Environment Design Rocks!

[TwilightExplode]

Awesome!! Thank you, Amit! I'm going to try to wrap it up tomorrow so I can start the new year with a finished piece and a pocket full of dreams. I'm also going to up-res it a bit.

[DomSinkevic]

Hello everyone! Happy 2016! A time for reflection of the previous year and deciding how to improve yourself this year! I think I'm finished, going to wait a day or two before posting them to look for work so if you think of some minor changes please let me know!


@Amit Thanks again Amit for an amazing mentorship!
For now I only saw about an hour of your stream Amit and I love it so far, integrated Todoist to my workflow and it works like a charm! Keeps me from distraction most of the time! ( Gotta get that karma!) Other app I would recommend is 7 Weeks on Android (maybe IOS too idk) its a free app. You basically type in the habit you want to instill and lets you tick off each day whether you completed it or not for 7 weeks (and you start again). I would like to ask (if not mentioned later in the stream) where can I get that contract template and other sheets you gave out during the stream? Could you post them in this thread? Thanks for hearing me out!

[neopatogen]

Here are my studies! I understood a lot of things while doing them, I just can't write everything here!
Yesterday I viewed some critique videos. It allowed me to add some soft edges and thin lines to my studies. I thought I could only use hard edges to preserve the ficed number of gradations.
I also think my studies are too detailed. Notan should be a bit simpler. And I learned how useful squinting might be, but too late, so I'll have to do some more studies like that later!
 But I got upset with my unfinished Notans from inmagination because it seemed that everyone's were better, so I had less fun doing the rest of them. But I understood that my mistake was making them too sloppy and sticking to drawing each in a minute. And perhaps I got too used to copying for the last year, that's why Notan practice must be especially good for me!
Oh and I found out that some of other students also used Amit Dutta's paintings as references! I think the reason is that we just want to understand our teacher better, so it's not a bad thing to do! :)
@Amit thank you very much for your course!

[tmldraws]

My first attempt do a full finished painting in color.Still not very comfortable with color.Edges look kinda funny. tried to finish with a painterly look but turned out kinda cartoony.But i learned a lot about finishing a painting.gotta do more like these.Big Big Thanks to Amit  :D

[TwilightExplode]

Everyone's stuff is looking awesome!! I'm hoping to finish up my piece tonight, but at the very latest it will be tomorrow.

[Amit Dutta]

Hey tml this is the link to the..umm links...and the link to my contract template is one of the links.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...=384928071

Neopatogen, glad to see you postin. Nice work on both the notans and the more detailed studies, a nice variety and some good balanced comps in there. I think you have definitely got the idea down, so just yeah, keep building on it. Also honoured once again to be the target for a study! Will never get used to that idea haha.

Keep it up! I will try and do crits for tml and Dom relatively soon too.

[TwilightExplode]

I finally finished!! Thank you again for everything, Amit. I think this is the longest I've ever worked on a single piece, and I feel like it paid off.

[Lordminkx]

Amit...it's so big and awesome what you've done during these months man, I really appreciate it. I don't know what to say more, I'm not very good at this kind of things.

@TwilightExplode Wow! What an awesome improvement in such a short time period. Maybe adding a little bit more texture in the crystal.

@Domsimkevic Hell yeah! Awesome pice man, tons of details to get lost in the piece, I love all the designs and little details. :D

Yeah I forgot to post my final lol I think it looks a bit dark in the left and overall. Maybe I could have push it further more but let's move on! I also didn't get the sharpness I wanted to. 

[TwilightExplode]

@LordMinkx Man, that looks killer! I agree about the left side being a bit dark, but overall the painting looks great! Also, I definitely could use more texture on the crystals. It's something I struggle with because I always feel like I have either too much texture or too little when I'm using it.

[Amit Dutta]

Hey tml and Dom, sorry I haven't been able to do paintovers for you guys. I realise I will probably be taking more of a backseat in this thread, simply because I burned out on critiquing! Ok so there was a limit ahha.

Lordminkx, that looks great. Definitely would be orders of magnitude better if you pushed through and tightened up your rendering where it counts (especially the detective) but as a concept mood it works. This is a skill that people dismiss or get scared of.. the finishing, and it is so key to doing good work, so take that feedback through to your next pieces...go past where you are inclined to stop.

Please keep posting any stuff you do, and newbies who want to post their assignments keep doing it as well. I will always see updates, so you never know when you'll get a PO :)

[neopatogen]

This task turned out a real challenge for me! Though everything looked so simple in the video.
Apart from low skill, I fought with procrastination because I set deadlines for myself and it seems that I hate deadlines   The articles on waitbutwhy.com that Amit recommended helped me, as well as "Pomodoro" technique. I must admit that this procrastination monster defeated me, but I raised up and kicked its ass, though I missed my deadline a bit.

[tmldraws]

Hey Amit.....its totally ok dude!!...What you have done already with this course is Awesome and super Helpful for us!! and before this course i had a strong fear with color !! Now i am trying to practice  more in color...
Recently i did these color sketches and painting... 
Trying to get comfortable with colors and finishing a painting.But i feel like something is missing....lack of interest on the focal point may be on the painting???  i don't know man!! kinda confused....

would love to hear your thoughts on that and the earlier painting too....am i going to the right direction???

[AChi]

Laaaaaaate Assignment 1, I saw this thread last week and start practice.

[neopatogen]

Laaaaaaate Assignment 1, I saw this thread last week and start practice.

@AChi I like your notans!! What is the name of the last reference picture, with burning ships? It's gorgeous. 
 I think I need to continue this course, too! Stopped on Assignment 2

[Amit Dutta]

@AChi, fantastic work on your notans and studies. Really great. Hope you got something out of the exercise. For the 3/4 value ones if you wanted to go further, once you have laid in the values, consider looking at edge control to match the study piece. I think that is the next logical step to these kind of studies. Then you can go on and do more accurate value gradations and you will have a proper value study on your hands! Please continue on!

@Neopatogen: Please keep going! I don't have a lot of time to crit on this thread of late, but I AM watching and will jump in when I think I can help!! The image you were asking about is the battle of chesma by ivan aivazovsky

[PewPewPew]

Heyguys :) , just joined this forum since I wanted to take part in this class, but it seems on the website there's no assignment past 3, am I on a wrong page or something :o

[Amit Dutta]

Hey pewpewpew. There aren't formal assignments after that, just the mini project and I talked about that on my sywork stream. It's recorded you should be able to find it on my channel.. I got too busy to put up weekly guidance after that. It is something I have to go back and do, so people can follow through the entire 8 weeks.

[PewPewPew]

OH ok awesome, yeah I'll look into that :)

[neopatogen]

Assignment 3 here! Feel awful about the result, but I really enjoyed doing it. And it helped me to figure out what to learn further. This course is a new experience for me and extremely helpful. I think I'll have to make thousands of different thumbnails in future.

[Amit Dutta]

@Neopatogen: Fantastic work. I really like the first mood you did, I think it is the most succesful, with the third coming next, and the second one last.

One of the reasons for this I think, is that the first one, in general has a bit more colour vibration to it, so it doesn't seem so "monochrome-digital"
What I mean by that is, that it is so easy to introduce blocks of flat colour digitally that just doesn't happen traditionally (there are always random variations in brush strokes and hue/saturation) that it has to be a distinct effort to counteract that effect. I do talk about colour vibrance in my streams (maybe week 2 or 3?). So I would think about that. But in general you have done a great job and you should be proud of your effort actually, not disappointed!

Glad to see you sticking through. The next week is gathering reference, doing a mood board and doing some thumbnails for your own little mini project. I hope you keep going!! If you want to hit me up for crits, feel free to do so. :)