[Anthony]

messed up

[This message has been edited by Anthony (edited July 22, 2000).]

[Anthony]

quote:

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Originally posted by Anthony:
WIP means work in progress BTW. This is after about 35-40 minutes. I figure by posting the image as I improve it I can A)show others how I procede, and B)Get some feedback from Fred or Spooge or Francis or Frost or Micke or etc etc on how I might improve my manner of painting. As of right now I plan on increasing the contrast on the figure next. Adding a blue backlight reflection didn't seem to work, so I skipped it. He's gonna have a mug of beer in his right hand and maybe a sword in his left. Bath house brawl? Maybe

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BTW, to clarify, this is the last of the paintings I'm doing for my own party for Icewind Dale, and I'll use them in BG2 as well(if I have time, maybe I'll do another of each character). And as always, I want as much feedback, good, bad, or fugly, as possible.


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-Anthony
Carpe Carpem

[Fred Flick Stone]

Anthony-I cant actually tell you how to paint. You have to find a way yourself. But, to get to a start of an image, think more general. Spooge did a quick lesson in the gladiator thread concerning sillouhettes. Here I made a slightly different pose than you have, just thinking more in terms of rythym. Then the smaller image was a 5 minute doodle, trying to find a gesture with what he has, the implement, and what he does with it. imagine yourself in this guys shoes, and find a neat pose by acting him out. This way you are more involved in finding the pose, rather than hoping to find the pose.

I would also not start by rendering detail in the background nearly first off. Wait till you have developed the whole image in a simplified manner, finding big shapes and colors first. Then secondary planes, then maybe the details, if you need them by then.

Also think contrast in form. Warm highlights and cool shadows. As of right now you do not have shadows, everything is bright lit,and is a bit confusing depth wise.

Think very general at first, including muscles. Those for the most part, belong to the secondary planes, or the details.

Post the next version, I am curious to see where you go with this...

The red box is an outline for my possible composition. Beauty of the computer is you can make the box on another layer, and slide it around till you find a good composition...

[This message has been edited by Fred Flick Stone (edited July 22, 2000).]

[Farwalker]

Wow, your posts are always so helpful Fred!

You explained what you were saying with some great illustrations.
What more could we ask for?

Keep it up Fred!

Thanks.
---- www.gamingvault.com



[This message has been edited by Farwalker (edited July 23, 2000).]

[Anthony]

Thanks much for your post Fred - I'm not entirely sure how to make the shadows deeper and still look right, but I've enhanced them a bit. I also darkened the background.

I feel like Painter is written by Boris-it mixes all the colors and makes new ones as if the paint's really running around. I'm going to be practising that silhouette ink stuff to improve my overall composition and form. This is gonna be shown at 100x150 in the game, so it limits what you can do. Thanks again,

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-Anthony
Carpe Carpem

[SushiMaster]

Hahaha love the beer touch :-)

Fred, how do you start such a drawing? Lines, or full colours right away? Could you please explain your technique?

Daniel

[Fred Flick Stone]

Anthony, I didn't realize he was going to be holding a flask of beer. If this is a period peice, I don't think they had clear mugs way back when. the image you posted looked like he had a wand in his hand. HAHA, my goof.

When you are deepening the shadow regions, you have to think in terms of light and dark, warm and cool, and contrast of value and hue all simultaneously. So, in your image, it looks lie you are going for a fairly light image, or he is very well lit. If that is the case, justify why the background is dark. Maybe it is the front of a building and he is standing on the darker side of it. Or, it is a dark patch of trees and foliage. Then, getting back to the character, his form is going to be directly lit from a light source, with that directional lighting, there is going to be shadows on the form, in areas that the sunlight cant get to. As of now, your figure is front lit,that would cause the background to have lit areas in it as well.
When finding the shadows on the figure, you are going to want to go for as much contrast as possible. So if his skin is warm in tone, as you have it, reddish yellow orange, then the shadows need to have purples and blues in them. Not deeper shades of reddish orangy colors. And all the values should be darker. Remember the cube exercise, same thing applies here. Light side, values should go to about a 3 or 4, in the dark side the values should remain in the 7 to 10 range. Contrast...if you want him to be fairly brighter overall, that is called a high key painting. Here you keep all the values in the image to about 1-4 or 5, and dont put in any hard shadows, all the shadowy edges will be diffused.

Sushimaster-the little image started off the same way the big sillhouette did. Just a big blob of black, the I fleshed out the form, light and dark, then just a bit of detail to make it look dimensional...

[Tinusch]

Anthony, that pic is incredible.

[Anthony]

OK, I found another 30-40 minutes to work on it. Most of the time was spent trying different shadow placements to see what worked, and I think this is OK. Thanks again for both posts Fred-although much of this stuff is natural, one tends to forget it if it's not drilled in.

The lighting really was tricky, because I want it overhead(like the light over the pool), but he's leaning back, which caused much more illumination than looks good. BTW, I don't think they even used mugs way back when-they had glasses and goblets and cups. Most of the time they weren't clear because the host usually drank better wine, and didn't want the guests to see this. It was standard practise. ^_^

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-Anthony
Carpe Carpem