Swamp Thing

[Maggietoh]

Sooo...
I have to put a creature I designed in an environment, so i chose to put him in a swamp. Before I start rendering and blending in the creature and the swamp, is this working as far as scale and composition goes. I will color in the swamp and finish out the creature so that it 'belongs' in the environment...but I dont want to do that yet until I am sure that the scale is right. Any suggestions, does this guy belong here? is he grounded...any views on perspective...ect?

Thanks guys

[THEMike]

Well, the scale of the creature really depends on how big you want to make it, since there is no standard for it. Perspective looks ok to me but the biggest problem that makes the character look totally pasted on is the range of values, which is totally different from that of the bg. As for the lighting, to be honest I can't seem to understand where the light in the swamp is coming from. I see some trees lit from the right and others from the left, but maybe I'm missing something so i can't really say if lighting-wise it fits.

[Alice Herring]

It doesn't look like the creature is actually 'in' the composition. You've placed him dead center in front of the foreground element. If you take away the creature you've inserted (is this your key bg design, or someone else's?) the focal point is actually in the lit area. I'd say...probably right about where the ....face tentacles are, but a little bit lower.

You really should do thumbnails exploring the best composition for the creature design in his environment, rather than trying to drop the image in and 'blending'. His feet aren't even on the same ground plane that the bg has established.

[Maggietoh]

ideally that's how it would be done, but my assignment is to put this guy in the environment after he was designed.

[Alice Herring]

ideally that's how it would be done, but my assignment is to put this guy in the environment after he was designed.

So you've designed him. Does that mean you can't redraw him for the proper pose/lighting/etc? or are you required to /paste/ him into an environment?

[Maggietoh]

lighting can be adjusted through blending modes in photoshop...all of my lighting is done on separate layers. And I will not repose him because this design was already approved by Jerad Marantz. I'd be a fool to not take his advice, he's the one who suggested the pose through a draw over.

[Maggietoh]

So, i think I'll reverse the lighting on the environment and do a paint over after the values read more properly and the lighting matches the creature's. I want this guy to be huge, I just hope I don't lose the creature to the swamp.

[Alice Herring]

I'm not saying it's a bad pose in and of itself - just that ideally, the pose, etc. should be considered as part of the overall composition. Often times it's much easier to start from the beginning rather than trying to 'make something fit' a composition. That's why I was asking if you're being required to paste the existing design/drawing into a bg.

[Maggietoh]

I have to put this creature in an environment, specifically a SWAMP. I like this swamp that I drew for my environment design class. Its convenient and wasn't planned but sometimes life throws you a bone.This project is due Sunday, I have other project that are also due this week. Obviously it would be ideal to start from scratch but when you have deadlines, you have to make shortcuts to get a finished project that looks decent. so I'm putting this creature into this environment.

[Artfix]

I think it looks pretty good now. But now that you have used the blending modes, you need to iron out the errors those cause like those banding rainbow colors. Go over it now and paint it manually.

There's just no way to make the creature look huge without something else for scale because those trees could be any size. The only thing I can think of that would make it look huge is to show some birds flying nearby. If the birds are really tiny, it might help give a sense of scale.

[Maggietoh]

Great idea artfix...I'll try that, and yeah...I will definitely have to do an opaque paint over after I get some local color stained in. Thanks man

[Alice Herring]

Artfix beat me too it. (using birds or some other animal to help indicate scale.)

Lowering your horizon line might also help. I uploaded an example. (Just...cut each layer and moved them up. Awesome outcome was giving it a ratio closer to film without trying.)

The 1 and 2 boxes are the same except for the horizon line. (well. and the direction of the ellipses on the shirt!) Simply by dropping the horizon line, the character won't look so small. That's because a high-horizon line means a downshot; generally they are used in film convention to indicate a variety of things: less power, smaller stature, or an objective view.

Also, I doodled some other notes on the bg - simply things to think about as you adjust it to work for this composition.

[Maggietoh]

Thanks! Yeah I think lowering the horizon line will definitely make this creature have more presence. Didn't even think of that/ Thanks for taking the time to do a paint over to explain your point....really helped! Much obliged

[Maggietoh]

Here's the latest.....

[Maggietoh]

Dont know if this is getting better or worse...I lowered the horizon line...did some other this, atmosphere. Now I'm pretty stuck.

[Iridyse]

Not really sure how helpful this is going to be since your assignment is due on Sunday, but here goes.
I think your earlier environment lighting was much more promising that the current one. Right now it just looks dead with no real depth in it. You can easily adjust the lighting on the creature to match the environment. As far as scale goes, you would have to redraw the creature instead of simply just dropping the horizon( in your case it looks like you just cropped the top?)

Like I said, might be too late for this one but maybe it gives you stuff to think about next time. Are you taking classes at the Concept Design Academy?

[Maggietoh]

Thanks for taking the time out to do those paint overs....made me decide to go with a cyan sort of back lighting....so here it is so far

[Maggietoh]

So I'm watching "The Creatures of Dr. Who" and was inspired a bit by the Ood....so took it in a slightly different direction.

[Lhune]

Mmmh, he's blending into the background a bit. Why is the cyan backlighting only in that particular place in the painting? You'd expect it to be all around, unless it has some sort of special light source in which case you'd expect there to be a main source, too.

Also, for the dark setting of the piece I fear the shine on his skin is a little too strong. It would need a bright light to reflect so strongly but nothing around him suggests such a light.

[Maggietoh]

Good call on the luminance on the highlights on the shoulder and such....Agree with all you have to say...fixed that. Even Jerad Marantz called me out o that! I've fixed a lot of the issues that weren't working....will upload soon.



THANKS!

[Maggietoh]

here's what I turned in for my final.

[EvilBunny]

Hey, turned out pretty nice. Assuming you got everything you needed from Jerad already, haha. When I first opened this, I thought to myself, "Man, reminds me of Jerad's class." And bam, Jerad's class, haha. Good luck at CDA.