Ps: The struggle of a Digital Art Beginner - Need Criticism & Advise

Noizedrop

Hey Guys,

First a little Introduction about myself...
I'm a silent reader for a good while now and i try to become a better artist since a pretty long time now... the problem is i never really practiced that much...i only studied alot of theory but never actually painted alot because i failed way too hard everytime i tried...somehow i managed to find motivation and started practicing harder than ever before.

If you want to know more about my background (beware the wall of text)

I'm 26 now and working as a professional Gamedesigner since 4 Years. I studied Game Development (mainly programming) and was a music producer for some years. I basically have most skills i need to create games completly on my own but Art was my biggest weakness all the time...but at the same time my biggest interest! I've always wanted to express myself through creating Game-art but was never able to achieve the Skill-Level I desired.

I do a shitload of Tutorials and know most of the technical stuff but when it comes to practice i failed pretty hard in the past...i always focussed to much on theory instead of simply practicing. I always believed i'm not ready yet and need to know before i can actually "practice" successfully.

currently I'm really on a beginner level. Mostly i struggle with the actual painting and colors. I don't want to give up on this anymore and keep at it no matter what it costs.

My Goal is to be able to create my own Game-Art in a Painterly / Hand-painted Style
This means from Concept to finished Game Asset (later with sculpting involved for normal maps..but for the start diffuse only)

Currently i force myself to just draw some pieces no matter how hard i suck at it...
Orignally i wanted to post this piece way later but i stumbled upon a little problem.

I don't know how i should paint carved wood. I'm seriously lost at this point.

The theme was "Wooden Sword" and i tried to give it a little twist. They blade should look like it's graved/carved but i just fail at this point.

Here's the Blade (currently only Value Blockout) and the 2 Versions of carving i came up with...both pretty ugly


Ideally the edge should somehow look like this:

If somebody could provide a little paint over or an explanation that would be really great! I don't really know how to paint it...it's way too noisy and I'm not on the elvel to find it out myself x_x

i would also be happy about some comments about the design. 

thank you guys in advance!

cheers,

-Noizy

Two Listen

I think it likely that your problem stems from the design itself.  I think it's possible to render something well enough that it forces your design onto the viewer, but if you have to do this...perhaps it's time to reconsider a view things.

Your sword is interesting, but does it make sense?  It appears a large portion of the "blade" is still covered in bark.  Have you considered what the other side would look like?  This is a sword, not a log you smash things with that has a pointy ridge along one side.  The other side of the sword would almost certainly be bare (absent the bark, being from inside the log).  Is this what you want?  Have you considered how to tackle that in your design?  Were you planning on it being identical on the other side - and wouldn't that surely mean this is two separate pieces of wood bolted together that both have an edge carved to serve as a blade?

Disregarding design critiques, it looks like you're going for too much micro detail on the carved edge.  The example you posted of the sharpened post has purposeful highlights to communicate and follow form, edges that define and portray its shape.  The overall picture of your sword does a decent job of this for the blade - but then you ignore these larger shapes on the edge when you go in to paint detail.  No need to overdo it.  Edit: One other thing to keep in mind - if your long term goal is to turn these into 3D assets, carving details that small onto the edge of something like a sword may just result in it looking really rough and noisy when it's in-game, at least as it's viewed from a more common distance away.

I would also encourage you to visualize how this sword would be made.  At the moment it looks like your carved edge, serving as the blade, is sort of...just injected into the larger bark covered piece.  Are they carved from the same piece of wood?  If so, imagine someone carving it - they would almost surely be cutting into the bark and outward, away from themselves off the edge.  But the bark doesn't appear to be impacted by the carving process at all, rather it just looks to be laying on top of of the carved bit.

If it was mine, I'd probably stop myself and say, "Maybe it's time for some quick paintover redesign possibilities..." and scribble some redefining tweaks over the whole thing a few times. 

Noizedrop

Hey Two Listen and thx for your detailed answer!

You are totally right that my design is pretty weak atm but it was honestly the best i could came up with while keeping in mind that i will model this in 3D (as i want to keep the general shape)
Actually i really thought through that and designed it at some places so it won't be too much of a hassle to model it! I will make a rough 3D Blockout this evening..maybe this helps me to understand the form a little better.

I thought of it like your second suggestion. That's why the big bolts are there...it's not the most logical thing, to build a sword like this but i was hoping to let it look like badly selfmade from a desperate teen that wants to be a hero. 
It's actually assembled from the two outer cuts of a log bolted together. I made the mistake and was going more for the look than the actual logic and was hoping the viewers won't notice that... but i guess i can never expect that x_x



The "bark not impacted by the carving" point is great! I planned to add scratches and abbrasion at the end of this.. you kinda showed me that i will need to do this at the transition between bark and blade! I will definatly keep that in mind!

I won't cancel this piece at this point because my whole point of doing it was pushing myself through it no matter what happens.

Thank you for your detailed answer. I'm really looking forward to try and fix those points this evening!

Cheers,

-Noizy

lutzbot

I think you're on the right track- this is the design process, and sometimes it sucks. It sorta gets easier with experience. Your piece is coming along and your idea to spin it as 'crudely made by wannabe hero' is a good one. Two Listen has a soild conceptual critique there, so i'll stick to painting.

1- draw from the simplest view that makes sense. I only mention this because you drew at a 45 degree angle, which seems uncomfortable to me- if you like it keep going that way though. 
2- draw the thing 8 times- try different proportions, chase neat ideas as they occur to you, let the process be fun. I suggest staying with lineart for this because it's faster and won't get you stuck on painting issues too early. I recall seeing a whole bunch of blizzard/WoW weapon designs that knocked my socks off a while back.. that would be a good place to go for inspiration and technique to copy.
3- when you start painting, think in larger areas of tight value, and think of the graphic design of the object. Where am I supposed to look? What defines this object, and how can I accentuate that? What is important for the player to see? Why hasn't that spot on my neck gone away? should I go to a doctor? keep asking yourself these kinds of questions to stay focused and avoid noodling at unimportant bits

Here's a quick paintover:


notes:
-the cutting edge is the most important thing here, so it gets to be bright and have a very clean value separation from the body of the sword. The actual woody texture of the cutting edge is very low contrast.. the cutting edge contrasts much more highly with the bark. the values of the bark have been brought much closer together- you can always finesse the form of the bark later once the values are established. I've also added a gradient so it's slightly brighter and slightly higher contrast at the top edge (again, because that's the important bit)
-pick your spots for detail/visual interest- here we only have a couple of small areas of detail that attract the eye instead of being evenly distributed across the surface. The details themselves (the bark overlapping the blade at the top, the peeling bits on the spine) sell the story of 'poorly made'
-keep a clean silhouette to maintain large, simple, easy to read shapes, and then when you break the silhouette (in small areas) it will be more meaningful. You're doing this okay already, but the spine of the blade had silhouette changes almost as large as the cutting edge.

again, you're on the right track here- i'm curious to see where you go with it.
good luck

Noizedrop

Hey!

Thx Lutzbot for your overpaint! really helpful!
Unfortunately i had already blocked out my model before i read your answer so the shape won't change that drastic anymore...

I completly forgot about where to lead the eye in this concept... after applying some gradients it looks way better now! Huge thanks!
My new approach on painting the carving looks kinda like your version only inversed logically but i'm quite happy with it after i reduced the frequency of it. It is still a little noisy but okay for now. i also reduced one of the sillhouette breaks on the backside...(not transferred to the model yet)

I applied alot of you advises to my blade and it looks a lot better now while staying pretty close to the original idea. in the third frame i added some little things I'd like to add for variation. Not sure about wrapping some straps around the blade but i've seen it on quite a few other concepts and liked the idea of it...it might also hold a little better it serves as a substitute for a rainguard.
I also tucked some ugly leaves (with a way to low value) below the grip.

I tried to paint in the Transition between bark and carved wood but noticed that it gets too noisy and irritating fast..i think i will try to solve this in the actual texture later on. maybe i'll add some little alpha planes to simulate the feaze.
I'll figure out the rest in the actual texture as it doesn't make much difference for me to paint it as texture or as concept...so the texture will be more efficient as i can see it directly in a lit version.

Here's the model...doesn't look like much but that will change pretty fast once i slapped the base values on it!

Thx for your support! It already helped me alot and i continue at least for a while now i'll update my progress!

cheers!

-noizy

Noizedrop

A little Update on this one

Coloring will be the hardest part for me...
model

Edit: Why the hell does my embedded Sketchfab Link doesn't work properly >.<