Some mindless concept garbage

EricElwell

Hey, I'm new here, and new to the industry in general. I'm currently interning as an artist at GarageGames, it seems the more I learn here, the more I realize just how little I know. That being said, I would be very happy to hear anyone's opinions and critiques on my work.

I've never really been pleased enough with my work to throw it out in the open, but it's definitely necessary in order to improve my work, so that being said.. here's a bit of sketching/speed painting I've been doing lately:





there are more of my random sketches and speed paintings at my flickr account:


http://www.flickr.com/photos/48207925@N00/


C&C? (be brutal)

EricElwell

No one? Not even for the sake of picking fun?




Oh well, here's another:



crits and suggestions would be much appreciated.

gauss

do you work from grayscale? there's something nagging about your use of colors, everything looks like it's shaded with black... in the second pic with the weapon--which i like better, btw -- all of the colors read as "cool" with white highlights, so despite there being some color in the piece it still comes off as very monochromatic. working black and white is fine, in fact i encourage it before tackling a lot of color work because people need to keep their values under control, but adding color to grayscale can be a difficult proposition.

the colors are pretty decent in the first post, but i think the most nagging problem i'm seeing are the strangely elongated proportions of the heads... the overall proportions are a little doughy and it just doesn't read as a stylistic choice, it just comes off looking weird. i don't know, can't articulate that thought well at the moment.

my suggestion for you is to do a few pieces starting from a toned canvas, which is to say, start with a nice neutral-ish middle gray tone or related color in the background. these pieces on white backgrounds make it very hard to control value, contrast, and especially color choices.

nealb4me

Hey there! This ship thing is kinda cool. From what I see here I would suggest just thinking a bit more about how things work to convey a greater sense of fuctionality. The guys faces have a lot of proportion and perspective issues. I can tell you have some good ideas trying to escape your mind and onto paper so to speak, you just need to increase your knowledge of anatomy and vehicle conventions. So what I'm saying is expand your knowledge instead of just going from one piece to the next everytime you have a brainwave.

EricElwell

Hey! thanks a lot for the crits! I was shooting for a stylistic look on the island people, though I'm not quite achieving the desired result. I know my faces need a lot of work, I'd love to hear anything you have to say about that.

I definitely agree with you on grayscale. It generally depends on what i'm trying to achieve or wether or not I'm thinking. I'm trying to stray from starting in grayscale, though many times I'm trying hard enough just to achieve form; color doesn't quite enter my mind at the time. On the first image, the only part I started with color was the dude on the bottom on the rocks.

nealb4me, Thanks for the suggestion, I'll definitely be doing that. If you have any source that you'd spefically recommend I would definitely check it out! Thanks a lot fellas!

I did a bit more working on the ship.. scratched in a few gun mounts and whatnot at the last minute..


Hopefully I'll get some of my pen sketches scanned up and on the sketch thread soon...

Thanks again fellas!

any more crits/advice/abuse would be appreciated.

gauss

abuse, eh?
this is better, but as you can see from my first post, i thought that was a weapon (AMD shockrifle alike or somesuch), rather than a spaceship. the trouble is that it appears to be missing the appropriate scale cues. most of the details correspond with a handheld weapon: wires sticking out, the intake, etc.

even the windows on the side really don't seem to indicate scale properly, nor do they really "read" as windows all that much.

this brings me to the point i usually come to when i crit concepts--what's your intention with this piece? a good concept brings with it a whole encapsulated history of the world it comes from. what are you saying about the technological level of the civilization that this ship comes from? is this a personal vessel, a military ship? what's the crew capacity? operative range?

not only are the scale cues an issue, but also the lack of typically identifiable spaceship components. i decided to add a sketch of my own if you don't mind... i apologize that it's quick and unfortunately a little more conventional than what you were going for, but i think it makes my points.




as regards to color, it took me a looong time to really approach it with anything resembling confidence. there is no shame with keeping things grayscale or monochrome as you work to get a better grasp on form and lighting.

EricElwell

Hey gauss, thanks a ton for the crits and the time taken to do that mockup. I see your point about indentifyable space parts.

What I was going for with this concept was basically just to get a mental image for a 3d model I started. I have very little experience with max, I've been using it a small amount at work, but not for straight model creation. I wanted to get a better understanding of max, so I started with a box and played around a bit until I had the mid/back section of the ship modelled, and had no clue where to go with it. This concept is admittedly ill-inspired, and considering that fact that I drew it in order to get a feel for those "identifyable space parts" .. I seemed to have missed the point. Your mockup is much clearer and to the point with some good things to think about, thanks for showing me that.

Here's the latest version that I've done. I haven't touched the sketch since your post... You can I see I had already started to give the cockpit a more volumetric feel, though I'm not entirely pleased with the outcome.



Well, I don't know if this concept deserves any more love. I will most likely do another in the near future, and keep in mind what you guys have mentioned.

Thanks again!

warpy

hey eric

EricElwell

Well, on an entirely different theme.. I was playing with the brush editor to get some presets ready for the next project coming up.. So here's what I put together while I was playing with that..



I don't think the stony/warty texture goes too well with the tenticles'n'whatnot... and I noticed some pretty big perspective issues midway through the process... :-\

anyway... crits/suggestions or anything like that would totally rock

gauss

hahha... yeah, the background does say "look who was playing with the brush editor" but otherwise i rather do enjoy the look of the beastie. the "mouth" area is really quite revolting, you did a good job giving it that slimy sheen. the corners and edges in the area suggest a not quite biological origin; seems a fairly novel way of exploring those themes. some good color variation, too, would be cool to see you develop the idea of that nasty creature further

Joao Sapiro

you should free your hand more, right now u seem to attain perfection in eaach pixel, wich of course makes the oposite, dont be afraid to throw in some dabs and stuff that might look plain, but the best concepts are made like that


P.S - i bet i didnt make any sense, but oh well :P

happy new year XD