Hey soda-folks!

I'm just a guy that likes the idea of drawing for a living but is still trying to work
out how to go about it.

Feeling a bit intimidated by how cool the stuff here is, but what the hell?

Tell me what you think (if you like!)

ooooooo
Nice pieces to start you thread off with man. Love artists that aren't afraid of color. The first and third pieces are my fav but i think in the third one you should change the color on the shirt of the guy wearing the hat. Kind of throws off the balance of your composition. Keep it in the tone of the background, as if we are seeing him through some of that atmopheric color you got in the trees behind him.
The last piece is a cool design and i think you should add some color to him to liven it up.

Welcome to the boards.

I'm loving the rough, textural feel to everything. Looking real good. And yes, the usage of color is pretty damn good.

Not much to say at the moment aside from that other than welcome to the boards and keep posting.

ya dude you have nothing to worry about, your work is friggen rad :D im loving it

welcome

Nice warm welcome, thanks guys!

Thanks for the feedback, I'll be sure to post a load more stuff
as I get up to different projects.

Here's some new things including some concept artish sci fi vistas and
the obligatory attempt at a cute girl pic

how's it going man?

First off, your layouts are really nice, and I'm loving the organic shapes and designs.

With your figure, however, I think you should try to describe the form more with your brush strokes. Try varying cast/soft shadows, and don't be afraid to paint with more hardness to your brush. I think you could also define the hair a little more, and add some warmth to the shirt in the shadows especially.

Good stuff man!

First off, welcome to the forums man! Great freaking dump, holy cow, where have you been and how did you find out about this lil' ol' forum haha!

Compositions... ace, color choices...ace, freaking solid stuff man.

Your figure work (There's only the girl and the robot guy, not really fair to totally judge but whatever) is the weaker aspect to your work, especially the female.

To echo what bigmac said:



Ditto. Its really soft overall, dont be afraid to get in there and really define the planes of the human form (even on a soft female) with some solid strokes and construction man. You're nailing it in your other work, bring it over to the human form.

Great stuff man, and welcome to the forums, hopefully we'll get to see some updates and progress in your work, because you're fucking solid in a lot of areas man, I cant wait to see you bring your game up in other areas to make it all level and murder anything and everything man.

Also, do you do vehicles or anything? Personally, I suck at them, no need or desire to ever do them, but I encourage other people to be better well-rounded artists haha.

Again, great stuff man, cant wait to see more.

Thanks again guys.

bigmac996: Thanks pointing that out. Characters and figures have
never come to me as naturally as other things (Doesn't stop me working at it!)

Igo: Thanks a lot! I've never properly tried doing vehicles in any form but you've
made me curious as to what I could do with that kind of thing.

Here's todays messy speedpaint:

I'm really loving this last one. In terms of atmospherics, it is pretty cool how much you've given the whole thing some crazy depth.

The only thing that I think this and any of your backgrounds could use is some sense of scale. The atmosphere in the last one is a good example of showing that the distances are great and that the structures are massive. Still I think you could maybe add a silhouette of a human figure in there just to really push the whole massiveness of it all.

Good shit man.

Thanks Spyder, you're quite right. Getting some relatable elements into my backgrounds
would probably do a lot for enhancing the "this is really big" factor!

Something a lil' older + a colour version of the old mecha pic (still very much WIP!)

I'd like to know what you guys make of the second. first off it's ACHING for a background
but I'm stuck for ideas that would'nt pull the focus too much + I'm not sure if the
depth of field blur is a bit much.





Thanks guys!

I was mainly going to comment on the depth of field blur you had going. It's hardly noticeable but when done right it will sell the effect further.

http://www.computer-darkroom.com/tutori ... al_9_1.htm

The above link shows how to use the lens blur filter in photoshop. It's different from the gaussian blur effect as there is a semblance of "chromatic aberration" on the edges of the blurred object. That'll sell the effect more.

I did the following example to kinda illustrate the same concepts from that tutorial. If you read from the link above, then the below will make tons of sense.

Something with no.2 that's important to note is that I used a gradient mask on a duplicated layer of the box to make the edges blurred and not the whole object.


Below is the alpha channel used for no.3


These are the settings I used to get a nice blur.


I may have gone overboard with the whole blur thing but it's something that's helpful to simulate depth of field blur. Hope it helps.

Thanks Spyder but I've decided to lay off the blur on this one

Here's a version without the blur, definitely better.



Hopefully I'll be buckling down to some new stuff as soon as I have time.

I think some blur would really help push the peice, Raul brought up some awesome tips and you could really use them to your advantage with this piece, or any, to help push that depth.

Great seeing more art outa you man, Im curious what kind of feedback you could contribute to others...

I may come back to that piece sometime but right now I'm kinda sick of this pic
when I feel like i'd much rather start something new (I dont want to sound like
I'm blowing off all the advice though )

Here's something new:

Im very pro "move on to the next piece" kind of guy, rather than working one to death. I meant only to take the blur advice to future subjects you tackle, not to go back and try and perfect the older one.

Hey guys, busy times recently. Here's a a load of random things I've gotten up to.



A CD cover design for a friend. Here's a link to the music, just small time stuff but
I enjoyed doing it: http://www.myspace.com/africanqueenmusic



These images are part of a segment of my illustration course to demonstrate dynamic
characters. Not great, but probably better than most of my usually weak character work.

Heya man,
I gotta start by saying your rendering and colours are killer. Really top class work. The compositions of all the landscape shots are really solid too.

Its clear you're less comfortable with figure work so i thought i'd give my 2cents on that.
I'm not sure about the requirements of your class, but if they dont require rendering for your figures I would leave it out and focus on creating dynamic drawings first.

So your first drawing of the hamster-
I can say you've succeeded in creating a clear pose. It has an easily readable silhouette, and communicates your ideas. I think you can improve on it though.
You can see from the red line red line that the line of action through the body is a straight line up and down. The two blue lines represent other interpretations of the line of action or gestural lines through the body. You can see that they are also relatively undynamic.

So in drawing (B) I took your original pose and pushed the line of action and the gestures through the body to something more dynamic- focusing on flow and weight. Lines like this are really important for giving drawings life. I also turned the head to a view that isnt profile. This is a quick way to add a bit more dimension to drawings.

Drawing (C) isnt necessarily better than drawing (B), but it was an experiment in changing the pose and line of action completely but still conveying same idea. I also used reference for the pose. just flicking through photos of baseball pitchers.

Following similar ideas for the other drawings would help add weight and flow. The clown on the vault for example- try drawing a line depicting the flow through the body. I think you will see similar shapes to the hamster drawing. Straight horizontal and vertical lines.
Now, there are loads of times to use horizontal and vertical lines, but just be aware that it is usually for an effect other than adding dynamacy.

Good luck with your assignment man. Dont be afraid to use photo reference to inspire you. Cant wait to see more

You've been VERY helpful Joybox. I've had a hard time getting my head round the
idea of line of action and you seem to have hit the mark (via the "this is what
you're doing wrong" method!)

Here's something new:

Hey guys, here's something new:

oh mannn that goblin dude is bad! nice and creepy, just how i like it.

Hey! Look at that. My quota for generic city skylines is down, let's deal with that:

Loving the color scheme happening here. The only thing I'd say is that I'd really like to see you go to town on one of these. Like really go in there and finish up all the details and all that. This last one is a good candidate I think.

If this is not one you're pleased with trying to go all the way with, that's understandable but I'd really like to see you go all the way with one of these landscapes.

You're quite right actually, It's not too often that I'll crank up the resolution on
a speedpaint and really dig in. I guess I could get a whole bunch of my speedpaints
to more of a portfolio standard. Thanks for the advice!

I know this is late, but that robot dude? instead of a blur you can also throw back the arm with atmospheric perspective.

AS for your other stuff. I can't say anything that wouldn't be just kissing up for being so bad ass lol you use painter or photoshop? I can never get that painterly roughness in PS. Maybe it's my round brush...

Late or not, the feedback is always welcome!

Nearly 100% photoshop, I'll start off a couple of things in painter because I like
the kind of flow you can get with the paints (but then it ends up in photoshop
very soon after!)

As far as textures go I use big texture brushes sparingly and really dig in
with a hard round brush and just think about how the light effects the
individual details.

Here's a wip I've been working on. Could do with a bit of a think through
with composition and suchlike. It could probably exist in the same world
as the turtle pic I think...

That teevee piece is wicked cool. Love the roughness to it.

I think maybe cropping it a bit would help. Zoom in just a tad. Other than that I can't think of much to help the composition out. [since it's not actually bad]

...what turtle pic?

Weird. I thought I commented on this last one. Must be more out of it than I thought. :|

Anyway, I like the symmetry even though it's a safe composition in that respect. And personally I don't mind it.

If anything I would have like to see you play with the perspective a bit to make things look more dynamic. The view at the moment being spot on looks nice but a more dynamic perspective take on this would do wonders.

Don't know what more to add to that. Other than I'd like to see you take one of these all the way.

Pez: Thanks, I'll have a play with cropping out the bottom a bit.
The turtle pic is at the top of the page, first thing I posted!

Spyder: You're quite right actually, I'll see what I can whip up
perspective-wise. Maybe make the sides and distance seem like
they're really towering.

In the meantime here's a quicky that I may or may not come back to:

Well smack my ass and call me Sally! How did I miss this? Kinda in a hurry, so, lets just say I love your color choices and your style. Bam! Hot stuff sir!

Oh SNAP you're right! lol yea it's got a little similar feel to it.

I gotta agree with Spyder on this. Cropping it like I said might help, but doing it over from another angle will give it an awesomeness that can't be fixed with a little zoom.

Here's something quick while I'm busy getting my shit together:

see...THAT's Just not right! How the hell do you even do that?!?

Im with Pez... FUCK YOU! God this is a thing that I cant do to save my life... we oughta collab sometime and combine our powers!

I'm flattered... I think!

I'll take you up on that sometime Igo!

Here's a couple of tweaked pieces I started ages ago that I quite liked and
wanted to share: