WDC 2: Janataos (WIP Thread)

[YOLOLEX]

Planet Name: janataos
Age: 40B Years
Topology: Aquatic no land, coral reefs
Environment: deep underwater, no (sun)light
Civilization Tech level: future
Cultural type: art nouveau, arabic
Creature Consciousness: sentience

Janataos, is a hostile, planet, covered in violent seas with storms constantly creating havok on the surface. As a result, life has managed to evolve deep underwater on the ocean floor... Humanity has come to this barren world to search for resources and new understanding of things. Its barren floor is littered with exotic life and deep trenches, weathered rocks and coral growing steadfastly among the faint lights of life in this calm, vast and desolate planet. The life here seems more intelligent than we thought...

[EduardoGaray]

i love this one! i´m busy these days, but i will try to make some time and participate

[YOLOLEX]

thumbs, any critiques would be much appreciated :)

[anzhou]

Looking good Yololex!, I would suggest framing each thumbnail.

Quite hard to tell when certain thumbs start and end.

You've got the undersea mood down :) Are you going to put in light sources and simple shading next?

[YOLOLEX]

thnx Dude yea i forgot heh!

yup gonna do some more thumbs and then gonna pick and add all the details and stuff :)

[YOLOLEX]

more ones

[YOLOLEX]

mre again

[Amit Dutta]

Yoloooooooooo!

Got some crit. Nice start on the thumbs, for the most part I find it useful to remember that the more you can nail with the thumbs in terms of composition (including focal points), value range (and lighting) and shape language, while indicating as much detail as is necessary to show what everything is, the more useful a thumb actually becomes as a design tool and the easier the final illo will be. You want to be able to generate them quickly, so of course detail isn't the focus, but it must be clear what things are...the more lazy you are with those fundamentals in the thumb...the more you will have to solve in the illo, and the less useful the thumb will actually be.

I found in general a few things with your thumbs. The composition of many of the pieces was the main weak point and there was a bit less variation in these iterations than might have been beneficial. In general I find it helps to think about composition first in broad strokes while keeping in mind focal points and rule of thirds. Then keep in mind the specific shape language to put into your forms based on your ref, and use value to get the sense of depth (I think you do quite well here)

Composition is the most important thing for a dynamic image, value is the most important thing for a good "read", shape language is all about coming up with a cohesive feel and design to the image that screams underground arabic design.

Some tricks with comps: Always go dark to light from foreground to background. Have some objects go continuosly from foreground to midground...midground to background etc rather than separated distinctly by depth....that way things look more realistic and less 2D cutout layers. Pick a focal point...then pick two subsidiary ones..use the rule of thirds to continuously divide up the canvas to pick these points. Make sure the highest detail and smallest shapes/visible brushstrokes are at the focal points...everywhere else is larger strokes less implied detail.

The other thing I noticed is that you can play with the balance of light to dark a lot more and come up with thumbs where the lighter values may be the two thirds to the darker 1/3. One thing I learned at CGMA was that the needs of the image outweigh the needs of the ref, so do what you gotta do to make a cool image, not necessarily be true 100% to your ref.

I made some notes on your thumbs on the ones I saw with potential (sometimes combining several similar ideas together) Then did a new sheet with those decisions tweaked values and comps a bit. Don't think my thumbs are anywhere close to finished or address all the issues but hopefully give you a gist of what to focus on with these...?

[YOLOLEX]

Thanks a bunch Monkey! That was a fantastic post there is so much information in there.

I been really struggling with trying to get more diagonals in there.... ill see what i can do,

That thing about the lighter value range is very true makes sense, i also gotta work on the shape language...

Honestly there isnt much time so shortcuts gotta be made heh :)

I love that B thumb u did Thanks for doing those btw, im gonna try incorporate the values into another piece.

That closed loop thing, Never heard of it before but yea it leads out of the picture, ill change it.
Also that thing about foreground to mid and mid to background is great adv.

Ok now i try make this into finished env.

[Amit Dutta]

No probs, great brief man, I was so inspired I almost wanted to add this to my billion and one things to do...lol