Hot it's made

Hello everyone . This is my first (I hope not last) tutorial.

In this “How it’s made” I’d like to share my knowledge using my picture as an example.

This article aimed to beginners at art. Recall myself year ago I started drawing and at some moments was like “well, but how made it beautiful ?” . I didn’t even realized that before draw any idea that comes to my head I should sat down and THINK about future project. The pre-project analyze helped me so much in next year. I started understand what I want to draw, but not just trying draw something that might looks COOL.

Any  project began from the idea. Idea that came to your head or idea which you get after saw someone’s art. In my case it was an inspiration form the cover pic for short animation my friend made in 3D. You can find it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XOKomKoMWY8

As well u can find another renders and animations of my friend here on g+   https://plus.google.com/u/0/110093011746417303813/posts

So  the story begins.

Usually all my workflow is divided to several stages:

1-getting an idea, refining of idea

2-composition

3-drawing

     - blocking

      -drawing

      -coloring

      -texturing (if needs)

4-effects and post production

Stage1- an IDEA. Afted I saw this pic I liked it so much that I wanted to draw something like a RE-MAKE. I marked the points I liked in original picture for transfer it to my future art.

-color balance that makes mood and atmosphere.

-composition (camera aimed to jets)

-color contrast (bright blue glowing of jets and snowy mountains on a background)

I advice you all the time keep such a things in  your head  or mark it with a piece of paper. Because during the working on u can forget about this main things u wanted express.

After that I made 2 quick sketches which shows my thoughts.

At first I was thinking about some snowy plain with soldiers and several hovercrafts, but then I decided draw something like troopers loading to flying vehicle . All I made is just saved what I already liked and changed or cut things I wasn’t pleased with. I liked the composition but I was going to change the vehicle, make it more complex but save this image of heavy war machine. Also I’d like expand the space for soldiers and add some details which make a feeling that it’s a military base but not just a landing place somewhere at North. Because Hovercraft was the main object I started thinking about it’s design.

Refining the IDEA. After reviewed a lot of pictures of vehicles saved at my PC I didn’t found anything that pushed me to any idea for design, dozen of paper sheets went to trash.  In such a situations usually I’m not drilling my brain and went do something else like drawing other pictures ,reading, watching movies, playing games. So I went watching TV and it was “transformers” transmitted at that moment. After movie I went sleep and LOL in a dream I saw the flying vehicle (sure “transformers” made it’s role in this). In the morning I was shining , grabbed the pencils and started scratching.

The dream-based design wasn’t very suitable for me and I made a bit of analogs thinking about “where put the compartment for soldiers”. The third sketch pleased me because back ¾ view  would show the form of vehicle and I started refining its design.

For find design I moved back to references.

Stage 2 - COMPOSITION. This is the most important part  so  insist to pay it’s price and give to this part an attention. Keep in mind that even high detailed picture can be ”doomed” because of bad composition and much less detailed speed paint may looks much more “tasty” if its made according to the rules of composition. You can find a lot of information about composition and mostly you will find articles about “the rule of thirds”. Feel  free to trust this rule.

The task is to put main object near one of a focal points (crosses). Also recommend you flip your picture during this stage. The correct composition looks same good despite of which side looking at.

Avoid place the horizon line at the middle. Avoid dividing picture for two equal parts. Avoid the symmetry . Picture looks better if values is not equal. Let light part be bigger than shady, let warm colors dominate above the cold, let the main object will be small but surrounded by huge rocks or hills, let’s anything but not equal. In one word – CONTRAST .

Here you can see the mountains placed right in the middle so further I moved all landing platform with vehicle and background  closer the bottom line.

Well , composition outlined, places of objects are calculated, we can start drawing.

Stage 3 – DRAWING. If  you’re done with composition it means you are ready for drawing. And at first you have to built a perspective for your objects. Here is where I 'cheated'. For building perspective of complex objects I always use Google sketchup software. Professional artists who are more familiars with prospectives and proportions can draw complex objects without a 3d software (and I’d suggest you to go trough the hard but correct method), but I prefer to save the time using 3D apps. Using a 3D model can be very useful because in case you decide to change the composition you don’t have to redraw the perspective for your object but just change the “camera” position in the 3D program.

I will not teaching you how to use Google Sketch Up. The same concept can be achieved in Blender, 3D Max or Cinema 4D or any equal program.

About after 15 minutes I made a simple blocking of vehicle and the landing zone, took a Print Screen and went to Photoshop.

At first I made rough outlines which I then refined, then I added a layer under outline and started painting.  During the workflow I used 5 brushes ( professional artists use even less number ) . You can download this brushes here

Их можно скачать здесь http://radiolol.deviantart.com/art/brushes-for-tutorial-348079684?ga_submit=10%3A1357999723

some time back, after seeing a nice artwork on the internet I though “I wish to get the brushes used by this artist, so I will draw like he too” but in time I realized that it’s not so important to have a lot of different brushes. Eventually I kept to a number of 3. 1 brush with soft edges (like airbrush), another one with hard edges, and a brush with a  texture. Usually a set of 3 brushes is ENOUGH for draw ANYTHING. You just need to create (or find) the brush you feel good with.

I usually start drawing in grayscale because it helps to feel easily the contrast and value. Remember that contrast loosing from foreground (high and wide contrast range) to background (thin contrast range). Also grayscale makes me feel free of thinking which colors should I be using. If you’re sure in a color scheme you can draw in color from the beginning but I’d advice you using the Black/White mask placed above all the layers to see if its everything good with the contrast of your picture.

DO NOT make the shadows totally black. Even deepest darkness have a color.

If you need some tips about the number of layers I use I’d say that from the first step I’m trying to put every piece on a single layer.  Digital painting gave us a gift – the layer, so why not use it?

At the same time I’m trying not to overload painting document with layers and keep it’s number as minimum as it possible.

Remember that background and foreground should be less detailed for let the eye attract to main object. But I’m not the best example of this rule because after I saw some beautiful artwork from Makoto Shinkai I fell in love with his clouds and then I was all the time trying to make my clouds look alike.

I chose what is looks IN PLACE and what is IN MY WAY,  choose by yourself.

During the drawing process first draw the stuff in their overall shapes , then add the details.

If someone is interested in the size of the picture, I’m aiming to the screen size “rounded“ to solid digits. If the wideness of the screen is 1366, round it up to 2000 so the high will be 1124 (witch I turn it into 1200). At the start of this project, the canvas remained static to 2000x1200 at 200 dpi. But as the project progresses these values may change

Here you can see the pretty detailed hovercraft, running soldiers and some incomprehensible strokes.

I will not teaching you anatomy as it’s a very big subject by itself and I can’t put all the information in just one tutorial. If u started drawing not long ago, I’d advice you cheating again. To draw the running figures use the images from google and placed it on a document just redrawing it looking at the original image. BUT NEVER TRACE THE IMAGE! You can’t learn anything by just tracing the photos, but if u are redrawing stuff it will teach you measuring the parts of a human body and this knowledge will be remembered in future.

You can see the gray mess in the right corner, that’s mean I decided to add something in that place, because sharp corner attracts attention and it should be softened with some object.

At this point I’m done with the main objects and decided its time for set a color in a game. Usually I’m adding colors using a layer in “soft light” blending mode.

Notice that for each b/w layer I use different color layer applied with a clipping mask. It allows me coloring without worrying that some color will damage an area around the object. After all the main colors are set down, I merge each pair of b/w – soft light layers.

Next I wanted to make the background more detailed with my fabulous clouds.  For making the sky I’m using gradients, which I made by myself just picking the colors of the sky from other photos. After that use a soft brush for adding light color closer to the source of light (sun) and making the area opposite to sun more darker ( if needed I use Gaussian blur filter).

For drawing mountains go to google again. Find several pics of snowy mountains and redraw parts you like in original images to create your own mountain.

Next step it was adding the sunlight to a platform. I used the lasso selection tool for this step, filled selected area with daffodil color and set the layer to soft light mode again. Light as itself wasn’t enough for good contrast so I added a shadow layer also using lasso tool. In this case, fill area with middle gray and set the layer to Overlay.

Next was reflecting images on a floor.  Duplicate all the layers  (except light and shadow), put it above the  “landing platform”  using the clipping mask, then flip vertically and merge (do not marge with the “platform layer” itself, just all the mirrored layers). Set the mirror layer to soft light , and use motion blur filter to lower the details.

The point I started “jumping” from one piece to another means that: as the general plan of drawing in my head is ended and now I have to make a new  plan “what  to draw next”. I’m doing it almost all the time, just adding new layer above and write on it what I need draw .

Im doing clouds looking at Makoto Shinkai pictures and using 3^rd and 4^th brushes.  Except the smoke from the vehicle (watch final image) this is the only point I used 4^th brush. In overall making clouds is a synthesis on 3^rd,4^th brushes and an eraser.

So after I’ve got a new plan I started working on the soldiers. Increased size of each soldier for draw it more detailed and painted looking at several references. They where drawn same way as hovercraft – outline above all, color layer beneath and merge layers at the end.

After finished with the running troopers, I wanted to finalize the vehicle to let me not go back and forth and give all my time to the robot on the right corner, details of platform and light and shadow. Actually that was the way u acted. Create a new layer above the hovercraft in “color burn” blending mode and with a soft brush paint with a light gray in the shadowed areas of it to increase contrast. Then do the same with the light areas but using “color dodge” blending mode. Added couple of titles ( just transform text and place it whatever  you want . Nothing special) I still found this picture quite boring, so I added jet glow.

In my opinion it still needed another light point; some more color like in the original image. Lens flares also add a cinematographic effect  (the same as adding  vignette).

 To make lens flare we need 4 layers.  One in normal mode to draw parts of vehicle that should be glowing (u can draw bright lines right on the “hovercraft” layer but I decided to be safe in case I wouldn’t be pleased with it) the 3 layers left will play as the glow itself. Draw white stripes where the light source is more hard and merge it down to “hovercraft” layer. to make glowing light go to another layer and set it to Screen  or Color Dodge mode. Using a soft brush add some foggy light. On the next layer draw a circles with brush No.2 near every light source.  Apply a Motion Blur filter and set the layer to Screen mode as well. Last layer will be used to do exactly the same but with a smaller brush.

All the stuff as light/shadow/effects should always be kept  at a different layer and not merged with anything else.

After that I added a white fog between clouds and mountains to make all the objects result. I also added a moon (drawn with reference) to fill in the sky ( I might have added some more clouds but it felt enough)

Added more details on the objects at the foreground. Just draw a silhouettes of anything, add couple of semicolors and add Blur. Its only to create something that will increase the feeling of space. So it doesn’t need a lot of details.

Next I painted a rough shape of a robots on the right and added some boxes with cables (this is to attach the robots on the platform,  it helps to make a link between objects and surrounding)

After finished with the robots, there was only 1 task left in my to-do list “the light”.There was no need for texturing this pic so I moved  into the post-production stage.

Stage 4- Post Production.  This is my way of making shadows. The thing you should know about shadow is it’s nonmonotonicity .  The shadow looks more dark near the line of light . But as you move your eye further from light the shadow becomes less dark  because you don’t see a bright light for comparing the contrast.

So in my work I simply duplicated the “shadow” layer and erased all the part except the area near the light (probably you will need to decrease the opacity of the duplicated “shadow “layer )

Well. All is drawn, but let’s add an effect of hot air next to the jets. Make a duplicated layer of all image (Ctrl+ Alt + E) and with the lasso selection tool select the areas near the jets. Invert selection and delete all other parts of that layer. Then go to Filter> Filter Gallery>Ocean Ripple or Glass filter. Use a soft eraser  for make it less edgy.

For Last I do the Color balance (Ctrl+B), To make the shadows more violet and lights more yellow.

Also you may use Image>Adjustments>Vibrance to increase/ decrease saturation.

Well, that’s all. Hope you found something helpful in this article.

Wish success in your art.