Sir Justyn - sketches and designs

[chluaid]

Here's my first jump beyond a rough sketch. I know the blue rimlight looks like the old cliché blue rimlight, but there'll be an open door to the left and a roaring fire (out of frame) to the right.

I was having trouble making the helm look like polished steel - - the reflection is supposed to be the ceiling rafters in the room - - but I realised I should have painted the rafters first, then at least I'd know what the helm is reflecting 

This is my first serious work in photoshop and I guess you can tell that it's all experimental. There's nothing confident about the strokes at all but I totally got lazy with the chain mail. Still, I'm happy with the beard and I think it'll look OK once I've blocked in more of the scene (and once I've fixed his teeth and his off-side eye!) 

Slap me with crits please.

[Katatafisch]

hahahaaa, thats awesome adam the beard looks so awesome and his face is just funny
that chain mail looks really good too, some darks would help bring out the chans a bit more, looks already really good, i like the helmet, though the right side looks a bit as if it is bumping a bit inside
the perspective is cool, but according to the ceiling, you should alter that jar with beer a bit perspetively...at least the upper ellipse
his under arm is a bit off id say since its coming towards the viewer it should go more like this > if you know what i mean

cant wait for the progress...our flash master is finally dominating photoshop yeeeha

ha and thanks for the comment on mine..hmm ive used a self made pattern for the chain mail and formed it a bit in the liquefy-mode or somethin?! in the filter section...its like the smear tool without getting the´stuff blurred...was more the lazy way of doing the chain mail
hmm maybe ill do some more, the drawing made a lot of fun

[Espen]

AHHAHhahhahaHAHAHAHahhahahaah a



(wish i could write something other then this non sense, but im in a fucking shock man, SHOOOOCCKKK! :O )

[KennyMcB]

Mmmmm Beer!

I love the look so far. It's amazing how you can jump into photoshop and already have a well drafted piece.

I personally want to learn Photoshop a little better.
What style brush did you use. You have a very cleaning paint-like look to your color.

[cakeofages]

LARGER THAN LIFE?


EW its my pathetic attempt!
I got sloppy with the color since it already took me hours of guess-work to get the sketch to look somewhat proportional.

Btw I didn't mean to make your friend look so gross, its just that he's the antagonist in this pic.

[muzzoid]

I cant believe I'm about to give advice to Adam Phillips .

Very nice, very clean working style.
What you are doing though is that you are working across the image finishing one part at a time, now i know for a fact that you can make it work and it will still look awesome, but it is a much nicer working practice to block in all of your colours first.
Here, try watching one of m@'s sketch videos.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=r6voFFGZJI0&feature=related
Notice how he works from blurry to focused?
You of course aren't doing speedpainting and are working a lot cleaner, but this still applies, perhaps in a less crazy way but it still applies.
I get the feeling that the reason why is because you are used to working in vector. With digi painting we have the flexibility to work from very rough and just keep refining it, which you cannot do in vector; as you have to make everything look finished from the get go as you work across the image.

Another thing that we have more flexibility over is edge control, and what a nice thing that is.
http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=51913

Oh and one last thing, thats one of the nicest uses I've seen for the smudge tool yet, but try not to use it that much.

I hope this helps, and welcome to digipainting .

[chluaid]

thanks guys

* chluaid takes notes

muzz, you've hit the nail on the head with how I did this. I worked over the entire image trying to finish off each part as I went but I have been watching some videos and realise that mine's probably not the most effective way to work. Thanks for those links btw. I suppose you're right about the vector thing too.. I'm used to working clean. Something for me to rectify

[Creepy Doll]

One thing that I find very off putting about it is the face... it looks terribly flat. It's mostly the nose that sticks out (or, rather, it doesn't), but I'm not sure what's causing it or how you should fix it.
I'm sure once you take a more layered approach to the image you'll be able to get it right in the early stages.

[chluaid]

wow, I think I can see what you're talking about and I never noticed it. Thanks for the crit, I'll see what I can do about it.
I'm going to start this image from scratch and take a more loose approach. I got so hung up on finishing each little section that I lost sight of the overall picture.

[Pieter]

I really like the way you did that beard Adam. I love it when hair looks like it's been "hand painted" rather then to rely on fancy brushes and whatnot to achieve a photorealistic-like effect.
I agree with Muzz that your workflow should better be more organical, try to be very loose at first using very large brushes and just lay in the colours to set the mood.

Most people work with their sketch set to the multiply layer blending mode, so they can block in their colours below their lines and then refine by working on a layer above the lines. This way you won't easily lose track of the forms and need to wory about colouring within the lines. I you get too focused on staying within the lines perfectly your drawing will start to get a laboured look.
If you ever want to boost the contrast and/or saturation in an area use the Overlay blending mode.
I personally every once in a while create a layer wich I set to overlay and just experiment with the colours, trying to make them pop more.
Also the colourpicker button works magic, you should get into the habbit of using it (I you don't allready) It really speeds up your workflow and it's the best way to blend colours when used in combination with lower opacity.

PS: you should check out some of these, they're good and ridiciously cheap compared to most other painting vids.

[elephant]

I dig the beard as well.

While Rubberhead mentioned the colour picker "button", I'd like to point out that the shortcut for it is "Alt".
Took me ridiculously long to figure it out, but it works magic.

[Pieter]

Yep it's alt, or the button with the hole inset on your Intuos 3 (Unless you've mapped it to something else ofcourse).

[chluaid]

thanks Rubberhead! I had no idea about the Alt button (it's context sensitive too so it's diff depending on the tool you're using). I'm also currently downloading a couple of videos from Massive Black.. thanks for that too

I'm having a problem with the Alt key though.. it chooses the colour for my background colour. How do I make it choose for the foreground colour?

Also, one other burning Photoshop question that I've been meaning to ask someone is: is there a keyboard shortcut to bring up the colour mixer? I've seen speedpainting where the colour wheel appears, seemingly without going near the tools panel. Am I imagining that?

[C.S. Murphy]

I'm not sure about the color wheel shorty, but "X" will toggle between the foreground and background colors.

Have you checked out the EDIT> keyboard shortcuts yet?

That's a great place to wield PS to your liking.

Hope that kinda helped. 

Oh and if you haven't purchased these ones yet, the vids RICHARD DOBLE CREATURE DESIGN PART 1 & 2 on the massive black page helped me out considerably.

[chluaid]

ah, X ! thanks mate.. I'm off to check out Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts then. Should have been obvious