Environment Design Rocks!

[Lordminkx]

@ZombieChinchilla Hey Zombie, try to give it atmospheric perspective using fog and so on, it looks so flat to me, also try to add some textures. Keep going man! ;)

That's what I got so far. 

[Adam Lina]

keep working hard guise!

heres my wip, still refining the values.

[keeny]

Hey guys,

Here's my value sketch so far for week 3, I'm going for ruins in a forest.

Anyone got any advice on composition? I'm thinking its a bit bland at the moment.

Thanks,
Barry.

[keeny]

Another option. Not sure if the FG trees split the image vertically, or if they're okay.

[art44]

this is a mess

[Xiaogabe]

Hey there guys! So I decided to choose one of my thumbnails and fix it up following the critique. 
This one: 



The thing that I gathered the most from the critique was my lack of overlapping shapes overall on all of my illustrations in order to create depth. I came up with this, but am still struggling with the perspective on the building. 
I don't want to make it flat, but I don't know how to make it fit alright. I still need more practice with the perspective. 



Please feel free to critique the image as a whole in any way you see fit, or to paint over it. Thank you!

[Olooriel]

Trying my first value sketch, which took me hours... followed by a first attempt at colour, because my husband said it looked like a desolate marsian landscape, and I wanted to make sure that it wouldn't with the addition of colour. So far out of my comfort zone I don't even know what I'm doing... any tips greatly appreciated.

[keeny]

Trying my first value sketch, which took me hours... followed by a first attempt at colour, because my husband said it looked like a desolate marsian landscape, and I wanted to make sure that it wouldn't with the addition of colour. So far out of my comfort zone I don't even know what I'm doing... any tips greatly appreciated.

Hi Olooriel,

I'm no expert, but perhaps having your ground plane completely flat is giving that desolate look. If you wanted to avoid that, you could try adding some rolling humps and bumps to the ground. Maybe a shallow slope overlapping the mountains in the BG. And one in the FG. If they sloped down left-to-right they might help direct the viewer to your focal point.

Barry.

[Olooriel]

Hmm... think you're right, that might be better. I actually had that at first, then got rid of it because it looked a little too mountainous for what I was going for, but maybe it'll work if it's subtle enough. Around here I'm used to land that's as flat and boring as a pancake, lol.

[keeny]

Here's a WIP of my first colour/mood

[Xiaogabe]

Here's a WIP of my first colour/mood

Those colors are looking very nice, Keeny. I can't wait to see what you come up with for the two other moods! 

@art44 I like how you added an additional structure and smaller trees to emphasize the size of your giant tree. It's a very good idea and adds to the grandeur of the main tree. :D

@Olooriel I agree with Keeny on adding bumps to the floor and what-not. I, like you, tend to make my compositions rather flat and struggle with the same thing. I look forward to seeing what you come up with and how I can apply the same to improve on that problem as well.

[Olooriel]

Number 2 - hubby says it looks flat *sigh*

[wasgodx]

Well, I wanted to do some weird thing, so, after 3 hours or so...



I really like how it ended up, but I know it's pretty bad.

[Amit Dutta]

Hey guys, great job on posting and helping each other out. keep that up! I will reserve my crits and help for the video crits. You learn the most from struggling through and making/identifying/solving your own mistakes so just go for it. Again this is just an exercise really, so don't think about them like final pieces. Let yourself make those mistakes and I will point out stuff you can think about to avoid them next time.


@lordminkx: Nice thumb man. Some small comp tweaks could be made perhaps but just crack on with the rest
@keeny: Nice work Barry, lots of time being spent on that! Keep it up.
@Art44: Scale is improving, nice one; but still a way to go. No worries about that though, will maybe suggest something in your crit.
@Olooriel: The guys made some good suggestions. To get more depth, add more overlapping things at various distances, make things much less contrasty in the distance. The more you dial down the contrast the more things will appear distant / shrouded by atmo perspective.
@wasgodx : much improvement already.

I might be streaming sometime later today, not class related specifically but if I do, feel free to drop in and ask questions etc.

[wasgodx]

Nice!

I'll try to stay up if I can then!

[ZombieChinchilla]

Took the concept for one of my thumbs and redid it. I think this is more successful but it's still lacking something...

[Amit Dutta]

Hey zombie, your major elements are there and it is looking much better perspective-wise. I would say it just probably needs a few more layers of things in between the ones you have now, to give it a bit more depth and interest and life. Bushes in the foreground, a pier, maybe it's a lake with reeds in it etc. Also, unless it's by design, the mountain silhouettes are probably a bit too straight and simplistic. If you refined the silhouettes a bit (use reference) it will start to look more complete and also help us get the scale of them.

Again doesn't have to be a perfect piece, just do your best in the time then get onto the mood and colour stuff! :)

[Bookend]

Okay, well...  I've really been struggling with this one.  I haven't had a single day of good lighting for environmental shots, so I'm sticking with my original piece...  It's messy and I'm not happy with it.  Kind of lost.  But, I think it's improved from the last assignment, at least.

[Broadway]

Hey @Xiaogabe, looking great so far! Since you requested paintovers I gave it a shot! 

Disclaimer: this may not actually be good advice :)

Here's what I changed:

Threw down a quick perspective grid with Carapace. You obviously were headed toward a "looking up" perspective so I made the verticals converge above the frame. From the columns on the shrine it looked like you were doing a one point perspective, but the height difference between the cloaked statues was more two point (assuming they're lined up parallel to the shrine). I went with the 2-point and massaged the shrine to fit that perspective. I think the 2 point works OK because it makes the shrine "look back" at the main character so there's a bit of "flow" in the image.

From there I copy-paste-transformed the left statue, the main character, the horse character, and the lion pillar to fit the new vertical perspective lines. I realized afterwards that the arches were supposed to be a fence/wall connected to the lion pillar, but I pushed the into the BG because I thought they were aqueducts. So, ignore that part :)

You mentioned that you're already trying to add more overlap so I just tried to fill in the empty space with overlapping stuff - trees, branches, etc. You can see I added some behind the lion pillar, (then another behind that one), some branches behind the left statue, added more roots from the big tree so they can reach the left statue and go behind it, and I added some bushes/vegetation around the base of the statues. The last thing I added was another foreground tree as by that point the right of the image was feeling sparse compared to the rest and my eye kept escaping out of that side.

I added some slight detail to the shrine since it's a focal point (this detail would eventually need to be bit sharper/better I think), and bumped up the contrast of the shrine. I also bumped up the contrast of the path to the shrine (really I just made it lighter).

I darkened the lion pillar a bit to pull it forward from the branches behind it, and added a bit of lighter values behind the horse's head to keep it from blending into the BG.

I brushed over most of the image with just a hint of darker values, EXCEPT the shine, so that it would have the lightest values in the image. Probably I could have pushed this a bit more too. Then I further darkened up the 2 foreground trees to pull them forward a bit more. Finally I added a bit of white behind the main character to pop it out from the BG even more.

Although I didn't push the big tree far enough really, I think it could be a bit darker and of course more detailed, since it's the real "star" of the image.

I think my separation between the overlapped layers (making sure each overlapped layer is different enough in value at the places where they intersect) could be improved a lot, but hopefully this gets the idea across!

That's it I think, I hope this is an improvement and that you find it helpful!

[ZombieChinchilla]

Hmm, once I tweaked my greyscale painting to where I was happy with it and then added colors, it started to get really easy. Like...really easy. Hope I'm not going to fast with these, haha.