Cosmic Inhabitant's Sketchbook

[cgmythology]

Really solid updates as always! I love the cartoon sheet in particular, really well done!

[Cosmic Inhabitant]

@darktiste - Thanks! I definitely will be posting more of 'em. I Also want to try to improve at a more anime style as well too.
 
@Yamsinpajams - Hey, thanks! Hah, yeah, the cartoon character pieces I did in my previous post where mostly inspired by Tex Avery and Cartoon Network shows from the 90s. Also, hope those sources helped you out some.
 
@cgmythology - Thanks! Seems people like the cartoon stuffs, I'll definitely post more stuff like that. I use to make little animations for fun years ago using Toon Boom which I got with my old Wacom Bamboo Tablet. That got me into doing lots of cartoon studies (and a bit of anime stuff too) several years back. Maybe I should try posting some little animations on here in the future.
 

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It's been quite a while since my last post. But I have finally finished this art piece, which I kept track of roughly how long it took, and it came out to about 145 hours and that is a bit on the low end, since I rounded down some time spent on it. I really need to speed up my process, a major issue I had making this piece was at around the mid-way point the file was getting big, making things slow down, and by the end it was painful. Took me about 4-5 solid minutes just to open the image. I definitely need to reduce the dimensions quite a bit and start merging layers more aggressively going forward, I got up to 360 layers by the end. But besides that I think I spend too much time detailing unnecessary things (like in the background or detailing the entire subject instead of just areas of focus) and going over every part of each object making sure the edges are crisp and sharp. Zooming far in adding details that probably wont be noticed or just flat out cannot be noticed unless you zoom 400% in. Then on top of that it doesn't even matter because the image is so massive I have to scale it down so much that any of those said details are now lost unrecognizable blurs. So I've added some close-up shots lol.
 
But with that said, overall I like how the end piece came out. I tried out adding some effects - the motion blur, action lines, sparks, and electricity effects. The only things I am a bit iffy about are the spark effects, and the perspective on the droid might be a bit off in spots, and if the motion blur effects on the creatures' blades and in general are too much, or too little.

[cgmythology]

Very impressive work with your latest! Composition and rendering is on point, and I love the effects you included to give the image a sense of motion. It works incredibly well and the image is more dynamic because of it. Very well done!

[darktiste]

I think those hour are still paying off but surely you will get more comfortable with your own process. My advise is always to do thumbnail so you can save time in being rough and less time being zoom in which is a time sink in illustration.

Also layers are nice but brush control shouldn't be out the window just because you can throw in one more mask. Here the little secret locking pixel of the layers this way you will only work withing the pixel you want to affect oh and the bigger thing use clipping mask in basically the same thing but now the in a stack fashion where the bottom layer determine the limit and link layers are limited within that bottom layers boundry .You also need to get more organize if you get to that many layer and you probably just use lasso to have more thing inside the same layer. For example grouping all those little round shape on that robot mantis head in one layer instead of maybe 4 .The trick is to find element that don't touch and group them by material i would say.This way you have a easier time to find you layers just by visually look you see a material and a surface example layer name metallic front leg and an other layer metallic back leg. Obviously the more something is segmented and overlapping with different material the higher the layer count. So sometime it just a question of limitation.

But here an other major time saver... a color coded layers where each surface as it own color this way you don't even have to look for the name of a layers this the most precise and layers effective method. You simply use the magic wand on the surface and you paint directly into that limited space.

You basically end up with less than 10 layers with this technique .Here how it look a highlight layers a mid tone layer and a shadow layers and the clown pass.So with the magic wand you select the clown layer surface and you select the layers you want to paint on voila.The clown pass over the stack of layers at 50% so you can see what it affecting you can turn it off to see better and you should because it affecting the color you see aftet you select something below that layers you have a group THAT THE CLIPPING GROUP(HL,SHADOW,MIDTONE(all those layers have there dedicated mask for none destructive purpose) This method require alot of back and forth between the clown pass and the layers but that the cost you pay so you don't waste time looking for the layer this also save you time naming, creating layer, deleting layer, organizing layer, looking for a layer...

It all super useful but it technical and not so easy to find info on you kind of have to ''dig'' into the menu and look at other people to figure those technique. I wish i could show you how useful it is but it by working and seeing people work with those workflow that you understand what true organization and effective workflow is. Don't underestimate the time lost due to leak of organization or a leak of understanding of the tool at your disposal.