Almost there, gotta stay on target. I'm gonna switch to Loomis studies from now on. If I decide to do them digitally, you'll be seeing them.
Every final stroke you leave on the canvas should be hand-mixed, not picked from the canvas.
You have to observe the hierarchy between the most important colours/values when doing a study. Put the most important ones down first.
If you mix the wrong value of a colour and you need to "transpose" it higher or lower, don't forget to adjust the saturation accordingly. It rarely stays the same when you make a colour lighter or darker.
When you can't quite mix the right colour, make a light stroke erring on one side of that colour, then make another light stroke erring on the other side. As in, if the colour you pick first is too blue, move the slider a tiny bit towards yellow, and make another light stroke. Mix on the canvas.
When you're nervous, you try to prevent your brain from analyzing yourself into oblivion. You talk fast, make a lot of random movements, eyes dart around, breathe quickly etc. So the way to not be nervous is to stop the analysis. Somehow. That's hard.
As artists get bigger, more and more people compete for getting in touch with them. How do you win?
- Start early
- Have something to offer
- Never think that you're beneath somebody, but be humble instead.
Always find a positive justification for what you're doing, even if it's not entirely true. Then make it true. If you can't do that, then don't do it.
Let it be. Do your own thing. Be tolerant and respectful of others, even if you can't find anything to respect them for.
Only after you have experienced the horror of the worst case scenario are you able to judge things rationally.
If there is enough information, reasoning will be productive. Otherwise it will be emotional and negative.
Assuming your aim is to get better, every time you give yourself to something and it looks like crap, you have done the right thing. The trouble is, if your work looks like crap all the time, you don't want to do it at all. But you have to keep going.
Everyone is too busy playing their own game to notice how you're playing yours.
When blocking in, don't try to put down exactly the colour you see from the start. Put down the jumping off colour, i.e. what you're gonna mix all the hues and variations from.
Kevlar jens: Thanks man! Gonna keep posting more often from now on.
Sorry I've been away, everyone. Things are getting progressively busier and busier, but it's all good because I'm happily employed at Riot Games as an associate concept artist! I'm living with my friend in fumy downtown Los Angeles trying to find a place to live in sunny Santa Monica, where my beloved studio is.
Consider this a rough step-by-step tutorial of how to break into the industry based on my experience, the mistakes I made and the things I learned along the way - while they are fresh in my mind. Anyone listening to my story should know that since it already happened, by repeating the same process you won't be able to get the same results. You will need to work harder, because I just took your spot.
Now, the big dogs out there will have much more information about the industry, how it works and what they like to see. I'm simply attempting to sum up how I would approach it if I had 5 years to do it over.
Step 1:
Don't go to college. I make less in a year than my tuition was for one semester, which is enough to live decently in Santa Monica, one of the most desirable areas in Los Angeles. While the place I got educated was a lot of fun, a fulfilling life experience, and got me a piece of paper that helped me get the job and stay in the States (I'm Canadian), it didn't do me much good as far as furthering my drawing skills. In fact, it took away time that I could have spent getting better.
Step 2:
Move in with an ambitious art buddy. It is very hard to motivate yourself when you are living on your own, or with your parents. It is even harder when all your roommates want to do is kick back and have fun. If you're serious about drawing for a living, you don't have time for fun right now. Get rid of friends, girlfriends, family, drugs, video games and whatever other distractions may stand in your way. Your ambitious art buddy will satisfy all your social needs and motivate you. Get someone around your skill level, where neither of you may feel superior to the other, so you will both take each others' criticism.
I lived with Neolight from last September to May. He is now going through an art internship at Insomniac Games.
Step 3:
Use the money you saved from not going to college to sustain yourself. Join a gym. Eat healthy. Sleep well. I can't emphasize this enough. If you don't exercise every day, you raise the risk of getting carpal tunnel or other RSI's. Alternatively, if you don't run into physical problems from drawing, you're not drawing enough. When you run into wrist/back problems, you'll need to carefully analyze your posture and drawing methods. Leading a healthy lifestyle outside of drawing will help you, but you'll also need to take frequent stretch breaks, have an ergonomic set-up for drawing, and do anything you can to adjust the physical act of drawing so that you don't get put out of commission by RSI. When I go to life drawing, I don't do bold strokes that carve the form out of the page anymore, because I only have about 400 of those in me before my thumb begins to hurt. Instead I draw lightly, bringing the form out with gentle strokes that I can do all day.
Step 4:
Communicate with other artists. You're not going to learn enough about the industry or about art from the internet alone. Reach out to as many people as you can and try your best to soak up everything they tell you. E-mailing people and going to conventions has countless benefits. It raises the industry's awareness of you, it gets you super inspired, builds up your social network (which increases opportunities), gets you tons of new information - anecdotes like this one, critiques on your work, etc etc. Face time with other artists is key. It puts you in the right mindset and reminds you that you're not alone on this journey.
Note: The only way you can increase the chances of people responding to your e-mails is by being yourself and being honest. If they still don't respond, then they're either way too busy to read them, or you shouldn't hear their feedback anyway.
Step 5:
Have something that separates you from hundreds of other kids at your skill level or better, trying to get your job . Concept artists are a dime a dozen. Even if you're not at a skill level comparable to the big stars of the industry, being able to do one thing exceptionally well will really increase your chances of getting hired (especially if that thing is in demand). This could be a tangible skill, a style that you have developed, subject matter you specialize in, or just a je-ne-sais-quoi about your work that makes other people remember it. I am good at turnarounds.
Step 6:
Get lucky. I did a turnaround to cover my bases, and 6 months later I happened to show it to Riot at precisely the right time when they needed someone with this skill. At this point, Riot's sky-rocketing reputation has turned the heads of badasses way beyond my level and I highly doubt I'd be able to get in if I were to apply now. Be at the right place at the right time, and seize any opportunity that comes your way. I had no idea how awesome Riot was when I was showing my portfolio to them. They were just across the way from the Blizzard booth at GDC.
Step 7:
Have a loftier goal that getting a job in the industry. It's a good place to start, but once you do achieve it, you'll need a new place to get to. Only recently did I understand that the journey is more fun than the destination, so I have to come up with a new goal fast, because I've trained my mind to focus on the task at hand and give it my all. At the moment, my brain is very confused as to what to focus on, and you don't want that to happen.
I'm attaching some life drawing for good measure. I haven't done it in a while, but I was sitting behind a dude who was just so good, that I had a really easy time simplifying the figure after looking at his drawings. 2-25's.
Unlike most other artists who get full time gigs and drop off the face of the earth, I'm gonna keep sharing my thoughts, studies and personal work with you here. The reason I haven't been is because I still don't have a place to live, which puts a hard cap on how much work I can do outside of Riot. It's been emotionally tasking not to be able to pursue your goals for a month, so I'm a little shaken up. Now it's time to review all the things I've written in my journal from a month and a half ago.
You are always right. Any decision you have made in the past was the choice that you needed to make. Even if it seemed like a mistake, it was the best thing that could have happened.
Trying to change your habits as a test of willpower is immature and rarely works. You need to internalize a shift in priorities in order to succeed at that.
Becoming an adult happens in 3 steps:
1. Learn who you are.
2. There will be things you won't like (or you have to re-do step 1), so change them
3. There will be things you can't change, so learn to love them. It is illogical to hate yourself for things you can't change. Your past mistakes count.
Los Angeles is deceptively spacious. There is actually very little space, because people are always moving. You always have to wait your turn to enjoy things. I guess it's the same in New York, but there you just expect everything to be crowded.
Here is how karma works: you put in the time, and you get rewarded. Fair? Yes. Why does it work? Because everyone else gave up before you. Certain kinds of risks often pay off, because very few people take them.
It doesn't matter how you apply brush strokes as long as you put the right value in the right place.
We spend so long hiding our true intentions that all you have to do to make a connection with another human being is to reveal them.
It's infinitely harder to make compelling and precise brush strokes on the computer, so do them in three steps: put the marks down on a separate layer, then adjust them, then merge down.
You can save a lot of time by plotting down your hard edges first, because they're the most important.
By trying too hard you make it harder for yourself to succeed. You start thinking about the effort rather than the thing you're doing. Or maybe that's just me.
Picking the base tone is more important than subsequent colours, because it heavily affects how your colour mixing curves will look. Make sure you have enough saturation!
Oddly enough, growing up is about relaxing more than proving or achieving anything.
Commit to lines right away. Without committing, you can't design.
You can change skintone by changing the colour of the clothes.
You learn how to react to things from the people around you. And other people learn from you what kind of behavior you approve of or not. Pick the right reactions and approve of the right kind of behavior.
The more you think about something, the bigger it becomes. Be careful of this power.
Your subconscious limits you. Negative thoughts limit your subconscious. DON'T HAVE THEM.
I was told I'd have a hard time working after work. But in actuality, I need to work on my own stuff to stay sane.
Don't use straight lines with shift-click. Do them with your own hand - put personality into them.
Successful people are not the ones who take action when something is wrong, but the ones who keep achieving when everything is great.
Doesn't matter what you do, it's all about how you do it.
If you have time or brainpower to think about how well you're doing your task, you're not doing it well enough.
When you are presenting a bunch of your designs, pick the worst one and work on it until it is awesome, (or start it over) then rinse and repeat until you can't tell which one is the worst.
Design is changing the patterns of elements in a picture to draw attention to certain points in it. The cleverness and simplicity of distribution of the viewers' attention is what makes the design appealing.
Anticipation is more interesting than the climax. IMHO.
Figure out what else will be in the illustration besides the focus. You gotta have room for your eye to travel, not just points of interest everywhere.
Thanks for the waning philosophy. Always a pleasure before bed. Seriously though, some great points here. Not sure if I'm on board with all of them, but still helpful nonetheless. Great studies as well
It's such an ordeal to update this sketchbook, but you know what? Someday, when I'm really good, some kid who's just starting to draw will want to scroll back all the way to now to see how I got to where I will be.
Do you remember saying this?
that's me man its truly inspiring how much you have improved.
Edit: Thank you for sharing the things you have learned that's how I learn best.
suburbum: Always a pleasure to rant you off to slumber
Timmywithag: Haha you're too early, dude! I only just begun my career. Seriously, thanks though. I'm always flattered when someone tells me I've done something to inspire them. The rush from that has to be one of the most rewarding things in life.
premium: Shine on man! Shine on...
Focus has become somewhat of a luxury in the internet age.
Retweet : Somewhere inside you, your imagination is conjuring up visions more elaborate, more beautiful than anything you have ever seen in your life. It's up to you to learn to harvest these images and reproduce them as authentically as you can learn to do in a lifetime.
I'm almost done moving to LA. Once I get my chair and my desk, I will have run out of excuses not to focus on my art. So many good things happening, though, it is distracting. Randomly got to meet Anthony Jones . Dude is really chill and super smart. You really should go to his page now. Don't read the rest of this.
When trying to calculate the shift of a coloured surface under a different-coloured light, decrease the saturation of the colour you're putting down (the one in the different light) and make sure that the new colour stays in the correct relative hue. Eg. Red surface under a green light: decrease the saturation of the red, and shift the hue into something cooler. Play until looks right. Also, i believe the value of a red surface under green light will be darker than the one under white light. Correct me if I'm wrong.
So.. when you have an area of high saturation on your canvas, desaturating your brush stroke and shifting the hue slightly goes a long way to introducing new colours into the area. I need to do a tutorial about this. Right now these are just notes for myself from the future. There is a tut on form coming next weekend, though. Watch out.
You can either mix colours by trying to get as close to your desired colour as you can, or by using wildly outrageous saturated combinations of colours. Which one do you think yields in more happy accidents?
The easiest opportunity to introduce wild colours into your pictures is in hard edges and fresnel reflections.
It's harder to get grays to look correct together, because the more desaturated a colour is, the more precise you need to be with your RGB slider ratios to get the right hues.
Design isn't about the shapes as much as the relationships between them.
Painting environments isn't about which brushes you use, but how you choose to blend your shapes and how you make them interesting.
Close your eyes and try to visualize it if you can't get it right.
Make everything in your picture cool to look at, but make the focus more prominent.
Find interesting flows in the outline of your design.
If you aren't absolutely certain that your drawing kicks ass, you should make it better, because it likely won't impress anyone else.
Sometimes you have to let yourself do what you want. Satisfy your curiosity for things other than art before you end up watching ponies for two hours instead of reading about space travel.
These are from two weeks ago. Went to life drawing with f'ing Katie DeSousa! Was probably too self conscious so the drawings are meh. Go to her page now. Last chance.
Read the entire thread. Excellent advice. You are a smart, gifted dude. Keep posting, this kind of thing helps a ton.
okay the above was not gushy enough, really dude this is tremendously helpful and inspiring. You need to pick up writing as a more serious hobby, with some focus you could write an amazing book on art someday. I would buy it for myself and all my friends. That ability to learn and intelligently dissect what you're learning is inspiring.
Dunno man, twilight is a pretty good movie to watch. It sorta takes you back to those good old high school times, when life was a lot simpler. Instead of your friends, it's really really attractive people having the same problems you had, with a twist. In the end, it just makes you feel good about yourself because you realize how much of a better person you've become since then, albeit you look different. Maybe it's more compelling for me right now because I'm currently coping with being a grown-up.
Never forget the importance of the colour you're mixing on top of, and it's temperature. The key to raising values in colour-harmonious style is establishing proper jumping off points.
When picking colours, max out your RGB slider values. You'll always be safe. You can tone down saturation/value with your brush opacity. It's the only way of mixing in photoshop without losing saturation, plus you make sure that your colour stays in key (I set my brush sensitivity to very low, so it's very hard for me to fully apply any colour I pick. As a consiquence, most colours I apply will have some of the under colour in them, which will them harmonize with it).
The more steps a task involves, the less likely you are to do it right now. Often the number of steps/time commitment of any given task takes priority over its importance, which is why we the young tend to get lost in the internet for hours at a time. Tabs is the worst invention. So, don't rack the disciprine: Have your sketchbook, pencil, eraser and sharpener out and open at all times. Have music playing if you need it to draw. Get rid of as many obstacles as you can, because you're only a split second away from deviantart.
Sorry 'bout the colours. Will try harder to calibrate.
So as you can see, for a long time i've been experimenting with using mostly a soft airbrush to start out my studies and only coming in with the hard round at the end. You don't commit to a drawing right away, you leave soft edges in areas out of focus and it looks very realistic/painterly. Then, after I started doing concepts, I realized that you can establish values and planes much quicker with the hard round, albeit it's harder to give the object polish and take it all the way to realism. The style of our game sort of forced me to commit to hard edges everywhere, because that's how textures work in 3D. (Though imagine if you could have soft edges in the same way your eye works!!!)
TLDR, a combination of the two is what I decided to pursue. You start off with the soft airbrush and lay in your values and colours, then search for the hardest edges that define your image and put them in with a hard round. Rinse, repeat: Establish the general values/colours with airbrush, tighten with hard round or texture brush. Ultimately it doesn't matter what you use. Just put down as much information as quickly as you can.
What got you started on using soft to hard brush? Is there any specific technique or artist you're emulating, or is it just what works for you? What advantages make you choose that method over just big -> small hard brush?
Awesome work. Saw your post on the crimson daggers thread over at concept art. Just starting 2D art myself. Doing mostly on life/photo studies right now focusing on measurements and value to get a likeness. Anyways any general tips you might have when starting to draw from imagination? At the moment I am just doing the 100's study for creatures and such.
suprore: It works better for me, since I like to leave a lot of the edges soft in my final product. Overall you can do either one. Soft rounds just give you precise gradients. It's a lot easier to make form go "bump"
perfectblue: To draw from imagination, you have to do it. Analyze artists that you like and figure out why. Then bring their techniques into your work. Analyze your own drawings/paintings, and figure out what's missing. The process of getting better at drawing is a path of knowledge, not physical practice. The more you can learn from every painting you do, the faster you will get better.
Didn't get into the Marquee club because I didn't bring a dress shirt to vegas, so decided to blog instead. Fuck that shit anyway, the wait was getting up to an hour.
Yet another tutorial that I will need to do. For now, just analyze the wikipedia page for the Golden Ratio. If you want to learn the rules of design fast, make your distribution of detail, value, saturation and colour should adhere to the golden ratio. Essentially, if the information in your image were to be measured in bytes, as your eye travels around the picture the flow of information should increase and decrease according to the fibonacci sequence. At least at first.
Do what you love, but be careful. If a bunch of other people love doing it too, you'll need to work harder than them to succeed.
If you're not starving, share your food.
Break down value the same way you break down shape. Put down the big value changes, then take it down to less significant ones.
Use each brush stroke as a piece of clay that you add or chisel away to sculpt your form.
As you increase the values of your sliders, remember that your distance between them needs to increase too, because you have a lot more of a range of saturation.
When working in colour, you need to think 2-3 steps ahead, because it is relative.
Money gives you access to things that are desired by people.
By the time success or acclaim reaches a person or a group of people, they have already changed, for better or for worse. Those zen people had some good ideas, man.
If you think you're ahead on a project, you will almost certainly fall behind.
charlottje: Nah it's not bad. They're just studies. Nothing really interesting about them. I'm just trying to upload something consistenly.
I got a whole bunch of work backed up now, which means I'm going to start posting more frequently. Maybe I'll get some of my street cred back.
Find a process for isolating elements of reality that leaves the prettiest artifacts. As in, the areas that aren't finished should look finished as quickly as possible. Constant time pressure helps you get better faster, because you begin to get rid of inefficiencies and you prioritize visual information so that the important stuff goes in first.
It's all about the bear necessities. Don't ask how many strokes it will take you, but ask how few. How few colours/values will it take to render a human body? What's important for you? Form? Pigment variation? Gesture? There are many ways to portray reality and none of them are "realistic" so choose to focus on a combination of visual elements that fits your brain.
Analyze the structure of what you're drawing. That way your drawings will instinctively have more power, and you will learn more about your subject.
In entertainment design you can't stray too far from the zeitgeist. Your audience has to know and get what you're drawing right away.
When taking crits, always say "yes, and ..." If you don't understand, ask why.
Always keep in mind what the most important element in your design/painting is. ALWAYS. Before making any stroke, ask what is the important element. I can't stress this enough.
Gradients give you more information that flat colours, however it's a lot harder to manage them to describe form.
Concept artists are basically prostitutes. You are hired to draw things without getting attached to any of them. I will probably return to this parallel.
The tighter the gradient, the harder edges you can use on your brush.
I repeat myself a lot, but that's only because these things are important. The easiest way to resist temptation is to give yourself no choice.
man, you think allot
very nice studies
as a concept artist you are hired to design and you get attached, you get personal, otherwise it looks generic so you shouldn't feel like a prostitute
maybe they didn't hire you as a concept artist and failed to let you know
it happens allot in the industry
I am just kidding
any way nice works, put some more concepts along the studies you will feel better
gillmeister: Thanks man! Failed so far, but hopefully will do.
altasa: Yeah but if you get attached, you will not take feedback, and then you really fail as a concept artist. I'll discuss this with you at some point.
Man it's been a while, eh? I started Extra Still Life to force myself to do personal work on the side, and so far the only sketch that didn't have to do with Riot is this.
Not to worry. This is the beginning of a new era. I've got a ton of Riot work backed up and ready to show, some of which I'll be uploading on DA and CGhub . Don't have too much written down these days, because most of it is short enough to fit in a tweet !
Anything you want is just a matter of time. Be patient and opportunities will present themselves.
Everyone loves to be sincerely flattered.
You know your own flaws, but you're afraid to admit them.
Stop yourself from ruminating. Recognize when you're having negative thoughts and get rid of them. The more you think the less you do.
Don't introduce new values into your painting unless you know that all the present ones are in the right place.
It should be more about shapes of value than strokes.
There are things that will fall in your lap, and there are things that you're too young for. Doesn't mean you won't get them ever. Be patient.
Replies
Every final stroke you leave on the canvas should be hand-mixed, not picked from the canvas.
You have to observe the hierarchy between the most important colours/values when doing a study. Put the most important ones down first.
If you mix the wrong value of a colour and you need to "transpose" it higher or lower, don't forget to adjust the saturation accordingly. It rarely stays the same when you make a colour lighter or darker.
When you can't quite mix the right colour, make a light stroke erring on one side of that colour, then make another light stroke erring on the other side. As in, if the colour you pick first is too blue, move the slider a tiny bit towards yellow, and make another light stroke. Mix on the canvas.
When you're nervous, you try to prevent your brain from analyzing yourself into oblivion. You talk fast, make a lot of random movements, eyes dart around, breathe quickly etc. So the way to not be nervous is to stop the analysis. Somehow. That's hard.
As artists get bigger, more and more people compete for getting in touch with them. How do you win?
- Start early
- Have something to offer
- Never think that you're beneath somebody, but be humble instead.
Always find a positive justification for what you're doing, even if it's not entirely true. Then make it true. If you can't do that, then don't do it.
Let it be. Do your own thing. Be tolerant and respectful of others, even if you can't find anything to respect them for.
Only after you have experienced the horror of the worst case scenario are you able to judge things rationally.
If there is enough information, reasoning will be productive. Otherwise it will be emotional and negative.
Assuming your aim is to get better, every time you give yourself to something and it looks like crap, you have done the right thing. The trouble is, if your work looks like crap all the time, you don't want to do it at all. But you have to keep going.
Everyone is too busy playing their own game to notice how you're playing yours.
When blocking in, don't try to put down exactly the colour you see from the start. Put down the jumping off colour, i.e. what you're gonna mix all the hues and variations from.
I really like how you post your thoughts and tips as well. They're quite useful and inspirational.
Sorry I've been away, everyone. Things are getting progressively busier and busier, but it's all good because I'm happily employed at Riot Games as an associate concept artist! I'm living with my friend in fumy downtown Los Angeles trying to find a place to live in sunny Santa Monica, where my beloved studio is.
Consider this a rough step-by-step tutorial of how to break into the industry based on my experience, the mistakes I made and the things I learned along the way - while they are fresh in my mind. Anyone listening to my story should know that since it already happened, by repeating the same process you won't be able to get the same results. You will need to work harder, because I just took your spot.
Now, the big dogs out there will have much more information about the industry, how it works and what they like to see. I'm simply attempting to sum up how I would approach it if I had 5 years to do it over.
Step 1:
Don't go to college. I make less in a year than my tuition was for one semester, which is enough to live decently in Santa Monica, one of the most desirable areas in Los Angeles. While the place I got educated was a lot of fun, a fulfilling life experience, and got me a piece of paper that helped me get the job and stay in the States (I'm Canadian), it didn't do me much good as far as furthering my drawing skills. In fact, it took away time that I could have spent getting better.
Step 2:
Move in with an ambitious art buddy. It is very hard to motivate yourself when you are living on your own, or with your parents. It is even harder when all your roommates want to do is kick back and have fun. If you're serious about drawing for a living, you don't have time for fun right now. Get rid of friends, girlfriends, family, drugs, video games and whatever other distractions may stand in your way. Your ambitious art buddy will satisfy all your social needs and motivate you. Get someone around your skill level, where neither of you may feel superior to the other, so you will both take each others' criticism.
I lived with Neolight from last September to May. He is now going through an art internship at Insomniac Games.
Step 3:
Use the money you saved from not going to college to sustain yourself. Join a gym. Eat healthy. Sleep well. I can't emphasize this enough. If you don't exercise every day, you raise the risk of getting carpal tunnel or other RSI's. Alternatively, if you don't run into physical problems from drawing, you're not drawing enough. When you run into wrist/back problems, you'll need to carefully analyze your posture and drawing methods. Leading a healthy lifestyle outside of drawing will help you, but you'll also need to take frequent stretch breaks, have an ergonomic set-up for drawing, and do anything you can to adjust the physical act of drawing so that you don't get put out of commission by RSI. When I go to life drawing, I don't do bold strokes that carve the form out of the page anymore, because I only have about 400 of those in me before my thumb begins to hurt. Instead I draw lightly, bringing the form out with gentle strokes that I can do all day.
Step 4:
Communicate with other artists. You're not going to learn enough about the industry or about art from the internet alone. Reach out to as many people as you can and try your best to soak up everything they tell you. E-mailing people and going to conventions has countless benefits. It raises the industry's awareness of you, it gets you super inspired, builds up your social network (which increases opportunities), gets you tons of new information - anecdotes like this one, critiques on your work, etc etc. Face time with other artists is key. It puts you in the right mindset and reminds you that you're not alone on this journey.
Note: The only way you can increase the chances of people responding to your e-mails is by being yourself and being honest. If they still don't respond, then they're either way too busy to read them, or you shouldn't hear their feedback anyway.
Step 5:
Have something that separates you from hundreds of other kids at your skill level or better, trying to get your job . Concept artists are a dime a dozen. Even if you're not at a skill level comparable to the big stars of the industry, being able to do one thing exceptionally well will really increase your chances of getting hired (especially if that thing is in demand). This could be a tangible skill, a style that you have developed, subject matter you specialize in, or just a je-ne-sais-quoi about your work that makes other people remember it. I am good at turnarounds.
Step 6:
Get lucky. I did a turnaround to cover my bases, and 6 months later I happened to show it to Riot at precisely the right time when they needed someone with this skill. At this point, Riot's sky-rocketing reputation has turned the heads of badasses way beyond my level and I highly doubt I'd be able to get in if I were to apply now. Be at the right place at the right time, and seize any opportunity that comes your way. I had no idea how awesome Riot was when I was showing my portfolio to them. They were just across the way from the Blizzard booth at GDC.
Step 7:
Have a loftier goal that getting a job in the industry. It's a good place to start, but once you do achieve it, you'll need a new place to get to. Only recently did I understand that the journey is more fun than the destination, so I have to come up with a new goal fast, because I've trained my mind to focus on the task at hand and give it my all. At the moment, my brain is very confused as to what to focus on, and you don't want that to happen.
I'm attaching some life drawing for good measure. I haven't done it in a while, but I was sitting behind a dude who was just so good, that I had a really easy time simplifying the figure after looking at his drawings. 2-25's.
You are always right. Any decision you have made in the past was the choice that you needed to make. Even if it seemed like a mistake, it was the best thing that could have happened.
Trying to change your habits as a test of willpower is immature and rarely works. You need to internalize a shift in priorities in order to succeed at that.
Becoming an adult happens in 3 steps:
1. Learn who you are.
2. There will be things you won't like (or you have to re-do step 1), so change them
3. There will be things you can't change, so learn to love them. It is illogical to hate yourself for things you can't change. Your past mistakes count.
Los Angeles is deceptively spacious. There is actually very little space, because people are always moving. You always have to wait your turn to enjoy things. I guess it's the same in New York, but there you just expect everything to be crowded.
Here is how karma works: you put in the time, and you get rewarded. Fair? Yes. Why does it work? Because everyone else gave up before you. Certain kinds of risks often pay off, because very few people take them.
It doesn't matter how you apply brush strokes as long as you put the right value in the right place.
We spend so long hiding our true intentions that all you have to do to make a connection with another human being is to reveal them.
It's infinitely harder to make compelling and precise brush strokes on the computer, so do them in three steps: put the marks down on a separate layer, then adjust them, then merge down.
You can save a lot of time by plotting down your hard edges first, because they're the most important.
By trying too hard you make it harder for yourself to succeed. You start thinking about the effort rather than the thing you're doing. Or maybe that's just me.
Picking the base tone is more important than subsequent colours, because it heavily affects how your colour mixing curves will look. Make sure you have enough saturation!
Oddly enough, growing up is about relaxing more than proving or achieving anything.
Commit to lines right away. Without committing, you can't design.
You can change skintone by changing the colour of the clothes.
You learn how to react to things from the people around you. And other people learn from you what kind of behavior you approve of or not. Pick the right reactions and approve of the right kind of behavior.
The more you think about something, the bigger it becomes. Be careful of this power.
Your subconscious limits you. Negative thoughts limit your subconscious. DON'T HAVE THEM.
I was told I'd have a hard time working after work. But in actuality, I need to work on my own stuff to stay sane.
Don't use straight lines with shift-click. Do them with your own hand - put personality into them.
Successful people are not the ones who take action when something is wrong, but the ones who keep achieving when everything is great.
Doesn't matter what you do, it's all about how you do it.
If you have time or brainpower to think about how well you're doing your task, you're not doing it well enough.
When you are presenting a bunch of your designs, pick the worst one and work on it until it is awesome, (or start it over) then rinse and repeat until you can't tell which one is the worst.
Design is changing the patterns of elements in a picture to draw attention to certain points in it. The cleverness and simplicity of distribution of the viewers' attention is what makes the design appealing.
Anticipation is more interesting than the climax. IMHO.
Figure out what else will be in the illustration besides the focus. You gotta have room for your eye to travel, not just points of interest everywhere.
10's, 15's and a 25:
Do you remember saying this?
that's me man its truly inspiring how much you have improved.
Edit: Thank you for sharing the things you have learned that's how I learn best.
Timmywithag: Haha you're too early, dude! I only just begun my career. Seriously, thanks though. I'm always flattered when someone tells me I've done something to inspire them. The rush from that has to be one of the most rewarding things in life.
premium: Shine on man! Shine on...
Focus has become somewhat of a luxury in the internet age.
Retweet : Somewhere inside you, your imagination is conjuring up visions more elaborate, more beautiful than anything you have ever seen in your life. It's up to you to learn to harvest these images and reproduce them as authentically as you can learn to do in a lifetime.
I'm almost done moving to LA. Once I get my chair and my desk, I will have run out of excuses not to focus on my art. So many good things happening, though, it is distracting. Randomly got to meet Anthony Jones . Dude is really chill and super smart. You really should go to his page now. Don't read the rest of this.
When trying to calculate the shift of a coloured surface under a different-coloured light, decrease the saturation of the colour you're putting down (the one in the different light) and make sure that the new colour stays in the correct relative hue. Eg. Red surface under a green light: decrease the saturation of the red, and shift the hue into something cooler. Play until looks right. Also, i believe the value of a red surface under green light will be darker than the one under white light. Correct me if I'm wrong.
So.. when you have an area of high saturation on your canvas, desaturating your brush stroke and shifting the hue slightly goes a long way to introducing new colours into the area. I need to do a tutorial about this. Right now these are just notes for myself from the future. There is a tut on form coming next weekend, though. Watch out.
You can either mix colours by trying to get as close to your desired colour as you can, or by using wildly outrageous saturated combinations of colours. Which one do you think yields in more happy accidents?
The easiest opportunity to introduce wild colours into your pictures is in hard edges and fresnel reflections.
It's harder to get grays to look correct together, because the more desaturated a colour is, the more precise you need to be with your RGB slider ratios to get the right hues.
Design isn't about the shapes as much as the relationships between them.
Painting environments isn't about which brushes you use, but how you choose to blend your shapes and how you make them interesting.
Close your eyes and try to visualize it if you can't get it right.
Make everything in your picture cool to look at, but make the focus more prominent.
Find interesting flows in the outline of your design.
If you aren't absolutely certain that your drawing kicks ass, you should make it better, because it likely won't impress anyone else.
Sometimes you have to let yourself do what you want. Satisfy your curiosity for things other than art before you end up watching ponies for two hours instead of reading about space travel.
These are from two weeks ago. Went to life drawing with f'ing Katie DeSousa! Was probably too self conscious so the drawings are meh. Go to her page now. Last chance.
10-25:
okay the above was not gushy enough, really dude this is tremendously helpful and inspiring. You need to pick up writing as a more serious hobby, with some focus you could write an amazing book on art someday. I would buy it for myself and all my friends. That ability to learn and intelligently dissect what you're learning is inspiring.
Dunno man, twilight is a pretty good movie to watch. It sorta takes you back to those good old high school times, when life was a lot simpler. Instead of your friends, it's really really attractive people having the same problems you had, with a twist. In the end, it just makes you feel good about yourself because you realize how much of a better person you've become since then, albeit you look different. Maybe it's more compelling for me right now because I'm currently coping with being a grown-up.
Never forget the importance of the colour you're mixing on top of, and it's temperature. The key to raising values in colour-harmonious style is establishing proper jumping off points.
When picking colours, max out your RGB slider values. You'll always be safe. You can tone down saturation/value with your brush opacity. It's the only way of mixing in photoshop without losing saturation, plus you make sure that your colour stays in key (I set my brush sensitivity to very low, so it's very hard for me to fully apply any colour I pick. As a consiquence, most colours I apply will have some of the under colour in them, which will them harmonize with it).
The more steps a task involves, the less likely you are to do it right now. Often the number of steps/time commitment of any given task takes priority over its importance, which is why we the young tend to get lost in the internet for hours at a time. Tabs is the worst invention. So, don't rack the disciprine: Have your sketchbook, pencil, eraser and sharpener out and open at all times. Have music playing if you need it to draw. Get rid of as many obstacles as you can, because you're only a split second away from deviantart.
Sorry 'bout the colours. Will try harder to calibrate.
So as you can see, for a long time i've been experimenting with using mostly a soft airbrush to start out my studies and only coming in with the hard round at the end. You don't commit to a drawing right away, you leave soft edges in areas out of focus and it looks very realistic/painterly. Then, after I started doing concepts, I realized that you can establish values and planes much quicker with the hard round, albeit it's harder to give the object polish and take it all the way to realism. The style of our game sort of forced me to commit to hard edges everywhere, because that's how textures work in 3D. (Though imagine if you could have soft edges in the same way your eye works!!!)
TLDR, a combination of the two is what I decided to pursue. You start off with the soft airbrush and lay in your values and colours, then search for the hardest edges that define your image and put them in with a hard round. Rinse, repeat: Establish the general values/colours with airbrush, tighten with hard round or texture brush. Ultimately it doesn't matter what you use. Just put down as much information as quickly as you can.
What got you started on using soft to hard brush? Is there any specific technique or artist you're emulating, or is it just what works for you? What advantages make you choose that method over just big -> small hard brush?
perfectblue: To draw from imagination, you have to do it. Analyze artists that you like and figure out why. Then bring their techniques into your work. Analyze your own drawings/paintings, and figure out what's missing. The process of getting better at drawing is a path of knowledge, not physical practice. The more you can learn from every painting you do, the faster you will get better.
Didn't get into the Marquee club because I didn't bring a dress shirt to vegas, so decided to blog instead. Fuck that shit anyway, the wait was getting up to an hour.
Yet another tutorial that I will need to do. For now, just analyze the wikipedia page for the Golden Ratio. If you want to learn the rules of design fast, make your distribution of detail, value, saturation and colour should adhere to the golden ratio. Essentially, if the information in your image were to be measured in bytes, as your eye travels around the picture the flow of information should increase and decrease according to the fibonacci sequence. At least at first.
Do what you love, but be careful. If a bunch of other people love doing it too, you'll need to work harder than them to succeed.
If you're not starving, share your food.
Break down value the same way you break down shape. Put down the big value changes, then take it down to less significant ones.
Use each brush stroke as a piece of clay that you add or chisel away to sculpt your form.
As you increase the values of your sliders, remember that your distance between them needs to increase too, because you have a lot more of a range of saturation.
When working in colour, you need to think 2-3 steps ahead, because it is relative.
Money gives you access to things that are desired by people.
By the time success or acclaim reaches a person or a group of people, they have already changed, for better or for worse. Those zen people had some good ideas, man.
If you think you're ahead on a project, you will almost certainly fall behind.
I got a whole bunch of work backed up now, which means I'm going to start posting more frequently. Maybe I'll get some of my street cred back.
Find a process for isolating elements of reality that leaves the prettiest artifacts. As in, the areas that aren't finished should look finished as quickly as possible. Constant time pressure helps you get better faster, because you begin to get rid of inefficiencies and you prioritize visual information so that the important stuff goes in first.
It's all about the bear necessities. Don't ask how many strokes it will take you, but ask how few. How few colours/values will it take to render a human body? What's important for you? Form? Pigment variation? Gesture? There are many ways to portray reality and none of them are "realistic" so choose to focus on a combination of visual elements that fits your brain.
Analyze the structure of what you're drawing. That way your drawings will instinctively have more power, and you will learn more about your subject.
In entertainment design you can't stray too far from the zeitgeist. Your audience has to know and get what you're drawing right away.
When taking crits, always say "yes, and ..." If you don't understand, ask why.
Always keep in mind what the most important element in your design/painting is. ALWAYS. Before making any stroke, ask what is the important element. I can't stress this enough.
Gradients give you more information that flat colours, however it's a lot harder to manage them to describe form.
Concept artists are basically prostitutes. You are hired to draw things without getting attached to any of them. I will probably return to this parallel.
The tighter the gradient, the harder edges you can use on your brush.
I repeat myself a lot, but that's only because these things are important. The easiest way to resist temptation is to give yourself no choice.
Life drawings from last night. 10s, 15, and 20s.
very nice studies
as a concept artist you are hired to design and you get attached, you get personal, otherwise it looks generic so you shouldn't feel like a prostitute
maybe they didn't hire you as a concept artist and failed to let you know
it happens allot in the industry
I am just kidding
any way nice works, put some more concepts along the studies you will feel better
altasa: Yeah but if you get attached, you will not take feedback, and then you really fail as a concept artist. I'll discuss this with you at some point.
Man it's been a while, eh? I started Extra Still Life to force myself to do personal work on the side, and so far the only sketch that didn't have to do with Riot is this.
Not to worry. This is the beginning of a new era. I've got a ton of Riot work backed up and ready to show, some of which I'll be uploading on DA and CGhub . Don't have too much written down these days, because most of it is short enough to fit in a tweet !
Anything you want is just a matter of time. Be patient and opportunities will present themselves.
Everyone loves to be sincerely flattered.
You know your own flaws, but you're afraid to admit them.
Stop yourself from ruminating. Recognize when you're having negative thoughts and get rid of them. The more you think the less you do.
Don't introduce new values into your painting unless you know that all the present ones are in the right place.
It should be more about shapes of value than strokes.
There are things that will fall in your lap, and there are things that you're too young for. Doesn't mean you won't get them ever. Be patient.