Curves are fun

I painted this image today. I'm still messing around with those brushes I got, though there seem to be only a handful that are really useful to me. I'm also attaching a quick image strip showing how curves can affect a painting. I absolutely love color, but I know I kind of suck at painting it and coming up with color palettes - so I've learned to embrace PS and its adjustment layer goodness. This may seem like an evil sin to some, but I've learned over the last 2 months of digital painting for work that it doesn't matter how it gets done (as long as it doesn't infringe on copyrights) just get it done good, and fast! Though I feel it is very important to watch what adjustment layers (in general) are doing and learn from them.

The top image in this strip was my original, though I will admit I had done a very similar curves layer halfway through or so. My image ended up being a mix of 2, 3 and 5. I'm not sure I made the right choice here, but I'm not too worried about it.

Fun with brushes...

Note: Added bottom pic later.

Here is an image I made this afternoon while playing with some new PS brushes I found on the net. As with everything on this blog (except for some of the models) this was a quick job - I promise I'll post more serious projects someday.

Also, sorry about the lack of posts for the last couple of months - thankfully I'm still working so that keeps me pretty busy. The game I'm working on might be ready for beta soon so hopefully that will let me show some work off.

Yoda Challenge...

I've been really inspired to work on my digital painting recently after stumbling across some really amazing artists. The following image was done using a few brushes by Melanie Delon. The brushes themselves aren't anything too complex, but it is fun to work in different brush strokes as it can really change the feeling of an image. I think I will even bite the bullet and purchase a Cintiq 21UX in the next few days.

Jeff Jackson's latest challenge is centered around Yoda, who is quite possibly the coolest character ever.





Before you ask, I have NO idea where this came from. It's strange but I like it.

Colors (nds)

The following images were painted on my Nintendo DS.







Not too long ago I installed Colors! a free digital painting program onto my DS and I have to say it is pretty awesome. It's a bare bones program, no layers, no adjustments, not even undo - so to that affect, it emulates traditional painting a little bit more than Photoshop. You are limited by how small the DS screen is which makes it a little hard to draw, but its really fun sketching with a stylus directly onto a screen. Consider it a $150 dollar cintiq that you can take with you anywhere. I recommend it to everyone interested in digital painting.

These are all really quick sketches. My biggest goal these days is to work on incorporating saturated colors into my work... and these are a little more saturated than I expected them to be but I guess that means they are a success.

If you own a DS, or want to look into this more, checkout this URL: Colors! - Setup Tutorial

Job(s)

I just wanted to let my friends, who may check my blog from time to time, know what I'm up to.

I signed on as a contractor to a start-up game company in Redwood City where I'll be responsible for concept design / modeling / level creation and other assorted photoshop work that will need to be done. I couldn't have imagined that my first job would be something this fun :D I'm really looking forward to being able to continue to increase my drawing/painting ability and get paid for it - and on top of that the game is already looking very cool! The company is working in 'stealth mode' so I'm not able to say much about it, or show work that I do, but from the looks of it it won't be long till I can post/link some fun stuff.

I also have another contract going that will be creating 3D assets for the casual game market (ex; iphones). This one hasn't begun yet but should shortly.

Wow I'm gonna be busy, and it's gonna be a lot of fun!! :D

---- Also, I haven't entirely forgotten about the ogre. I actually rendered out a turn table of him with a composited Ambient Occlusion turn table on top and it looks really great! The only problem is it is 88 megs and I don't know how to shrink it without losing much quality. If I ever figure that out I'll post it.

Progress and Learning

Continuing with the idea of having kittens in the scene, I decided that I wanted to have 3; one looking up to the ogre, one sleeping, and one playing with a butterfly. This update shows the placement and general posing that I'm going for. Things that are missing or unfinished, are the butterfly and the bedding the kitten is on won't be just a block - I'm just not sure what to make it yet.

Now for things that I've learned during this small step. For one, the smooth tool in Modo is amazing. It will average out so many issues that arise from posing meshes, I only wish I had used it more a while ago.

Also with the help of Christian and Mike I figured out how to make my renders look better. This image (above) is an ambient occlusion render with the white range turned way up to minimize the amount of dark values that appear in the scene. The purpose of this is to take this render, and composite it with a color render (below) using the multiply blend mode in Photoshop to really enhance the shadows of your scene. The result is the image at the top of this post. I will update more soon.

WIP movie

A WIP turn-around. The biggest issue with the model when I last posted, was that it was just an ogre-like figure. That is already cliche, so I need to work the scene to make it memorable otherwise it will probably be a wasted slot in my reel. I don't know if my direction is working, so any comments are helpful, but my idea is to add kittens to the scene to show that this big fat ogre is really a softie and that he is protecting them from some outside enemy (which I may need to hint at).



Well this turned out to be really low quality, but I'll leave it up for now. Heres an image as well.

That ground texture sure is hurting up close...