Flipping through my Art of Spirited Away book, got inspired to try to emulate the background painting style. Design isn't as good, and there's still some sloppy painting and some of the perspective is off (why the heck did I try to do barrel distortion, argh), but whatever.
This is what happens when I can't get away with the impressionistic chiaroscuro loose painting texture brush speedy bullshit that I use most of the time. :P
I don't think the POV is set low enough to have such drastic curves on such small buildings (like you said some perspective is off) but the coloring job is superb. You could have said you scanned this out of any of Miyazaki's art books and I would have believed you. I'm loving the blue you used for the sky.
Yeah, I really should have just done straight 1 point perspective, but I have a thing for really wide lenses and fish-eye barrel distortion...probably not the way to go here, since all it did was confuse me and make it impossible just to use a friggin' ruler. :?
In any case, back to my usual schtick of creating Fine Art that answer Important Artistic Questions of the Day, like, "What if Travis Bickle and Blade had a baby?"
I looked through that book too, its freaking sweet. I hope you know why they distort it like that. I bet you do, but I can't help but explain it.
They do this in video games also, like in street fighter. They do it cause for the camera, when the camera starts moving up, the perspective changes to like a 3 point view. You can't really look up in a painting with a camera, so thats why they distort it like that, so it feels like your looking up. They usually put the charaters on the ground and have the camera pan up so you can get a look in the view.
Watch the movie and pay attention when you see chihiro standing in one spot and the camera pans away from her, they distorted the perspective to get the effect. If they used regular perspective, it wouldn't go so well.
AOB, You did good in distorting it, but you did it toooo soon. the windows shouln't be distorted yet, the distorion should be a little higher. Once you get the distorion right, try putting it in flash and have the view set at the bottom of the pic and have it pan up, it will cause that effect that I poorly explained.
I could take an hour to give you a professional critique about how great it looks, and how you were able to really bring out the style of the Spirited Away background images.
I could even try to tell you how the colors look perfect on the scene..
But I'm going to be lazy and say it looks fantastic, and I wish I could grow up to be just like you... or something like that.
how long did both of these things take you? They're very inspirational.
Also I was wonder if there is a way to take off anti-aliasing with the brush tool? Or is that what the pencil tool is for? I don't like the grayness that comes with it, is there any way to change that?
@ people asking about the art book- I got mine for $35 at Borders, still a bit pricey, but I'd say it was well worth the money if you like the background style.
@pious- yeah, I know about the distortion necessary to do a pan that appears to be a rotation, but that's not really what I was going for, but rather a slightly fisheyed bowing you'd get with a very, very wide angled camera lens.
@McAllen- I'm just kind of estimating since I don't put myself on a stopwatch-
1st one: 6 hours
2nd one: 30 minutes- 1 hour
And yes, the pencil tool turns off the anti-aliasing, but then.... you get a lot of aliasing. You can get around that by working at a ridiculously high resolution, like Brian Bolland does (I believe he works at around 600 dpi or so.) I prefer to work at decently high resolutions (1600- 2500 px in general) with the brush tool and using my handy-dandy flat brush, which lets me get some slightly sharper edges than I can get with the standard round brush.
Paint to post. Threw in a dude as kind of an afterthought to see if it would actually look ok, not sure if it really works with the kind of looser background than the first pic.
Flipping through my Art of Spirited Away book, got inspired to try to emulate the background painting style. Design isn't as good, and there's still some sloppy painting and some of the perspective is off (why the heck did I try to do barrel distortion, argh), but whatever.
This is what happens when I can't get away with the impressionistic chiaroscuro loose painting texture brush speedy bullshit that I use most of the time. :P
This'll probably become a dump topic soon.
Quite good for a first try, the tower thingy on the left need to be a bit curved, and the right loos too staight compared to the left, but a quick photoshop fixes that.
eminkey2003 over at the TSO forums whipped this up, the curving doesn't seem too bad to me when it's panned like this (of course, I fully admit that I am probably wrong :P): http://img70.imageshack.us/my.php?image=baconbgxt4.swf
This is just pure bad ASS. I need to know how, tutorial process gogogogogogogog.
Well, process-wise it's nothing special. Tossed a gradient and some flats under a pencil sketch set to multiply, threw down a basic shadow layer with a slighlty blue hued layer set to multiply, then went to town just noodling over those layer with paint. 90% of the painting was done with my standard 100% hardness flat brush, pen tilt for angle control, pen pressure for opacity control, a lot at 100% opacity to keep the opaque/gouache look. There a little bit of soft airbrushy shit going on, mostly in the clouds, but not much.
Step by step (well, not really, but these are the photoshop layers I had saved). As you can tell, the process really kind of stops being exciting a thrid of the way through, then it just becomes a matter of a noodling death-slog. :P
Some kind of ipod commercial/Viewtiful Joe/graffiti ripoff style. (Why is that when I try to do something in a "cool" style it just ends up looking like a sneaker ad?)
AntibodiesUsed to live in a psychic city. Never knew what would happen in a day. Chicago, ILRegistered Userregular
edited January 2007
You have a footsy fetish clearly. Seriously amazing sense of space and lighting, and thanks for the step by step, that's about the best way for me to make sense on how you colorist people pull these things off. Your diversity of style is insane, pretty much what I'm going for.
@ people asking about the art book- I got mine for $35 at Borders, still a bit pricey, but I'd say it was well worth the money if you like the background style.
@pious- yeah, I know about the distortion necessary to do a pan that appears to be a rotation, but that's not really what I was going for, but rather a slightly fisheyed bowing you'd get with a very, very wide angled camera lens.
@McAllen- I'm just kind of estimating since I don't put myself on a stopwatch-
1st one: 6 hours
2nd one: 30 minutes- 1 hour
And yes, the pencil tool turns off the anti-aliasing, but then.... you get a lot of aliasing. You can get around that by working at a ridiculously high resolution, like Brian Bolland does (I believe he works at around 600 dpi or so.) I prefer to work at decently high resolutions (1600- 2500 px in general) with the brush tool and using my handy-dandy flat brush, which lets me get some slightly sharper edges than I can get with the standard round brush.
Paint to post. Threw in a dude as kind of an afterthought to see if it would actually look ok, not sure if it really works with the kind of looser background than the first pic.
2.5 hours on this I think?
I'd like this a hell of a lot more if the background was a bit simpler. It's bordering on very Darwyn Cooke.
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Yeah, I really should have just done straight 1 point perspective, but I have a thing for really wide lenses and fish-eye barrel distortion...probably not the way to go here, since all it did was confuse me and make it impossible just to use a friggin' ruler. :?
In any case, back to my usual schtick of creating Fine Art that answer Important Artistic Questions of the Day, like, "What if Travis Bickle and Blade had a baby?"
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They do this in video games also, like in street fighter. They do it cause for the camera, when the camera starts moving up, the perspective changes to like a 3 point view. You can't really look up in a painting with a camera, so thats why they distort it like that, so it feels like your looking up. They usually put the charaters on the ground and have the camera pan up so you can get a look in the view.
Watch the movie and pay attention when you see chihiro standing in one spot and the camera pans away from her, they distorted the perspective to get the effect. If they used regular perspective, it wouldn't go so well.
AOB, You did good in distorting it, but you did it toooo soon. the windows shouln't be distorted yet, the distorion should be a little higher. Once you get the distorion right, try putting it in flash and have the view set at the bottom of the pic and have it pan up, it will cause that effect that I poorly explained.
I could even try to tell you how the colors look perfect on the scene..
But I'm going to be lazy and say it looks fantastic, and I wish I could grow up to be just like you... or something like that.
Seriously, I that bg. Going to look out for that artbook.
- great animation focused website http://www.catsuka.com
man I don't even know what that implies
but I would do it.
I like this piece very much, since I'm especially fond of perspectives
Also I was wonder if there is a way to take off anti-aliasing with the brush tool? Or is that what the pencil tool is for? I don't like the grayness that comes with it, is there any way to change that?
@pious- yeah, I know about the distortion necessary to do a pan that appears to be a rotation, but that's not really what I was going for, but rather a slightly fisheyed bowing you'd get with a very, very wide angled camera lens.
@McAllen- I'm just kind of estimating since I don't put myself on a stopwatch-
1st one: 6 hours
2nd one: 30 minutes- 1 hour
And yes, the pencil tool turns off the anti-aliasing, but then.... you get a lot of aliasing. You can get around that by working at a ridiculously high resolution, like Brian Bolland does (I believe he works at around 600 dpi or so.) I prefer to work at decently high resolutions (1600- 2500 px in general) with the brush tool and using my handy-dandy flat brush, which lets me get some slightly sharper edges than I can get with the standard round brush.
Paint to post. Threw in a dude as kind of an afterthought to see if it would actually look ok, not sure if it really works with the kind of looser background than the first pic.
2.5 hours on this I think?
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Quite good for a first try, the tower thingy on the left need to be a bit curved, and the right loos too staight compared to the left, but a quick photoshop fixes that.
My digital art! http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=8168
My pen and paper art! http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=7462
FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT ~
http://img70.imageshack.us/my.php?image=baconbgxt4.swf
Well, process-wise it's nothing special. Tossed a gradient and some flats under a pencil sketch set to multiply, threw down a basic shadow layer with a slighlty blue hued layer set to multiply, then went to town just noodling over those layer with paint. 90% of the painting was done with my standard 100% hardness flat brush, pen tilt for angle control, pen pressure for opacity control, a lot at 100% opacity to keep the opaque/gouache look. There a little bit of soft airbrushy shit going on, mostly in the clouds, but not much.
Step by step (well, not really, but these are the photoshop layers I had saved). As you can tell, the process really kind of stops being exciting a thrid of the way through, then it just becomes a matter of a noodling death-slog. :P
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I think the addition of dust cloud detail behind the buildings would benefit the piece.
I'd like this a hell of a lot more if the background was a bit simpler. It's bordering on very Darwyn Cooke.