Danger Zone

[Tristan Berndt]

Yeee, your stuff is great.
I really like this (for the lack of a better term) Blizzard-ish style you've got going. It makes your forms look really solid. It's very nice to see people branch away from the loose painterly stuff that is all the hype right now and go in a different direction.

Great work, man. Keep it up!

[rafa zanchetin]

@Tristan Berndt Thank you very much. I'm really happy everyone is digging my style, really encouraging.

Very slow day, doing some heads for the thumbs on the earlir post so I can learn how to render some undead/forsaken skin, I'm going really slow with it because i'm having tons of fun, plus I'm liking the end result!

[ZombieChinchilla]

Hey man, great stuff! Can't wait to see the piece you're working on.

For depicting corpse skin, check out this tut: http://navate.deviantart.com/art/SKIN-a-...-145159387 Its mainly about general skin, but at the end it discusses fantasy styles of skin, and gives you some color swatches, too.

[rafa zanchetin]

@ZombieChinchilla Thank you very much, really useful. :)

Idk, some more stuff. :)

[PacaTatuCotiaNao]

Great face expressions, man. Give me some tips, will ya? Do you copy pictures to study face features? :P

[rafa zanchetin]

@PacaTatuCotiaNao Thanks, althought these last ones are without reference, I spent huge amounts of times drawing heads from reference, either quickposes or just straight google, just like I am doing anatomy now, from last year to about 3 months ago I drew countless heads. You just need to form a big visual library in your head and the only way for you to do that is studying, alot.

Having some fun.

[Bjulvar]

Incredible stuff man! What an instant inspirational source this sketchbook is. So much personality in everything you do.

That gnome gladiator from a few pages back is hilarious. Such a serious take on a race that's not really built for that kind of thing. Makes me love it more.

Latest undead celt is amazing too :D

[Suira]

Whoooohoooo man! I'm just freaking impressed! I gotta say I love your line control and your faces, really really awesome, that's exactly what I'm trying to achieve right now and I can tell you put your serious hours into doing this stuff you got me pumped to go for it now! :)

The renegade portraits were just great , I particuraly love the way you managed to get the shoulders in the way giving it so muc more depth, awesome ideas man, gotta learn from you.

Overall I also dig the paintings a lot the effects are getting better and better and it's slowly growing into a more organic feeling and out of the clay/plastic.

Now, if I had to give some crits I'd go for just a few things:( mostly personal opinions since you're doing almost everything great man)

I understand you're going for a Blizzard type of style, which is really smart because that can land you a job there in no time, but as for my personal taste I'd love to see you include more variation in the saturation on some areas that would make it look even cooler. Sometimes the stuff falls a bit on being a bit too " all the same" in the picture, maybe also trying to render materials in a more distinct way, that probably would spice up the variation, since the designs and the angles you pick are pretty awesome.

Another issue I see is background interactivity. I feel that your characters get a bit isolated from their background. I understand that most of them are character designs and as such you're not going for a full ilustration with super elaborated backgrounds and shit, but maybe some mist or some simple effects that integrate with the character or interact with them in some way would fix that.

And as a last thing I'd be pretty curious to see what you can hook up as of painting in a more realistic style , the girl with the hood could be a good example of what I think you can get out of it. Painting a few studies in this realistic way would force you to try and sort out what to render in detail and what to omit , simplify or change, and I think it would strenghtend even further your skills.

Overall man, great stuff you got going on, I felt weird giving crits because you're really beyond my level, but maybe it'll be helpfull, looking to see what's next! ;)

[rafa zanchetin]

@Bjulvar Thank you very much :)

@Suira Thanks for the compliments man, really appreciate it. And I agree on mostly all of your points, I have been working with painting on b&w first so I can mess with saturation and color, I'll be tuning that out. On background most definitely my worst attribute, I end up detailing the BG too much and the focus goes all around, trying to fix that.
On the more realistic I'm avoiding doing realistic studies since I have tried to be more realistic in a few years ago but it just isn't my taste. And it kinda makes my rendering wonky.
And no sweat man, this is why this community is great. Thank you again. :)


Advancing some more on the thumbnails, and having some fun mixing bears and wolves.




(it's a wolfbear)

[clockodile]

Man I am liking your rendering on those last couple of posts. Great edge control and forms. I also like how you handle unconventional skin tones and the little touches like the green gungey rotten bits and the purple-ish fingers on that undead fellow with the spear.

Nice melding of the anatomies on the wolfbear, particularly around the face, and getting that longer body to work on such a heavy looking animal. A small crit on the fur - whilst the general directions look consistent, it is a little chaotic looking on the full body sketch, so it might help to convey it in a chunkier manner to show off the forms more clearly. If you want some bear related inspiration, try doing google search for "Terryl Whitlatch bears". She worked on Brother Bear and did some amazing anatomy studies of them.

[Suira]

Cool thumbnails, a pretty hard thing to master as I learned the hard way back at TAD, yours are looking pretty solid, would love to see more of those they're always interesting to watch. I agree with clockodile on the bear-wolf, still pretty nicely managed to integrate those structures. And the quick figures look very solid man, if I may ask, how long do you take for each one? I myself am trying to set a reasonable time limit, cause I can't get shit done in 30 secs.

Cool stuff man.

[rafa zanchetin]

@clockodile Thank you! I'll definitely check it out, probably gonna do some painting of wolfbear.

@Suira Thanks man :) It varies, somewhere around 2 to 5 minutes, I don't like doing 30 seconds ones because I don't feel I learn that much from them, so I try just to be as quick as I can while still maintaining something I feel I can grasp, don't know if that makes much sense, heh.

Soo, having some pain in my arm and it's annoying me, taking slow for these days. Tried to make some orc but it came out too stiff so I'm tossing that one, doing new one later.

[Fedodika]

you keep this shit up and you'll be givin mr.jack a run for his money in no time :)

[Cyprinus]

You've put up some amazing updates since I last was here! I still can't keep calm about how great your rendering is and how lovely the colours are. Like always I don't really have something constructive to say just keep it up (:

[Craig Paton]

This is a great sketchbook, looked through the whole thing a couple of times.

I feel that I could maybe learn a few things by looking at your studying methods. Do you have any kind of set goals or methodology to your study routine, or do you simply apply work on areas which you think it is needed?

[rafa zanchetin]

@Fedodika Hahaha, thank you <3 I just wish to learn from him!

@Cyprinus Thank you thank you :)

@Craig Paton Thank you for going through it! I tried having a schedule before but I always forget keeping it up, maybe that's something I should work on too. Lately I've been trying to work on my weakest but still focusing on what I want to do most, like anatomy for me is the most important thing so I still do gestures everyday, I need to learn to do backgrounds better but that ain't my final focus so I'm not doing so much of that.
Basicaly it's a cluster fuck where I try to learn everything, I realize it's going to be hard and long but it'll pay off.

Trying to be quicker but without losing so much rendering. Came out ok.

[Adam Lina]

You should do some goblin sappers! They were my favorite unit in WC2 :)

[JeanDoe]

uh..uhhh
I don't know what to say.. I could go through your sketchbook all day, learn something new everytime and never get tired.
Man, I love it!

[Lyraina]

Ahh, love how you're playing with all that subtle color and temperature shifts in the green skin. How quick is 'quicker' in your case?

[rafa zanchetin]

@Hypnagogic_Haze Good idea! I might do all the races so that's a probability!

@JeanDoe Thank you! I hope to keep posting more.

@Lyraina Thanks, glad you noticed. The orc one I tried to not focus so much on rendering, I mean I did render the shit out of the arm and the face, but then I loosened on the rest and the result wasn't that bad.

Still not sure on the colors on the thumbnail, I want to make it like eerie night or something, don't want to go crazy on bg details. And some more shit.