Rob's Creatures, Beasties, Aliens, Monsters, and other stuff too...

[Rafal Dorsz]

Hey,

You're cetainly on the right track, so forgive me if I'm being obvious or repeating after someone. Right now I think your paintings suffer from being a little on the monochrome side. Or maybe I should say 'objects in your paintings' instead of 'paintings'. I'd like to see a bit more color variation there. Brown lizards arent just varying lightness of brown. There's lots of other colors there, plusr light bouncing around the environment would introduce some more colors, and at the same time help unify your creatures (or whatever you have in any given painting) with their environments.
You're doing good, so don't give up and have some fun with colors - bring more life to your creations.
Good luck!

[warburton]

Hey Rob, its been a while, hope alls well!

Recent creatures have been I always get a little bit jealous when i see your crazy progression ;p I think keep going the way you are and it won't be long before you start getting some C.O.W badges under your belt. I agree with above comments and Rafal Dorsz makes a good point, your values are prity spot on now but it would be cool to see you push your colour palette further. Try using interesting light sources and complimentary colours to give your designs mood, story and character. Try reading James Gurneys Light and Colour, its awesome and might help alot.

All the best for 2012 dude, and keep pushing, its been great seeing your work develop over the past year.

[thedestroyer]

Good Job! Those creatures kick ass! Great Development on these pages.

Cheers

[Rob Powell]

Rafal Dorsz: Thnx for the crit, mate!

logistic puppet: Glad I'm making someone jealous haha. I'll def look into that book you mentioned, I'm at thepoint where I always keep my eyes peeled for any sort of reading that may help.

thedestroyer: Thnx, man!

Past couple of days been working on this week's EOW and IDW. So I uplaoded a wip of my EOW entry and some silhouettes for IDW. Hopefully will be able to finish both, but I want to finish at least one of them. Also a SHITLOAD OF GESTURES!!....mostly 10 sec, but a few 30 sec ones as well...

[Rob Powell]

...and final for Eow...had some fun with this, tried to loosen up while I was painting, dunno if it worked or not...

[Rob Powell]

just finished doin some mat studies, something I REALLYYYY need to do more of, and probably will because these were quite fun to do...kinda failed with teh leather, but that's what studies are for!!! no ref for the skin and scales btw, ref used for all others...

[Rob Powell]

some variants done for cow, starting a bit late, but I'm might be able to finish in time...

[Rob Powell]

Boorish cow done for cow....
I think I need to start doing some more illustrative works as well...plus if you look in the finals thread you'll notice my entry is sandwiched in between two awesome entries by Panshi and Eclectix....talk about no chance, but at first I wasn't gonna submit anything so it was noce jsut being able to do something really quick....

[BludHund]

Hey Rob,

Creature work is pretty-jaw-dropping.

Your rendering has improved incredibly, but I still think there's a certain sense
of dullness or dryness. Try really delving into some flesh tones, not just
hide and carapace.

Don't forget, its not just a matter of rendering, push the lighting of forms. Make
those volumes come off the page into the viewers space. In general there is also
a sense of depth or dimensionality that seems just out of reach.

I think some broadening of your subjects/disciplines will help you enormously.
Characters, artifacts, most especially I think landscapes. Landscapes should
really help you pick up all the tricks of depth and scale to make those monsters
come alive!

PS

If monsters are what you want to do, think about going ahead and submitting your portfolio
to Wizards of the Coast (or their competitors, I suppose) you should be able to start making
some money freelancing, for sure. If not, maybe you can at least get some pro crits

[Rob Powell]

BludHund: Thnx for the crits, mate. And I'll keep your suggestion in mind, atm I don't think I'll be too reliable for freelance work since my other job conflicts with my art.

Latest cow, I'll always welcome an opportunity to render Nessy!

[Vielmond]

Hello, Rob. I really like your creatures and I can see you've improved since your first post.

I agree with BludHund and I think you could improve even more if you started to vary more the colors used in the shading and light too. You could check some impressionst works to notice that often a skin, cloth, background, they aren't painted with values of only one color, but many other colors as well.

It was one of the hardest things to learn for me, and I'm still working on it, so don't panic, it can take some time. I guess one of the fastest ways to study this would be to do more photostudies. You don't have to detail anything, do each in 30min or less with large brushstrokes and just focus in trying to mimic the colors and understand their relationships.

[Rob Powell]

Thanks, Vielmond!

Well, I just can't keep away from cow, I'm thinking to myself that I'm gonna skip the next week, then the next topic just prevents me from doing so...anywho...

[Rob Powell]

This week I'm working on this week's Eow: Centaur Rendezvous Point and Cow: Great Armored Bird....we'll see if I can not only finish both of them, but create some nice quality work, both ideas have potential, but it will be a challenge to get both to point that I'm aiming for.

[Duman]

Just paging through your sketchbook it is obvious that you have grown leaps and bounds over the stuff on page one. I am quickly becoming a fan of your C.O.W work.
Keep it up!

[LukasUrvan]

That's dedication all those little sketches on the 7th!

[Rob Powell]

Duman: Thanks glad your liking my work, hopefully I won't dissapoint with future updates!

LukasUrvan: Thanks, though I'd call it more dedication if I did it on a regular basis.

Latest cow entry. Plus updated my blog if you want a gander.

[Blankstate]

Hey Rob. Your creatures are looking better and better and your environments are starting to show some improvement. Mind if i do a fairly quick paintover of your recent eow as a suggestion of where you should probably take it?

[Rob Powell]

Hey Rob. Your creatures are looking better and better and your environments are starting to show some improvement. Mind if i do a fairly quick paintover of your recent eow as a suggestion of where you should probably take it?

Of course any crits and paintovers are highly encouraged! ^^

[ElricSlinger]

The creature designs are looking great On your last painting the idea is cool but I think the creatures look a bit static (excluding the front legs and head on the one on the right) Maybe try to show the weight shifting a bit more in the muscles. Anyways, Keep up the good work!

[Blankstate]

oops. guess that wasn't so quick. had to do that thing where i sleep and ended up doing more of a full paintover even though it was still an unfinished wip. Here's what i did with your piece and included some process shots.


hope that helps/makes sense.

[Rob Powell]

HOLY FUCK, MAN!! That looks amazing! Thanks for the paintover, really gave me some more ideas!

[Rob Powell]

just finished...

[BludHund]

Not reliable? Job conflicts with personal work? DUDE YOU JUST FINISHED TWO WEEKLY CHALLENGES IN ONE WEEK. Its clear to me that you have the passion, even if you don't have the time. At least show your portfolio to some pros.

Good work on the landscape. Definitely an area that you can chip away at whenever you get a chance, do some thummbnails, speedpaints, light and color studies. An hour at a time should still pay dividends.

Keep rockin!

[TFsean]

Hi thar
Really like your sketchbook andI love your little thumbnail figures. For your environments one thing I notice is the texture of your scapes. In #95 and #112 the ground is very similar but iceblocks and forest would not be, do a couple studies of mountains, see what they do and help get better textures to your environments

[Rob Powell]

BludHund: Thnx, yeah I mostly meant that because I haven't worked in the field before and I'm not really sure how well I'll do, I know I still have a lot to learn so, I'll wait for now, until I'm truly ready.

TFsean: Thanks, I need to experiment more with textured brushes, atm I'm more worried about the rendering and lighting so I haven't had the chance to make anything good. I also try to avoid using other people's brushes which may also be a downfall.

Forgot to upload my updated Eow, so here it is. Plus some thumbs for this week's cow, Asymmetrical Insectoid. I tried to push the Asymmetrical aspect quite a bit, turns out I made more of a freakshow than anything, lol.

[Rob Powell]

Latest cow finished and some stuff for chow...

[Baconstrap]

Hello Mr Rob I shall be honest to you. The first of you're works I ever saw was the "Egg dragon i Cow" right before the summer. And then I wasn't very impressed even tho I really sucked super hard then(I suck a bit less now) But I saw one of you more lately cow's and I like wow that's pretty good yes. So I'm happy for you progress but you can still be so much better which you sure should be. The only crit I have is the same as Rafal Dorsz just study light and color bounces.

Keep up the good work and stay bacon.

[Si_Swe]

Hey Rob,
I haven't gotten the chance to crit any of your COW pieces in a while because of my sketchbook, but I figured I'd stop by to give some feedback.
First off, I want to say just how much you've improved since you started participating COW(round 211 or 12, if I'm not mistaken... perhaps I am). Your designs are becoming more creative and your ability to render clearly is vastly improving.
I would crit individual works, but I feel like that might be less useful than just some overall pointers that I think might help in the future:
The first and seemingly most repeated in this thread is your use of shadow and light in your work. You have a tendency to use value as the chief indicator of what is illuminated and what isn't. Try experimenting, not only with value, but shifting hues. Produce warm shadows for a cool light source and cold shadows for a warm light source. As people have been saying, light bounces, so get a little bit of the hues from other surfaces coming out onto adjacent surfaces. Your use of bounce light is beginning to appear, it just needs to be refined. In that same vein, I see you used, in your last piece, the ambiguous, hyper-powered secondary light source trick: This is a trick that tends to work a lot better when there's a more dynamic light scenario, wherein it would seem more reasonable for a secondary light source to command so much power. It's a good way to start pushing forms with light rather than line, but it can easily become arbitrary as it seems to be in your insectoid piece.
Secondly, brush size. Push it up a little bit. Your work tends to suffer from having to many strokes present whilst rendering. In some cases it creates texture beautifully, in other cases it creates unwanted activity in what should be a more calm space. Varying your brush size in this way is going to give you a lot more versatility in your ability to bring the viewer's eye to the focal points of your pieces, it will allow you to emphasize detail and will also just save you a whole whack of time.
Lastly, I still see a heaving reliance on line in your work. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Some artists heavily rely on line and works beautifully. With the direction your rendering is taking, though, line either needs to be played up, or eliminated entirely. Right now you occasionally have this awkward space where some lines are showing through at rough intervals which takes away from the form of the subjects. It's a problem I've been having lately as well, so I guess we'll get rid of this one together, eh?
Keep improving, and thanks for being such a big supporter for COW. Now go forth and conquer the world or some such thing.

[Rob Powell]

Baconstrap: Mmmm...bacon...lol, thanks for the comments dude! Glad my work is starting to catch your interest!

Si_Swe: Thanks for stopping by, appreciate it! I can't remember the number but my first Cow was the Bridge The Gap round, now that I think about it it's about 10 months or so since then, I can't believe almost a year has past since then. It's really great all the support I'm getting from fellow Cowies, really keeps pushing me to get better. Thanks for all the crits as well, right on the money as usual. I'd leave a comment in your sb but I noticed your not so active there, you should update that bad boy, so you can show the community how much you've improved from your earlier work!

well, I've decided to try something out in the mournings and work on silhouettes to wake myself up, this is a technique used by Mike Corriero himself and is really useful in generating a lot of useful designs rather quickly. Instead of explaining the technique I'd rather if you just watch this video. I'd recommend watching just about all of his vids if your even the slightest bit interested in creatures. There's a few here that I created that I particularly like and may even use in the future. While some are just garbage, but it's not about whtehr it looks good, but putting ideas down on paper, or in this case computer screen.



this one's kinda shitty, but still some useful stuff here...

[Rob Powell]

another set of thumbs...