Environment: Surreal SF city

[tarrzan]

hey Jesse, great piece man, very moody.....I just think if you throw in a sharp focal point, it's done! I love the loose painterly feeling it has. I know what you mean by Painter, when I first got it, I was frustrated, then went back to Photoshop, but now after 6 months with it, I use it way more than Photoshop:) Great site you got there too, keep it up!
http://www.pikzel.co.uk/speedies/bridge_city_web.jpg


Hello, this is my first non-challenge submission on Cgtalk.

I bought myself Painter IX recently and thought I'd share one of the first images I'd made with it. This started off as a random doodle, and quickly started to take the shape of a foreground bridge and some kind of city structure set in a bowl at an angle supported by columns. Well, it kind of emerged by itself and I chose to work it out a bit more. I got to the stage where details are being noodled without really benefitting the whole so that's always a good time to stop and call it a day.

I'm primarily a photoshop man myself, but have played with Painter in the past. All of my past challenges were done in photoshop, but I'm going to try the next one in Painter. My impression of Painter is a mixed one. It's got some very unique features and a feel all of its own. I really like the way colour lays on the canvas, and the captured bristle brushes are excellent. I think its well worth the price, though Photoshop beats it hands down, imo, when it comes to a feeling of control and being able to chop, change, resize and get stuck in. Photoshop's colour controls are way better in general. So it's a good thing they play so well together!

Crits, comments always appreciated. The perspective's off I know, I eyeballed it messily, but I kinda like the rest. Let me know what you think, and what bits work or don't work for you. Cheers! :thumbsup:

[PerfectBlue]

looking good so far, can't wait to see it sharpened up :)

[Squibbit]

Hey Speaky , long day no see, have fun with your new program :thumbsup:




.

[Speaky]

Tarrzan - Glad it's not just me that finds Painter a bit quirky! I think I can forgive it though, its strengths more than make up for it, I can see that even at this stage. Thanks for the reply! :thumbsup:

Lord Blue - I fiddled around long enough with this one. It's no more than a concept really. I have taken some elements and ideas from this one and have started on a more finished piece, as you can see below! Cheers.

Squibbit - Hello buddy, just biding my time until they unleash the next challenge! ;)

[Speaky]

Ok, gonna dump some WIP pics now.

http://www.pikzel.co.uk/speedies/steamcity_sketch.jpg

I've taken the idea of the intricate brass city, which I imagine to be steam-powered and full of pipework, hissing and clunking, and sketched it out directly into Painter 9.1 with the 2B pencil. I had done 4-5 small thumbnail sketches first, just playing around with the composition. I'm aiming for one concentrated centre of interest in the lower right hand third.

[Speaky]

http://www.pikzel.co.uk/speedies/steamcity_values.jpg

This is my working out of the basic values. The majority of busy value changes will (eventually) be in the lower right hand third to reinforce the focal point. With the sketch on a Gel layer above, I poured a 70% value onto the canvas, and then swabbed in a complementary 30% value to show the areas in shade. I often make my shaded areas too dark so I'm trying this 70% / 30% approach which I read about somewhere. The idea is to keep the dark areas and light areas well separated, and within each I have further leeway to define form - i.e. in the shade areas I can use 0% - 40% values and in the lit areas I can use 60%-100%. Keeping the lights and darks so separate should help the picture read properly and look dynamic. That's the theory, at least!

[Speaky]

http://www.pikzel.co.uk/speedies/steamcity_wip1.jpg

I'm trying something a bit different here. It always pays to play around with different approaches, and I haven't yet found my 'technique' when it comes to digital art, though I think I'm getting there. I know what I like, I don't try and force a style to emerge, and I think my end-goal is to achieve a balanced hierarchy of edges, values, colour, detail and texture. Easy to say, hard to do!

In this one, I scaled the artwork to 5950 x 8420. I'm using the Bristle Oils brush a lot here with my Wacom Intuos 3 A5, I just realised that tilting the pen makes the bristles splay out. Nice!

So, scrubbing in some colour, some detail.

[Speaky]

http://www.pikzel.co.uk/speedies/steamcity_wip2.jpg

And this is the stage I'm currently at. Pretty much self-explanatory, lots of work to go. Not quite sure what to do with the sky yet, but I know I want it quite flat and dark.

Crits, comments will be greatly appreciated.

:thumbsup:

[Speaky]

http://www.pikzel.co.uk/speedies/steamcity_wip3.jpg


Wrestling with the sky area a bit. Instead of billowing clouds, I'm now thinking quite a flat sky, a very subtle gradient. The mountains around the steamcity now surround it on all sides rather than the city being in a kind of steep valley like before.

[kaspaxl]

Hi, i really like this last piece you posted. Great work. Some Critique however. In my opinion this last composition change is for the worst. The previous one with the sky triangle going all the way down led the eye much better towards the main building and allowed for a very nice effect with the light beign seen through the pipework beneath it. Now that it is gone the building seems to have melted too much with the background. I think you only needed to clear up the clouds and mix in more of the orange sky tone into them.

Well, it's just an opinion for all it's worth.

Regards,
--kaspaxl

[fourcrowsArt]

Hi! These are great, and I have more of a question than a crit...(everything digital looks good to me at this stage of the game...) I hope it's not completely idiotic...

Are you working in layers? I did the demo of paint, and for the life of me I can't figure out the layers in there...I'm a photoshop person myself (I started in photography, then moved to fine art, now trying .....ugh...floundering....with digital)

If this isn't layers, is it just building up opacitys?

thanks a ton...and again, love this!

[Speaky]

Kaspaxl - I know what you mean, but I noticed a bit of a problem in the lighting setup. That's why the latest changes the bg quite a bit. I really wanted to have the front of the steam city to be catching the light on its round base all the way up to the little brass spires and pipes. The problem was that the bright sky behind it was so bright that the setting sun had to lay in that direction, which was almost completely wrong for the front of the city to be lit. So, a bit of a drastic change. I considered going back to the sketch and restarting, but I'll see if this works. The bright sky 'triangle', while leading the eye to the city, was way too bright. It dominated the area too much. Thanks for the feedback, nice one. :)

Fourcrows - I'm very happy to answer your question! I try and work on one layer only. The sketch was on one layer, then I made this a layer above the canvas as 'gel' (same as Photoshop's multiply mode). That way I could slop colour in underneath. As soon as I could, I dropped (flattened) the layers together.

Everyone has a different methodology, but I don't like to use many layers. Especially in Painter, but Photoshop too, working in many layers makes blending colours and areas together problematic. I find. They give flexibility to layout, but then again the layout should have been sorted out before starting the bulk of working on the piece.

As to digital art, stick with it. When I first started to get into it (two and a half years ago), I was incredibly disheartened because it is so easy to produce bad, simplistic, naiive looking art. My first efforts really frustrated me, though I had an art education and a talent for it, it simply wouldn't translate to the screen. I think the main strengths of the medium - immediacy, flexibility etc bring their own disadvantages. When working in natural media, you have the texture of the paint and paper giving quality and interest to the colour, but these have to be simulated or added in digital. So it is very easy to produce boring, flat pics on the computer. You can use brighter, more vivid colours too, but it takes practice to use them well (i.e. in a careful, restrained manner). I just found that I had to go back to basics, learn about values, colour theory, compostition etc and keep practising. Speedpainting is a good way of improving, a one-hour limit forces you to concentrate on the basics. Oh and you absolutely need a graphics tablet. Wacom. Nothing else will do.

[Speaky]

http://www.pikzel.co.uk/speedies/steamcity_wip4.jpg

Now that's another thing that Painter wins over Photoshop - blending tools. Obviously if you blend everything together then you'll end up with a super-smooth 'plastic' look which isn't desirable, so what I do is to make sure to break apart blended areas with textured brush strokes. Like the sky in this instance.

Hmmm. Still not 100% about the whole shebang. And that really is the world's least interesting bridge!

[Speaky]

http://www.pikzel.co.uk/speedies/steamcity_wip5.jpg

I've detailed out the steamcity quite a bit. Since it is the focus it can have quite a complexity to it. At the other end of the scale is the backdrop which really shouldn't grab the attention, so feathery strokes and indistinct edges (I'm happiest with the left hand mountain where the shaded area meets the sky) are the order of the day. The transition between similar values needs to be soft in order to prioritise the transitions between areas of differing value.

I've pushed the saturation a bit and tweaked the levels to try and inject some life into it. Next up: that damn bridge. I'm thinking the horses and carts should become coal wagons or something, to feed the brass god of steam!

[Speaky]

http://www.pikzel.co.uk/speedies/steamcity_wip6.jpg

That's a bit better, definitely got something happening with the bridge now. I'm aiming to have a whole string of coal carts feeding into the gatehouse at the end. Coal burns and creates smoke, water becomes steam ... at some point I'm going to have to work out a way of conveying this in the pic. Some kind of steam venting, black tarry smoke billowing forth from one of the uppermost pipes.

Trouble is, I like the clean sky, so... got to think about that. Also, not fond of those mint green touches in the left hand mountain.

Come on you lot, lets have some feedback!

[fourcrowsArt]

Fourcrows - I'm very happy to answer your question... <snip>... Wacom. Nothing else will do.

Hey Speaky, thanks so much for this! It helps so much to learn little tricks...I work in layers only if I have a set pallette, and I stick to it...no wandering off, LOL....

I've had my wacom for exactly 2 weeks today, and it's become my new boyfriend! :love:I spend all my time with it...I don't think I could ever live without one again...

You are so right on about going back to basics...I had a few days of near tears trying to figure out why I couldn't just take what I know of traditional painting and use it with digital...it was horrible...but slowly I'm coming around...

The one hour limit sounds like a good idea...

anyway, thanks so much...I couldn't be doing as well as I am without this forum and people like you who share their works in progress and their tips!

:applause::)
Robin

[Speaky]

http://www.pikzel.co.uk/speedies/steamcity_wip7.jpg

An update showing how I have tackled the coal smoke and steam billowing out of the enormous brass structure. There is an internal glow to it, a bright orange light source that hints at some kind of raging furnace, devouring coal and perhaps driving steam turbines or some other mechanical contraptions.

I imagine this thing clanking, hissing and rumbling away into the night, full of sparks, shouts from the greasemonkeys and a heavy, humid smog settling in when there is no wind.

What on earth are they doing here?

[Speaky]

http://www.pikzel.co.uk/speedies/steamcity_final.jpg

Okay, I think I'm about there. Endless noodling isn't that much fun for me, I'd rather start something else! So here is the final pic and we'll leave it at that.

Title: Steam City
Software used: Painter 9.1
Resolution: 5950 x 8420
Brushes used: HB Pencil to sketch it, Bristle Oils 30 to colour it, Round Camel Hair for detail, Soft Airbrush for the steam (going over it afterwards with the RCH).

[kaylon]

6000 x 8000 size!! .. that must be a 130+ meg image :)...


It's nice..very nice, but (and this is not meant to sound like a put down) You could have probably achived the same "looking" results working at 10th of the size.

Your style as you even said yourself is for broad blocks of suggestive detail and not squillions of noodling...so why do an image of such monumental proportions if your not going to take advantage of the resolution. Seamt to me like a waste of hard drive space..and time when you consider how fast brushes must track on an image that size :).

Is there some reason for working so big ?.. I'd love to work large like that, but get frustrated at the speed and responce of brushes...how do you get around this ? or do you just live with it ?.

K.

[Speaky]

Kaylon - Thanks for taking a moment and posting in my thread :). You're about right with the file sizes (painter .rif files between 60-80 megabytes, Tiff files for moving between Painter and Photoshop around 150 megabytes).

I saved about 8 iterations of this pic plus the sketch and value base. In total it makes up a folder of 565 megabytes. After I finish, what I tend to do is convert the previous steps into max or very high quality jpegs. An 80 megabyte file becomes say a 3-4 megabyte jpeg. That's fine for me, storage-wise. I'll keep the final pic in the original format and zip it up.

Now, as to the why of it :D

A number of reasons. It's good to work big and go into these things as if they were being done for print, so you know the tricks etc if (when!) you get a job doing it. The first pic in the thread was a concept sketch, worked small. The last pic was a finished piece, worked big. I found it relatively easy to do brushwork in it by tweaking the 'feature' setting of the brushes, which makes the bristles more defined (by using less of them).

This leads on to a very good reason to work big. Even if your painting style tends towards simplified colour blocking, there is a real visual benefit to working big. Painter's brushes are beautifully textural and they need the resolution to show this off. Consider this comparison between my original size and the jpeg above (exactly a tenth of the size of the original!):

http://www.pikzel.co.uk/speedies/steamcity_crops.jpg

See what I mean? Resolution isn't just important for narrative detail, but also for allowing some of the colour and texture qualities of traditional media to emerge.

If I printed my picture as an A3 poster, I could see all those painterly strokes and bristle marks, and it would bring me joy! :bounce:

Edit: The right hand pic is a 100% crop scaled up 1000% to match the size of the original crop.

[beelow]

One thing that I like about painter is that you get the nice textures with the brushes. Also you can create brushes to as well. I like using both programs though. but you can create with both, look at Ryan Church's work and Look at Linda bergevists work. Either way is fine for me, anyways enjoy Painter and hope to see you put the program to use in the next cg challenge...holla!:thumbsup:

[Khanh703]

Wow, I like both what you started out with and the later stages. But I like the mood in the first sketch best. Has more of that "humans colinizing an alien planet feel". Mad talent you got.

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