Help me create my own course for env concept learning

MainManiac · Feb 2012

(I have checked the wiki already)

Lately i've been learning to paint (http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=88339 please make sure you compare the first page to the last few posts

) and I've progressed quite a bit. I enjoy painting characters, but like 3d, I never feel like im fully expressing myself and something is missing. I think what im aiming at is I want to be able to concept environments so I can draw complete scenes rather than components to a game which is just a part of a scene.

I remember with characters I studied anatomy quite a bit and it helped me immensely, proportion and all that jazz gave me a great foundation for alot of characters.

What im asking is if youre an environment painter here (hopefully we have some

) I would absolutely LOVE to know what key areas youd suggest I research. My biggest trouble that seems to be hitting me right now is perspective, I have issues making something appear to be going far back in space, but I would love to learn!

Also if you have any extremely helpful mini-lessons on lighting/shadow studies outdoors or indoors etc id love to see them (other than that big art_tut one, read it 3-4 times)

Note: my main priority right now is getting forms to read. I don't really care about details right now when I can't even get a landscape to have correct scale

Thanks!

Blaisoid · Feb 2012

ok, some random thoughts:

i know what you mean, i was at that point 2 years ago myself.
back then i was a part of a mod team already and one day i thought i should give environments a try.

So i just started painting areas.
my first concepts in perspective were so crappy that i soon switched to painting isometric views.
Which was probably a bad move, i should have worked my ass off practicing standard 2 point perspective instead.
Cos while there's nothing wrong with isometric, it's pretty limiting to be good only at that. Genres like FPS require concepts that are closer to what player will see.

So because of that laziness, today i still suck at defining normal perspective.
I do understand it theoretically but using all those helper lines is such a pain in the ass that i always give up in the end.
I think that for people who practiced it from start using those is so natural that it takes only few moments. they just draw some general foundation for perspective and then they can correctly visualize placement and size of details, without drawing lines for just everything.

so yeah, you definitely should focus on perspective.

besides that, all the other general knowledge also surely applies to environment concepts. design guidelines, color theory, composition etc.

i think my biggest problem right now is inability to give rooms an interesting shape and use more complex dimensional forms for walls, ceilings, floors etc. i got stuck with octagons, hexagons, rectangles and other simple shit.
i guess solution to that would be studing and copying existing architecture.

generally you should make lots of really diverse locations and try out different styles.
when you design a certain type of environment for the first time, you must use brain to determine what kind of details will fit there, how to achieve the proper look of each material etc.
it always requires lots of trial and error and observation.

but after you finish it, you have a small library of assets in your head and if you ever have to design the same type of environment it'll all come to mind easily.
and i think professional concept artists need to have incredibly big libraries in their heads, so that they can deal with whatver environment type they're assigned.

hope this helps.

Joseph Silverman · Feb 2012

You should DRAW. No shortcuts, draw places, buy books on drawing/painting environments, hunt for threads with wisdom on art forums, draw in lines, paint in tones, portray forms in perspective.

cholden · Feb 2012

here's some links, why not

linked to me a while back for ref
http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=108793
http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=109384

one of my fav fundamentals
http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm

more tutors than ever
http://idrawgirls.com/tutorials/

gsokol · Feb 2012

Feng Zhu has a series of videos on youtube that are pretty cool.

The first couple "lessons" completely ignore color and focus on composition and value. They are all good, really...check those out.

MakingMeshes · Feb 2012

I learned a lot from Andrew Loomis Successful Drawing Perspective.All his books are well worth the time to go through actually.

MainManiac · Feb 2012

@Blaisoid I never thought of it like that. I always wondered who in speed paintings people immediately knew what a _____ looked like or what it needed to look perfect. I never really though that they could have painted that material a bagillion times already. As for diverse locations, thats another good point, because if ill be painting places that dont exist they need to be influenced by places that do exist so they feel real.

@Joseph, people always act like im not going to draw lol, why would I state the obvious? Besides drawing wont help me with color, just perspective.

@Cholden, those are some seriously kickass links, the ref in the second link is so much better than googles bullshit, thats so much!

@gsokol Ive watched a few of his, mainly the fantasy landscape ones but I never saw the first few, Ill see if I can dig them up.

@MakingMeshes I thought he was exclusively characters? Either way ill check it out

thanks guys!

Help me create my own course for env concept learning

Replies