Digital painting WIP

Below are some notes I made for myself during the thinking process.

Final Project: Start today 11/21, final due, full color, 12/16 (last day of finals)

-personal project

-created in photoshop

    -can be linked to 3ds max, maya

        -this means textures for stuff

    -brainstorming today

        -color animation

    -21-25 hours of work minimum

        remember process:

        Idea

            -what will be deliverable?

            -concept, setting, character, story, composition

        research

        pose

            crit

        thumbs

            crit

        value

            crit

        color comps

crit   

What do I like? What do I love? What inspired me to be an animator when I was so young? What turned that love of animation and art into the desire to work in video games?

It started with cartoons when I was younger. All of the cheesy action cartoons of the early 90’s, TMNT, Biker Mice from Mars, Xmen, Spiderman, Batman, Gargoyles. Even beyond the action shows I loved everything that spielberg directed Warner Bros was doing: Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Freakazoid and Tiny Toons... I was, and am still, obsessed with cartoons. I always played video games, they were playable cartoons essentially... but none of them captured my attention like Blizzard did starting with Warcraft 2.

I got into it a little late, I had played casually with friends and family. It was when I got the battle.net edition that I became a man entranced. From that point forth I was hooked on everything Blizzard. I spent countless hours in each of Diablo, Warcraft 2, Starcraft, Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft (though I cut that addiction out early on), and Starcraft 2. The one game, more than all the others, that has, from day one, captured my heart and soul is Diablo 2. I may very well have put more time into that one game than all other games I’ve played combined...maybe, I might be selling myself short here. Really most of my time since junior high has been spent video gaming.... The moral of the story is: Diablo 2 is my favorite game, hands down (until D3 comes out, we’ll see what happens then). I have always been able to go back to that game and sink way too much time into it, over and over again.

Now I am going to school to eventually work for Blizzard and some of the artists that inspired me (hours poured into looking at all the art in the manuals, copying and studying it helped get me where I am today).... it’s only fitting that I do something from that world that has driven me so much.

How do I make it interesting? Diablo 2 is an action-horror RPG.... well, the music that I love goes right along with it. Why not a Metal album art style Diablo 2 illustration?

   

now for inspiration:

    research: album art

        -ed repka http://www.humandeath.de/Repka_Arts.htm

        -dan seagrave http://beinart.org/artists/dan-seagrave/gallery/paintings/

        -travis smith http://www.seempieces.com/

        -necrolord http://rateyourmusic.com/list/nospaulatu/album_art_by_kristian_wahlin__aka_necrolord_

        -hr. giger http://www.hrgiger.com/

        -eliran kantor http://www.elirankantor.com/

        -par oloffson http://www.parolofsson.se/

        -baizley from baronesshttp://vectroave.com/2009/12/john-dyer-baizley-illustrations/

        -james jean

        -david salle

       

come up with album title and have that direct theme

    does it need to be diablo? could be inspired by other things I like: books and junk and stuff

   

Metal album art:

    Normal with a touch of hell

        -strong surrealism influence

            -find surrealist artists

    - color studies

        -strong monochromatic (very cold, or very warm)

        -or ‘bi’chromatic (dominant color with splash of contrasting color...lots of warm with harsh cold)

    surrealism

    -how do I control that chaos? Everything has its place, nothing is extraneous

        -stream of consciuosness type painting

        -break it down into it’s individual parts:

            -symbolism as representationalism

            -what defines the thing?

                -deconstruct

            -specific compositional devices, themes and choices of bits depicted

            -does not have to be oversaturated with that stuff

                -keep it simple stupid

                -beyond that, keep it personal.

how to personalize this?

    I want to make an awesome tribute to diablo2 and reference from metal (certainly an inspiration for the D2 team as well).

        - I want to show that I can do awesome work

    what made the game special?

        -theme?

        -setting

        -story?   

        -music

I like drawing big ridiculous warrior guys and big monster demony things (that can’t be a direct relationship to the fact that a lot of my young artistic influence came directly from blizzard...)

    -I like fighting... not winning, but fighting. Focus on the action, not the result

        -figure out a title that works with fighting a physical embodiment of evil

            -read up some d2 lore for reference

Break it down

    -setting

        hellish

            -gothic cathedral in states of disrepair in a chaotic mass of fire and

abyss

- may be the church is too easy

    -abstract the idea?

- see par olaffson/ eliran kantor

    - characters

        - barbarian

        -diablo

    -colors: Warm for hell and diablo

        -cold for barbarian (looking like he came from snowy mountain highlands)

            -more par olafsson for reference, look at Immortal album art.

            -because they are fucking awesome

        -diablo

            -because he can look all hella badass and bullshit

       

11/28/11

    Don’t be tied to the square composition

It got to a point that using my brain like this was going nowhere and I just needed to draw.

These are some of the thumbs that I did. Really this is just thought vomit, trying to transcribe all the research I did into picture. 

This is the one that I like the most and decided to use it as a foundation for  the finished piece.

Next it was taken into PS to start refining the drawing and composition.

The original was scanned and drawn over to help refine some edges and get the overall feel working. The sillhouette is used to help cement the image, if it reads as a sillhouette it should read as a full painting.

 I lost it here. It just wasn't working, the sense of struggle and power was lost. It also didn't feel like it would be a proper Metal Album Cover. My instructor came with a helping hand and smacked me in the back of the head. Keep it simple stupid. The 3/4 turn wasn't working, it didn't lend anything to the drawing.  I turned the figures toward the viewer and everything was working much better.

 I was done beating my head against this drawing, if I took it too far as a drawing it might not work as a painting. There was a solid foundation, so it was time to start painting. 

As it is it's still really rough. Having a vague approximation of lighting helped to show what was and wasn't working with the structure of the figures and the composition of the painting.  

These early steps I am spending a looooooong time on. The more tender love and care I give in the beginning the easier it will be in the end. I get to solve all of my problems early and ultimately avoid the dreaded "polished turd."

The proper playlist really helps with this kind of arting. Miseration, Decapitated, Strapping Young Lad, Obscura, Yyrkoon, Lair of the Minotaur, Zonaria, Slayer, Dark Funeral, Behemoth, Belphegor..... The list is long. For as much time as I am putting into this I am Happy I have days and days worth of Metal to work with.

Animation!

Here is a walk cycle I did for a game team I am working with at school. The character concept, design and color were all my doing as well. We (myself and the other artist -who has done a stellar job on background and layout assets- that is contributing) are trying to get a very designy feel to the art in the game. Reminiscent of old UPA, 50's Disney shorts and Chuck Jones Looney Toons.

It's not quite finished. There are some minor details that I need to get into it, but it's fully tweened and colored.

This was hand-drawn, then colored in Photoshop.

Some recent figure drawings

Most of these are with Prismacolor markers (french grey and/ or cool grey) and a Tombow brush pen (black). All done in an 11x17 sketchbook.

FIlm Studies (13 Assassins)

This is another assignment from my digital painting class. We were to watch a film (or many) and get screen caps to do full color studies from. There was a previous assignment doing the same thing but in black and white.... but those are just terrible so I'll keep them to myself.

I was doing these pretty quick, trying to get better at conveying a visual message rather quickly (speed-painting?). Really, I was looking mainly at the composition used in the shots and trying to get better at seeing color/ value without using the color-picker in Photoshop.

Also: Watch this movie if you have not, it is awesome and full of beautiful cinematography.

"Finished" illustration

Here is the Sniper illustration after some fixes were made (the original was posted to facebook for critique). Not much was tweaked, really... tried to knock back the background, silhouette the city against the moon and got rid of the bi-pod on the gun (just wasn't working). Mostly doing what I could to bring further distinction to fore, mid and back ground.

Process work for a digital painting

The goal of the project was to adapt a figure drawing into a storytelling illustraion.

Step 1: The drawing

Here is the drawing I chose (from a group of my 5 best at the time). Unfortunately all the best storytelling poses that models will do tend to be short ones (2 minutes or less). More unfortunately I still had been struggling a lot with figure drawing so the list of 'good' drawings was a short one.

 Step 2: Fixing what's broke

 Once I had decided on a drawing I had to make sure everything was working anatomically. The drawing was scanned into photoshop and drawn all over.

Step 3: The Underdrawing

 On top of all of that is the underdrawing upon which my painting would have gone. I couldn't figure out a good, simple, straightforward story that could be told with this pose so it was modified.

Step 4: More fixifying

Making the figure stand left more room for my brain to think of stories. The model was sitting in a kind of contrapassto so it was relatively easy to adapt into a convincing standing position. I threw the knee up because I felt like she had a little captain in her.

Step 5: The story(ies)

We were tasked with making 5 story ideas with the pose, place the figure in a setting and create lighting (keeping it monochromatic, for simplification). I sat and brainstormed some quick and dirty stories and jumped onto the internet to find some photos that I could cheat in for setting. That also turned out to be a great tool for figuring out the lighting.

Step 6: Color Comps

We then had to pick out the ideas to take to color comps. I liked the sniper, but more importantly, so did everyone else I showed it to (as an artist going to the entertainment industry I had better get used to making stuff that everyone else wants to see).

The Final(ish) step: To finish

This was such a huge learning experience for me it is hard to sum up what the process was on this. As soon as my brain has had more time to digest everything I will get to writing it down.

I can not sufficiently thank my partner in class, along with my instructor the TA and the rest of my classmates. This really was a team effort and I don't know if I would have been able to get this quality without all the help from everyone.