Hey all,
I've been urged to post my sketches before I render and all that jazz for characters, so I've done a quick speedpaint in b/w and decided that even though its a casual thing, there are probably a load of mistakes ive already made, so it would be a good idea to post :)
Its just a fantasy style thing, with a valley, some crazy rock formations and a dude on a bridge (a must have!) heh.
Any feedback at this stage would be awesome :D
Thanks for posting up at so early a stage before you've noodled away a bit...it takes guts.
I'm pretty sure I showed you this before for one of your enviro pieces on dA: Composition basics
While the example is character focused, the same holds true for environments, just replace the foreground, midground and background with your environment's shapes. I think you've jumped straight into old habits again. I'd say redo this, but this time paint only with 4 values as per the blog post. Put each one on a different layer. Paint with a large brush, full opacity ,no pressure sensitivity, so you get flat shapes and create an interesting composition and your depth that way.
And actually as long as we're going for it why don't we do it properly? Work at thumbnail size only (<500px per image), and do at least 6 of them. Then post those, and we can crit you on comp first of all.
We can worry about things like atmospheric perspective later.
(03-24-2013, 11:32 AM)ChantalFournier Wrote: Have you ever heard about atmospheric perspective?
Yes, but (rightly or not) thats usually one of my later stages, I just add an airbrush layer with the horizon sky colour on low opacity and cover the distant things in it. Quick and dirty, but it works :) That would be my next step after establishing a good comp, though I recognise in this case it makes the arcs seem like they are touching each other which isnt good.
Thanks :)
(03-24-2013, 05:55 PM)monkeybread Wrote: Thanks for posting up at so early a stage before you've noodled away a bit...it takes guts.
I'm pretty sure I showed you this before for one of your enviro pieces on dA: Composition basics
While the example is character focused, the same holds true for environments, just replace the foreground, midground and background with your environment's shapes. I think you've jumped straight into old habits again. I'd say redo this, but this time paint only with 4 values as per the blog post. Put each one on a different layer. Paint with a large brush, full opacity ,no pressure sensitivity, so you get flat shapes and create an interesting composition and your depth that way.
And actually as long as we're going for it why don't we do it properly? Work at thumbnail size only (<500px per image), and do at least 6 of them. Then post those, and we can crit you on comp first of all.
We can worry about things like atmospheric perspective later.
Ah I complely forgot about that, that was a really good page I remember. I've had another look, and that 4 colour thing will help push the perspective for sure :)
Yes I kind of have reverted back to my old habits actually, probably because I really wasnt concentrating on this one, it was just a doodle that evolved. Will do a repaint with the same idea behind it but with a better foreground, midground and background. May tilt the 'camera' too, that always adds some nice dynamicism :) (how come that isnt a word?!)
Cheers for the feedback, good ideas, will work on this afternoon and post.
[attachment=17968]
heey, right these are my 4 thumbs, im a fan of 1 and 2 myself.
Im a big fan of having a waterfall and a kind of warm pinks and cool blues cave, was gonna have a load of broken off arches surrounding the cave and drawing focus to the waterfall and dude through their direction but i think they look too hostile for a placid environment?
Anyways, let me know what you think and which are you faves :D
I like 2. And I mentioned atmospheric perspective because in a piece like this one, it can have a major impact on composition. But Monkeybread's answer was more complete!
(03-25-2013, 08:48 AM)ChantalFournier Wrote: I like 2. And I mentioned atmospheric perspective because in a piece like this one, it can have a major impact on composition. But Monkeybread's answer was more complete!
yes of course you are completely right there, without atmospheric perspective this kind of scene would look very confused and cramped so thats a good call thanks- i can already see from using the four shade technique that Monkeybread suggested that it helps a heap.
Cheers :)
I like 2 and 3, I actually prefer the shapes in 3 but the comp needs tweaking.
But first, I'd suggest that instead of using pure white and pure black for your extreme values use a 90% for your lightest and a 10% value for your darkest. The reason being you wouldn't have this much extreme value in any painting of this type for the most part.
Also I don't want to complicate things here but will mention that there is a general guideline you can follow for creating interesting value balance across the whole painting. The guideline is that you should split your darks, mid and light values in a 60%/30%/10% ratio for an interesting balanced painting. So 60% of your comp should be one value (say mid) 30% should be another (dark), 10% (light). It doesn't matter which value is in which ratio but by having an unequal balance like that you automatically create a more interesting scheme to work with. With these, you have balanced things mostly equally..so I would say think about that the next time you do your comps as well.
I tweaked the comps and did what I would do next steps on one thumb to get the ball rolling. I apologize the quality of the "paintover" is quite rubbish, it was late and I was tired, but hopefully the gist comes through.
With 3 the shapes are nice (I prefer them to 2) but you have left a big gaping hole at your focal point which then drops directly down out of the canvas. So tweaked it and put something there. I also refined the shapes a bit
With 2 I did a really quick colorize over the whole image just to give it some colour to start with and then I again tweaked the comp a bit to place the character a bit better as a focal point and inserted the waterfall at another focal point. At this point I would plot a perspective grid and start to realign everything so that it fits into the perspective I want. I skipped this step explicitly and just eyeballed it but you should definitely do it. Then started refining the foreground, rock shapes, mid ground etc, just to start to create more depth and start to add varation to the 4 values you started with. At this point you can also start thinking about adding atmospheric perspective selectively to push things back, pull them forward etc.
Also somewhere at this stage I would start adding colours to build my palette but for you I'd actually suggest that you keep things grayscale or limited palette (just a colorize) and concentrate on value only. Colour makes things much more complicated and as you haven't mastered the use of value yet so I think you shouldn't add that to the mix. It may be better for you to develop and keep things in discrete stages at the moment.
Hope that helps...
(03-26-2013, 07:25 AM)monkeybread Wrote: I like 2 and 3, I actually prefer the shapes in 3 but the comp needs tweaking.
But first, I'd suggest that instead of using pure white and pure black for your extreme values use a 90% for your lightest and a 10% value for your darkest. The reason being you wouldn't have this much extreme value in any painting of this type for the most part.
Also I don't want to complicate things here but will mention that there is a general guideline you can follow for creating interesting value balance across the whole painting. The guideline is that you should split your darks, mid and light values in a 60%/30%/10% ratio for an interesting balanced painting. So 60% of your comp should be one value (say mid) 30% should be another (dark), 10% (light). It doesn't matter which value is in which ratio but by having an unequal balance like that you automatically create a more interesting scheme to work with. With these, you have balanced things mostly equally..so I would say think about that the next time you do your comps as well.
I tweaked the comps and did what I would do next steps on one thumb to get the ball rolling. I apologize the quality of the "paintover" is quite rubbish, it was late and I was tired, but hopefully the gist comes through.
With 3 the shapes are nice (I prefer them to 2) but you have left a big gaping hole at your focal point which then drops directly down out of the canvas. So tweaked it and put something there. I also refined the shapes a bit
With 2 I did a really quick colorize over the whole image just to give it some colour to start with and then I again tweaked the comp a bit to place the character a bit better as a focal point and inserted the waterfall at another focal point. At this point I would plot a perspective grid and start to realign everything so that it fits into the perspective I want. I skipped this step explicitly and just eyeballed it but you should definitely do it. Then started refining the foreground, rock shapes, mid ground etc, just to start to create more depth and start to add varation to the 4 values you started with. At this point you can also start thinking about adding atmospheric perspective selectively to push things back, pull them forward etc.
Also somewhere at this stage I would start adding colours to build my palette but for you I'd actually suggest that you keep things grayscale or limited palette (just a colorize) and concentrate on value only. Colour makes things much more complicated and as you haven't mastered the use of value yet so I think you shouldn't add that to the mix. It may be better for you to develop and keep things in discrete stages at the moment.
Hope that helps...
Hey, sorry for the late reply I've been really busy. Ok, glad one of them is ok. Yeh I see what you mean about the values, I was just taking it from the website saying 'true black' and 'true white', your idea sounds good.
Wow, your paintover is awesome actually, thanks a lot for that. Its looking a lot better than I thought it could, kinda different from what I was originally going for but its probably better really. I may do it in a fantasy blue/purple colour pallette and have glowing veins of cyan in the rock formations/trees (I thought in your paintover they kinda look like bendy trees and I quite like that idea!).
With the 'gaping hole' i was going for a valley there, but your right, it just doesnt look natural at all so good spot there.
Naww but I want to add coloourr! Meh, your probs right though its just gonna complicate things. Will see what I can do with value, and then probs do a colour wash afterwards to liven things up a bit. Working on it now, will show you what I come up with.
Cheers!
Latest update, added a waterfall on the close right because I like them ^^
Tell me what you think ( i can get rid of the waterfall if needs be)
I think i did the water too high, so will lower that in the next update.
Hey, the addition of foreground is good to create depth, but again you are leading the eye out of the image by dumping it right to the edge of the canvas. Maybe overlap the foreground with the mid ground so it comes full circle. And once again, use a perspective grid now that you're working up a comp. You're already starting to lose it and misalign things, you've sunk your horizon line, the main arch looks too flat and you've also lost the background values of the distant formations leaving an uninteresting hole in the middle of the image. Go back to your original and have a look. Which one has more depth and a clearer horizon? When you use atmospheric perspective, think about why you are doing it. It pushes things back, so if things don't need to be pushed back don't push them back.
(03-30-2013, 01:54 PM)monkeybread Wrote: Hey, the addition of foreground is good to create depth, but again you are leading the eye out of the image by dumping it right to the edge of the canvas. Maybe overlap the foreground with the mid ground so it comes full circle. And once again, use a perspective grid now that you're working up a comp. You're already starting to lose it and misalign things, you've sunk your horizon line, the main arch looks too flat and you've also lost the background values of the distant formations leaving an uninteresting hole in the middle of the image. Go back to your original and have a look. Which one has more depth and a clearer horizon? When you use atmospheric perspective, think about why you are doing it. It pushes things back, so if things don't need to be pushed back don't push them back.
Oh ok yeh i know what you mean there, i was thinking perhaps that it drew too much focus, but I dunno i though that the out of focus splashing would look cool :)
What do you mean with 'overlapping', the two are already pretty overlapped?
I set up a perspective grid for this one, what looks wrong with it? What have I done wrong here? Got a cool brush that sets it up for me :)
I know what you mean about the background, will make it brighter to highlight the distant arches.
Ok, will work on it, and will update :P
Cheers.
