Thanks NightDragon. You're right, the left side is a bit dull. It was a bit like that in the reference but what's the point of painting it if you can't change bits you don't like eh.
Wassermelone (I always read that as Wasser-mole for some reason) thanks dude! I hadn't seen his paintings before but they are awesome. Will do a couple of studies.
All of Eyvind Earle's work is spectacular, but he's behind a lot of the backgrounds in Sleeping Beauty, and those are just amazing -- highly encourage everyone to check those out if you haven't already!
Been working on a couple of Eyvind Earle studies. How do I do the water under this wave?? Draw the lines? Draw the 'gaps' or whatever you want to call the globular shapes? I tried three times and it didn't look good.
Been working on a couple of Eyvind Earle studies. How do I do the water under this wave?? Draw the lines? Draw the 'gaps' or whatever you want to call the globular shapes? I tried three times and it didn't look good.
I'd do this by making things on separate layers.
First, clean up the shadow'd edge and make the shadow straight black. Make sure that line is crisp.
Second, on another layer, draw in some of the lines. Make sure to cross over the shadow'd edge at least a little bit (emphasized in mine).
Third, lock the transparency on the "lines layer", and paint in the proper light and dark blues (the darker blue on the shadow'd section of the wave, and the lighter section on the lit lower half. Make sure to line up the two colors with the line of the shadow'd edge). After that, you can go back to the main base layer, and set your brush's blending mode to "darken color"...this will allow you to paint that darker blue behind/in between those lines, without interfering with the darker wave shadow. Add globules on a separate layer to your heart's delight, and lock the transparency to change the colors of individual globules with ease. Once you've done all of that you can go back to the main layer again and paint in the shiny areas between globules (which will be easy, as it will be under the globules layer).
There are a few similar ways to do it, but that's more or less how I'd approach that.
Frank, try writing down a few things about her. Where is she from? Why did she become a bounty hunter? How did she lose the eye? What kind of planet(s) does she operate on? What kind of (or species of) criminal is she usually hunting. Some of these things will influence how she's dressed and what sort of equipment she keeps on her.
From a concept point of view, I notice a couple of things. What does she do if her target is too close for a rifle? (Pistol needed probably, or a stun gun, maybe knives or tranq syringe?). What does she do with them once she catches them? (Handcuffs? Something different and cooler if they're alien?). Her hair is up, but I think it still looks a little untamed considering she's got only 1 eye. (Maybe a really tight bun or a helmet?)
Try to give her concept some kind of unique selling point. Maybe it's that she restrains her captives by shifting them forward a day in time, and by then she's got a small portable cell waiting for them. Maybe she's youngish boy, dressed as a woman so he's able to get work that he's really underage for. Those are two fairly bad ideas - but that's the hard part, making her original in some way. Otherwise you're not selling a concept so much as a drawing, and then the drawing had better be pretty awesome.
On the drawing side, you are heading towards the fairly flat face your last guy had originally. Make sure you work on that!
Keep it up man you are putting out some good work.
Frank, you need to do thumbs, silhouettes, development sketches. There is no way around that. You need to do studies.
It feels like you're always tempted to jump right into rendering your first idea, but you will never get a job as a concept artist if this is what you continue to do. This is actually not even limited to concept art. I can't really think of any professional 2D artist job that doesn't require or benefit hugely from some preliminary work to be done. Concept art is hugely about preliminary work, though. It's about exploration more than it's about rendering.
It was really, really great to see all those sketches for the tower that you did! But you need to keep doing that kind of stuff, MUCH more than you're doing any of your rendered drawings. It is your weakest area, IMO - "concept development".
If you seriously just did studies rather than these rendered characters straight from your head...if you spent like, 90% of your art-time doing studies and kept 10% for rendered things that you find fun, and you drew at least a few times a week, and you kept up with that for a year? 6 months? A single month? I guarantee that you'll see so much more improvement than you ever have within that same time period.
If you want to learn how to make more convincing faces, you need to draw many different faces from reference/life. If you want to learn how to draw more dynamic poses, you have to draw many gesture studies. If you want to understand sci-fi design cues, you need to draw many different sci-fi environments, costumes, props, mechanical photographs, etc! From reference.
I want to see you get to where you want to be, but you have to put in work in the right areas. You could continue to develop characters like this and you might eventually get there, but you might not. Doing studies and practicing things you're weak in and not confident in will help you improve hugely compared to doing the same rendered static characters from your head. Try to take it as a challenge, make it fun! You get to develop a world down to the smallest detail...you get to explore all the cultures of the world and all the design cues in every movie and all the gun designs and costume designs, and etc...all that will help you gain a font of knowledge that will improve your created characters by leaps and bounds.
Again trying to train myself to think and measure and be deliberate before I noodle with stuff- ink sketches with no underdrawing. First two pages are brushpen/freehand only, with the movie stills I've got a ballpoint and a t-square helping me out.
Hopefully some of this helps and it's not just an exercise in art masochism.
Anyways, here's a wip. I call it "Fuck everything about construction"
I guess eventually I also chose a shitty angle to showcase the headless bikeman having one hand on the handle and the other holding the helmet.
Decided it would be good practice in both anatomy and perspective/interiors to go work from movie frames. My plan is to also use it for paint practice. Dunno if I'm gonna finish this one cause I already done fucked up my placement. Everything is too low, Brad Pit has some weird eye deformity and also I've been working on this stupid sketch for three hours. Harumph grumble grumble
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Wassermelone (I always read that as Wasser-mole for some reason) thanks dude! I hadn't seen his paintings before but they are awesome. Will do a couple of studies.
3DS : 2165-5535-6036
hmm... really not sure on this one....
I'd do this by making things on separate layers.
First, clean up the shadow'd edge and make the shadow straight black. Make sure that line is crisp.
Second, on another layer, draw in some of the lines. Make sure to cross over the shadow'd edge at least a little bit (emphasized in mine).
Third, lock the transparency on the "lines layer", and paint in the proper light and dark blues (the darker blue on the shadow'd section of the wave, and the lighter section on the lit lower half. Make sure to line up the two colors with the line of the shadow'd edge). After that, you can go back to the main base layer, and set your brush's blending mode to "darken color"...this will allow you to paint that darker blue behind/in between those lines, without interfering with the darker wave shadow. Add globules on a separate layer to your heart's delight, and lock the transparency to change the colors of individual globules with ease. Once you've done all of that you can go back to the main layer again and paint in the shiny areas between globules (which will be easy, as it will be under the globules layer).
There are a few similar ways to do it, but that's more or less how I'd approach that.
From a concept point of view, I notice a couple of things. What does she do if her target is too close for a rifle? (Pistol needed probably, or a stun gun, maybe knives or tranq syringe?). What does she do with them once she catches them? (Handcuffs? Something different and cooler if they're alien?). Her hair is up, but I think it still looks a little untamed considering she's got only 1 eye. (Maybe a really tight bun or a helmet?)
Try to give her concept some kind of unique selling point. Maybe it's that she restrains her captives by shifting them forward a day in time, and by then she's got a small portable cell waiting for them. Maybe she's youngish boy, dressed as a woman so he's able to get work that he's really underage for. Those are two fairly bad ideas - but that's the hard part, making her original in some way. Otherwise you're not selling a concept so much as a drawing, and then the drawing had better be pretty awesome.
On the drawing side, you are heading towards the fairly flat face your last guy had originally. Make sure you work on that!
Keep it up man you are putting out some good work.
It feels like you're always tempted to jump right into rendering your first idea, but you will never get a job as a concept artist if this is what you continue to do. This is actually not even limited to concept art. I can't really think of any professional 2D artist job that doesn't require or benefit hugely from some preliminary work to be done. Concept art is hugely about preliminary work, though. It's about exploration more than it's about rendering.
It was really, really great to see all those sketches for the tower that you did! But you need to keep doing that kind of stuff, MUCH more than you're doing any of your rendered drawings. It is your weakest area, IMO - "concept development".
If you seriously just did studies rather than these rendered characters straight from your head...if you spent like, 90% of your art-time doing studies and kept 10% for rendered things that you find fun, and you drew at least a few times a week, and you kept up with that for a year? 6 months? A single month? I guarantee that you'll see so much more improvement than you ever have within that same time period.
If you want to learn how to make more convincing faces, you need to draw many different faces from reference/life. If you want to learn how to draw more dynamic poses, you have to draw many gesture studies. If you want to understand sci-fi design cues, you need to draw many different sci-fi environments, costumes, props, mechanical photographs, etc! From reference.
I want to see you get to where you want to be, but you have to put in work in the right areas. You could continue to develop characters like this and you might eventually get there, but you might not. Doing studies and practicing things you're weak in and not confident in will help you improve hugely compared to doing the same rendered static characters from your head. Try to take it as a challenge, make it fun! You get to develop a world down to the smallest detail...you get to explore all the cultures of the world and all the design cues in every movie and all the gun designs and costume designs, and etc...all that will help you gain a font of knowledge that will improve your created characters by leaps and bounds.
instagram.com/stevenzapata_art
Hopefully some of this helps and it's not just an exercise in art masochism.
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Cute boxy cars are easier to draw than slick supercars, I think.
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Anyways, here's a wip. I call it "Fuck everything about construction"
I guess eventually I also chose a shitty angle to showcase the headless bikeman having one hand on the handle and the other holding the helmet.
Just drawing because I now have legal access to Photoshop and it is wonderful.
Doodle on ya'll.
Even in these 8 samples, I can see improvement over the first few. Keep going! moar moar.
instagram.com/stevenzapata_art
Getting only this much done in half an hour feels bad, but hey that's why I'm practising.
I've been working at them for a while now and they've only made me very accomplished at being miserable.
I like this.