Background Workshop II - Concluded

Misj' · Fri 19/06/2015 22:16:52

STAGE II: Getting into Details
-- continuation from Stage I --

selmiak · Fri 19/06/2015 23:13:42

Cool stuff Misj'
I always wondered how you do this line art on PC. So this is a pencil drawing scanned in? With some contrast and other adjustmenst in PS or similar image processing software?

Misj' · Fri 19/06/2015 23:47:51

Quote from: selmiak on Fri 19/06/2015 23:13:42I always wondered how you do this line art on PC. So this is a pencil drawing scanned in? With some contrast and other adjustmenst in PS or similar image processing software?

This is done entirely digital (I do a lot with pencil on paper and when push comes to shove it's still my favorite medium , but digital has its advantages (read: undo-button

).

Most of my Blitz-entries are fully digital with a Wacom tablet. I use a number of different brushes (that I sometimes tweak a little) depending on the style I want. In this case it's a simple pressure-sensitive (on thickness) pen with a 20% opacity. This is what I use most when inking (in combination with a digital pencil-brush for my sketches).

Eric · Sat 20/06/2015 00:21:10

Are you using Photoshop for this linework, Misj'?

(Are outsiders allowed to post here?)

loominous · Sat 20/06/2015 08:29:01

Quote from: Eric on Sat 20/06/2015 00:21:10
(Are outsiders allowed to post here?)

Sure, anyone's welcome to participate in any way they like.

Myinah · Sat 20/06/2015 12:47:28

I wanted to pop in and say thank you for the feedback provided so far. Unfortunately my chronic autoimmune disease is flaring badly of late and I've been struggling to work. I may not finish but the feedback has been insanely helpful from everyone. That shading was brilliant and the perspective changes Daniel and Misj did were great and helped the depth of the picture a lot. I will continue to follow and learn and maybe present an update if I can.

ThreeOhFour · Sat 20/06/2015 20:12:58

Quick update from me:

I love the idea of doing colour last, but at this point I'm not confident enough to dare try it - colouring takes me a huge amount of time and leaving it last is a scary prospect, so I've taken the "safe" path and am using a bit of colour as I go.

You can see how messy everything is still, I take ages to clean up.

Dropped Monocle Games · Sun 21/06/2015 00:05:08

been really busy so havent worked on this as much as I would like, but here is what I have now!

Thanks for all the feedback everyone

ThreeOhFour · Sun 21/06/2015 21:36:36

This is the long, slow part for me, so my updates are going to be a lot less exciting, and really more "putting one foot in front of the other", especially as I'm only spending an hour or so on it at a time. Also keeping any "process" post stuff for stage III due to my use of colour, but looking forward to seeing other people's!

cat · Sun 21/06/2015 21:42:16

Link to first post

Just want to let you know that I'm still in, but doing the refined sketch is a lot of work. I'm currently drawing the various builings with (hopefully) correct perspective and I'm also adding first detail. I also added some reference pics for this.
So here is the WIP that I'm currently working on:

Update 23.6.2015

This is as detailed as I will go in this stage, next I will focus on colors.

Update 26.6.2015
I played around with color a bit:

Eric · Mon 22/06/2015 04:43:48

Quote from: loominous on Sat 20/06/2015 08:29:01
Sure, anyone's welcome to participate in any way they like.

Well here's a question from an interested observer, then. It seems many are getting to the point of dealing with non-organic objects--buildings, etc. Whenever I've tried to paint, and this is why I generally stick to lineart, I have a lot of trouble with...well, lines. Straight lines, curved lines, whatever. But things with hard edges. I'm sure any advice any of you have would be appreciated by all of the rest of us.

loominous · Mon 22/06/2015 07:24:49

Quote from: Eric on Mon 22/06/2015 04:43:48
Quote from: loominous on Sat 20/06/2015 08:29:01
Sure, anyone's welcome to participate in any way they like.
Well here's a question from an interested observer, then. It seems many are getting to the point of dealing with non-organic objects--buildings, etc. Whenever I've tried to paint, and this is why I generally stick to lineart, I have a lot of trouble with...well, lines. Straight lines, curved lines, whatever. But things with hard edges. I'm sure any advice any of you have would be appreciated by all of the rest of us.

Could you elaborate? Are you having trouble with the lines not looking nice, or the shading of these hard edged objects?

Misj' · Mon 22/06/2015 11:33:05

Quote from: Eric on Sat 20/06/2015 00:21:10Are you using Photoshop for this linework, Misj'?

For art I'm a Painter user. To me there are certain advantages to it over PhotoShop, since PhotoShop just isn't good for natural media. To contradict myself: I have seen people use it with fantastic results; it's just not (nor should be) the core business of Photoshop. It's an application primarily meant to edit, retouch, optimize, and manipulate photographs/images, and I use it quite a lot for that. So my opinion is not based on lack of understanding/knowledge about the application. It's purely based on a. my own preferred workflow, and b. the look I'm going for.

I've also looked into Sketchbook Pro which arguably has the best digital pencil; it's a great tool, but I could not find a real advantage of it within my workflow (that justified me buying it). However, at a 70 euro price-point, it's well worth to investigate if you want something to use for digital comics and such.

I've also looked at ArtRage in the past, but that was still quite an early version (I think it was still version 1 or an early 2), and it just wasn't worth it at the time (since I already was a Painter user). Painter is still much better then ArtRage, but on the other hand, ArtRage is 50 dollars, whereas Painter is 425 dollars (for the record, I bought it much cheaper through my workplace, but am not allowed to use it commercially). And is Painter - from what I've seen - really 10x better and thus validating the 10x price difference? - In some aspects the answer is yes, but for most people here the answer should be 'no', simply because they would be using maybe 10% of its capabilities (I have the same argument for Photoshop) so why not use a much cheaper application that has all the capabilities that are relevant to you?

So yeah, I use Painter, and can recommend it to everyone, except that I would tell you not to buy it. Buy Sketchbook Pro and ArtRage instead, and spend the rest of the money on a Wacom tablet (and yes, I would absolutely recommend a Cintiq).

ps. Also, some people feel the UI of Painter is awful. I don't entirely agree with that, but I understand where it's coming from. This is a problem that Painter and Photoshop both have (although you won't see it once you're used to the quirks) simply because they've become quite bloated with a lot of options that don't really fit in a simple design. ArtRage and Sketchbook run the risk of this happening to them as well, simply because they need to add new features to either stay relevant in the market or to give users a reason to upgrade. Hopefully they can fit it within their (currently) simple UI design.

Misj' · Tue 23/06/2015 11:15:03

I'm having trouble finding time this week to work on my piece. Unfortunately - from the looks of it - next week doesn't appear to be much different. So I hope I'll be able to continue, but I might be a bit slow...

Cassiebsg · Tue 23/06/2015 15:21:08

I haven't had time to work on mine since my last update either. Sorry.

loominous · Tue 23/06/2015 15:49:49

Heh, me neither. Globally unfortunate week it seems.

cat · Tue 23/06/2015 21:39:55

To keep this going I'll post some progress:

Click image for link to main post.

This is as detailed as I will go in this stage, next I will focus on colors.

Eric · Wed 24/06/2015 00:47:37

Quote from: loominous on Mon 22/06/2015 07:24:49
Could you elaborate? Are you having trouble with the lines not looking nice, or the shading of these hard edged objects?

It's a combination of both, I think. I tend to lose the "painterly" quality when drawing straight lines, or I tend to paint lines that aren't straight. And I'm never sure how edges should be shaded / highlighted...I think it's a trickier thing to observe in real life that most other light situations. I'm looking at a corner of a wall right now, and to my eye, it looks like it gets incredibly dark just before the edge, which is glowing white from the light of the other room.

selmiak · Wed 24/06/2015 01:13:32

just a short notice, please excuse my shortness on words, I have no idea how to paint over 3d renders to make them look cool. But then I have no idea how to make 3d renders look cool in the first place.

If I find any way I hope I can put my process into words...

@cat: love your progress!

overall I like this timemanagement...

selmiak · Wed 24/06/2015 01:20:04

@eric: straight lines are easy in every paint app, just keep shift pressed. making the swirly pearly lines look interesting and keeping them the same boldness is a mystacle.