The Landing - Work in progress

[ThreeOhFour]

I've always been a big fan of those atmospheric sci-fi and fantasy scenes that people paint, and really would like to learn to "paint" (with a computer) those sort of scenes.

I've decided to have a shot at doing one - I would have done it bigger, but my current monitor is only 17" crt and 640x480 sits kinda perfectly in the middle of Photoshop at 100% zoom. I hope to have a newer monitor soon...



This is the rough layout I've worked up to for my image so far. Probably took half an hour or so. Some notes about stuff you might ask/suggest:

-Composition wise, I've followed the rule of thirds/golden ratio idea thing I've read about (albeit roughly), placing the main spaceship roughly around the 'Golden Mean' (I think) and the bigger building slightly off the other point.
-Colour wise I didn't think too hard about it. I looked at a few fantasy paintings for ideas, and tossed up going either greeny yellow or orangey yellow. Settled for greeny.
-I used a basic perspective illusion to hopefully make the city look like a pretty big one.
-Birds flying away idea stolen from a billion other fantasy artists. Sorry
-Lighting the ground and building orange with the jet flames seemed like a good idea but looks kinda crappy. May need reworking/scrapping.
-I used a big (maybe 39? I can't quite recall), plain brush here because I wanted the emphasis on me creating the image, not the brushes.
-No sketch for the image (well, unless this counts) because I am terrible at drawing things on paper with pencils.
-The image was mostly done on 3 layers (basic sky colour, clouds, city) but I went overboard and added another three afterwards, one for each ship and one for the birds .

Obviously it needs tons and tons of work before anyone would begin to call it 'done' but I think it is best if I get advice now before I go and put in details .

Thanks for your time!

[TheJBurger]

Some comments:
- If you haven't, try working out through the thumbnail stage first. Get something that looks good (the big picture--not the details) and then blow it up to work on.
- Think about adding a foreground. In particular, try to put some human-sized elements so the viewer has an idea of the scale in the background.
- Overall, you've got a good use of light/dark in the image, so that helps distinguish the objects. The atmospheric perspective looks nice.
- I think the composition could really benefit from some strengthening, but unfortunately I'm not skilled enough to offer any solid advice. Try looking up 'post apocalyptic' on google, and that might give you some inspiration. It all depends on what you want the key elements to be in the image.
- I think you would benefit from being a little less 'messy' and more controlled in your brush strokes. Also, it might help to use fewer changes in value. You can get the same look across, except with less gradation, and have a much tighter look to the image.

Hope this helps. If I'm not clear enough, let me know and I'll answer any questions

[ThreeOhFour]

Thanks J.

In response to your points:

- I've never done thumbnail type stuff before, but I can see how it could be effective. Is there a guide to what sort of size is good for doing a thumbnail image, or is it just something you guess?
- Nice idea, I might put a couple of people standing in the foreground looking at the descending ship (in the bottom left hand corner, methinks)
- I agree that my brushstrokes are all over the place but I think that it's mainly due to inexperience. I've cleaned up a lot of them here, following the basic pattern I set with the initial sketch. I prefer sketching with harder edged brushes and then cleaning up with the soft brushes, so it is pretty obvious as to where I've done a stroke until I clean up. I guess this is something I'll improve with practice as well. With fewer changes in value, are you referring to hue?

Anyhow, some cleaning up results in the following:



Certain things like the ground I will go back over with a harder edged brush once I'm happy with the way everything is to give it a more clearly defined edge.

Again, thanks for you time

[auriond]

In your image, everything is drawing the eye of the viewer towards the city, but the city itself is very scattered. I don't quite know how to put this, but I feel that the city should be a solid mass rising out of the ground, to "reward" the viewer for looking there. Otherwise the eye doesn't quite know where to settle - the skyscraper on the left? the tall building on the right? Or something framed by the two buildings? (At the moment I can see that there's nothing in the foreground between the two buildings; unless this is a ruined city, that's not very interesting.)

But I'm also a fan of such atmospheric drawings, and I think you're well on the right track One day I'd like to attempt this too, but I'm afraid my skills aren't up to scratch yet.

[loominous]

I also always get the urge to give one of these vast scenes a go when I see them in a movie. Must get around to it some day.

Anyway, I think the biggest things I'd try out would be:

I) Rotating stuff. Atm we're lookin at everything straight on, from the spaceship to the buildings. This gives the image a flat look, and is a pretty unexciting solution.

II)  Offsetting the composition. Right now you've offset individual elements, but if you look at the big picture, everything is centered, and the image is more or less symmetrical. Again, not the most exciting solution.

For instance, you could place the city a bit to the left, with the brightest part of the sky even more to the left, and have the ship closer - but still on the right - to balance it out (as you'd get a pretty heavy left side). Or some other solution.

III) Right now there's no real main lightsource. Overclouded can be nice and atmospheric, but it does rob the image of:

i) additional colours - as introducing an, let's say, orange main lightsource, from the back left would create a richer palette.
ii) some sharper contrast and definition - as that lightsource would lit up sides of the buildings, giving them depth and definition.
iii) additional atmospheric effect of the non lit areas, as these will look soft and misty in contrast to the lit up parts.
iv) haze effects, which are not uncommon in these paintings, as far as I know.

Btw, this main lightsource doesn't have to be strong, and can be very limited. It could be blocked out partically by clouds or mountains, and only light up a couple of selected nice building's upper side areas. Or something.


About thumbnails:

Working with thumbnails just mean that you start off with a small size, then go larger. The small size forces you to ignore details n focus on the big picture, so as long as your thumbnail size does this, it's working as intended. Also, the small size and roughness allow you to try out a heap of solutions before running out of steam, which just one or two elaborate sketches will achieve.

Small size doesn't necessarily mean that your resolution must be low however. I usually start off with the final size and simply zoom out to achieve the thumbnail size, which allows me to just keep refining throughout the process, without having to resize. The problem with resizing is that it creates these ugly blurry artifacts, which you'll have to paint over. By contrast, if you work in full size, you'll end up with a bunch of brushy (good) artifacts from the thumbnail sketches, which are a really great resource for coming up with ideas n textures.

Take your first sketch, and all those weird strokes at the bottom. All those can be interpreted as recesses in the landscape, weird buildings etc, that you can start refining, or simply paint over. They're there in either case, and have the sort of randomness that's really hard to achieve consciously.

Anyway, looking forward to seeing the progress!

[Moresco]

This isn't a critique, but figured I'd throw it out there in case you wanted to give it a try for your next ones.

I'm doing something similar to this right now, so it reminded me of this.  I borrowed the idea from Scott Robertson actually.  You basically do a bunch of thumbnail sketches of value only, trying to establish some sense of architecture or any random environment.  Then you take those, align them in PS all on one layer, mix them up, flip them, spin them, put some of them on dodge, others on difference, whatever.  Then you zoom way in and look for a scene basically.  Anything that pops out at you.  Once you've got it, you copy it merged and save it on another file to work on.  It's funny because what you have here really looks very much like many of the environments that I start with from this method.  They're like happy little accidents really, and you can come up with some great starters to get you going towards something you'd never have painted otherwise.

And yeah thumbnails are great, I do them all the time for comic stuff and concept art as well.  They're usually thumb size, as big as your thumb laid out flat.  What I do is VERY roughly sketch in a basic idea to figure out the composition, don't worry about perspective too much, keep it loose when you do your thumbnails.  That way you can do ten different compositions based on the same idea very quickly without spending huge amounts of time on it.  Maybe a minute tops on each.  If you find one you like, thicken the border around it to remind yourself, then you can do another version of the sketch maybe the size of your hand and start adding in value.  Then you can scan that in bigger and go from there in PS.

Anyway not trying to repeat what everyone else has said.  Really like what you have there, though.  If I ever get around to finishing some of mine, I might post them as well.

[Stupot]

For a moment, Ben I thought it this was going to be a picture of the top of your stairs. 
Happy Birthday by the way, mate.

[Questionable]

Something that I've always found helps me is to draw from the ground up. When I draw a person (with a pencil, at least) I start with bones, then I add muslces, then skin, then hair, then clothes.

When I draw a motorcyle I draw the engine, transmission, fuel lines.

I've never done a city scape but I would start off with a birds eye view. Streets, public transport, different neighborhoods... basically, making the city function, making it so that it actual COULD exist.

Before I draw something I always try to draw motive. Either what I'm drawing has a motive for existing, or the image itself is giving the viewer a motive to view it. What am I looking at this for? Is it to see how pretty the picture is? A glimpse at a dystopian future? A single frame story?

What's the focal point? a building? A monster? The Ship(s)?

I'm a little hungry and I'm not sure I just made any sense, so maybe after I eat i'll try to be more coherent.

TACO BELL... and away?

[ThreeOhFour]

I only have 2 minutes, but thanks for all your comments and I'll reply to them when I've got a spare moment

Quick update with some suggestions followed and some ignored (for now, I plan to do more drastic changes later)



@ Stu, Cheers, and sorry if you were disappointed

[Trent R]

I don't like the people in the foreground, I honestly liked just the cityscape and the sky. Since you have the man and kid, it makes it seem like you should focus on them, which draws away the focus from the rest of the picture.


Granted, I'm not an artist whatsoever.


~Trent

[Matti]

I like them, but till now the buildings seem to small compared with the people, at least the detailed one...

[pslim]

I agree with matti. I really like the way you did the people but I think they're too big for where they're located. Perhaps instead of having the hill on the right in the distance cradling the city you could have it more in the foreground, and sloping down across our view of that edge of the city, with people standing there? Just a thought. 



edit: quick mock up

[TheJBurger]

I think the scale could be improved. Right now, the buildings look really tiny because of the new figures. My suggestion: move the figures REALLY close to the foreground, and push the city back towards the horizon more.

I was thinking more along the lines of these:
Warning: resizes your browser. Maybe: http://www.intothepixel.com/artwork-details/w2007_city_17-half_life_2.asp
http://ryanchurch.com/ryanchurch_image011.htm
http://ryanchurch.com/ryanchurch_image019.htm
http://ryanchurch.com/ryanchurch_image018.htm
In those pieces, notice how the use of the foreground (and the figures) helps create distance, scale, and atmosphere.

Ryan Church is a guy who does concept art for Star Wars and a lot of films, and many of his pieces revolve around this kind of scale (small tiny people, large stuff in the distance, technology looming in the sky, etc). Feel free to take a look at his work.

Oh--and Happy Birthday!

[Sean]

Heyas,

Thought I'd pop in to let you know I really like what you have.

Really nice image, keep working on it!

I'm not an artist (as much as I'd like to be), but I've given this a quick go-over to try and 'highlight' the chunk of city in the middle. I don't know the fancy terms, or proper techniques but hopefully these images will get my point across

As much as I dig the 'atmosphere' you have going, it all seems a bit 'wishy-washy'... maybe you can start 'pulling things' out a bit more?

Anyway, take a gander at these.. and get back to work. I'd love to see this finished

Original Image



Remix One (Black and White)



Remix Two (Colour)




Remix Two (Full Size)