Official OT-Creativity Thread 2

[Chris2balls]

I'm really digging those brushes, Facet! They capture charcoal effects well. I've been thinking about scanning different papers to use as texture, too.
Regarding the portrait: I love pieces done with a knife, and this is no exception! I don't know the lighting conditions you were in, but I feel that the contrast could be pushed a tiny bit further. The volumes of the face are well captured and perfectly readable, apart from the ear, which kinds of melts into the rest of the face.
The third picture is intriguing: how did you get that effect for the background? It almost looks like some databending.

I've been using MyPaint. It's similar to Painter, but of course not as sophisticated as the latter. Loads of brushes you can tweak in as much detail as you like, which is fun. I'm going to have to find a copy of Ps pretty soon...

Anyway, cool stuff, looking forward to the still life!

Ryumaru: You did a great job on rendering the torso and arms on the Deadbird dude, my favourite part being the forearm! The legs, however... maybe it's the perspective, but they don't seem to match up in terms of size, the brighter leg seeming longer than the one in the shadow; intuitively I'd do the opposite, because of foreshortening.
The way you've blocked out volumes in the second picture is what I prefer in the way you paint/draw... however, I feel as if the pose could be more dynamic. Maybe this is more dynamic?

[Ryumaru]

Chris2balls: Yes those legs have been giving me some trouble, the figure was done completely from imagination,which I think is a step forward for me, but now in the interest of getting a solid image I think I will have to bust out some reference and do some skeletal drawings to get the legs in proportion.

It might be splitting hairs, but the intention for the pose of the second guy was a very sophisticated, almost regal look, meant to contrast with his demonic form. This is also why his arm/sword has the appearance of a rapier, as it's one of the more elegant weapons. But just that simple switch does add a lot of interest to the piece and doesn't stray too far from the original intent so I will try it out; thanks!

edit: Does this look better to you guys? He was kind of missing his entire pelvic girdle in the previous one. Had to take some photos for this one.. >.>

[Facet]

Thanks a lot guys!

Maybe if I spent a couple days drawing a hundred feet I'd like them more, or at least be better at them. Those brushes have made me super excited to open up photoshop now.

Do it! I might join you there, right after I get round to doing that still life .

The new calf position looks more grounded, I think the pose overall is a bit on the stiff side I guess due to the alterations, but it's a really convincing construction from imagination.

@C2B: I use a bunch of transformation tools for making textures & patterns, as well as some randomising brushes. I think that BG is a bunch of overlays from something quite simple; flipped and staggered some; it was done some time previously to the profile itself. Experimenting in the abstract, and remixing ideas and happy accidents from that pool later is an enjoyable way to work for me.

I've had a play with Mypaint before; the level of customisation possible; down to the individual response graphs for every parameter is pretty great, but the procedural brush engine (what with everything ultimately being constituted of vector circles), is inevitably limiting in some aspects; I found it can result in everything looking just a bit sterile sometimes, not to mention the lack of a lot of important tools outside of the brushes. A while ago I did actually try for a palette knife look in there too, like so:



It was supposed to be a sort of master copy; something to challenge the brush application, but I think I might have started as a caricature, or else I just didn't measure squat and didn't fix it so it's way off the original (by Lovis Corinth, here). Vague ears again!

[Chris2balls]

Ryumaru, I've actually been drawing my feet tonight (I'll post the sketches later, haven't scanned them yet). Anyway, I thought I'd help you with the pose:

Quite a few changes. I've been trying out the current pose, and I noticed that the brighter leg is actually lower than the other leg, because it was very difficult to give the other leg some kind of foreshortening. As I made the legs longer, I added some length to the arm. Since the pelvis was tilted, I tried to tilt the ribcage by adding more on the left side.
I gave more definition to the knee: I felt as if you grouped the muscles too closely around it, so I moved them lower. I thought that the knee would look better if it faced us a bit more, considering that the foot is facing us.
I hope it helps!

Facet: I've played around with the graphs too; I usually stick to using ink brushes because despite my best efforts, I couldn't get a good pencil brush, may it be in its effects or shape, or the way it reacts to pressure. It's funny that you mention the lack of tools besides the brushes, because for my portrait, I had to open up another program to fix some proportion issues, as I couldn't do so in MyPaint.
I think I recognize the brush, the result is good!

[Facet]

Well, at least I started a still life

• Made a drawing to establish forms and perspective; wire-framing surface reminders when I feel like it, erasing superfluous and overly messy passages. I didn't do a lot of exploratory stuff here actually as my shapes and the reference point of the paper's VPs look decent by eye.
• Took my own advice and made a decent job of masking off local colours, using paths so I can manipulate/amend the selection easily and seamlessly at any point during the painting. You can then also reuse the paths for duplicating repeating forms, or to try completely different lighting with the same objects (the latter I'm probably going to take advantage of as there's not a lot of light left in the time I have free atm.
• Put a palette on a separate layer with a quick base ramp to ensure I don't lose any colours while blending and modelling.

The window is north-facing so it's pretty diffuse lighting with a great deal of variation and pick-up in the shadow, not fantastic for (easy) painting. If I'd have thought ahead I might have started from more direct conditions elsewhere with my laptop. I made a pin-hole colour viewer out of a toilet roll tube with a hole-punch to help a bit.

Chris: thanks, I personally find getting nice line-work a lot more challenging than painting in digital. Most of the time I actually avoid it I think Mypaint is pretty good in that department though, it's very responsive. I had a look in the program just now and there's a preset pencil I really like called 'sketch 1' by Ramon, it has a scatter jitter inverse to pressure; something PS doesn't allow for some reason.   

[Ryumaru]

Facet: Good start on that still life :] I'd love to see you do the multiple lighting situations. Some night time ones would be cool

[Soundlust]

Hope it's ok to make my first post in here.
So much good stuff here, this forum looks like so much fun.
A little doodle to  break the seal.

[pistachio]

Not a piece first but a quick crit for Soundlust's piece, will get to posting one though.

Real skill here in folds and detail and design, in those aspects this is ace!

Unfortunately I'm thinking the legs might be throwing the character design and construction/perspective off. They seem, although not as drastic really, like formulaic psuedo-anime/indie sidescroller character legs (examples when I find some, but you know what I mean?), pelvis forward, knees backward, tight pants, tapered legs and small feet, the latter two or three elements which are kinda ruining the heavy mafia-boss character vibe here. Fortunately the legs' execution here shows you understand construction pretty well, but the feet and character bits still apply.

Another problem, the biggest as far as perspective, is that the right foot is off of the ground plane. The other, lesser problem is the way the legs and cane both lean left, causing the weight situation to read as 2d instead of 3d, so one of these elements could be tweaked. And the size of the right hand, length of left arm, etc., also minor problems.

Failed construction is not a major critical problem throughout the piece at all but this is still a good pointer among this rambling/nitpicking: how does x connect to y and where is it in perspective? For example: how does the neck connect to the body? Ask questions and questions. Get to know and understand the pose, its purpose, and the character doing it. Quickly sketching it from different angles, maybe applying perspective guidelines (like this) helps.


Damn, gotta edit this post for a piece soon...

[Facet]

Maybe I should've picked a non-perishable subject . My banana is looking noticeably more camo, luckily it's bloody cold atm. I caved and started the colour over from a spotlight; made it a whole lot easier to paint anyways.

• Blocking in major colours with emphasis on contrast, starting with the highest and working towards midtones with a firm edged, almost opaque brush: I'm sure this process is very familiar to anyone reading this . If it doesn't function like this then it never will. I check contrast without the bias of colour occasionally, to make sure my shadows as a unit are appreciably distinct from the light.
• Trying repeatedly to subdivide the previous and pin down more subtle shifts with much squinting, cross-checking. The saturation and reflectiveness of the pepper in the harsh light are giving me a little further trouble with values but the rest has been made a lot simpler by the light change. The colour viewer I made was next to no help actually; 'calculating' colours by relation is a lot easier than trying to conjure stuff ex nihilo; I feel like I definitely learned stuff here.
• Blending and detailing with softer and/or less opaque brushes. I could've manipulated more edge priorities here than I did; seeing as all the external borders were super vector-crisp and some variety (taking into account material and distance/focus) is nice but I'm happy as is. This stage is a bit time consuming but undemanding really, excepting when fixing up previous oversights.

I haven't a clue how long it took with the disjointedness, not quick though! I already see a couple of things now I could improve on: the table is markedly lighter towards the front and there's some sloppiness to bits of the pepper which should be nice and smooth. The black things are from the stand of this ikea lamp and my keyboard.

Pistachio! where's yo piece? I know you've got skillz to share

Edit: Caught a silly mistake in that I had drawn the whole thing at a bit of an angle somehow which the 'verticals' of the curtains and lamp (put in later on) needed to be aligned with accordingly, and an animation popping through the layers:

[Chris2balls]

I like the attention to detail in this, and the contrasts are working well! 
Something about this bugs me though, but I can't put my finger on it... the banana and the pepper feel flat for some reason?

[Facet]

Thanks I know what you mean 'bout the flatness, it's really bright & high sat in the lights (the form shadows too, with all the reflected light) and I was having problems pining down any kind of modelling there. I was actually pretty surprised at the lack of contrast in places. I'll give it another pass and maybe try adjusting stuff as a whole.

On detail: you've been hoodwinked! I was pretty lax with the banana spots cos no-one would know the difference

Ryu: I don't think I'll be able to use the same stuff again in natural light; I was already skipping a few wrinkles on my pepper while painting (a couple days ago) and there's far more most interesting subjects to be had, I think. Next time hopefully! Moonlight would definitely be a novel challenge.

[Ryumaru]

You could always swap with new fruits? I thought that would be one benefit of the line art and separate layers. But i can also understand it not feeling right if you're going for a strict life study.

I made a little video of me taking  a really old sketch ( maybe 6 years?) and slapping some stuff onto it in photoshop:
http://youtu.be/FhPXhJo8VGQ

[yaomon17]

Here are my English notes.


Full Size (It is pretty large and still crud quality, scanner is a broke): http://i.imgur.com/74kp0t7.jpg
The head could use some major work but I liked how the torso and stomach area turned out.

[ptoing]

Learning me some ZBrush

[Rain Dancer]

Hey all.

First post, but, I've actually been here before with another account I don't even remember the name from. Still, this place is still as amazing as I remember it; the amounts of quality art here as well as the pixels is lovely. I mean, just look at the stuff on this thread. Can't even begin to describe it. You guys rock. 

(The pixel art section seems a little on the decline, quality wise, but it may just be me..)

Feels good to be here.



Let me not forget this wip, too



Im improvising on it, background coming, but im not sure what yet
All advice is welcome as always.

[Dennis]

Started dabbling with oil colors this year. Both are WIP, left one first, right one second. (Note to self: On your third painting make a drawing first and make a plan on how to paint it. )

Notable observation: Whatever amount of oil color you think you need to take from the tube to paint an area, take less, far less than that amount.

[Indigo]

Working on some traditional animation.  This is my first true attempt at this so feedback is appreciated.  This will eventually be cut up into pieces to be experimented with in Spriter, but for now it's pretty traditional.  The upper body asymmetry doesn't quite make sense yet as he will be holding a gun with both hands in the final.

[Helm]

Only thing that springs up to me immediately is that the far shoulder has a huge movement trajectory while the foreground shoulder is pretty contained.

[Indigo]

I didn't really put much thought/planning into the positioning of the back arm, so it doesn't surprise me if it's a bit off.  I'll see if it makes sense with the gun and adjust accordingly if it's too much, though I am still going for somewhat exaggerated movement

Edit:
Slight update with the gun.  Too much?

[Helm]

Yes. I'd make it not show travelling behind the back and I think that'd take care of it, along with minor adjustments to how fast in moves in and out in the front.

[32]

I definitely agree on the back shoulder, I think it implies a much larger movement on the rest of the arm and combined with the gun makes it look very much like he's jerking his elbow upward over the space of a frame or so. The vertical movement on the gun might be a bit too extreme in general, look's almost like he's uppercutting, might also be caused by the slightly quicker move forward than back. Looks a little bit like his feet are slipping, I think this is caused by the legs not straightening on the push off. I would consider straightening them at least a little more and maybe moving the entire center of mass forward a bit, would give it a nice little forward thrust on each step.

Fantastic character and volumes

[ptoing]

I have to say that the leg animation does not convince me. the contact frame mostly. I would make the contact further out, foot not fully on ground (heel contact) and then BAM, take that weight down in the next frame. Just a suggestion.

[Dennis]

Concept sketch for my next oil painting (already kind of abandoned the first two paintings):

I've done this applying a quick iteration technique I learned from watching Stephen Daniele doing live concept art for Shroud Of The Avatar.

Used up half an Ivory-Black art-pencil for that.

Iteration 1: http://imageshack.us/a/img542/9466/20130421b01.png
Iteration 2: http://imageshack.us/a/img12/7803/20130421b02.png

Iteration 3:

[Corinthian Baby]

Not sure when/if to call this done:

Trying/going for Shaddy technique/style:
http://www.shaddyconceptart.com/

Ref (High Res):
http://braddstudios.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/img_0352.jpg

[Dennis]

colored pencils on paper

[Facet]

Corinthian Baby: Looking pretty sweet , definite improvement from previous stuff you've posted here, shapes & colours are solid. The bushes are pretty flat still, I'd go softer/more dispersed/transparent with layers of texture rather than blobs, and maybe stencil out some nice hard fissures & facets on the rock shelf with the lasso or whatnot. atm my attention's caught by the hard, contrast-y greenery, and I think the rock should rightly be the focus.

Dennis: you're getting a really nice illustrative rendering quality with those pencils. Do like. That flower looks edible, and pretty tasty moreover.

[Corinthian Baby]

Good calls, Facet, as usual. After loving on the rock some more and other various edits:

[Facet]

I think I prefer the previous actually, not sure about the smudgy stuff.

I did a example here of the kind of softer foliage I had imagined, toning down the colour a bit too, and bringing up the value of the cliff behind for reduced contrast (also as atmospheric perspective). While I was doing that I noticed you could perhaps get a better sense of depth, and also of light by utilising directional marks according to the perspective of the ground plane and by bringing up the brightness in the sky, foreground and form shadow; there was quite a lot of black in the last which is detracting from the sense of reflected light that's so prominent in the ref, and I think is better reserved for punchy bits of occlusion.



Also, those three rocks in the middle are strangely aligned, like a beaded necklace, I really don't know where to stop with these things do I?

[Dennis]

Dennis: you're getting a really nice illustrative rendering quality with those pencils. Do like. That flower looks edible, and pretty tasty moreover.

Thanks man. I do feel like my "art" has improved a bit over the past year. Still wish I could motivate myself to put in more hours and more effort. 

[Facet]

I know the feeling. Do check out Carter Goodrich if you haven't; some seriously sweet colour-pencils.

[Dennis]

Thanks for that link Facet. He's got some real good stuff there. Does anyone else think that those pencil character designs have a lot more character than the final 3D-rendered versions of them? To me it feels like most of the qualities of traditional art are somehow lost in the translation to uber-polished, kind of sterile 3D-CG imagery.

I can't really put my finger on it or express with words what it is in traditional art but I find it much more enjoyable to look at real pencil drawings and real paintings than to look at digital paintings and 3D rendered stuff. Something is missing in the latter or maybe it's because it is usually too clean and too perfect.

[Corinthian Baby]

@Facet You are too kind to me, I am not worthy. Back to the lab. Also do you think you can maybe post a higher res version, something not so jpeg artifacty so I can see your specific brushstrokes more clearly?

Will edit with results.

[Facet]

Hey, glad you like! purloined PJ emotes!

Sorry, I didn't save the original file mainly 'cos it's quite rough and there's little to see! but I did think it could be distracting from the stuff I was trying to effect anyway; it should all be there at a thumbnail.

Brushstrokes wise mines's probably somewhat overcooked: as an exercise recently I've been paring back to basic round + texture only, kinda provokes a bunch of hatching across form to describe surfaces without getting too fussy, more drawing than painting which is interesting...to me only maybe. I just smoothed out some texture in the lights 'cos it was a little samey, and for 'over-exposure' paired to increased range in the shadows.

Dennis: I think few would argue against physical media being more individual, I used to feel much more comfortable with pixels or vectors as being native 'unapologetic' digital, over pseudo painting, but my views have meandered considerably, it's an apples and oranges situation ain't it? there's a lot of truly distinctive stuff now-a-days, I'll try and example up later. 

[Corinthian Baby]

I dig the messy and drastic hatching though. It's perhaps why some describe digital painting as digital expressionism. As a thumbnail it looks like its communicating much more information than it really is. This is something that is effective in pixel art as well, expressing the most with the least sort of principle, so it's interesting to me as well.

Here's what I've drummed up based on your edit and comparing back to ref:


btw I'm trying to stick to these brushes:
http://www.shaddyconceptart.com/download
They're a good general set for conveying a versatile array of textures, and with brush tweaks they cover even more.

[Facet]

  yeah, priorities are better, it's kinda inevitable you've lost some of the freshness/economy of the original that I really liked with the editing, but hopefully it's ideas you can roll into the next painting more spontaneously. I'd consider bumping up the lights a little still, for a bit of extra zing.

I've had a play with that brushset and it's really solid, so often shared collections are a massive intimidating mess. I probably spend too much time messing about tweaking my own set, hence my round brush exercise. Experimenting with all the other tools can be as productive in PS though, it's so malleable.

[r1k]

I notice in the new version, none of the rocks overlap eachother.  Kind of eliminates some of the depth.

[Cage]

I might post here more often, I'm slowly starting to make works which aren't "DUH obvious practice piecie"


photo based, b+w inks on gray paper. I'm still kinda used to vector art with perfect lines and perfect whites and blacks - not too happy with the white ink being semi-transparent but the end result works okay, I guess

[Mathias]

@ Corinthian - Thanks for link the brushes! I was JUST about to say - wow, how do you guys get all this nice texture into your stuff??? Needless to say I've neglected to truly take advantage of special painting brushes. Foolish, I know. But I'm looking forwarding to trying out that set. Nice scene, btw.

@ r1k - That's a great point, about communicating depth in an image. I always knew the value of doing that, but I guess I never stopped to actually think about consciously. It's good to disambiguate principles like that.
Reminds me of a design class I once took, where I finally had in front me a textbook breaking down all the different design principles, rather exhaustively (with visual examples, etc etc) - things I already kinda knew in the back of my mind, things I did and felt automatically, but after that class I finally UNDERSTOOD them consciously. And that makes a designer/artist much much more powerful, since he has a firm grasp on fundamentals then. Know what I'm sayin'?

@ Cage - I love it. What drawing/painting tools did you use? Couple of fox hair brushes dipped in ink wells? The hair looks brushed, but then the right ear oultine looks like sharpie. Lemme know.

[Cage]

Some generic black india ink, white acrylic ink (I'll try white gouache next time) and a 00 Winsor & Newton University Series brush (Synthetic hair IIRC)

[Chris2balls]

http://i.imgur.com/YP3vZPP.jpg
Long time no see! A WIP of a Yoruba bronze to test out some brushes in MyPaint.

Edit:

Finished.

[Corinthian Baby]

Hye guys, sorry if I'm flooding this topic with iterations of the same painting, but you guys have brought up some great points and helped me push this to the next level.

@Facet, I'm not sure what you're seeing in that original, maybe it was the solid and more vibrant colors since I didn't use any transparencies. I tried to incorporate some of that original juiciness.

I also tried to layer those rocks to bring in the depth again, like r1k said.

[Mathias]

Cripes, Chris2. That's nice! Good realism. Is that like oil-rubbed/treated bronze, or just meant to look very old?

What do these brushes look like?