Sketchbook: Isso09
So Neolight told me to start a sketchy here, and I'm no enemy to shameless self-promotion so here it goes. Let me start with some of my current portfolio (soon to be updated with better) pieces and life drawing. If you want to see more of my work, please check out my BLOG!
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I really like the concept of VS and the town.
Amazing work sir.
This is a little belated and overall most of my duels over the course of next two weeks won't be worth posting because I have to make two portfolios for IlluXcon. But I'll post any still life drawings if I got em.
Other than that, I have a lot of work to show and a lot of things to say... But I'm not going to because that would take time away from painting more.
In love with your 4 first pics *_*
I collected some thoughts here. They may be outdated, but worth sharing I think.
First of all, I uploaded my IlluXcon portfolio on my DeviantArt . I'm finally painting how I thought I could paint.
The only way to stop yourself from procrastinating is to have no choice in the matter. Instead of forcing yourself to do something you need to do, you eliminate urges to do anything else. Which is hard, because we're all just apes. And apes are very impulsive.
Procrastinating happens when you take breaks. If you keep working, nothing can stop you. Or me at least..
Really it's the people that do go out on the weekend that are the losers. They're wasting their time drinking when they could be getting ahead with work.
Every time you deny yourself something, next time it will be easier. Every time you give in to vice, next time giving in will be easier as well.
Always set deadlines that are near-impossible to meet. (But don't get frustrated if you don't meet them) As soon as you know you will make a deadline, you become complacent.
Some of your work in the Sketchbook on ConceptArt look like 3D models their so good...
Guess that pokemon!
For some reason they all came out desaturated. I blame sunlight.
Also, if you haven't found him yet, visit [URL=http://]Ryan Yee's Blog[/URL]! Met him at IlluxCon. That dude is a baller.
Sorry that the colours looks like poo. I realized once I was done that the entire time I was doing my studies, my monitor was turned down to half way brightness. Super lame, but you can still guess that movie.
I really like your CA sketchbook, pretty daunting task you set yourself, good luck! It's definitely a motivational read.
-em-: Are you watching closely?
Bobby Chiu is right. It's all about how much information you're putting down with each stroke. The more cartoony your style is, the less information you have to think about. Since cartoons are a simplification of reality.
The more you "see" before you put the stroke down, the more efficiently you can paint, and your ability to "see" comes from studies.
Painting is a reflection of your thought process and as such it doesn't matter how many strokes you can put down in a minute. You can't make your brain think any faster.
Finally got back to life drawing today. Monsieur Bargue, I salute you for teaching me the way to draw. Learning fundamentals is like collecting a jigsaw puzzle, and I just got another piece. JENGA!!
Guess which ones are from imagination. If you guess right, I will draw you. For serial.
And then some DUELS!!
Tried to do a long pose today, and was disappointed because the model kept moving. I don't know how they do it at the Academy. Overall, abour 30 mins. The model is actually the same dude from the [ame=
There should really be a holiday where people only tell you the truth about you or about themselves, and you're not allowed to judge, criticize or get upset at them. Maybe I should make a short about it...
2 hr portrait + process + 20 min portrait + whole foods impression + duels. Preparing for my next class at the GC academy. Painted portrait sketch with Rick Piloco.
I guess the third figure, and the last - because the strokes look more like you're using shapes from your arsenal than trying to follow a reference. I was going to say third on the same principle, but I recognize the pose. (although I though I remembered it being a man?) How wrong am I?
So yeah I started updating with regularity but then girlfriend happened again. Anyway here are some leftovers for you. Mostly studies for duels. Movie stills are from Terry Jones' Barbarians documentary.
If you want to succeed, you should always be behind schedule until the deadline.
All the words you hear, like values, edges, temperature etc take at least a month to learn to be aware of. Certain ones, (like form) take years. Mastery comes after a lifetime.
I'm staying at this kid's house in Colorado for two weeks, and we're gonna paint ourselves to death. I will come out of this with a nice portfolio piece showing what I've learned over the last two months (if anything), and many many life studies.
These are my last Bargues because I let my lady borrow the book. Finally, here are the much coveted casts that I've been doing for the past two weeks. They're obviously not finished, just at the point where it would be easier to start a new one and apply all the knowledge. I've learned so much from them, and if I had another month perhaps I would actually learn form. But maybe I'll buy one of my own and study it to death instead.
I've got some life drawing too, but I'll post that later along with the awesome duels I'll be doing here. PEACE.
The most valuable things in life are positive changes. Even if you are in a really nice place for a while, you will get sick of it eventually.
Or am I? There's a new personal piece in the works, and it's gonna negate everything I've done up to this point.
Chasing that perfect studio is like chasing a perfect girl - if she actually wants you start to wonder if perhaps you can do better. The drama of uncertainty is what keeps the pursuit going.
I'm getting close to the point where my art will need more than just foundation to be good. Things I've been working on recently:
Values:
- Making things read
- Form rendering
Drawing:Continuing with these themes, here are some duels, and prep sketches for upcoming personal illustrations.
Why six weeks? GDC .
In the meantime, let me share some parting thoughts with you. Drawing, like any art, is just another magic trick. If the mind of the beholder cannot bridge the gap between his ability and the picture (or art work) he sees before him, he finds it impressive and amusing. The wider the gap is, the more impressed the viewer is (another obvious factor affecting the effect of the work is the viewer's prior experience with art works of the same kind). If the viewer has the ability to create a picture of comparable quality, he/she knows the secret to your magic trick, and no longer finds your work impressive.
The nature of drawing and painting makes us very susceptible to self-inflicted physical damage. Drawing requires a lot of focus in order to make something of merit. This kind of mental commitment often makes it difficult to be aware of your physical state, i.e. posture and possible pain you may experience. Since it requires a lot of time also, you may mess yourself up pretty bad without noticing it. Heed the warning, kids! Stop drawing while you still have the limbs.
I'm back from GDC now and my mind is still trying to straighten itself out. I feel a little empty from having the deadline for such a significant goal pass, and I dearly miss the three days I spent hanging out with professionals. They flew by so fast, and I can't help but feel like I didn't make the most out of the experience. That said, even though 6 weeks was not enough to accomplish my dream, GDC was the best place to spend my birthday week. The questions that have built up over the weeks finally got answered, I met tons of badasses and got a lot of feedback on my portfolio (which you will find below); and most importantly, I know exactly what I need to do to get to where I want to be.
In addition to the emptiness, I feel a lot more freedom. I'm free from the time pressure, and free from my ignorance of how the industry works.
I've been keeping a diary of the things I learned over the last 6 weeks, and I think once I actually accomplish my goal, I will post a very extensive "how to." In the meantime, I'm gonna regroup, clean my room, my body and mind and my "to do" list; and prepare for the next round.
The 6 weeks actually turned out to be quite different from what I expected. I spent the first two weeks on the spider piece below, and a piece that's not shown. The following 2 were spent entirely on duel concepts, and the best displayed. The fifth week was taken up largely by 3D, and I spent significantly less time on painting, and I spent all of the last week on my 3D. Ultimately, I only spent 2 weeks focused on solid drawing, so imagine what kind of progress could have been made if I dedicated the entire 6 weeks to it like I said I would. Anyway, enjoy!
Still need to work on values and texture. It's pretty tough, but I figure these will get much easier in about a week.
Then there are these guys:
The trouble with that portfolio below is that I'm a lot better than it, both because the 2D works are now almost a month old, and because I did each one in a day. But nevermind that, the project I'm working on right now is gonna kick so much ass, you have no idea. I hope to finish it by Monday.
Thought I wouldn't post today did you? Well you're WRONG.
This is a lot better than the last "night still life" I did. I think back then i couldn't see green. On this one I tried to achieve a realistic look with the highlights, but failed again. Oh well. Some value areas need a bit of work as well. Now that I see it in thumbnail, mistakes become more apparent. Gotta remember to step back!
Can't wait to see what my paintings will look like when I get back to them!
Been thinking a lot about form in my still lives. Having less and less time to do them these days... How long can I keep it up?
Also, I'm often on the phone with my girlfriend as I do these, so I wonder how that affects their quality. During the last one she read me Sailor Moon lore from the wiki.
Some thoughts I've collected over the past couple of days:
When you are drawing line art, doesn't matter that much how you arrange your shapes, as long as there is a semblance of going big to small. The eye can be guided with line weight.
Size should dictate the amount of detail you put on an object. If it's big, it's usually important.
I think that ideally every company wants their concept artists to produce the quality of work they would produce for themselves (for fun), but do it for the company and before its deadlines.
If you want to become good, you have to modify your process for painting so that you are rewarded appropriately as you paint. In a way, it's like a video game. It's only fun if you have enough success, otherwise you don't want to play anymore. Since making a detailed illustration or concept takes a long time, there must be points in your process where you look at your work, become proud of your progress and get inspired to continue working. For me, there is always a dip that happens at about 40% when your expectations for the painting are underwhelmed by what it actually looks like as you start to refine the sketch.
There is always a positive and a negative way to react to your situation, so ALWAYS react positively. When you are striving towards a goal, you are only harming yourself by letting negativity get into your brain, even if its only for analysis of your situation.
I started taking 5-minute "motivation breaks." When I feel tired, bored or uncomfortable from sitting in one place for a while, I go into the living room and look outside for a couple of minutes. Then I flex my muscles, yell and do whatever it takes to get myself pumped up to go back to work. It works much better than taking breaks by checking your email.
Instant colour scheme tip #1:
- Take your entire image or area with muddy colours and lower the saturation.
- Go into "Color Balance" and raise or lower any colour you want. Boom.
I still haven't figured out a good way to mix colours digitally, because there is no way to preview the colour you find with RGB sliders other than trial and error. Also, PS eats your saturation when you use opacity to blend your colours, which gets in the way of everything. Maybe I should just permanently use my brush on overlay? Gonna try it on my still life tonight.
When you set out on a big project, it's important to lay down some key elements and main goals at the beginning, so that you don't lose track of them as you are working.
If you are using a soft brush, you are limiting your value range, because your capabilities for contrast are limited. This is why it also makes sense to use a soft brush to begin your paintings. However, as you progress through it, you must use a harder-edged brush for the fine value/colour transitions.
Contrary to the unpopular belief, it IS actually about the brushes. The shapes you make, the hardness /softness of edges, and how the brush puts down the colour are all qualities that are essential in achieving a workflow that makes every stroke count.
The MOST IMPORTANT THING I LEARNED: It doesn't matter how good or bad you are objectively. If you can constantly convince yourself that you're just within reach of greatness, you will become objectively great sooner than you think.
Oh yeah, I also think I'm gonna reveal that project I've been talking about. Check it out!
And some thumbs:
Just sent that off to the blizzard guys I met. Hopefully they'll find these worthy of a crit.
Based on the work you see above, things I need to work on are:
- Scale
- Depth in Z-space by the use of colour, saturation, edges and shape. i.e. more scale.
So I gotta get back to work!
In concept art, three things guide your decisions when making shapes: appeal, functionality and gameplay implications.
A lot of hard surface and architecture design is about adjusting angles to make straight lines flow in a nice way.
In the same way that you want to distribute polycount and texture space, you want to put your detail on the part that is most exposed to the camera, or position your concept so that the biggest area of importance is seen.
The way you usually tell a professional from a student is by spotting shortcuts in brushwork. A student, while perhaps having the same skill as a professional, will not have had enough experience to simplify his painting process into something efficient and effortless.
When you don't want to design new shapes, guide the eye with dust, scratches and other texture details.
I heard this new rumour that Diablo III is actually set in Mexico.
I stopped working on this guy and decided to start on a new one. Where this guy failed:
- Detail distribution
- Silhouette read
- Value read
I've sunk two days into this robot, expected to get a portfolio piece, but had to settle for the knowledge of how much I need to work on vehicles. But out of the bad comes the good, out of the plague came the renaissance, and at some point soon I'm gonna embark on a new challenge that will teach me the ways.Starcraft struck gold by imitating the Alien with zerg, and adding an exciting horror element into their game, on top of the sci-fi run-of-the-mill conspiracy/rebellion plot lines and themes that go along with the Terran campaign. Protoss are probably the race with the least character, and I was never really invested in what they had to say when I played the campaign, though their visual and gameplay design was solid. Their biggest thematic achievement is probably being the indians to the Terran cowboys. My guess is they were trying too hard to conceptualize a real alien race, which felt too foreign and weird.
Blizzard is the game industry Valhalla. You go there once you have proven your worth in battle.
I realized recently why a few of my pieces were ions beyond anything else I was doing at the time (see the Samurai). It's that "artistic" aspect of concept art shining through, coming from your subconscious. When people are hit with "inspiration" or whatever you want to call it, your brain produces better work, and that's what happened. However there's still no way to logically predict when it will happen again, or how to cause it to do so.
Ideally, all the pieces that go in your portfolio are ones that were made with inspiration.
Oh yeah, I also did some studies hoping they would help me with materials etc. They did. But it didn't save me in the end.
This thing calibrates my monitaur , but it does a terrible job so I've been putting off making a still life out of it. Unfortunately, I'm running out of interesting objects to draw so there.
And then I did some fan art for Riot Games. It's their latest [ame=
Some things I learned:
You compose with gradations, not flat colour. Always know where your gradations are going, and how intensely.
The most efficient way to make something better is to erase it. So do that as often as you can manage. Ideally, if you have the time and are willing to 'scrap' hours of work, you should do your illustration 3 times before the deadline. Good product is made by having smarter than average people iterate on an idea more than the competition.
Sometimes seeking shortcuts for processes actually takes longer than doing it the "stupid" way.
Next time you listen to a pop song, in your head replace all the "baby" lyrics with "hitler." It's the way it was meant to be heard.
I'm beginning to understand that more and more things in life depend on what you believe rather than logical analysis. There are many things you couldn't possibly figure out the reason for, so you have to rationalize it with your own belief. Fill in the gap in knowledge, in a way. So what you put in that gap is entirely up to you and sometimes it's very important to your attitude and work output. Please, always believe the most positive thing. If a big shot artist doesn't respond to your e-mail, don't blame the fact that your art isn't good, or that you came on too strong. Analyze what you can, then rationalize it with "he would have loved to answer if he wasn't so busy."
That said, in any past circumstance, there is always a more positive outcome that you could have achieved. You have to question how you could have gotten there, without regretting that you didn't.
I heard that the final boss of Diablo 3 is, in fact, Lady Gaga, and not the lord of terror.
Edges are gestalt psychology at work. When you draw from life, you find out how your brain makes sense of your scene, by analyzing which edges in it seem hard and which seem soft. The fast your eyes skim over the edge as you're looking at the scene, the softer that edge will be in your painting.
When doing something artistic, you gotta genuinely love what you do, so that you get some creativity help from your subconscious. When doing other tasks, like programming, you just have to have a passion for problem solving.
There are really 3 types of edges in digital painting. Hard, soft and textured. You can use a texture brush to softer things, instead of the boring old airbrush.
I also heard that in the Diablo movie the monk will be played by Vin Diesel.
More on that later. For now, let's compile everything I've learned over the last three weeks.
You gotta let a story write itself, same way you gotta let a picture draw itself. You can't force creativity.
You can never accomplish something great without believing that you're special, or better than other people, because other people and circumstances will always lead you to believe that it can't be done, and you have to be able to ignore them. The first step to greatness is believing in yourself: "other people failed here, but I can succeed."
People who draw realistically often don't have the graphic design sensibilities of people who draw in their own style, and stylized art usually lacks the fundamentals of realism.
You have to know which parts of your painting are gonna POP with value contrast and edges. It's less about the shapes themselves, but more about the connections and relationships between them: edges.
Don't max out on saturation. Sneak up on it.
Warp a painting to get rid of tangents and make the drawing more interesting.
Frequency of detail brings objects forward.
Let accidents fill the gaps in information that exist outside the focal points. Your painting is a web.
Studies make you aware of how much information you can leave out in order to have something read. Painting from imagination is about arranging that information in a pleasing manner.
Learning new things gives me a high.
The more you iterate, the more ideas present themselves. Accidents make innovation.
Never bring in a new colour or material unless you can use it in more than one place on your piece.
Hard shadows and highlights define form more efficiently than careful shading in the light.
You can make anything you want read with just reflected and ambient light, however you should strive to do so with key light and shadow.
All ideas that you throw away should be good. The reason you're throwing them away is that they don't fit your project.
There are three crucial things to having the fire:
- Deadlines
- Feedback loop of achievement and satisfaction with your work
- Truly believing that you will achieve your goal
Your "skill" as a painter never really improves. Your perception of the world, though, does.
The importance of surfaces is prioritized by the angle at which they face the light. Thus, surfaces that are more important will be brightest.
You can often raise or lower your values by changing hue. Likewise, you can change the colours of the paint on the canvas by putting down colours outside of that hue family.
You cannot create in abstraction. You need constraints. Rules are prompts. Prompts make you think.
The motivations for the actions of your characters will determine the moral of your story.
When you're young, usually you are focused on the social aspects of life, which is funny, because very few people have achieved anything of merit. Then, when you're older and meet people that have gotten somewhere, you have no time to hang out with them, because you're too busy getting somewhere yourself.
What you're doing with lines is creating the silhouettes of things. Same with brushstrokes, but less prominently.
Iterations allow you to re-formalize your ideas, kind of like defragging an HD.
The worst enemy of the creative process is the illusion of completion. That is why iterations are so hard, but so necessary.
In the same way that every painting is an opportunity to find "truth," you have to follow your drawing to whatever you start "seeing." You search for lines that make you see what you're drawing, and follow those to the end project. You can't force your drawing to become what you originally intended it to be.
Thumbnailing characters is iterating graphical patterns on your "skeleton," the body.
Evaluate what qualities make it a crab. How long does it take to read as a crab and what information are you looking at to make the judgment? Reddish pale colours, intricate symmetrical patterns. Shapes - claw + legs. Think how much information you can leave out before it is no longer a crab!
Evaluate the hierarchy of information you take in.
Kenneth Branagh meditates at the beginning and end of each day. True fact.
Anything can be accomplished at a cost. When you're low on time, you can sacrifice other things.
And now, the work.
I did some fan TF2 concepts. Hopefully you can read the text. Eric Wolfpaw is coming to NYU, but they didn't book a room large enough (or I didn't rsvp quickly enough) so I can't go. Bummer.
Latest still life. Need to stop being lazy about these and actually flesh them out.
Old man still life. Did this at Frank Stockton 's meetup. Guy's got mad skills and really good advice. If you live in NYC, you should find him on meetup.com and attend.
Think that's all for now. Will update more once I figure out what's going on with my life.
Didn't even realize it's been so long since my last update. I apologize for you loyal 12 followers... I've have very little time for art over the last 18 days.
People have the illusion of free will because they're conscious of their body making decisions for them. If you were unconscious (say, sleepwalking) your body would make similar decisions and behave in a similar way to your conscious state. The only difference is that you would not able to perceive your own behavior and remember it. Listen to radiolab.
No one person is better than another unless they are older (to a point). If two people are the same age, they have both done interesting things with their time, in their own way. Next time you try to criticize someone, chances are, you have something to learn from them too.
I may be repeating myself, or rephrasing old statements, but it's not like you read those anyway, so:
Design is about enforcing hierarchy in all elements of the picture: shape, value, texture, colour, etc. (Same with polycount and texture res in 3D) The better the hierarchy, the less effort the brain has to go through to make one while you look at the picture, and therefore the more pleasing you find it. At the same time, you have to retain an element of chaos to make the image interesting.
EXERCISE: Try simplifying the edge spectrum. For example: have only super hard and super soft edges in a picture, and nothing in between. See how that affects your colour pickins.
Fixing something isn't nearly a hard as starting it from scratch. Same goes for iterating. It may not be as exciting, because you already know what you're gonna get, but at least it's easy, and it will make your piece look better. SO DO IT!!!!
You can't draw for fun until you have the FUNdamentals ingrained in your brain.
On my intuos4, no matter how much you change the sensitivity, applying the full amount of pressure will always require the same force, which I thought was stupid, because the whole reason I wanted to make it more sensitive was so that it was easier on my hand. I recently discovered that this actually helps me when I'm using the round, pressure-sensitive brush, because whatever colour you pick will stay in harmony with the rest of the canvas as long as it's close to what you need and the opacity of your stroke is at ~80-90%. You don't hurt your hand, and the colour stays in harmony. It's sort of a failsafe device for choosing colour, because you can never get the right one purely by sliding RGB values around.
Also, I spoke about this before, but you can "overshoot" your target colour in saturation and value, but lower the opacity with the pressure on the stylus in order to get to the right place. This is how I usually pick my colours. More often than not, I move my RGB sliders wayy out of whack, and try to put down as much of the crazy colour I mixed as I can, without it looking jarring. Takes a lot of practice.
Anyway, the good news is: Daily Duels is coming back online! Soon. Probably within the month, but we gotta upgrade the website, introduce the voting system and do all sorts of polishing for the graphics. They are going to be tight.
Also I did this pantheon skin from League of Legends. It's not official.
yet.
Seems like fun guidelines for an exercise; it yields great results anyway haha. I'll have to try it sometime.
Going to have to read through your posts because you leave a gold touch with every post you make and its great to learn from.
suburbbum: Sweet!
Been feeling all sorts of weird negative emotions lately, so it's about damn time to return to drawing. Especially since my set up here in Canadia is finally complete! Too bad I'm going back to New York, where I can't draw that much. But at least I can play Log of Leaders!
When you reach a point where you don't know whether what you're doing can be achieved is when miracles start to happen.
Delving into textures again. It's hard. I'm trying to make a decision about how much information I can convey with just the hard and soft round brushes, and how fast.
Nice stuff.
I'm finally alive and online, and man, did I miss the boat of getting good! About two years ago tons of people on CA got good, posted in each others' sketchies and got awesome jobs, including Dave Rapoza, Algenpfleger, Danielc, Miles etc etc. Too bad I had to go to film school and learn about nothing that had to do with painting for another year. Oh well. Maybe the boat will come again...
Great stuff man, keep it up. Watching you do these makes me realize how little I understand about lighting and shadows. At least now I know what I'll be doing this summer.
Nice sketchbook though, its great to come across people that ramble and think about this kinda shit and its something i try and do myself from time to time.
By the way, do you lurk on msn or anything of the sorts? having art dudes to talk shit with is awesome.
p.s. of course you can draw for fun without knowing anything, thats what fuels the fire in the first place, right?
Jackwhat: Yo dude! I think there's another one coming, and sailing to dan's danger room. You better jump on. We'll talk on skype at some point. It'll be good.
Some studies fail. Some studies succeed. Life goes on.