I have a character going on and I am fairly happy with the values now. Now I want to take the picture to colors but I havent found a good way in the internet to do it.
Either I have to do a lot of painting after adding color (which is what happend on the colored WIP) and then what is the point of doing values first?
Or I start in color, but how can it be so difficult to go from greyscale to color? Can anybody help me?
Also please comment on edges, anatomy and perspective (and design)... what the heck, please say what you think about it. :)
Cant wait for your answers.
P.s. I watched some tutorials already. One by Dave, one by Gimaldinov and others. One that I haven't seen is the one on Ctrl Paint. Does anyone knows it and has an opinion about it?
Thanks for any help.
Cheers,
Flo
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well I didnt stop since yesterday and this is what I got so far.
I am not really super happy with it, because I had a lot of rendering to do after adding color. There has to be a better way.
Anyways, changed the color scheme, hope you like it
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Hey Flo,
There's no secret technique to adding colour to grayscale I think because there are lots of ways to do it. There is also no getting around having to paint directly on top of your piece with colour at some point , that is a mandatory step. But the trick I guess is to come up with a way to get a really good base to start with that doesn't require totally re-rendering in colour.
I've been asked similar questions recently, and as I don't really do it much I decided to give it a go and see what I could figure out. A is the result of fiddling for about 30 minutes trying a couple of things before finding one way. B is the result of about 10-15 minutes a different way. Note these are both done really rough just to get a nice colour palette going so you would still have to overpaint on top to adjust saturation and detailing properly, but it is quicker than rendering over again in colour.
In terms of the image I think you need to nail your light source and push some atmo perspective on the wings and behind limbs and stuff to get them to pop out more. Let me know if you like the result of either and I'll try and remember what I did to get there.
You are probably right, I have to do rendering after adding color. But I feel like I dont have a valid workflow to go from greyscale to color. Maybe after watching Matt Kohrs tutorial on it, I will be smarter. The other tuts I got from him are pretty helpful.
Thanks for pointing out the undefined lightsource and atmospheric perspective. I will work that in more. :)
I think I like the one on the right more, but I would tone down the colors more. But since you said it is a rough, that is not a bad thing. I also once got the critic to add more color variety into my pictures. Beginning with such a colorful image might be a way to do that. One color just hast to be most dominant I guess. Which layer options did you use there? Would be interesting to know.
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So for B I think I painted the colour on a normal layer but actually used the grayscale painting in a "value" layer above the one I was painting on. Not sure if PS has this blending mode (I use Gimp) I think you would get similar results just using a color layer on top of the grayscale in PS. The real trick though was that I squeezed the value layer to be less contrasty with curves once I put some base colour down. This was to get a better balance because of the way the two interacted.
I think a perfect value painting with a good range doesn't always allow you to get the right amount of chroma into the areas you need it simply with a color layer, and things can end up looking pretty dark. So tweaking the values to be a bit less darker than they would be in value alone can help when moving to colour.
I agree my palette isn't refined or thought out at all but I was more focused on achieving a good colour vibrancy overall quickly in a base layer because this is the thing that I hear most people seem to complain about not getting when using color layers. I think it's achievable. I would agree that you are missing a sense of vibrancy in your current piece so try working in some hue variation within your palette. Besides directly painting that in to your colour layer you can also throw some random blobs of high sat colour on a really low opacity (3%) on an overlay or screen layer to bring some of that random variation into your work.
I like to think of the value painting as a really good base to get the essentials of form, depth design and comp working, so it's not a pointless exercise because you've worked out a lot of the fundamental things without having to worry about colour. Anything after that is game if it aids in the final result, including overall shifts in the value painting itself. Experimentation is key to hone in on something that works for you I guess.
If you are after a more specific workflow thing though here are a few interesting workflow / layering type methods which I think has some real benefits and may be worth trying.
and a vid which shows Clint's process, but he also does a great job of explaining how different layer modes interact when moving from grayscale to colour. The bit at the end about cool highlights is really interesting and worth checking out.
That's looking nice but I still think you should push saturation in key focal areas such as around the face chest area and use speculars to distinguish the various materials a bit more. Most of the image is tending towards this cool gray (which is a usual problem with using colour modes) which is making all your colours less vibrant. You could try duplicating the entire character rendering into a new layer and doing a bit of colour balancing on the whole thing it to get some higher saturation, more chroma in the lit and shadow areas, and then with a mask paint in as needed. It's quick to do this and experiment. I might give it a go a bit later and see what I can come up with.
Also it is looking very digital and clean and sharply defined all over so maybe consider playing with some really low opacity texture work over the whole image to get that hue variation going and add a bit of noise and grit. That's more a preference thing, but skme random variation is key to vibrant images. Good luck with finishing.
Couldn't help myself, had to play wid it. I duplicated the character and and used colour balance to try and bring out some warmer tones overall as a base. I used multiple layers of different types; overlay and color to colour glaze (like using watercolours), color dodge layers for hotspots, Normal layers for small manual adjustments as needed. Also added two subtle textures for grit and variation; one over the background mostly at 50% overlay (a cork texture for low contrast noise), another on soft light over character at 50% as well (a pocked concrete type deal with a bit more contrast and hue variation). They were both warm toned textures to counteract the cool grays in your image.
I erred on the side of over saturating to be blatant about it but you can be more subtle depending on what feel you are going for? I did lose some of your local blue in the process, but that would be fairly easy to bring back by just using a color layer over it again.
Oh yeah, finally I start to understand color-relationships. Still I dont really know what is going on but putting complementary colors next to each other EVERYWHERE is so much fun. it feels like having a brand new toy :D
It is definitely more vibrant now. Also I enlarged the head bit and worked on the feet.
And I did something stupid by using the smudge tool set to "sample all layers" and forgetting about the background D: but thats no problem, I clean that up tomorrow.
now I go to rest and dream of colors
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i am trying to increase the realism in the painting. I think one problem is that the lit areas were to dark. I looked at some applibot's card illustrations and the values on their lit areas moved around 80 - 100 %. so I increased the value and also added rimlight. what do you guys think?
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I tried to increase the lighting and make it feel more realistic. ATM I am not 100% sure, what makes a lighting situation seem realistic. Is it the right distribution of value? are my colors to saturated to look realistic? I still need to figure a lot out. I looked at some Applibot stuff, mainly one archer- and one angle-piece and I think it already helped a lot, but still some information is missing. Maybe you guys have an idea?
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Hey man....you know the thing about realism...it's not crisp. It's blurry, and it's all about the gradients and soft transistions. That's what you need for reality. Applibot is not reality. It's highly rendered, uber tightness. I personally appreciate the skill required, but hate the aesthetic. If you want realism, look at things like impressionist masters (contemporary and dead), Jaime Jones, Mullins, maybe even Gurney etc etc. They are all about simplification.
Applibot artists I don't think model that ethos. If you want to go for that style, then I think you're probably on the right track but you won't get further by tweaks to this image. I think you need to move on to the next one and focus on the goal from the start. Mostly I guess it is just really about focusing on a more dynamic pose and perspective (that is the one thing that I think is mostly lacking) and really using value, saturation and lighting to your advantage.
Study their images for perspective and posing and with a color picker for value and sat in particular. You won't have to study edges because they're almost all 100% tight. euchh. :D
I'd probably recommend doing colour and lighting studies of their cards, as well as other cool character work you like. This will probably help you the most
Color aside, I think you could squeeze some more interest out of your pose, you have a nice dynamic curve coming up through the legs that just straightens out when you hit her ribcage. Pushing the head up and angling it slightly gives your character more flow and also gives you a nicer negative shape with the wings. Bringing up the left elbow as well gives you a better flow along the arm and a nicer cross.
