One bit of criticism: Desaturate your colors a bit. Only use those hyper-saturated blues and reds for accents. It does depend on what sort of game/comic/film you are making, because there are situations where you want everything to be stylized and colorful (MLPFIM comes to mind) but with these, they look like you are trying to go for more realistic.
It was initially based on the real-life M107, but because it had to carry it's crew with it ingame, I ended up putting a platform on the back for them and raising the breach accordingly. When doing the upgrades, we needed one to represent the general health upgrade, and gun shields were popular with the guys in the stream chat so I went ahead and made it look as much like the Earthshaker shield as I could as a tribute.
However, if you line up the Basilisk with this tank, they barely resemble each other. The Husky is shorter both in length and height, the gun is considerably lower compared to the hull, it has a distinctly curved hull, a different gun mechanism, and a completely different track layout. The two are alike only in the sense that they are self-propelled artillery guns with open platforms. It's like calling an Abrams tank a rip-off of a Tiger because they both have turrets, guns, and tracks.
1. Don't make all your shadows black. That makes them look de-saturated and boring. Only use black for the really close folded parts like the collar or the armpit, to give them crisp definition. The rest should be deep reds or blues, depending on the light color. No grey light. Skin especially benefits from having reddish shadows, it makes you aware of the flesh and blood nature of it.
2. Beware the dodge and burn tool, especially set to "highlights." I use it, but only sparingly, for hair mostly. It doesn't give a good enough color variation, for starters.
3. Everything is very blurry. Make the details crisper. I think part of this is the blurry black shadows around things like the belt paunches. If you do black shadows, then make their edges well defined and make them cover more area. That's film noir lighting, and it comes from only having one direct light source in a night scene. Mike Mignola makes good use of it.
You know what makes it look like you are using the dodge brush on the face and the burn brush for your shadows? The fact that your light areas are almost white, such as one the nose, surrounded by a thin line of pink. That brightness should only be for specular highlights at most. Overuse of dodge often leads to this kind of overexposed look. Also, the blurry black shadows are similar to what you would get if you took a burn tool with a blurry brush and went over the whole picture. You don't see a lot of strokes or tone variation within the shadow.
1-Take more time painting these, and try and get as much detail on them
2-BG please...
3-Add textures all that metal/plastic needs some texture to it, if you are not at a level where you can do it with a brush http://www.cgtextures.com/ and multiply/screen/overlay is your best friend.
4-Go light on the shadows on the faces, they look gaunt.
5-Black and white does not shadows and highlights make, purples, blues, yellows and reds do.
6-Exagerate with contrast on your pictures, everything looks so gray so monotone, go ahead and merge everything then un-saturate the picture, you won't see any black blacks or white whites just a small sample of the brightness spectrum.
7-Mind your silhouettes look at captain huge crotch for example.
8-Dodge and burn = no, just no.
9-Don't be afraid of hard brushes either, try using square ones or oddly shaped ones.
10-Trace a line from the tip of the head to the foot they are supporting themselves on, you will notice they are kind of straight, gravity defying and kind of hunched. Don't start something out of the blue without proper structure first, once you have some years of it on your belt, you can start to do without parts of it, but honestly I've never seen a good artist that doesn't at least do some silhouettes and general curves before starting to do a piece.
You should also post the sketches and structure work.
Well, there is no quick way to anything, but the general rule of thumb is take the color wheel, pick the color of your light, then for the shadows, do the opposite color on the wheel, it will work most of the time. If you really want to get into it, then also take into consideration places like the nose and ears, if the light is strong, some of it will bleed through them and give it a reddish hue etc.
You have to also get in your head there is no absolute right way to go about it, sometimes the style will lend itself to one thing, sometimes it's another.
Experiment with color, limit your palette to only cold colors or only warm ones, do stuff with only contrasting colors or complementary, etc.
eg:
See, yellow light, purplish shadows, light bounces off the water on her legs, light bleeds through the scarfy thing and gives you reddish light on the boots, etc.
Starting today I've been doing some quick sketchy exercises to that regard as warm-up at the start of the day; I'm drawing ponies because their colourfulness gives me lots of colour and shading options.
I do greyscales, then add colour. Is there any quick way of adapting that hue variation?
Yes there is. Use Image>Adjustments> Gradient Map. That way you can control the different hues based on how dark, light it is. You can do this for different parts of the greyscale image that are different colors, and then set the greyscale layer to overlay or some other appropriate blending mode.
Hopy shit, that gradient map thang is amazing! Just gotta be careful not to overuse it I imagine.
I bought like 350 dollars worth of art books today, including two thick volumes of digital paint techniques. I'm just so excited. Being unable to do things in art has always been super frustrating to me, but I've got this sort of zen going now I'm really digging. I look at something I can't do, and I don't think "Why can't I do that?" I just think "I can't wait to get there!"
I bought like 350 dollars worth of art books today, including two thick volumes of digital paint techniques.
Shit, I'm getting jealous. Nothing quite like soaking in the pages of a new art book, let alone a small library. It's good to hear you've gotten yourself in a driven mind set towards improving. One of the biggest obstacles I ever deal with is bouts of self doubt and harsh self criticism that can make me set the stylus/pencil down, but when you wrangle yourself into the mindset that you can, and will, reach the level you aspire to- that's when you start making amazing progress.
Yeah, I'm totally jealous of your attitude, man. Not only are you set on improve, but you're actually taking steps towards it, and it shows! I can't wait to see your new paintings.
I think I'm hovering around the 9 hour mark on this one so far. I've hardened up my brushes and I'm feeling a little more confident about light now; this is gonna be really fun to colour.
Comments
A unit from my mod. Used a bare-bones 3d model as a base and painted over it, as they did in for the concepts in Valkyria Chronicles.
This are super fun.
However, if you line up the Basilisk with this tank, they barely resemble each other. The Husky is shorter both in length and height, the gun is considerably lower compared to the hull, it has a distinctly curved hull, a different gun mechanism, and a completely different track layout. The two are alike only in the sense that they are self-propelled artillery guns with open platforms. It's like calling an Abrams tank a rip-off of a Tiger because they both have turrets, guns, and tracks.
A couple of crits on Tanaka-san and the Commando:
1. Don't make all your shadows black. That makes them look de-saturated and boring. Only use black for the really close folded parts like the collar or the armpit, to give them crisp definition. The rest should be deep reds or blues, depending on the light color. No grey light. Skin especially benefits from having reddish shadows, it makes you aware of the flesh and blood nature of it.
2. Beware the dodge and burn tool, especially set to "highlights." I use it, but only sparingly, for hair mostly. It doesn't give a good enough color variation, for starters.
3. Everything is very blurry. Make the details crisper. I think part of this is the blurry black shadows around things like the belt paunches. If you do black shadows, then make their edges well defined and make them cover more area. That's film noir lighting, and it comes from only having one direct light source in a night scene. Mike Mignola makes good use of it.
This is a good guide!
Also, everyone keeps telling me about the dodge and highlight brushes, but I don't use them! What the heck am I doing!
2-BG please...
3-Add textures all that metal/plastic needs some texture to it, if you are not at a level where you can do it with a brush http://www.cgtextures.com/ and multiply/screen/overlay is your best friend.
4-Go light on the shadows on the faces, they look gaunt.
5-Black and white does not shadows and highlights make, purples, blues, yellows and reds do.
6-Exagerate with contrast on your pictures, everything looks so gray so monotone, go ahead and merge everything then un-saturate the picture, you won't see any black blacks or white whites just a small sample of the brightness spectrum.
7-Mind your silhouettes look at captain huge crotch for example.
8-Dodge and burn = no, just no.
9-Don't be afraid of hard brushes either, try using square ones or oddly shaped ones.
10-Trace a line from the tip of the head to the foot they are supporting themselves on, you will notice they are kind of straight, gravity defying and kind of hunched. Don't start something out of the blue without proper structure first, once you have some years of it on your belt, you can start to do without parts of it, but honestly I've never seen a good artist that doesn't at least do some silhouettes and general curves before starting to do a piece.
You should also post the sketches and structure work.
You have to also get in your head there is no absolute right way to go about it, sometimes the style will lend itself to one thing, sometimes it's another.
Experiment with color, limit your palette to only cold colors or only warm ones, do stuff with only contrasting colors or complementary, etc.
eg:
See, yellow light, purplish shadows, light bounces off the water on her legs, light bleeds through the scarfy thing and gives you reddish light on the boots, etc.
I bought like 350 dollars worth of art books today, including two thick volumes of digital paint techniques. I'm just so excited. Being unable to do things in art has always been super frustrating to me, but I've got this sort of zen going now I'm really digging. I look at something I can't do, and I don't think "Why can't I do that?" I just think "I can't wait to get there!"
I think I'm hovering around the 9 hour mark on this one so far. I've hardened up my brushes and I'm feeling a little more confident about light now; this is gonna be really fun to colour.
EDIT: Katawa Gundam Senshi?
It's easy and hard at the same time.