MrFrenik's Sketchbook

[GrayPersona]

very good perspective studies man and cool charactar studies,makes me want to work harder on my own perspective studies.
thanks for the inspiration and keep updating.

[kingkostas]

Hello mate . Wow that linework at the last design is really great. The design looks interesting, if not by context at least by execution. Now keep up the studies, do more value studies on anatomy and simple 3d objects.Work with a limited value range and when you have blocked in the basic values only after that proceed to more inbetween values. The anatomy study you did is very good, you train both in values and in anatomy. Keep working and thinking. Interesting play with the sillouetes of these characters, but you have some very repetitive elements around the forms. Make areas with more detail and areas with less detail. In a sillouete when you have lots of changes in one area, it mostly indicates detail. So in overall small gaps,cuts etc are details, and big gaps cuts etc are less details.
Keep up the good work!!!

[MrFrenik]

Thanks everyone for the comments and crits. They never go to waste. Couldn't figure out what the hell to do tonight, so I messed around in Alchemy for a bit. 50 random ass silhouettes. Plan is to chop them up and make an assortment of things, although most of them I already see designs in (some of them definitely more obvious than others).

[MrFrenik]

Back to studies for a bit. Box construction and rendering. Downloaded a new set of brushes and took one of those textures and added it to the basic soft brush, which I used for this rendering. It almost makes it look as if charcoal powder was used for this, so I really like the effect it gave. Let me know what you guys think. I'll update this with other lighting schemes as well as cylinders, cones, and the dreaded sphere.

Edit: Just realized that the cast shadow isn't touching the bottom corner facing the "camera". I blame the masking, since this is the first time I've used them for a digital rendering.

[MrFrenik]

Not exactly sure how "valid" it is to use the smudge tool for blending, but I played around with some setting tonight and came up with a few brushes that seem to work well for it. Blocked in 4 colors and went to town smudging. Applied some sharpen, brush stroke, levels adjustment and texture and it almost looks like it was painted on canvas.

[Nemome]

Your latest IDW came out really nice.
When you are painting studies, like the torso studies, then also try to apply it afterwards to a painting or drawing from imagination.
Otherwise we tend to ust copy that stuff and then forget about all the important stuff that we learned a few days before.
Also try to play a bit with line weight.
Ctrlpaint.com has an quick video tutorial about that, you might want to check it out.

[MrFrenik]

Cylinder rendering. Started to do a cone, then my computer decided to restart because of an update. I'll do it and the sphere tomorrow.

[Revidescent]

I really like the textured brush stuff you're doing, and the cylinder is great. Very dynamic shading. The smudge experiment above it - be careful about overusing texture; I think the one you used there has a very fake, digital look it. (The one on the cube and cylinder, on the other hand, work really well.)

[ecki]

Nice constructions and renderings! I agree with Rev the textured brushes look fake on your "test pages" but work ok on the objects. I would still try to use them less, they can be kinda obtrusive.

Nice alchemy silhouettes, but some of them are just blobs Try turning the opacity of the alchemy brush to 50%, I find it way easier to come up with nice thumbnails that way (and my mind sees more).

[MrFrenik]

Thanks for the input, guys; I'll play around more with it to get a more realistic look. Cone tonight. Let it be known that cones are now my new enemies. The bastards are tough to render convincingly in correct perspective. As always, any tips are appreciated.

[lionheartGFX]

wow alot of experimentation i love it! i would love it even more if you applied it to fun stuff like sketches, design and ideas but i will take what i can get keep it up man!

[MrFrenik]

Some chamfered cube coming at ya. Things to learn from a study like this - be aware of the angle of incidence, or where the light strikes an object. As a plane of an object turns closer to 90 degrees towards the light source, the more that plane will be illuminated. Be aware of tangents that occur between an object and light, as this is where your core shadows will mostly occur. Be aware of reflected light and the possible angles at which light can bounce from one plane to another. Light has a tendency to catch strongly at edges on a lit plane and occlusion happens on the planes adjacent to that lit plane. As I do more of these, I will eventually put them to "creative use", as some of you have requested. I've seen some school projects from some ID classes that take these simple forms and build cities out of them. A geo-city, if you will. I'll probably do something like this.

[MrFrenik]

Cube with graphic shape. The construction shows the numbering system used, called "halfway to black", and is taught at Art Center by Scott Robertson. For a 1-2-3 read of an object's values, you choose the value when the object is in light and using a 9 value grey scale you find the halfway point between that light value and pure black to give yourself the degree for your core and cast shadows (assuming the ground and your object are the same value) and then half that again to find your midtone. So for my cube, the light value is 1, so the shadow will be 5 and midtone will be 3. The graphic's light value is 3, so the shadow is 6 and the mid is about 4.5, and so on. Of course I added more and more contrast as I went, but I tried to make sure that I always kept the values separate and readable as what they initially were set out as. Hopefully this came through.

[LeaderOfZombies]

Very nice studies! I should get more into perspective as well. Been avoiding it for too long. Thanks for commenting on my sketchbook.

[Istmin52]

I really like the experimentation with the texture brushes but be careful not to overuse it. I would use it more sparingly. You can easily control that with masking. In general though, I'm liking the perspective studies. It would be cool to see you apply this stuff to an illustration.

[Joe777k7]

lol Loved your comment in my sketchbook! Man! Mad rendering you are doing! I need to start doing the basic shapes like that soon! Great work man!!!

[GrayPersona]

dude those planer studies are fucking bad ass,they looks so crisp and almost have a traditional feel to em.
I should try to see if I can approach anything near this level of presentation,thank you man!

[David Keen]

DUDE! Those shape studies are so good! You're using a nice painterly style but in such a controlled manner, very impressive stuff. All your hard work is really paying off.

[MrFrenik]

Thanks for the comments and crits, dudes. They always help. I'm trying to find a decent balance between texture, soft and hard edges; if anything seems like it's over the top, please do tell, since it's sometimes hard to see when you're "inside" of the work, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, bumped it up a level on the studies and went to a multi-chamfered cube. This one's definitely harder to do, as you have to be very conscious of your primary planes (top, side, back, or 1,3,5) and then you have to be aware of the angles of the secondary planes to the light source. I included the construction, so you can see what values I decided to assign each plane based on where it is located relative to the light. I shifted some of the values around, mainly the lightest value and second lightest and I kept the top planes much lighter than what I had initially planned (more between 1-2.5 than 3-4). It might seem like a lot of unnecessary planning for a simple object, but it helps to take all the "guess worK" out of it and I can just enjoy painting and working on a good presentation instead of worrying about what values should be where. The thing that really gave me trouble was considering how the secondary planes transitioned into one another. I thought that a harder contrast between the planes would be correct, but it didn't look right, and I'm assuming that's because the difference in angles isn't so great as to warrant such a dramatic value shift. As always, gradual value shifts are much more difficult to achieve than sudden shifts and so I spent most time on getting that to look correct. Here's what I came up with. Let me know of anything that doesn't work and that I might need to adjust/address. Thanks!

P.S. If anyone knows precisely how to calculate the angle that occurs between a plane and a light source in perspective, I'd appreciate the info. Right now I'm kinda guessing at how it's done and I'd rather be 100% certain.

[maths82]

woah, you're like a scientist with these studies Real accurate work, and I really like your texture brush style, I can see you have control when you paint, it's not overworked with the texture lost, it's more like you plan each stroke to do its job. Good stuff.

[Joe777k7]

Wow some really great advice you are giving man!! I will be trying to follow that advice and watching Scott Roberston's Dvds soon! Keep going your paintings are looks awesome!!

[MrFrenik]

Quick update. I ordered James Gurney's "Color and Light", so hopefully that'll shed some... um, info on lighting and painting for more realistic results. I'm also eagerly waiting on Scott Robertson to finish his 3 books, How to Render, How to Draw, How to Design as I will be yanking those off the store book shelf as soon as they come out. If you guys don't watch his stuff on Youtube or haven't checked out his Gnomon work, I highly suggest it all.

2 Cubes. Interplay between objects in space, how to the light and shadows interplay with one another, etc. It seems simple, but I'm sure the construction shows that there's quite a bit to actively think about when planning these out, especially when multiple objects are involved. In this scenario, the light source is a "sun", so worrying about degrees of lightness on each object wasn't necessary. However, if a local light was used (spot light, overhead, softbox, etc.) then it would be necessary to plot out the angles to which the light hits each planar surface in order to accurately understand how much light hits the object at certain points. I did add that little bit of construction in the orthographic side views to show how this could be done. Again, let me know if anything needs work. Thanks!

I also will be working on some simple orthographic sketches of objects around my job area ( fork lifts, crates, gas containers, and other construction gizmos), but since these are pencil/pen sketches and my scanner is being a bitch and not working with this laptop, I'll have to figure out another way to post them on here.

[gregoriarts]

I like the hair

[GrayPersona]

great studies man,you are making me feel lazy(and thats a good thing),I own the james gurney book-its excellenet for theoretical understanding
and just in general how light behaves but its not a "how to" book like scot robertsons techniques sort of are. but it is execellent none the less.
I also ordered a book called "framed ink" on composition,cant wait to check it out.

[MrFrenik]

Don't feel lazy, Gray; I certainly don't put out enough work to make anyone feel envious, ha.

Quick studies so far tonight. I tried jumping into a more complex box shape and then discovered that my understanding of constructing accurate cast shadows in perspective leaves much to be desired, so I've gone to this website http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/pers...tml#shadowform and have been studying the examples there. I want to do more creative work with this stuff, but I want to understand my fundamentals first. I also did some quick orthos. They're tough to do cleanly in PS, so I'll need to get better at that.

[MrFrenik]

I've found a good use for SB Pro - creating derpy looking alien faces. I'll get better at design. Promise.

[Joe777k7]

that is a good use for sketchbookpro, i might start doing that as well Awesome cast shadow construction too!!! Im watching those gnomon vids on it right now hahahah keep up the good work man!! Keep trying those orthos as well Search Blueprint in google search for some cool orthos to draw in 3/4th view. GrayPersona gave me that advice. Try tank Blueprint. Alot of cool stuff comes up

[MrFrenik]

Thanks, Joe, your comments stroke my ego like no lady ever could.

Gonna spank some IDW ass this week. A lot of possibilities for cool designs with this one, so it'll be fun and challenging. Check out the topic, if you're interested, because that contest could surely use some participants. And even if you don't want to participate, at least stop by and show some support for the artists who are.

Anyway, quick sketches for some gas masks. Feedback's welcome, as always.

[ecki]

Really nice studies here! I love the shadow constructions and value studies
I think you've really internalized that halfway-to-black stuff.

The symmetric drawings look nice, but I would add some non-symmetric elements at the end, just to break it up a little.

I love how you are working on understanding the hard stuff and science behind it. I should also do that technical stuff more.

[MrFrenik]

Thanks for crit, Ecki. These were just some quick doodles (about 15 min. each), so for the final I'd definitely add more asymmetry.

Some more shadow constructions, dealing with inclined planes. Actually a lot simpler than I thought they would be, and they're getting to be addicting. Kinda like art puzzles.