Neolight's days of Thunder: Updated 1/17/2016

Neolight · April 2008

Hey, I'm pretty new to these forums. There are some great artists here, so figured i'd follow in the paths of others and let loose some things i've done.

Currently i'm a freshman in NYU Tisch majoring in animation. This year all the film oriented majors are taking these pre-req classes so we haven't had a whole lot of drawing. I've just kept illustrating things throughout the year so I wouldn't run out of practice.

I hope you guys can rip them to shreds for me.

winter_combat_knight · April 2008

Hey mate! Nice work. I like your colour and perspective. The only one i can pick on is the top illustration, looks like it needs more work in the background. At the moment it looks a bit blury. Other than that they look nice. I especially like the third pice. Is this for a particular idea for a story you are working on?

beavotron · April 2008

furriez! lulz

for serious, some alright stuff happening here, the thing that really threw me off is the foreshortening of the snout in the first image. the whole face is flat and needs a bit more depth.

overall your digital pieces feel a little untidy and unfinished. they could use some polish and tightening up.

i really like all the structure designs. buildings and scenery seem to be your strongest point, the character design is considerably weaker. it's usually the opposite for most people.

Neolight · April 2008

winter_combat_knight wrote: »

Is this for a particular idea for a story you are working on?

Yes it is. I blocked out an animated feature this year - probably writing a screenplay over the summer. The illustrations just sort of helped me pinpoint what was going on, what things looked like. Hopefully I can get started on making it before I'm a sophmore.

Yeah, i'm pretty used to people telling me my environments are better. The problem is that I simply can't draw a perrson. I got the very same crit at a Wizards of the Coast review before the art director told me to go draw 900 more figures. I really just need to do that. Hopefully some life drawing workshops in the city will feature a summer discount.

Thanks guys.

Lly · April 2008

Very nice, but you could work some on adding depth to the pieces, through paler/less saturated tone in the distance. They all look a bit flat for such expansive compositions. A good excercise to do is take one of the pieces you've posted and convert it to greyscale. You'll notice that it is all very similar in darkness. More contrast and more definition between the foreground and background areas will give them much more depth and make them more interesting to look at.

Nice work though, keep posting.

srsizzy · April 2008

None of these look finished. Digital brush strokes being visible across the board is not a good coloring or drawing technique. Frankly, the hastily smudged out backgrounds, unfinished sketch lines, and unfocused edges and colors just make it all look kind of lazy. I didn't think much until I realized that you seem to intend for these to be finished works, and they're not really. They're all pretty good starts, and I can see where they could go, but they all look pretty preliminary right now.

Fugitive · April 2008

Oh lawd is dat sum Tribes fanart?

I had a bunch of crits but I deleted them because, us two? We're friends now.

wakkawa · April 2008

Yeah these all have a lot of promise, but they just need to be all rendered a little more. From looking at these. it looks like you are using really small brushes. If you are trying to get that messy painting feel, use some bigger brushes.

Mustang · April 2008

A good excercise to do is take one of the pieces you've posted and convert it to greyscale. You'll notice that it is all very similar in darkness. More contrast and more definition between the foreground and background areas will give them much more depth and make them more interesting to look at.

That is a good excercise, I usually just use auto blance on PS to get an idea of how far off I am but I'll give this a go next time.

Zeromus · April 2008

I agree that these are really awesome and good starts but don't seem finished.

NibCrom · April 2008

Neat stuff. I like the feeling the pieces give.

The second picture is really lacking in detail. The building (?) looks really tiny. It needs more detail I think...unless I'm reading that one completely wrong.

Your compositions are interesting.

Scalfin · April 2008

They look quite good, but I think you need to talk to someone with an acting major, as the stances seem unlikely given context.

desperaterobots · May 2008

Um, the guy with the jetpack... Is he looking back at the cube, which is floating in the foreground? Or is he looking back toward the camera, flying toward a giant cube-shaped building in the background?

Damn thats confusing.

Neolight · July 2008

desperaterobots wrote: »

Um, the guy with the jetpack... Is he looking back at the cube, which is floating in the foreground? Or is he looking back toward the camera, flying toward a giant cube-shaped building in the background?

Damn thats confusing.

Now i'm confused $:\$ Its the perspective thats fucking the whole thing up, maybe if I had taken a ground to arial vantage point it would be easier to read. Gotta keep that in mind :O

Yes, its starsiege tribes and was my entry speed paint to apply for a particular game modification that strives to bring a like z-axis shooter back

But I can't talk about it much further. I will say that our team's got very good leadership, our gameplay is allready better than legions IMO, and we will get done.

Anyway, i've done quite a bit during my absence so here's more stupid shit. C&C would be lovely, no zerg rush before 10 minutes plz. (Theres one very wide picture in here)

I've placed an emphasis on cleaning up messy lines and stuff as suggested and now the problem is that everything seems to be a little too refined so that they appear fake / toyish. I need to develop an eye of reflectivity??

Creambun 007 · July 2008

I love the tribes stuff.

Mustang · July 2008

I'm really not liking that thin scratchy brush you're using for your highlights, apart from that though good stuff.

I know what you mean about the pasty toy-like look, unfortunately I have no idea what you could do about it. I'm sure one of our more learned collegues will be along soon with timely advise.

winter_combat_knight · July 2008

Is that Sonic in one of your pics...?

jibjib · July 2008

There's something missing, and I wasn't sure what it was until just now. Your shadows are just darker/more saturated versions of the same color. This makes everything look a little pastel-y and just generally "off". Try shading with complimentary colors and refining your pallet. You seem to have everything else under control pretty well.

Also: You could make better use of atmospheric perspective in your environmental paintings to give the structures a sense of massive size and distance, making them look less like models. It would also fix your depth and visual hierarchy problems (such as the jet-pack cube guy one.)

Mustang · July 2008

Good call jibjib.....I hadn't noticed that but yes I think you've hit the nail on the head.

srsizzy · July 2008

Yeah, that's a big problem, not to mention your color pallets are really bland, and...I still don't see anything looking polished or finished. Things lack detail, smoothness, and still have a lot of sketchiness, up to the original lines still being there. I would strongly suggest trying either to finish one of these, spending time on it repeatedly until it's done (with advice from others), or spending more time learning about texture and color and contrast. Your perspective and geometry are great, but at this point it's a bunch of bland shapes and some light.

Godfather · July 2008

Man, out of all of these I like your environment/building designs the most by far. What an imagination!

You need to finish those post-haste!

Neolight · July 2008

I'm back, kupo.

Creambun - That's good news.

Mustang/jibjib/srsizzy - The white scratchy brush is usually residue from me trying to build more of a form on an object or just trying thigs. Its like lineart, but i'm drawing it mid-painting or something. Its probably also general messiness from trying to light an object - I can't say I really know what i'm doing there and I bet it shows.

Texture I need to work on no doubt, I'm currently stuck on a big interior painting and its driving me absolutely insane. If there is a way to recover the first painting by adding in some atmospheric perspective and generally utilizing the crits here I would do it.

I'll also try the snowy yggdrassil one. We'll see how it turns out. I've got a gnomon workshop vid on color theory - maybe that will clarify things.

Winter combat knight - No. You are clearly delusional.

God father - Thanks, I'll finish them when I can get a better definition of finish into my brain.

Neolight · July 2008

Allright, lets give these a try.

I've labored on this one over the course of this week. I am REALLY trying to finish this one, but i'm getting tired of looking at it. Since I dont really paint villains and monsters, I was kind of out of my comfort zone this time. The BIG VERSION is here for those of you who who are interested in critiquing: http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-3/679183/Amrnottbig.jpg

Here are little character concepts.

More for the mod, this was hard to do considering the fact that they want everything pretty fast. Unfortunately, if I didn't take my time on this thing it would really have looked like all the other shit i've done for them. I tried to push the reflections here, though I know there could be more.

Hopefully you guys see improvements.

Mustang · July 2008

Just a glaring one here; The legs in the second panel on the second image...one leg is significantly longer than the other. I can see you've angled the hip to compensate, but it's still not right.

mudkachu · July 2008

Neolight, if I may ask for some advice from you; how do you go about starting an environment piece? Do you just plot a horizon line, some vanishing points and then work willy nilly? Or is it a more contemplative process where you sketch elements separately and piece them together in a space? The reason I'm asking is because I'd like to practice making indoor/outdoor environments like your "blackbase interior", but when I open up a program and have a blank canvas staring at me, I go: "Okay, what do I do first?".

Neolight · July 2008

mudkachu wrote: »

I go: "Okay, what do I do first?".

Its hard to just jump into an interior or any sort of big environment without doing thumbnails first. Everything for the mod was all apart of a process of making a finished concept from just some idea. If you have an urge to draw something, but dont quite know what it is then do a bunch of small really fast thumbnails that dont look good and pick one. Draw the most desirable line of it or whatever.

When I do an environment, I have a dark canvas and stick to big brushes and the horizon line gets established just from making a sky and a ground. If its a really angled shot without any horizon or something weird like that- I was probably prepared to do it. Other times, I've tried doing the sparth thing with all of these wierd brushes. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it really really doesnt.

Dont really think of vanishing points and realy ruling things out. But thats probably where I could be better. Most of its really just sketched out.

mudkachu · July 2008

I think you've enlightened me on a subject that was pretty much in the dark for me. I'll try out those thumbnail ideas, something that should have been obvious for me to do but I guess it just slipped from me.

Zeromus · July 2008

Yessss Neolight yess

I really like the "Amir" piece

Neolight · September 2008

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Neolight · January 2009

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Neolight · March 2009

Neolight · June 2009

Now interning at Garage Games!

2009-179-14-15-40-1-1240603734.voltemand_legoinsfinal2.jpg

Mustang · June 2009

There is something here that is preventing these from being rediculously awesome....but I don't know what it is.......I'll have to stroke my chin, smoke a pipe and ponder for a little bit.

Neolight · June 2009

Mustang wrote: »

There is something here that is preventing these from being rediculously awesome....but I don't know what it is.......I'll have to stroke my chin, smoke a pipe and ponder for a little bit.

I feel the same way. I think I end up over detailing the entire image instead of letting atmospheric perspective and lighting do it's thing. Don't hesitate if you come up with a crit ;3

Mustang · June 2009

Y'know I honestly can't fault the rendering. The detailing would only be a problem if you're under a time constraint. However there are a few general structural and perspective problems that I think are bringing the whole show down. Particularly in the flying soldier piece.

You might want to revist some fundamentals, pencil and pad studies of anatomy and perspective, don't forget to use references for your poses. It's not that it's bad, but it could be better.
Try to leave as few cut corners as possible, if something isn't right, don't leave it, fix it.

lyrium · June 2009

I enjoy the backgrounds far more than I enjoy any of the characters. I think this disparity contributes to preventing the ridiculously awesome for me.

srsizzy · June 2009

Major issues detracting from awesome:
- Being able to easily distinguish digital brush strokes everywhere with no effort to blend them.
- All those thin white/light outlines. They look really sketchy and poorly rendered; it's a lazy way to create edge highlights. They sometimes seem randomly and too commonly distributed.
- It looks like you're working at a low resolution; your level of detail could actually be much higher, and you could start utilizing texture much more at the level you're at.
- Lines that aren't straight. Fine in a sketch, should be smoothed out in finished pieces to be straight. It's obvious with a line/object should be straight/smooth and isn't.
- General muddiness in blending/rendering. Not very prominent, but, for reference, your best rendered textures are the distant mountains in the rocket trooper and mining robot pieces.

Besides all that, huge improvement from last year. Good job. I love the character concept of that little dragon guy.

Wassermelone · June 2009

The problem with them is theres no value composition. Your foreground, midground and background all have the same value structures.

Theres kind of three really basic ways to compose your values in an illustration:
Bright foreground on dark background.
Dark Foreground on bright background.
Or high contrast foreground on mid grey background.

I did a paint over of your piece to show you what kind of compositional impact you can get with just the basic values. This is of course a pretty extreme (and poorly done) example as I went from near white to near black, but the breakdown is pretty obvious.

Ryan Church does this really well:

Sparth also does this really really well:

Penny Arcade

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Neolight's days of Thunder: Updated 1/17/2016

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