Daedelus Workshop Study Group

[Wheeljack18]

Ok, So Ebersol and I have had an informal Study / Mentor/ Challenge group going on over in our sketchbooks but since we've been picking up steam, it's been decided to start our own thread outside of the Sketchbooks forum. We don't want to break any etiquette rules y'know

The basic premise is to help each other grow and improve, round out our portfolios and above all have fun. We give each other challenges based on our strengths, weakness's and goals and give each other crits through out the process.

The man thing is to push ourselves and be positive! We are going to rock this shit!

Right now it's me , Eb and Eelis working on various things. The first couple of posts will seem a little disjointed because we are all working on different things already but once we get going here, it will start to make more sense.

To start, I've been working on an illustration based on an idea that has been kicking around in the back of my head for a while. A Mucha inspired piece featuring Lisa from the 80's movie Weird Science. The boys here have been giving me some art direction and here is the progress thus far.

This is going to be awesome!

[Eelis Kyttänen]

Thanks for shooting this up wheel! I'll begin with the jetpack assignment shortly. We'll also have to figure out some still lives with eb.

[Wheeljack18]

Oh man, we have a lot of ground to cover.....

What do you guys think about putting together a influence map like they have over in Novbert's Thread 'Just Another Study Group". It might be fun and give us some insight on each other's work.

Ebersol: Re: Your layer management issues....
I try to follow the KISS principle. Keep It Simple Stupid. Too many layers is a pain in the ass and impossible to keep track of. I try to work on one main layer and separate elements into individual layers. IE: Back ground layer, Character, Effects, Misc etc. Things like character equipment is painted on a separate layer and then merged once they are complete or almost so. Check out this guys stuff on Deviantart. He posts a bunch of tutorial and also allows you to download the .psd's. It will give you some insight on how he manages his layers and he's also really good!

[Eelis Kyttänen]

Hah, ID is really nasty stuff. Straight out of my uncomfortable zone. Might take a bit longer to scratch up the beginning sketches than I thought.

[Wheeljack18]

Id can be challenging but try to break it down into simple shapes like spheres, cylinders and squares. Don't focus on perfect elipses and straight lines so much as knocking out ideas and form. Draw lots of small thumbnails or silhouettes and then post them here.

[David Keen]

Hey guys, sorry for the lack of updates. I'm moving house at the moment and my time is spread super thin. I'll try and get some time tomorrow to do some work but if that doesn't happen I'll get on it asap. Keep up the great work and I'll be back with a vengeance shortly.

@Wheels: Great work setting up the thread mate. I like the name, it seems very fitting for our little group. Looking forward to seeing the next update on your piece. Ps sorry it didn't play via text but I was only kidding with the emerald daggers suggestion, I forget sometimes to proof my writing to check that the proper tone is being expressed.

[Wheeljack18]

No worries Eb! I've been busy with work so no updates on the piece. I'll be camping this weekend so don't expect anything for a few more days. I did however re work that zombie portrait I did a few weeks ago. It's in my SB as I didn't want to add it here to confuse things.

Cheers!

Eelis: Any progress on those sketches? Post up what you got. Who cares if they are not fancy!

[Eelis Kyttänen]

Thanks for the advice wheel, I'll try with simpler forms. Had to work some school stuff out the last few days, I'll have something solid done in the weekend. I'll check out your SB for that zombie!

Good camps.

[David Keen]

I've returned from my hectic week of moving madness and am ready to roll! Here are a few thumbs for jetpack designs, are the any that stand out for you guys?

[rebelionature]

Hey i just stumbled onto this thread today and i was hoping to get in on this! Its been a long time since i posted anything or even did anything artistic but im rediscovering how to have fun and not worry so much about finished products... anyhow ill post some jet pack ideas since that seems to be whats goin on right now!
@Ebersol: i really like 4,5,8,10 and 12!
here they are for what its worth...

[Eelis Kyttänen]

@Eb: 1st and 8th strike me as the firmest ones. I really dig that kind of "gadgetgy" designs, rotors and rockets! Trying to put some into my sheet too.

@Reb: Come forth and join! We have just began, so things are quite hectic right now. Me and eb are trying to figure out these ID designs and wheel is continuing with his girl from older thread. After these are done we'll most probably figure out same project for everyone. From your designs the 2th and 6th look the best. Exactly something that could be worn and flown with at the same time.

[rebelionature]

A little more refined version of number 6 of mine. This is something ive never really done before but its pretty fun so far! not sure what to do from here though... any ideas?
next posts will be smaller size.

[Wheeljack18]

Great job guys, Lots of of stuff to see and progress made.

Now that you guys have put together some thumbnails, Pick your top 2-3 and work those up further 3 dimensionally. Keep it sketchy, keep it loose, but concentrate on form and perspective. Think about the Jet pack device, how it works and who wears it. Let those ideas influence your decision making.

@rebelionature: Welcome, The more the merrier! Take a look at this link for inspiration on Industrial design http://www.idsketching.com/toolbox/t...-of-sketching/. I suggest you work up your top 3 thumbnails to a more refined level and then post it up so we can have a look.

[Eelis Kyttänen]

I forgot to mention that we are also doing some simple still lives with Eber from this link:

http://www.photos4artists.co.uk/Stil...ery%20One.html

Top to bottom.

I just finished the 1st Banana! We are trying to keep em around 30 minutes.

It also seems like I can't really sketch with the tablet, so I will do some pencil ones instead for that jetpack. Hopefully I'll be able to get em done that way.

[David Keen]

This is the first in a series of still life's that Eelis and I are working on. I enjoyed doing this piece, it was fun to focus on some pretty simple shapes and pay attention to the values and form. Mucking around with the depth of field was really relaxing and enjoyable.

Here is no. 1 of 3 more developed thumbnails. Half way through doing this one I started thinking that it looked a lot like a medieval shield and that it could be fun to try and make the jetpack something that can be used both for flight and for defence. With that in mind I'm going to muck around with that idea a little and tailor each thumbnail to a different theme or era. This is the first iteration of a pure medieval knight themed jetpack/shield.

@Rebelionature: Welcome to the party mate! As the other guys said you're more than welcome to join our little study group. As Wheels mentioned I've found it quite helpful to spend some time working up multiple designs before settling on one to go ahead with. Have another look at a couple more of your thumbnails and then pick your favourite from that batch, it can be pretty surprising what can grow from your least favourite thumbnail with a little extra attention. I also found that link that Wheels posted very helpful for developing my ideas.

@Eelis: Thanks for the feedback on the thumbnails man. I like the gadgety feel as well but I feel like the steam punkish look has been done a little to death so I won't put all my eggs in that basket just yet but will try and make sure that there are elements that are identifiable as real mechanical parts.

Your still life is looking really good! I chucked mine in my sketchbook as well as here just so I still have some new work appearing over there while the focus is mainly on the Daedelus pieces. From looking at both our pieces I think we'd both benefit a lot by paying closer attention to edge control. There are some fuzzy bits that should be sharp and some sharp bits that should be fuzzy in both our pieces. It may also be worth having a little play around with the levels at the end of rendering the piece just to bump up the contrast a touch. beyond that I think we've done pretty well on our first still life attempt. Let's keep them rolling!! Happy to move onto the two apples next?

Can't wait to see your jetpack sketches.

@Wheels: How's the Mucha piece coming along? Have you had an opportunity to spend any time on it between all the contract work? My being a hungry hungry hippo may have contributed to the missing banana incident..

[Wheeljack18]

Hey guys, great to see you guys are keeping up the initiative and producing more studies on top of the jet packs.

On the still life Studies: Eb mentioned that it would be worth it to adjust the levels on a piece which is a good tool but because I am playing devils advocate and in the spirit of learning, I suggest that you guys try to execute your studies with as little tools / tricks as possible. As if you were doing it with real media in a studio. Digital is so flexible that it makes us lazy and creates a lot of bad habits. It can be very useful and a boon to the working artist but in the long run you will be better served by doing it the hard way but the right way. Keep in mind that this is only a suggestion but you should at least consider what I'm saying. Other options could include creating studies with say only 1 brush or if you are using painter, 1 medium and limit yourself to using adjustment layers or effects brushes etc etc. In the end of the day, you want to be able to accurately draw what you are seeing using any tool and not have to rely on a crutch. Rant over.

Eelis: The still life looks good. In the next one, I suggest you concentrate on more value range. IE: Darker darks and lighter lights. One technique you can try is to make a grey background to use as your mid tone and only use white and black to delineate the form.

Ebersol:
Banana Study: I like that depth of field exercise. You are right that the edges could be more defined but to be fair, the only part of the Banana that is in focus is the central portion of the body and the only edges there are textural as opposed to linear in relation to the form of the body. If you did much more to play with the edges, you would be more so going into the realm of interpretation instead of observation. Working from photos can be a real dilemma when doing this sort of exercise because so much of what you see is already filtered through the eye of the camera. This in turn limits our choices even further.

Jetpack Design 1: Looking good so far. Isn't it great what your mind comes up with when you allow it to explore a little? I'm looking forward to seeing some more designs and where you decide to take this. Just remember to keep it loose and " Dream on Paper" as Iain McCaig would say.

I hope to post some progress on that Mucha Piece soon as I feel guilty for not contributing more work to this thread. I just handed in two assignments to my AD and I've got another piece due by the end of the week so depending on how that goes, I 'll have something up soon.

[Eelis Kyttänen]

I agree with Wheel. Photoshop holds loads of valuable tools, but it's easy to just resort to them, which in turn limits your progress. Personally, for 90% of the stuff (be it full-fledged environment piece or just a still-life study) I use one fancy textured brush (used it with the background of the banana) and the normal PS airbrush.

@wheel: You are absolutely right about contrasting things up more. I'll pay close attention to that with the apples.

@eb: I'll most probably release the stills to SB in bigger batches. Could indeed also keep an eye on the linework. I'll try to make the background a bit darker next time so the lightest areas are easier to distinguish.

Yeah, I agree that we did well with this one. Let's bring out those apples!

[David Keen]

Hey guys here's the second still life, around 35 mins again. I didn't notice until I'd finished that the deep cast shadow from the left apple is a bit flat in tone and doesn't show any of the reflected light from the apple, this is causing that area to little a little unnatural. I'm glad I picked the error up eventually and will try and keep an eye out for this in the future.

@Wheels: You're totally right about the limiting nature of photo studies. Although I've enjoyed trying to interpret the depth of field it would be better to work from real objects. The only real advantage for now is that Eelis and I can work from the same images and critique each others which is pretty fun. You should get in on a still life sometime just to loosen up and play around, if time permits.

It was great to get stuck into the jetpack assignment and feel something growing from the initial brief. After you asked me to flesh out the background of the Guardian I've felt a real benefit from trying to contextualise the subjects of my pieces and get a greater understanding of their nature. I have a day off from uni tomorrow so I'll get right into some jetpack designs and try and get all the loose sketches done along with some extra bits and pieces. Iain McCaig is such a master. I need to watch his Gnomon character design DVD again, there is some seriously good information in there.

I hope all goes well with your commissions mate!

@Eelis: Shall we do one more in black and white and then have a look at some colour studies? Maybe we could do the "selection of fruit" image next to make things a little more complicated?

[Eelis Kyttänen]

Yeah, one more black n white sounds reasonable. I'll try to make the apple one today! It's indeed probably for the best that we choose an image that has more variety in colour and shapes.

[Eelis Kyttänen]

And here's my apples. I am aware that the background kinda ruins it, I forgot to paint it up first again and duh! Maybe I'll remember with the last black n white one.

Btw, the "hole" in our left apples is pretty unsettling.

[Wheeljack18]

Hey Guys!

I needed to take a break from work and I have a little bit of progress to share on my piece. Just a few more refined comps. Playing around with color and Design. Any thoughts?

So what? No more Jet packs? You guys run out of Steam on me? JETPACKS!!!!

The studies are looking good and it's good to see you are keeping busy.

@Eb: I had the pleasure of meeting Iain McCaig a couple of years ago. He just exudes such a positive aura and immense energy that I can still remember it like it was yesterday. I also got him to sign one of my Gnomon DVD's and you can never watch them enough. Sometimes I just play them in the background and listen to the lectures. I wish I could share my stuff but NDA and all that jazz limits what I can do on that front. Someday...
I might get in on the studies too, I just have time constraints to work with so it's not a priority but I think it is always a good thing. Your studies are looking good, I think it is time to move on to color.

@ Eelis: Hey man good work. But don't kill yourself on the lack of a background. It's just a study. Notice the difference in the shape of your apples and how elongated they appear. I have a suggestion. Most of the work I have sen of yours are value studies and environments. I'd like to see you do a study using line only and focus on construction. When you model the form with line, it gives you a different understanding of the planes and construction that you would not get with straight value. Try it and see if it helps.

@reb: Where did you go?

[Eelis Kyttänen]

Hey Guys!

I needed to take a break from work and I have a little bit of progress to share on my piece. Just a few more refined comps. Playing around with color and Design. Any thoughts?

So what? No more Jet packs? You guys run out of Steam on me? JETPACKS!!!!

The studies are looking good and it's good to see you are keeping busy.

@Eb: I had the pleasure of meeting Iain McCaig a couple of years ago. He just exudes such a positive aura and immense energy that I can still remember it like it was yesterday. I also got him to sign one of my Gnomon DVD's and you can never watch them enough. Sometimes I just play them in the background and listen to the lectures. I wish I could share my stuff but NDA and all that jazz limits what I can do on that front. Someday...
I might get in on the studies too, I just have time constraints to work with so it's not a priority but I think it is always a good thing. Your studies are looking good, I think it is time to move on to color.

@ Eelis: Hey man good work. But don't kill yourself on the lack of a background. It's just a study. Notice the difference in the shape of your apples and how elongated they appear. I have a suggestion. Most of the work I have sen of yours are value studies and environments. I'd like to see you do a study using line only and focus on construction. When you model the form with line, it gives you a different understanding of the planes and construction that you would not get with straight value. Try it and see if it helps.

@reb: Where did you go?

Thanks wheel. I think the elognation might be caused because of the way I tried to add more depth with. Curving lines from the vanishing point, atleast with the left one. I can see it now after slept night.

I'll do the third one with line only. Let's see how it goes!

The science pic is shaping up real nice. Hard to decide if i like the left or right composition more!

[David Keen]

Here is an update for the art director who seems quite out of sorts with the slow progress. The idea for this one is continuing to grow and I'm starting to like the direction it's heading. I'm beginning to settle a little more with the technical workings of the jetpack and will now just muck around with the aesthetics of the shield in future updates if that works with you wheels? It's been great fun to play with this stuff and now that the mechanisms are a little more solid I'll spend some time exploring how the joints would actually work and explore that side of things in some more 3D images.

@Eelis: The apples are looking good mate. Like wheels I'd be interested to see a pure line drawing as this will give you more time to focus on the proportions and construction. Line drawings can be a real help and relieve some of the pressure that comes with finishing a full painting with all the values and effects.

@Wheels: So far I'm liking elements of both the comps but am curious to see a bit of a blending of the two. I like the way the figure steps outside of the borders in the second comp and also am liking the border itself more than the first one. But I prefer the title on the first image and bringing some of the movement that the wavy background lines provide might help keep the background a little less symmetrical. I'm also not 100% sure about the really bright pink background, but it is very evocative of the 80's and suits the subject of the piece. Keep chipping away and we'll go from there.

I'm so jealous that you got to meet Iain McCaig! Lucky bugger! He's seems like such a stand up guy and has been a great inspiration of mine to work in concept art and illustration. Where was it that you met him? Which Gnomon DVD's do you have? I've got the character design and story telling series that focuses on the little mermaid but if there is anything else available I'd love to jump online and buy them. Speaking of great online tutorials have you bought any of Matt Kohr's paid stuff from ctrlpaint.com? Some of it is a little basic but I've found the "photoshop rendering" and "greyscale to colour" series' very helpful for reinforcing information from less concise resources.

No pressure at all about the studies, but I certainly didn't want you to be excluded from anything Daedelus. All the best buddy.

[rebelionature]

Sorry im still here! just been busy with work and its been hard to get time to sit down and do some fun stuff! but ill post asap im working on the first still life and it is really hard xD. ill see what i can do with some jet pack idea's...

Here's still life number 1! whooo... had to restart after PS decided to rage quit on me.

[Wheeljack18]

Hey Guys,

Here is another update on the Weird Science Pic. I could uses some art direction on this one. I'm fuddling with the color scheme ( I know, I should I figured that out prior) and I want to push that 80's feeling and give it more energy as well as a warm seductive feel. Combine that with the classical feeling of a Mucha piece. At least this is what I am going for. I still have more details and refinement to come but i'd be open to ideas and suggestions on design etc. Think " Wierd Science. In the back I'm going to put some design suggesting one of those cheesy static electricity balls in hot pink with lightning bolts. Al la " My science Project" ( it's another 80's flick).

Thanks Guys, and I'll comment on your pieces in another post.

Cheers.

[Wheeljack18]

Reb: Good to see you are still here! next time, try to just draw it and work on modeling the planes. Once you have a good understanding of that, then move onto value. So far so good!

Eb: HA HA I met Iain and you didn't! Nyah Nyah! Seriously, he was a cool guy an I hope to meet him again someday. I have all his Gnomon vids and No I have not downloaded any of Matt Khors's stuff although I'm familiar with his site. I've got a huge collection of Tutorials and vids. Quite a few from the guys who run this site but some are better than others. The Shield / Jet pack is an Idea I never would have thought of. Good one! So who wears this? Is he some sort of Time traveling Knight with kick ass gear to make fast getaways or hunt Dragons? Two thoughts, The jet arms look small and flimsy and might not be able to handle the force of the thrusters and how does the harness work? So next step for you is to work up a more refined concept. I want to see one that is 3D and not an ortho. Orthos would be good to accompany the final image but a nice rendering of the pack demonstrating texture and painting skills is what I'm looking for. The end goal is for this piece to go into your portfolio so take your time and have fun with it!

[David Keen]

@Rebelionature: Good attempt there mate, I agree that still life's are extremely hard to do but they're a great way to work on your observation skills. As Wheels said have a look at a line drawing for the next one and see how you go with that. Once you've done an accurate line drawing the values should be much easier to do.

@Wheels: I love the rendering in this piece, the style works well with the Mucha inspiration but pushes far enough away to not just feel like a straight rip. Nice work! I feel like there is something wrong with the face at the moment. It may just be the bushy hair, but I feel her face is a little too small for her body. Perhaps have a look at resizing it and see how things go from there. As far as the colour scheme goes I think the pink works to invoke an 80's feeling but it is a too dominant in the piece at the moment. Perhaps by adding another shade of the greenish yellow colour to the background the piece will feel a little more balanced. Adding the static electricity-esque pattern to the background would also be a welcome addition and would help break up that space a little more and lead the viewers eye back to the main figure. The pattern work you've done with the border so far is really fantastic though and I can't wait to see what you do with another opportunity for pattern making. Great stuff buddy!

I'm always trying to expand my tutorial collection but the gnomon ones are hard to justify because of their rather large price. So far getting some from the TAD store has been a great, especially when they have sales going and a series only costs $8.

There is a jetpack related update incoming. I'll try and address some of the issues you pointed out, especially the jetpack arms. Thanks for the feedback mate!

[Eelis Kyttänen]

Sorry for no updates on the lineart! I'm trying to figure out personal landscape picture, and it's eating my time a bit. I'll continue with this one as soon as I am ready!

[Wheeljack18]

Hey Eb, My wife said the same thing about the face . I'll play with it some more as well as I'm not too fond of the way I've framed it so far. Stand by for more updates and I'm looking forward to seeing more jetpack designs.

Eelis: No Updates ! WHAT?! lol post up what you are working on and share it. I suggest that you wrap up the Jetpack or move on. Letting a gig linger just adds weight to your neck and drags you down. If you want to move on to something else, just let us know and we can move on. I suggest you just power through it and crank out something. Doesn't matter if it is super designed or Rendered. Just take the idea as far as you want to go and then call it done. Learn from it and move on. You like doing Environments and that is cool but you do need to broaden your portfolio if you want to do concept art. So why not, do one Environment and then one of something else and keep alternating. This way you get to work on both. For myself, I love character work. It's all I would do if I could but I recognize that I need to work on other things more and I try to do things that way to keep myself balanced.

So guys what do you think of the Study group so far? Is it working, isn't it? Are you losing steam? Was the Jet pack assignment boring?

I think it is going good so far. It's keeping me motivated and inspired and I am enjoying the feedback and our little community.

[rebelionature]

Sounds good. Ill try to get an accurate line drawing of the next set and see if i can tackle blocking in values. I have a hard time understanding planes so it something i should focus on.

@wheeljack: I'm not really skilled enough to crit your piece other than to say i really like it!