Desktop Wade: An UPDATE!? Has the world gone topsy-turvy!?

Desktop Wade · **Posted:** Thu Apr 15, 2010 12:49 am

Hey all! Jeez, how long has it been since I made a peep on here? Too long. In any case Dan tipped me off to the contest for Art Book 3 and I'd been thinking about getting back in here for a while. And thankfully I'm no longer a video game tester; I currently have the illustrious title of unpaid art intern (oooooooh!) and that's freed up some time.

I'm sure you guys are all heads down with your own stuff, I know for sure Dan has been. But if you get a chance to provide some feedback I'd love it, even if it comes after the Sunday deadline. Here's where I'm at:

Obviously a WIP but you know that. The idea I'm going for is a very pulp/scifi cover illustration. Sadly most of the old scifi covers are shit compositions and colors and most of the good covers are done for the straight-up adventure comics (James Bama's work for example). I want text to be a part of the final but I'm by no means a typographer. Here's my basic mock up (excuse my poor fontage):

I think giving the image more text and bordering and adding in some wear and tear like you'd see on an old comic could really bring it out. Still on my to-do list is to liven up the background plate with some more stars/galaxies/planets etc so it's not so drab. Also, putting a bit of motion blur on the stars in the background will help sell that she's jetpacking up while returning fire to her moon-based adversaries. (Those other laser blasts came from below, btw).

Any ideas you have on how to sell those ideas would be great. Cheers and good luck to you on yours!

Soulkarl · **Posted:** Thu Apr 15, 2010 4:57 am

This is awesome dude :D I love this idea - though i will miss the ghetto FLB you had goin. Anyways heres a drawover (but don't take it as law or anything, and hopefully others will give feedback as well- and maybe evne tell me im wrong haha)

thoughts:
-the lasers seem odd to me that they pan inwards towards her, makes it seem like there are people firing from like opposites sides of the moon, i think they should be stemming out more from a single point (or closer point) so they should pan out as they go towards her.
-the pose looks slightly stiff to me I was thinking maybe moving her left leg might help that out a bit
-also making that elbow (which i didnt notice till drawing over) for her right arm more noticable would make the pose have a lot more movement and overlap (or at least read better, i never like having arms hidden, generally comes off weird)
-add a TON of texture on this - i really like where you're going with the old 70s comic cover, and i think the current text works well also, but if you look at old 70s scifi comics they had a LOT of really tacky text and a lot of weird symbols and like slogans (like Shes back for vengance) or some such shit - hell dont be afraid to like draw a funky love bot or some other shit and do an issue #4 on it or something, just search vintage comics and grab some reference and go NUTS

-everythings a bit washed out, which i guess works for the retro cover, but try auto-leveling it and seeing how much darker it wants to go, you may want to try it out, and you may end up wanting to go darker - though i would understand why you wouldn't
-also maybe run out to one of those comic shops around the ave (or that used book store) and buy a REALLY ratty comic thats seen better days, and scan it in with all its pages sticking otu and what not, then you can paste the cover onto that and have a piece that literally looks like you found an old 70s comic book and scanned it in - could be super rad.

anyways dude this is SUPER rad so far and you've got 4 days to really make it shine - so do it UPPPPPP

Soulkarl · **Posted:** Thu Apr 15, 2010 5:10 am

DISCLAIMER: Kris Anka says your original is fine ahaha, so take that as you will - FINISH UP DUDE!

Osorio · **Posted:** Thu Apr 15, 2010 1:15 pm

I'm really digging this dude. I'd suggest you go with your ideas you mentioned. Adding that stuff to the background will add some more visual eye candy to look at and will liven up the whole comp.

Add the textures and well, I'm a sucker for that when done well. I'm sure you could do that no problem.

Dan provided those references and I think they give enough visual keys as to what else needs to be added to the image to make it stand out more.

Great start though. Finish up!

zombiezach · **Posted:** Thu Apr 15, 2010 5:20 pm

badfuckinass!

you only have a couple days left man.. finish!

Desktop Wade · **Posted:** Thu Apr 15, 2010 10:24 pm

Sweet! Thanks for the quick feedback all.

@ Ciurczak:
The leg position you drew is in one of my earlier drawings and for the life of me I can't figure out why I decided against it! I think maybe there were other problems in that sketch so I decided to scrap the whole thing (derp). I've been having the concept artists at work look at this and they agree: move the leg. As far as the arm/elbow goes I agree, looks weird to have it hidden. I've been fighting with that arm position since the first sketch. And the thing you redlined wasn't even the actual elbow so clearly the whole thing isn't reading. It'd be so much simpler without the bloody jetpack! As far as adding in more tacky text that's already the plan! ;) My main reference has been the Spicy comic series (Spicy Detective Comics and Spicy Adventure Stories). They're a little cleaner and the art is generally of a pretty high quality:

So it needs more text clearly but I want to keep it a bit subdued for my own personal preferences. I think changing the aspect ratio to make it a little taller will give me some more room for text without obscuring the actual image.

@Spyder:
Yeah the trick is going to be doing the textures right. Sadly I don't have much experience in that dept but I've got some tips and hopefully I'll have time to explore and make it happen.

@zombiezach (et. al):
Just a few days I know! Thank god my job is super chill and I can say things like, "Hey I'm gonna take off at 3 today to go work on a comic thing". Oh the benefits of being an intern ;)

Hopefully I'll post an updated image tonight. Cheers all!

Soulkarl · **Posted:** Thu Apr 15, 2010 10:35 pm

ya dude make good use of the concept artists at your work, I'm sure they know more than enough about texture to help you out and give you good feedback - also you can post it up here, but really all we can say is - thats enough texture or thats not enough ahha, but really just keep testing stuff and see if it works.

(oh and don't change the leg if you dont want to/dont have time - people don't seem to have a problem with it, but its certainly an option.)

PeZ · **Posted:** Fri Apr 16, 2010 2:16 am

Hey man, sweet wip you got going! I'm diggin the pulp :smile:

I personally agree with Ciurczak about the leg. I did a quick paint-over with some suggestions. Make sure you match your lighting. If she were right outside of that planet/moon, all that light would give her a sweet under-lighting, which I pointed out in the pic here. Second, agian with lighting, the jet pack would cast a shadow over her shoulder, so i pointed that out as well. And about that arm, if it doesn't read well, then do something totally different with it. sometimes it works :happy:

keep it up. Looking good! Looking forward to the final!

-PeZ!

Desktop Wade · **Posted:** Fri Apr 16, 2010 3:21 am

Oh shit that's badass PeZ! Ciurczak texted me that you did a paintover and the first thing I said was "Shit, I hope he fixed my arm because I've spent 2 hours trying different poses." And you came through in flying colors
Proof that I was having artists block:

I liked the leg and already changed it. The unanimous opinion on the leg was "Well it doesn't look bad but it would look way better with the knee up." Here's my current progress as of writing:

I really dig that arm though PeZ. I'd been experimenting with something like that but kept confusing myself with foreshortening. But now that i've seen it and like it I'm gonna make it happen.

This is great everybody! I'm getting advice faster than I can make changes and updates haha! :lol:

Idk if I'll be able to make another update tonight, I've got work tomorrow. But I'm sure as shit gonna try! Peace! :smile:

PeZ · **Posted:** Fri Apr 16, 2010 12:59 pm

Your welcome :happy:

I'm glad I could help. Sorry it wasn't more detailed, i gotta finish mine too since I put it off too long :shock:

That leg looks great by the way. It's not super dynamic, but I think that's a good thing. It stays classy and well within the vein of a pulp poster.

Supah sweet!

-PeZ!

Desktop Wade · **Posted:** Sat Apr 17, 2010 5:15 am

BAM!

UPDATE

- I added in my moon cities but I think they stick out too much, gotta push 'em back a bit. Especially that one in the middle which I think it picking up undesired color from another layer.
- Fiddled with the arm some more. I tried to work with the general position PeZ had but I think it was a pretty straight-up copy by the end.
- I also liked the rear hand appearing on top of the Satellite Soda text (or whatever I decide to put there). Not sure if that was intentional or just part of PeZ's paintover but I'm going to call it one of Bob Ross's "Happy Accidents"
- Redid the laser blasts but now they look like comets instead of lasers. Derp

I'm probably going to lock in the limbs and pose and get to fixing the lighting; so if you see something odd about a limb or something you should let me know, I'd rather fix it now. I'll probably shoot some lighting reference in the AM tomorrow because I'm having trouble making it up in some places (particularly the left arm) and it should go better with reference. Also her left leg looks really damn long even though I haven't touched it in 24 hours. Her femur on that leg is probably about a foot longer than the other leg even accounting for foreshortening. Or maybe it's knee placement... :bbqbf:

Welp, t-minus 46hrs or so till pencils down!

Soulkarl · **Posted:** Sat Apr 17, 2010 5:26 am

looks good dude, its time to just hunker down and render render render and finish. Everythings looking fine and honestly any crits would be nit picks, its better you just finish it at this point - now get to it!

Desktop Wade · **Posted:** Sat Apr 17, 2010 5:39 am

Thanks Dan. It's polishing and refining time!

Sadly this is the stage that I never actually get to in 98% of the art pieces I do.

PeZ · **Posted:** Sat Apr 17, 2010 1:15 pm

Awesome man! This is looking bad ass. Same as Dan, everything you've chosen is good. The legs are fine. Push back those cities, and rock that lighting. Thanks again for the feedback on my piece, man!

-PeZ!

Osorio · **Posted:** Sat Apr 17, 2010 6:33 pm

Badass! I know time is limited and like Ciurczak said, it's time to polish the image. However, it you manage to fit a starfield or something like that in the background you're gold in my eyes.

Good stuff regardless. :)

Desktop Wade · **Posted:** Sun Apr 18, 2010 7:58 am

Blurg

it's 5 in the bloody morning.

I shot lighting reference photos of the arm today but sadly (or maybe happily?) I don't have skinny woman arms so I had to make some adjustments anyways. I think I'll shoot some more reference tomorrow for the legs/hips/knees so I canr really nail that.

I like the background but it's a little too realistic. Needs some cartoony "Spaceman Spiff" planets or moons or something. Also I want to do some drybrush stuff to the moon. A guy from work had some good links to look at for when I add text and aging as well; http://skutterfly.deviantart.com/gallery/#Vintage-Covers, and http://jonnycrossbones.com/tutorials/how-to-make-your-cover-look-old-and-worthless/

Cheers as we come into the home stretch! If you can think of things to change or add I'd still love to hear it! :lolbf:

Soulkarl · **Posted:** Sun Apr 18, 2010 2:38 pm

i like how that second link seems to have a caricature of you on the first page

PeZ · **Posted:** Mon Apr 19, 2010 2:21 am

I didn't see yours in the contest forum. I'm going to be SO pissed if you didn't post :arghh:

lol

Dude that looks great! Post it already!

-PeZ!

Desktop Wade · **Posted:** Mon Apr 19, 2010 2:26 am

Welp, this is it! I've gotta post it in the official thread still but I thought I'd post it here too to keep a solid record.

There's still 40 minutes or so left so if you see something, say something! I just like to get things in "early" in case my computer friggs up or something. You know how it goes.

Texturing went well, I was worried for a bit about finding a good quality reference for the beat up cover. I keep my books in good condition and then I couldn't find my scanner power cable, AUGH :dies:

! My camera did the job and the book "ILLUMINATUS!" provided the texture (great book btw).

Osorio · **Posted:** Mon Apr 19, 2010 2:29 am

Fantastical! I was def looking forward to this one. The textures and all look great. Was starting to wonder if you'd get to finish on time. Glad ya did!

Desktop Wade · **Posted:** Mon Apr 19, 2010 2:35 am

Haha thanks! Don't get too excited yet though, I'm having trouble uploading my full res! I've had to switch from my go-to image host imgur because it didn't like a file that big. :omgbf:

Osorio · **Posted:** Mon Apr 19, 2010 2:44 am

Ever tried http://www.getcloudapp.com/ ?

PeZ · **Posted:** Mon Apr 19, 2010 2:49 am

AGH!!!! TOO AWESOME!!! MY EYES!!! :somad:

...also "Sex, explosions, and sexy-explosions." Made me laugh pretty hard.

Soulkarl · **Posted:** Fri Apr 23, 2010 6:51 am

for fixes

- i think you could refine the legs and shoes a lot better - same with the gun. They all still feel fairly rough and I think if you put more time into them you can get htem at least a little bit more refined. Really the whole body could use a tad more refinement, but if time doesn't permit for that those seem more like the problem areas.
- the hair is clumping weird in spots, specifically the back clump, which seems to have gotten painted the way it did because it was being changed around with the background. Just give the hair a little more loving as well on all the clumps like you did on some of them (with the loose strands of hair and what not)
-the texture so far is just like the book had tiny pieces ripped off of it, rather than the whole thing looking weathered. Rather it looks like just certain areas are weathered. You can remedy this by putting some texture over the ENTIRE thing (like so theres texture over the active image as well - if that makes sense?) Anyways you don't even have to go nearly as rough as the one you have (well obviously - bu i mean you can really go light on this) but juts putting texture over the entire thing will tie it a lot more together and cover up a lot of the inconsistancies with the shading.

HARSH BUT FAIR - now get to work haha (also let me know if you need any help with the textures or whatever - i can send some your way or help you do it)

Desktop Wade · **Posted:** Fri Apr 23, 2010 12:24 pm

Ciurczak wrote:

HARSH BUT FAIR

Nah, that was pretty close to my "mental list" of things to fix anyways. Just glad to have someone confirm it. I agree on the texture over the whole piece. There were a few very minor overlays to try and age the whole piece but I hadn't found one I liked by the 11pm that night so I said "screw it". But I agree with you; it's quite literally a super-clean image with outrageously tattered edges.

Right now I'm looking at ways to add some grit without going too far. Trying to find a good mix of weathering is tough, especially because I'm not looking to hide or obscure the details I took the time to paint. There's some things I could do like channel offsets (moving an entire color channel slightly in order to simulate a printer that was poorly calibrated) or yellowing the colors but I'm not sure things like that would fit what I want to do.

I'm going to try reinstalling painter and going over some spots to try and get more of an oil paint texture out of it. Photoshop can replicate damn near everything painter can but that doesn't mean I know how. In particular I'm looking at some of the specularity and shadows the program will add to each brush stroke to make it look more like 3d paint on canvas. Should be interesting at the very least.

Current progress:

Too much canvas texture, probably going to get rid of that in favor of something else. derp

Osorio · **Posted:** Fri Apr 23, 2010 1:12 pm

How about something like this. It's somewhat subtle but I think it adds that color distortion you want if ever so slightly.

1. Make a new layer over everything and fill it with a grey with rgb values of 125 each.
2. Add gaussian noise at 400% not monochromatic.
3. Repeat step 2.
4. Gaussian blur at 1 pixels.
5. Change layer to overlay and bring down to like 10-20 range.
6. Change the saturation of noise layer to taste (depending on how unsaturated/saturated the layer is, the colors will be distorted more or less)

I've done this before and I think it should give a more grainier/textural feel on top of whatever other texture(s) you decide to add on top.

PeZ · **Posted:** Fri Apr 23, 2010 1:19 pm

SpyderFSG wrote:

1. Make a new layer over everything and fill it with a grey with rgb values of 125 each.

Also known as %50 gray (EDIT>fill>%50 grey) :lol:

Yea I did the same thing on my piece, it adds a small amount of texture that really makes things look solid.

I'm with you, too much canvas texture. And I'm with Dan abut the trouble areas, and I'll add one:
the folded leg looks a little wonky. Some of it looks flat. I'll try and do a paint over :smile:

-PeZ!

Osorio · **Posted:** Fri Apr 23, 2010 1:29 pm

Haha! Yeah, I'm retarded. O_o

Desktop Wade · **Posted:** Fri Apr 23, 2010 2:11 pm

PeZ wrote:

the folded leg looks a little wonky. Some of it looks flat. I'll try and do a paint over :smile:

I agree. I think the issue there is that the yellow light from the moon would be wrapping around the leg more (and having a lighter shape that goes partially up the side of the quad from the knee joint. If you look real close you can see the one bit of paint I put there this morning before I had to go to work :lol:

At least that's what I think the problem is.

I totally agree with dan on the gun/legs/shoes. I had gotten rid of the rings/discs on the boots and the gloves while I was painting because they were getting in my way. I think it was best to get rid of them still but they were really the main "costume" elements and added to the retro look. I think adding in more details to the clothing (wrinkles, logos, zippers, doo-dads etc) would make it look more like a costume.

A paintover would be money though PeZ!

Soulkarl · **Posted:** Fri Apr 23, 2010 4:00 pm

use less obvious textures. A canvas texture is too obvious, and often looks lame as a result of it. For this weathered effect try some high res photos of mud or something. Coffee stains on paper, that kinda stuff. hit me up on aim and i can send you some though. Really though what raul said could be all you need.

anyways painter could be a pretty cool step in this - im curious to see how that goes.

PeZ · **Posted:** Sat Apr 24, 2010 3:12 am

Whooops! Sorry this took that long. you can probably see that it's this tiny itty-bitty change. It's like almost unnoticeable. But if you overlap them, you'll see.

U think that solves your wonky leg issues :smile:

-PeZ!

Desktop Wade · **Posted:** Sun Apr 25, 2010 5:49 am

Thanks for all the feedback. I'm going to get into the painting tomorrow in the AM. But I did do more work on the textures. A concept artist at work gave me his go-to file for weathering effects (which he had gotten off a hi-res image of the poster for the movie Grindhouse). Here's his website if you're curious http://chrismaddenart.com/, he's quite good and is a super nice guy; probably one of the only people in the history of UW's IVA major to become successful with art.

In any case I added those layers in and did some tweaking. I also tried the greyscale noise/blur. It's there in the image, but you can't bloody see it. I think I need to tweak it more because the image I'm working on is 3k by 4k so I think the pixels are just too small for that technique to work. I'll try bumping up the scale beyond 400% and seeing how it goes.

Thanks for the paintover PeZ! :happy:

I see the issue with that knee/leg now. The knee is almost completely in profile but the leg itself isn't.

Lots more to do tomorrow afternoon. I'd have done more today but I got distracted by a random sketch (which is up in the quicksketch thread).

Thanks for the feedback all!

Soulkarl · **Posted:** Sun Apr 25, 2010 6:06 am

textures too strong - lower its opacity a bit. otherwise keep going!!

Desktop Wade · **Posted:** Mon Apr 26, 2010 12:21 am

Within striking distance of being "done" I think. Some stuff mostly in the legs, feet and the lats/waist is still a little hairy. lots of brush strokes where only a few larger ones were needed.

I messed with the guns and the hair and I'm pretty happy with both.

I added the rings back in because rings are cool (bonus points for you if you get the futurama reference :razzbf:

)

Still have a few hours to go till I need to send it off. Anything you got to say, say it now!

Desktop Wade · **Posted:** Mon Apr 26, 2010 2:21 am

Welp! All done I guess.

Here's where we wound up:

And a little side-by-side which I thought was pretty cool. Shows what it looked like before I got help and what it looks like after! :coolbf:

Massive props yet again for everyone who took the time to help out!

Now I just gotta upload the honkin' hires version and send 'er off.

PeZ · **Posted:** Mon Apr 26, 2010 2:40 am

"Oi, did that guy just say that rings were cool?"
"um...no?"
"COOL!"

Lol not sure if that was the reference, but I loves me some Futurama! And this piece, I think, ended up as awesome as possible. let it rest now, and go on and do another one! HURRY!

-PeZ!

Desktop Wade: An UPDATE!? Has the world gone topsy-turvy!?

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