Texture trouble

[SundryAddams]

I'm having trouble differentiating between textures in this wip (skin/clothes/rocks), they all have this sameness that I can't shake.

I'm trying to push this as a portfolio piece, so any help is appreciated.

[Elmst]

To soon to think about color, texture or any detail. First you need to nail down the figures proportions and the composition.

After you have done that you can find reference for the materials. What you are looking for is how does light interact with the material of the object. The gun could have a height metallic sheen to it and reflect allot of light.

Find reference for everything and keep them on the screen while you paint, so you can refer to them often.

This year I have made a resolution to slow down my process and not jump into painting to soon.

Can't wait to see more!

[SundryAddams]

Thanks! If I may ask, what is unclear about the figure proportions and composition?

[meat]

Thanks! If I may ask, what is unclear about the figure proportions and composition?

I'd say her mid-section is too short for a humanoid. Also she's leaning a bit too far left to still have balance. The image looks like it could have a really deep space with that purple circle being an opening of a long tunnel, but that isn't clear. It's still flat right now.

[SundryAddams]

As per meat's suggestions.

[Elmst]

Hi SundryAddams,

I did a quick paint over, not really a paint over but rather an explanatory cover.
First thing I did was correct as many anatomy as I could with the figure, I feel the figure still needs work, i wrote on the paint over some of the modifications (hope you can read my hen skratch). Then I cropped the painting so her eyes crossed the top third line. I started to push back the far mountains into the background, objects farther away get lighter in value.

She also looks like she is afraid of the gun, she is leaning away from it. By turning her head and angling it slightly towards the gun You could use her body gesture to make it obvious she loves her gun:)

I did not address this but of you could add something to the foreground so you have a clear foreground, middle ground and background, it would help you work out values and composition. You could always do some quick thumbnails to work that out.

I hope some of this helps.

[SundryAddams]

I didn't agree with all of your choices but it did help me move forward with my piece.

[adam-brown]

One thing that bugs me with your piece is a design choice not the texture problem. This alien race has a third eye on the forehead but the hair style you have given her seems to cover or would easily cover that eye. If you are trying to convey good concept design in this it would be interesting to see how a species with that extra eye would adapt hair/ jewellery to accommodate that. At the moment it seems like the eye was just pasted on to make the character more alien. I hope that helps.

[SundryAddams]

I hadn't thought of that actually. As a solution, I figure they would keep a extremely high hair line so as not to obscure their eye.

[adam-brown]

Yeah that could work. I linked a few other designs that could work. My suggestion would be to play with it a bit try some designs and then pic the best one.

http://media.onsugar.com/files/2011/03/1...les-25.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5TMbBpicDNg/UE...styles.jpg
http://themanesqueeze.files.wordpress.co...nmage1.jpg

I hope that helps :)

[SundryAddams]

I was helpful, and something I should have gathered from the outset.

I think I'm hitting a point of diminishing returns, I don't really know how to finish this.

[ChantalFournier]

One of the problems you have is that it looks like you have no references for the pose. For exemple, given how short her left leg is, one assumes that it is extremely foreshorthened. That would mean that it's far in front of her torso. However, considering how long her left arm is, we have to assume that it's straight down. Yet, it's in front of her left leg, that's not possible. It could be close to her foot but her knee would be in front for sure. I think you need to gather references when you do a piece like this.

[Amit Dutta]

I agree with Chantal and Elmst. You need to sort out the fundamentals of the figure first before you even start to think about things like rendering and texturing. Don't be in such a rush. You're also succumbing a little bit to getting attached to the pixels already on the screen, so take a deep breath, take the advice and fix the figure pose and proportions as best you can, going back to the beginning if you need to. If you don't, it won't make a difference what you do in the texturing and rendering phase because the figure will always look wrong.

I also noticed that you have a sketch in your SB of this lady which was heavily stylised, which was great, but she seemed to be constructed really well fundamentally. This seems to not have gone through the same process? Did you do a drawing first? If not I suggest going back to that stage and fix things in the sketch first before you get to paint.

If you do decide to restart, don't be disheartened, if you spent a lot of time on this already to get nowhere. Failure is how you learn. You will probably learn a lot more by following a good workflow the second time around while keeping in mind the places you went wrong. So use the ref, do a solid drawing first. Fix all issues in the drawing, then apply paint underneath the drawing. You'll actually be able to go much quicker in the rendering phase if you're not having to fiddle with fixing stuff as you go. Do the work up front, and the rendering just becomes rendering.

Anyway, here's some ref I gathered in about 5 minutes, searched for "crouching woman"





*EDit: Ahhh I wasn't going to do a paintover but it seemed the best way to show another thing, and that is values. you aren't getting form or depth to the painting because of your values. I put in the values on parts of your piece below. I used the ref to hack a pose together quickly that matches what you wanted (I don't recommend doing it this way...do a sketch instead) . I don't particularly like the pose you chose because it seems to unbalanced and uncomfortable to maintain easily, but I'll run with it for this demo. It's really like a mid squat pose instead of a pinup "hold" pose which is what you piece is trying to be, so I'd suggest looking at ref to nail a better one.
Anyway I'll let you examine the values on mine to figure out how it works, but basically your values had way too much range between highs and lows at every depth. The rule is basically less contrast (lower separation of values) and brighter the further back you go. That's it.

[SundryAddams]

Wow, thanks for gathering all this for me!

Unfortunately I'm throwing this all out, it's not working and I think I can do better.

I started on a bunch of new thumbnails after reading up a bit on composition. The ones marked read look the best to me.

As I was designing I noticed that my intent changed as well, I discovered an emotional component to designing value structures. I started to look arrangements that had impact. I discovered a few comps with an oppressive feel on my heroine which I really like. The piece is going from kinda happy go lucky to sort of dire.

we'll see. My next question is what do I do after this step?

edit: almost forgot here's the info I dug up, might be useful

http://muddycolors.blogspot.com/2012/08/...cture.html

http://muddycolors.blogspot.com/2012/08/...cture.html

http://muddycolors.blogspot.com/2012/10/...nails.html

http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2012/0...ation.html

[Amit Dutta]

Awesome...glad you're going back to basics. That thumbnailing post is my staple send-to link when I try and explain a simple thumbnailing process to people.

So first things first, why not follow it?

If you're examining broad value structures in thumbnail form you have to draw the forms properly, at least at an approximation. The trick is do accurate work up front, not just a dozen loose explorations that don't actually address the issue you are trying to solve (paint a picture). What will happen is you will have to tweak everything all the way through the piece once again.

Your figures in your thumbs are long sticks. When you come to actually drawing a figure in pose and with proportion it will change the value structure and comp making your current thumbs somewhat a waste of time. It's a common beginner mistake (sorry I assume you are relatively new to the game) to think that general thumbnailing and sketching means you have licence to be inaccurate and sometime even abstract. No. You should be aiming to solve the issues that you don't want to solve later on in the painting. (pose, composition, values etc)

So for each thumbnail you do. Nail your general pose. Nail your proportions. Nail your composition. Nail your value structure (the 4 value system is good to start with). By nail I mean, that if you are to take it up to rendered state, it would look largely similar to the original in overall read. This is the ideal anyway.

From personal experience, almost every time I have started with a loose thumb and then just fiddled away it ends up something completely different and the process is painful. Of if I started with a strong thumb and then diverged from it by not referring to it all the time, the piece ended up being worse than the original thumb! The lesson is....the thumbnail is everything. All the important work happens here, everything else is just added fluff.
This is a lesson to be learned the hard way I think, but that doesn't stop me from trying to help you not do the same :D

Best thing I think for you is sketch to resolve all the main things in each thumbnail.
Use the muddy colors thumbnailing technique and sketch some poses and comps relatively accurately (at least in proportion and silhouette)

Here's a quick example, took maybe 10 minutes max. 4 layers .Started with flat value. Once the silhouettes were in, layer locked, and added simple gradients for broad value shifts (Not necessary to get the gist, but if you can why not?). Note that there are still issues, anatomy, perspective etc...but they are smaller in relation to the overall picture, and these can be fixed later.




Do 3 or more. Then post those and get some feedback or just crack on with the one you like.

[SundryAddams]

Still too abstract?

As far as comps go, 3 and four are looking pretty good, but for the sake of the learning process, I'll submit all for review. I'm sort of surprised though, all of them seems fairly solid.

[Amit Dutta]

I thing those are a better level for quick comp ideas, but when you pick one you should definitely keep refining the shapes and everything in the thumbnail first so it reads like how you want it in the final. Then resize it and start the rendering process.

By 3 and 4 I guess you mean the two lower ones? Depends what style image you are going for. I actually quite like 1 which has quite a strong graphic style comp to it that might suit a poster, similarly with the bottom left. The bottom right is more like what you would see in card art, and also works quite well.
So yeah pick one you like and either do a couple of iterations on that idea just to see if you've nailed it and then on your final chosen one,start to sketch in your pose, refine shapes to the background and begin to add nuance to and refine your values, all the while still working small.

[SundryAddams]

Hah, I actually started the image before you posted, just the line drawing for now, would it be a problem to go back after and really define the values in the thumb afterward.

not too important, but here's the gathered ref as well.

[Amit Dutta]

ha that figure is coming along nicely. So much better....

Well to be honest again, you skipped the step of refining the thumb a couple of steps further to to be more accurate which is kind of the point of thumbnailing and where you would solve most of your image issues.

But I think as long as you are viewing and working on this at a thumbnail size on screen and not get caught up in detail, then you can use this to develop the main fundamentals of the image.

The figure is pretty good pose wise so far. Watch that lower arm though, it has a strange foreshortening and connection to her shoulder. I'm also not 100% on that backward foot twist...seems a little awkward.
So now istead of adding lots of detail, like in the face for example, reslove the pose and anatomy issues and once you have a clean silhouette start applying broad values to her. Use a separate layer, start with flat value first and then apply the broad gradients and define the major form to her. If you want you can separate shadow and highlight layers as clipping masks to make it easier to try different lighting schemes quickly. Do not render detail! Just broad sweeps.

Also really start resolving the perspective and the background. Are we looking up at her as she is leaping? Are those mountains in the background, or moons or distorted perspective?

Also think about playing with the positioning of those two swoops, they do cut the canvas halfway atm, which because they are curved isn't so bad. However maybe you can play with the positioning and sizing so they add a flow along with value change to draw focus to her head? These are the kind of things you want to play with before doing any rendering at all. So resolve placement, shape, silhouette and value, but in the most simple terms and flat values only.

Keeping things on separate layers at this point will help you move things around and try out different value schemes quickly.
Hope that helps!

[devinn]

@SundryAddams: oh my, aren't you glad you are a part of the daggers? The advice you are receiving is immensely helpful; I've learned plenty myself just from reading your critiques and observing the paintovers! You're doing a good job so far! Just keep an open mind and continue working hard man!