Danger Zone

[Cyprinus]

Your sketchbook is absolutely amazing. Love your values and your colours, and you have a great style of rendering. Also, your sketches are so clean and the lines are really spot on. I really hope to see more soon!

[rafa zanchetin]

@nastobi123 Thank you :)

@iCi Thanks! As someone I know named James Nike says, Just do it!

@Hypnagogic_Haze HIGHWAAAAY TO THE DANGER ZONE, LOL
http://thechive.com/2013/10/11/the-arche...for-video/

@Cyprinus Thank you very much. :D

So I was trying to apply these last few studies, but my PC started to BSOD'ing me every 30 minutes, I'm going to have to muster all the patience I have to finish this.

[smrr]

Holy crap your sketchbook is an absolute joy to go through! Yep, I can see you at Blizzard kicking ass for sure!
Looking forward to your next update, keep it up rafa!!

[rafa zanchetin]

@smrrfette Hey thank you very much, I appreciate it.

Finished that, aaand started another one.

[PacaTatuCotiaNao]

Dude! Duuude! DUDE! Look at those freaking armors! You rock!

Check this guy out. As it seems, he works for Blizzard!
http://bayardwu.deviantart.com/

[rafa zanchetin]

@PacaTatuCotiaNao Lol! Thanks man, and does he? Very nice style indeed, I'll keep an eye on him for sure.


Meh, didn't like today's work.

[clockodile]

Awesome costumes/armour above! The last sketch has a lot of energy to it as well, great choice of viewer angle. Compositionally, it might work out better to give him a bit more breathing space - perhaps by expanding the canvas up and to the left a little bit?

[rafa zanchetin]

@clockodile Thank you! I'll try that.

At a crossroads where I am slow at this thing and if I try to get something fast it comes out shitty and I get angry or, I try to take my time, it comes out way too slow, I feel like I'm not studying and I get angry. /shrug

[rafa zanchetin]

Weird Shit.

[aCrab]

Lovin' those character portraits. The construction and caricature is spot on. So much improvement man, keep at it.

[rafa zanchetin]

@aCrab Thank you very much :)

I'mmmm not sure about it, gonna sleep on it and finish tomorrow.

[Cyprinus]

Great updates, love those poses. I feel you tho on the speed thing. I'm also very very slow and when I do it faster, it doesn't look good anymore. However, I once watched an art advice vid on youtube and the artist said one should speed up the process without worrying about the quality, because the quality will improve naturally over time. I'm trying to do this but sometimes it's hard looking at all the "speedy crap" I'm producing.

Illustration is looking great, awesome rendering and nice colours (: I just think the character doesn't stand out enough from the background. I'm by no means an expert though and maybe it's just personal taste. I thought about it and maybe a different lightning situation that creates more tension between values (I'm not sure if that makes sense) would make a difference.

And please keep up your frequent updates, it's so great to see and it feels like nice kick in the ass for me to sit down and do some work!

[clockodile]

Great set of updates. I especially like those character heads a couple of posts back, they have a great balance of volume versus exaggeration to them.

As for the speed thing, I agree with what Cyprinus said too. Same boat here of taking ages to get anything presentable together - it seems to be a natural stage learners go through as they hit a certain level of competence, but still need to be very concious of their actions? I'm sort of trying to attack it from both ends by doing the quick stuff and dealing with it looking crummy, and trying to improve efficiency on longer things (Paying attention to sensible mark making has helped me with both sketches and painting speed+quality too).

I checked the values of your illustration in photoshop by throwing it into greyscale, and he does blend into the background a bit (and the colour temperature doesn't seem vary enough to make up for it) - though the sparing use of the light values does help to punch out the face and the magic effect. It isn't such a big deal for his lower body, because it is away from the focus, but the back of his near arm and his shoulder guard gets pretty close in value to the wall behind him and sort of flattens out the image. So perhaps the light already shining on him could be a bit more intense to boost the contrast? (I suggest that over lightening the background mainly because it seems more believable, and would also help pop the near hand out from his body mass more too.) Depending on your tastes, it is probably possible to get away with making the magic purple light be a bit more powerful too.

Totally understand if you want to approach it differently though, I'm sure there are a quite a few approaches. Looking great so far though!

[Kaffer]

The pose, facial gesture are cool on your rough guy, it's the colors that are way too saturated IMO..
forgive my audacity, but I made a very rough paintover-thingy to illustrate my point.
What I did is pushed the backround back with some athmospheric perspective which separated the figure from the BG, tuned down the saturation and gave a little light on his head to make it stand out more. Again, I hope you don't mind, it just seemed easier this way :)

[rafa zanchetin]

Yes, it's a pickle about the time thing, I guess in the end (for me) would be the time rendering. I love both styles of rendering to a smooth surface and leaving it rough (I love LD austin paintings), but my "rough style" has no personality at all yet and maybe I should try more of that.
((LD Austin manages to use soft brush and rough lines, it's dope)).

@Cyprinus Thank you and I'll try that as long as freelance don't swamp me (right now I'm "free")

@clockodile Thanks for the tips! And the faces are kindof a gym session for criativity, very fun to do and I'm happy you liked them, I'll be doing more.

@Kaffer I don't mind, and thanks :) I liked a bit more dessaturated too.

Thanks again guys for the tips and we're all in syntony, I was "fogging" the place up but when I added colors (I'm doing this in B&W) the place kinda went ...... meh. Plus I spent like all day painting the thing and I couldn't judge anything anymore and decided to finish it today.
Trying a few things I might still flip him, helps with readability.

[rafa zanchetin]

Ok I'm going berzerk over this shit. Did and redid, went back and I still prefer the version full saturated, even though I know that if makes everything crumpled, I don't know but it just... looks better.......... Also some anatomy so I don't go insane.





* I still like this version*


/shrug

[rafa zanchetin]

@Hal Wayland Thank you, that's a great read :)

And yea after that failure I need to practice backgrounds too, so here the journey begins....

[iCi]

Nice start with the backgrounds, man! Try putting some more saturated colors near the viewer when you have that atmospheric perspective going on , helps with the depth.

[Archreux]

Hey, man. Nice sketchbook. So, has Blizzard offered to hire you yet? Haha. ;D

Your style is really great. A lot of your work just screams WoW card art. I love the orc and lady with the dagger on the previous page. I think that last piece of yours turned out nicely for all the trouble it had given you. It looks like you learned a lot from it.

Also, I get ya on the speed and quality thing. I tend to get frustrated, myself. But that all just comes with time, yeah? Great stuff. :]

[rafa zanchetin]

@Archreux Haha, no, maybe in the next years! And thanks, that's what I am aiming for. Mostly yes, the solution for that is to dump an incredible amount of time into it.

Some more weird shit, didn't get to do much today.