[Nex]

very cool!

can you explain how you approach things like this?
Do you draw construction lines with VP and all or just free hand sketching?

I like this look with the shining through sketch lines a lot.. looks like the starwars concepts somehow.

[Fred Flick Stone]

Hehe...Francis, wait till you see the ship design I am working on right now, very similar. Havent seen this one from you yet.
I am not sure if I like the painting underneath thing happening. Spooge has a bit of harmonious orginization going on underneath, like dean cornwell. What I mean is, when Dean Cornwell used to paint, he would shock all his pupils with his methodology. A warm beige coat on a character would start with purples and blues almost right out of the tube. THen he would proceed to paint the coat. The colors underneath served as a good balance for the shadows and highlights, grounded the coat colors once he painted them in, and the effect was of course, very convincing. This image seems to have a randomness about the underpainting. With spooge, the underpainting works with what goes on above it. Complementary, not just in color, but also in texture, which you really dont want to paint. On Linen, when painting in oils, the texture of the material serves well as this ground, that produces the illusion of texture while not laboring over it. I could be wrong, but I think that is the use of the photogrounds. Not to mention the color shifts that are occuring in the actual painting. I hope spooge comments on this, cause I feel like an ass for trying to decifer the masters work while he still lives, breathes, and posts...
The other thing that bugs me a bit is the cockpit area. It looks dramatically out of scale with regards to the characters standing around it. It looks like a two seater cobra or something like it. This is an area that I would break down just a bit more in terms of detail, to better suit the scale.
I do like the start of the painting though, with out the ground. One thing the ground does, and your brush work, is makes the whole painting look like its bleeding its colors. There is no real sense of planes, i.e. ground plane flat, wall planes vertical feeling, etc. That is one great thing about painting, is that it lets you set up the form merely by painting the direction the light and shadow is falling on, over, and around the object(s) painted.
Death star door entry is pretty keen, nice homage...

Spooge, say something, I feel like a bad kid for talking for you... eeep

[Francis]

Hi

It occurred to me rereading my own post that it might look as if I was trying to conduct a class in "spooge technique," which is definitely not the case. I wanted to get as much feedback as possible on the process, and was also trying to incorporate various things I've learned here. Most definitely still in student mode.

If not, sorry for the interruption.

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Francis Tsai
TeamGT Studios

[black_fish]

Fucking rocks!

I like that!

Can I ask a question? Why Presto, with that kind of talent, has never published any game worth remembering? No offense, but I always considered Presto as a very small company not releasing anything very interesting, and at the same time I am blown away by your design...

Hmmm... the game industry is a wicked industry



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http://jmringuet.webjump.com

[spooge demon]

Hey there,

In response to someone asking about the photos underneath some of my stuff, here are two examples. I don't do every image this way, not by a long shot. It is a neat technique, though. The lilies have no photo at all, just an old painting. The Francis redo is a photo that I grabbed off a Nasa site.

This one is under the lilies from speed pics

This one is under Francis' star wars sketch.


Francis, this is a good start. That ship design is quite similar to the ship that zips around the FF movie. What's it doing on the death star ? Like watching Gilligan's Island and having Batman walk through and slug Gilligan.

Your block in is more similar in value and color to what your final will be, that's good. Less fighting it. What is your light source? Diffuse above, I think. The reflection of the ship is a little harsh in edge right now. Don't confuse reflection with shadow, they are separate animals.

You might want to block in the vehicles at this stage as well. They will have a complex and integrated edge with the surrounding floor and should be painted along with it to avoid the "cut out" look. This is truer in a sketch, less true if this were going to be highly finished.

Think about your reflection and lighting from the doorway. That area will show exactly how reflective or matte you surface is. The reflective shape is wrong as well.

Hey Fred, you got what I would say right, no problem.




[This message has been edited by spooge demon (edited August 07, 2000).]

[AliasMoze]

Spooge (excuse me a sec, Francis ),
Do you grab colors and values from the photo or painting underneath?

[WacoMonkey]

Black_fish: ....Ouch!....

[black_fish]

Don't get me wrong: I think the guys working at Presto are really great. If there is a problem it's with the company...
If there is one. Which is why I was asking the question to Francis and Fred (I think you both are at Presto).
That's all.
Don't get mad!

[Anthony]

I think the underimage works well, although since Fred doesn't, I'm probably wrong. I would have more places where the underimage doesn't show through-this was one of the things I noticed in Spoogey's redo of your other one. He created places of high diffuse or specular highlight that were opaque. Maybe you should add a sheen on the floor on the right, near the door. BTW, did you notice how weird the reflection there is? ^_^

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-Anthony
Carpe Carpem

[Rinaldo]

Your my hero Francis

I really dig that ship design

One of the things that's still a mystery to me about spooge's work is where he pulls some of his colour choices from.
In particular spooge, I was interested in why you put that blue in the redraw of Anthoney's pic, it wasn't in any of the others but I think it really made he whole thing come alive. Is it just experiance, an acident, or do you have a more mathematical reason for it.

Sorry to bug




[This message has been edited by Rinaldo (edited August 07, 2000).]

[Superbug]

I too think the ship design is sweet. But i also for some reason see a problem. It seems so many ship designs are being made for games like Descent Freespace, and Colony Wars, that ships are turning out to be a little too generic and bland in all aspects. I was just wondering what u guys think about this.

[LethargicBoy]

I like the way your line drawing implies that you thought of the ship's features in 3d before you drew them instead of jumping in and trying to make 2d into 3d. That's my big problem.


i'm in awe, as my message icon indicates

[LethargicBoy]

I think the ship design thing all started with star wars.But with the design from the aliens series trailing right behind em.

[Francis]

This is another concept piece for a second animation project I'm working on with another guy here at Presto. It's still in progress obviously, but I wanted to post this at a couple of different stages.

This time I tried to take a lot of Craig's comments (as well as those from a lot of other helpful people on the board) to heart:

Lay out the big shapes first, try to establish correct values, cover up the white space first. I also eliminated (or tried to) the weird perspective curvature I was attempting before, and instead tried to limit the field of view so that there is not as much distortion. In addition, I used Craig's previous painting as the color/tone/textural underlay. You can probably still see traces of it in the image.

So, let's hear some thoughts please. Thanks for your time.



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Francis Tsai
TeamGT Studios

[Tom Walker]

very nice.

[Kenzo Tanaka]

Egads Francis, your good!

Love the ship, great design. A very Geoff Darrowish feel to it. Lots of detail, but it doesn't feel cluttered. Can't wait to see the color scheme you come up with for it.

Like the background. Great reflection. Didn't quite understand the one coming from the small arch door on the right.

Great job, more, more, more

[Manik Monkei]

I agree with Kenzo - love the ship design. Colors are nice too.

Are you planning to flesh out the ground workers and vehicles as well?

The reflection under the brightly lit door on the right seems a little weird to me. Very beautiful picture though. I'd like to see more as well

[burn0ut]

that ship design is wicked awesome hehe real nice start francis

[el tigre]

A lot of the artists in this forum seem to use darker/lighter tones of the same colour when adding shadow to an object. I was always taught that that was bad and that shadows should be progressively more contrasting the darker you want it, i.e. purple shadows yellow, green shadows red etc.

Spooge, Fred is that wrong?

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Does anyone know the secret formula? :�

[spooge demon]

I am not really sure what you mean...

There's a "rule" about warm light-cool shadows and vice versa, but I have never heard that one. Because sunlight is warm and the sky is bright and cool, warm light and cool shadows work very well with our eyes. But the idea of simultaneous contrast also makes this work. Look at the sky on an overcast day, is it warm or cool? Depends what you put next to it.

Careful about rules that are taught to you as gospel. Esp. about composition. It is no secret that art teachers are, well, teaching cause they don't know much(sure was true when I was teaching , so run it through a BS detector first.

Make your own observations, submit to what your eye sees, not what you think it sees. i know that sounds 2bit matrix style eastern bromide philosophy, but it is literally true.

A quick example come to mind. i have seen many drawings and paintings of cars where there is a strong delineation between the tire and the ground. It is not there if you look at it. Your brain tells you it is there, but trust your eye.

[WildMyth]

Wow Francis. Nice hanger bay. Where did you get your insperation or reference for the whole idea for this one?

[ceenda]

That is so cool Francis!

The ship has a wonderfully manta-like appearance. It reminds me of some of Chris Hall's concept art that was done for the film "Judge Dredd".

Did you do a few sketches beforehand or did you start the whole concept piece from scratch? If you did some working sketches for these I think alot of people would love to see these as well.

Great stuff Francis!

[sfr]

Whee, more concepts from Francis! The design looks great, but I'm not sure about the underpainting - it sort of seems to disturb the depth effect here, instead of just providing a "non-offending" texture for vibrancy. I could be wrong...

Anyway, I love the concept images I've seen here from so many good artists. I've never taken a good look at concept art (or other commercial illustration in fact), but this forum has got me interested, so it might be time to make up for that gap in my basic education. I've even got a salary coming soon, so can anyone recommend some amazing books I absolutely should get? And I guess ordering online is my best option, considering the rather limited book selection in shops here in Finland...?

Saffron / Sunflower

[Isric]

No way! It totally helps! I like that technique, I should try it.

[Adam Soulraider]

Beautiful!! Keep on posting'em, we love them!!

[black_fish]

For Spooge and El Tigre:
What El Tigre meant, I think, is that when you learn to paint in an art school you learn that if you want to make a color darker you have to mix in the 'complementary' color (I'm sure it's not called like that but I miss the english technical word for it). This color comes from the 'color wheel'. Knowing that the 3 basic colors are yellow, blue and red, if you want to make yellow darker you have to use purple (mix of blue and red) to make it darker. That sound probably stupid to a lot of you but if you try with paint you'll see that you end up with darker yellow. A few examples of contrasting color (or complementary if it's the right word): red>green, orange>blue, pink>light green...
As long as you know the basic 3 colours and you know how to mix the colors (like mixing red and yellow to have an orange) you can find easily any contrasting color.
Now for the big problem: I don't think (I'm actually pretty sure) that PS doesn't handle colors like paint. Don't ask me why because I'm not a technician but I know it has to do with the fact that you are working on a screen and not on paper. So I don't think that these method can be used, not even with Painter. That's maybe bad, because the purpose in mixing a contrasting color instead of mixing black is to make the dark zones less dirty. The problem with the black is that it changes the color and makes it dirty looking. The contrasting color is different (although it's not always very obvious).
The trick I use to do good shadows is to boost the saturation of my color at the same time that I ad black to it. It doesn't work of course, if the shadow is pure black, but in the case of a light shadow it's usually pretty satisfying: a good example on that is the skin tones. If you use only black the skin looks dirty, if you saturate your base skin color (with red for example) and then ad a little black to it, the shadows look much more vibrant.
I hope that answers the question.

If I'm not clear, ask again



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http://jmringuet.webjump.com

[Minotaur]

The differences is the mixing of color that black fish was talking about has to deal with the mixing of light and the mixing of actual pigments. When you are mixing paint and you mix red and green you get a brownish color. Now if you are mixing these with light(such as on a monitor) you will get yellow as many of you know.

The term for these different types of mixing are addative and subtractive. The more of a color you add with light the brighter it gets. The more you add with paint the darker it gets.

Ohh BTW I love the design, nicely detailed.

[Francis]

Same thing, a little further along - thanks for all the great comments so far. Here are the changes:

Reflections were off, as numerous people pointed out. The consensus among the more experienced painters seemed to be that the underpainting image was not working, so I desaturated to a sort of gray random pattern.

Ron (Fred) advised me to try to define planes by orienting brush strokes with the surfaces in the picture - I've tried to incorporate that a little more, instead of just in random directions.

Nex, I did not construct the perspective, which is probably my downfall on a lot of pieces - I relied on eyeballing it, which works OK in sketches, but is harder to pull off in more finished stuff.

Craig, the dark area on the floor underneath the ship was meant to be its shadow, although if it's not reading that way I must have hosed it somehow.

Wildmyth, this is a collage of influences from all the movies that we have seen. I was telling Ron (Fred) that you could probably name the three movies bsaed on this image alone.

Ceenda, no pre-sketch. It was designed on this page, lotsa kneaded eraser work.

Anyway, here is the image. Everything still going OK? Am I starting to noodle details too early? I feel a little selfish in subjecting everybody to my own little learning process, but hopefully this is helpful to others as well.



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Francis Tsai
TeamGT Studios

[Fred Flick Stone]

Black fish-sometimes the complementary color is not the direction you want to go in. Sometimes leaning on the color warmer or cooler, next to that color in the color spectrum will also help out a bit in dulling, or greying the color out, orpopping and brightening the color a bit more, etc.
Bottom line is, there are a few things to kinda remember about color, but there are no absolutes. Go outside and observe what the sun does to everything. You'll see stuff and say to yourself, noway, that's a trick of the eye, but it isn't.
What I absolutely know about color is, when you have a warm light, you have cool shadows. When you have cool light, you have warm shadows.
And a couple things that I can't refuke, mentioned by Richard Schmid, a very, very famous painter. One of the very very few painters to recieve the John Singer Sargent Award.

The Locale color of anything changes its appearance when wither light changes or its surrounding colors change.

A few odd rules that have come down the pipe to be careful of, because they might work sometimes, but not always

-you have all heard the saying about warm colors "advancing" and cool colors "receding" in landscape painting-that is simply false, so don't believe it. There are no such constants in nature. Sometimes colors appear cooler with distance, but not always.

-Equally wrong is the idea that certain colors naturally go together, or that they "clash". That is just personal opinion formed by fads or flawed theories of harmony.

For Black-fish
-The idea that a color can be neutralized by mixing it with its complement isn't true either, because there is no such thing as a neutral color.

-Avoid schemes that offer recipes for creating color harmonies or specific natural effects(like how to paint the color of water, or flowers, or rainy Paris street scenes). They might produce results under certain circumstances, but not in working from life. Nature has given us no such formulas, only a few principles. Be wary too if anyone claims to have a cure for your color problems, or offers a theory that if followed will always produce "good" color no matter what.

-There is also a popular idea that nature has to be helped, and her colors or forms need to be altered to conform to an ideal of what is compositionally desireable or aesthetically pleasing. This is absurd. Nature is perfect!

-There are no "beautiful" or "ugly" colors. Those words describe our feelings about colors, not their intrinsic properties. "Wrong" or "muddy" colors are simply mixtures that are the innappropriate relative temperature for the area in which they are placed.

-All the common adjectives applied to specific colors: exciting, somber, mellow, sensuous, gay, deathly, bold, feminine, etc. have no valid meaning either. They too only refer to our feelings.

-The names given to many colors are worthless-Rose Red, Canary Yellow, Fucshia, Muave, Beige, Spanked Baby Pink-all are just silly. However, the names for artist's pigments, such as cobalt blue, cadmium red, etc. are functional since they are manufacturers standards by which we identify specific pigments.(Or are supposed to be)

-Lastly, beware of the mystique of color-the notion that you either have a color sense or you don't-or the belief that it is too complex to ever master. Even worse is the often helpless feeling that it doesn't make any sense at all. Color is one of God's nicer ideas. It is their for us to savor, and it has a beautiful order. Trust me on this.

There is more, but that gets the point across. I am not flaming anyone, not you Black-fish, just saying be careful how you preach color, it can be a very tricky thing that can get someone backed into a corner...And that's a painful place to be...

I am tired now, back to drawing...

[spooge demon]

I agree with Fred, 100% well said. i can't type, glad Fred can