Stepping up my handpainting game

SanderDL

Hi,

I'm looking into improving at handpainted texturing. I feel like I have been about at the same level for a while and I'm sort of stuck on how to take it further. I especially have trouble getting shapes right. All my textures feel rather flat.

Here are some I've made recently:







I feel the rock textures feel especially flat and I'm probably using too much filter effects on them.

I'm really want to make them more stylished but I'm not sure how to approach this.

Blaisoid

don't rely on fancy brushes, blending modes and filters at this point. They won't help you improve the painting technique.

You might want to choose some good looking textures and try to analyze what exactly makes them appealing. Stuff like colors, contrast, edge definition etc. Basically any elements that could contribute to overall look. Compare them to your textures and see what could be improved.

I personally never tried this but you could also just copy some texture for practice.

TomGT

My best tip is to focus on the big shapes more, rather than the finer details. Filter effects generally make things look stiff.

I reckon you should pull up some handpainted textures that games like WoW and LoL use and see how their artists approach large chunky shapes. You don't have to follow them completely, but it will help you develop your own way of tackling certain details.

Hope this helps!

SanderDL

Thanks for the tips guys. I've looked up texture from WoW as well as textures by Jessica Dinh. Then I went back and redid the floor tiles, as I felt they came out the worst before. Here's the new texture:



I'm already much happier with it. Still lots of room for improvement though. I'm going back to the other texture and see what I can improve on them.

Ged

thats getting better, bunch of odd parts to still fix, the cracks look drawn on top with multiply - its just obvious that they dont blend in properly with the shadows around the edges of the tiles, some tiles are a bit blurry/lowrez, some of the cracks dont make sense, the obvious one is the triange wedges in two of the tiles, also one has a crack right in the middle of the tile...always good to ask how would this ever naturally occur.

SanderDL

Thanks. I think my problem is that I'm satishfied too quickly. When something starts too look good, I tend to get less critical of my work. Thanks for keeping my feet on the ground.

Edit:

Redid the wood and grass textures today: