Digital Painting: Videotutorials online

[Floriam]

Genious! Especially liked the fourth video :)

It's a riddle to me how you're able to block out the shapes at the beginning and make such a fantastic picture out of it.. never going to understand that. If my picture would look how yours did at the beginning, I probably would have abadonned it - but I guess that's the reason why I havn't finished a piece since months. :(

May I ask you if you always had that concrete scene in mind (with those trees in that position and the river with it's waterfall), or did you just started to draw and "let it happen"?


Greetings, Florian

[I-NetGraFX]

Hi Florian!

Yes, I had something specific in mind. I wanted to have those abandoned temple like structures overgrown with the roots of the trees. Kind of like mangroves, ...
But the exact placement of those are for sure random, while I painted them. Thanks a lot for your comment!

[AmDiv]

Your work looks awesome, I'm heading to check out the tutorials now, I'm just getting into CG work myself, I hope to find my way quick, since I am devoted. Your Ice maze is very clever, My favorite I think.. =P

CheersAm

[Chriz5]

Hello,

I have watched your Tutorial 4 right now, cause I like environments pictures, especially jungles/ruins and it is great!
It is interesting to follow works step by step and watch how an idea gets realized.

But I have only one question.

How many layers do you have used to paint this jungle?

[I-NetGraFX]

AmDiv: Thanks a lot for your comment!

Chriz5: Especially at the beginning stage I rarely use more then one to two layers. While laying out the composition and finding the color palette I don't want to be bothered with too many layers ...
Later during the process I have color correction layers, texture overlays and atmospheric effects on separate layers.
Sometimes it's clever to have at least the background separated and close foreground elements in case it should be transfered as a matte painting or anything with a higher resolution ...
Hope that helped a bit. Thanks for your comment!

[Chriz5]

Hi again,

thank you for your reply.
One time I tried to working with about 5 layers, but it started to confusing me, so that I painted sometimes on the wrong layer. But this is a question of concentration, I think.
Last time I used only one layer to paint a jungle and it was not really... "comfortable".

So I am going to use more layers again. For my next project two or three layers should be enough. We will see. :)

Thanky you.

[WhItY]

Thanks a lot Daniel, that is definitely a fine thing!
For me as a beginner in digital painting it's great and helpful to watch how you build and construct a painting :)

Cheers,
Julian

[swedishnitro]

Amazing tutorials Daniel, though I really think a voiceover would be immensley helpful for us viewers. Thanks! Jay

[DeadlyAppearanc]

Wow, really great tutorials.
First time where i can see how this technic works.
Mostly you can only see some steps in tutorials.

But two questions.
What the name of that technic? You draf every time over the picture to get more and more details. If i want to draw i would every object and object, but with all the details.

The second one. Which brushes are you using für the ice picture? I have downloaded you brushes. And what is you table setting? What change the pressure on you tablet, the size or the opacity? You change the flow, or 100%
Because i have the proble if i draw a picture with that technic the strokes don`t smooth together.

Thanks for your answer.

[Kaidonni]

Yes, great tutorials. I now know where I've gone wrong in my digital painting - brushes. I notice that you use a myriad of customised brushes...I've had some success messing around with some of the brushes from online that are available for download, and tried my hand at making my own...but it's still hard. Did you make yours, or are they general purpose ones you can find online anywhere? I don't want the brush to do any work for me, but I've been very limited to using a basic round brush, with opacity affected by pen pressure, etc, and not more varied like you used, and hence my paintings have been failures because of these restrictions. Of course, a recent attempt did yield far better results than previous, after taking note of how you used customised brushes. But I'm skeptical of my custom brushes...

You should post a tutorial on what types of brush you use. I'm just itching to find out more, now. :D

[Floriam]

Have a look at his download section… there's a package with custom brushes :) A bit old, but they're probably a good point to start from, if you want to know which brushes he's using.

Florian

[Kaidonni]

Heh, didn't notice those brushes there. Glanced it over earlier, and could only see the tutorial files, etc. I was wondering if there were brushes available there...

Thank you Floriam for pointing that out, and also thank you I-NetGraFX - for both the tutorials and the brush downloads. :)

[the_ARTS]

is there a chance u can put one up with voice ? explaining what u do and so forth ?

[kizoku]

Yeah, some comments and such would be great! :)

[LadyEvey]

Thanks so much for these videos. I enjoy watching the methods used. I appreciate it very much. If you find more time. I would love to see some more. I only have watched the fourth one. So I still get to watch the ohter 3 so no worries you have time. Haha.

[I-NetGraFX]

Chriz5:
One time I tried to working with about 5 layers, but it started to confusing me, so that I painted sometimes on the wrong layer. But this is a question of concentration, I think.
I'd suggest only work with as many layers as absolutley necessary.
Especially in the beginning stage, you don't want to be bugged with a whole bunch of layers!
Thanks a lot for your comment!


swedishnitro:
though I really think a voiceover would be immensley helpful for us viewers. Thanks!the_ARTS:
is there a chance u can put one up with voice ? explaining what u do and so forth ?Unfortunately due to the high work load and my side project, I'm unable to spend time on voiceovers, since it would cause way more additional work.
If you have specific questions, I'd be happy to answer them here as far as time allows it.
Thanks a lot for your understanding.


DeadlyAppearanc:
What the name of that technic? You draf every time over the picture to get more and more details. If i want to draw i would every object and object, but with all the details.Not sure if there's actually a name for this technique. If I would make up a name for it, I'd call it "progressive digital painting". I really prefer to work this way in production, since at almost any stage I'm working on the final image. I usually try to balance the level of detail while I work, so at any stage the art director has the possibility to see where I'm going and could already send a draft version to the client or stop me early enough from adding more details ;)

There are different ways of starting concept art. Some start with a line drawing, black/white shading and introduce color at a later point. Even if there's an advantage in breaking those steps in smaller ones, by focusing on values before on colors. You need to spend already a certain amount of time in preparing your image, so it would look more like the final piece.

Generally, you don't want to focus on details at the beginning, rather to be sure to maintain the overall composition, defining the color palette, values, lighting, perspective, etc ...


Which brushes are you using für the ice picture? I have downloaded you brushes. And what is you table setting? What change the pressure on you tablet, the size or the opacity? You change the flow, or 100%
Because i have the proble if i draw a picture with that technic the strokes don`t smooth together.I'm actually using a photoshop standard brush for it, set to opacity pen pressure at 100%.
The flow is switched off at 100%.
If you have troubles with "smoothing" things together ... it's most likely that your hardness of your wacom tablet is not set properly. You should be easily able to paint a gradient from
light to strong values with a hard brush set to opacity 100%.

Thanks for your comment,
I hope it helps others as well ...

Kaidonni:
I notice that you use a myriad of customised brushes...I've had some success messing around with some of the brushes from online that are available for download, and tried my hand at making my own...but it's still hard. Did you make yours, or are they general purpose ones you can find online anywhere? I don't want the brush to do any work for me, but I've been very limited to using a basic round brush, with opacity affected by pen pressure, etc, and not more varied like you used, and hence my paintings have been failures because of these restrictions. Of course, a recent attempt did yield far better results than previous, after taking note of how you used customised brushes. But I'm skeptical of my custom brushes...

You should post a tutorial on what types of brush you use. I'm just itching to find out more, now.Please do not forget, that brushes are not the key to a successful painting.
They can be time savers, but at the same time they can work against you by introducing noticable repetition patterns. Most of the time it takes more work to clear those out then actually painting it properly, especially then when the brushes are not set correctly.
At the beginning you should really focus on a very simple set of brushes.
Any brush that feels like chalk, has a minor randomness and is controlled via opacity will do a nice job for basic sketching.

Following examples were actually meant for a friend who didn't wanted to believe that you could paint anything with one single brush. So I restricted myself only to use one photoshop standard brush:
http://www.inetgrafx.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10059/normal_SKETCH-V001b-MONGOLIA.jpg

http://www.inetgrafx.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10059/normal_SKETCH-V002a-STADIUM.jpg

Thanks a lot for your comments!
Best Regards,

[CGTalk Moderation]

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.