When you reach a point where you don't know whether what you're doing can be achieved is when miracles start to happen.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Welcome to Summoner's Rift
Faces.. I'm still bad at them, but I blame the resolution. As for the plein air, you really can't do that when the sun is out.. I couldn't see anything on my monitor, so I gave up on it.
When you reach a point where you don't know whether what you're doing can be achieved is when miracles start to happen.
When you reach a point where you don't know whether what you're doing can be achieved is when miracles start to happen.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
A Ritter Ronery
Been feeling all sorts of weird negative emotions lately, so it's about damn time to return to drawing. Especially since my set up here in Canadia is finally complete! Too bad I'm going back to New York, where I can't draw that much. But at least I can play Log of Leaders!
Sunday, May 22, 2011
The Waiting Game
The waiting game is hard, but there are some exciting news on the horizon, I'm sure. All will be decided tomorrow or the day after, I think.
Didn't even realize it's been so long since my last update. I apologize for you loyal 12 followers... I've have very little time for art over the last 18 days.
People have the illusion of free will because they're conscious of their body making decisions for them. If you were unconscious (say, sleepwalking) your body would make similar decisions and behave in a similar way to your conscious state. The only difference is that you would not able to perceive your own behavior and remember it. Listen to radiolab.
No one person is better than another unless they are older (to a point). If two people are the same age, they have both done interesting things with their time, in their own way. Next time you try to criticize someone, chances are, you have something to learn from them too.
I may be repeating myself, or rephrasing old statements, but it's not like you read those anyway, so:
Design is about enforcing hierarchy in all elements of the picture: shape, value, texture, colour, etc. (Same with polycount and texture res in 3D) The better the hierarchy, the less effort the brain has to go through to make one while you look at the picture, and therefore the more pleasing you find it. At the same time, you have to retain an element of chaos to make the image interesting.
EXERCISE: Try simplifying the edge spectrum. For example: have only super hard and super soft edges in a picture, and nothing in between. See how that affects your colour pickins.
Fixing something isn't nearly a hard as starting it from scratch. Same goes for iterating. It may not be as exciting, because you already know what you're gonna get, but at least it's easy, and it will make your piece look better. SO DO IT!!!!
You can't draw for fun until you have the FUNdamentals ingrained in your brain.
On my intuos4, no matter how much you change the sensitivity, applying the full amount of pressure will always require the same force, which I thought was stupid, because the whole reason I wanted to make it more sensitive was so that it was easier on my hand. I recently discovered that this actually helps me when I'm using the round, pressure-sensitive brush, because whatever colour you pick will stay in harmony with the rest of the canvas as long as it's close to what you need and the opacity of your stroke is at ~80-90%. You don't hurt your hand, and the colour stays in harmony. It's sort of a failsafe device for choosing colour, because you can never get the right one purely by sliding RGB values around.
Also, I spoke about this before, but you can "overshoot" your target colour in saturation and value, but lower the opacity with the pressure on the stylus in order to get to the right place. This is how I usually pick my colours. More often than not, I move my RGB sliders wayy out of whack, and try to put down as much of the crazy colour I mixed as I can, without it looking jarring. Takes a lot of practice.
Anyway, the good news is: Daily Duels is coming back online! Soon. Probably within the month, but we gotta upgrade the website, introduce the voting system and do all sorts of polishing for the graphics. They are going to be tight.
Also I did this pantheon skin from League of Legends. It's not official.
yet.
Didn't even realize it's been so long since my last update. I apologize for you loyal 12 followers... I've have very little time for art over the last 18 days.
People have the illusion of free will because they're conscious of their body making decisions for them. If you were unconscious (say, sleepwalking) your body would make similar decisions and behave in a similar way to your conscious state. The only difference is that you would not able to perceive your own behavior and remember it. Listen to radiolab.
No one person is better than another unless they are older (to a point). If two people are the same age, they have both done interesting things with their time, in their own way. Next time you try to criticize someone, chances are, you have something to learn from them too.
I may be repeating myself, or rephrasing old statements, but it's not like you read those anyway, so:
Design is about enforcing hierarchy in all elements of the picture: shape, value, texture, colour, etc. (Same with polycount and texture res in 3D) The better the hierarchy, the less effort the brain has to go through to make one while you look at the picture, and therefore the more pleasing you find it. At the same time, you have to retain an element of chaos to make the image interesting.
EXERCISE: Try simplifying the edge spectrum. For example: have only super hard and super soft edges in a picture, and nothing in between. See how that affects your colour pickins.
Fixing something isn't nearly a hard as starting it from scratch. Same goes for iterating. It may not be as exciting, because you already know what you're gonna get, but at least it's easy, and it will make your piece look better. SO DO IT!!!!
You can't draw for fun until you have the FUNdamentals ingrained in your brain.
On my intuos4, no matter how much you change the sensitivity, applying the full amount of pressure will always require the same force, which I thought was stupid, because the whole reason I wanted to make it more sensitive was so that it was easier on my hand. I recently discovered that this actually helps me when I'm using the round, pressure-sensitive brush, because whatever colour you pick will stay in harmony with the rest of the canvas as long as it's close to what you need and the opacity of your stroke is at ~80-90%. You don't hurt your hand, and the colour stays in harmony. It's sort of a failsafe device for choosing colour, because you can never get the right one purely by sliding RGB values around.
Also, I spoke about this before, but you can "overshoot" your target colour in saturation and value, but lower the opacity with the pressure on the stylus in order to get to the right place. This is how I usually pick my colours. More often than not, I move my RGB sliders wayy out of whack, and try to put down as much of the crazy colour I mixed as I can, without it looking jarring. Takes a lot of practice.
Anyway, the good news is: Daily Duels is coming back online! Soon. Probably within the month, but we gotta upgrade the website, introduce the voting system and do all sorts of polishing for the graphics. They are going to be tight.
Also I did this pantheon skin from League of Legends. It's not official.
yet.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Last Ten Days in NYC Blowout
I've been silent for way too long. I just moved out of New York City. It's been a hell of a five years, and I'm happy to move on. I just don't know where to yet.
More on that later. For now, let's compile everything I've learned over the last three weeks.
You gotta let a story write itself, same way you gotta let a picture draw itself. You can't force creativity.
You can never accomplish something great without believing that you're special, or better than other people, because other people and circumstances will always lead you to believe that it can't be done, and you have to be able to ignore them. The first step to greatness is believing in yourself: "other people failed here, but I can succeed."
People who draw realistically often don't have the graphic design sensibilities of people who draw in their own style, and stylized art usually lacks the fundamentals of realism.
You have to know which parts of your painting are gonna POP with value contrast and edges. It's less about the shapes themselves, but more about the connections and relationships between them: edges.
Don't max out on saturation. Sneak up on it.
Warp a painting to get rid of tangents and make the drawing more interesting.
Frequency of detail brings objects forward.
Let accidents fill the gaps in information that exist outside the focal points. Your painting is a web.
Studies make you aware of how much information you can leave out in order to have something read. Painting from imagination is about arranging that information in a pleasing manner.
Learning new things gives me a high.
The more you iterate, the more ideas present themselves. Accidents make innovation.
Never bring in a new colour or material unless you can use it in more than one place on your piece.
Hard shadows and highlights define form more efficiently than careful shading in the light.
You can make anything you want read with just reflected and ambient light, however you should strive to do so with key light and shadow.
All ideas that you throw away should be good. The reason you're throwing them away is that they don't fit your project.
There are three crucial things to having the fire:
- Deadlines
- Feedback loop of achievement and satisfaction with your work
- Truly believing that you will achieve your goal
Your "skill" as a painter never really improves. Your perception of the world, though, does.
The importance of surfaces is prioritized by the angle at which they face the light. Thus, surfaces that are more important will be brightest.
You can often raise or lower your values by changing hue. Likewise, you can change the colours of the paint on the canvas by putting down colours outside of that hue family.
You cannot create in abstraction. You need constraints. Rules are prompts. Prompts make you think.
The motivations for the actions of your characters will determine the moral of your story.
When you're young, usually you are focused on the social aspects of life, which is funny, because very few people have achieved anything of merit. Then, when you're older and meet people that have gotten somewhere, you have no time to hang out with them, because you're too busy getting somewhere yourself.
What you're doing with lines is creating the silhouettes of things. Same with brushstrokes, but less prominently.
Iterations allow you to re-formalize your ideas, kind of like defragging an HD.
The worst enemy of the creative process is the illusion of completion. That is why iterations are so hard, but so necessary.
In the same way that every painting is an opportunity to find "truth," you have to follow your drawing to whatever you start "seeing." You search for lines that make you see what you're drawing, and follow those to the end project. You can't force your drawing to become what you originally intended it to be.
Thumbnailing characters is iterating graphical patterns on your "skeleton," the body.
Evaluate what qualities make it a crab. How long does it take to read as a crab and what information are you looking at to make the judgment? Reddish pale colours, intricate symmetrical patterns. Shapes - claw + legs. Think how much information you can leave out before it is no longer a crab!
Evaluate the hierarchy of information you take in.
Kenneth Branagh meditates at the beginning and end of each day. True fact.
Anything can be accomplished at a cost. When you're low on time, you can sacrifice other things.
And now, the work.
I did some fan TF2 concepts. Hopefully you can read the text. Eric Wolfpaw is coming to NYU, but they didn't book a room large enough (or I didn't rsvp quickly enough) so I can't go. Bummer.
Latest still life. Need to stop being lazy about these and actually flesh them out.
Old man still life. Did this at Frank Stockton's meetup. Guy's got mad skills and really good advice. If you live in NYC, you should find him on meetup.com and attend.
Think that's all for now. Will update more once I figure out what's going on with my life.
More on that later. For now, let's compile everything I've learned over the last three weeks.
You gotta let a story write itself, same way you gotta let a picture draw itself. You can't force creativity.
You can never accomplish something great without believing that you're special, or better than other people, because other people and circumstances will always lead you to believe that it can't be done, and you have to be able to ignore them. The first step to greatness is believing in yourself: "other people failed here, but I can succeed."
People who draw realistically often don't have the graphic design sensibilities of people who draw in their own style, and stylized art usually lacks the fundamentals of realism.
You have to know which parts of your painting are gonna POP with value contrast and edges. It's less about the shapes themselves, but more about the connections and relationships between them: edges.
Don't max out on saturation. Sneak up on it.
Warp a painting to get rid of tangents and make the drawing more interesting.
Frequency of detail brings objects forward.
Let accidents fill the gaps in information that exist outside the focal points. Your painting is a web.
Studies make you aware of how much information you can leave out in order to have something read. Painting from imagination is about arranging that information in a pleasing manner.
Learning new things gives me a high.
The more you iterate, the more ideas present themselves. Accidents make innovation.
Never bring in a new colour or material unless you can use it in more than one place on your piece.
Hard shadows and highlights define form more efficiently than careful shading in the light.
You can make anything you want read with just reflected and ambient light, however you should strive to do so with key light and shadow.
All ideas that you throw away should be good. The reason you're throwing them away is that they don't fit your project.
There are three crucial things to having the fire:
- Deadlines
- Feedback loop of achievement and satisfaction with your work
- Truly believing that you will achieve your goal
Your "skill" as a painter never really improves. Your perception of the world, though, does.
The importance of surfaces is prioritized by the angle at which they face the light. Thus, surfaces that are more important will be brightest.
You can often raise or lower your values by changing hue. Likewise, you can change the colours of the paint on the canvas by putting down colours outside of that hue family.
You cannot create in abstraction. You need constraints. Rules are prompts. Prompts make you think.
The motivations for the actions of your characters will determine the moral of your story.
When you're young, usually you are focused on the social aspects of life, which is funny, because very few people have achieved anything of merit. Then, when you're older and meet people that have gotten somewhere, you have no time to hang out with them, because you're too busy getting somewhere yourself.
What you're doing with lines is creating the silhouettes of things. Same with brushstrokes, but less prominently.
Iterations allow you to re-formalize your ideas, kind of like defragging an HD.
The worst enemy of the creative process is the illusion of completion. That is why iterations are so hard, but so necessary.
In the same way that every painting is an opportunity to find "truth," you have to follow your drawing to whatever you start "seeing." You search for lines that make you see what you're drawing, and follow those to the end project. You can't force your drawing to become what you originally intended it to be.
Thumbnailing characters is iterating graphical patterns on your "skeleton," the body.
Evaluate what qualities make it a crab. How long does it take to read as a crab and what information are you looking at to make the judgment? Reddish pale colours, intricate symmetrical patterns. Shapes - claw + legs. Think how much information you can leave out before it is no longer a crab!
Evaluate the hierarchy of information you take in.
Kenneth Branagh meditates at the beginning and end of each day. True fact.
Anything can be accomplished at a cost. When you're low on time, you can sacrifice other things.
And now, the work.
I did some fan TF2 concepts. Hopefully you can read the text. Eric Wolfpaw is coming to NYU, but they didn't book a room large enough (or I didn't rsvp quickly enough) so I can't go. Bummer.
Latest still life. Need to stop being lazy about these and actually flesh them out.
Old man still life. Did this at Frank Stockton's meetup. Guy's got mad skills and really good advice. If you live in NYC, you should find him on meetup.com and attend.
Think that's all for now. Will update more once I figure out what's going on with my life.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Who do you think you're fooling now?
It's such an ordeal to update this blog/sketchbook, but you know what? Someday, when I'm really good, some kid who's just starting to draw will want to scroll back all the way to now to see how I got to where I will be.
This thing calibrates my Monitaur, but it does a terrible job so I've been putting off making a still life out of it. Unfortunately, I'm running out of interesting objects to draw so there.
And then I did some fan art for Riot Games. It's their latest champion. That company is going far, because they're actually innovating within the DotA genre, and their business model is very clever. That is, until Valve gets on the scene with DotA 2. Then all those companies (all two of them) are getting hit by a freight train, unless Riot makes some really bold moves.
Some things I learned:
You compose with gradations, not flat colour. Always know where your gradations are going, and how intensely.
The most efficient way to make something better is to erase it. So do that as often as you can manage. Ideally, if you have the time and are willing to 'scrap' hours of work, you should do your illustration 3 times before the deadline. Good product is made by having smarter than average people iterate on an idea more than the competition.
Sometimes seeking shortcuts for processes actually takes longer than doing it the "stupid" way.
Next time you listen to a pop song, in your head replace all the "baby" lyrics with "hitler." It's the way it was meant to be heard.
I'm beginning to understand that more and more things in life depend on what you believe rather than logical analysis. There are many things you couldn't possibly figure out the reason for, so you have to rationalize it with your own belief. Fill in the gap in knowledge, in a way. So what you put in that gap is entirely up to you and sometimes it's very important to your attitude and work output. Please, always believe the most positive thing. If a big shot artist doesn't respond to your e-mail, don't blame the fact that your art isn't good, or that you came on too strong. Analyze what you can, then rationalize it with "he would have loved to answer if he wasn't so busy."
That said, in any past circumstance, there is always a more positive outcome that you could have achieved. You have to question how you could have gotten there, without regretting that you didn't.
I heard that the final boss of Diablo 3 is, in fact, Lady Gaga, and not the lord of terror.
Edges are gestalt psychology at work. When you draw from life, you find out how your brain makes sense of your scene, by analyzing which edges in it seem hard and which seem soft. The fast your eyes skim over the edge as you're looking at the scene, the softer that edge will be in your painting.
When doing something artistic, you gotta genuinely love what you do, so that you get some creativity help from your subconscious. When doing other tasks, like programming, you just have to have a passion for problem solving.
There are really 3 types of edges in digital painting. Hard, soft and textured. You can use a texture brush to softer things, instead of the boring old airbrush.
I also heard that in the Diablo movie the monk will be played by Vin Diesel.
This thing calibrates my Monitaur, but it does a terrible job so I've been putting off making a still life out of it. Unfortunately, I'm running out of interesting objects to draw so there.
And then I did some fan art for Riot Games. It's their latest champion. That company is going far, because they're actually innovating within the DotA genre, and their business model is very clever. That is, until Valve gets on the scene with DotA 2. Then all those companies (all two of them) are getting hit by a freight train, unless Riot makes some really bold moves.
Some things I learned:
You compose with gradations, not flat colour. Always know where your gradations are going, and how intensely.
The most efficient way to make something better is to erase it. So do that as often as you can manage. Ideally, if you have the time and are willing to 'scrap' hours of work, you should do your illustration 3 times before the deadline. Good product is made by having smarter than average people iterate on an idea more than the competition.
Sometimes seeking shortcuts for processes actually takes longer than doing it the "stupid" way.
Next time you listen to a pop song, in your head replace all the "baby" lyrics with "hitler." It's the way it was meant to be heard.
I'm beginning to understand that more and more things in life depend on what you believe rather than logical analysis. There are many things you couldn't possibly figure out the reason for, so you have to rationalize it with your own belief. Fill in the gap in knowledge, in a way. So what you put in that gap is entirely up to you and sometimes it's very important to your attitude and work output. Please, always believe the most positive thing. If a big shot artist doesn't respond to your e-mail, don't blame the fact that your art isn't good, or that you came on too strong. Analyze what you can, then rationalize it with "he would have loved to answer if he wasn't so busy."
That said, in any past circumstance, there is always a more positive outcome that you could have achieved. You have to question how you could have gotten there, without regretting that you didn't.
I heard that the final boss of Diablo 3 is, in fact, Lady Gaga, and not the lord of terror.
Edges are gestalt psychology at work. When you draw from life, you find out how your brain makes sense of your scene, by analyzing which edges in it seem hard and which seem soft. The fast your eyes skim over the edge as you're looking at the scene, the softer that edge will be in your painting.
When doing something artistic, you gotta genuinely love what you do, so that you get some creativity help from your subconscious. When doing other tasks, like programming, you just have to have a passion for problem solving.
There are really 3 types of edges in digital painting. Hard, soft and textured. You can use a texture brush to softer things, instead of the boring old airbrush.
I also heard that in the Diablo movie the monk will be played by Vin Diesel.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
On Our Last Crusade
Today is a very important day because I failed harder than I have in the recent past, and it was difficult to get over it.
I stopped working on this guy and decided to start on a new one. Where this guy failed:
Starcraft struck gold by imitating the Alien with zerg, and adding an exciting horror element into their game, on top of the sci-fi run-of-the-mill conspiracy/rebellion plot lines and themes that go along with the Terran campaign. Protoss are probably the race with the least character, and I was never really invested in what they had to say when I played the campaign, though their visual and gameplay design was solid. Their biggest thematic achievement is probably being the indians to the Terran cowboys. My guess is they were trying too hard to conceptualize a real alien race, which felt too foreign and weird.
Blizzard is the game industry Valhalla. You go there once you have proven your worth in battle.
I realized recently why a few of my pieces were ions beyond anything else I was doing at the time (see the Samurai). It's that "artistic" aspect of concept art shining through, coming from your subconscious. When people are hit with "inspiration" or whatever you want to call it, your brain produces better work, and that's what happened. However there's still no way to logically predict when it will happen again, or how to cause it to do so.
Ideally, all the pieces that go in your portfolio are ones that were made with inspiration.
Oh yeah, I also did some studies hoping they would help me with materials etc. They did. But it didn't save me in the end.
- Detail distribution
- Silhouette read
- Value read
Starcraft struck gold by imitating the Alien with zerg, and adding an exciting horror element into their game, on top of the sci-fi run-of-the-mill conspiracy/rebellion plot lines and themes that go along with the Terran campaign. Protoss are probably the race with the least character, and I was never really invested in what they had to say when I played the campaign, though their visual and gameplay design was solid. Their biggest thematic achievement is probably being the indians to the Terran cowboys. My guess is they were trying too hard to conceptualize a real alien race, which felt too foreign and weird.
Blizzard is the game industry Valhalla. You go there once you have proven your worth in battle.
I realized recently why a few of my pieces were ions beyond anything else I was doing at the time (see the Samurai). It's that "artistic" aspect of concept art shining through, coming from your subconscious. When people are hit with "inspiration" or whatever you want to call it, your brain produces better work, and that's what happened. However there's still no way to logically predict when it will happen again, or how to cause it to do so.
Ideally, all the pieces that go in your portfolio are ones that were made with inspiration.
Oh yeah, I also did some studies hoping they would help me with materials etc. They did. But it didn't save me in the end.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Here We Go Again
Time to get back to work. I'm making some robots next. Will probably upload by Sunday.
In concept art, three things guide your decisions when making shapes: appeal, functionality and gameplay implications.
A lot of hard surface and architecture design is about adjusting angles to make straight lines flow in a nice way.
In the same way that you want to distribute polycount and texture space, you want to put your detail on the part that is most exposed to the camera, or position your concept so that the biggest area of importance is seen.
The way you usually tell a professional from a student is by spotting shortcuts in brushwork. A student, while perhaps having the same skill as a professional, will not have had enough experience to simplify his painting process into something efficient and effortless.
When you don't want to design new shapes, guide the eye with dust, scratches and other texture details.
I heard this new rumour that Diablo III is actually set in Mexico.
In concept art, three things guide your decisions when making shapes: appeal, functionality and gameplay implications.
A lot of hard surface and architecture design is about adjusting angles to make straight lines flow in a nice way.
In the same way that you want to distribute polycount and texture space, you want to put your detail on the part that is most exposed to the camera, or position your concept so that the biggest area of importance is seen.
The way you usually tell a professional from a student is by spotting shortcuts in brushwork. A student, while perhaps having the same skill as a professional, will not have had enough experience to simplify his painting process into something efficient and effortless.
When you don't want to design new shapes, guide the eye with dust, scratches and other texture details.
I heard this new rumour that Diablo III is actually set in Mexico.
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