CGTalk - Character- Centaur

drewgilbert

11-18-2003, 10:08 PM

This is going to be cross-posted on the Conceptart.org forum, so I apologize for any crossover people seeing the same thread twice, and I apologize if I am breaking a rule by cross posting.

So I wanted to do a piece using approximately the same techniques I found in Adi Granov's wonderful tutorial found here (http://www.sofos.com/adi/tutorial.htm) so I drew up a centaur, because I'm looking for a gaming job, and I need to pad my portfolio with Sci Fi and/or fantasy work. I started with this sketch;

http://www.drewgilbert.com/centaur/centaur.jpg

Then on a lightbox, I traced it lightly;

http://www.drewgilbert.com/centaur/centaur-2.jpg

Then rendered it.

http://www.drewgilbert.com/centaur/centaur-3.jpg

Then colored it flatly after doubling the layers of the pencil, making the top layer a multiply at 50% transparancy. The other pencil layer was also multiply, come to think of it. That's the only way I would have gotten the color to come through.

Continued in next post...

drewgilbert

11-18-2003, 10:09 PM

http://www.drewgilbert.com/centaur/centaur-4.jpg

Then I put a watercolor wash in the background, made a layer over that set to screen, so I could color the wash any way I liked, then flattened the picture, and with the dodge tool set to highlight and about 35% opacity, I put highlights where I thought they would be appropriate. This is the completed image.

http://www.drewgilbert.com/centaur/centaur-5.jpg

In the future, I need to experiment with using the watercolors the way Adi does, as well as spend more time rendering the figure in pencil. There's far too much white space in the figure for my taste. I did this in about 8-10 hours. It's interesting that Adi uses a different technique now. I'm new to his work, and I far prefer this older technique to the newer work on his site. It must be more labor intensive than the way he does things now. Or maybe my taste is just skewed.

Anyway, I hope you all like it. Any helpful critiquing would be greatly appreciated.

Take care,

pyraxis

11-19-2003, 05:01 PM

Nice line work, and I really like the background.

I think the color needs a little work though. The colors you laid in, especially for the skin and the horse's body, are very flat, so overlaying the pencil work on top of that makes the shadows look kind of dirty and there aren't enough hilights. Just my opinion, but I think you should choose whether you're going for a cel-shaded look, in which case you don't really need the pencil shading, or a more realistic 3d look, in which case you should drastically deepen the shadows with richer, darker colors. The one place you've done this well is the hair, it would be nice to see the horse's body in the same style.

drewgilbert

11-20-2003, 02:40 PM

Thank you for the comments pyraxis, I do appreciate them, and I see what you're saying. I've rendereed the horse's body some more and have worked a little on the colors and replaced the background. I'm not sure I nailed the rendering, but I think doing a fresh piece all together will help me work out some of the kinks as far as how best to do these pencil renderings.

http://www.drewgilbert.com/centaur/centaur-6.jpg

pyraxis

11-20-2003, 04:02 PM

Much better! The shape of the body is really starting to jump out. Looking forward to seeing the next one...

VShane

11-21-2003, 06:39 AM

Personaly I like the rendered pencil shaded sketch. Also the rump seems kinda flat and dog shaped, needs to be rounder.

CGTalk Moderation

01-16-2006, 06:00 PM

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.