[klaivu]

This image was supposedly an image to the 2d competition at assembly 2k in Finland, but as they ran out of tickets... oh well, anyway, this is not all done, I need to work on the sea and the capes a bit. But, something that I can't quite figure out is how should I create the feeling of space ? Is it all about perspective ? How about colors ? What should be done in this image ?

Help me, if you can.
Maybe someone could even make a tutorial on this..
( or then on color use, another kind of tutorial I'd really like to see.)

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god is an american.

[This message has been edited by klaivu (edited July 17, 2000).]

[Superbug]

Your characters seem to take up too much space if the main thing is about space itself. Put them off to a side if possible or shrink em if u did em in photoshop...plus a red sky scenery would look cooler i think. other than that....its a pretty frikin wigin picture.....good job!

[Lukias]

Christ that's bizzare!....I like it. I'm Still trying to work out exactly what makes me feel sea sick when I look at that, maybe its that it seems that the clouds & ocean are being sucked into the horizon, reminds me of one of those time lapse photography clips. no kidding there's a crazy motion thing going on in that piece, makes..me.feel...nausious.

Don't get me wrong, I think its fukcing nice

[waylon]

First off, I really like this pic a lot. The characters are very cool (and very expertly drawn), but as you mentioned, the picture could use a bit of depth.

To accomplish this, probably the most important consideration for your picture would be to consciously build up a foreground, midground, and background. I'm sure Fred Flick Stone or someone could give a much better explanation of this than I could, but here are a few points as they relate to your picture:

You already have a foreground and a background. That's obvious. But one of the reasons that it lacks depth is that the foreground and the background don't MEET anywhere. There's nothing to carry the eye from the characters to the background. This is where midground comes in.

Apparently your characters are standing on the shore of an ocean, or on a boat. Draw it. It would be better to show the characters' feet, because then you would have a definite connection, but even adding midground objects in the vicinity of the characters would bring things together a little better - perhaps the railing of a ship, or some sand and rocks, or something like that. And if you can build the composition in such a way that it draws the viewer's eye from element to element, so much the better.

But whatever you add, the foreground should always have the most detail, then the midground and background progressively less. Just look at one of Veb's paintings, for instance, and you'll see what I mean. You don't want an overabundance of detail in the background taking away attention from the foreground characters. Not to mention that's how you see things in real life - things that are farther away have less detail.

Which brings me to the background. The water lacks depth, because it's uniformly textured. The ripples look the same farther away as they do up close. You may want to look at some source photos, and see if you can get a better idea of how this looks in real life. Though unless you fudge it a little, realistic water is annoying to dray. (additionally, the reflections of the clouds aren't distorted by the waves, so it looks like a flat mirror with darker and lighter stripes of color in the glass.)

One other property of space that you could use to your advantage in this picture is the effects of moisture in the atmosphere. As objects get farther away, you'll notice three things: First, there will be less contrast. Something that would appear as pure black in the foreground would show up as dull grey in the distance. Second, saturation will go down. A bright red object in the foreground would look more grey farther away. Finally, with a blue sky, everything gets a slight blue tint as it recedes toward the horizon. Once again, these are just the natural effects of moisture in the atmosphere. Since you're doing an ocean drawing, they would be quite prominent.

For a good example of this in real life, check out this panorama I made of Los Angeles (city of haze) back at E3. Notice how, at the horizon, the color of the ground and the color of the sky are very similar.
http://fear.incarnate.net/~vlad/misc/la2.jpg

Also, are you familiar with an artist named Michael Whelan? (If you're not, you should be ashamed of yourself!) Your picture reminds me a lot of some of his work - bright, cheery, sunny day with some really weird stuff going on. If you don't know who he is, I'd check him out. You might find some good source material.

[klaivu]

Well, I have to say, thanks alot waylon. I read your reply and finally found answers to some questions that had been giving me headaches. I applied what I understood to the image - and I'll upload it once my isp, saunablah, has its ftp servs up.

[Rinaldo]

Uh yeah....

I think that reply would have stolen even fred's thunder Waylon

I just wanted to say that I really like that contrast of movement you have going with the forground and background. that clouds are really dynamic while the figures are more serene, and calm. I have trouble with the red drapery but am not really in a position to give any advice on how to improve it.

I tend to overlook technical flaws in an image like this becase for some reason it just captivates me.


Oh.. A later version just appeared out of nowhere (me thinks I timed this post badly)
Hmmmmmm.... I think the first one had more "omph". The update looks a pit clapped together. there would be waves of some sort non? the colour of the sea is not right somehow...less black I think.
The first one has a nice surreal quality.


Anyway, I like it either way

[Frost]

Very nice Klaivu!

[spooge demon]

Man, I was going to go to the Hibachi tonight... Damn.

Waylon, those are some good suggestions. Could we see some pixels from yourself?

Well, um. It is just easier if I do it rather than explain it. Is that better or is it easier if I babble? Or maybe I should not bother? I don�t think I am helping much with this one. It is far enough along where a lot become preferential.

I did a something on the robe and head here. I dropped the contrast a little on the BG. I adjusted the contrast on the lit and shaded side of the head and played a little with the reflected light (which would be strong due to the bright light source, the neutral color of the skin and the intense color of the robe).



I kind of liked your very thin aliens better than mine. They look more menacing in an alien kind of way. They don't need big bodies to kick your ass.

Get a bed sheet and a digital camera and stand on a chair. be inventive with figuring things out. Sometimes tearing around trying to filch a milk carton and clothespins and a can of grease is one of the funnest things about doing a scribble.

[FireWalker]

I really like the creatures you got going here.. something about the smoothness.. and design that.. ohhh, yes, baby! hehe, well they're neat.

One thing that kinda throws me off though is the water/ocean.. dunno if you said you were still working on it.. but its kinda rare that ocean water will reflect the sky so perfectly, because of the choppiness of the water. oh, and.. because the crystaline salt formations of oceanic H2O declines visual reflections. uh huh.. yup. http://www.vjv.co.uk/africa/s.afr/ocean/image/boatman.jpg
thats a random picture.. very random, hehe, but shows an ocean and a sky and some guy from survivor?, so maybe its helpful. Can't wait to see the finished product.

[waylon]

Klaivu: Glad you could use my advice. You definitely added more depth, but now it's not as cheery. :( Keep going with it though. It's one of the more intriguing pictures I've seen in a while, and I really like the detail on the aliens.

Spooge: I have depressingly few 2d drawings to show for myself at this time. (if anyone wants to see what I've been up to, check out the screen shots of my game at http://www.guildsoftware.com/wgafshot.html. Practically all of the art in the game at this point is mine, though these images are from about December...) I'm working on a nifty new drawing though, I'll probably show it off in about a week.

[Kyri]

Klaivu, I really think your pic is great. It
has a surealness that I think is very intriguing. The changes you've made I think are working well, although I agree that the blue of the ocean you had was kinda nice. Detail on the alien characters head is incredible and I hope you don't alter them too much. Just keep going with it as you are, it's going really excellently.

[klaivu]

Here :

any better ? still gotta work on the capes..

[Joachim]

Klaivu,

I really like that alien design. Looks very stylized and not cheezy. Nice background as well, kind of surrealistic.

Really cool the clothing spooge made too, I think you should add that to your picture.

spooge, that technique you used to draw out those draperies really reminds me of the technique Leyendecker has. The way he it looks like he almost uses oil painting as markers.

Cool stuff !

joachim

[spooge demon]

Thanks, J. He is a Lot Better, though

I am not sure what I did was right for this image. I blindly plodded in and did some snoozy academic drapes, completely ignoring the overall universe of the image. i think the flatness and simple modeling of the shapes is one of the things that works well. DOn't listen to me.

That is a trouble as was talked about in another thread. How to improve something that has a freshness to it that is hard to finger. Just think harder until you loose interest, hopefully. Don't overwrite your original, just in case.

One basic thing that does need resolution is the spatial relationship[ between the two aliens. Who's bigger, who's behind, etc.

[klaivu]

Fidgeted with it a bit more.. getting a bit bored, maybe I should start a new one ?


Does everyone see these as malicious ? The name of the pic is "angels", anyway. I thought of kind of "reality organizers", that keep the reality and the laws of physics in order. Higher beings anyway.

The thing that bothered most me was the color of the sand, as it somehow did not fit in to the image. The clothing is somewhat done with more care now, but do you think I should just paste my sig on it and leave it alone ?

[micke]

Klaivu, very nice!
I like the aliens and the way their skin looks. The clouds reminds me a lot of Salvador Dali. Giving them shoulders and adding more wrinkles like spooge did improves the picture too
great work you guys.

-Micke

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-Mikael Noguchi-

http://www.katode.org/noguchi/

[SushiMaster]

Wow! One of the guildsoftware people ? :-)

When is the next version of GSynth coming out? Is it gonna be better than Buzz? :-P

Daniel

[Sumaleth]

I really like the alien designs. Especially with the Spooge clothing they really remind me of Wayne Barlowe's style (which is a *good* thing).

Row.

--
Sumaleth

[waylon]

Klaivu: Lookin' good. Maybe if the sand was a bit more yellow? Or hmm. It might be kind of fun to play with the hue a bit, see what it looks like if it's a bit more pink (it IS an alien world, afterall.) And no, I don't see the aliens as malicious. For me, anyway, you hit it right on - reality organizers seems to fit their form perfectly.

SushiMeister: Uhh, no new GSynth any time soon, I don't think. We're currently forcing the coder to write network code and other such horrors.