The Peer Project- OPEN Foundational Exercises for All, A great place to start.

[Idiot Apathy]

The Peer Project Vol. 2
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See Vol. 1 here: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=53517
It is of course still open to participation, however my time is going to be spent here so I will be unable to comment on your results.
Do note however that for the most part "the answers" have already been given, you may just have to dig them up
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The Mission Statement:

In coming here I hope you have come to learn, to discuss and to teach; or at the very least one of the above. A lesson learned in Vol. 1 of the Peer Project is that if I want this project to live I unfortunately will be unable to detach myself as ringleader for this project, alas I'm fine with that. It is my sincerest hope that others will also contribute to the thread and I whole-heartily encourage you all to do so - more on that later.

I'm nothing special, just a normal guy on this forum same as you and everyone else - I may know a thing or two you don't, but I assure you - there are many things you know that I don't as well. This is in fact, an essential part of this threads concept - we will share our own knowledge and what we are unsure of our collective thoughts will decipher. So to restate, I may be the ringleader however I am no teacher and am not qualified to be so - all participants including myself are in fact the teachers and the students.

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It would be great if some of you professionals and instructors could drop in from time to time to help us out!

I would like to thank briggsy@ashtons for all his kindness and hard work in the Peer Project Vol. 1 and would love to see him in here as well.
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The Rundown:

Here are the keystones I would like to see for the project -

1. Exercises: The backbone of the project. This is what I will focus most on. These will, for the time being be fairly foundational and basic. A solid foundation is extremely important in my opinion. The focus on these is to open participants eyes and to get them thinking, the focus is not on perfection. In other words, you will learn to learn for yourself I hope. These will again, be fairly basic to keep the amount of time needed to participate at a minimum. I of course welcome anyone to contribute anything to this keystone. Also, any suggestions are welcome as well - if you have something you think would be good for this let me know, or if something is bothering you I'll see what I can do as well.

2. Demonstrations: Well, come on - we all know what demonstrations are. I see this as something others would be more inclined to contribute as it's a bit less work than the exercises. For this keystone as well I see suggestions and requests as a large part.

3. Questions and Theory: Have a question? Something bothering you? Ask away! I would prefer to keep this more open and less about individual critiques and etc - there is plenty of other spots for that. I would like to see this as a large part of the thread as well. I will create a post near the beginning of this thread to host links to all the questions so they don't get lost.

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The Exercises:

I will post the exercise and an example of the "finished" product I envisioned. The "finished" product will be in link format only - I do NOT want people to look at this until they have done the exercise. I believe it is vital that you think through this for yourselves, more vital in fact than the actual exercise. If you are completely lost please ask questions - if you can't help it use the example as a guide, do not copy it try only to understand the reasons behind it. You are not here to show off or produce art, you are here to learn and to study. Those of you who feel embarrassed to post their results and lurk beneath the shadows shall feel divine wrath! How are you to learn if you don't try?

1: Exercise Guidelines
a. The exercise will be set up with a goal in mind, sometimes specific, sometimes fairly loose. Focus on the concept, not on the final product.
b. As you do the project I want everyone to keep notes of their thoughts and reasoning. Why did you do what you did, that sort of thing. If for whatever reason you can't keep notes I still want you to think explicitly about what you are doing and write something down afterwards. In your notes and thoughts I want to take the key ideas and post them here. With this insight into your thought process we all can both learn and teach each other much more effectively.
c. Spend as much or as little time as you need to understand the concept. This is only a race against yourself.
d. All exercises are of course optional, feel free to pick and choose if there are activities you would rather do or rather not do. I will however note in the exercise if they are somewhat concurrent or if I believe it would be best to do a previous exercise before hand.
e. People who are too embarrassed to post their results will be shot on sight, you're here to learn not to show off.

I strongly recommend you read the discussions and analyses within others posts that will occur between these pages and exercises. In the past volume I saw and personally repeated the same advice over and over.

This being said, sometimes advice or critiques will be given that may be incorrect, or misconceptions; I most likely am not innocent of this either. If you spot mistakes be sure and correct them! Don't confuse these with opinions however, which are never wrong only different.

Exercise One: Simplified Construction of a Sphere
Exercise Two: Tone with Color
Exercise Three: Light and Color
Exercise Four: Light and Color Part B!
Exercise Five: Light and Color Part C!
Project One (Beta): Simple Shape Rendering, emphasis on different materials!
Exercise Six: Color Recognition: Part A: Hue!
Exercise Six: Color Recognition: Part B: "Brightness"!
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The Tutorials, Demonstrations and Explanations:

Demo by Prometheus|ANJ: Lighting different materials, Clay Plastic and Chrome + Insight into thoughts and Painting Process.
Demo by ChrisMayernik: Efficent Tool Selection in PS, general process tips, shadows and aerial perspective.
Demo by Cup of Joe: Method for Determining Cast Shadows.
Demo by Romance: Using Lighting to Efficently Describe Surface Texture.
Demo by Yoitisi: Proper Sphere Shadow Construction.
Demo by dischord: Method for Determining Specular Position
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The Questions:

Question One: From EtaCarinae: Specific Questions on Edges, refering to Elwells Edges Tutorial
Question Two: From Duq: Questions on Reflected Light Value and Precise Specular Position

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The Valuable Link Archive:

Please feel free to suggest any contributions!

Dr. David Briggs: Further Reading
http://djcbriggs.googlepages.com/
Fantastic collection of knowledge, go here and learn.
Prometheus|ANJ's excellent "Art Tutorial" (This is awesome!)
http://itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm
More than you ever wanted to know about light (Amazing)
http://science.howstuffworks.com/light.htm
briggsy@ashtons on proper sphere construction: (Woo!)
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...&postcount=175
Edges Primer by Elwell (You will read this or die!)
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=51913
Detailed Lighting Tutorial (You will read this or die!)
http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/ (Click Tutorials>Light)

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Basics and Definitions:

Hopefully these will keep us on the same page and better help us to understand each other. A standardization system and a lexicon if you will. Please correct me when I am wrong and I welcome suggestions!

Light for Artists, In my limited understanding:
Picture for a moment if you will the most blue light that you can imagine. What is theoretically happening with this light is that the only the hue of blue is present in the lightsource. Sunlight, theoretically is pure white light, meaning it contains all hues at their maximum saturations. Now it is important to consider that absolutely everything you can see is quite technically a lightsource - if it wasn't you couldn't see it. More on that in a minute...

So, from light from a lightsource to an object - when light hits an object, to keep it simple at the moment, the object either absorbs or reflects the light it receives. What we actually see, i.e. a yellow banana, is the reflected light - all other colors are absorbed. This light in turn can be considered a lightsource, though nowhere near as powerful as the the original direct lightsource and of course in the case of the banana the light has taken on new properties such as a dominant yellow hue.

This should serve only as a very basic and flawed primer - more on this another day, or perhaps today if you yourself feel so inclined. I suggest starting at the first two links provided above from howstuffworks.com and Prometheus|ANJ. I'm still trying to pin it all down in fact.

Color:
We all know it when we see it of course but here is a wordy definition from Princeton's WordNet: a visual attribute of things that results from the light they emit or transmit or reflect. You can get crazy scientific on your own time, but in art terms I think it is proper to consider color as consisting of Hue, Tone and saturation.

Tone:
A measure of the amount of light (brightness, with it's extreme at white) or the lack of light (darkness, with the extreme being black). I think it is perhaps proper to think, more light = more tone, less light = less tone. There are of course complications, but I think it still remains basically true. I believe tone is the most important factor in the readability not only in form but in an image as a whole. Tone is very important and should never be neglected.

From Left to Right, White to Black in 10% increments.
Not to be confused with: Brightness, Value and Luminosity. These as I've come to find out all mean different things entirely, and it really does get confusing at times. In fact, you will probably often find me using value sometimes to describe tone It's the term I was taught with haha!

Hue:
Again from WordNet: The quality of a color as determined by its dominant wavelength. Again, get crazy scientific on your own time - I do recommend doing so. Check out the link to howstuffworks.com on light in the Links Archive. With any level of saturation will come hue, and at any value level with the exceptions of white and black hue will exist. Hue can often be a bit hard to discern at lower saturations and lower values, for example - ever seen a dark yellow? A good way to discern hue that I recently learned is a bit of a deduction game. You will of course have a decent idea of what hue any given color is - from here I think it is helpful to ask yourself is it more of this hue, is it perhaps an orange with a tendency towards red, or perhaps yellow? If yes, chances are you have a yellow-orange or red-orange to some degree, if you are positive in saying no - then you have orange. Seems simple but it was a neat revelation to me at the time


From Left to Right: Yellow, Orange, Red, Red-Magenta, Magenta, Violet, Blue, Blue-Cyan, Cyan, Green-Cyan, Green, Yellow-Green and finally white. The white symbolizes that in light these will combine to make white, that and I wanted it proportional . This selection may seem a bit odd to most of you familiar with traditional color wheels, here I have based my choices on the primaries of Red, Green and Blue - Secondaries of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow and Tertiaries as the remainders. I believe this is the most correct representation of light, but again - I'm still working on pinning this all down. I think it is also important to note that violet could perhaps be more properly named as blue-magenta, but what's in a name really?

Saturation:
A measure of how pure a hue is. If a hue is mixed with any other hue it will loose saturation. There are exceptions but only if you are mixing say a low saturation color with a high saturation color - but you will still loose the saturation in your original color. If you say your object is at the absolute maximum saturation possible you are in effect saying that the object is reflecting only one hue and absorbing all others.
Not to be confused with: Intensity and Chroma. I suppose we'll go into these terms later.




Top Bar: From left to right, 100% value 100% saturation Yellow to 100% value 0% saturation Yellow in 10% increments. It is important to note that with 0% saturation it is a misnomer to actually call it yellow, it is in fact no longer color - simply value, white to be exact.

Middle Bar: From left to right, 60% value 100% saturation Yellow to 60% value 0% saturation Yellow in 10% increments. Again, with no saturation it is actually no longer color only value, we can not properly call this yellow.

Bottom Bar: From left to right, 100% value 100% saturation Yellow to 0% value 0% Yellow in 10% increments. Again, it is no longer color once we have removed saturation, in this case it has become pure black.

Local Color:
The color we percieve an object to truly be, usually this is under bright sunlight without any interference or the effects of shadow and reflections. I.e. An orange orange, yellow banana, white eggs (I must be hungry...) It is important to note that this perception can cause trouble in many instances, can you picture say, an egg under a bright red light? Do you picture it as white, or do you picture it as red?

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Using Color with our Digital Medium:

Do note how confusing it is to have to use Tone, Brightness and Value ... but don't let it it bother you haha!

Adobe Photoshop's Color Picker:

A: The Selection Window - From here you can visually choose the color you want. Top to bottom of the entire square is a scale of brightness, top is white being 100% and bottom is black being 60%. Left to right is a scale of saturation for the entire square, left being 0% saturation and right being 100% saturation.
B: Note the radial dial is selected in this box under H, for hue. This controls object D, the slider. If I knew practical uses for the other radial dials I would go into them at this time.
C: The Hue (H), Saturation (S) and Brightness (B) input boxes. Note that brightness is a not exactly a synonym for tone. The Hue box is measured in degrees, as if on a wheel - D, the slider bar is perhaps more accurate as a band or wheel. In this case both 0 degrees and 360 degrees are Red, add 30 degrees incrementally to recreate the hue bar post in the above section. Again, concerning the other input boxes - I have yet to determine a practical use for these for painting.
D: The slider, currently depicting a full hue range with each hue at 100% brightness and 100% saturation.

Corel Painter's Color Wheel:

A: The Selection Window - From here you can visually choose the color you want. Top left corner represents white, 100% brightness 0% saturation. Bottom left corner represents black, 0% value 0% saturation. The right corner represents a pure hue - 50% value 100% saturation (In Photoshop this is 100% value 100% saturation, I think - perhaps this makes more sense but is much harder to calculate).
B: The Circle shape surrounding A is in fact a color wheel. In Painter this is how you select your hue.
C: Inside the box are H (Hue) S (Saturation) and V (Value) scale measurements. When I used painter I never really bothered to look at any of these, relying only on visually picking the colors I needed. So, as such in never using them - I have yet to wrap my head around hue being a percentage haha. Saturation makes sense of course, but value is complicated by the triangular geometry, and as we all know artists generally hate math
D: Same story here, I never used these - you can switch this between HSV (Hue, Saturation and Value) and RGB (Red and Green and Blue). Don't feel bad if you don't understand why RGB would be of any use, it's a long story. hehehe!

[Idiot Apathy]

Exercise One: Simplified Construction of a Sphere

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Intro:
In the last volume of the Peer Project we all sort of had our own idea on what a sphere was supposed to look like, briggsy@ashtons set us all straight in this post here: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...&postcount=175.

Our first exercise is a simple one, but will be useful because I think a sphere will be valuable in later exercises.

I will post my results below to be used as a loose guide/reference. I would prefer you not look at these until you are done, or unless you are confused/stuck.
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Exercise Guidelines
a. The exercise will be set up with a goal in mind, sometimes specific, sometimes fairly loose. Focus on the concept, not on the final product.
b. As you do the project I want everyone to keep notes of their thoughts and reasoning. Why did you do what you did, that sort of thing. If for whatever reason you can't keep notes I still want you to think explicitly about what you are doing and write something down afterwards. In your notes and thoughts I want to take the key ideas and post them here. With this insight into your thought process we all can both learn and teach each other much more effectively.
c. Spend as much or as little time as you need to understand the concept. This is only a race against yourself.
d. All exercises are of course optional, feel free to pick and choose if there are activities you would rather do or rather not do. I will however note in the exercise if they are somewhat concurrent or if I believe it would be best to do a previous exercise before hand.
e. People who are too embarrassed to post their results will be shot on sight, you're here to learn not to show off.
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Step One:
Sketch in a light tone circle, woo! Also if you so choose draw a light value for a table surface for the sphere to rest upon.

Step Two:
Decide upon the direction of your lightsource.

Step Three:
Determine your form shadow, this will speak largely about the direction of your lightsource.

Step Four:
Determine your cast shadow, this too will speak largely about the direction of your lightsource.

Step Five:
Choose appropriate flat values for each of these areas: Full light, shadow-side of the sphere, cast shadow, and background/background with a table if you so choose. You may also want to choose a value for light half-light and dark half-light if that makes sense to you . Refer to the link at the top of this post if you get lost!

Step Six:
Determine the proper strength of edge for all areas. See Elwell's magnificent post on edges in the links section of this thread.

Step Seven:
Add ambient light into the shadow side of the sphere.

Step Eight:
Depending on the surface quality of your sphere the highlight may be rather intense and concentrated or perhaps dull and spread out. Add whichever you choose. For more thoughts on this, see Prometheus|ANJ's tutorial in the links section of this thread.

Optional Step:
Think about what other reflected or ambient light may be present. Is the table or background reflecting light? Or perhaps is the sphere itself reflecting light onto the table?

Finishing Steps:
Save your results to a JPEG format at an appropriate size for web viewing. Along with your image please post your thoughts/notes while doing the exercise and/or on the exercise itself.

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I strongly recommend you read the discussions and analyses within others posts that will occur between these pages and exercises. In the past volume I saw and personally repeated the same advice over and over.

This being said, sometimes advice or critiques will be given that may be incorrect, or misconceptions; I most likely am not innocent of this either. If you spot mistakes be sure and correct them! Don't confuse these with opinions however, which are never wrong only different.
- - - - - - -
My results to prevent confusion and for reference: click it foo!
I would prefer you not look at these until you are done, or unless you are confused/stuck. I do hope you kick my ass and show me how it's done in these exercises

[Idiot Apathy]

Exercise Two: Tone with Color

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Intro:

This is a bit of a rehash of from Vol. One - Exercise One so I apologize to those of you who have already done this.

I feel that when many people start out trying to work with full color they have no idea where to begin, I feel confident in saying so because I had no idea where to begin.

It is important to understand how tone is connected to light and how important it is to color. I'm hoping that this exercise will open some peoples eyes and get others thinking about it even more.

This exercise is also rather simple, but I think perhaps it is fairly effective.

I will post my results below to be used as a guide/reference. I would prefer you not look at these until you are done, or unless you are confused/stuck.
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Exercise Guidelines
a. The exercise will be set up with a goal in mind, sometimes specific, sometimes fairly loose. Focus on the concept, not on the final product.
b. As you do the project I want everyone to keep notes of their thoughts and reasoning. Why did you do what you did, that sort of thing. If for whatever reason you can't keep notes I still want you to think explicitly about what you are doing and write something down afterwards. In your notes and thoughts I want to take the key ideas and post them here. With this insight into your thought process we all can both learn and teach each other much more effectively.
c. Spend as much or as little time as you need to understand the concept. This is only a race against yourself.
d. All exercises are of course optional, feel free to pick and choose if there are activities you would rather do or rather not do. I will however note in the exercise if they are somewhat concurrent or if I believe it would be best to do a previous exercise before hand.
e. People who are too embarrassed to post their results will be shot on sight, you're here to learn not to show off.
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Step One:
Prepare your canvas to have room for two spheres set out side by side. I also recommend that you put a pure gray as the background toning. White is perhaps too brillant and will affect your perception on this exercise. Black is vice versa and will likewise affect your perception. Let's just go with a nice ugly 50% gray ok?

Step Two:
Follow the guidelines laid out in Exercise One to create a simple sphere on the left, we will use the space for another sphere in a moment. This first sphere is to be black and white grayscale only.

Step Three:
Using the same guidelines and reproducing the exact same lighting you will now create a colored sphere. I recommend still doing a lay-in without worrying about color up until the blocking in stage at step five. What I want you to do here is pick a local color and create a colored sphere. I would like you to try and match the tones as close as possible to the first sphere you created, the grayscale sphere. Try not to use digital readouts of tone as your guide, use your own senses please. If you get lost, use digital readouts if you must but recognize them as a crutch in this circumstance.

Consider what will happen to your color as it recieves light. If you change hue or saturation as you add/subtract light what sort of declaration are you making? And if you don't? We can go into this on another exercise.

Optional Step:
As mentioned above, if you feel confident enough feel free to adjust hue/saturation as you add/subtract light, but I would like you to comment on your thoughts.

Final Step:
Prepare this image in JPEG format. Then also make a copy of the original file only this time convert it to grayscale. Do not simply desaturate, I believe converting to grayscale is much more accurate to real tones. Prepare this image in JPEG format as well. Post both images as well as your important thoughts and comments for this exercise.

Do note, that convert to grayscale isn't perfect but should let you know if you were close or not. The concept of this exercise is not to match tones perfectly, it is merely to force you into thinking of tone with color.

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I strongly recommend you read the discussions and analyses within others posts that will occur between these pages and exercises. In the past volume I saw and personally repeated the same advice over and over.

This being said, sometimes advice or critiques will be given that may be incorrect, or misconceptions; I most likely am not innocent of this either. If you spot mistakes be sure and correct them! Don't confuse these with opinions however, which are never wrong only different.
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My results to prevent confusion and for reference:
I would prefer you not look at these until you are done, or unless you are confused/stuck. I do hope you kick my ass and show me how it's done in these exercises

[Idiot Apathy]

Exercise Three: Light and Color

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Intro:
Ok, let's get dirty with color now.

So, if something is visible it is either reflecting light or actually emitting it. (Maybe there are exceptions, but we're not scientists today ok?). Now, not all light is the same and not all things reflect light the same - thank god, life would be pretty boring without colors I think.

For this exercise we are going to use a hypothetical 'perfect' white lightsource. To break it down layman style - within this lightsource is every color - specifically every hue at it's maximum intensity! I'm unclear on exactly how many hues there are, how many we percieve and all that jazz so I'm not going claim anything here (again, we are not scientists today, we are just looking for a workable tool as artists). So, when this lightsource is shined on any object the result should make the object more 'colorful' than before. Technically speaking, if our object is of say a pure red variety it is absorbing all the other hues (so we won't see those, wave goodbye!) and it is reflecting all the red transfered from our lightsource. Now, I don't think much exists in the way of 'pure' hue objects or anything - in life an extremely red object is more than likely absorbing some red and reflecting some of the other hues.

Ok, quick primer and now you're going to work - thinking that is, not too much painting to be done here.
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Exercise Guidelines
a. The exercise will be set up with a goal in mind, sometimes specific, sometimes fairly loose. Focus on the concept, not on the final product.
b. As you do the project I want everyone to keep notes of their thoughts and reasoning. Why did you do what you did, that sort of thing. If for whatever reason you can't keep notes I still want you to think explicitly about what you are doing and write something down afterwards. In your notes and thoughts I want to take the key ideas and post them here. With this insight into your thought process we all can both learn and teach each other much more effectively.
c. Spend as much or as little time as you need to understand the concept. This is only a race against yourself.
d. All exercises are of course optional, feel free to pick and choose if there are activities you would rather do or rather not do. I will however note in the exercise if they are somewhat concurrent or if I believe it would be best to do a previous exercise before hand.
e. People who are too embarrassed to post their results will be shot on sight, you're here to learn not to show off.
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Note: The notetaking is vital in this part! I want others and myself to be able to read your thoughts (not literally, just what you've written). Besides, it's too easy to fake this if you've seen results

Step One:
Read the Introduction if you haven't already - it's vital to the setup (always is !)

Step Two:
Get yourself set up to produce seven (7!) spheres - it's not necessary to have them 'perfectly' constructed as before; however it would be good practice, and practice makes perfect and you want to be perfect yeah? These don't really need to be big or anything, your objective here is to 'calculate' the correct color. Oh, no reflected light on any of these, just our one lightsource ok?

Step Three:
Ok, taking our perfect white lightsource imagine that your sphere is absorbing every hue except for red. Paint this sphere! Think about the shadows and highlight - but don't stress too much; get the general idea!

Step Four:
Again, taking our lightsource imagine that your sphere is absorbing every hue except for blue! Deja vu? Don't stress the shadows and highlight too much, get the general idea please!

Step Five:
Take our lightsource again, this time our sphere is absorbing nothing and reflecting everything! Oh man, how are you going to paint this? Shadows? You tell me!

Step Six:
Take our lightsource again, our sphere is now absorbing all colors and reflecting nothing! Eek, don't let it suck you in too!

Step Seven:
Ok, here's a fun one - our sphere (do I need to say same lightsource again?), our sphere is now absorbing every hue except yellow and red! Woo! Don't stress shadows and highlights, get the general idea!

Step Eight:
Next up! The sphere is now absorbing exactly 50% of all hues and reflecting 50% of all hues. Huh? Now what?

Optional Step:
Ok okay, bonus! Sky blue! You tell me what the sphere is doing! (edit: write instructions for this one like I have above )

Final Step:
Prepare your results into a decently presented file (nothing fancy!) that is easy to see and suitable for web sized viewing. JPEG's please, and watch your filesizes Don't forget to post your notes!

Important notes:
I think perhaps there are several answers at times to these - not the resulting color but the reason for the color, I dunno yet - perhaps not? Probably not...

- - - - - - -
I strongly recommend you read the discussions and analyses within others posts that will occur between these pages and exercises. In the past volume I saw and personally repeated the same advice over and over.

This being said, sometimes advice or critiques will be given that may be incorrect, or misconceptions; I most likely am not innocent of this either. If you spot mistakes be sure and correct them! Don't confuse these with opinions however, which are never wrong only different.
- - - - - - -

Compound Reply and Answer 'Key':
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/sho...3&postcount=97

[Idiot Apathy]

Exercise Four: Light and Color Part B!

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Intro:

Alright alright alright, how was that last exericise?

Ok, going a step further - our lightsource my friends is now changed! No longer have we the luxury of every hue, we now have .... dundundun colored light!

Think you can handle it?
- - - - - - -

Exercise Guidelines
a. The exercise will be set up with a goal in mind, sometimes specific, sometimes fairly loose. Focus on the concept, not on the final product.
b. As you do the project I want everyone to keep notes of their thoughts and reasoning. Why did you do what you did, that sort of thing. If for whatever reason you can't keep notes I still want you to think explicitly about what you are doing and write something down afterwards. In your notes and thoughts I want to take the key ideas and post them here. With this insight into your thought process we all can both learn and teach each other much more effectively.
c. Spend as much or as little time as you need to understand the concept. This is only a race against yourself.
d. All exercises are of course optional, feel free to pick and choose if there are activities you would rather do or rather not do. I will however note in the exercise if they are somewhat concurrent or if I believe it would be best to do a previous exercise before hand.
e. People who are too embarrassed to post their results will be shot on sight, you're here to learn not to show off.
- - - - - - -

Step One:
Spheres again, get set up and ready to go! Let's see, how about 7, 8 if you can do the optional step! Do these nice and quick as there are many, shadows - highlights? Who cares, unless you do! Oh, no reflected light on any of these, just our one lightsource ok?

Step Two:
Lightsource one, pure blue. Object is a white sphere, what does that mean you say? Well, it's going to reflect all colors equally, or at least it should. In what quanitity you say? Up to you, just don't make it a mirror!

Step Three:
Lightsource one, pure blue. Object is a sphere that reflects all colors except blue, now what? Oh noes!

Step Four:
Lightsource two, pure red. Object is pure blue! Meaning, it will only reflect blue. Hmm hmm, tricky?

Step Five:
Lightsource two, pure red. Object reflects just a little bit of red, how are you going to calculate the saturation and value? A bit trickier no? I'm going to leave this a little vague to get your gears going.

Step Six:
Lightsource three, pure red and pure yellow. Our object reflects only yellow! Oh noes, what will happen to red?

Step Seven:
Lightsource three, pure red and pure yellow. Our object is green... muahahaha. You do the math. (Correct me if I'm wrong later...)(Seriously I'm not picking these randomly! they all have a point!).

Step Eight:
Lightsource four, see lightsource four didn't eat it's Wheaties you know? Grew up weak - it contains, oh let's say 30% of all hues. Our object reflects all colors equally and just about all of them! (Well, I didn't want it to be a mirror you know.)

Optional Bonus Step:
Look these aren't always optional, you should do them if you can
This time the lightsource contains all hues but is not white, let's say all the hues except blue are at 30% of their capacity and blue is at 100%. Our object reflects 80% of all hues except red, of which it reflects all red it recieves. So if our lightsource was instead perfectly white you could say our object was probably a dull red. What is it going to be now? Hell that's kind of hard, don't worry about exact math or anything - just think about it.

Final Step:
Prepare your results into an easy to view (web appropriate resolution and file size), and post it up! Don't forget your notes!

- - - - - - -
I strongly recommend you read the discussions and analyses within others posts that will occur between these pages and exercises. In the past volume I saw and personally repeated the same advice over and over.

This being said, sometimes advice or critiques will be given that may be incorrect, or misconceptions; I most likely am not innocent of this either. If you spot mistakes be sure and correct them! Don't confuse these with opinions however, which are never wrong only different.
- - - - - - -

(If I ever get the time and motivation to do them, what? This or another exericise )
My results to prevent confusion and for reference:
I would prefer you not look at these until you are done, or unless you are confused/stuck. I do hope you kick my ass and show me how it's done in these exercises

[Cup of Joe]

Two words- Fuck yes. I may not have enough time to commit to one of these for a while (I'm currently devouring Bamme's and re-reviewing Loomis. Plus school), but I will make a serious effort to get back in on these. Thanks for doing this man!

[Idiot Apathy]

My pleasure homie,

I'm trying to keep them a little more self contained, quick and efficent. Hopefully they won't take you too long and for the most part I think you will be able to spread them out if you need too.

Cheers dude, glad to see you on board.

[romance]

Yay, congrats dude on becoming an 'official' community activity. I've said this before... and didn't hold my word,... but I 'll say it again, hopefully I can find time to get back into this stuff, it was one of the things that got the ball rolling for me here on CA.

Keep up the great work Idiot and thanks for your dedication to making a better CA.

-Rob

[j a k e]

Hey man. I don't have time to participate in this at the moment, but i just popped by to say that you really are a dedicated chap. Love what you do, and you really have helped me in pretty much every aspect of colour. Great to have you around.

[Idiot Apathy]

@Rob: Hell yeah man, I want you to know that you were the cause of a lot of my drive for the first volume.
Any time that you've got to participate or contribute (wink wink) is much appreciated my friend.

@J a k e: Thanks bro, glad to have you around too! You're a cool dude and a personal inspiration. I'm trying to make the exercises quick and efficent so pop on by if you're bored sometime mate.

[MattGamer]

yay! i cant wait to do these

[Zaknafain]

good to see that pp2 is finally starting. I will try to participate more than in the last one. I promise!
One of CAs best learning threads.

[AdamDillabo]

heres my go at the first one. very 80's miami beach




thanks for getting this started IA.

[AdamDillabo]

this one is way off i think im going to give it another stab later.

[AdamDillabo]

not sure if i did this right. on ball 4 the black one, i used c,k, and Y at 100 and k at 0. i dont like to use pure black.

[Idiot Apathy]

@Mattgamer: Haha, get to work then you bum

@Zaknafain: Hey Tobi! Thanks for the encouragement - hope to see you participate or contribute *cough cough*.

@Adam278: Hey man, thanks for participating. You're all gung ho already, makes me happy. Thanks for participating!
ExOne:
Haha, didn't expect people to go full color on this one exactly let alone all miami vice. Cool that you did though, feel free to create your own take on these as long as you get the general idea! Ok, sphere looks great - that's quite a lot of blending, which is fine - but if you check out the post by Briggsy@Ashtons at the top of the exercise you'll see it's not entirely necessary. Anyways, the only point of the exercise was to get people making 'nice' spheres and fast - so you're cool! Something for you to think about, would light reflected off the sphere have an effect on the table? Please remember to write down any thoughts you had on or during the exercise ok? It is in part to not only improve the exercise, but to give others a trail to learn from what you have done as well as a means to check your thinking.

ExTwo:
Good, the point of this exercise was to start people viewing color and color selection using a measurement of tone. Matching them perfectly wasn't the point although evaluations like that are important I think. Now, if you want to challenge yourself go a little more saturated and add a little tone and try violet and yellow - muahaha. Again, please remember the notes portion if you had any.

ExThree:
Great, I didn't expect anyone to do this one so soon! I had to write up an answer sheet just now haha. Please write down your explanation for the optional step, sky blue sphere. I'll send you a link to the 'answer key' after you do.

[bumskee]

you freak.. I swear I will follow this one through.. it's so hard...coz I get lost... *Cries*

[DieOxin]

I am going to be in this one .. you are dedicated ..
I love you for that ..

[Idiot Apathy]

@Bumskee: Hehehe, I'm doing my best to simplify stuff! Just try it out, don't be afraid to mess up!

@DieOxin: Ha! Thanks bro, hope to see you in here soon. I'm only as dedicated as long as it's in use and worthwhile.

[Cup of Joe]

Got started on this one. I'm fairly satisfied with it, though I think my shadow shape is a little off. I'll probably do ~1 a day, since they're fun and don't take long.

Notes taken during project-
Decided on a tilted background, to break up the blandness. Looked kind of like a corner, so I decide that having a wall and floor may be good practice for shadows. I’m also doing the whole thing free-hand, so expect some fugly outlines.

Decided general light source, set up shadows.
THOUGHT- Would the shadow appear darker against the wall then against the lighter floor? I’ll just have to see.
NOTE- Remember that light (and therefore shadow) always covers HALF of the form (with one lightsource).

Blah blah, set in cast-shadow, refining form shadow. Laying in flat values and such. Also zoomed out and flipped to make sure everything looked good so far.

Mostly spent the rest of the time polishing up.



This was more of a warm up, so next time it'll be in color.

[Idiot Apathy]

Cup of Joe:

Great Joe. Really appreciate the thoughts and notes! (In bold to inspire others hehe!)

The point of the exercise was to be able to efficently 'spit' out a sphere so I hope you're working on speeding up your process.

Some thoughts, forgive me if you've heard them before:

Process wise you might start out with a brush as large as your sphere to get that down quick. Then perhaps 1/3 the size to get your form shadow in the right place. Then if your shadow went out of the border you'd clean that up with the largest brush possible as well. I'd probably do all of this with a pretty hard brush. I'd then use a soft/softer brush to get the edges I want for the shapes. Rinse and repeat for other shapes.

Seems to me you've blended a lot, which is fine of course - but you might be surprised at how effective (or even I suppose it's more realistic, I dunno) the method Briggsy@Ashtons demonstrated. Basically for your sphere you only need 3 shapes with the correct edges and a highlight, diffuse or not.

Now, I think your highlight is in the wrong place perhaps. Have you ever played billiards? Pool? See, imagine the light as a ball - when it hits an object (to keep it really simple here), when it hits it's going to reflect at the same angle it is hitting. Now if you've ever looked at an shiny object like this and moved around you'll notice that the highlight moves! See, the highlight is really just an acute reflection of the lightsource. Ugh, having a hard time putting this into words - long way of saying try putting your highlight higher and to the right - perhaps right in the middle of where you imagine the lightsource is hitting. That make any sense at all? Ok ok, I've thought about it some more - picture looking into a mirror, whatever you are looking at imagine that as your lightsource and the spot on the mirror as your highlight. That work?

Brush settings: It's a little curious to see some edges that are 'wavy'. What program are you using and what sort of brush?

Cheers Joe!

[Cup of Joe]

Edited the highlight, and as for the wavyness, I've been really confused by that. It's been going on for a while when I use a big-medium brush zoomed out. I use PS, and the waves were mostly using a hard brush either with opacity set to pressure or with no settings at all( I use no settings to block in so I can keep hard shapes). Smoothing is on. Suggestions?

[Idiot Apathy]

Hmm hmm, I would check your spacing setting in the Brust Tip Settings (should be above shape dynamics). See if reducing the percentage will work.

[Form]

Glad the activity is in its proper place, and as promised, from herein i will be a regular contributor

Heres my stab at exercise 1, with comments.

[Cup of Joe]

Form- Real nice! I think it would be even better though if you put the cast shadow on all of them, to orient it in space a little better.

Thanks for the brush help IdiotApathy! The waves are gone.

Redid Proj. 1, but faster this time. I probably did this one ~5 min.

For proj. 2, I was very surprised by the outcome, since I checked the values while still in color and they're fairly close. Although as IA said in PP1, the point is not to match them perectly, just to get you thinking about value in color.

No notes this time.

Proj 1 take two.



Proj 2 take 1





Gotta vary my lightsource more.

[Idiot Apathy]

Crit & Comment Disclaimer: Yatta yatta, I'm not infalliable and I really don't know jack - I hope I come across here as only giving my opinion and trying to help


Form:
Nice buddy! Glad you're in!

ExOne:

Also glad to see you've found the value of stroke economy on the 3rd sphere, sweet lord isn't that so much easier? Ok, the point of this exercise as I've said before is for quick and proper sphere construction. It's really only necessary (I believe and based off of briggsy@ashtons post linked in the exercise) to create only 3 - 5 shapes. Full light, half-light, shadow, highlight and reflected light. Briggsy went further to split the half-light into light half and dark half-light. The rest are really just edges.

The rule you've given that your lightest light in the darks can't compare to the darkest dark in the lights is pretty good - just be aware it can be 'broken'. Probably not good to ever break it though... you might have to buy it.

I like the 'lightsource breaching the horizon' sphere, pretty cool - though I'm not entirely sure that will work as far as shapes, dunno. If it's the sun the sphere should be lit basically 50% light 50% shadow I believe.

Metallic Surfaces: Can't say I've really done much into thinking about metal, however I think it's safe to say the only big difference is they should reflect more and more 'acutely' - so highlight is sharper and brighter and closer to shape as the source I suppose. Reflected light should also show off it's 'parent' shape as well, depending on how shiny. Overall though the 'shading' shapes shouldn't change on the sphere - minus reflected and highlight as per above.

Cheers bro!

-Cup of Joe:
Great, glad that worked for you! I can still see it happening a little bit though, just less frequently. If your CPU can handle it you might lower it some more, what setting is it on?

ExOne:
Great Joe! If you spend a little time 'studying' how to improve your process and technique I think you will find you will be better able to study other things and with greater satisfaction. (Jez, I sound... old or something.) Keep it up, always room for improvement!

ExTwo:
Nice Joe~! Hehe I see red tricked you a bit, see I think you might be checking things out via th (b) brightness in PS, not the same as tone! Try and use your eyes and develop a sense for it, it's hard I know but I think it's pretty important if you are going to draw/paint from life. Anyways, like you know - you've got the point down, practice is all you need.

Something to think about, see on your white sphere where you haven't softened the edges of the 'half-light'? That's one of the parts where it would actually be one of the softest area's due to it receding away from us - so it's pretty important. If you can't get your brush in there without mucking things up you might do the softening as best you can on a seperate layer and the use the eraser to clean up.

Cheers Joe!

[Cup of Joe]

Thanks Apathy! (I'm going to call you that now, since I don't feel like typing it all out, and 'Idiot' sounds like an insult. Or was your name Dave?)

Anyway. Tone, hmm, I'll study into that sometime. Doh'! Don't see how I missed that hard edge. Actually, I'm getting a little better at using big brushes, so these are also going WAY faster. I can do a simple sphere in 5-ten strokes now instead of 50 with a tiny brush. Definately makes these things easier.

I'll redo project 2 later, but for now,
PROJECT #3

Notes- Took a bunch

Okay- Main goal for the first part is getting a good basic sphere down fast. 2 min. Tops.
Basic process- Big brush at 100 opacity and no pressure to block in shapes, then using a softer brush with pressure set to opacity to clean it up. Fast and easy.

Keeping my lighsource the same-ish, but still trying to work in a little variety. Keeping Briggsy’s post up on the side as a reminder. Wait, Idiot said no reflected light? Shit…
What about shadows? I’ll just guess no.

Trying to remember that light covers half the form. Trying to keep the terminator soft but still easily recognizable.

Whew, done with my base spheres. Okay first color one. Not too hard yet. Thinking about saturation. Did a sharp saturation dive at the terminator, but then decreased mainly value in the transition to the shadow. Trying to keep my values rather uniform.

Okay, second one basically the same, not too bad yet.

Ummm, #3. Hooo boy. I guess the light-side would be all white and the dark side a blackish color. I think. I guess there would be no specular than? Wait, that doesn’t look right….

#4, I know this seems lazy, but if it reflects nothing, wouldn’t it just be black?

#5, Let’s see here, yellow and red. Orange? Is that right? Wow, that looks baaaad.

#6, Ummmm, what? Okay, in 50-50, wouldn’t the complementary colors cancel eachother out into a grey? Or is my subconscious just lazy today?

#7, Almost done! Let’s see, sky blue. Is that reflecting blue light and a little bit of everything else? Actually, it might be reflecting quite a bit of everything else.That sounds right.

Grey-



Color-

[Idiot Apathy]

Crit & Comment Disclaimer: Yatta yatta, I'm not infalliable and I really don't know jack - I hope I come across here as only giving my opinion and trying to help

Cup of Joe:
Awesome Joe!

You can call me Dave if you want, name's Tom though. Idiot, Apathy - hey you work just fine too. Glad to hear you're getting quicker and more efficent! Hope ExOne had something to do with that. Thanks again for the great notes, I think it will really help some people out and it helps me see what you were thinking too. You don't need to redo project two! Unless you want to of course, practice is always good I suppose. It's cool that you want to experiment with lightsources, keep in mind that could complicate learning other things too. Sometimes when I want to mess around or practice a new idea or technique I go with really easy lighting to make it easier to focus.

ExThree:
Going to PM you this reply for now; give others a chance to do it 'blindfolded' so I can get some more 'test samples' hehe. I'll post it up later too.

[AdamDillabo]

in the bonus step for level 4, what color is the ball? white? am i dumb?

[Idiot Apathy]

Heheh sorry dude, that's written like an SAT question isn't it? I'm going to send you a PM in a second, I'd just post it but I'd like to see some of the other 'blindfolded' results.