First picture

It is a high time to start working on pictures for my trailer. My first rule according this project is to produce a good piece of work, which can be included in a portfolio. During creation process, I should learn some principles of digital drawing and gain more knowledge about techniques, brushes, layers, composition etc. I did a small test in After Effects to check how many images I’ll need to produce if the whole trailer was to last about one minute. For that purpose, I set the basic transition animation for each image, the one I was going to use in a final piece. Then, I slowed down one image presentation to a proper pace. Overall counting amount was about twelve pictures. The immediate thought was that I don’t have enough time for producing that many images. The simple solution was to chop the length of animation into my requirements. At this point, another thought crossed my mind. I came back to my learning aims and repeated myself what’s the most important, and it wasn’t finalization of the trailer. Don’t understand me wrong, I wish I could have a trailer, built of images, but at this project, my goal is to learn the digital painting process and achieve satisfactory outcome. That means, I would rather have two good looking pictures for my portfolio than six very poor ones. Following that path, I’ll learn how much time it takes me to produce one good piece of work and that knowledge will help me in setting up the realistic time for the next project, which is our final. Summing this up, this project is not going to look like a trailer or introduction of my character. What I’m going to do instead, is to keep the form of trailer and present my painting process. I saw some artists who do that and I think the outcome looks pretty good. All in all, people are interested in watching “How it’s made” videos.

Work in progress

Before I started sketching, I was thinking of camera angles and shots for my pictures. As I still wanted to make some kind of introduction of the character, I was considering well lit, “peaceful” sceneries. I had to think a lot on each picture just to include the proper message in them. For the first picture, I had to include essential information: personality of my character(strong, fearless and provocative) and it’s merchant profession (which was slightly hard, because there was a very thin line between making her look like a pirate). I decided to keep this scene on a ship, for it’s the asset she’s spending most of her time on.

I’ve started with an idea of Clarice sitting on a bowsprit. To me, choosing that part of a ship meant very interesting angle (with a ship in a view) and a clue for Clarice’s character. She’s brave and climbing on this long, high mast definitely calls for a respect from the viewer. To get the perspective right, I was searching for references.

It's exactly what I want, except for position

Bowsprit details

Once my research finished successfully, I moved to the next step – sketching.

This was my first sketch. It’s not impressive at all, I didn’t mean to spend a lot of time on this stage, because it’s just a guideline for my digital painting and I preferred it to be clean. What counts is the right perspective and characters features…….and here they are not right. I’m showing this “unsuccessful” attempt as my learning process and as an evidence of my evaluation.

Next idea was born in a different order to the previous one. This time I was looking at my gathered references of the ships. One image caught my intention and pushed imagination to action. 

I really wanted to give this low angle a try. Although, as I remember, all my previous attempts of drawing a person from the low camera view, ended up with failure. This was my time and I really wanted to change this unlucky chain. What was my solution? Easy – finding more references!.... then practice.

      

The main conclusion from those research was: if want to draw right body perspective, you need to choose the proper scale. What I mean is that low angle camera exaggerates bottom part of the body and at the same time makes upper part smaller. Some artists know how to push this principle into extremes but I’m not going to do that, as I intend to make it look realistic. Another main observation I’ve made is the look of chest and shoulders. If we’re looking from the bottom, breast start to cover neck and shoulders move slightly down, what hides them a little bit. Those points helped me to improve my drawing and this time, I dare to say, it finally turned out to be successful.  One note for the proper understanding.  The presentation may seem short but creating each image really took me a lot of time, since I’m still learning.

Before moving to painting, I decided to test if I’m going to leave an outline or not. 

From my previous experiences, I’ve noticed that doing background first really helps me in getting proper lights on the character. That’s what I started with for this picture. I’ve used a photo of the sky for the quick and nice effect.

 I was painting more details, still keeping an outline in the image.

At this point the revolution started. As you can see, I erased an outline, as the image looked better without it. This image may look very simple and that it’s not including many details but it took me a while to get objects’ surfaces  into that point. I was really unpleased with this image and I decided to share my doubts with others. I received many feedbacks about unclear situation on the picture. First of all, it didn’t look like a ship. I’ve noticed that before and I was hoping that adding a riling at the background would help. Unfortunately it would not because viewers couldn’t tell what kind of perspective I’m presenting here. Another feedback mentioned ropes, which looked like going in eternity to the skies, not to the masts. Saving this image was my mission. I had to have a break and come back with a clear vision on my work, then the deconstruction started. Audience review was my guide for making changes. First thing to do was to fix the perspective. Basically, my actions included mainly moving objects around, testing if that would improve the image. I’m not including those images because there were too many of them and at the end none actually worked. After not working changes, another thought came to my mind. I deleted smaller mast, which was simply confusing and then, changed the whole perspective of the ship.

 Grey blocks at the background imitate front of the ship. This action finally worked and viewer stopped being confused by unclear perspective. I also had to change the sail, which is now standing in front of us. But there was still something wrong and I kept changing features of the image.

Thinking of layering principle, I decided to add some details at the foreground. Two rectangles at the front play role of barrels. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough. After hundredth try, I finally understood what’s not working. The main mast was too small and didn’t fit the whole scene so I rescaled it.

When the new composition was established, it was time to start painting.

 There was a mix of references used for my design and it kept changing the whole time. When the shape of a ship appeared at the back, the middle and front layers stopped making sense. That meant, another changes were required.

The mast started wandering again. As the perspective has changed, the position of a mast also needed a retouch. I didn’t like to put it straight behind Clarice, because then the composition was distorted. The ropes from the previous image( on a right hand side) didn’t look right as well. I decided to replace them with a better version, which you can see in here.

 At the same time I was working on other assets. The mast kept changing it’s position, so I could establish where is his right place. Shape of the ship transformed into another one and there was also a constant sculpting of railing. The handrail was going through the whole evolution of forms and shapes, all that to get a better perspective.

Now assets from the middle layer moved to the right. As I mentioned before, a mast shouldn’t stand behind the character. Once one of the objects has changed it’s position, a bunch of ropes started to be in a wrong place. That resulted in moving them aside, but there was another reason for that action. Ropes are attached to the mast at one side and jointed to the deck on the other. Before I moved the ropes, you couldn’t tell what they had been actually for. Now it is clear and I can tell that the new composition was established.

 Once I finally had an idea what the image should look like, it was time to start working on details. Here I was considering some space filling but I’ve received a feedbacks that the picture looks better without crates on the deck.

Crates were gone and I had to focus on getting the right perspective for the railing, since it was revealed now. I added a bit of sail in the upper right corner to make the whole piece look stable. I was searching for ideas for the forecastle’s balustrade and I came to like the shape which you can see on this image. I had also shaped the base for the barrels.

 

Reference of the railing

 

Here is the picture after a retouch and added textures. It came to my attention that for this project I’m researching a lot of wood…..may be I’ll become an expert in drawing timber. However, that’s the texture I needed to learn and understand for it’s the main material on my pictures. I also cleaned the gaps between posts and it turned out to be a good choice. Now it allows to pour more light into the left side of the scene.

 Posts from the railing on right hand side were a real nightmare to me. Somehow, I couldn’t get the perspective right , what caused constant adjustments. For painting barrels, I was supporting myself with a reference. I wasn’t satisfied with the outcome, to me barrels look like paste onto the picture.  I’ve planned to add more shading but that action comes at the end of the process. It was a real fun to draw sail though. The basic Photoshop brush perfectly imitated fabric’s texture and I was positively surprised how easy such an effect can be achieved.  At this stage, I considered my background as almost finished. I still had to add shades but that was the last point I was going to do. Although, the background didn’t look as exciting as I wished. I could spend another few days, trying to fix it but I thought it’s better to move onto next stage instead. Otherwise I would be playing with one image for too long and to me, it was more beneficial to simply start a new image and apply principles that I’ve learnt while doing the first image.

Finally, it was time to start working on a character. Here I added some basic colors to figure out the proper tones. To make my task easier, I also added a temporary sunlight that would help me to establish lights on a character. I also made a decision to get rid of an outline, for it didn’t fit the whole image. I would leave it if I meant to keep a comic style of the picture but it wasn’t my desire for this one.

 Hard work, painting face tones and details. This tiny bit took me incredibly long time of instant changes. There were few different versions of the face but I wasn’t satisfied with them so I covered each with another layers. The turning point in painting the face was when I found an amazing reference by Stanley Artgerm Lau. I was looking at colors, techniques and most of all on facial features on his drawing. That helped me to improve my character dramatically.

Here is my final outcome for the face. I am very proud of it and in my opinion, she is very pretty. I think I’m a slight maniac of pretty faces, and I won’t lie, it gives me the most fun to paint female faces. When I was working on Clarice’s face, I was so focused, I didn’t even notice passing hours.

 Another challenge to me was painting hair. I’ve always had problems with drawing them and I’m still learning the proper method. I was watching many tutorials, looked at books and references but I still haven’t found my way of drawing hair. I believe it will come with practice. To make those hair, I was trying many different ways of painting. If I didn’t like one, it was simply covered with another layer. Very good choice was use of highlights. This picture presents the final hair design and I’m pretty pleased with it.

Close up of the face

 Working on this image, I really put a lot of effort to make clothes look real (or at least good). For that purpose, I was playing with different brushes and tested which ones suit each fabric. I was using references to let my eyes caught necessary details. The most layers was added to the corset. I found my own way of drawing leather while working on a character design. Thanks to that knowledge, I saved some time on painting clothes. All in all, we’re getting better with practice and I had a chance to experience that. Although Clarice’s pants look pretty simple, I’d spent some time, trying to get shading right. Usually before I was using brush with a stroke and it was a very quick method to make smooth transition between tones. Unfortunately that brush left image kind of blurry so I didn’t want to use that method anymore. Instead, I was doing it as professionals do – with a normal (harder) brush. It took me a while but the result really paid off. I also focused on some details of blouse and added thin stripes on it’s surface. That makes the fabric look more elegant and exclusive.  

This is the final look of my image. It has all the details finished, added shading and lights. I didn’t screen in between pictures but I was changing the sun light and after a  few tests, I realized  that the light, which I set as a temporary one, actually worked best in a scene.  That’s why it looks like nothing has changed but there were changes on a way to that point as well (about ten different versions).

Conclusion

I am glad I’ve finished this image but I’m not satisfied with it’s final look. I definitely learnt “How not to draw an image”. This image looked good as a sketch but from the beginning the perspective was slightly unclear. Once I started adding colors, it got even worse. I “saved” the image but not without a cost. By changing the background, my image lost that interesting low angle and my character looks slightly off picture. I’ve got e feeling that the more I changed, the worse it got. I mean that each object seems to be on it’s own layer and you can’t feel like that was one image but a collection of pasted assets.

Another point is also the stillness of a scene. Once I changed the background, the dynamic was gone and everything looks slightly flat. I won’t make that mistake again and for the next time I’ll have to prepare better sketch (the one that works and doesn’t require such drastic changes).

I think I also made slight mistake with lights. I was researching a day time images and I noted down that there are not many shades in the afternoon. That’s what I kept in my mind while painting the image. But as I realize now, I think there should be more shading on the left side of the picture, which is dimmed because of the casting shadow mast. Also, my character should be shaded as she has the sun almost right behind her back. I decided not to do it because then you would not see her details and she wouldn’t be properly highlighted. I did what I thought is right and I realized I was wrong. Another conclusion for future – think of the light in advance (basically before you start sketching).

One more, probably most important thing that happened after finishing this picture. I was surfing the internet, looking for a job offers. As I mentioned before, I’m widening my AOP from illustration, through comic books, character design and concept art. In accordance with that I was typing various job titles. What I realized from those and many previous research is that I would really like to get into game studio. I’ve always loved video games and being part of development team would be simply amazing. Following this direction,  I came to the conclusion that I need to work on a different style of drawing, the concept art one. So far I was producing pictures that could be printed but drawing for concepts is totally different thing. From this moment I decided to make changes into my goals and highlight that now I need to develop concept art drawing  skills, which include: perspective, techniques, brushes, characters, vehicles, environments , assets and very important lights and shades. I’m going to start at this very moment and my first point is to find new references.