Desperately seeking painting suggestions
polycounter lvl 18
I can sculpt and animate, but I've never been good with color.
Any suggestions on what I can do with this thing to bring it to life?
I have a scale bump map that looks more like a plucked chicken, but it beats none at all.
I also have some tones underlying the green, but the green is not permanent. Ideally I'd like something grayish, but the green is a decent starting point. The black on the wings is a yet-to-be-implemented mask.
Any suggestions on what I can do with this thing to bring it to life?
I have a scale bump map that looks more like a plucked chicken, but it beats none at all.
I also have some tones underlying the green, but the green is not permanent. Ideally I'd like something grayish, but the green is a decent starting point. The black on the wings is a yet-to-be-implemented mask.
Replies
Good to see another garg, heh, if we keep it up there'll be enough gargoyles to play in ut2k4 (as Firebrand is still coming too :P)
I'd probably go with a slightly lighter slate for this guy, also he happens to look alot similar to him
Notice the color changing slightly to yellow
Remember that ut2k4 has overbrights, so don't cover too much highlight on the skin.
"I also have some tones underlying the green, but the green is not permanent. Ideally I'd like something grayish, but the green is a decent starting point. The black on the wings is a yet-to-be-implemented mask"
um.... huh? Before you start getting all freaked out about color, think about the design. right now its just.... a nude green gargoyle.
as cheap said, you could stand to put a little variation in the greens. if you look at where the green is in photoshop, move slightly to the left (warm, toward red) for highlights, and right (cool, toward blue) for shadows. just something to try - you could of course put some red in the shadows and go really crazy. to learn to understand color, you gotta use more than one
before trying to dive into a skin right off, pick up a color theory book and do some sketches/2d work/exercises to try and figure out a little more about how colors interact with one another, and their application.
you dont have to stick to rules though - just do what you think looks cool... and hope other people think it does too ;P
1) I picked a pallet with a main color, a highlight and a shadow. Try not to use black as a shadow and white as a highlight unless you really have to. Also remember there is always light coming from different places, surfaces, and colors so using the same highlight color might not do the trick.
2) I took the highlight color, a soft edge brush about (18 size) set to 20% and painted in some soft highlights. Then sized the bursh to 8-5 and painted some smaller highlights to show where light might be hitting first.
3) Same brush size and %, just switched to the shadow color and painted some dark areas darker. Leaving some of the areas near the highlights a wee-bit lighter.
4) Small details: I decided that a gargolye needed a crack in his chest, why!? Because I wanted to paint some small details to show you something... keep in mind this skin is mirrored so this kind of detail will look funny. Maybe taking the polys that have just the crack on them and move them to another place on the skin? Ok where was I!? Oh yeah, I rough out the crack and find a position that works.
5) this is where most would agree this start to go a little wrong, but I will press on because I am pressed for time... This is where thinking about light and what catches it will come in handy. The bottom edge will catch more light than the top so paint some highlights where you think the light should be catching first. For more knowelge in this subject I suggest hitting the web and finding some painting tuts, they like to drone on and on and on about the subject.
6) Added some noise using photoshops noise filter. Filter>noise>add noise>3-10%.
7) Since everything I paint comes off a tad flat I always play with the brightness/contrast and hue/staturation. Image>Adjustments>. In this case the green is a touch too neon for my taste so I used the same tools to tone it back and wash it out a bit.
8)I added three colors to the pallet (see img_09) and painted some varriation into. These colors where not colors I pulled out of my rear.
- Yellow because sunlight is not always white. Foresant light is white, natural sunlight is often yellow or orange. Standard household "natural light" bulbs often have a tinge of yellow mimic sunlight. The non-natural kind or office lights go with harsh, steril, opressive white.
- Blue because the sky is blue and most things under the sky will reflect it to some degree.
- Brown, because I needed a shadow color that is not black and the ground is sometimes brown.
I ended up using the colors not so much for highlights and shadows, as I used them to splotch up the skin with different color varriation. BUT normally having three lights to paint with toward the end is a good idea. I did a pretty poor job of taking this as far as I could, and this last part fell pretty flat so take it with a grain of salt and read some real tuts =P
9)I played with the bightness/contrast and hue/sat. Added a touch more noise and painted some more highlights/shadows. Now I am late for work so... I leave you with my messy half ass-ed texture tutorial. If I get time I will dig up some tuts and post the ones that really helped me over the years.
http://itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm
Painting an eye
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?threadid=227727
Tons of painting tutorials
http://www.gfxartist.com/features/tutorials
http://www.furiae.com/index.php?view=gallery
The hardlight method
http://www.horribledeath.com/tut-hardlight.htm
portportions for 2D and 3D
http://www.anticz.com/heads.htm
Hair and Fur
http://www.creativemac.com/2003/08_aug/tutorials/pshair030825.htm
@Cheapy: No, UT2k4 doesn't do bump maps to my knowledge. I have a bump map that I blend into the texture in PaintShop Pro (a layer that I set to Multiply for the type.) I also have a Multiply layer that is just the grey shading. I'm hoping to use that as a quick way of getting team skins.
@moose: You're right - the design is part of the problem, and I'm painfully aware of that; it's one of the reasons I posted. I'd like to break it up in some way, perhaps with color variations kind of like a reptile, but not so much that it looks like a reptile. I also have to be realistic: if I wait 'til I'm good enough to do a good job, this thing won't be done for quite a while. I'm targeting something that isn't embarrassing. It's a novelty model, pure and simple, and since I'm not in the game biz it won't be going in a portfolio.
@Vig: Yes, I am that Mooseboy. I hope the memories are good ones! Some of my kids' friends have less-than-pleasant memories of watching the moose talk (it's mounted on the wall in our livingroom), but at least they didn't wet themselves...
The tut sequence is too cool. A year or more ago I saw tutorials similar to what you've done, but I never saved them. They are wonderful for showing where highlights can go, and how you can play with colors outside the main palette. I forgot some links, bookmarked some links which went dead, and even the wayback machine (www.internetarchive.org) wasn't able to help with all the images. So in short, I spent hours trying in vain to find those things again. Any you can dredge up will be immediately saved to my hard drive.
Shot 7 is the kind of color I had in mind for the primary skin. I'm guessing that it won't be adequate to merely embed the highlights in the tone layer. It may be good enough for team skins, but the "main" one ought to be nicer, I think.
@chip: I've worked most things out. I should send you what I came up with - it'll be good for a laugh.