03-26-2016, 11:24 AM
Thanks for the nice words, you two! @Kurt right now I have a lot of time and I use 100% of it on getting better. Getting really motivated since I found a door into color, it really makes your stuff come alive when it works and that's just so satisfying.
The standard process is pretty much like this:
step 0: Think about what your image is going to be about, maybe lay down, close your eyes and visualize it, imagine variations on your idea, decide for one, grab your pen and get to work.
Right now i prefer doing this over doing thumbnails. It strengthens your inner eye and is also way faster! If you do this and you find out mid-process that your idea is bad or flawed, the first version of your image serves as a guiding post leading to a better one! I hate the feeling of drawing out things that i know aren't gonna cut it anyway or knowing exactly what is going to happen. I rather embrace failure and risk wasting a day on a bad idea - if i do, i'll probably never make that same mistake again and that alone makes that day worth it. If I just visualize the ideas i can see all the options right away and they look better than my finished images, so why do thumbs? :D Probably not the most professional way of going about it because it entails a bit more risk, but the reward is the joy of discovery and that will definitely shine through in your final image! It is also a better way of teaching yourself I believe because you figure out your mistakes in detail and learn how to fix them on the fly instead of doing thumbs to pick a direction that instantly looks good and that you know you can execute - that just builds a comfort zone and i don't want that. All that being said, I should still do it for images that really need to come out well in the end :D
step 1: choose the best idea that came up and figure out everything in lines first. All the problems that can be solved with line are being solved now.
step 2: Decide on a color scheme and lighting setup and block in the local values.
step 3: Switch on the light! One light source after another. Block in all the basic shapes that the light makes when it hits the forms. (the forms have already been figured out in step 1 and their local color is also done already so all this is, is turning yourself into a rendering machine and stick to the physics of light.
step 4: Do all the smaller stuff: block in ambient occlusions, smoothe the form transitions, add bounce light, subsurface scattering and light passing through things, texture details and other smaller shapes.. etc. Done!
I'm not following that order all the time, but i consider all these things when I make an image.
The standard process is pretty much like this:
step 0: Think about what your image is going to be about, maybe lay down, close your eyes and visualize it, imagine variations on your idea, decide for one, grab your pen and get to work.
Right now i prefer doing this over doing thumbnails. It strengthens your inner eye and is also way faster! If you do this and you find out mid-process that your idea is bad or flawed, the first version of your image serves as a guiding post leading to a better one! I hate the feeling of drawing out things that i know aren't gonna cut it anyway or knowing exactly what is going to happen. I rather embrace failure and risk wasting a day on a bad idea - if i do, i'll probably never make that same mistake again and that alone makes that day worth it. If I just visualize the ideas i can see all the options right away and they look better than my finished images, so why do thumbs? :D Probably not the most professional way of going about it because it entails a bit more risk, but the reward is the joy of discovery and that will definitely shine through in your final image! It is also a better way of teaching yourself I believe because you figure out your mistakes in detail and learn how to fix them on the fly instead of doing thumbs to pick a direction that instantly looks good and that you know you can execute - that just builds a comfort zone and i don't want that. All that being said, I should still do it for images that really need to come out well in the end :D
step 1: choose the best idea that came up and figure out everything in lines first. All the problems that can be solved with line are being solved now.
step 2: Decide on a color scheme and lighting setup and block in the local values.
step 3: Switch on the light! One light source after another. Block in all the basic shapes that the light makes when it hits the forms. (the forms have already been figured out in step 1 and their local color is also done already so all this is, is turning yourself into a rendering machine and stick to the physics of light.
step 4: Do all the smaller stuff: block in ambient occlusions, smoothe the form transitions, add bounce light, subsurface scattering and light passing through things, texture details and other smaller shapes.. etc. Done!
I'm not following that order all the time, but i consider all these things when I make an image.