Help me out on my cover art, pretty please

[HillBilly]

Hello Critics Lounge,

I'm creating cover art for a little game(plug, plug, plug) I'm making. It's mainly just for the fun, but also practice. Anyway, I sketched down a few concepts last night, and came up with one I liked:


(If I'm lucky, it'll look better in colors)

Now, before I start the process of coloring, I'd like to know what you guys thought about it, and where there's room for improvement. As you hopefully can see, I'm aiming for an extreme smallscale-to-bigscale perspective. Oh, and the circle above his head is the moon, not a halo or anything. Just to make it clear.

Also, I'm looking for archiving a paint effect in photoshop, similar to StubbsÃ, theÃ, Zombie. Probably not as professional, but hopefully in the traditional spirit of cover art. Now, I'm no Photoshop guru, so if anyone could link me to some tutorials covering the method, that'd be great. I haven't found anything useful myself, yet.

If there's no good digital way, maybe this'll be the perfect time of learning acrylics.

Thanks.

[ildu]

There's always a digital way .

Well, what can I say? Just:

1. Paint in the base colors for each area of the image according to the linework
2. Keep the linework, but make it invisible, since you won't need it for anything else than referance
3. Determine a lightsource
4. Texture the base colors accordingly
5. Paint in shadows
6. Paint in highlights
7. Make adjustments and possible effects.

Of course this you probably already know. There are so many different ways to paint when it comes to technique, style, brushes, color, etc., that I can't really advise any further. All I can say is that it's überly difficult to get a satisfying result if you've never done it before. You need practice practice practice .

Search for 'digital painting tutorial' on Google and you'll find some mediocre tutorials for this stuff.

[Nikolas]

I find it quite brilliant as it is. Not meaning that you shuoldn't try to colour it, but meaning that you're definately in the right up.

Just thumbs up, nothing helpful really...

[pslim]

The coloring method I use is similar to what Ildu suggested, with the only differences being that I burn and dodge a lot of the highlights and shadows instead of painting them on. I also suggest that any time you have achieved with some portion what you wanted to you duplicate the layer and continue working with the duplicate instead of the original, but that could just be because I'm so incredibly anal retentive. 

[MashPotato]

Something that helps me is to set the lineart layer on multiply, then paint beneath it on a separate layer when doing basic colours.  This makes the lighter areas or the lineart layer transparent (the lighter the colour, the more transparent it is), and helps me keep an idea of where things will go (and what things are, if things get a bit messy ^_^).  Once I start on the detail, I make the lineart invisible.
As for shading, loominous gave me some nice advice in one of my previous CL threads.

I like what you have so far, and I hope the painting goes well! ^_^

[CaptainBinky]

I like the idea - however, because the line of the side of the building is pretty much vertical, the sheets do look a bit like a tiny bit of string that gets thicker, rather than heavy perspective. I think if you extremified the jail building as well as your character and objects, then this would look pretty cool

Cheers,

CaptainBinky

P.S. Oh and when you colour it, don't worry too much about getting the colours *just right*. Since this is probably nighttime, whack a gradient map layer (those things are great) with a black -- dark blue -- desaturated light blue -- white type gradient on top of it, and play with the transparency / blending mode of the gradient map layer.

[HillBilly]

Thanks for all comments, tips and critics. I've started on it, and decided just to go with myself, instead of a tutorial. I've finished the sky and half his face, and it's looking all right so far. I'll show off when I got some more.

P.S. Oh and when you colour it, don't worry too much about getting the colours *just right*. Since this is probably nighttime, whack a gradient map layer (those things are great) with a black -- dark blue -- desaturated light blue -- white type gradient on top of it, and play with the transparency / blending mode of the gradient map layer.

This sounds interesting. How do I make a map layer?

[CaptainBinky]

This sounds interesting. How do I make a map layer?

Depends on your version of Photoshop. If you've got 6 or above (I can't remember if they were in 5 or not) then in the layer panel, you should see 6 buttons at the bottom of the window.

The first is for doing layer effects, next is masks, next makes a new layer folder, and the fourth brings up a list of layer modes (looks like a circle that;s half black half white at an angle). This includes Solid Color, Levels, Curves, blah, blah, blah, and 4th from the bottom, the glorious Gradient Map.

Have a play with this, and it should be pretty immediately apparant how it works. It's great!

Captain Binky

[HillBilly]

Wow, that's a pretty neat effect. I'll keep it in mind, thanks.

Anyway, I've worked his head and some of the background. Not quite done, but I'd like some input on how to improve it, before I move on:



While I think it's pretty decent for a first attempt, I'm sure it could be improved.

[deadsuperhero]

Holy crap, that looks great! :o

[HillBilly]

Thank you. 

[2ma2]

Looks good. I do think the edges are a bit soft, there are no sharp edges to the piece, which makes it all look smudgy. The moon is rather squashed aswell 

British teeth?