[raybender]

Hey all,

i managed to work on my portfolio a bit and on the online presentation.. would love to hear some comments.



thanx in advance.!

http://www.alexbroeckel.com

cheers, Alex

[sometimes]

that steam octopus is pretty cool

[Mikko K]

Good work, your background in lighting really shows.

[_scottewen]

hi. first time posting.

really enjoy your work here, raybender. great ideas and really nice executions.

[SubJodge]

Fantastic works.
Also, really like the website layout, nice and simple; but looks great

[Synnical]

When I first saw your profile pic, I thought to myself, "OMG, it's Jimmy Kimmel's twin brother!"

That steampunk octopus pic is totally badass! - I would love to see more artwork based on that particular universe.

The website looks great, it's simple and straight-to-the-point, plus the works are presented well and are wonderful to look at. Good job!

[raybender]

thanx for all the nice comments

will have some more updates soon..

Synnical: theres another Steampunk pic coming soon... i�m currently working on it.. here�s a Wip:

[Spiik]

Hi, great work man, i really like the octopus pic as well but i am a huge sucker for pirates and adventure s� the pirate island one really hooked me

The site looks great to, nice to instantly get an overview of your work as well as your presentation.

keep it up!

[Petri.J]

Looking nice, and yeah the octopussy is awesome.
Btw, do you know any good books/websites that explains basics of lighting in movies?

[Synnical]

Awesome! can't wait to see more!

I would be so lost in the image if I paint the way you do (even though I tend to, but that's mostly due to laziness, not skill ) Love the way you structure your values.

[raybender]

hey guys.. thanks for all the nice comments.

synnical: thats interesting, what do you mean by "paint the way you do" ? its a serious question because i am interested in other peoples workflow a lot since im so slow with mine.. would love to hear how you have approached that image ?

[med]

i'm thoroughly impressed! really excellent skill and content all around. The lighting in your compositions reads really dynamically with a sense of good color harmony. Two thumbs up

[Synnical]

raybender, what I meant was that you seem to lay down all your values from the darkest to the lightest, as well as overall colour schemes before you finish constructing the image, and from then on just start pulling shapes out of all the vagueness. I guess you generally have a good foresight regarding how the image will turn out.

For me, I am learning to correct the habit of jumping into something with only a vague idea about how things will eventually fit together. I think this is one of the danger of working with the digital medium - since you can always erase back or delete the whole layer altogether, there exist less of an incentive for pre-planning and thinking involved.

Now even for speedapints I would force myself to go through the thought process of setting goals in what I want to accomplish. I know for many, one of the fun parts of speedpainting is muddling around with paint and see what comes out of it, but personally I have grown tired of doing that, mainly because I ended up wasting time painting over the same layer over and over, and when I do see things I like starting to emerge, I then see the poor composition and weak stucture, which leads me back to the re-painting loop all over again. I guess with enough practice, one can become proficient in tackling all the problems of a painting at once, but I am not there yet.

[raybender]

med:

synnical: ha im doing that because i dont have routine or workflow yet.. im just messing around until it looks ok... its exactly how you describe it..

actually i tried a new way with a new painting im doing currently.. comments are welcome: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=5610861#post5610861

on thisi just did a very small and fast (still 45 mins) color Thumbnail and now im doing some lineworl before going into detail.. dont know if thats a good way. but its a way i never tried.. so i try it now.. lol.. so much to learn..

[Synnical]

raybender: One thing I do like your way of doing things though is that it gives the work that painterly, suggestive look, which I think works in your favour with the style you have.

haha, yeah, for me, it's the 'messing around until it doesn't look like crap' routine. It works sometimes but can be a real pain if I become indecisive.

I think it's good that you are experimenting with new ones because it will likely open your eyes to new things that can be incorporate into your own routine to make certain stages more efficient. Thumbnails are definitely a good way to start; I find that sometimes I can get caught up in an idea I have that I forget to find out what would be the best way to present that idea, and doing thumbnails can usually help with that process.

I am not quite sure what you are doing with the new sketch though. The dropship to me appears to be a 3D wire? By the way, don't get caught up in the perspective of individual objects too quickly when you do thumbnails - the important part here is to figure out the big picture, namely composoition, structure, areas of contrast, etc, the things that can't be fixed later on with more paint.

[raybender]

heheh synnical actually it�s drawn.. not 3d.. heres a closeup




yeah id dnt know where to go with this either.. but i think with this painting for me it was important to get a certain mood, having a special scenery behind... dont know where it will go.

[Synnical]

it's very well done. I can't help but thinking it was the Hunter Killer from the Terminator series, that's why I thought it was 3D first.

I think if you are doing a scene like this, it's important to know which one would be the primary focus here, the dropship or the structures in the background, so they don't end up competing against each other. Also, the dropship seems to be this huge, menacing machine, therefore I would probably choose a low camera angle to exaggerate that for better effect. I do like the mood you have here, again, that's probably another reason why it reminds me of the Terminators; dark and foreboding.