[SpeeDFX]

Hey everyone, I'm doing this project for my graphics class. I consider myself a better sketcher and drawer than a painter, and color things in photoshop has been a weakness of mine . Right now, I think I'm done adding the buildings, but the problem with them is that they look fake. I know some of them don't look like real buildings but the shape doesn't have to. Can you please tell me whawt I can do to the city part of the picture, to have it look more realistic, and quite possily could you do a small overpaint of it so I get better Idea of what you mean? Any help is very welcomed, THANKS!
PS: I divided my picture up to paint different sections of it. Do you guys do that? whats the best way to do about painting it.

Thank jome, for puting it on your faster server


[ March 02, 2002: Message edited by: SpeeDFX ]

[ March 02, 2002: Message edited by: SpeeDFX ]

[jome]

I took the liberty to put it on my webspace, because it was so terribly slowly loading, and that might have been the reason you weren't catching comments. The server might've been far away. Colorado, I see. Well this could help some people out.



I think the main reason the buildings don't feel right, is because the perspective is off. You know these drawings in manuals and so on, where they show the object in perspective, but something doesn't look right? They use an isometric perspective. Iso="the same" metric="measures". Without the shortening of lines or objects that are either going to the background, or are already further back. It looks like you've partly made that mistake, and the buildings look a bit like a technical drawing.
Check the first explanation of perspective, and I think you will be on your way to make it look better. After all, the buildings are simple shapes, and when you know the tricks, are easily put in perspective.

And another comment is -also for the perspective- the round buildings you have here and there don't have the same perspective as the square buildings. You can easily check this by drawing a square in the same virtual plane as the one of the circles. And then you see that even though every object on your drawing should have the same vanishing point, they do not at the moment. Fix that!

Damn I wish I had a drawing tablet, so I could quickly explain it.

[Walkaer]

Another thing is that the viewer sees the tree "head on" whereas they see the buildings from the top, which would mean that if the tree was on a cliff or something (which I assume that brownish color is), the tree would be leaning backwards towards the buildings. The problem with shifting the view to look down at the tree is that you'd lose those wonderful knots in the tree's upper branches. I took the liberty to do a crude overpaint to illustrate ^_^.




And to illustrate what I think Jome was saying:


1) What your picture lacks is a vanishing point. see below:




2) This vanishing point can be put anywhere (and I mean ANYWHERE in a picture. The trick, though, is that EVERYTHING in the picture has to abide by it (even organic figures, but that is more easily done intuitively, in that there are usually very few straight lines that you can trace to the vanishing point on an object like a tree or animal . . .unlike architecture).



3) I figure that the part of your picture that you want to change the least would be your tree. Consequently, I suggest putting your vanishing point somewhere along a central horizontal:



4) Which would mean that the buildings in the background would react like so:



Also you might want to tone down the colors in the tree to make it look a little more realistic, but <shrug> whatever floats your boat .

Hope this helped!

[SpeeDFX]

oh, the colors in the tree are just for my reference of the different areas to color, which brings me to my second question, which is my first post, could you help me with that?

[Walkaer]

erm...so what's your question, exactly? Are you asking me to expand on what I said about the city? Or would you like some more advice not pertaining to perspective? etc..

[SpeeDFX]

Tips on how to paint it in general, is it a good idea to divide it up into different selections or what? I stink with painting in photoshop and want to get better

[Walkaer]

oh HO. well...where to begin?

most of this is just my opinion on painting, so...

First off -- GET A PEN TABLET! If you're serious about CG, you absolutely need one. I bought one mostly b/c I couldn't think of what to ask my parents for my birthday. I was completely blown away by how much my work improved.

As to painting itself...

I was taught in my graphics art class (which was really really basic) in high school to start at low opacities and build up to higher opacities as I go on.

Lately though, I've been working w/ higher opacities and not relying on gradual addition of color. Instead I'm starting to paint more like I do w/ real paint.

Do you paint with real paint? A lot of the same principles apply.

In terms of splitting up different areas of the painting into layers...it can be helpful to do so -- but beware of switching between your paintbrush and eraser too much, you should be switching between colors. In your case, I recommend having only two layers -- the city and the tree.

You can duplicate the layers or save copies of your file to backup your work, it's up to you. But I'd just stick with the two layers (no more).

hope this helped? heh

[ March 02, 2002: Message edited by: Walkaer ]

[SpeeDFX]

yeah, I have a pen tablet. Its a wacom Intuos 2 12x14 I think, its kinda big. As far as real painting goes, I've never painted with real paint in my life , except once when I was in kindergarten, with my fingers. Anywho, could you tell me some techniques to painting with photoshop, for instance, how to get teh tree to look hard yet organic, and without making it look all squishy like the airbrush does...or point me to some sites that give help like this?

[ March 02, 2002: Message edited by: SpeeDFX ]

[Walkaer]

hm...well my advice is to paint from life when you can. So I don't really know where a tutorial on painting wood might be (i remember I once replied to an artist by the name of kad who looking for a how to paint wood tutorial, himself. You could try getting in contact with him and asking him).

In order to avoid that "squishy" feel, I suggest that you use a harder brush at higher opacities and at a higher magnification. You could also try playing around with the filters a little (though I usually steer clear of them). The Sharpen filter, in particular, may be of some use to you.

Another set of Photoshop features that I like to play around with a lot are the Hue/Saturation and Brightness/Contrast settings. Changing the hues helps me make color choices and increasing the contrast (while decreasing brightness) helps to make things interesting.

Keep in mind that doing the above only effects whichever layers you have selected.

Save often and save copies (so that if you accidentally press CTRL + S, and you want to revert to before that, you can).

Most of the rest of it is just practice and experimentation. Don't be afraid to try something new and see what happens (after you save a copy, of course. heh).

I'm not sure where to go from here. Do you have any other specific questions? Am I answering the ones that you've already asked to your satisfaction?

Again, I add the disclaimer that these are all merely my thoughts on the matter, and are based on only what I know, and could be dead wrong (though I don't think so. heh).

[SpeeDFX]

Yes, that helps But something that has really been bothering me, is how a lot of the people on these boars put out outstanding paintings, and I hear they only use about 2 or 3 layers. For my City, I used a different layer for each of the buildings, a different layer for the tree trunk, one for the leaves, and one for the ground, is that odd? I mean, am I supposed to use 1 layer or 2? does it make it easier when painting? is there some kind of effectyou get when you paint on a small amout of layers?

[jome]

I think that's just experience. I think I use more layers than the expert painters around here. (6 � 7)

[Walkaer]

well the reason I tend to use fewer layers is so that I can better paint shape against shape. So in terms of the buildings, I would have painted them as a whole, instead of individually, and then gone in adding detail. I would have kept the tree in a different layer, mostly because it's so very separate from the buildings (psychologically really). In this way, I wouldn't have to worry about painting over the tree by accident (in that it divides the page right down the center and is almost a completely different thought). So really I think of your painting as only two forms (minus the sky and ground). It's all how you think about it, I guess, and is up to your taste.

I can only say that over the years, I've found that I tend to be using fewer and fewer layers <shrug>.

What exactly do you plan to do about that third (brown-green) form (ground?), anyway?

[ March 03, 2002: Message edited by: Walkaer ]

[ March 03, 2002: Message edited by: Walkaer ]

[SpeeDFX]

Well, I've decided to start the picture over. The huge brown area weighs the picture down quite a bit, and makes it look boring, I'll do a new sketch of a tree, and with all the help I've got on the boards, make a new, and a lot better one. Thanks everyone

[S4Sb]

Walkaer, we owe you a lot! Thanks for the info and the time spent! It is really appreciated.