Book Of Thumbs (tutorial vid inside ^_^)

[Pixeltuner]

Hi everyone!

A couple of EOW people wanted a little explanation on my thumbnail process so I made a little video out of it. It's around 23 minutes in 2 parts and I got some really good feedback (even though it was my first vid..) on it even encouraging me to start a sketchbook solely for my thumbnails exploring comps and different shapes to get different moods and themes.

Which I'm doing right now. I've added some examples of recent sheets I did but every new one that gets added will have a little explanation on the process behind it and what kind of shapes/brushes I made to get where I wanted.


Here is the vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKTLn...73zs-0LwUL1Jk=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odCGW...73zs-0LwUL1Jk=

If you like it, by all means share and spread the word.

and here's the image from the tut plus some more examples

[NickyBeats]

whoa! cool man!! im digging these! looking forward to more comps!

[Ironbyte]

Great stuff, always love your enviro thumbs and progress. Inspiring me to get my ass in gear and work on this myself.

[vandusbp]

are the links not working for anybody else?

[Pixeltuner]

Sorry, copypasted a shortcut. Fixed now

[ashess]

hey pix, thank you very much for this useful video!
this is what I came up with after watching; im not unhappy for a 1st attempt!

[Pixeltuner]

Not too bad Ashess I suggest not jumping to colour too quickly. Keep it monochromatic or black & white at first and keep the shifts in value and colour more subtle

[atarr]

Thanks for the vids. I've just got the program and playing with it now. Looks like good fun. Only thing I couldn't work out was the short-cut for getting the image from alchemy to photoshot.

[Pixeltuner]

Attr: It's ctrl or cmd + b. You have the select the app where to send the bitmap file to first in the menu.

[NyeAlexandaFrayne]

coooooooool, il have to get on this tomorrow.

[MagicPrincess]

Thanks so much for putting your process down and sharing with the rest of us. These thumbnails are truly inspiring! I've always wondered how to generate ideas for environments. This makes sense and the results are amazing! Hopefully I'll get to try this out sometime

[jedininjaman]

Nice. thanks for sharing, and really cool results.

[Pixeltuner]

Thanks for the love everyone The pleasure was all mine

I've made two new sheets for your viewing pleasure.

For the first one, I wanted a cave like feel for the thumbs so I tried to make shapes which looked somewhat like rocks and made brushes out of them the way I do in the video with rotation, scattering, colourshifts etc. I also used softlight layers with the same brushes to get extra colourdepth and implied detail which almost looks like phototextures but are just a lot of layered alchemy brushes.

For the second one, I wanted vertical compositions and a brush which would enhance that feel, so the compositions look kinda similar on this one. I also created a circular/starlike one to counterpoint that vertical motion in some places. And a brush for some noise.

Hope you guys like it

[Pixeltuner]

And the last one for today. No special shapes created for this one, just dicking around with everything I have. Started in colour on this one so it's a bit more happening colourcomp wise

[Coool Brain]

dude. I asked for a quick little tutorial and you are pouring it on. thanks thanks thanks for the blessings

[Blankstate]

I like this work that you are doing. Maybe you might even try to make some sort of cohesive sense out a full sheet by removing the grid. Just a thought. Might be interesting to attempt. Will have to check out the tut some time.

[AdrianNagorski]

Pixeltuner: thank you for the informative video and idea, it actually reminds me of Scott Robertson's marker approach to landscapes, still very handy and fast way to create great compositions.

[merl1n]

Cool. Some of the thumbs work very well. Some don't. But that's what they are for. Keep it up

[Pixeltuner]

coool_brain: Yeah, it's a fun way of working so I'd thought it would be useful to share and do more
blankstate: I think in that way it would end up more looking like an abstract painting and kind of defeat the fact that these are separate mini-comps, but it might be interesting
adriannagorski: I will check out Scott's marker sketches, haven't seen them
Merl1n: Yup That's what you get with the random factor, you can fix some of it but some just don't work. I'd rather not have a sheet full of only useful and great thumbs though.. I don't know where I'd find the time to develop all of them

[ashess]

hey thanks pixel! ill try and keep mine a grey longer. though I kinda liked what happened with the random colors. they are a bit much I guess.
I been looking into alchemy, and found this thread>>
http://al.chemy.org/forum/talk/topic92-10.html
you prolly know it aleady, but it's pretty usefull if you're trying out stuff and the brushes available dont do what you want yet. so for ppl who dont know it, go get your brushes

[Pixeltuner]

Hey Ashess, yeah the pull shapes is pretty fun. Just slap a pdf in there and see what happens. Actually, I don't really use it that much. The fun part for me is always the brushmaking in photoshop and seeing what happens there so the alchemy part is always pretty standard for me

[Pixeltuner]

Here's another one. The goal with this one was to get as much 'perspective' in there during the initial strokes. To get an instant feeling of dynamics and direction. So I made two 'room' brushes with converging lines I might try even more extreme angular stuff as a base, but as an experiment this gets my seal of approval ^_^

[Pixeltuner]

Hmm, it actually starts to scare me how quickly you get something 'useful' when I you make the right kind of brush. Hardly any extra painting on this one, just tried to get as much shape variation in the initial alchemy phase

[NickyBeats]

damn dude!! i think i was just in here yesterday!!! WTF HAPPENED!!!???!?! haha your a maniac tuner!!!!! im gonna try to use at least one of your comps to make a sketch today. its the least i can do with all of this hardcore motivation!! maybe ill use it for my chow piece! great stuff bro!!

BIG UPS TO DIS DUDE!

[Pixeltuner]

What happened? Thumbnails happened

And please do, I'd be interested to see what you'd do with one of those comps and how you'd interpret it

Here's another one, made the brush even more complex and busy. Layered that with some directional brushes and some noise et voila.

[pixel cheetah]

Thanks a lot! Very useful and very inspirational!

[Pixeltuner]

Glad you like it

[MacTire]

Wow, stuning thumbs pixelturner, looking forward to watching the video now.
This could'nt have come at a better time since I'm just after really getting into the thumbnailing process and loving it so far!!

Thanks for sharing! Can't wait to give these a go myself!

[Rob Powell]

I do have to say great thumbnailing technique, developing a large amount of thumbnails is something I've struggled with, because I end up doing three or four then I'm out of ideas, this should be able to break out of those barriers by eliminating doing a single thumb at a time and just doing a bunch. COOL STUFF DUDE!!!XD

and you know if you remove the black bordering it makes for an interesting abstract piece...especially in post 23

...btw I subscribed so I may look back in here and dump some thumbnail spammage in the future...

[Jeff Bartzis]

woah, really interesting. I wanna see more.