The PHATandy Tome of Daily Updates.

[PHATandy]

Nickybeats Thanks man, I'm surprised to say but I do feel like that lately, which is good. Doing freelance work is actually helping instead of slowing me down.
Meps Indeed, speed is just practice. Stuff normally takes a long time because you just make a lots of mistakes. Get stuff right first time and it comes out much quicker.
Tom Thanks bro, I'm glad i've landed well to. I'm actually surprised at all things have fallen nicely into place. Not perfect yet (the infamous game-developer studio job), but its goin ok. ty.
Kielbasa Thanks dude, your doing fuckin ace work too lately. Im very jelly.
Sebastian Cheers, glad you like it.
Shyam I did have 4 stars, whered it go! *mad*!. Oh well, thanks anyways.
MPaar Thanks buddy

Ill keep this short and sweet.
Still pretty busy on the day today, but not getting much that I can post here.
I should have some stuff coming up shortly. I'm working on a pitch for a short film/web series. Real time with actors and stuff. And steam punk. Exciting. Hopefully soon.

In the mean time working on some 3D shit. 3D is fun as hell, I love learning, but its so time consuming of which I could be doing portfolio work. So dont expect much 3D, but paintovers of this stuff instead since that will work for the portfolio.
And some other shit.

Peace.

[Meps]

Loving those character sketches. Especially the armor plating on the guy on the left. I've been wondering--it seems to vary from case to case--do you work in 3D as well as 2D for your studio job, or do you just do 2D at work and dabble in 3D on your own? Either way, the model you posted looks great.

[PHATandy]

Meps Thanks man! 3D at the moment is just a little something Im doing in my own time. I've always really wanted to get into it. For work, I work freelance doing 2D stuff. Someday I'll get a studio job... someday....

Hohoho messing with rendering settings is WAY TOO much fun to be healthy. I should'nt be enjoying this as much as I am.
Gotdamn.
Some more bits added:
Probably just gonna do a paint over of this now for the portfolio. My texturing would just ruin my nice geometry.

[CONtra]

flip through the whole sketchbook, really great renderings, studies, and characters. really dig the style. great stuff

[PHATandy]

Thanks Contra, really glad your digging everything. Cheers.

Some more on that 3d stuff, except now its a paintover!
Really trying to make a move on my portfolio. I've got some more stuff planned, so stay tuned!

[PHATandy]

Today is good day.

[ThomasM]

nice 3d works andy - impressive how quickly you seem to have picked it up! Personally I am more attracted to 2D work, but Im looking forward to more. - and throw some pencils up for us por favor!

[Meps]

Awesome paintover on the 3D piece! The colors and lighting are looking great (although it might pop a bit more if you threw in just a few highlights).

Loving the spaceman, too. Especially the arm exoskeleton/claw tool. The only critique I can think of here is that the lower part of the torso armor around the crotch doesn't seem to line up with the armor above it, although that might be intentional if it's a separate piece. Anyway, awesome stuff!

(What program do you use for your 3D work?)

[PHATandy]

Hey Tom, thanks. Yeah 3D is useful, I still prefer 2D, but the advantages and speed it can bring are amazing. I just need to find a way to integrate it into my normal way painting some more.
Thanks Meps - yeah I noticed that not a long after I finished it. I'm gonna touch it up for my portfolio. Cheers.

Another little doodle.
Practicing, as Prometheus put it 'Greebles'. I'm not very good at it though. Too much stuff that is un-important and superfluous. I would like to paint this up properly. My linework isn't very flattering really. Its a bit messy and my line weights are REALLY bad. Put all the details in the wrong places with the wrong sized lines.

Also go read THIS. Really good little read by Prom.

[PieMonster]

These prop things are great dude, I think you've got something really interesting going on in them. And the design of this guy is really cool. Keep it up man, looking forward to seeing more!

[PHATandy]

Hey, thanks Pie. Glad you like em.
I definitely think I got something going. I just need to find out what it is and push it some more.
I think I might paint this one too. Practice moving on from lineart to painting without becoming dependent on the linework for the painting. We'll see' I think I will use the whole white/blue. Has a cool icy/snowy setting to it.
I'm enjoying doing these:

[Justyna]

That last piece looks promising, pretty cool design.

[walnut]

Man, those Underverse illos were amazing! And the one with the tower in #888: Pure fucking grooving gold dude. And as for this last page, i think you really have the tech thing going for you, there's an original voice here which i don't see often enough. And i don't just say that for the asskissing.

[cedule]

cool 3d stuff. i just looked through your sketchbook and wow there is some really awesome stuff! i'm looking forward to see some more badass works!

[sourgasm]

can't wait to see where that new one goes. also, it's just beeeggging for a sweet ship swooping in from the right.

good stuff, mang.

[TheGnoll]

niiiiiice!!!

[PHATandy]

Justyna Hopefully I delivered! Glad you liked it.
Walnut That means a bunch, I feel like I'm slowly not giving a shit about having a 'voice'. So if I'm getting one, then that's awesome. Thanks a lot.
Cedule Thanks bro!
Sourgasm Holy shit, I just finished this and read your comment. But yes, I absolutely need a helicopter or something landing on this. Gonna do that now.
Gnollynoll Yeeeaahhhh!! Ty.

I feel like I get to a certain point in paintings these days where I can still go further and I NEED to take it further. Like this is about 3-4 hours of paintings. But thats nothing, I could refine this so much more. But I cant really say or know how I would do anymore, do I just up-res it and max out the details and textures. That feels pointless, but I know this feelings lacking in a certain polish. Maybe I need some 'effects' and stuff on it. I was thinking I could add snow to everything, like a little dusting.
I dunno

[Luckers]

Whoa, Andy, this looks absolutely amazing!
I would love it if you would show us the progress of one of these line to finish pieces. I think I could learn a thing or two of that
Great work!

[PHATandy]

Yeah I might do that luckers. I'll see if I can salvage anything from my layers. Probably not though, I compress a lot of stuff down as I work otherwise file sizes get a bit big. Ill think about it for the next maybe. Thanks.

[VirgL]

that last one is great Andy, as for pushing it further, I personally think it all depends of the style your looking for.. if you want something super realistic, you should try getting rid of the lineart stiff visible and really descrbibe things only with spot of values , I think the snow looks more realistic because of that. Crips edges on silhouette is also something you can refine when polishing an image , like selecting an area with lasso and painting inside it to make sure its 100% sharp.. For the resolution I find it works best to stick with a high res canvas from early on , like 3000 x 5000, this way you can build up your image using textured brush which will create random small details that can build up into some kind of texture effect.

[walnut]

I'm not sure about putting too much more detail in that last one, right it looks crisp enough (to my tastes at least). Maybe playing around with the light and the shadows a bit more might make it pop out more?

[Sebastian Gromann]

yeah, I'm agreeing with Virg and walnut.
i think pushing the values will help pushing that awesome scene and will give the eye a clear focus, if that makes sense, if not then i tried to do a quick overpaint ! Hope you'll get my intention, otherwise it could just be my personal habit, hehe. pm me if i should replace that one, buddy

btw, i'm really enjoying your latest works ! keep this going!

[Marian Rowling]

Hey Andy I think it looks good. At the moment to me everything is fairly evenly lit which is good from a concept point of view and if it was to be modelled. My suggestion to take it beyond this would be to imagine what film or game it was in and light it like a scene from one to create a specific mood. Even adding characters or some vehicles or crafts to show some action will take it beyond a static picture. All that said though it does look good.

[gurzy]

Hey Andy I looked through a lot of your pages! So inspiring how you got to where your at the moment. A lot of hard work and really enjoyed your comments w/ your art. I could feel your frustration trying to figure a lot of things out and just pushing past those obstacles and focusing your attention on how to do it. You've come a long way from your first page keep it up don't stop hungering!

[NickyBeats]

ow WOW man! that last environment looks incredible!! dude! awesome job!

[Dark_Eyes]

Really stellar improvement here man, you're running on all cylinders now! can't wait to see what's coming next! Love! *****

[merl1n]

That last one is super great!

[PHATandy]

Wow, glad you guys like that one.
I said this somewhere else, but this is work I find fun and I think I can do well. And you reaction to this show that, so thanks. I'll definitely be adding this kind of stuff to my portfolio I think (more than already).

Luckers Ask you 'might' recieve. Lol. Someone else asked for this as well. its best I could get out of my PSD that I keep flattening a lot. Basically between the line work and the painting - I just keep painting on the top and over lines etc, and also I slowly bring the opacity of the line work down, so I have to paint the edges in. Until I remove the lines completely.

Virg Thanks a lot man, and good tips. I definitely like refining things and the lasso gets used every now and then, but I'm such a sucker for brush strokes. The end of the 'gun' or whatever had a really nice feel to it in shape and brush strokes. Hope I can find out what it really is and keep it. Cheers.

Walnut Thanks a lot man. Pushing the contrast definitely helped here for sure.

Sebastian This paint over was SUPER useful. Thanks loads, its only by putting it along side mine that realised how dull it was and not enough contrast. Thanks.

Marian More amazing tips. Thanks a lot, as you can see, I took them right into this. I'm actually thinking of experimenting with another version where I really push the atmosphere of the piece for more mood. So much CA stuff I see lately seems to actually push atmosphere and mood so much, just to get that WOW factor. Even if it ruins it as a 'concept' piece.

Gurzy Indeed it was a lot of hard work. Not enough hard work, but some! Cheers buddy!

Nicky, DarkEyes, Merlin - Thanks a lot guys, glad you like it.

OK, So I did some more on this. Like I said to Marian, thinking of doing some more on this, maybe an intense snowy version or something. But really I just want to push onto starting another piece, learn from this and just make another thats even better.
(havent done this in a while
Also guy I found this sort of recently, Id known of his work but never seen his site. Darren Quatch, works at Insomniac. His design work is really amazing. He manages to keep his line art in his work in a really fucking sleek way. Wish I could keep line work integrated so nicely like that.

Also this stuff is just fucking mind blowing. via:Tom Scholes http://www.variousplaces.org/. Jesus holy thats good stuff.

Phew.

[ThomasM]

Holy crap Andy - those last two artists you posted are mindblowing. Particularly tom scholes, I´m definitely going to do something related as a study later today..... It reminds me of Ferdinand Petrie (plus colour) in how few individual lines he uses (the guy who wrote this book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Drawing-Land...0623495&sr=1-1

I hear what you are saying about your pieces, and youve regularly said that you often feel like you hit a wall whereby you dont know how to take it further. If I were you (famous last words) I would draw up a sort of check-list of what you think SHOULD be in the piece when you get to the finished stage. If you then go through it assessing whether you think you´ve achieve it or not. I know that people think they do this mentally anyway, but writing it down really helps to spot anything you´ve missed

e.g.
Perspective
Edges
Focal Point
Compositional Techniques etc etc

(you know more than I do about this I´m sure)


As an observational criticism I would recommend working a little more on your edges. You tend to keep them fairly uniformly sharp when you paint in particular, and I think this detracts slightly from the quality of your design.

I would REALLY recommend this book to think about edges, but then there are so many great resources out there:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Alla-Prima-E...0623421&sr=8-1


Anyway, I hope that helps - its high time I actually gave some useful crits on these forums!

[Meps]

Wow, this piece looks absolutely stunning. Really solid design and handling of the colors (particularly the ice).

I'm really kinda blown away by your linework. I know you said you think it looks messy, but it honestly looks pretty clean to me. How do you go about making the lines so clean and precise? Also, did you use photo textures for the ice cliffs around the building in that third step? If so, great job integrating them into the painting.

On a note of critique, I think that the design itself is really strong. However, when I'm looking at the piece, I find myself focusing more on the surrounding cliffs than on the architecture. I think this partly has to do with what ThomasM said--the textures and lines of the cliffs are rendered clearly and sharply, and while that does look fantastic on its own, I feel like it draws more attention than the architecture does (particularly when the ice has such high value contrast).

Some things that might help that are first, like ThomasM said, working on the edges--sharpening the region around the focal point and blurring areas outside it. It also might help to add some more contrast on the building itself--playing up the highlights could help bring more of the white from the ice into the design so the ice isn't so overpowering.

That said, it's an awesome piece and I'm crazy jealous of both the final product and how quickly you managed it. Looking forward to more!