Environment Scene "Voluntaria" - First project from scratch

#1

So I’m nearly an absolute beginner; you can check out my portfolio which consists of 2 pieces of work, both done by reference.

I’ve been a UI/UX/Identity designer + developer, and I started out back in '99. I’m also an instructor for pluralsight.com, and I run a design youtube channel with close to 100k subscribers.

…And I have to say, attempting to learn 2D concept design has been the most difficult endeavor of my career. It is so g’damn frustrating, but also very eye-opening and exciting to put myself in my student’s shoes, and remember what it’s like to be an absolute beginner at something.

The struggle, frustration, wanting to quit (I have, a couple times already!), the moments of motivation and inspiration; and then failing, the disappointment. All great stuff.

So my goal is to produce something that I’m proud of, and unfortunately as I’m a busy guy, I have to kick this thing in the ass and really stick with it throughout the next month, otherwise I’ll lose interest and this bout of motivation. I’m hoping I fill up this thread with updates.

The project:

A digital environment painting, with the scene set in a jungle / ancient ruins location – a character looking out from a cave with the eye directed towards an ancient artifact known as the Voluntaryism “V” symbol, half buried with a lot of forestry covering.

The Voluntaryist V symbol:

I consider myself a voluntaryist, which is a philosophy that holds that all forms of human association should be voluntary. The purpose of this piece is to draw a parallel between the excitement of discovery, with the excitement of discovering voluntaryism; along with its logical conclusions (anarchism, law, etc…)

So enough of the backstory, here’s a moodboard that I’ve created. I have no clue if a moodboard is something used with concept artists, but when it concerns identity design, it definitely is. It seems like something worth doing in order to establish references for a potential mood of the anticipated piece:

And this is my first ever thumbnail sketch. Surprisingly, I’m happy with it at the moment, though I’ll be working this over, and I realize the “V” is off center from the center of the circle:

So the next step I’m going to tackle is bringing some more detail into this sketch, re-working the V symbol, etc…

#2

Ok another update here real quick. I felt inclined to do a line drawing based on the thumbnail. Not sure if the V symbol is too close in the scene, but I’m going to go with this and start working on the actual values…

#3

Ah christ…

Alright, I just spent several hours working with this and I’ve concluded it’s absolute garbage.

There’s a lot wrong with it, although I can’t pinpoint one single thing. I think the perspective is majorly off, and just the “V” symbol at the end of this thing that looks like a swimming pool, wtf? I think that was just bad decision making, it’s very strange looking.

Back to the drawing board…

I think I’m going to try and come up with a more simple composition next time. I’ll report back shortly.

#4

Okay so I decided to take a much more simplistic approach to the composition. To make life 100x easier, and because the voluntary V logo is a bit difficult to get right when it concerns hand-drawing it in a 3d perspective manner, I hopped into blender and set the scene up.

I know, I’m such a damn cheater. So then I took this into photoshop, and painted over it.

I’m a lot more happy with this one than the first one in this thread. Aesthetically it’s good, but it really doesn’t make sense. A burning wood symbol in a lava pit? wtf is that. I don’t know. I had the intention of taking this in a different direction, almost sci-fi’ish, but I started drawing and random ideas came to me based on what it started to look like.

I’ll continue this with a new piece in some other direction. The goal is to nail the aesthetics and the idea.

#5

Alright, I’m the most happy with this result so far… Beginning to build more confidence and have fun with this stuff.

All I knew before going into this piece, was that I wanted to incorporate tornados and have the tornados sort of “form” the V symbol. There’s also been meme in the voluntaryist/anarchist community “taxation is theft” so I gave that a little hint in this piece.

Bit of the process below…

I’ll keep this theme up and try to experiment more with different environments. I’m still keeping the compositions rather simple – not much architecture or crazy angles/perspectives.

#6

Alright, still a simple perspective/concept, but getting better at rendering. One problem is I went into this, thinking it was going to be a war scene – so instead of executing the initial concept I have in mind, I’m going off more like what things look like as I draw.

Process:






#7

[VIMEO]162677166[/VIMEO]Ok I tried something quite different this time… I took a pic of my 6 yr old daughter and drew her. I recorded it all and condensed it into 3 minutes (4 hours real time).

I know there are some issues with her, and the values, mainly in the face but oh well. It was fun.

Timelapse:

#8

At your current phase of artistic development, it will be much more helpful to do a lot of training exercises and studies to strengthen your foundation knowledge and skill, instead of doing a bunch of original images where all you’re really doing is making the same mistakes over and over and not really improving much. What you need right now is to strengthen the weaknesses you have, and you’re not going to get that done if all you do are original images.

For example, learn how to use appropriate brushwork to produce convincing looking visual elements such as different surface properties or common elements in nature. Don’t just settle for some very rough approximation–you need to NAIL it. Pick a photo of a landscape that has all the elements that you feel you suck at, and then train very hard at reproducing it convincingly. Experiment with all kinds of brush customization approaches so the leaves look convincing, the dirt, the rocks, the clouds, the ocean, the grass, trees, etc. all look very convincing. When you learn how to do that, you can then apply the knowledge to all future pieces you work on. But until you learn to do it properly, everything you attempt will look wrong and awkward. This is why is crucial that you do training exercises.

That’s just one example of one possible thing you can work on. There are many other training exercises you can do that would make a huge difference in your artistic development and help you excel much faster than if you were to simply continue the way you currently are.

#9

Ty Lunatique. After reading through your comment a few times, and looking back at my work, I can see some things that are now more obviously wrong than before (such as the trees looking more like long grass 2 projects ago). So I’m planning on doing some more work based on reference, or at least hybrid.

Speaking of which, for this project, I wanted to do a portrait. This still relates to the theme as it’s political. I had a lot of fun with this and I’m really pleased with the outcome.

#10

Here’s a silly self-portrait (focusing more on individuals lately as opposed to environments) - I focused more on the character instead of the background, which is why I just opted to blur it.