Our work so far

Connor Magill

So I am sure most of us have worked on our pieces since last night, I thought I would post my most recent update to hopefully get some feed back. I have followed Dans instructions from my crit, and tried working from dark to light and as such I have added  two pillars each side with robot arms attached to the female character, Basically just blocking colours before i get to a rendering stage. I feel this is helping with the composition of the image as it draws the eye to centre of the image..

All feedback is welcomed, and I hope you guys will post up your work as well 

Caroline Gagné

Guess I'll post my lineart here too, since I didn't show anything yet...

Feedback is welcomed as well! 

Tomasi Akimeta

@ Connor: I'm really digging the progress so far. Work + school = hardly any time to paint during the weekday for me. If there's one thing I'd say, is that I'd repeat what Dan has mentioned in the past, that being pushing the saturation of the colors. There's a lot of blues, maybe Kneeling Guy could use some orange highlights somewhere, or maybe some of the clouds around him could use some glowing orange smoke emanating from behind?

I say "orange and blue" cuz of the whole "movie posters = orange & blue" just to help contrast the subjects from the background (like this article): http://www.thewrap.com/movies/blog-post/why-movie-posters-all-look-same-75846

HOWEVER, this miiiiiight be bad advice, so don't listen to me if it technically is bad advice

@ Caroline, I'm really digging what you've got going on, dude! Digging the motorbike and the bullet riddled with holes. I like the armor she has on, pretty legit. 

Will Pitney

Connor:  Great so far.  Like the others, I think it'd be good to push the saturation a bit more and add stronger highlights (the highlights should help communicate where the light sources are coming from).  Also, I think a slightly reflective dark floor would look SWEET floor link.

Keep up the good work!

Caroline:  I like where this is going.  In the first part of the webinar, Dan wasn't just asking who our people were but WHY they were who they are.  This led to encouraging us to show little story driven details.  Things like, did she grow up around cows? is she a country girl?  is she a PETA terrorist who hates milking companies?

A design suggestion - push the horns on the skull!  Dan is a big fan of the ridiculous. check out this bike

So far so good

Tomasi Akimeta

IT's still early on, but I finished with the pose that I'm satisfied with and am now blocking in the background.  I googled a buncha cityscapes and earthquake rubble and am still in the middle of sorting them out for the background. Once that's done, I plan on Feng Zhu'ing the crap out of it and painting in explosions and wreckage strewn about the street.

I know Dan wants for me to do something that pushes this guy into the realm of what I call "functional ridiculousness", and I already have plans for that to be set apart, I just didn't want to reveal it here just yet.

There seriously isn't enough hours in the day!

Connor Magill

Thanks for the advice guys, I might go back to having the screen that yellowy / orange colour it was before,  I had changed it to blue after speaking to you guys on stream as I felt it was to strong of contrast and drew the eye straight to it, Ill have a play and see what happens. As for the floor I am liking the reflective idea Will, I am also thinking of having grating with lots of pipes and cables with spot lights on the floor, will ned to have a play around.

Caroline loving the concept.. I think what I like the most is the motion in the picture, You can see she is skidding in and have bits of paper and stones being kicked up in the air, And like Will says it conveys a story with theme of Cows and Milk etc. The character as well looks class, love the armour and her spear, really gives off a jousting kinda vibe, the only thing I would change is probably just make the spear head bigger or more bad ass... Really excited to see what it looks like finished!

Tomasi I am digging it, Love the idea and your design for the character is sick... the dude just looks like a wall, nothing getting past him! The only concern I would have is something Dan said while doing a crit with Mony, there is a rule about having the character covering stuff in the background ( and in both you and Mony's pieces the gun is massive and takes up a lot of space), so if you are going to add street rubble and explosions in the background it might be an idea to crop outwards the right hand side of the image to give you a bit more real estate to play with.

Keep up the good work everyone! 

Caroline Gagné

Tomasi, I think you got nice background colors, but I also think that your character looks tiny compared to what's surrounding him (obviously, those are buildings). Maybe you could make him take more space in the composition, by cropping a bit of the top of the image, or by scaling him (but again you mentioned that you would do stuff in the background so it depends on how much it is important vs the character in your image). Sooo I'll look forward to your next wips

Connor, like others said, you can really go darker/more saturated, and then have fun with lights. I don't know how you plan to light up this image, but for sure it's gonna have more effects if you let it be darker at the beginning. Also, I know you've already gone through your lineart... but his neck and his knees are bugging me a bit: http://images.wikia.com/camphalfbloodroleplay/images/a/a3/16932564-a-young-shirtless-man-on-his-knees-in-the-rain-with-his-arms-outstretched.jpg. http://juliakovach.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/man-on-his-knees1.jpg

Beside that, I think your composition is great, I really like the verticality of it!

As for my character, well, I'd say she is an experimental bomber (my sketch evolved so you can't see this aspect in the image right now) who's a loner and a traveler. But the one thing she falls for is milk. She loves milk. And so this image depicted her as she is being pursued just when she stole some milk in a grocery, and they shot through the bottle of milk, so she really is pissed off about it.

Keep up the good work everyone!

Tomasi Akimeta

I dunno why I totally spaced that fact, Caroline, thanks for pointing that out. Gonna replace that orange and blue sky in that case with an all blue night skyline. Yo Canvas Resize Tool, where you at foo!

@ Connor: don't worry brosef, the background will eventually meet the Gaussian Blur, I just wanna plop in some reds and bright oranges to push Big Gun Dude to the front.

Connor Magill

Hi Caroline, I know the neck has been bothering me as well a bit, but when I look at just my line art it does look ok, I am not sure if its just an illusion caused by the colours and the lack of precise shading etc.. but I will be keeping an eye on as I progress further into the picture, luckily it will not be to hard to fix. As for the knees I know they need work but I plan to have the floor covered in pipes and cables which will obscure alot oh his thighs/knee area so I have just sort left it till now. But again I will keep an eye on it as I progress.

Thanks for the advice

Connor Magill

Hey Guys and Girls,

Just thought I would post another update... This is prob going to be my last one for a while, The g/f went into labour about an hour ago so I am not going to have much time for next few days ( I am gonna be daddy.. eeeeeep )

Anyways I have not added much from the last update. Just tidied things up and added a floor texture and some tubes/cables etc

Mathias Sunardi

That's actually looking good, Connor!  Great progress!

And congratulations on being a dad!

Mathias Sunardi

Well ... here's what I have so far. Any critique, comments are appreciated

I'm still trying to figure out what else I can do with the wall, the hole in the wall, textures, lighting ... well, everything really

Cheers!

Tomasi Akimeta

Mathias! You go, boy!! Lookit that, that's awesome!! Holy smack, I'm totally loving what I'm seeing right now! All you need now is Ripley from "Aliens" in a heavy loader hahaha! "Let go of her, YOU BITCH!"

Hey, you know what could help keep the eye flowing around the center... remember how Dan did those metal sparks flying? You could accent the foreground by giving some sparks and smoke, or some maybe up close fire that could give you a nice Blue & Orange contrast, with your North Light still being on the left, but some orange highlights on the right side... just a thought.

And grats on bein' a dad, Connor! Man, crazy awesome stuff so far, everyone.

Tomasi Akimeta

I finished blocking in the background, and I rendered the main character in grayscale. I hid the redrawn "surprise twist" because I'm not finished with the line drawing, and the grayscale render of the unchanged version was already finished, so I thought I'd just toss it up for critiques. I'm taking the day off tomorrow and should have the new version of Big Boy ready for show by mid-day tomorrow.

Connor Magill

Well turns out this whole going in to labour thing, takes longer than I thought. So i have spent about 10 hours today just rendering out the torso and head of the foreground character and trying to make him as photo realistic as possible, I need to adjust the colours to help him fit in scene better, but ill do that once he complete with adjustment layers/curves etc.

Hopefully get him finished tonight by finishing off the hands, trousers and the helmet thing he is wearing. Then hopefully make a start on the Female character tomorrow....

Tomasi bro where is this updated version!! looking forward to seeing it.

Mathias that is looking amazing.. once you sharpen up the edges on the wall and get some textures added that is gonna be unreal looking.. Cant wait to see it dude!

Hoping WIll and Mony post something as wanna see that crazy Snail sniper and Will's Huntsman!! And I am itching to see an updated versions of Carolines biker chick! 

Raaaaarrrrr so much good art here is keeping me inspired.. keep it up peeps!

Connor Magill

oops forgot to attach the image... derp

Connor Magill

then I attached the wrong file... not having much luck... 3rd time lucky

Mathias Sunardi

I'm kind of debating whether or not to make the foreground wall more detailed - I feel like adding more detail to it create another focus on the scene that may draws away from the creature/head and make it too 'busy' for the viewer. Maybe I can work on the wall using 'muddy' colors. Thoughts?

Connor Magill

I dont think it will draw it away at all... the first thing I am drawn to is the teeth due to colour. I think if you keep with the colours you are using and just tighten things up it will look awesome! Adding details like Panels etc to make it look more realistic is only going to add to the over all feel of the image

Mathias Sunardi

Thanks Connor! I appreciate the feedback!

I like the progress you made. The only feedback I can give you right now is to maybe think about how strong the blue-ish glow is coming from behind the guy, so you may have to adjust his shading/shadows a bit ... maybe something like this? http://vishstudio.deviantart.com/art/Open-To-Attack-341152899

Unless, of course, there's another light source from the front

Hope that helps!

Connor Magill

Cheers dude that pic is awesome for the lighting, I am planning adding the rim light for the light source behind him ( so that will come in really handy thanks) and there is going to be a light source in front and to each side of him as well ( I am going to add a curved screen on each side of him similar to one above him if time allows and I can get the perspective of it, have tried a few times roughing it in to not much success ), so I have kept the shading pretty much the same as in the reference image I used for the pose. Part of me is starting to get worried though that I biting off more than I chew with the extra screens so may resort to just having lights in the flooring.

Thanks for the ref image dude.. it will be a big help

Will Pitney

Mathias:  Sweet so far.  I'm curious what bigger debris chunks could do for it in the foreground SMASH If you need more wall stuff, I think one of these could subtly fill some space.

Tomasi: Cool beans. can't wait to see some colors and fire glow.

Connor: Keep it up - love the veins in his arm

I'll try to block in some colors and post something tonight

Mathias Sunardi

Tomasi,

Great character there. Looking forward to see him rendered.  Just a note, I think his hands are a little bit too low (i.e. the arms are a bit too long) - maybe raise them up a little bit?

Will, thanks for the refs! I really appreciate it. I can't wait to see how your character is coming along.

Tomasi Akimeta

Mathias, it's kinda intentional as I like to throw a bit of a comic book lilt to my guys and give them longer than normal forearms... this has been a new tendency of me for the past year as I've found a dislike for "huge biceps equal super strength", when in reality it's the pecs, triceps and forearms that do a majority of the work for overall grip, punch, hammer-fist, and pulling

I tend to take a more balanced outlook when drawing women, however, with slight emphasis on thighs and calves and broader shoulders for the more strength oriented heroines.

Will Pitney

Changed up a number of sketch stuff and am adding flat base colors.  This is a little strange showing things this early...

ps. The story of his robot leg is after a nasty break out, an prisoner smashed his shin bone to pieces.  The doctors were able to save his foot but not the leg.  SOO000oooo he's got blood tube feeding down keeping his estranged foot alive.

Robin Mies

Unfortunately I didn't make so much progress yet. Today's my first time I have an hour or two to work on it. And I realise it'll take a lot more than I was kinda hoping on. At least the goal I set myself. But we'll see. Till now I worked on the skull face. Added details, removed the drawing on it for now. Added some global shadows on the figure and some kind of fishnet stockings to make the pants less like a diaper.

Just put something in the background, but I'm not sure of it. 

On the left would be some kinda Hot Rod Buggy. Made with bones, skin and leather or something like that. Or the right a little (African) house. But I really need some tim to look for some good reference photos. Since Dan suggested something like Resident Evil kinds African village type of stuff and I am nog familiar with that game. I'm kinda have to do some more research on that. Not sure what 'that' is. What is good and fits I mean.

But we'll keep on struggling and hope there is a brush for it...

Love the work you guys are doing so far. Will be some very nice finals I bet!

Connor Magill

Really like it Miles

If you do a search for Resident Evil 5 on google you should find some stuff, Its set in Africa so has that sort of shanty town feel to parts of it.

You might also want to try looking at art from the game Borderlands and Borderlands 2 as they are both very OTT post apocalyptic games. Also a google search of fallout brought up some great images,

You might want to try looking doing a google search on MadMax concept art, it brough up some nice buggy designs.

Tomasi Akimeta

@Will: I love the idea of being able to save a portion of the limb that's apart from the body, but not the connective limb itself. That is way funky to think of, having a living portion of your body kept aliveby non-organic tissue, but still connected to your body. Awesome concept. I like the vagabond vibe he and his dogs are giving off.

@Robin: I feel ya on the struggling to find time to do your painting. I literally cleared everything from my schedule this weekend and am solely going to work on this, I'm even taking Monday off from work to make sure that the painting's good enough for show. In a way, I'm kinda depending on everyone else's tips and tricks to help push my final piece over the edge, if you catch my drift.

@Mony: how come we haven't seen your painting so far yet, Mony! You're Killer Sniper Snail was one the most original concepts I've seen ever, and I'd love to see what progress you have so far on it.

@The people who haven't posted anything yet: I'm hoping to see some awesome stuff from you guys by Tuesday, this is all pretty exciting.

Robin Mies

Also still not quit happy with the pose. It is a funny contrast, the 'sexy' pose and the evil skull, but as pose it could be better. I know... I'm a pain in my own ass... Like I am for my students... But what if I change her left arm? Lower it and give het a knife or something? Something foreshortened. Not from the side. I don't know. I just went to an opening for a sporting entire I did some work for. I hope to work on it some more tonight and tomorrow. Ahw man... The time... The time... Where do I get it from??? Is there a brush for time?

Mony CAZAMEA

Hello there !

This is how far I am for now.
The bases are done, I need to refine everything now o//

What do you think ?

Will Pitney

@Robin  Hope you don't mind but I took a break from mine and worked on yours a little. maybe a springboard for inspiration?