Thursday, December 13, 2012

I lied

I worked on this some more after all, and since it hasn't been officially critiqued yet I will probably end up changing it afterwards again... but I am happy with the changes thusfar.


Monday, December 10, 2012

Process Pt. IV: Now in Technicolor

Hello internet! Barring some final touchups the societty piece is just about done! So it is time to talk about color.

Before I start mucking about with color I always give the underpainting a once over to check for composition or continuity mistakes. In this case I noticed that the old background was creating some lighting problems, and was also directing the viewers eye away from the parts of the piece I wanted. To solve both problems I shifted the whole background to the left and knocked out a wall. Now the hanging lights and perspective on the roof lead us to the robot and the flower, and there is a nice light source to backlight the robo.

The updated underpainting
For the color, I simply chose a scheme, created a new layer set to Multiply, and roughed in the hues I wanted. Since the underpainting is pretty tight this stage can be pretty messy, so this only took around an hour of fiddling once I nailed down what colors I needed.

base color
To add some interest and warm up the robot's overall color I added some decals, originally I was thinking warning strips but they were a bit garish so instead he got whatever these are...

With markings


And a bonus shot just to show how loose the color really is under all this here are the color layers set to Normal.

fugly eh?


Monday, December 3, 2012

Process Pt. III: Detailing

Progress! Slowly crawling towards the finish, next week will be a big update with the coloring and touchup stage. For now some detail shots!









Sunday, November 25, 2012

Intermission

Happy Thanksgiving to all you in the US!

Due to fall break there has been no significant progress on the piece for the society competition, so I threw together a sped up recording of a speedpainting I did over a lunchbreak about a week ago. For a TLDR version of my process I present you this.

 

Total painting time was a little over an hour in good old Photoshop CS5. I would also recommend watching it in the full 1080p to get all the juicy details if your connection can handle it.


The final image

Monday, November 19, 2012

Process pt. II: Revisions

This week saw a couple of major revisions to the black and white sketch as I slowly tighten it up.


Probably the most notable change is that the Robo now has more defined segments and detail. He was feeling pretty lame as the box with legs he was earlier so I chopped up some of those planes and made him look a bit more bulky while still retaining some of those joints. I also decided that it needed another narrative element, so I changed his pose and made him some sort of battery collection bot. (there will probably be a bunch of those power cell looking things scattered throughout the piece.)


The old background wasn't working for me, it had some weird perspective and compositional issues, so I tossed it, stretched the canvas to the right a bit and roughed this in pretty quickly with chalk and square brushes. At this point the level of detail doesn't need to be too high since most of it will be hidden by the foreground elements so it is pretty sloppy at this stage.






And lastly some messing around with lighting.Stay tuned for the finished underpainting and base color!


Monday, November 12, 2012

Process pt. I: Sketch

Howdy all, this weeks post marks the first in a series on my process. First up, the sketch phase!

       This piece is currently being made for the society of Illustrators Student competition, so there was a pretty big emphasis on doing what we enjoy working on during the concept stage for this one, since it is essentially advertising the kind of work we are in the market to do.

       Since Fantasy and Sci-Fi is pretty much my jam, I came up with a bunch of thumbnail sketches in that vein.
Thumbnails straight from the sketchbook
Usually the first idea in a series of thumbnails is the throwaway sketch to get the ball rolling, but in this case I liked the concept and ended up coming back to it and reworking it (the bottom right set of sketches). The next step was to work it up to a full size sketch.
   
Rough Sketch ver. 1 
Next week: the revised sketch and the beginning of the greyscale.

Monday, November 5, 2012

War of the worlds

Due to Hurricane sandy last week there will be no process post for this week, but I will be starting up an illustration for the Society of Illustrators student competition soon and I plan on documenting that instead.

And now for the regularly scheduled installment of giant mechanical monstrosities!


War of the Worlds
This was done for my fantasy painting class, we were allowed to choose a book cover to illustrate for the assignment so I naturally went for one that would allow me to burn down a city with giant doom machines.

Lasers are cool you guys.

Monday, October 22, 2012

So it begins...


Hello and welcome to my blog! I will be using this thing to show off new work, share inspirational or handy resources, or post bits of my workflow.

To kick things off, have a dragon! Or three!
Prospective Blogger vs the Internet
Done in Photoshop CS5 as per usual. Next week I will probably start a series on my process.