sparth - depot - custom shapes

[heix33]

I'm not very original, so to stick out, i'm gonna say, your aewosme.
Thanks for the mini tutorial on post 4.

[ethan karnopp]

radicalll

[B-Man]

Awesome, thanks for explaining your technique. It's really inspiering. Also wanna say that I admire your compositions.

[oma]

cheers.. for this.. subscribtes bigtime .

[malyddz]

amazing work waiting for more

[kingkostas]

Thank you for sharing knowledge!!! Great works

[Jai Kamat]

this thread is a revelation

[NickyBeats]

SPARTH! your my hero. im not kidding, i love your work. seriously excited about you posting on here. i hope it continues!! thanks for the tips too!!

[ImagineTheEnding]

You're landscaped are ridiculous. It just looks like it took you forever to do.

[Howie]

thanks so much for sharing this technique, I've never even touched custom shapes before this opens up a whole new world for me

[sparth]

jockemon, thanks
the best way to describe it is that you create masks for each big group of shapes you're making, and this according to where they're located too. foreground, middleground, background.when you paint on the selected shape surface, you then afterwards invert the selection in order to pain on the white areas. it is extremely fast and keep you in control of all the rendering.

toby: i apologize, i haven't replied to your email yet.
will try not to forget.

howie: me neither. i was always refering to the custom shapes as some dumb stamping thing for fun, or something similar. i'm exagerating but there's a bit of truth.

here's a piece for tonight.
don't even ask me what it is, it just ... "is". hehe
it's based mostly on custom shapes, with several overlay/darken/lighten layers and blends.

s

[Toastage]

toby: i apologize, i haven't replied to your email yet.
will try not to forget.

hahaha it's all good. I'll just keep resending it until you do

Love this recent one. I can just imagine it layered up and animated slightly as the camera pulls out. Awesome!

[LAL]

awesome sketch here ,I love your works very much !

[ethan karnopp]

I just got to playing around with this and wanted to figure out how to sample directly from a photograph or texture so I did a quick screencap tut.




Basically:
-Get image (I used one of sparths from his flickr, hope he doesnt mind ^^)
-Desaturate, adjust contrast to 100%, brightness whatever you would like
invert optional, for this one i did, ALSO I added an overlay gradient to help even out some of the values otherwise your texture may fade in areas you don't want
-color range, pick whichever part of the image you would like to sample and it will select all corresponding values

then just finish it off with pathing it and making a custom shape and VOILA! cheers

[richart]

This is exactly what I love about this art profession - there's always new things popping up to learn and so many other artists willing to help, share and nurture. Thanks Sparth you legend!

[Carnifex]

subscribing so i can come back later and try that technique.
nice mood in the pictures.

[VirgL]

really nice to see you posting here again, thanks for sharing your thoughts.

This technique must also create amazing result when used as quick masks, using whatever custom brush or gradient to fill these shapes right away and not just being stuck with an opaque mass. You get the sharp edges but are free to fill them with whatever type of texture you like. Will definitly try this out,
merci msieur

[sparth]

Thanks all!

Ethan: not a problem at all

Virg, i think you described it best, you nailed it!
This is when it's becoming exciting, when you manage to create masks for each section, that you treat as a negative or positive surface, switching masks by inverting the selections.

[z01ks]

Hey Sparth thanks for sharing all this so generously! I'm a long time fan but a noob at painting. So I wanted to ask you how you control your focal points with this kind of technique, because we mostly see hard edges. And if you were to push one of these paintings to a finished state (not that they're not already spectacularly beautiful) how would you soften the edges? Thanks!

[Lukias]

Hey stellar as always and if I used PS I know I'd love these tuts!. Question.. do you know similar for Painter or know of anyone I could hit up for info like this re Painter 11?
I'm hankering desperately for input. Cheers!

[pixel cheetah]

Amazing work, nice technique, many thanks!

[Jockemon]

Hey Sparth!

Thanks for the explanation. I kinda did what you described, but I made a layer under the layer I had the custom shapes on. But Im gonna try it your way.

I really like this technique though. I dont really know how to explain it but, it just sparks your imagination and all that stuff. Like custom brushes but you have way more control over it.

"Specific question": Do you have any tips on how to make futuristic/ sci fi custom shapes? Do you use photos(like Ethan did) or do you paint your own sci fi shapes?

Thanks again for sharing this technique

[h2rra]

Awesome, will test it out today!

[jama]

Guys,
i am leaving CA))

i am joking)
Sparth... you are one of the artists that dragged me to conceptart world!

thank you so much for inspiring us!

your biggest fan,
jama)

[conte]

thanks for sharing! its always a live interest to try new and uncommon things.
thats even more pleasant if they broad up your workflow possibilities.

[Toastage]

Been playing around with this some more today. To save messing around in different windows I've created an action that goes: set selection > make path > make custom shape and bound it to F2. It works a treat

[hücumkedi]

insane!! nice sci-fi concept...

[Lyno]

Nice approach, thanks for sharing this !

[JRStagg]

Your land scape's are out standing, They make me feel small in your vast pictures, brilliant, from the future to the baron deserts! amazing.

[tehmeh]

it is good to see you posting here! Thanks for the great thread, I'm a massive fan!