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SPI 40k (now with slaanesh, NSFW)
-SPI-
Osaka, JapanRegistered User regular
Osaka, JapanRegistered User regular
I'm working on a folio for the Games Workshop art apprenticeship. This is one of the new pieces I've done for it. I might try and bring it out a little with some digital painting underneath.
-SPI- on
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I think the legs are just slightly different in their scale. Just enough to look off. I wish there was a quick fix for that as I'm pretty much burnt out on this piece and ready to move on.
Whenever I draw space marines I always tend to draw them really chunkily- like gears of war style. I love it when their armor/shoulder pads are absolutely HUGE. I would refer you to a few fan comics if I could find them.
Otherwise, nice piece. I don't really get a dynamic feel from it, but that's just my personal impression.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
WAAAAAGHHHHHH
Apologies if I'm repeating shit you know like the back of your hand, but all I've got to go on is this pic and the old battle tourney comics, so I'm kind of hoping I'm not insulting you by treading over shit needlessly.
I also apologize for my length, spelling, and potentially berating tone. I'm tired and I am taking it out on this picture. Don't take it personally.
And before I get to specifics, I'm guessing a lot of the problems here resulted from rushing to cram in so many details before hashing out the basics. Slow down on that. One good, sharp detail in a good, solid, picture is worth a million details in a poorly composed one. If people have to look at your tiny details to be impressed, you are doing something wrong!
1. Gesture
This has alread been hit upon, but yeah, the pose is ambiguous. I don't know if he's angry, tired, sad, doing a jig, posing for his yearbook photos, or what. Now, ambiguity really does often become a problem when all you're trying to get down with the pose is, 'well, this guy's standing here'. I could give you some crap about controposto and balance and whatnot, (and yeah, he's off balance too, but I don't want to talk about that shit), but the easiest thing to do? Just don't make it about "here's a dude just standing here." Get an idea behind there, in addition to that fashion-plate demand. Maybe it's his attitude- is he standing up, victorious? Is he just kickin' back, relaxin' all cool? Is he tired? Does his ass itch from wearing ill-fitting armor? Give him something to do and most of your problems with posing will fall away. I remember from your battle comics you're not bad at all at drawing dudes actually doing something, so why hinder yourself?
Or, maybe it's not an attitude, but some other idea you want to bring across. Maybe you want to focus on the hulking weight of the armor. Instead of skeletal gesture, you'd be going off maybe a giant square, pieces of armor just seeming to pile up on one another, until it reaches the vague shape of a man. Thinking abstractly like this can break you out of habit of things getting too standard, too by-the-numbers.
2. Space
Use space. Perspective. Design the pose so you have an opprotunity to create the illusion of depth. Like Synth said, he looks like he's pressed flat, like you are spreading his limbs apart to dissect him like an insect.
Beyond being unrealistic as a pose, it's also boring in its use of space. Don't rush to draw things from head-on, draw them at an angle. Give yourself something that you can put some foreshortening to work, so you've got something to break up drawing, make the space tangible. One object over another, over another, that kind of thing. Overlap elements for depth.
Another thing is, partly because of the flattened posing, dead-on angle, etc., and partly because of the simplified design, you're ending up with a lot of instances where elements are perfectly symetrical. The legs, arms, and torso are not far off from simply being able to get away with mirroring their halves in photoshop. That might be ok for a diagram, but as a three-dimensional drawing, it just winds up dull. Again, this can be aleviated by putting more thing on angles in space, but also by trying to oppose the curves on each side of an object.
The easiest example of opposing curves (this is used a lot in Disney-style animation design) is to, instead of drawing 2 straight or curved lines parallel/mirrored, you draw one curved, and one straight. Or use series of lines, offseting the lines on each side to prevent symmetry. This should help get rid of some of the monotony, as well as help get across the form even further.
3. Design
Given, you are not really responsible for the 'design' of the character, but how you've rendered that design leaves something to be desired. My biggest gripe is that the silohette of the character is somewhat flat and even- Try exagerating the details- make sure that they are actually noticable. For example, you've got an interesting pattern on the feet, where several plates overlap. However, because you've toned down that lip where they overlap so they all kind of meld into each other silohette-wise, it doesn't feel nearly as striking as it could have. Now, given, you don't want to just throw in a bunch of shit to spike out the silohette haphazardly, but you definatly want to make sure you've got some contrast in there.
4. Lighting
There is a difference between being able to put down tones that indicate how light is hitting the surface and filling in areas with some values just to be able to say you've done "shading" on the piece. Unfortunatly, this seems to fall in the later category.
Try to figure out your light source BEFORE shading anything! Try taking your base line drawing, photocopy it a couple times, and lay down some different lighting setups with just a big black sharpie. If you can get the basic forms of the objects to come through with nothing more than big blocks of black and white, the forms will be much more pronounced than simply whittling at it piecemeal with your H pencil, and hoping it comes out right. Shading is not just about being able to make transitions from one tone to another, it's about being able to define the form with the light.
Take the time to design your lights to maximize not just the depiction of form, but also mood. There are fewer cheaper or easier ways to get across a feeling in a picture than just fucking with the lighting design a bit.:P
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Extremely helpful and comprehensive Bacon, as always. Treading over shit I know is never insulting if I need a reminder on it.
This should give me a good start on the next one.
Trying to do something with more... well MORE.
So it's a terminator coming through a breach in a steel wall (smoke, shit etc), striding over some dead gribbly genestealer. The only thing that's worrying me at the moment is the hammer. Theres something off with the perspective or the way it's turned or something that I can't quite pick out but it simply looks off for me. Perhaps it's head is on a slightly different perspective or angle to the handle...
Oh and I'm going to make the guys head slightly smaller so he looks bigger overall.
Terminator armor is "Tactical Dreadnought" armor. As such it's lacking a sense of "mass." In the new figs the torso is really big and the tops of the armor extend well above his head. High enough to mount missile launchers without burning his skull.
I think if you made the torso piece a little larger and going a bit further over the top of his head it would go a long way towards making him more massive.
(unless you want it to look like the old metal Terminators that GW used to sell, in which case it's fine)
Oh, and, you know, good art. Bacon hit all the major points, except for "design". I don't know if it's such a good idea to mess with the design of the characters just to add some bits sticking out here and there. I mean.. a plasma gun has a very signature look, etc.
BTW, the next sketch looks really promising SPI, I definitely wanna see how that thing turns out.
Also,
Bacon, you're awesome.
Also,
This forum rules.
You just have to send some copies of recent work (which I thought I'd add a few GW themed pieces to)with a CV and cover letter by January 28th (not long!). If you're one of the ones considered you'll be invited to do a specific Illustration.
here we go
http://uk.games-workshop.com/careers/availablejobs/default.aspx?job=78
It was in the Australian White Dwarf so as far as I know it's open worldwide.
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Well, perhaps I should have used a different word than "design", but I didn't really mean to advocate wholesale abandonment of the existing character design, but rather the design of the pose/composition.
Luckily, the doodle thread yielded a perfect example of what I'm getting at, (I didn't even realize this was SPI's when I thought of it, oddly enough).
These are silohettes of an original drawing of Haruko and one by SPI. The design of the characters, if you glance over at the doodle thread, are identical. However, the original is just much, much more interesting in terms of pictoral design. Strong silhouette, demonstrates opposing curves, has an easily readable gesture, and it varies the level of detail in select spots to create interesting contrast- the hair, the hands, little wrinkles to add some spark of life to the proceedings. SPI's is less interesting- too much monotonous linework, and the placement of the scarf makes the gesture much less readable. The character design hasn't changed, but the treatment of it has.
Now, for these Warhammer dudes, obviously the character design is dictated in a very strict kind of way, but that doesn't mean that using that design to create good pictoral design is by any means impossible. It is simply a matter of choosing which details you want the audience to focus on, and making sure that you design around empasizing those things- bringing the sharpness of rendering up in those areas, making them stand out in the silhouette. Giving a little negative space wiggle room so those details stand out won't change the character, but it does necessitate being very choosy in how you compose that character.
Anyways.
New pic is coming along a lot better, gesture is much nicer. It'd be nice to see that back leg be bent more so you don't have a largely parallel line silohette there.
Thanks for the kind words people, glad to know at least sometimes I can be helpful.
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I'm not sure how much further I should take this. I think I might clean it up a little and add a few choice details. I really want to avoid overworking this.
I have only seen one, and to be fair, I believe it was a player crafted model as it was painted very carefully with extra fine detail and have a unique base.
When I used to play a lot of people gave their HQs terminator armor.
I need to rework the left arm (his left)
Maybe it's the angle, but I'm imagining the Termy dude having a hunched back, and it seems his arms are being 'pulled apart' by the armor.
However, I'm not familiar with how Terminators work (aside from playing Dawn of War), they might be just a suit of armor with a head attached :P
This is pretty weird, because I was thinking about this the other day when I first saw that haruko picture. Like, the exact same damn thing with comparing silhouettes.
but I was too lazy to say anything.
I'm finished with this one.
WIP
Doing a 40's/50's style daemonette pinup now.
edit-
I might dump that background, it was pretty thrown together and I'm not sure about it.
I'm pleased with this. The feet are a little niggly, but the rest seems good.
Don't get me wrong, it's looking very nice so far (especially her face/head/hair/whatever). It just doesn't look remotely finished.
And that's all I'm going to be able to do for that one.
You're really inspiring confidence here.
The reason I thought it was a mouse is that you don't appear to be getting much pressure sensitivity, not because of the quality of the work ;D Anyway, even with just the minor cleanup it looks a LOT better (especially without that background).