[Rinaldo]

Okay I'm as good a person as any to start this thread.

AliasMoze posted some referance photos.
http://www.sijun.com/dhabih/ubb/Forum2/HTML/003393.html

The idea is to draw them at speed (say 15-20 min). Thus developing the ability to block in shapes and suggest, more than go into fine detail.
I have no idea If anyone else is interested but it is good fun and will help your drawing skills a great deal.
I don't think there are any real rules as such. It was AliasMoze's idea so he might have a better idea than I.

Anyway I'll just start with these two. If you want to see the original photos then go to the SPEED PIC SUBJECTS thread.


Time: way to friggin long.
I've kinda stuffed it up off the bat by posting this because I got all caried away and spent about an hour over time *sorry*



Time: about 20 min. *yay*

Uhh...so yeah, everyone give it a try

[AliasMoze]

Rinaldo, the stuff is looking good. You obviously spent too long on the proud man. Bad Rinaldo, bad, bad!
I'm not qualified to give a crit, but they look nice to me. Just fight the detail monkey in your mind and keep it simple.

[SushiMaster]

Could you tell me what photoshop tools you use? I mean I tried to use the paintbrush but it gets all messy and bad and bad... Which tools do you use in Photoshop? Feel free to explain in as much technical detail as you want as I am fairly familiar with most photoshop tools and concepts.

Daniel

[AliasMoze]

Sushi,
Personally I use the paintbrush 99% of the time. Occassional airbrush.
The key when blocking out, scribbling around, whatever you want to call it, is to get the big values/colors onto the canvas. You really don't need a tablet for this; a mouse will do fine. If you need to lasso a squiggly shape and brush in some tone, then do it. Scribble some shapes in a mask if you need to. Just get the big shapes onto the canvas.
That's pretty general info, I think. It looks like Rinaldo may be using Painter, but he'll have to answer that.

------------------
AliasMoze
:) :) :) :)
"That activates my hilarity unit."

[yoszi]

here,

[Rinaldo]

I wish I could get my head around that stupid painter interface. I use Photoshop. I have a few custom brushes but none were used. the trick to getting the texture is to set your brush to Dissolve. it gives a sort of pastel feel. I've been playing around with it latlely and I could't think of any other way to get that texture into the proud man's face. It's good to use all over the place. not to hevaly but airbrush a bit down and then work over it. enough of it will show through even if it's just a bit, to add visuial interest to and otherwise flat shape.
If you use it exclusivly you get a very chalky image which I don't like that much. so I use a lot of solid colour too. My main tool is a round brush set to transparency, but not size. I use size a bit but mostly for finishing. the airbrush I stay away from unles I want to get a really smooth feel. Just for fun I sometimes blur a bit of the image and then re-work some of it. I don't smudge, mostly because I never understood how that thechnique works
I some time's use a bit of dodge/burn. It is important to know haw to use the blending modes. Just play around with them.
I only used the brush and airbrush on these pics tho.
I hope that The painter interface gets a revamp now that Corel have got their hands on it but as it stands I always hit a brick wall whenver I go to use it. (where's that tut veb?)

Anyway ask specific questions if you want. I'm still learning, and getting to grips with it myself

Cheers

[Anthony]

Rinaldo, here's a quick setup for ya in Painter: Rip the WaterColor/Simple Water, the charcoal, the Smooth Ink Pen, and the Felt Marker off into their own panel. Now close the other brushes. Leave open Brush Controls-you will use this to change brush size, grain, and opacity on the fly. Have a blank swatch open, and have the color wheel open. As you paint, add colors to the swatch, and once you have your main colors you can close the color wheel. Now, if you're going to draw, I suggest setting up a custom charcoal brush. Make it so that the Minimum Brush Size is very small, but that the overall brush size is large. Set the tilt to handle the brush size. In this way in a normal drawing position the brush will be a good size, and you can get larger and smaller by tilting it, just like a real pencil. Set opacity to pressure, and you're all set. If you want to paint, I suggest using the water colors. They're like a crazy hybrid of oil, water color, and acrylic, but they work in interesting ways once you get used to them. If you want a dark scene, paint the canvas black first with the water colors. Of course, this isn't what you'd do with real water colors, but it works here. As you paint, you'll find all sort of colors and patterns emerging. It's much less of a technicians paint program than Photoshop, where what you see is what you get. You'll find that if you go lightly over a surface, it tends to lighten it. That simulates real wc's pretty well. I tend to put the grain down to 5% or less, but that's up to you. Just jump in and paint-personally I can't paint in PS at all. I mean, I simply can't do it! I guess I like to grow images instead of sculpting them, I dunno. Hope it helps ya. Oh yeah, and the smooth ink pen's very nice for inking stuff. Combine it or the custom charcoal with the felt pen or water colors and you have a great concept sketch tool.

BTW, does anyone know how to fix PS as far as the polygonal look of strokes? When I do a smooth curve it comes out faceted, like it's a polygon model that doesn't have enough polys to look smooth. I know this doesn't happen to everybody, but it's a real put-off in PS if I can't even draw a smooth curve(curves are my favorites )

------------------
-Anthony
Carpe Carpem

[Sumaleth]

Here's one I did last night (closer to 20 mins than 15 - that 15 minute mark came up a lot quicker than I expected).


I don't think I nailed it with this one. It doesn't really have the same feel as the photo but it's all good practice.

Rowan.

--
Sumaleth


[This message has been edited by Sumaleth (edited August 02, 2000).]

[Alan]

I was super speedy with this one:



-Alan

[Bilbo]

Here's my lame effort.. 20-25 mins each.

[yoszi]

that;s already more than 20 min, the damn grass took 10 min,

[Binke]

Hrmm... this is my try :|
time 18min.. damn those 10 minutes went by fast. Ack maybe I shouldn't have taken a picture with lots of grass. Good practice anyway.


------------------
http://binke.gamesquad.net

[Anthony]

11m23s:


------------------
-Anthony
Carpe Carpem

[Sumaleth]

Tonight's speed pic;



(Big thanks to Darkmoon for hosting the pics while my site was down!)

About 18 minutes for this one.

Row.

--
Sumaleth


[This message has been edited by Sumaleth (edited August 02, 2000).]

[Binke]

Eheh, didn't have anything todo, so I made another one, I did not use any of AliasMoze photo's though. Took me 10min approx. It looks more rough then my other one, but somehow I like this one more.



------------------
http://binke.gamesquad.net

[yoszi]

not so quick

[Rinaldo]

Thaks for those painter tips Anthony I'll give it another go Which version of paiter are you using by the way?
It's interesting that some people can only paint with one app but not the other.

Some great stuff happening here. I'll have to do some more.
Do people want to include crits in this thread or what?

[mantis]

GReat work you guys, wish I could share. I need a tablet. now.

------------------
Arpan . B
[email protected]
www.stikik.com/koma
Halo 9 Studios

[AliasMoze]

I posted this one in another thread, but I guess it still applies.
This one was realistically about 10 minutes. Real quick and simple.
Photoshop (can't use painter).

Rinaldo, maybe we can get Fred in here to give crits. It's not just the painting; it's the approach.



[This message has been edited by AliasMoze (edited August 02, 2000).]

[Rinaldo]

Yeah...fred or spooge if your out there how would you feel about contributiong a bit to this thread. It would be much appreciated.

How about some more photos to use. I've got a pretty good digi camera. Any requests?
My garden is pretty big and overgrown. I've managed to get some pretty interesting (but amaturish) photo's.

Should Photo posts be kept in the subjects thread?


Suppose I should shut up an' start painting.

[AliasMoze]

We should probably keep the photos together in the subjects thread. These pages can get really big for slower connections.
Rinaldo, go for it, man. I'll try to find some more, but please take some cool pictures for us.
Rinaldo, on a another note, I just tried out Painter six on a little doodle for a set I'm designing. Wholy crap! They've made it much more like Photoshop. I tried the oil pastels; very natural. I think I'm in love.

[Rinaldo]

I just put a string of pics in the subjects thread. some of them are a bit shoddy, but they give a few different types of subject to play around with. It would be good to get some proper photo's. (fred- you had a nice one of the mountains...got any more?)
If anyone want's something I might have something saimilar around that I can take a snap of. or anyone else can do it obviously. Many of the pics I posted are not as suited to quick skethces as the one's AliasMoze posted. But I think they will work.

It might be a matter of figuring out a techique to deal with the differnt things. like clouds or repeditive flower petals.

Tell me what you think of them

[Anthony]

I'm glad I could turn you guys onto Painter. I'll admit that before Painter6 I never used it either!! The interface in 6 is much much improved, and having normal layers helps immensely(as does a little thing called Reverse-out, which makes your lines the inverse of whatever they're over-great for overlaying a sketch on a painting). I'm gonna do more of these paintings, they're great fun!

------------------
-Anthony
Carpe Carpem

[Rinaldo]

I've only got ver 5
But I'll have to upgrape soon.

You've given me the incentive Anthony

[Sumaleth]

Tonights Speed Pic;



Another 20 minute job. Ran out of time in the end so there are parts that I didn't get to clean up as intended.

Looking at it now I don't think I got the bright colors as bright as they should have been (colors were not picked from the photo).

Sumaleth

[AliasMoze]

Rinaldo, the pics are fine. I think we each will pick and choose which ones we like.
I try to stay away from photos with any blurring at all, from low depth of field. Other than that, I guess anything goes.

Painter 6 is really neat. So far I've used the oil pastels, which are great. I plan on blocking some stuff with them soon.

Sumaleth, some of the values in your orangutans actually are too bright, namely the skin. The baby looks like he has a lightbulb in his mouth. I'm not giving a crit; it just cracked me up.

[Sumaleth]

AliasMoze; The lightglobe-in-mouth observation is an interesting one . But I think those values are actually close to correct, it's the areas around which I did too dark (which makes the mouth's look like they're glowing).

Sumaleth

[Tinusch]

Mantis: You definitely don't NEED a tablet. It helps, but it's not at all necessary. Come on, make some mouse pics!

[Fred Flick Stone]

I need to do these. This looks like fun. Lots of cool stuff. I will post later...

[Binke]

Ooooooooo I like this topic...! Although it's getting pretty big, and takes some time to load.. hmm. Maybe we should go get some crits in here or something hehe *waves to the big guys*.
I made another one, but I dont think ill post it here though. Btw great speedpics Suma, I think your version was better then mine


------------------
http://binke.gamesquad.net