AuthorTopic: Official OT-Creativity Thread 2  (Read 811345 times)

Offline Chris2balls

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Re: Official OT-Creativity Thread 2

Reply #1650 on: January 13, 2013, 12:57:23 pm
I'm really digging those brushes, Facet! They capture charcoal effects well. I've been thinking about scanning different papers to use as texture, too.
Regarding the portrait: I love pieces done with a knife, and this is no exception! I don't know the lighting conditions you were in, but I feel that the contrast could be pushed a tiny bit further. The volumes of the face are well captured and perfectly readable, apart from the ear, which kinds of melts into the rest of the face. :ouch:
The third picture is intriguing: how did you get that effect for the background? It almost looks like some databending.

I've been using MyPaint. It's similar to Painter, but of course not as sophisticated as the latter. Loads of brushes you can tweak in as much detail as you like, which is fun. I'm going to have to find a copy of Ps pretty soon...

Anyway, cool stuff, looking forward to the still life! :D

Ryumaru: You did a great job on rendering the torso and arms on the Deadbird dude, my favourite part being the forearm! :y: The legs, however... maybe it's the perspective, but they don't seem to match up in terms of size, the brighter leg seeming longer than the one in the shadow; intuitively I'd do the opposite, because of foreshortening.
The way you've blocked out volumes in the second picture is what I prefer in the way you paint/draw... however, I feel as if the pose could be more dynamic. Maybe this is more dynamic?
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Offline Ryumaru

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Re: Official OT-Creativity Thread 2

Reply #1651 on: January 13, 2013, 03:41:55 pm
Chris2balls: Yes those legs have been giving me some trouble, the figure was done completely from imagination,which I think is a step forward for me, but now in the interest of getting a solid image I think I will have to bust out some reference and do some skeletal drawings to get the legs in proportion.

It might be splitting hairs, but the intention for the pose of the second guy was a very sophisticated, almost regal look, meant to contrast with his demonic form. This is also why his arm/sword has the appearance of a rapier, as it's one of the more elegant weapons. But just that simple switch does add a lot of interest to the piece and doesn't stray too far from the original intent so I will try it out; thanks!

edit: Does this look better to you guys? He was kind of missing his entire pelvic girdle in the previous one. Had to take some photos for this one.. >.>

« Last Edit: January 13, 2013, 06:37:23 pm by Ryumaru »

Offline Facet

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Re: Official OT-Creativity Thread 2

Reply #1652 on: January 13, 2013, 10:17:32 pm
Thanks a lot guys!

Maybe if I spent a couple days drawing a hundred feet I'd like them more, or at least be better at them. Those brushes have made me super excited to open up photoshop now.
Do it! I might join you there, right after I get round to doing that still life ;D.

The new calf position looks more grounded, I think the pose overall is a bit on the stiff side I guess due to the alterations, but it's a really convincing construction from imagination.

@C2B: I use a bunch of transformation tools for making textures & patterns, as well as some randomising brushes. I think that BG is a bunch of overlays from something quite simple; flipped and staggered some; it was done some time previously to the profile itself. Experimenting in the abstract, and remixing ideas and happy accidents from that pool later is an enjoyable way to work for me.

I've had a play with Mypaint before; the level of customisation possible; down to the individual response graphs for every parameter is pretty great, but the procedural brush engine (what with everything ultimately being constituted of vector circles), is inevitably limiting in some aspects; I found it can result in everything looking just a bit sterile sometimes, not to mention the lack of a lot of important tools outside of the brushes. A while ago I did actually try for a palette knife look in there too, like so:



It was supposed to be a sort of master copy; something to challenge the brush application, but I think I might have started as a caricature, or else I just didn't measure squat and didn't fix it :lol: so it's way off the original (by Lovis Corinth, here). Vague ears again!
« Last Edit: January 14, 2013, 05:14:34 pm by Facet »

Offline Chris2balls

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Re: Official OT-Creativity Thread 2

Reply #1653 on: January 13, 2013, 11:37:01 pm
Ryumaru, I've actually been drawing my feet tonight (I'll post the sketches later, haven't scanned them yet). Anyway, I thought I'd help you with the pose:

Quite a few changes. I've been trying out the current pose, and I noticed that the brighter leg is actually lower than the other leg, because it was very difficult to give the other leg some kind of foreshortening. As I made the legs longer, I added some length to the arm. Since the pelvis was tilted, I tried to tilt the ribcage by adding more on the left side.
I gave more definition to the knee: I felt as if you grouped the muscles too closely around it, so I moved them lower. I thought that the knee would look better if it faced us a bit more, considering that the foot is facing us.
I hope it helps!

Facet: I've played around with the graphs too; I usually stick to using ink brushes because despite my best efforts, I couldn't get a good pencil brush, may it be in its effects or shape, or the way it reacts to pressure. It's funny that you mention the lack of tools besides the brushes, because for my portrait, I had to open up another program to fix some proportion issues, as I couldn't do so in MyPaint.
I think I recognize the brush, the result is good!
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Offline Facet

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Re: Official OT-Creativity Thread 2

Reply #1654 on: January 15, 2013, 08:56:47 pm
Well, at least I started a still life :blind:


  • Made a drawing to establish forms and perspective; wire-framing surface reminders when I feel like it, erasing superfluous and overly messy passages. I didn't do a lot of exploratory stuff here actually as my shapes and the reference point of the paper's VPs look decent by eye.
  • Took my own advice and made a decent job of masking off local colours, using paths so I can manipulate/amend the selection easily and seamlessly at any point during the painting. You can then also reuse the paths for duplicating repeating forms, or to try completely different lighting with the same objects (the latter I'm probably going to take advantage of as there's not a lot of light left in the time I have free atm.
  • Put a palette on a separate layer with a quick base ramp to ensure I don't lose any colours while blending and modelling.
The window is north-facing so it's pretty diffuse lighting with a great deal of variation and pick-up in the shadow, not fantastic for (easy) painting. If I'd have thought ahead I might have started from more direct conditions elsewhere with my laptop. I made a pin-hole colour viewer out of a toilet roll tube with a hole-punch to help a bit.

Chris: thanks, I personally find getting nice line-work a lot more challenging than painting in digital. Most of the time I actually avoid it :-[ I think Mypaint is pretty good in that department though, it's very responsive. I had a look in the program just now and there's a preset pencil I really like called 'sketch 1' by Ramon, it has a scatter jitter inverse to pressure; something PS doesn't allow for some reason.   
« Last Edit: January 15, 2013, 09:17:30 pm by Facet »

Offline Ryumaru

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Re: Official OT-Creativity Thread 2

Reply #1655 on: January 16, 2013, 03:08:44 am
Facet: Good start on that still life :] I'd love to see you do the multiple lighting situations. Some night time ones would be cool :B

Offline Soundlust

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Re: Official OT-Creativity Thread 2

Reply #1656 on: January 16, 2013, 08:46:27 am
Hope it's ok to make my first post in here.
So much good stuff here, this forum looks like so much fun.
A little doodle to  break the seal.

Offline pistachio

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Re: Official OT-Creativity Thread 2

Reply #1657 on: January 16, 2013, 11:42:59 am
Not a piece first but a quick crit for Soundlust's piece, will get to posting one though.

Real skill here in folds and detail and design, in those aspects this is ace!

Unfortunately I'm thinking the legs might be throwing the character design and construction/perspective off. They seem, although not as drastic really, like formulaic psuedo-anime/indie sidescroller character legs (examples when I find some, but you know what I mean?), pelvis forward, knees backward, tight pants, tapered legs and small feet, the latter two or three elements which are kinda ruining the heavy mafia-boss character vibe here. Fortunately the legs' execution here shows you understand construction pretty well, but the feet and character bits still apply.

Another problem, the biggest as far as perspective, is that the right foot is off of the ground plane. The other, lesser problem is the way the legs and cane both lean left, causing the weight situation to read as 2d instead of 3d, so one of these elements could be tweaked. And the size of the right hand, length of left arm, etc., also minor problems.

Failed construction is not a major critical problem throughout the piece at all but this is still a good pointer among this rambling/nitpicking: how does x connect to y and where is it in perspective? For example: how does the neck connect to the body? Ask questions and questions. Get to know and understand the pose, its purpose, and the character doing it. Quickly sketching it from different angles, maybe applying perspective guidelines (like this) helps.


Damn, gotta edit this post for a piece soon...
« Last Edit: January 16, 2013, 07:26:18 pm by pistachio »

Offline Facet

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Re: Official OT-Creativity Thread 2

Reply #1658 on: January 21, 2013, 07:24:13 pm
Maybe I should've picked a non-perishable subject :P. My banana is looking noticeably more camo, luckily it's bloody cold atm. I caved and started the colour over from a spotlight; made it a whole lot easier to paint anyways.



  • Blocking in major colours with emphasis on contrast, starting with the highest and working towards midtones with a firm edged, almost opaque brush: I'm sure this process is very familiar to anyone reading this :). If it doesn't function like this then it never will. I check contrast without the bias of colour occasionally, to make sure my shadows as a unit are appreciably distinct from the light.
  • Trying repeatedly to subdivide the previous and pin down more subtle shifts with much squinting, cross-checking. The saturation and reflectiveness of the pepper in the harsh light are giving me a little further trouble with values but the rest has been made a lot simpler by the light change. The colour viewer I made was next to no help actually; 'calculating' colours by relation is a lot easier than trying to conjure stuff ex nihilo; I feel like I definitely learned stuff here.
  • Blending and detailing with softer and/or less opaque brushes. I could've manipulated more edge priorities here than I did; seeing as all the external borders were super vector-crisp and some variety (taking into account material and distance/focus) is nice but I'm happy as is. This stage is a bit time consuming but undemanding really, excepting when fixing up previous oversights.
I haven't a clue how long it took with the disjointedness, not quick though! I already see a couple of things now I could improve on: the table is markedly lighter towards the front and there's some sloppiness to bits of the pepper which should be nice and smooth. The black things are from the stand of this ikea lamp and my keyboard.

Pistachio! where's yo piece? I know you've got skillz to share ;D

Edit: Caught a silly mistake in that I had drawn the whole thing at a bit of an angle somehow which the 'verticals' of the curtains and lamp (put in later on) needed to be aligned with accordingly, and an animation popping through the layers:

« Last Edit: January 22, 2013, 01:11:34 am by Facet »

Offline Chris2balls

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Re: Official OT-Creativity Thread 2

Reply #1659 on: January 22, 2013, 01:48:34 pm
I like the attention to detail in this, and the contrasts are working well!  :D
Something about this bugs me though, but I can't put my finger on it... the banana and the pepper feel flat for some reason?
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