Coloring WIP for yet another Fortress ship in the drawing. This one’s exploding.
I’m having trouble getting parts of the blast right though, particularly the flash on top of the ship. If anyone has any technique that could help me out here, I’d appreciate the help.
hey move on dude 
to me that explosion looks sweet , instantly got my attention
and didn’t attack it.
So if you’re worried about finishing the pic in time move on and if you have the
time come back to this and do what you need
I agree with the planet remark. At a quick glance I didn’t evan notice the planet. I had to go back and look for it. I love your ship renderings.
Oh yea, nice fire affects there.
The planet is a bit low. Bring it up a little. It may be more interesting that way.
As you compose your image furthure, think about the direaction of sunlight and earthlight and how that interacts with the ships. I’m guessing the ships are headed towards an orbital skermish of some kind. consider how you design that. Working out some small thumbnails can also help in defining your composition.
Good Luck.
I think you are getting there with the explosion. If you look more closely, explosions are mixed with streaks of lights and big puff of clouds. The technique I use for such effects is listed in the steps below:
Place an underlying of soft explosion colours, this acts as the background glow. If it is a generic explosion I would go for red, yellow, white and black (black if you are planing to show signs of smoke).
Overlay the steaks light on top of the background glow.
Create a customised brush that has some kind of inconsistent spatter pattern, dots and variant in size (you could choose to use the default spatter brushes supplied in some applications). Note, on high resolution images you will require a larger bush size to get the effect to look convincing.
Then dab them here and there with the explosion colours. There is a lot of mouse clicking but once you get the feel, it takes off quiet easy.
Finally use the dodge and burn tool to give depth to your explosion in certain areas.
This is the way how I quickly achieve the explosion effect in one of my colour rough concept. I’m sure there are other ways of expressing explosion, just experiment with the tools and you will realise how amazing they actually are. Hope that helps.
I’m gonna be charging ahead with the rest of the line art for now. I’ll get back to coloring once some more of the layout is clear.
The perspective lines are missing in this one- just thought a change would be nice :P.
vapourtrail- I see what you mean about the point of interest being in the center, its not something I usually do either. I’ll see what I can do with it, but other than moving the wormhole a little off-center, I dont think there’s much I can do to alter it. Any suggestions?
Rares_Halmagean- Some of the light will be coming out of the wormhole, and some from sunlight (from the left). I didnt really consider earthlight though…I’ll be paying more attention to all the lighting once I have more objects in the drawing though.
ecura- Thanks for the tips on the explosion :). I’ll try it out when i get back to that ship.
A lot of people commented on the Earth’s placement- I’ll definitely try to bring it more into the picture, though I’m not sure to what extent I can- the wormhole will be taking up a good chunk of the space, and I cant have the Earth cutting it off.
And of course, thanks for compliments from Squibbit, element5, BlueEyeLizard and Rares :). Always appreciated!
I added a starfield, along with lots of other objects. Continuing progress of line art without coloring- all that will come later since, as you can see, I need to have the whole thing composed before I can color in lighting etc.
Yeesh. Ok, so I didnt work on this for a month. Didnt think I was getting anywhere. I probably wont be able to get anywhere near finishing this before the deadline, but who’s stopping me from trying?
I’ll probably get disqualified for being so inactive though. Oh well.
As you can see, I changed the planet. And added another one.
Still lots to do. Wish me luck…I’m gonna need it.
More updates to the drawing, which is no longer about a wormhole. I colored some of the fighters and captial ships. The planet will be replaced soon too (the blue one), since I have credible sources telling me that “it looks like hell”. As for the rest of the composition…I’ll figure something out.
Replaced the planet. Working on the starfield now- once thats done, I’ll get back to the ships.
If theres any criticism, nows the time to tell me!
Got the starfield down. I really dont like how it looks, but this is all I can do.
Up next- finish the damn ships.
Closeup of the ‘Crab’ fighter in the drawing. Just finished coloring it. Will add engine flare in the drawing’s final stages.
Getting closer to finishing whats on there. Then I’ll add more.
I REALLY need some feedback here! >_<
Crap…forgot to bring the planet back into the image last time.
Again, part of the image at the bottom of the drawing, at 75% of the actual size.
hi mate, the design of the shipe looks really nice. I love that explosion effect of yours, very nice. Eagerly waiting for another update of your.
Further along in the drawing. I’ve added a lot more ships- now I just have to color them. After that, as much polishing as I can put it.
This is great… i really like your planets. I like uber detailed planets. w00t Anyway… great background too… with the nebula. I finished mne… go check it out.
Jamie
