Continuing Ridiculous Art Month, I just cant get colors to work on this dude, and I think im having value trouble with it as a whole. (whats new)
Sexy robot.jpg
(spoilerd for nsf-eyes)
We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight.
Ill just cut this off now, I did use a fill bucket, its done in gimp, and it was as quick and dirty as it looks. I currently have no aspirations as far as digital coloring goes, so I wont pollute the doodle thread with a long discussion of it :P The clouds I did start to try on though and failed miserably (just to be clear I am not making excuses for it, I am terrible with the colors, just don't think this is the appropriate place for what would be a long discussion which would only result in what I already know, that I need to practice it!)
EDIT: Doodles!!!
JohnTWM on
0
BrocksMulletInto the sunrise, on a jet-ski. Natch.Registered Userregular
@ChicoBlue, just went through your tumblr. You're really fucking good. Gah, the creativity!
Continuing Ridiculous Art Month, I just cant get colors to work on this dude, and I think im having value trouble with it as a whole. (whats new)
Sexy robot.jpg
(spoilerd for nsf-eyes)
Practicing me some colorin'. Once again, thanks Angel for that tutorial you posted a page or so back. Color is absolutely one of my worst areas, especially painting. That really helped me out a bunch. Now if I can just transfer it from coloring balls to say, people.
Moss. Moss on everything. The bottom left one is my favorite.
It's still VERY rudimentary but I guess that's to be expected. I'm totally out of my comfort zone here and really need to be doing this every single day.
That meme mostly reminds me that I dont really like superhero comic aesthetic in general, right down to the bloom light coloring.
It's the lack of tude, isn't it?
Hold on.
I can fix this.
God this is such a terrible drawing.
Also at first I thought you said, "I thought that was DMAC for a second".
Which would be weird.
I think everyone- DMAC especially- is glad that I am not doing creepy sexy pose DMAC fanart.
Question: when trying to design a character, do you ever feel kind of like you have to make them attractive and suave or beautiful or stick to the established paradigms, even if it doesn't fit their personalities? I ask that because I was playing around with some character designs and with one in particular I wanted to go for a stocky, kind of mean look. But every time I finished, I'd look at it and say "but nobody would ever really connect with him because he looks more like a bad guy than the a-typical hero."
How do you break out of that mindset and still make a character that people can visually connect with? Or can you?
Question: when trying to design a character, do you ever feel kind of like you have to make them attractive and suave or beautiful or stick to the established paradigms, even if it doesn't fit their personalities? I ask that because I was playing around with some character designs and with one in particular I wanted to go for a stocky, kind of mean look. But every time I finished, I'd look at it and say "but nobody would ever really connect with him because he looks more like a bad guy than the a-typical hero."
How do you break out of that mindset and still make a character that people can visually connect with? Or can you?
Have you tried tinkering with their facial expressions? That, and sometimes characters are made more by their actions than their looks. Put them in a scene, doing something that fits their character.
TheExAm on
Battlemans: DiscoCabbage | Elite: Dangerous: Aleksandr Khabaj
@SeveredHead: You gotta start simplifying your objects into broader planes/volumes, rather than treating every individual bit as it's own separate thing. If you shade your objects more as a simple series of cylinders, spheres, and boxes, you can establish the tangible, solid feeling of the overall object relatively quickly, and you'll find you actually don't need much fiddling with the individual details to make it feel detailed and rendered. Doing it as it looks like you're doing, it's easy to get confused as to where your light source is, or to shy away from the substantial darks or lights that you need to create the illusion of a solid-feeling object.
And one from Nathan Fowkes... http://nathanfowkes.blogspot.com/2008/09/head-drawing-demo.html
Wish I could find a demo that more explicitly illustrates how that simplified statement is derived from cylinders/boxes/sphere shapes though, that's probably one of the most important idea to grasp when it comes to good shading.
I can't explain the theory stuff as well as Bacon, especially relating to color, but I know a thing or two about light.
And a fun GIF because I like GIFs
I haven't gone over every inch of the character but you get the idea.
You posted a mutated scientist character shortly after Bacon did a paintover for you and it seemed like you were still struggling with internalizing how to project light onto a character. We see the same problem here with the tree guy-- he's all very flat and it's almost impossible to discern any clear light source, despite the fact that you clearly spent a lot of time "shading". As Bacon touched on, the light literally and metaphorically illuminates the form, so when the light is applied with logic that does not obey natural laws (or no logic at all), we end up with a very unreal form that doesn't make as much sense as it could.
The basic logic that I have applied to this paintover is actually very simple, and has to do with the geometric shapes that Bacon mentioned. The reason thinking about geometric shapes is important, is because light has very specific and predictable rules that govern its behavior. If you can learn those rules and what it looks like when light interacts with various simple curved and flat surfaces, you can begin to leverage that knowledge to predict what light would look like when it strikes a more complex form, like an imaginary tree man. I am sure you have seen this type of thing before:
You may be wondering how you get from a sphere to a tree man, but it's not so huge a leap. For example, the torso mass of the tree guy can be mostly understood as a kind of vase or barrel type shape with an open top. If you've done a light study like the one above with a cylindrical shape, you're already well on your way.
Getting the fundamental volume correct like the abstract simplified form above is WAY more important than laboring over expressing all the knobby strips of bark in his surface texture and other secondary details. It's part of the reason I was not too concerned with obliterating your black line art when doing the paintover.
A similar method of thinking is applied to the legs, arms, and even the face. Having a good anatomical understanding of human facial muscles and how they broadly break down into planes can be very helpful for informing monsters and tree guys.
If you want to understand this stuff better, my personal advice is to do some still life studies and dedicate some time to learning those basic rules of light.
Posts
Posting this because I was digging around Myspace for some dumb reason, and found a self-portait from 2006...
Spoiler'd cause it's awful:
Sexy robot.jpg
(spoilerd for nsf-eyes)
Plus a thing I did for a nose art competition
P.S. I suck at digital coloring
EDIT: Doodles!!!
Steam: BrocksMullet http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197972421669/
So many penises. Also, value is tough, yo.
Hook'em
Here is my line work thus far,
I'm aware of the deapth problem. The nightstand is deeper than my composition would allow. So I shortened it, and the spoon. Should spoon hang off?
Anyhow, rather than post something to far worked into to make changes...
Any help on my line work would be appreciated.
The coffee pot is still in use if you were wondering about the handle placement...
[img][/img]
doodle before bed
It's still VERY rudimentary but I guess that's to be expected. I'm totally out of my comfort zone here and really need to be doing this every single day.
General advice accepted and appreciated.
My Portfolio Site
Twitter
Nice hawkeye. That meme mostly reminds me that I dont really like superhero comic aesthetic in general, right down to the bloom light coloring.
It's the lack of tude, isn't it?
Hold on.
I can fix this.
Also at first I thought you said, "I thought that was DMAC for a second".
Which would be weird.
I think everyone- DMAC especially- is glad that I am not doing creepy sexy pose DMAC fanart.
Twitter
and I think sexy pose DMAC would make the most excellent tumblr that ever existed.
How do you break out of that mindset and still make a character that people can visually connect with? Or can you?
Bacon, you should submit both of those (if you haven't already).
wakka - derp.
My Portfolio Site
Battlemans: DiscoCabbage | Elite: Dangerous: Aleksandr Khabaj
I don't have time for a paintover (and I'm sure there exists some better resources for explaining what I'm on about somewhere, I just don't feel like hunting some down), but I've done a couple paintovers in the past for people who have had the same kind of problem...these may or may not be all that helpful without the original context, but:
http://bacon.iseenothing.com/otherpeoplestuff/menschomatic.jpg
http://bacon.iseenothing.com/otherpeoplestuff/tonkka.jpg
http://bacon.iseenothing.com/otherpeoplestuff/SPI_lights.jpg
http://bacon.iseenothing.com/otherpeoplestuff/DrewB.jpg
http://bacon.iseenothing.com/otherpeoplestuff/mykonos.jpg
http://bacon.iseenothing.com/otherpeoplestuff/mykonos2.jpg
And one from Nathan Fowkes...
http://nathanfowkes.blogspot.com/2008/09/head-drawing-demo.html
Wish I could find a demo that more explicitly illustrates how that simplified statement is derived from cylinders/boxes/sphere shapes though, that's probably one of the most important idea to grasp when it comes to good shading.
Twitter
I can't explain the theory stuff as well as Bacon, especially relating to color, but I know a thing or two about light.
And a fun GIF because I like GIFs
I haven't gone over every inch of the character but you get the idea.
You posted a mutated scientist character shortly after Bacon did a paintover for you and it seemed like you were still struggling with internalizing how to project light onto a character. We see the same problem here with the tree guy-- he's all very flat and it's almost impossible to discern any clear light source, despite the fact that you clearly spent a lot of time "shading". As Bacon touched on, the light literally and metaphorically illuminates the form, so when the light is applied with logic that does not obey natural laws (or no logic at all), we end up with a very unreal form that doesn't make as much sense as it could.
The basic logic that I have applied to this paintover is actually very simple, and has to do with the geometric shapes that Bacon mentioned. The reason thinking about geometric shapes is important, is because light has very specific and predictable rules that govern its behavior. If you can learn those rules and what it looks like when light interacts with various simple curved and flat surfaces, you can begin to leverage that knowledge to predict what light would look like when it strikes a more complex form, like an imaginary tree man. I am sure you have seen this type of thing before:
You may be wondering how you get from a sphere to a tree man, but it's not so huge a leap. For example, the torso mass of the tree guy can be mostly understood as a kind of vase or barrel type shape with an open top. If you've done a light study like the one above with a cylindrical shape, you're already well on your way.
Getting the fundamental volume correct like the abstract simplified form above is WAY more important than laboring over expressing all the knobby strips of bark in his surface texture and other secondary details. It's part of the reason I was not too concerned with obliterating your black line art when doing the paintover.
A similar method of thinking is applied to the legs, arms, and even the face. Having a good anatomical understanding of human facial muscles and how they broadly break down into planes can be very helpful for informing monsters and tree guys.
If you want to understand this stuff better, my personal advice is to do some still life studies and dedicate some time to learning those basic rules of light.
Now for some praise: I really like all of the different designs you come up with. You seem to have a really good imagination for these kind of things.