Thugs Face

Supp?

You've already had a chance to see that guy in my older post.
Now he's a bit more rendered. He' is basically test subject for my new blending technique.
Well... it's not that new, but I wasn't using it 'till now.

1. Quick sketch -> rough indication of facial features (as always) -> some basic shadows and...

2. ...the "fun" part. Putting broad strokes of values and smearing edges where the plain change is soft, and leaving hard edges, where the plain change is sudden.

3. I gave him an eye-patch, mostly because I'm too lazy to render the eye properly. I needed an excuse, so I scratch his face and left him with a scar. Also put him against the darker background to indicate some rim light coming from behind. Everything made in probably the most lazy way I could have even imagined - eyeballed and painted by the hand :D

4. Some value changes, bonus trapezius, some plain changes and I got bored.

The only reason of bringing that guy to this level was testing that paint&smear thingy'.

-values are off and stopped at 25% brightness;
-anatomy can't be called "spot-on" in any possible way;
-nothing is rendered to the presentable level (character nor the background);
-materials don't look like they should (leather is not leather, skin doesn't look like skin etc.).

I know what I did wrong - or rather what I didn't do at all and I'm totally fine with this.
I'm not capable of working on all mistakes I do at once, so I'll be working them one by one.
Right now I'm focusing on human body anatomy, so maybe somewhen in the future (certainly not the near future) I'll do recap of my anatomy fuckups.

Any way - have a good day.
So long

Old Stuff 4

Wanna see something funny (or rather sad)?

Stuff that's so bad, it can give you a cancer. Mostly late 2013 and early 2014.
Today (or whatever day you are reading this) - tips and trick on how to NOT draw human face and how to NOT do correct brushwork.

1. Face so flat it could be used as table. Really ugly table. Believe or not - I was proud of this.

2. And here I was trying to figure out how to paint an iris. For what I've noticed - the more saturated and brighter the iris is, the more non-human it looks. But that may be wrong observation. Try it yourself.

3. My frist attempts on drawing skulls and learning the basics of head anatomy, and how it roughly translates on to the face structure.

So yeah... I was that bad or even worse.
Maybe I'll post something more recent next time. Maybe I won't.

So long.

Monthly scraps - May 2016

Guess who's back!

I've got some stuff for you. Not much but still something.


1. Since my tablet lost initial levels of pressure sensitivity I had to came up with a way of blending colours/values that doesn't depend on pen sensitivity as much as standard airbrush whatsoever.
That's basically test of mixer brush. Nothing fancy. Just test.

2. Another test. The test of my patience this time. I mean sketching with partially working pen pressure... Pain in the ass. Took maybe 5 minutes before I quit.
And yes, she has feet that long. Yes, that's mistake I didn't notice.

3. That dude - you may see a bit more rendered version of him somewhen in the future.

4. Oh, and that one... That supposed to be some kind of children book cover. I mean that's just a sketch but I want to render that bit more.

Aren't they pretty? Ok, they aren't.
But as I said it's not about me drawing nice, but about me drawing better and better every month(hopefully). Even if the progress is so slow you can't even notice - I can. 

At this point I'm filling 30+ A4 pages per month. 2 months ago it wasn't more than 15. Consistency improved.
I know I suck at anatomy (look at these sketches LOL), values, colours and stuff but It won't stop me.

PS. I'll be posting more of old stuff this month.

Monthly scraps - Apr 2016 /update

That post can end up being long. Don't know exactly how long yet tho'.

First of all - that's monthly scraps post so I got for you this:

I wanted to check how my brain thinks the average French man looks like. Well... I've never seen so manly-looking French in my life, so I've no idea why he came out this way.

1. Terrible choice of background colour. I don't know what I was thinking...
Rough indication of facial features. I wanted him to have very sharp, heavy, though look.
I had no pre-existing sketch whatsoever, nor the references, so I was just squinting my eyes, and putting dark tones where I was thinking it's good place to put them.

2. Shape refinement, darker tones, lighter tones.

3. Guy with pointy nose, cheeks and chin needs pointy ear. That's a rule no.1 of painting (not really) - period.

4. I really wanted to take him to presentable stage, so I put some lines, to know where to put the lighter tones and hard edges. These lines were meant to be overpainted. Now I can see the perspective is a bit wacky.

5. Overpainted some of lines.

6. Added some lights.

At this moment I've lost ma patience and that's where the UPDATE part begins.

Long story short - my tablet doesn't work as it used to. I just don't have that 20% of the initial pressure levels. Can't draw light lines any more.
It's not the driver problem. It seems to not be the Win 10 default Pen and Touch service problem either. I have tested out few drawing programs and problem appears in every one of them.
CTH-460 served me well for 3 last years (end even then it was 2 years old model), so I think its time has come. I'll switch back to Win 8.1 just to be sure it's not the system issue.

I'll be still drawing stuff but it's fucking irritating. Maybe I'll figure out some camera and I'll be just putting the photos of what I drew in sketchbook... Maybe won't.

GL&HF
So long

Monthly scraps - Mar 2016

Right... 

Don't zoom in. It's not healthy thing to do. Not for your eyes.

Not so steel

Do you remember when I said all my stuff ends up in that far-from-being-finished stage?

I've got another one of these, and SPOILER ALLERT - it doesn't look good.

Here is my miserable process. Enjoy, and do not repeat my mistakes.

1. Sketched that guy in my organizer from 2012... Has lines, is outdated, but the paper it's made of is great. Then I added the earpads (I believe that's how they're called), and some highlights digitally.

2. Added some basic colours and started to paint over the sketch.

3. And here's the moment I decided I don't like what I see... So I scrapped that, blurred, and stuff.

4. I drew plains of the nose, paint over it, and did the same thing to cheekbone.

5. Darkened up entire image to bring up some lights. Also I painted that ball to keep in mind where from the light comes and what's the colour of his skin, tho' I didn't use it even once.

6. ...and I scraped everything once more. If you don't like it - scrap it and redraw. I think that's the main reason I have nothing to share with you.

7. Darkened up one side of his face (or rather something that supposed to be his face), and lightened up background, to make him pop-out more from the background and give myself some values to play with. Oh...

8. Scrapped it once more. Brought greyscale again, to not get distracted by colours. Drew it again with planes of the face, to have something to follow later. I thing at this point I've started using references. Made his skull more prominent. He seemed a bit to chubby in earlier versions.

9. Added some flats for armour, earpads and that horn thingy on his head.

10. Sorry about the "how to draw an owl - tutorial" syndrome, but I forgot to save all the steps. I just painted in some shadows on another layer.

11. Brought the colours again by adding some gradient-map layers for skin, earpads, armour, and horn.

13. Painted in some lights. Same problem as I had with shadows. No step by step images.

14. I was so tired of repainting that over and over again, I just simply added a muddy background, some rim-light, and called it done. I mean not really done. Just done.

And here's .gif presenting my journey through the dark valley of hell.

By the way. That's one of the champions that you can play in Paragon. Man's name is Steel.

That's it.
So long.

Paragon and banana

Ave Caesar whatsoever!

So why am I not posting anything? Well - I was playing Paragon Closed Beta. I'm under a confidentiality agreement, so I can not post much more than this: the game is freaking cool.

For these who don't know what the paragon is - tan da da DAN! PARAGON SITE

For these who are too lazy to click the link... It's MOBA with TPS view from Epic Games (these guys from Unreal Engine). I was playing LoL (League of Legends) before it was cool. I mean from open beta, for 2 seasons, and then community happened (I mean I grew up and reading what's-not 'bout my mother and my playstyle bored me), then e-sport happened (not good e-sport, but that I-am-12-years-old-master-of-lol-and-know-fucking-everything "e-sport").
I have never had that much fun in LoL, I've got here. The gameplay itself is rather for B+/A-, but their card system that lets you create your own equipment, for every single character, and about which I sadly can't talk, is great.
When it comes to graphics, game's gorgeous. If you see the trailer, graphics in-game looks same.
Early access beta starts on March 18th. Open beta somewhen in summer. Totally worth a try.

Oh, and as long as I won't paint anything new... Get my attempt to "sill life".

For your own eyes sake - DO NOT zoom in

That *ekhem* masterpiece *ekhem* is dated on January 2014.
I didn't set up the scene, nor even had any references... Again twisted mind of mine gives me vague picture of my painting objects.

That's not good thing if you want to learn anything. I should have paint that from reference first and then try repainting it with the knowledge I acquired.

Feel entertained. Or not. It's up to you.

So long.

Monthly scraps - Feb 2016

This month even less of them.

I kind of switched to pencil and paper for my day-to-day sketching.
Not that I will not draw on tablet, but well... My "work station" is not as mobile as my notebook.
Beside, I really like the feel that drawing with pencil gives.

DO NOT zoom in. I dare you. I double dare you.

Guess who's on the left. It's not hard.


So long.

Hardware upgrade and some Unreal Engine 4

Long time no see.
Unpleasantly seriously long.

What was I doing all that time?

1. I changed my hardware. It is not the most powerful PC on the Earth but gtx960 is far better than 9600gt.
One '0' less - a lot of power more. Beside that, I changed CPU, motherboard, and RAM too but the difference's not that big.

2. Installing Windows...
It wasn't suppose to last 3 days but it did. Installation failed on every possible step. Process was painful, long, painful, boring, frustrating and fucking painful.
Oh! and at the time I needed to update the shit out of Win8 to finally get my Win10,
my internet provider had some kind of issues with providing the internet.

3. Lollygagging.

4. Doing that:

 

It is not something I'm proud of. Not yet.

-materials have no textures nor the normal maps;
-Stones, rocks, and grass models are made in less than 10 minutes each;
-everything is a placeholder;

BUT

-landscape material automatically paints cliffs with grey, plains with green, and everything in between with brown;
-Green, Grey and Brown are material functions so I can change behavior of one layer without messing with others. Also, that means I can add to them textures separately;
-grass is generated procedurally - which basically means everywhere where landscape is green the grass appears, with density based on how green the surface is;
-rocks and stones are added as grass, but less dense;
-if I want to change something that the "algorithm" fucked up (or, more likely, I simply want to change it) I can paint it manually;
-grass WAVES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ :D

Considering the fact all I did I did in one day, still being newbie to Unreal Engine 4, it's not that bad.
I'll be working on that.

So long  - hopefully not too long.

Monthly scraps - Jan 2016

Not much this month - huh?

Anyone wants to see something ugly?
Some scraps I wasn't able to even bring to "presentable" stage. 

Any way - catch'em all.

So long