeljack18

May 22nd, 2012, 12:31 PM

Hey Eb,

I got your email. Sorry for the delay but I have a lot going on right now. I've only got a couple of minutes so I'll be brief like you asked.

Center Character: Front left leg ( His right) is out of perspective with his body. It's too far forward and to the left. Go to your loomis and there is an exercise in the first chapter or two demonstrating how to correct this. Its in Creative Illustrations. He looks like you drew him from photo ref but did not correct the image from the lens distortion from the camera lens. Lecture on that in loomis too in Figure drawing for all its worth. His elbows seem akward and stiff and his helmet needs more body. Make it look less like it is a second skin and more like it is sitting on top of his head.

Helmet guy in the left: Not mush to say. He looks a little stiff and his head is too small. Consider how much more body a helmet adds to ones head when you put it on. A real battle helmet makes one's head look a good 3rd bigger at least.

Figure on the right. No issues for now. Looks like a lepur wrapped in rags to me as there are no discerning features.

Re: The wisps of fog. Be careful with that effect. You should either use it as an effect that slightly fogs over the BG( which means you should figure out your background and figure ground relations ships) or you should use it as a design element. In the second case don't be afraid to push it and be bold!

Through out the image don't forget to think it all through and ask the 5 W's and try to incorporate all of that into the final image. Just try to stay true to the spirit of the story. Right now I'm getting a Dragon Lance Chronicles circa 1985-86 vibe from the 3 figure composition. Google Larry Elmore and Dragon Lance to see what I mean.

Anyways, that's it for me. Now I'm off to the Dentist. I'm sorry for the brief crit this time.
Cheers.

Eelis Kyttänen

May 23rd, 2012, 05:48 PM

Bham, I am just throwing this here quickly, a follow-up from the thumbs:

http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/144/5/a/chunk_of_miniature_environments_by_eeliskyttanen-d50ymy0.jpg

Will take a peek into your new posts tomorrow!

Wheeljack18

May 24th, 2012, 11:01 AM

These look great Ellis. You are improving with every new piece. I think 1-3 and 6 are your most successful. I see hat you are posting on Deviantart quite a bit. What is your impression of the community over there?

Eelis Kyttänen

May 24th, 2012, 11:27 AM

Alright! Finally got time to write a bit more here.

@Wheel: Thanks, it felt really refreshing to be able to hit some other colour & lighting schemes than just normal white daylight. I am most probably going to take the 1th further. It needs some shaping to make the comp work better, but I am sure the finishing will be a fun ride. I feel real good about the others you mentioned too, personally I would probably prefer the fifth one a bit over the sixth. Most people have named 1, 2 and 5 as their favourites.

Some common probs among those I notice: A bit too diffused lighting there n here and some colour schemes could use a bit of more work. Also I could've been braver with the perspective & tried to get some mid-scaled compositions in too. Meaning, some images with more restricted space eg: cottage in a deep forest. It is actually an issue to me, because I find that kind of closer stuff rather hard, I'll take that problem on after this is done.

Mm, deviantart. From what I have gathered from my personal experiences and others's notes, I could really say that place is rather goody to gain up some fanbase (albeit young fanbase, but still fanbase). For work etc. all of the professionals I've seen commenting the issue have said they get absolutely no serious job offers from there. So to sum up, it is rather hobbyist place, stuff is all around et all, but it is good to get some fans. ;)

Oh, I am going to reserve my flight tickets to vancouver next weekend, probably around 16th of agust.

@eb, I'll write something up about those pieces as soon as possible! I really like your traditional work.

Wheeljack18

May 24th, 2012, 11:57 AM

Hey Eelis, Too bad you are not going to Van earlier as I'll be in town around the beginning of August for about 10 days. I have to be back home by the 15th so I guess we'll be missing each other. Any luck with finding a place yet?

Eelis Kyttänen

May 24th, 2012, 12:41 PM

Oh, you were around that early. The flight date is rather flexible for me though, and I would really like to meet up with ya and get some grip of the city. :) You are probably around the week 6.8-12.8? (or is it actually marked 8.12-8.6 in canada?) If yes, I can most probably travel during that week too.

No luck yet, but I have no worries about it really. Decided to find a suitable apartment just for myself first and then search for dog-friendly place while I am there & important that little chap in there later ;). Can't get a roomie because of that though. But yeah, keeping a close eye on the rents, also checking out how the train system works in the vancouver region, pondering if I could rent something just a bit outside the city, but yeah, not worried.

Eelis Kyttänen

May 27th, 2012, 01:27 PM

We moved our timetable discussion to private email, eb.

Alright, here's the current iteration of the top left of those thumbnails. It is still in the putting the exact composition/values/colours up, so no real detailing. Some problems I see: More contrast, stronger shadows because the light should be so..strong.

http://i.imgur.com/uUgSa.jpg?1

EDIT: Now that a day has passed I have came into conclusion that even though I like the colours I think the composition is just crap, boring and oversimiliar to some of my recent works. Back to the sketching table.

David Keen

May 29th, 2012, 05:24 AM

Eelis, that bunch of thumbs are absolutely rocking it! My favourites are 1, 2 & 6 but the first one is ahead by leaps and bounds. I see that you've decided not to push the piece any further but I'd encourage you to have another look at it and see which part of the composition are falling flat and try to address the issues. I feel that the left third of the image is the weakest part with some areas that don't have clear definition and are a little confusing for the viewer. I also wonder if placing a large object in the middle ground on the right might break up the composition a bit and create some variety. I think it would be a shame to give up on this one when to me there is a great piece here that just needs some extra love and attention to bring it out.

Eelis Kyttänen

May 29th, 2012, 10:46 AM

Thanks eb. I am still considering continuing with this overall comp even though I was pretty unconditional yesterday. I am just having this feeling at the back of my head that this looks too much like the last mountain picture with the gazer at the same area & vanishing mountainline at the left too.

Gotta figure it out.

Wheeljack18

May 29th, 2012, 12:46 PM

Hey guys,

I hope to post up some work for Daedelus sometime this week.

Anyways Eelis. I know you are done with the composition and you have decided to move on but you really need to finish it. Other wise you will end up with a large body of unfinished work which is good for nothing and will eventually start to demotivate you. The idea is to start a piece and finish it and learn from it and move on. The level of finish is up to you and it doesn't have to be a master piece. If you want to be a professional someday, you might as well start training for it now and put yourself ahead of your classmates. In the real world you can't say to an AD, I don't like where this is going so I'm just not going to finish it. I'm only saying this to you because I used to do the same thing and I ended up with a very thin portfolio coming out of school and it had a negative impact on my career. Who cares if it is great or not. Just finish it, move on, add it to your current portfolio and eventually replace it when you next paint something better. Who knows, you might end up liking it.

Anyways, that's my 2 cents for ya :)

Eb: When do you think we will see the next installment of your book cover series?

Cheers Fellas!

Eelis Kyttänen

May 29th, 2012, 01:06 PM

Darn, sorry wheel, you got me wrong. I think I am to blame for that since the edit I added to my original post kinda reads like I was just going to scrap it. I wasn't going to let it go at all, just trim the composition (even though more or less hugely) so that it would appear a bit more unique compared to my recent stuff.

So, I was extremely happy with colours, horse & man elements, body of water and a few of the mountains, but I hadn't thought out the composition well enough before I went on and posted it up. So I was definitely going to continue with the piece, but make some drastic changes to the overall composition.

I am indeed sorry if I came out with a bad attitude, but I swear it ain't the case here.

I understand when doing professional work to real clients you can't just do huge changes if your client has approved the preliminary stages, but I think I can give myself the freedom here, as you said there's no better learning than learning by making not-so-good pieces, learning from them and possibly going over and doing it again with the tweaks.

Oh, thanks for the job link you send me over email. Judging from it and a few others environment studio jobs I've looked up they really, really want someone with extra-skills like textures etc. too. I'll have to take a look into those thingies later on.

Cheers, hopefully you can post some stuff here soonish too, can't wait!

Wheeljack18

May 29th, 2012, 02:06 PM

Hah hah! We'll it wouldn't be the first time I misinterpreted something ;)

Sounds to me like you are on the right track then so I'll just stand by and wait for the next iteration.

Talk to you guys soon.

Eelis Kyttänen

May 30th, 2012, 02:08 PM

No worries Mike, I was very confusing myself!

Though, I'll admit your words about finishing things that you have started ring very true to me. I think we have talked about this before too, but I really have got that problem sometimes of letting go of works, not finishing em at all even if they are in later stages. I think I have kinda began to get rid of it, but there can never be enough reminders to me about that thing, because it is a real problem that could indeed hinge the progress.

On another note, I have been researching some pencil techniques lately, since I have never really paid much attention into the deeper stuff that it holds. Came across this real popular and probably real basic method, but of which I hadn't ever heard:

http://www.sightsize.com/castdrawing.html

Really widened up the possibilities of how the drawing progression with pencil can work, great stuff!

David Keen

May 31st, 2012, 10:37 AM

Oh man, I apologise as well Eelis. Text is so open to interpretation, it can get very confusing! I'm glad to hear you're going to keep working on the piece, it's gonna look awesome.

My stuff is coming along, I've had 50% of my assessment for the semester this week and it's been a complete nightmare! Thankfully all the graphic design stuff is pretty much out of the way and I should have a pretty solid 2 weeks to work on the paintings without a great deal of distraction.

I'll throw some updates up for the paintings over the weekend when I get a second.

I hope you guys are going well. :)

Wheeljack18

June 1st, 2012, 05:09 PM

Hey Guys,

I just did a major sketch dump on my blog and I also did a smaller update on my SB page. I don't want to hijack this thread and post all the stuff here but suffice it to say, I've been doing a lot of studies. For a more in depth story, you can read my blog. I'm also working on wrapping up the Sethlan but I'm having a hard time staying motivated. I think this one is a perfect example of why one should not leave a piece unfinished. It just drags at your neck until it is done. That and I have a couple of ideas that I want to run by you. I'll do a separate post on that soon. In the meantime, I'm posting one pic because I like it and I want to feel like I am contributing some art to this thread too :)

Eelis: I checked out that technique. Have you ever looked into Barque drawing? If not look it up as that method is a far superior and time tested method for learning and cast drawing. The barque method gives you tools to help you learn and figure out proportion while this method basically consists of "Sit and draw it until you get it right". This is one way to learn but let me compare it to learning to play the piano. Either you can learn by ear or by reading music. If you learn by ear, you know what sounds correct but you may not understand why a note is off nor would you be quite as able to explain it to someone else. When you learn by reading music, you understand all the technical things like scales and notes etc and you gain a language by which you can communicate music with others. Drawing by sight is the same as learning by ear. Some people learn best with this method but not me.

Once more, I've chipped in my 2 cents. You guys must get sick of my long tirades on art!

Eb:What does 50% of your assessments mean? Are you halfway through your semester? Finish Mid terms? Sorry, I just don't get Aussie Uni speak ;) lol. Post up what you can, when you can and we'll pitch in with a crit or two. Also, I re read the D and D art test brief and I think they do want you to do an Orc. Bah!

Wheeljack18

June 1st, 2012, 10:04 PM

Alright boys. Finally, we have a completed Sethlan for our fictional Mass Effect character design.

What do you think? I stuck to the last image and I did not clutter it up too much with extra stuff although that could be an upgrade. Altogether I think I over worked it for a concept.

You thoughts? C and C? I did not do a background because when I was talking with a concept artist at Bioware, one of the things he suggested was that I did not do the background as well as put more effort into details, texture/ materials.

Thanks :)

David Keen

June 2nd, 2012, 10:50 AM

Mike, I looked through your sketchbook post and am now feeling very guilty about the amount of study I've been getting done recently. I've been feeling this way for a while and a few days ago decided to draw up a monthly checklist for charting my the time I dedicate to personal work. Hopefully this will make me a little more accountable and help me set aside time for personal projects. In my last post when I spoke about 50% of my assessments being completed I mean't that last week I handed up almost half my major assignments for the semester and will hopefully have a little breathing room now. After the 13th of July I'll be done with uni for six weeks and will be trying to make up for lost time on Daedelus projects.

I think the Sethlan has turned out very well, he holds true to the brief and the rendering looks good. The texture work is especially effective, it enhances the piece but doesn't dominate the whole image. The advice from the guy at Bioware makes a lot of sense, probably something we should all think about in our future concept art pieces.

Below are some scans of two of the final drawings for my paintings and a colour comp of the second painting. There were some changes that I would have liked to have made to the drawings but simply didn't have time to execute. Rest assured that all your crits are present in my mind and will be carefully considered as I get into the paintings. The colours for the image are proving a real nightmare though, this is the third attempt I've made at sorting out the colour scheme. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

I hope you guys are well!

David Keen

June 2nd, 2012, 10:57 AM

Ps the colour sketch it only intended as a way to work out the colour placement and I haven't paid any attention to the anatomy of the figures which is why they look a little funky. :)

David Keen

June 3rd, 2012, 09:25 AM

After seeing Mike's finished Sethlan I decided to use my spare time today to go back and do a few more little sketches. I really enjoyed doing these and it was interesting to note which ones flowed onto the page without any effort and those that had to be laboured on. I'll bet you can guess the two that gave me the most trouble!

David Keen

June 4th, 2012, 09:13 AM

Hey guys. here is an update on the current painting. For a first pass on the background I was pretty pleased, I can't wait to get into figure town tomorrow!

Wheeljack18

June 4th, 2012, 12:42 PM

Wow! look at all the activity. Daedelus has been revived!;)

So Eb likes the Sethlan I did. GREAT! No changes then? How about you Eelis?

Eb's Sethlan: It's good to see you are still interested on this one. Do you think that you might want to eventually finish it? If you do, go back and re read your brief because you emphasized that he needs some sort of air filtration system and I only saw that on one or two pieces. Still, it's good to see you back concepting again. Post more as they come

Eb Paintings:

The image looks good so far and I'm jealous that you have such a clean and organized workspace! The background seems to be coming along nicely and before I remark, I'd like The nature painter of the group Eelis to Chime in with his two cents. The only thing that stands out to me at this juncture is the floaty guys shoulders are still Way off. Are you planning to fix that in the painting later on? Let me know if you want some direction on that.

Great work EB I'm inspired.

Eelis Kyttänen

June 4th, 2012, 03:42 PM

I am real glad to see you guys have had some free time to do some stuff for good ol' Daedelus! Such a sprinkle of activity and artistic glamour! Great!

#Wheel: Oh, Barque drawing is an actual technique? I have seen that thread about barques on art discussion forums here and just tought it meant drawing some baroc plate series with extreme detail. Got that idea without any googling, how off can one be? ;) I'll check it out immediately!

Good point about techniquess usefulness being related to the person in question. I should really keep on exploring different techniques and styles and see what comes out of it. Don't really know what fits me best yet, haven't really given a tought about it for some reason.

The sketch you posted is goody. I really like the linework, that's something I should really work on with pencils. Also checked your SB, great deal of studies indeed! Makes me also a bit remorseful that I haven't really done real figure drawing & learning ever, even though I am environment oriented.

I am hoping to pick up a life-drawing figure class outside of school when I get to Vancouver for that purpose!

About sethlan, great that you were able to finish it. Dragging of projects can be a real nuisance indeed. I quite agree that putting more effort into the character and just leave background to none was quite good decision, even though I always like to see how artists solve the challenge of fitting a character into the background and vice versa.

@Eb: Glad to hear your uni year is approaching it's closure. How many years do you have left currently? I found that scheduling myself really works out well, but I don't like to keep it too strict.

And WHOA, Eb, that painting in process, the colours are real, real great. You have also managed to capture clouds & smoke quite well, especially if you meant it to be heavy. I also like how you knew to add that white space behind the right floating guy's head, that's a great way to attract some attention to it.

Alright, some probs though. The anatomy of the hills could use some rehashing the next time. Right now they appear quite flat and oddly connected. I see you have had great deal of references when you build up your characters, it's real important to ref the background too. For example, take a peek here, it is not quite the composition you have painted, but has some resemblances: http://www.albertbierstadt.org/Liberty-Cam--Yosemite.html
Apart from the anatomy and texture of such a cliff/hill, notice how the cliff in the left gets behind the cliff in the right? That's one great technique to create some depth, and would probably work real nice in your piece too.

You have some athmospheric perspective going on, which is good. However, in this case it is a bit too strong, as the hills aren't that far back and clouds are blocking most of the sky. That brings us to another problem at hand, the colours. I really like what you did with the colours up high, but the blue glow in the bottom kinda disorients me. Where is it coming from? Clouds should be blocking off most of the light, so the bottom should be quite dark and rather same colour as the sky. Keep in mind how light bounces off objects and causes colour to transfer too, even though it is one of the hardest things to predict when speaking of colour theory.

You could also probably enhance the feeling that the front figures are on a ledge of a deep chasm. Some tricks like darkening the foreground and/or adding some dead looking foliage could do a few tricks, but the best way is really to observe the real nature and how the masters have done it before. :)

Feel free to be real critical to what I have posted above, because it definitely isn't a professional opinion such as Mike's. I am happy to be able to contribute with some critics this time. You both do so much of figure & character work, and I am real poor with those, thus can't really give any good opinions. So, more environments & backgrounds peeps so I can do some writing. ;)

@personal: I didn't have very much time in the weekend to chime into the orange rocks project, both days were full of high school graduation party preparations and such. However, I was able to make some progress with it, and I am quite happy how it is rolling now. I will post the next iteration tomorrow.

And once again, great to see you both so active again, even if just for a while.

Eelis

EDIT: Ohop, I forgot to add that I bought a domain recently: www.eelisk.com
I haven't been able to build up the site yet, but hoping to do it soonish.

Wheeljack18

June 4th, 2012, 10:02 PM

Eb Crit:

What Ellis Said. lol I think Eelis did a great job talking about the background stuff so I won't go there. Good job Eelis! What I want to talk about is design. This all your own personal aesthetic but I want to challenge you to think about it and I'm going to point out a few things and I want you to consider them.

Exhibit 1: Background shape pattern. What does that look like to you?

Exhibit 2: Character Shape Pattern: Notice the arrow shapes and how they work against each other?

Exhibit 3: Patterns combined: Now what do you think? How well do the patterns work together?

Exhibit 4: Shape Notes and Eye Guides.
Pink Arrows: These indicate the viewers eye as it goes through the characters. You have a circle in the characters action which works real nicely. Well done. But.. notice the area near the lower character's right hand. See how it points down and away and how the curve of the cloak leads you off the canvas? Now we already have a nice story element at the hand and the legs take it up from there and lead you back into the page. In most cases you can stop here and be fine but if you want to take it further, maybe you could add another element to bring the viewers eye back in? Maybe a random fold in the cloak or an arrow shaped break in the background smoke?

Green Arrows and lines:
The curves of the hills are pointing directly to the character in the foreground and serve to lead you in. When I get to his left arm area I am really distracted by it and the negative shape in the corner. It's too much of a curve. It is boring and it is empty. It is useful space and the shape makes another arrow which can lead your eye off of the canvas. I drew in a black line to indicate his arm going off camera and a blue shape to demonstrate the arrow the new negative shape makes. Now we have two shapes which point to the focal point in the image. Two is better than none right? Also, think about your body, when you get startled, do you only react with your right side? This is an illustration so why not use every tool you can in order to tell the story.

Blue Shapes: Possible fixes to enhance the movement on the canvas.

I want you to look critically at the shape design of this piece and some of the elements that I am pointing out. For a student piece, you are already way ahead of the game when it comes to compositional design so don't kill yourself over this. The thing is, you should be thinking about these things and their impact on the image as a whole. Rarely do you get the time in the real world to work these things out to your hearts content but with practice, you will start to apply these principles to your work with little effort. The trick will then be to come up with an interesting composition or to take an AD's direction and make it interesting and do it all within your time constraints. When you figure it out you can let me know

There already is a lot of movement in this piece but I want to encourage you to be aggressive and confident in your mark making. I think it will help to enhance the feeling of surprise you are going for, especially in the foreground character.

Lastly: I am having a problem with the tiered curve shapes your background is making. They are flattening out the canvas and work horizontally against a vertical image. The top curve is nearly directly parallel from the floating guys head. You might consider dropping that shape to below his shoulder. I think that this could create more depth and create another triangular shape on the right side and a more triangular composition would give your image more vertical thrust.

I hope that you find this helpful and I look forward to the next iteration.

Eelis: Have fun at your grad and be safe! I ended my grad night wearing a kilt and jumping over hedgerows to hide from rednecks... heh heh Long Story there

You are only just starting your art education so don't beat yourself up. I didn't do any figure drawing or any real serious study until I hit art College so you are already ahead of me. If you don't get to have figure drawing sessions in school then yes you should sign up for some outside of class but I would be shocked if you didn't spend at least 2-4 weeks in your first year doing figure drawing. It's such a fundamental exercise and I have never heard of an art school that did not make it a mandatory part of their first year curriculum. Try every technique you can and never stop learning. I consider myself a lifelong student and so should you. This goes for your too Eb! Don't let yourself get caught in a rut and experiment with new medias and techniques. I never want to be that guy who gets pigeon holed into doing the same work for 30 years and never gets to branch out and try new things. For me, that would feel to much like a manufacturing job.

Enough lectures, Great work everybody. Let's keep this activity rolling along!

Cheers

David Keen

June 5th, 2012, 09:58 AM

Guys, what amazing crits! Thank you very much for all the time you spent preparing them.

@Eelis: You are totally right about needing to reference my background. It was a pretty cheeky move trying to get away with vague impressions and I can honestly say I was feeling a little guilty the whole time. I spent some time having a look around today for reference and Bierstad is such a treasure trove of mountain paintings that I pulled up the google art project and zoomed in on some points of interest. I've gone ahead and made some changes to the mountains, making them overlap and breaking up the shape into something a little less stereotypical. I think you're also dead on regarding the light and the way the blue sits in the image. I've tried to bring a little more of the skylight into the mountains and fog but am reluctant to completely paint over the blue glow, I think it adds and otherworldly feel which suits the mood but I do need to work out a story for where the light source really is. I'm going to look into adding a little more interest to the foreground once this layer has dried, so far I've just darkened a few areas but some plants will be incoming soon.

I really appreciate your input so please never be shy in giving me some pointers on what you're seeing in an image. Although I know environments are your speciality you're artistic eye will always see things you think work and don't work in any piece. Awesome crit buddy! :D I've got just over another 2 years left of uni here in Aus, but with aspirations to do more study overseas who knows how long it will actually be!? How long will your course in Canada be? How far away is the move now?

@Wheels: You are totally right about that left arm! I can't believe I hadn't seen how weird that little space was. As you said, it leads into a dead zone that breaks up my flow and that is as bad for compositions and it is for free style rappers! I'm now waiting for the paint to dry before I put the characters in over the top but I'll be sure to reposition the left arm and add an extra fold onto the cloak on the right side. You'll be the first one I call once I've discovered the holy grail of masterful composition and workflow but until then I'm glad for the little pieces I'm picking up and for Successful Drawing which arrived the other day!

I'm still interested in trying to finish the Sethlan piece when time permits. It's probably going to be a little tight until these paintings are done but after that it'll be go time to get some portfolio pieces done before the workshop in July. It was refreshing to take a break from all the composition work and just focus on a single figure again. I think my appreciation for the difference between concepting and full illustrations is becoming a little more solid as I work on these paintings.

Everyone: What is the next move for Daedelus projects? Should we set another brief now so you guys can get cracking on the next thing and I can catch up when I get a little time? I'd be really keen to get an enviro piece as set by Eelis. Have you got anything you've been waiting to have a crack at Eelis? Thanks again for the crits guys. Sorry for the crappy photo for the update, the paint is starting to dry in places so the surface lighting is a little inconsistant for my phone camera.

Wheeljack18

June 5th, 2012, 01:00 PM

Hey guys,

Good work Eb, keep it coming. For me, I have a few days of down time before some assignments kick in and I was thinking about doing the art Order D & D challenge. I want to tackle the Monster cook. My idea is to illustrate a Gnoll cook in his shack on a rainy miserable day. That or I'd like to do a Redo of a classic Forgotten Realms Novel from the 90's Azure Bonds. These are the ideas on my mind at the moment. The main goal is to add another piece to my portfolio. I want to have some cover illustration examples, Mood/ Key frame illustration and of course, more concept work.

Your thoughts?

David Keen

June 6th, 2012, 09:39 AM

@Mike: I agree that it's a good idea to try and get something together for the artorder challenge. I'll have another look through the brief and see what takes my fancy. From the ideas you've listed I'd be most interested in seeing you have a crack at the redo of Azure Bonds, that cover looks right up your alley and is prime for a new interpretation. How far do you want to push the design of your version? A completely new composition and character designs or something that sticks closer to the original? Looking forward to seeing you work through this one.

@Eelis: How's your painting from earlier going? Are you still chipping away at it? I'm excited to see the final.

Wheeljack18

June 6th, 2012, 12:39 PM

Hey Fellas,

I just picked up 3 gigs so don't Expect too much Deadelus work but I will share what I can ongoing.

I'm torn between the Azure Bonds and the Gnoll Cook. I will do both eventually. For Azure Bonds, I would keep the character design because it is so Iconic( to me). I would modernize it and I've already got the model picked out. The thing that lacks the most in the original I think is movement. The whole composition is vertical and static. Let's see some action! Let's see some energy! Not just a babe in a chain mail bikini. To prep for it I'm going to re-read the novel and try to come up with some ideas. Currently I'm reading " A Princess of Mars" by Edgar R Burroughs. Great book and just the Pulpy space odessy I was craving. Give it a shot if you are so inclined. I must say that the new cover is illustrated by Kekai Kotaki and it's sub par compared to most of his work. It's as though he submitted a concept or only half completed the image. Worse yet is the creature on the cover is either a white ape or a Thark but either way you can tell that he didn't even google the character descriptions because he's way off. Eb, when you go to his lecture, you should work up the guts to challenge him on that and ask him why he half assed the gig? Maybe in a more PC manner but I would be interested to hear an explanation.

Cheers!

Eelis Kyttänen

June 6th, 2012, 02:56 PM

Ohhhooo, I am back!

@eb: No probs, it was great to help ya out. And darn, those changes you made are really fabulous. The image reads a lot better now. It was a good move to open up the sky a bit, the blue glow looks alot more seamless now and I agree that you should keep it. The lightsource seems pretty strong, so you could probably try to enhance the highlights just a bit there and here.

Bierstadt's works are great. He was a member of that Hudson River School group. Their trademark is that luminous light, so easy to recognize. ;)

Yeah, why not more studies while grabbing up connections and such (if that's your goal). "Master of" sounds real neat! The canadian bachelor's program is four year one too, then master was somewhere around 2 or 3. I'll be moving real early in August, so about exactly two months to go!

Would be fun to do a Daedelus project again in the future when we all got time for it. I am open to everything, so let's see when all of us have some free space in our schedules. Personally I would like to do some Urban/rural cityscape or close/mid-view picture of a forest of sort.

@Mike: No probs. Work before leisure!
Thanks about the grad warning. Actually, I am such an oddbird absolutist, so I just end up taking care of others if needed. ;) Sounds like you had quite an adventure there then, can't even imagine.
And yeah, I might come across as rather critical fellow to my own doings, but actually it is just honest enthuasism over things I am yet to try & should be doing more. I don't stress about it, but really want to just do as much effective learning & such as I possibly can. On a note, I have looked into courses that I will be taking next fall, and found out I can include this real neat sounding course:http://www.ecuad.ca/programs/courses/ILUS/200/S001 Can't wait to tackle that! However, it seems likely that this is the only course I'll be able to fetch that really dwells into the technical side of things. What I have gathered the core visual arts stuido course is really artsy art course. Seems likely I'll have to attend a group outside of school. Could be even more benefical though.

And as you said, gotta keep on moving with the tech and mediums. Especially between mediums for me, since I do way too much digital stuff.

Oh, that Kotaki stuff sounds rather weird. Is it this cover? http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GZ3lVTMsCCk/TsaBHNmPsHI/AAAAAAAAAeA/P1v6_irEeNI/s1600/kekai.jpg

@Personal: Alright! Here's the last iteration of the composition of the orange rock image. I will plunge into the details now. I am rather bad portraying real contrast drama in the finished comp plans, so it should get better when I get the detailing done.

http://a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/252737_4162905157349_2069305731_n.jpg

Either way I'll want to start taking my paintings to a more realistic approach á la Bierstadt and co. Meaning, I want the whole scapes to look more believeable in their core, the placement of elements and such. It is of course the sum of overall.

I am going break the ledge gazer loop the next time and do something mid-sized with absolutely ZERO mountains. But before that, I'll render this and do some masterstudies!

Eelis

Wheeljack18

June 7th, 2012, 12:04 AM

That's the kekai image Eelis. Not his best work by a long shot and I'm being harsh because I respect his work and I hate seeing guys cut corners. I'm sure there is a reason but I'm not happy with the cover. Both as a fan of the series and a follower of the artist.

I checked out that course description you posted and it doesn't say much about the actual course content. When you touch down in Vancouver and get settled at EC. Make an appointment with a councilor and go over your schedule with that person and let them know what your art goals are. It's their job to help you get the most out of your education so don't be shy about it.

Eelis Kyttänen

June 9th, 2012, 09:27 AM

Mm, from what I gathered, it is kinda open-style course with loads of back n forth criticism. But yeah, I definitely have to speak up with guidance councilor to make the best possible choices. A pretty big pile of money is at stake. ;)

Anyways, I've quite completed the rendering now to the best of my ability. I am however waiting for a pretty probable paint-over in one live stream next wednesday to add the finishing touch. The snowy ridge area on the right still bugs the hell out of me. I'll do some masterstudies and speedpaints meanwhile. Going to do something pretty different from my usual stuff the next time, so watch out!

Everything looks so much better in the thumbnails ;)

Wheeljack18

June 9th, 2012, 11:08 AM

Hey Eelis,

Are you ready to branch out and do something more figurative yet? If not, I'd like to see you take a shot at the industrial /city environment scene you mentioned. I'd like to see a dramatic alleyway or an old condemned building. OR.. you could try something based off of a fictional setting.

Cheers!

David Keen

June 9th, 2012, 11:59 AM

Hey guys, I've been busily painting away and am starting to make some progress on the figure. I think I've addressed the issues with his shoulder size but if it's still looking funky to you guys let me know.

That piece of Kekai's does look pretty average for him. I think that could be a draw back of using concept artists for illustration jobs. Many concept artists natural workflow is to work pretty loosely, only picking out details that are integral to the design for that particular asset. I could see that being a difficult habit to break and having consistent rendering for a full piece might prove challenging. Bit of an orange overload as well, the world is on fire!!! If I get an opportunity I'll try and ask him about it at the workshop.

@Eelis: There is a lot to like about your most recent iteration of the mountain piece but I'm not sure about the changes to the shape of the peaks. The two sides of the mountain now look pretty symmetrical in their gental curving shape. I think having one a bit more angular might create some more visual interest in that area. Is the paintover you're waiting on from the Awesome horse guys? Man, if Noah Bradley has a crack at this piece I'm sure you'll get some amazing pointers!

Looking forward to seeing more work guys. Good luck with all the new work Mike.

Eelis Kyttänen

June 9th, 2012, 12:56 PM

Yeah, from amazing horse peeps. :) They were going to do it a few weeks ago, but sadly due to some sound problems that session was cancelled. So I am keeping my fingers crossed for next week's. I've gotta say that team awesome fb group is pretty darn good place, have got loads of great pointers & things. I actually didn't realize you were in it too, eb, good to see you there too!

As said I am not dat good with figures, but to me the head itself looks a bit too big compared to the rest of the body. It ain't that bad though. One bigger problematic point that I could foresee could be that you paint the floating figure too bright considering the lightsource. Currently the foreground itself is pretty dark. However, you could have one awesome dramatic effect if you limit the brightly illuminated area to his upper body as if the light is blocked partially by something in the rightside. I really digg how you are matching the character's colours with the background though!

Yeah, the peaks. I get that same feeling too. Been referencing and referencing but I have some real bad problems with this particular piece it seems. ;) I'll try to do something to make em distinctly asymmetrical. Thanks eb!

@wheel: I am definitely going to do something with figures now, but not as a standalone. Going to incorporate some directly into a landscape piece, but the knack is that the landscape view will indeed be a mid-sized this time, so no huge open backgrounds with mountains and stuff. I am shooting to something like this: http://mv.cgcommunity.com/images/valleyscene.jpg. I am going to keep this one rural still, but with some structures that will be the second focus. I'll be doing a few studies and speedpaints before going into that though, plus thumbnails et cetera. Going to finish the red rock painting too hopefully before that.

Even though doing environments is really my thing, I have got this growing interest to do real illustrations with full backgrounds & figures. That means though that I'll have to start some standalone figure practice's too.

Eelis Kyttänen

June 9th, 2012, 08:17 PM

Dropping this here quickly before bed. Also added description from team awesome:

"Ere we go. I took a little break from the orange mountains picture and came up with this. I have the composition ready now and entering the rendering phase. I am not sure if I should keep the foreground tree or not, if I do I 'll add another figure.
Otherwise I don't really have anything special I would want some crits about, so please bring on any issues at hand."

http://i.imgur.com/s6Z8s.jpg

Eelis Kyttänen

June 10th, 2012, 08:23 AM

Alright, here's some progress with rendering. Haven't got that far yet, this'll take some time. I also realize the foreground cloud part is rather meh, getting the figure fleshened out & some points of interest into the clouds should help. But next I am going to dwell in the sky and clouds because I detest it. The placement will stay the same though.

Oh, and I hooked in another monitor. This is just awesome.

http://i.imgur.com/eMyAl.jpg

David Keen

June 10th, 2012, 12:14 PM

Here's the work of today. I'm going to have a break from that figure for a while now, I'll block in the rest of the image and then come back to adjust some issues if time permits. Although there are a few glaring things ie adjusting the flesh tones, fixing hand anatomy and reducing some of the blue light effect I'm reasonably pleased with how things are looking overall.

Great point about the light source Eelis, because the figures are closest to the viewer the contrast should be at its max but I think you're right and some areas of the fog should be adjusted to make things fit better. The issue of the head size may come back to the shoulders again. The figure is somewhere around seven heads tall so I don't think that is the problem I was thinking perhaps his right shoulder needs to come up a bit and be widened out a touch? Also, RED KNUCKLES!! I might tone those down just a bit..

What happened to doing more of a mid range enviro Eelis? When you mentioned a tighter image I envisioned something more like either of these paintings, http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Eiwce13X738/Rr3j0TsBGmI/AAAAAAAAADU/ANKScsSOUPY/s1600/Trail2theBeaverDam.JPG http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Eiwce13X738/RrNfjzsBGeI/AAAAAAAAACU/5DzwmVbKE9E/s1600-h/Cabin+at+Platte+Clove+copy.JPG The temple on a mountain is a cool subject. I wonder if you lowered the mountains on the right side if that would make the temple seem more impressive and help it dominate the composition? At the moment they're roughly the same height and just like the mountains in my painting it makes the composition seem unnaturally balanced. I really like the way the foreground is looking at the moment, I'd definitely keep the tree and try and bring it in really dark and create a cool spindly silhouette shape in that space.

Wheeljack18

June 10th, 2012, 02:15 PM

Ok Fellas, here goes my observations.

Eelis:
I like this piece and where you are going with it. I've done a quick paint over to highlight my thoughts.

Eb already remarked on the parallel mountain/ castle shapes so I won't say any more on that. It balance the image out too much.

I wrote in some sight line comments which demonstrate how the viewers eye is led by the negative shapes.

Lighting: The sun is to the left and is striking the left rear of most structures but not at all on the foreground elements. The castle would not be casting a long shadow on the foreground with that light source so it should be receiving more light unless there is something in the way off camera. I roughly painted in some light spots to show you what I mean.

The biggest issue I have is the gap between the foreground and the background. There is nothing to connect the two and you end up with a big dark gap. It reads too much like two separate images instead of one unified piece. How do you think you could resolve this?

Eb:
I have a couple of paint over's for the figure.

Ver.01: Here I am pointing out some changes in the contour curvatures. You will note the differences and how they effect the flow and movement of the figure. You will also note that his shoulders are pointing in opposite directions. The right hand shoulder should be higher than the left hand, so should his shirt collar. The left arm is much bigger and longer than in the reference and consequently it is throwing off the shoulders because the angle is awkward.

Ver 2.0: Here you have a character that is about 7 heads high but is closer to 6 because of he foreshortening in the feet. I pointed out the shapes of the arms and note the variance in foreshortening from the reference to the painted image. Of particular note, you will see that your left arm and hand are much bigger than the reference. Particularly the fingers and the forearm width. Also there is one chest fold that is bothering me. It stands out too much like a blue shape on his chest instead of a fold in the cloth.

Ver3.0: Here I traced the reference and over layed that on top of your figure. I scaled it so that the head was approximately the same size as in the painting. I think that gives you a good idea about where you are off in comparison to the reference.

Heads: Here is a direct comparison between the ref and the painting. Note the difference in the contours and how the mouth planes on the painting extrude instead or recede. Note the eyes and their shape and direction. The painted one's eyes are looking away from each other. In general all of your features are larger than in the reference. What you get is a proper sized head with very large features.

Color wise you have some neat things going on but again this is where it would have been handy to have some color ref to work from. You are cooking up information based on what you think should be there instead of what you can see is there. IE: Pink and red Knuckles. For the next painting you do in this series. I highly recommend that you do a complete monochromatic under painting first to work out the values and then add your color and effects. It will make your life so much easier.

I think a big part of the problem starts with your reference. The lighting is soft and flat which gives you high contrast lights and dark but where are the edges? Note that in your painting you have added a lot more information and planes that do not exist in the reference. The ref is creating more work when it is supposed to help. It looks as if you are mixing elements from both pictures that you sent me but that is a tricky venture because you are left with a hybrid and are using parts that are out of perspective with one another. This is also throwing you off and also why it is difficult to pick up what the issues are. It's kinds of right but not ;) Believe me, I've been there too. You need to study more loomis and structure before you can do this effectively and even then, why not just shoot the ref right the first time?

Using reference is a tricky thing and my advice at this stage is to pick one reference image and paint the figure based entirely off of that and if you need to, shoot more ref. I don't know much about the story but is this floaty guy a ghost? If so, you can potentially fix some things by painting them out and making him look more ethereal.

This is one of those learning experiences where it would have been easier to work out all of these things in the drawing stage before you went into paint. Don't be discouraged though. Think about how good it will feel to finish this piece and how much you have learned. When it comes to learning how to paint, it's all about the journey and not the destination.

Keep up the good work fellas. I hope that my crits don't come off as too harsh because they are not meant to be taken that way. Just trying to help.

Cheers!

Eelis Kyttänen

June 10th, 2012, 02:50 PM

Thanks for the paintover mike! Almost everyone has pointed out those two problems, unlit foreground and empty mid, so I am definitely going to tackle them. I want to keep the foreground somehow dark though, so planning to just add a few, but very strong, highlights to the top half of the figure (when fleshed out), then to tree and maybe a bit to the rocks. I am also planning currently some rising structures, maybe tops of a bridge or something similar to give the gap a little more life. You are right that in it's current form it separates the picture into two.

However, that parallel stuff you both mentioned is great observation, because nobody else has mentioned it yet! I kinda want to keep the right top closed off, so instead of lowering the cliffs I might add some heavy clouds. But I ain't sure about it yet, posting the version with that fix tomorrow, let's see if it helps!

Also, the leading the eye. I think I came up with quite good fix to that, going to add a horizontal structure, not too big, to the point where the cliff currently carries the eye out. Should do the trick.

@eb: About the mid-size. I am taking it slowly. This one, even though plays with sizes, is already a leap towards more tight scene. Also, the figure is going to be real detailed and one of the tallest I've ever done. I am also going to add another figure now that I decided to keep the tree.

&Red knuckles. Just great! ;)

Thanks a ton both of you!

And boy I am glad the perspective is working quite well. The last time I tried to do a taller structure was a real disaster: http://eeliskyttanen.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d4p9e7n

David Keen

June 11th, 2012, 12:59 PM

Thanks for the fantastic feedback guys. I decided to spend today getting as much of the second figure done as possible so I can spend the majority of the day tomorrow addressing problems and polishing. Unfortunately tomorrow is my final day before this painting is due for assessment but I'll obviously keep working on it after that to finish it off for portfolio duty.

Mike you have raised some excellent points especially about shooting reference and getting it done right. The whole experience has taught me a lot and I'll be taking a slew of new objectives with me next time I'm using models. Of the issues you raised the right arm and the face seem to be the really obvious problem areas that I'll be sure to look at tomorrow, I'll try to bring some of those natural curves back in as well. Doing a full illustration in oils has helped to clarify the pros and cons of working traditionally vs digitally. I need to keep developing my process for some of the techniques I took for granted when painting digitally, ie flipping the canvas, value layer and anatomy checks. Seeing the paintovers you've done Mike have helped remind me that using the digital tools is only a photograph away and is well worth investing the time.

If you guys could do me the favour of having one more look at this before my final painting day tomorrow I would really appreciate it. Thanks again for all the time spent putting together the crits, they've made a huge difference to the direction of this painting.

p.s. holy red cape batman! (this is one of those times that a hue and saturation tool would come in handy)

p.p.s. his right arm is my favourite part of the whole painting, look at those saucy folds.

Wheeljack18

June 11th, 2012, 02:17 PM

EB: Top image reads very cool and the bottom image is much warmer. I think I am not getting an accurate version of what you intend for the colors on this image.

Is any of the blue light that is playing on the floating guy going to show up on the red cape guy?

Red cape guy: The bridge of his nose reads too high. Drop it so that it intersects with his eyes and push the tip of the nose out further just a hair. He just looks too Greek to me.

Bright light source in the bottom left. Is that reflected light? Will it cast onto the floating guy?

At this stage of the game you just need to wrap it up. The red cape looks nice so far but you have not paid the same attention to the lower right side as you have to the hood. I expect that you will attend to that soon.

The piece looks nicely unified and my only suggestion is to consider all of your light sources as you wrap it up.

Race to the finish Time!

Eelis: Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Cheers boys!

Eelis Kyttänen

June 12th, 2012, 02:29 PM

Phew, coming up with something fitting with that cloudy lower-midground is proving harder than I imagined. Might take a bit more time than I anticipated.

Eelis Kyttänen

June 13th, 2012, 02:31 PM

Righto, here's the newest iteration. I've loosely painted in the fixes I am planning to make. Everything else should be there expect the blockade of the right cliffside that leads the eye out. What do you think? I am quite happy how showing a bit of the lower ground works out here. Still need to efficiently separate the main foreground though.

http://i.imgur.com/LfSys.jpg

I am off to draw some deer now, would really want to be able to draw animals nicely, especially with pencil.

Oh, and my study permit was approved. That's the end of bureaucratic involved in this operation. ;)

David Keen

June 14th, 2012, 09:06 AM

Your foreground fixes are looking good Eelis, the image looks more cohesive now. The little hints of bright highlights could probably be made heavier to create some more varied shapes in that space. The front side of the building and mountain facing the figure still looks a little bit plain to me, I think you could use that spot to break up the repeated triangular forms with a curve or diagonal linking the figure and the temple. How do people ascend the mountain to get to the buildings at the top? Could you put a really awesome staircase or possibly alien system of climbing the mountain there? I really like the composition overall but that would be a really good spot to add some more interesting architecture. The temple is looking a little crooked to me at the moment, like it's leaning to the left a bit. It may just be a trick of my eyes but could be worth looking into and double checking on. I'd also think about giving the temple a little more headroom at the top of the painting, the tip of the tower is almost touching the edge of the page. Great colour palette! Maybe add a couple more cool tones and you'll be golden!

Thanks for the final feedback on the painting Mike. I've attempted to keep the light sources in check but it's possible things got a little out of hand towards the end :$ I'll borrow a friends camera and take a photo of the final so you guys can check it out. I think I'll move onto one of the other paintings for a bit now and then revisit this one once I've had a little space from it.

I did a couple more head sketches for the Sethlan character. Any decent ones in this batch? I'll do a little more reference hunting tomorrow and come up with a few more with clearer inspirations. Loving all the Daedelus activity!

Eelis Kyttänen

June 14th, 2012, 06:05 PM

Eb, I will answer to you tomorrow! Real late, played around with colour balance, I kinda like it, but what do you think?

http://i.imgur.com/qhpud.jpg

Eelis Kyttänen

June 15th, 2012, 07:51 PM

Sorry eb, have to postpone the naswer to your crit to yet another day. :( Completely forgot!

This thing is starting to near it's finish. What do you think of the figure? I've laid the basic things out for it.

http://i.imgur.com/mua70.jpg

Wheeljack18

June 16th, 2012, 11:43 AM

Hey Fellas,

Sorry for the absence but things have been busy around here.

Eelis: Good work on the scene and I like how you resolved the dead space between the foreground and the background.
The gesture is nice but I want to challenge you on the story behind the character making the gesture. Once you throw a person in the image, you are now dealing with an illustration and you need to consider these things. Think about it and how that information could effect the out come of this image.

How far do you plan on taking this image? Is it almost done to your satisfaction? For your next photoshop painting, I suggest that you play around with your mark making and vary it up. Try different brushes and push your ability to indicate texture. You should check out Whit Brachnia's tutorials on painting that you can download from Massive Black. I think they would be right up your alley and they come with his brush sets etc.

Eb: Nice to see you doing some concept work again. I'd like to see you polish up a drawing to show us what you are thinking instead of only indicating what you are thinking. Take it to the next level! :)

Cheers fellas!

Eelis Kyttänen

June 16th, 2012, 12:32 PM

Alright! So, Eb. thanks for those notions. There seems to indeed be somekind of a prob with a perspective, but it doesn't seem to be too bad. Tried some hotfixes, too late to do anything real groundshaking now, but you are definitely right. You were also right about no cool tones, I had noticed it myself, but for some reason just went on and didn't care. I played out with the colour balance settings, and added some nice blues!

I kept the small gap between the top of the screen and the citadel, didn't feel it was too much of a prob.

Anyways, I am ready now. And DARN I learnt a lot about rendering. This is probably the first piece ever I've really taken on with as tight rendering as possible. Next stop is a masterstudy, then a few speedpaints and batch of thumbnails. And this time it //will// be close quarters, no distant horizons!

Speaking of textures and custom brushes, I just ordered this book: http://parkablogs.com/content/book-review-digital-painting-techniques-practical-techniques-of-digital-art-masters Goes into great detail of how to make em, and then how to apply textures nicely and so on. Textures will definitely be my next big stop. Though I'll definitely stay away from overdoing them. Just a few there n here, where they belong to.

Another big point coming up next is the story aspect. It isn't clear in this one either, but it is improvement. I'll really keep that in mind for the next piece.

I'll try to answer to your last email today, sorry for taking so long!

The Return: http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/168/9/b/the_return_by_eeliskyttanen-d53sxd1.jpg

David Keen

June 17th, 2012, 10:17 AM

I'm so glad holidays have finally rolled around, now I've got some time to get some Daedelus work done. I've been feeling guilty about my quick read through Figure Drawing For All It's Worth so now I'll be spending two hours a day working through all the exercises in the book. Already I feel like a lot of my observed knowledge about the figure has been wiped away and replaced with something much more concrete, having a few rules to fall back on feels good! I also want to get a few more pieces done before I get to the Sydney workshop on the 1st of July so the Sethlan project is the first one on the chopping block. Today I settled on the general look and feel of the characters head and went ahead with a bit of a costume. The balance of Mass Effecty looking armour and little gathered odds and ends feels about right to me. I wanted to push the line in the brief about the Sethlans being technologically augmented so I hinted at a bit of an exoskeleton (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2004-03-10-exoskeleton-walker_x.htm) type thing for the legs, which will help them to move quickly and bear heavier loads. I'll do some more research into this component of the design and flesh it out more in the next version.

Eelis: Your final version looks good man, the colour palette has a lot more depth now. The hint of an entrance at the base of the tower helps the piece immensely. You've done well to make that space more interesting. What're you going to move onto next? Maybe you could have another look at the D&D (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/feature.aspx?x=dnd/feature/dndarttest) art test and see if you could tackle a piece for that and take advantage of getting some feedback from top level professionals.

Mike: I hope you're surviving! :)

Eelis Kyttänen

June 17th, 2012, 02:42 PM

Thanks eb. I am definitely happy how this turned out. I am going to ask for some views from environment professionals, hopefully getting that longawaited paintover too, so I know where to improve next.

On an odd sidenote, by DA skyrocketed:

http://eeliskyttanen.deviantart.com/art/The-Return-308719333

Keeps the motivation to improve up among plenty of other things. :)

So, eb, next stop. I am going to paint a close-quarter masterstudy of nature first, don't know whose yet, but I am scanning through the list right now. Then a few quick speedpaints and one batch of grayscale thumbs. All mid to close quarters in nature. And then, a rendered piece again.

Thanks for posting that D&D challenge again, I had forgotten about it. I think that I will still keep my hands of it though, because it seems to be aimed at those who are really looking to work with WotC, and I am not quite there yet.

Your plan about going through the book sounds good! It'll most probably help you immensely. That workshop is pretty soon too! Hopefully you'll learn loads from there too. Do they have some portfolio review thingy?

About sethlan: I saw this on awesome horse! Sorry for not commenting there yet, will try to remember later. Hopefully you'll get loads of crits there. I've got just one notion design vice, it kinda looks like a human now with a beard. Could you do something alien to the body too?

EDIT:

Decided to paint this one as a masterstudy: http://inetgrafx.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d1751uy
The guy behind it ain't an old master, but I've always liked this one after watching a sped up video of it's painting. Will be a though challenge with all that texture and foliage, but both of em are really what I am shooting for in my next piece anyway.

EDIT2:

Funny story right here. The registration for courses opened just 12 minutes ago, I had scouted the teachers in advance, and thought I had figured the best teacher for the visual arts core course. Seems like I was right, because the course went full one second after the reg opened, leaving all other visual art courses rather stranded. ;)

Sadly I wasn't fast enough either. :p

Wheeljack18

June 18th, 2012, 02:01 PM

Hey Guys,

Eelis:
Good to see that you've had such positive feedback from the DVA community. 3 pages! Nice. Any study is better than no study but this early in your student career, I think you would be best served by studying the Old masters first. It will better help you understand the new guys and why they do what they do. Too bad about not getting the classes you wanted but you'll figure out a way to adapt. No worries.

Eb: I'm surviving, Thanks!
Its good to see you concepting the Sethlan again but it still looks too much like a human with a squid on his face. Really play with it and push the design past your comfort zones and think more than draw. I drew inspiration from Beards, skulls, sponges and whale mouths for the Sethlan face. Step back again and maybe take a look at the Mass Effect Art of Books for some inspiration. They also really drew heavily on guys like Ralph Mcquarrie and Syd Mead for the look of the game.

How was the Green Light summit for you? Did you get much out of it?

Drawing from loomis seriously is the best thing you could do. It will give you tools that will help your drawing exponentially. I can't recommend what you are doing enough. Post up the studies when you get the time.

On a side note, I got over my stomach issues with Mass Effect and I've since played through 2 and 3 twice and I am wearing an N7 sweatshirt as we speak because I am such a nerd! I am so sad that it is over and the ending for ME3 was total Horse Shit! ALL of them.

Eelis Kyttänen

June 18th, 2012, 02:14 PM

Yeah, DA is so-so for any real critics and such, but imho it is good to have such a casual place for art, and you really get some honest appreciation there even if you aren't real good. This of course poses a trap, in which you can't see the problems in your work and respond harshly to anyone who tries to give you some real critique, especially a problem of younger chaps. Personally I've learnt to enjoy that place's good sides though, and it's real good area to pick up some fans. And nothing is better than an active fan. ;)

Anyways, I think you are probably right about doing old masters first. I, however, had some problems trying to find an interesting close quarter painting by them. Went through my list completely. I'll however do another round, because I feel you are right. Hopefully I'll be able to catch something interesting!

And whazaa? Glad to hear you were able to catch on with ME, it is neat franchise.

And noo, you shalt not dis ME3 ending. ;( It is all just a big misunderstanding, honestly!

On a more serious note, I haven't still decided if I liked the ending or not.

David Keen

June 19th, 2012, 09:23 AM

Today I had a glorious day of rest! It was really nice and I set out to not do any picture making at all and just decompress, but it didn't work! I still ended up doing an hour or so of Loomis drawing and decided to reboot on the Sethlan concept. You guys are both dead right that at the moment he's looking a lot like Zoidberg and the inspiration isn't coming from very many other sources. I've been going back through the archive of Awesome Horse live streams and stumbled across one working from Sterling Hundley's Ideation (http://sterlinghundley.tumblr.com/post/21322323099/ideation-video-from-sterling-hundley-faculty) technique (something you may have already seen Eelis). It seems like a interesting way to try and pull some contrasting elements into one piece so I'll continue working through it and post my progress along with my Loomis sketches tomorrow.

@Eelis: That's pretty cool about the DA buzz. I've never spent much time over there but have often heard what you guys stated, that it's more of a space for hobbyists than people working to go pro. Still a little ego boost here and there, especially when so many artists feel down on their work all the time is a nice change of pace.

I agree with Mike that it's probably best to focus on masters work at the moment. Pictures that are good enough to be considered the work of a classical master have so many layers to appreciate beyond having a good composition. Here are a few links to some master works that are a bit tighter than some of your other studies. The Stone Bridge (http://g.co/artproject/ct35), Villa in the Roman Campagna (http://g.co/artproject/sv9z), Embarkation of St Paula (http://g.co/artproject/vs2n). As a side note, it's a really good idea to try and do master studies from the reproductions on the google art project rather than random image searches. The art project trys to and stay as close to the original in colour reproduction as possible and as I'm sure you guys know the "diversity" in colour temperature and value on random websites is all over the place.

@Mike: I haven't actually seen much of the GLS yet because of the timing of all my assessments for uni. One of the sessions I did watch with John Stevenson who directed Kung Fu Panda was pretty fantastic. He focused on developing a narrative and techniques for collaborative story creation. I'm hoping to get through the rest of them over the coming weeks.

The Loomis drawing continues to be awesome, he presents everything so well and I've had a few "Ah ha!" moments already. I'll warm up the scanner tomorrow and post what I've done so far.

Glad to hear about your triumphant return to motion blur heavy gaming! I still haven't played the third one but will hopefully get around to it eventually. The second game completely blew my mind and I got fully wrapped up in the world and read every single codex entry I could find. Now I want some N7 swag. Massive nerds unite!

Eelis Kyttänen

June 19th, 2012, 09:56 AM

Oh yeah! I forgot. Thanks a lot Mike for uploading all that stuff to dropbox. It'll be real helpful!

@eb: Yeap, sometimes it is for the best to start over again, even though it is rather tedious sometimes. I am sure you'll get it right this time! Good idea to go through the old awesome horse streams too, I should do that myself also. If I recall right I indeed saw that Hundley episode live, it is an interesting technique.

Thanks a lot for those links! I'll scroll em through. Also got one maybe from Bierstadt's stuff again. And you are exactly right about google project, the colours are so off even on the artist's homepages. :p. Best of all is that I don't even know what the real ones should look like.

David Keen

June 19th, 2012, 11:07 AM

I know what you mean about the colour reproductions. There have been a few times that I've actually liked the weird tinted version more than the original! I guess its all just good motivation to travel and actually get to see some of those paintings for real. Looking forward to seeing your studies man!

Wheeljack18

June 19th, 2012, 11:34 AM

No Problem fellas, I hope that it is useful for you.

I agree that there is no comparison to studying artwork " For Real". Textbooks and slides( dating myself here) can never do the work justice. Try not to turn up a chance if it ever comes.

Eb, you should give ME3 a try. It's harder and faster than ME2 and the whole time you feel like you are racing against the clock. It's an experience. Too bad that the ending is such a let down and that you have to pay to download extra content and characters like the Prothean. I refuse to do that, It's Bull shit! The sweater was a gift for Fathers day from y wife and it is just a cheap knock off of a Lulu lemon hoodie with an N7 logo on it. It's made in Pakistan and is second rate quality but I like it for what it is but I don't expect it to last long. Every Single Codex? !? You win.

David Keen

June 20th, 2012, 09:15 AM

Hey guys, I threw some of the Loomis studies up in my sketchbook, I didn't want to clog up this thread with that stuff. It's still going really well and there are quite a few pages just filled with notes that are starting to sink in the further I get into the book. I've added here a bit of the ideation process for the Sethlan redesign, just so you guys can check out the way I'm interpreting the process. All kinds of random associations are have been popping into my head as I work through it and I've got a really different idea for the next version now.

I've tried to add some goodies to the dropbox but the upload time is a real problem. I'll add the other half of the series tomorrow.

Eelis Kyttänen

June 20th, 2012, 03:18 PM

Here's the completed masterstudy:

http://artofeelis.com/Kuvat/Bierstadt_yosmite_falls.jpg

I did it out of this one

http://www.rockwellmuseum.org/iu/BierstadtMet.jpg

Personally I think it turned out quite alright. I focused on the overall, not on the details. However, I should have paid more attention with sharp/soft lines.

David Keen

June 23rd, 2012, 04:02 AM

Hey Eelis, sorry for the overdue reply! I really like the study you've done, my only crits are to try and make those true blacks really really dark like the Bierstadts original. There are a couple of spots that they get a little bit muddied into general shadow areas. Did you select all the colours yourself from observation of the original or did you use the colour picker? If you did it all yourself you've done really well! If not I've heard from a few people that when doing master studies that you've selected from observation helps you really understand how the painting was constructed. It's a tip that I haven't used yet myself but will do so on the next batch of master studies I do.

What else are you working on?

David Keen

June 23rd, 2012, 10:55 AM

I've just been reading through the Skilful Huntsman and was thinking that visually developing a story the way they did in that book would be a great project for us all to be chipping away on together. We could find (or write) a short story and then each work on designs for the characters, environments and props. That way there would be a group project to be working on which would be fun, but we'd also be able to tackle some different topics and work through the whole thing at our own pace. What do you guys reckon? I know it's been done by a few other groups before but I'd be interested to see what we'd come up with at the end and developing a full I.P. would be great for the portfolio.

Eelis Kyttänen

June 23rd, 2012, 02:16 PM

Eyey

Thanks eb. I never colour pick from photos, that is cheating! ;)

The blacks in Bier's original are probably just scanning errors. True blacks are often real harmful to a piece, especially an environment one. However, I know I should have pushed some places more, but sadly I made the painting too dark from the beginning, and when I noticed the problem with the darks I couldn't effectively make the surroundings lighter to make the dark parts look darker. Confusing!

I would definitely be up for that sort of a project, since sometimes personal stuff is hard to come up with. However, I think time is an issue for all of us, especially to Mike. Though, if we just keep chipping away at it when our time permits and don't worry about time/responsibility and such at all it could work. Let's give it a tought.

So, now that I got that study done I moved onto that speedpainting series. However, looks like that when I finally get a nice idea in my head it is just too hard for me to let it go and stop. So instead of doing a speedy painting I am doing a turtle! However, I have kept the resolution real low so I can't go into some real full detailed one. Here's the piece I have going on right now.

http://www.artofeelis.com/Kuvat/anomaly_02.jpg

Some points I have already heard: The anomaly snake monster doesn't stick out enough, I have to rubble down the rightmost intact bookshelf and litter the floor with some books and pull think how to show that the flaming sword isn't litting up the poor books. Also, the sword's light isn't currently making shadows and some highlights from it are still missing.

Cheers!

David Keen

June 24th, 2012, 10:03 AM

A lack of time will undoubtedly be a problem with a group project but there's no pressure to finish anything on a schedule and I just think it would be fun. If you guys have any ideas for something you'd like to work on throw them up here and we can work out something we'll all enjoy. :)

Today I just kept chipping away at the new Sethlan design. I'm happier with the way this one is heading, Sterling's Ideation process has been a lot of fun and made me come up with all kinds of crazy ideas. I'll probably do some more silhouettes before settling on one but if you guys have any favourites out of this batch I'd love to hear them.

Eelis: Along with those issues others have pointed out I think you should change the knights pose. At the moment it looks to me like he's looking at the bookshelf rather than at the snake monster. Perhaps just playing with a twist in the torso would make him a little more frontally on the with monster would help, I'd also define his head more so his eye line is clearer and we know where he's looking. I think the most important points to focus on are addressing his pose and bringing the ice monster out of the mist more. Once the dramatic focus of the piece is clearer your main job will be done and then you can focus on little details like more debris etc.

I really like what you've done though dude, colour palette is killer and your marks are looking much more varied and interesting. This one is gonna be good!

Wheeljack18

June 24th, 2012, 11:52 AM

Hey Guys,

Sorry for the lack of feedback on your work. I'm still in the thick of it but I do appreciate all of your help.

Anyways, I'll chip in a few points..

eelis: For the vortex illustration. I don't see any Snake Monster? Am I missing something from another post? I just don't get the reference!? Right now the atmosphere you are setting up looks spot on, The values are working, now you just have to dive in and start rendering the image out. If I were you I'd create more chaos in the image and use the warp function liberally to bend the perspective around the vortex. Maybe consider tilting the horizon too. Also don't be afraid to use motion blur and whatever crazy effects that you can think of to enhance the mind bending aspect of a hole opening up in space. Check out guys like Jon Foster and Phil Hale for some inspiration. The knight looks akward. Does he need the flaming sword? because it's not necessary to the story as I see it. Does it have to be a raging inferno blade? Ask yourself what is his motivation? His pose suggests little and I agree that he appears to be looking at the bookshelf. Do some side studies of that character and explore this. The lower right looks a little dead, perhaps you an fill it up with more chaos and objects that will tell us more about what is in the room. Give us some clues as to what is really going on.

Eb: Good to see the Sethlan is going strong for you. Remember to stick to the brief..... I like the idea of a omni tool sword but is that really a Sethlan thing? I haven't settled on a silhouette yet, I want to see you explore different shapes and sizes, it just has to have a humanoid skeleton but there is a lot you can do with it. Think about adding to the universe. Right now ME already has it's space ninjas like Kai Lang and even Thane. If he is going to be a Martial / Tech character, why not give him something besides a blade? Like a space whip or space axe? I want you to have fun with this so do what ever you want, I just am trying to push you to justify your design decisions.

I don't know how much I can contribute to a group project but I'd be willing to pitch in when I can. I think you should pick a genre that you can sink your teeth into and be able to stick with for the long term. Or you can pick and IP that you like and expand on it like I did with Solomon Kane. We still have our long list of " Bucket List" pieces that we have not addressed yet so it's not like there is nothing for us to do ;)

Cheers!

David Keen

June 25th, 2012, 09:31 AM

Hey guys, here's a little more Sethlan work that I got done today. I'm pretty wrecked now though so I'll write something a little more extensive tomorrow. Thank you for your feedback Mike, it was helpful while I was putting together this second round of silhouettes. Talk soon.

David Keen

June 26th, 2012, 09:57 AM

Hey guys, sorry for the short comment yesterday. It was a big one and after looking at my screen for so long I needed to get away from the computer and have a look out the window for a while. What are your thoughts on this Sethlan sketch? I was cheeky again and didn't ref the pose (no one was home to take another photo of me making silly faces) but to just play with the costume design the sketch still worked ok. I'm not satisfied with the ratio of the natural carapace to added armour pieces, I'd like to make it look more like the carapace is underneath and the armour has been used to strengthen the natural forms. I'll play with it more tomorrow and see how things progress. I'll also do a few studies of spider and insect heads to get some more prominent mandibles going.

I unfortunately didn't get any work done today as I had to the day job and then went and saw Brave at the cinema. It's a pretty decent Pixar film if you guys are into their other work but I'm not sure if it quite rivals some of the homeruns they've hit in the past.

I hope you guys are going well with all the work and if you get a minute maybe we could start reading some short stories for the group project or go back through our Bucket Lists and put some of those suggestions back up for consideration?

Cheers guys!

Wheeljack18

June 26th, 2012, 11:48 AM

Hey Eb,

I felt the same way about The Brave. We saw it last saturday and was forced to sit in the front 3 rows and I'm pretty sure I missed two 5ths of the movie that took place on my periphery. My Daugther liked it though so that's good.:)

For the Sethlan: Right now he looks like a big Human with an Alien Face. His silhouette doesn't distinguish him from our race except from the shape of his head. Can you say the same for the other ME alien races? If he is going to be big then punch out his anatomy and push it further. You are not limited by star wars FX makeup from the 70's ;) so have fun with it! I like this carapace/ exoskeleton idea. Why not make it his real skeleton but on the outside? How about instead of Ammo pouches made of material, he has cubbies and nooks in his body? I am just thinking out loud here. Also how did you resolve the air filtration from evolution problem?

Cheers!

David Keen

June 27th, 2012, 09:25 AM

Here's another quick iteration on the Sethlan design. I'm pretty happy with this one and think this will be what I push on with and try and finish. It isn't hugely different from the previous version but I tried to push out the upper body proportions a bit and play with some more pieces jutting out to give him a more identifiable silhouette. I'd like to have gone further with it but I like this design and when really surveying the other races there are quite a few that are just slight twists on standard human anatomy. I really like that idea to incorporate some of the storage into the carapace pieces Mike, I'll play around with that a bit and see where I can pull out the anatomy a bit to provide more space. The filtration system will be a little more apparent in the more polished version but he has glands around the mandibles on his face that will serve as filters. I'd like to try and have something a little more rendered out to get crits at the workshop next week so now it's time to get this baby done and get away from it for a while.

That sucks about the seating for Brave! Nothing worse than craning your neck up the whole time and still missing loads of the film. The cinema we saw it at was tiny so that wasn't much of an issue, the room only seated about 30 people! Thanks for all the feedback on this piece man, it's helped me push the design way further and I'll keep working on my idea generation on the next one.

Where you at Eelis? Anything on the way?

Eelis Kyttänen

July 1st, 2012, 12:00 PM

So, peeps, my computer died. It is probably just the power supply, but I don't want to invest on it now that I was going to buy a new computer anyway. I won't get one until I touchdown to vancouver though, so I will be without one for a month and week.

I will try to fetch my data from HDs tomorrow when I get to friend's place. I think everything should be alright with that. and all the files are intact. Tomorrow will tell. Should start on backupping everything though.

It is quite sad really though since it is basically a forced break from digital stuff. Atleast I have loads of time to hone traditional skills, but it still feels bad to lose so much time from the digital medium.

Eelis Kyttänen

July 2nd, 2012, 02:48 PM

Fortunately I can pull the above back! The problem was in the power, and when I got that part changed it came back alive!

Time to start cloud-backup services though.

David Keen

July 3rd, 2012, 10:08 AM

Hey Eelis, what a massive scare! Is always good for getting you on the regular backup routine though. Take this whole thing as a sign to get outside and do some traditional work and give your computer a rest. You'll enjoy it! Sorry I've been out of action the last few days, I'm over in Sydney for my week long workshop I don't get internet for much of the day. I'll try and upload some stuff from the course soon but it'll probably have to wait till I have access to my scanner at home. Keep on truckin guys!

Eelis Kyttänen

July 4th, 2012, 05:59 PM

Yeah, it was a real scare! Luckily everything turned out alright and I learnt my lesson. ;) I'll definitely do some real traditional work after this one!

Ooh, the workshop lasts a whole week? That'll surely help ya by a load! Hopefully it is interesting as well.

I've been working daily on the anomaly picture, and it is just an inch from done. Some things are lacking there n here, like the closest bookshelf/not enough rubbish flying in the air close by etc...but it is soon done either way. This has truly been something that is way out of my comfort zone, so I have been focusing and trimming it really intensely. I gotta say though that I am a bit sad that I began it as just a speedpainting with low resolution. Thus the original reso is just 1200x720, but no can do.

'ere's the current iteration:

http://i.imgur.com/OaRSf.jpg?1

Imgur quality isn't that great, I will try to upload these on my own server in the future.

Wheeljack18

July 5th, 2012, 10:20 AM

Hey Guys, It's been a while but I finally have a few minutes to come up for air before I dive back in so I thought I should post some feed back for you for a change. :)

eelis: I see the Snake now! lol. Seeing as this started out as a speedpaint/sketch. I think you accomplished what you set out to do. All the story elements are there and it is just a matter or refining and enhancing what you already have. I would encourage you to take this to the full illustration stage if you have the time. Otherwise, what is next?

Ebersol:
Have fun at the workshop and let's see if you come back with any new ideas that you can apply to the Sethlan.

So guys, have you submitted anything to the free portfolio reviews thread yet? You should if you get a chance. I did and we shall see if they take a look or not.

Back to work for me.
Once more Unto the breach!

Eelis Kyttänen

July 5th, 2012, 05:42 PM

Aaaand ready:

http://eeliskyttanen.deviantart.com/art/Anomaly-312745956

I could've probably gone on, but frankly I wanted to move onto some other works already. Plus the sad resolution size didn't really give room for tight details. :/ Was a quite learning experience though! However, I believe this is either way almost as far as I can currently push a piece. It is a shame though because I know it could be vastly improved, but I don't know exactly how. Explored that for quite a while, but it didn't really yeild any big results.

What next, hmh! I think I am going to do more tight quarters. Probably not so character intensive, but with some characters nonetheless. I'll probably try to do quicky quick speedpaintings with bigger resolution than those thumbnail pics I did earlier. Will try to learn more about the core of an image and how the parts interact with each other. Will probably time myself so I don't drag on endlessly if I get hooked to some of 'em. ;)

I would like to get such a review, but sadly I think there's too much jump in the quality between the last four of my original works currently. Shame to miss such a chance though. :(

Hopefully you'll get a review! Poke us here if ya get one.

Work work! I'll get back to my apartment hunting business too. ;)

David Keen

July 9th, 2012, 10:53 AM

Home sweet home! How have you guys been going? I'm glad to be back and it's good to see there has been a bit of stuff happening on here.

Eelis: I really like what you've done with this piece in the end man. The new pose makes way more sense and directs the eye towards the monster, as a bonus it looks cooler as well! You've done well in your exploration of texture but it could possibly have been done a little more softly around the anomaly monster. I find all that noise a bit distracting but the idea would have worked well with a softer application. While on the subject of the monster I'm just not sure about the choice of colour and value for him. I get that you were trying to make him appear as part of the fog in that area but by not having a dramatic looking enemy the piece loses a bit of impact in my mind. Seriously good stuff though man, for a guy who doesn't like characters the protagonist looks great! Armoured fantasy knights represent!

Wheels: I hope the submission of your recent commissions went well man, I'll be in touch via email soon.

The workshop in Sydney was pretty amazing. I was very impressed by the work and teachings of John Park (http://jparked.blogspot.com.au/), personally I'm not a huge Mech guy but the way he produced those images before my eyes was astounding. I've come back with a greatly renewed interest in getting my perspective knowledge really worked out properly and was pointed towards the Gnomon DVD's of Scott Robertson (http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/category/110/). It's about time I really learn't to draw..

The other artists were great to observe as well and seeing it all unfold over a week was really interesting, especially when all three guys worked very differently but ended up with similarly polished pieces. I'll talk a little more about what I picked up in the coming days but here is my newly re envisioned Sethlan concept that I started last night. Let me know what you think, I'll be trying to knock it off tomorrow night. Looking forward to getting back into working hard!

Talk soon.

ps. He's gonna have some crazy future tools and the like added and a building tool / weapon in that right hand.

Eelis Kyttänen

July 10th, 2012, 06:16 PM

Eb! I will answer to ya in-depth tomorrow! A quick comment on the sethlan though: it looks real good! Great design!

I will throw this one here quick, still heavy wip, especially the structure. There will be a small canoe in the right bottom which will make the story clear. Also some other elements on their way!

http://artofeelis.com/Forest_04.jpg

David Keen

July 11th, 2012, 10:14 AM

I finished off the main body of the Sethlan today and moved on to working out the other techy bits. I think what I've given him is a huge help with communicating the engineering side of this races' personality, and assists him to fit into the Mass Effect universe more clearly as well. I'm gonna try and render the accessories up when I get home from work tomorrow and call this guy done and finally move on to something else!

Eelis: Looking pretty good so far man, as you move on with the building maybe you could push a more specific architectural style? This would be good practice for doing historical period pieces but you could try and mix it up by finding something that will contrast well with this overgrown forest scene like gothic architecture or an american civil war fort? Just a thought to try push you for more varied looks in the buildings. Keep chipping away dude!

p.s. I'm gonna colour shift his hands to match the rest of the design tomorrow.

Wheeljack18

July 11th, 2012, 11:26 AM

Hey Fellas,

Great work from both of you. I'm swamped with deadlines so this is why I'm not as active and I don't expect to come up for air much in the next month or two. I'll still keep you posted off forum though ;)

Eelis: This is your best piece to date. Only two things stand out for me and hat is the perspective where the water meets the building and the giant trees in the foreground. For the trees, you might consider adding some more regular sized foliage in order to give the viewer a better sense of scale. Right now it is unclear if the big trees are just Really Big or just really close to the viewer. For the water line, it just looks off and I'm not sure if it is the perspective of where the lighting. Other wise, looking Gooood!

Eb: I hear ya on the Sethlan dragging on forever. Next time we will have to give ourselves a due date or be more motivated to finish sooner. I like where you are going and I want to see where you take it for the final rendering. Because he is an Alien you can get away with bad anatomy and one never knows if the Big hands are done on purpose or not. When I look at him in the "Big Picture" he's looking fine and the idea is coming across as planned. Let's see the next iteration.:)

That's it from me,

Cheers!

David Keen

July 13th, 2012, 09:19 AM

Done and done guys! I'm glad to have this one all done and dusted. Let me know what you guys think, I'll start something fresh tomorrow.

Eelis Kyttänen

July 13th, 2012, 07:01 PM

Ey! I am just chipping in quick, I promise to comment on your sethlan in depth tomorrow eb!

This one is done. I couldn't push some parts further because I screwed up the resolution. Note to self: Ampe up the resolution if you get hooked to a speedpainting

Eelis Kyttänen

July 15th, 2012, 04:05 AM

Alright!

Glad to hear your workshop went well Eb. I hope I am able to attend some workshop/convention too next year, they teach ya a lot! Did they have portfolio reviews there?

As for your Sethlan, I quite like it. The design is far more better and unique now. Just the feet bug me a bit, why that kind of bird predator claws? In my opinion they look kinda divided from the rest of the designs, since the hands are humanish. I really like how you enlarged the hands though. ;)

Also, watch the lighting. It is sort of diffused now on this piece and there isn't enough distinction between hard and soft lines. Otherwise it is neat! So, what next?

@wheel: Thanks a LOT for the notion about the perspective. I knew something was fishy there, but you nailed it. The building's starting point was too high, and I lowered it down a bit. Should be better now.

As for the tree size issue, I hope the figures helped to sort that out. :) I would have really liked to add more foliage, but to be honest... I didn't know how! Looked up alot of refs and stuff but it never really dawned to me, so I had to rest it.

All in all, I really liked how this turned out. The building is a bit monotone, but I think those small scratches and things I shizzled on it bring it out enough.

@eb again: I actually did check out some indian temples for this one and used them mildy. However, I still feel that in the end I didn't give it enough charisma. You can't really tell at all what it is! Next time I promise to think all this stuff through and REALLY integrate that stuff into it.

Cheers!

David Keen

July 15th, 2012, 11:11 AM

Thanks for the feedback Eelis. I hadn't thought about the feet like that before but that does make some sense to me. I might look at reworking them as I had a couple of other changes I'd like to implement. I like where you finished up with your most recent piece. You've done really well in integrating some more diverse elements into the piece and constraining the composition to a more limited field of view. I'm looking forward to seeing your next round of architecture stuff!

Here is the start of a illustration with a couple of nasty fellas sneaking up on a female protagonist. I'd like to shoot some ref for the antagonists, as they're looking pretty uninspired at the moment. Any thoughts on general composition stuff and the like?

David Keen

July 16th, 2012, 08:51 AM

Hey guys, the speakers from the CDW in Sydney have put out a brief for the attendees to do so I'm gonna switch gears and try and get that done by the 23rd. There is plenty of time so hopefully I'll get it finished but getting vehicle polished up nicely is going to be a challenge for me. I've copied the brief below so you guys can have a look and it keep it in mind when you're critiquing me.

1. Brief: Please design a vehicle/mech/or machine for a character that is looking for a lost treasure. The character is a pirate, always on the search of some new riches/finds. His goal is to
find these treasure using his device as a way to detect/navigate/travel.

For this assignment: I would like everyone to create a small back-story for your designs.

A. Please come up with a research page for your character
- Please do a set of thumbnails
- Refine 1-2 character designs
- Finalize "1" character design in color

B. Please come up with a research page for your vehicle
- Please do a set of thumbnails
- Refine 1-2 vehicle designs
- Finalize "1" vehicle design and please include design "call-outs"

I've decided that I'm going to go with a near future time period and I'd like to get a bit of an oriental feel in the decorative elements of the design. The setting of my world is that there are floating mountainous regions upon which ancient tribes built tombs for their great leaders. My pirate is going to be a bit of a roguish treasure hunter who'll be flying up and raiding these tombs while fighting off the corporate competition who're seeking these artefacts as well. The setting is a little thin at the moment but I wanted to do a flying machine rather than a traditional mech or spaceship so I'll try and flesh it out a little more to strengthen the purpose of the design.

So far my favourite silhouettes are #22 and #24 but I'm open to suggestions from you guys. The line drawing page was an attempt to explore the 3D shapes of a couple of the silhouettes (so please ignore my wonky perspective at this stage), I'm not very satisfied with any of these interpretations of the silhouettes and will be doing at least one more round of these before picking a favourite. So far I haven't started anything for the character component but will try and jot some stuff down while at work tomorrow.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! :)

David Keen

July 19th, 2012, 09:13 AM

Here's an update on the vehicle design from the other day. I didn't get a chance to work on it today but will try and knock it off tomorrow. If you guys could give me some feedback on how this one is looking I'd really appreciate it. Cheers! :)

Wheeljack18

July 19th, 2012, 11:44 AM

Hey Guys,

So Eb you asked for some feedback on this one and I think it is great to see you doing some ID and Tech. I have a couple of practical problems with the design however. I find myself wondering, how does it land? What kind of propulsion does it use? How do the thin bars between the 2 main structures support the weight? What is the space between the structures for?

Have you answered these questions? A big part of ID is solving these problems and it might be worth your while to go back and Check out the Feng Zhu tutorials and listen to his lecture. He has a couple of good ones like the Snow Walker and there is some kind of Mech Truck that are pretty informative.

Other than that, the perspective appears to be correct and the design seems to be coming along. Another suggestion may be to have some kind of windshield in the cockpit to help the pilot out a bit. Maybe think of Reffing WW1 Bi Planes. I dont' know if it is the color or shape or what but I am immediately thinking Sand Crawler from Star wars when I look at this design. huh?

On a side note but related. You mentioned that you were going for an oriental influence with this design and I recently came across a neat article on the Chinese Wheelbarrow. Apparently it is the most efficient Wheelbarrow design there is and it looks pretty whacky compared to the standard " Western" model. Anyways, check it out, maybe it will influence you.

Eelis Kyttänen

July 19th, 2012, 02:13 PM

Yeah, I agree with mike. I saw the concept before reading your description, and the first thought was "oh, it is somekind of an industrial manufactoring machine!"

(I have to say that it would be rather goody design for such an apparatus ;) )

On a personal note I had a imagination-blackout after that latest forest work, so I did a few studies instead. A scene from LOTR and then some fancy still lives. Sadly the lotr study didn't go so well, so I won't post it yet. I am going to revisit some other scene from lotr though, because I have to admit it was loads of fun!

I just finished a creature linework done with pencils O.o. I'll probably post it someday if I get around to shadow it.

David Keen

July 22nd, 2012, 10:17 AM

Hey guys, thanks very much for the feedback the other day. I've thought about the points that you raised and they've been a great help in the progression of the piece. Mike, your points about landing, propulsion and the windshield were particularly helpful and I've tried to address two of those problems. I'm looking at adding some additional smaller thrusters for assistance with landing, ala harrier jets but will have to see how much I can get done in the time allotted. The chinese wheelbarrow is a pretty nifty looking design, I'd have loved to have displayed the oriental influence more prominently in the piece but I was glad that chinese sailing ships served as great inspiration for the shape of my speeder.

I hadn't thought at all about the sandcrawler having some similarities to the speeder. I imagine it's because they both have that blocky look and a similar palette as you mentioned. But mine flies dammit! Take that Jawa's!

How're you guys going with your work at the moment? Eelis have you recovered from your mental block? I'd love to have a look at the creature linework you did. I hope you guys are well and thanks again for the feedback. :)

p.s. the landing great was just blocked in at the end of the day, I've got to fix up the lighting and finish detailing that area before calling it done.

Wheeljack18

July 22nd, 2012, 12:21 PM

Hey Guys,

"Outiniee"!

I can't help but feel like there is a bit of Ralph McQuarrie going on in this piece Eb. I think it's your best AD yet so be proud, learn from it and build on it for the next piece. I don't know if you are required to do Orthos' for this one or not but it would also be a worth while exercise. I would go adding anything more at this late stage but I would encourage you to put more consideration into the functionality of the vehicle into your next design. Always keep in mind that in good design " Form follows function", not the other way around. Check out this site for some interesting design ideas http://www.tuvie.com/

For a crit, some of your perspective is off here and there. For these types of things, if one line is off, it can mess with everything. I suggest that you set up a grid and set you VP's and Horizon line and always keep it visible while you sketch out the image. Not all of us are Feng Zhu and can eyeball perspective perfectly. Also the turbines look flat as if they were painted on instead of 3 dimensional surfaces. Lastly, what about this vehicle suggests that it is a pirate vessel? To me, it looks more like an industrial machine. I don't have a problem with plain, The real world is plain and rarely will you see more than a manufacturers logo on heavy equipment or vehicles of any type. The only thing is that for entertainment, they tend to gravitate towards Michael Bay retarded ideas instead of good design and the flashiest piece tends to win out over the best designed piece. If you want to win the contest you might want to consider Jazzing it up. Personally I hate saying that. I appreciate good design and I feel that skill and integrity has been diluted and overwhelmed by the latest fad. Most of these contests including the CA Ch0w's etc are more like popularity contests and the best design rarely wins out over the flashiest one. It pisses me off but it's a fact and that's life. Sorry for the Rant. I do that from time to time;)

Eelis: Post up the pencils. Don't worry about tone. One thing that helps if you have a block is to get the hell away from art. Go for a walk, visit a friend, live your life. Have some new experiences and they will inspire you eventually. It never fails. Besides, shouldn't you be packing or something?

Cheers fellas!

Eelis Kyttänen

July 22nd, 2012, 04:54 PM

Eyey!

Eb: Nice progression! I still have kinda hard time figuring out how your vehicle moves :/ I took the first glance again without reading the description, but couldn't figure it out! Some effects that would enhance the wheel that it is a flying machine could be in order. It really looks industrial-themed now, so if that was your goal you have done real good job! Not to mention I really, really like your rendering here. Some perspective probs like Mike said, but otherwise goody! I always have some hard probs with geometric spaces like this. :)

Eb&Wheel: Yeah, I think I overcame the block today. Sketched a few quick speedpaint starts and will probably take them to a speedpaint finish tomorrow. I would have followed Mike's notion about gaining some new real life experiences if I hadn't been a bit sick. So what worked in the end was that I bought a few, graphically innovative and creative titles like psychonauts, the longest journey and braid. ;) That combined with the pencil works, creatures and landscapes kinda lifted the veil. Good to do some imagination stuff now too then, studies tend to be a tad bit stale. ;)

As for the linearts, yes Mike, I think you are right and I will just ditch the toning for now and focus on the lineart bit, since I have some probs with that. I will post them as soon as possible. Checking tomorrow if camera pictures are good enough, if not I will probably have to wait a bit till I get to a scanner.

Ooh, and packing you say Mike? ;) Yeah, I guess I should be! Just scraping those last dimes off from work and getting everything else ready and I am off to that 8000 km trip!

Cheers

David Keen

July 23rd, 2012, 12:12 PM

Hey guys, thanks so much for the crits on the speeder concept. I'll reply in full tomorrow but I wanted to put these up here before I go to sleep. I've also copied over the setting for my designs.

For this brief I decided to explore a near future setting with a familiar industrial aesthetic. The planet our pirate is pillaging and plundering has a long history and archaeological discoveries are still common. The planet is subject to a unusual anomaly, small areas are exposed to fluctuating gravitational fields which causes large masses of earth to float hundreds of metres above sea level. These suspended islands were the subject of much admiration by the early inhabitants of the planet who incorporated it into their religion and viewed the sites as sacred ground. Cities were built just outside the affected areas and enormous towers were constructed to provide the priests with access to the holy sites. When a great king died he would be buried upon the floating islands and his tomb would be filled with holy manuscripts and great treasures of his time. Modern society still observes some of the principles that were set by their ancestors religion so the tombs have been left largely undiscovered and undisturbed, but this encourages a wildly profitable black market for smugglers and pirates.

Eelis Kyttänen

July 24th, 2012, 01:28 PM

Ey!

Nice to hear some backstory there eb, makes the designs feel alot more liveable. ;)

The character is rolling rather nicely. There seems to be a big hand syndrome though, and the forearm could be tad bit too long. Otherwise, good!

So yeah, as I mentioned yesterday I got back in the business. Shizzled up this little speedpaint in a hour or so. I still seem to have some probs with contrast, gotta work on it.

And, when in doubt, paint puddles! (or lakes, water, ocean...you name it! Horizontal lines!)

http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/206/4/9/speedpainting_landscape_village_by_eeliskyttanen-d58jsbi.jpg

Oh, and eb, I will try to remember to answer to your email today. :)

David Keen

July 28th, 2012, 10:34 PM

Hey Eelis, sorry for the very late reply! I like your most recent speedpaint, nice colour and good job implementing multiple focal points. I think a few more rocky outcrops and similar areas of interest might help break up the landscape on future paintings of similar subjects. Good stuff though man, what's next on the cards?

I've been seeing so much environment stuff recently that I wanted to have a try and see what I could whip up. It was really fun to just play around with shapes and not have and real restrictions of subject or setting. I'm gonna try and do a few more sketches like these over the coming week.

David Keen

July 29th, 2012, 09:54 AM

Here's another couple of these quick environments, both about 30 mins to finish. The orange seascape one was really tricky and I ended up trying another iteration which failed even more horribly than this one. Still fun to play with colour and texture more liberally than usual.

Wheeljack18

July 30th, 2012, 12:07 AM

Great Work guys. I'm too wiped to give you a crit but lets just say I'm jealous and I need to jump on the landscape bandwagon too. Keep it up!

David Keen

July 30th, 2012, 10:29 AM

Here's couple of perspective drawings for the day, I've been working from The Techniques of Feng Zhu Volume 3 dvd which has been really enlightening so far. I'll try and bash out a few more complicated compositions tomorrow. I also had a shot at Nathan Fowkes portrait drawing technique (http://nathanfowkes.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/step-by-step-reprise-and-video.html) which was great fun. It was a real challenge for me to try and use shape and tone rather than line to construct the drawings and I'm excited to try some more drawings using this technique. I hope you guys are well. Cheers!

Eelis Kyttänen

July 30th, 2012, 12:36 PM

Whooza! Great job on the landscapes eb! Especially in your first post. I will write in-depth coverage for you tomorrow. :) Also, nice exploring of new techniques.

eb & mike: I will try to answer both of your emails as soon as possible!

Personally I am going to shoot for some more speedpainting/value studies etc for the rest of my time here in Finland. (one week!) Don't want to start any big projects. I am going to get a good laptop as soon as I have an apartment in Vancouver and start something nifty, probably mountainous because, you know, Vancouver. ;)

Anyway, on another note I hadn't had glasses for some one and half odd years. I had thought I don't really need em that much, but boy was I wrong. Got a new pair today, and I have to say my work has some serious hard edges. :D Without glasses they always looked so soft, and my stupid brain couldn't link that & the problems with eyesight.

EDIT: I just had my first .PSD corruption. It was just random sketching psd, so no probs there. Teaches though that one should never turn off computer by force while Photoshop is closing down. ;)

David Keen

July 31st, 2012, 10:58 AM

Glad you liked the landscape stuff Eelis, there was more to come but images seem to be down on the site at the moment. I'll try and upload them tomorrow morning.

I'm looking forward to seeing more studies from you Eelis but it's worth having a quick look at this (http://www.ctrlpaint.com/the-danger-of-painting-silhouettes/)video by Matt Kohr about the dangers of silhouettes and speedpainting. It raised some interesting points for me and made me think a little more carefully about the way I approach my pieces.

That's pretty funny about the glasses! :) Sounds like you'll be seeing your work in a different light for a while now. It's strange how easy it is to think you're sight is pretty good until you put the right glasses on and look at the world with newly enhanced vision.

Good luck with your work guys!

Eelis Kyttänen

July 31st, 2012, 02:33 PM

Alright! Let's get down into the business. I will answer to your last post first, Eb!

So, yeah, the point the ctrl chap makes about speedpainting is accurate. However, the focus of his mention was more about skipping the essential steps in handpainting by applying a butt-load of textures/images et cetera to the image to speed up the process. That kind of act is indeed a trap for the beginners.

Personally though I just hand paint everything. Speedpaints for me are more along the lines of establishing a good value/composition/colour structure and then not taking it to the rendering phase at all. So essentially, the only thing why I spoke of 'em as speedpaintings is because I stop painting them further. :p

I made a nice little four-step mix to demonstrate how I usually approach them. Was working on the speedpainting in question today, and I probably want to still go on with it to link the foreground and background better together colour-wise.

http://artofeelis.com/Kuvat/Mountain_gorge_step_for_daedelus.JPG

Righto, on to the crits! Let's see.

The most glaring problem in both of your post 239' images is the background fade. You are definitely trying to use the athmospheric perspective the right way, but the problem is that the fade looks unnatural. In other words, it looks too accelerated. In the mountain pic it might go on as fog, but in the vertical piece that would be impossible due to the strong sunshine you established.

Instead, don't be shy to add some darks in the distance too. However, you should simply not just pick up the same dark values as in the foreground, but to create the illusion of dark colour by encircling any colour with ligter tones than that particular colour.

I really like how the effect was achieved in this one: http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/152/e/9/osmadth___bancur_lake_by_nurkhular-d51ws64.jpg

The second point concerns edges. Try to have a few more smooths there and here, even in the speedies.

That was a quick point. Actually I can't really think of anything else for now. Good work on the value structures and doing some grayscale stuff too. ;) Keep pushing at it and you may as well be able to create some real great full-fledged characters + environment illustrations later on. Personally for me that's something I really want to be able to do at some point.

The points above also apply to post 240. Remember to block the shapes in and keep the shadows in the same tone if the distance isn't too big/some other things lightening 'em up.

Back to packing!

Wheeljack18

August 1st, 2012, 01:06 AM

Ok, last post before vacation time and NO, I will not be checking CA while I am away. At least I tell myself this but Daedelus has become part of my daily routine, like coffee.:)

Regarding the landscapes and speedpaints. I'm with Eelis and I like to paint what I see and leave the textures as secondary tools. They can be very helpful and I think one of the better methods is the Feng Zhu one whereby he uses them more to set up his color and composition. But, Eelis is the man when it comes to environments so do what he says. I'd like to see more enviro studies based on real observation and less from imagination. It makes it easier to gage the learning curve when you have something to compare it to. Your thoughts?

Eelis: I feel your pain with the Photoshop blues. I've had my own share of critical errors and it's pretty much time for me to give up the ghost and upgrade my PC. Do you guys have any thoughts on a top notch machine that is not a MAC? I need specs and I will either upgrade what I have but more than likely I will end up building the machine I need. Look after those eyes! Staring at my Cintiq has aged my eyes incredibly this past year and I'm due now for a new perscription. Nobody warns us about this crap when we sign up to be artists. Talk about an oversight! No real crits for the environments today and I'm curious to see if I notice any difference due to your new glasses. To be honest I think you need to push yourself harder and move away from the speed paints. It's time to move onto something more challenging and technical. Perhaps a master study or a long study based on observation or a still life. I'd really like to see something realistically rendered from you and I think you could learn a ton from those exercises that will only make your speed paints even stronger. Just my 2 cents though.

Eb:
Wicked perspective studies. They will never let you down and if you can master that then you are pretty much there when it comes to concept art so keep em coming. I checked out the Nathan F video and was totally inspired. When I get back, one of the first things on my to do list is a portrait using that method. Did you check out the rest of his blog. I loved the pic of his studio at dreamworks. How the hell he can work with all of those plants all over his easel is beyond me! Your own version of his technique looks unfinished. It looks like you could restate the darks again and after a little modeling, then go into the white. Good first start though.
Going way back to your pirate character: It's good to see another finished design from you. My biggest crit is that his features all get bigger the further down the body we go. IE his legs and feet are huge but his head is small. It is as thought you drew each section /limb independant of one another. The design itself has a nice mix of future Retro and I think it hits all the points you were trying to make. Maybe for the next time you might want to take the design portion further by pushing things a bit more. IE his goggles. They look like regular old goggles that I've seen before but maybe next time, consider designing some goggles that I haven't seen before. Think of it less as a costuming exercise and more of a designing exercise. Besides, that can be the best part of any gig.

On a different note. I came across this post on Matt Rhodes Blog where he talks about how because of the internet, it makes him feel like everything has been done and he no longer feels creative. http://mattrhodesart.blogspot.ca/
Anyways, it's an interesting post and worth discussing. Personally, I think he has just hit a low spot and is venting via the blogosphere. Realistically he is a successful concept artist with some original ideas of his own so he is contributing the the problem he is complaining about. Again, I personally don't allow myself to go down the road he's traveling and try to do the best I can with what I've got and not worry too much about what the next guy is doing or what has already been done. Otherwise, you are just being depressing and holding yourself back. Anyways, your thoughts?

David Keen

August 1st, 2012, 10:37 AM

Hey lad's, thanks for all the great feedback. I've got an early one tomorrow so I'll just put up my work from today and reply in detail tomorrow. Awesome job on the recent painting Eelis, it's looking good!

Eelis Kyttänen

August 1st, 2012, 02:08 PM

Eyey

Vacation! Alright! The best time of the year, enjoy and relax, Mike. ;) I hope you are able to peek into here occasionally though! I find myself checking Daedelus out as my daily routine too nowdays.

About enviro studies wheel. Personally I like to think studies from imagination and studies from reality serve two different purpose. I will break these down to a few bulletin points:

Envio-studies based on reality:

-Methods include plein air, still life setups, master & photo studies
-Always based on pre-created content, be it from another artist or from the nature itself.
-What is essentially learnt: How environment works in reality. (values, lights, colours, shapes, land formations etc.)
-In a nutshell: Real observation based studis improve your skill to understand the basic principles and basics of the world around us & how to transfer them realistically to the canvas.

Enviro-studies based on imagination:

-Methods include just about anything
-Based on artists own imagination and skill to see things. A reality/space created solemly by the creator, with influences from the real life experiences, views and references.
-What is essentially learnt: Composition, imaginative concepts, storytelling and skill to apply real life principles unto a concept that doesn't exist to make it believeable.
-In a nutshell: Improves one's ability to come up with new realities.

That's how I would summarize these two methods. However, I don't see these as completely seperate entities, but instead two halves of one. To be a succesful artist, one has to learn what both of these have to offer and unify them into one single mass.

However, it is not easy to really decide which you should focus next. That's why I still try to do these fifty-fifty. Recently I have felt that I have very strong problems of coming up with entirely new composition, placements and places. Thus I've tried to improve this area by doing quick sketches that include all the basic fundamentals to the level where I could take them to the rendering phase.

Speaking of which, my current absolute max rendering is the latest forest scene. :) I am going to push into the realistic rendering area next, more below!

I absolutely agree with you Mike that I should do something real challenging now. I am currently doing quite a load of environment lineart with pencils, so it is time to do something heavy with digital tools. My previous masterstudies have been more about learning the space/colour et cetera, so this time I am going to do a huge, 1 on 1 (well, as close as possible) render of a painting. Will start today, hoping to get it done before leaving next tuesday.

By the way, I will most probably be without a computer until I can fetch an apartment in Vancouver, so hopefully I will be able to come back to ditgital stuff in a week starting from next tuesday.

Speaking of computers Mike, I will be facing the excatly same problem now that I am moving. Personally I think that any machine that is suitable for gaming can satisfy the needs of a digital painter. Bundle that up with some real hi-tec screen and you are on a good track. I was thinking of getting a laptop first, but I am not so sure anymore as the screens tend to be bad. I will really have to give this a long hard thought.

About eyesight: Yah, I have had bad eyesight for almost my whole life. :p Nowdays I can do without glasses, but apparently I couldn't really see clearly enough. It will indeed be rather interesting for me too, seeing what happens now that I can finally see the hard edges. ;)

I didn't actually know you had a cintiq! Nice!

Regarding your last note about Matt Rhodes, I have to admit that I sometimes tend to sport that kind of mentality. For example, I might get this idea of a castle in some stranded mountain place (duh), be happy with the idea for a sec and then remember how cliché it is. However, I don't really dumb that sort of idea instantly, but try to come up with something new or just some interesting details that would make the painting more..interesting. This often leads to some way too long thinking and scribbling process though, since I really have problems with imagination these days.

I would kinda really like to get rid of that way of thinking, but it probably is about wanting to do something recognisable in the end. Gotta think about it.

@Eb: Good job on those perspective studies! Keep em coming. Also, thanks again for that FDZ dvd!

Cheers

Eelis

David Keen

August 2nd, 2012, 07:59 AM

@Eelis: Thanks for all your great feedback on my enviro attempts man. You've got some really solid advice and I feel that the repeated attempts are starting to sink in more now. I understand your position on speedpainting and agree that seems like the best way to approach covering a range of images quickly. Just like Feng pointed out in that video, the essential parts of the painting are done very early and when comparing the blocked in version and the final the only difference should be the details.

Good point on blocking in shadow tones that share a similar value if the distance isn't too far, I need to remember that!! :)

I agree with your feelings about working from life and working from your imagination. That's a key part of my environment study that I haven't been attending to. I'll be getting out there this weekend to do some plein air painting and I'll try and do a couple of master studies as well. The master studies seem to have made great improvements to your work Eelis. I agree with Mike that now is the time to try something that is really going to push your work. Maybe another image with a figure? Or perhaps something with a heavier architectural focus? Or just something else that you've never tried before. Go all out with something different and really push the boundaries of your skills, don't forget you need to make 1000 paintings to make a truly good one.

Thanks for all the great feedback dude, I'm glad to have done some topics that have allowed your expertise to be really shown off. Looking forward to more environment time soon! :D

@Mike: It's new PC buying time! Hooray! I'm going to live vicariously through you and look around at what a good rig will be. This one (http://www.tested.com/news/feature/2003-how-to-build-a-future-proof-1500-gaming-pc/) probably wouldn't be a bad place to start. It's a little over a year old now but that means the prices would be cheaper and you could always add a little more RAM and check out the updated versions of these components. The guys at tested.com do a seriously good job and all the advice of theirs that I've followed has gone very well for me. I'll have a look around though and see what else is happening. What's your monitor situation like? Noah Bradley was repping his monitor (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?SID=7v6Q4shrEeGEh-bHJGciMA0_0_mjI_0_0&AID=10440897&PID=1225267&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-cables-_-na-_-na&Item=N82E16824260038) recently, it seems to go on sale quite a bit a looks pretttttyyy nice! I didn't know you had a cintiq either, jealous!

I've been following Nathan Fowkes blog for a few months now and it's been a really solid source of quality information. He has another blog (http://nathanfowkes-sketch.blogspot.com.au/) purely for his plein air studies which is rocking as well, check it out. I agree with you about my portrait. Not to be a bad workman blaming his tools but I only had some really cheap hard charcoal on hand and couldn't get it to spread very evenly on the paper. I'm going to grab some nice soft compressed stuff from work and give the drawing another crack, thanks for reminding me though. :)

Good points about the pirate design. It could have been pushed a lot further, I ended up playing it safe because I didn't have much time and wanted the rendering to be pretty solid. I'd like to address this issue in my future designs though.

Have a fantastic time on your trip and don't do too much work when no one is looking. We're gonna miss you, but lets be honest how could you stay away from us for long? :D

Talk soon guys.