If curious, original was done in Photoshop at 4k resolution...ok back to painting...
Background Art Only
Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger
Background Art Only
No animation yet, still working on the backgrounds...more soon...
If curious, original was done in Photoshop at 4k resolution...ok back to painting...
If curious, original was done in Photoshop at 4k resolution...ok back to painting...
joelstoryboards.com - (WinXP SP3, ASP 6.1)
A friend asked about my method. The following applies to backgrounds painted in Photoshop. This is only my opinion, take it with a grain of salt. Here are the things that have helped the most:
1. Use a simple brush. I just use the standard Photoshop round brush. The flat circle, not the soft edge airbrush. I have a boat load of custom brushes for Photoshop that I found online but here's the problem: I get too caught up in picking the "right" brush; The brush doesn't change so it starts to look like a pattern; I spend too much time fiddling with brush attributes. I would never get anything done if I had Painter, I would spend the whole time experimenting with brushes.
2. Start with the background move to the foreground
3. Here's the most important one, which I'll expand on...
3 tones is all you need...mostly. While your composition on the whole should have good color harmony, start each large section with only three colors, medium tone (overall value), shade tone, light tone. Stick with those three, the very last thing should be maybe a quick addition of darker dark and a highlight, leave it at that.
To blend between the shades I set my brush to either 50%, 30%, or 10% transparency, pickup one color tone and then start painting on top of the other color tone.
Typically, I don't even bother to cool my shadow tones and warm my light tones. Maybe that is lazy, but I get too stressed if I try to do this, debating if I have enough blue in it or whatever. A better solution is to cool or warm areas, just grab a color and glaze over the offensive area by using a brush with low transparency, boom done, no stress. To be non-destructive, just glaze on a different layer.
4. Block in the entire shape with those 3 tones. Add detail only if you have good reason to, like adding grain lines to make it look like wood. Leave it fairly chunky, let the 3 tones show, sucky paintings look like crap when someone is trying to work with more than 3 tones and blending too much and end up with smooth gradients (not good). Chunky shows dimensional form.
5. Work at a higher resolution than necessary. It doesn't really add more work, just make your brush bigger. It is nice having high enough resolution that if you need to do detail work you can zoom in and paint it, and not trying to wrestle with pixels. For background work, paint beyond the image view size by maybe 30% or more, you never know when you might decide to do a push in or rotate...
6. Zoom out. Work with the image small, so virtually far away. Now you can see the big picture (pun), you can see how what your doing may influence another area. What looks good far away, looks good close; what looks good close, does not always look good far away. As you block things in slowly start to zoom in to tighten up edges.
7. In Photoshop, hit the "F" key a few times and watch it get everything out of your way. Learn the keyboard commands to make the process quicker.
8. It's OK to become friends with Undo and the History panel, that's why you are working digitally.
9. Don't use Masks if you don't have to, and keep merging layers. Having 50 layers and 30 masks is not cool unless you are developing some mind boggling multiplane extravaganza. Otherwise you start painting and realize halfway through a section you were suppose to be on a different layer, and it becomes a complicated mess.
10. All this leads to our moment of Zen. Simplicity. Painting is hard and tedious. Cut out the fiddling, minutia and stress. Self-impose limitations like those above can be freeing. Amen.
1. Use a simple brush. I just use the standard Photoshop round brush. The flat circle, not the soft edge airbrush. I have a boat load of custom brushes for Photoshop that I found online but here's the problem: I get too caught up in picking the "right" brush; The brush doesn't change so it starts to look like a pattern; I spend too much time fiddling with brush attributes. I would never get anything done if I had Painter, I would spend the whole time experimenting with brushes.
2. Start with the background move to the foreground
3. Here's the most important one, which I'll expand on...
3 tones is all you need...mostly. While your composition on the whole should have good color harmony, start each large section with only three colors, medium tone (overall value), shade tone, light tone. Stick with those three, the very last thing should be maybe a quick addition of darker dark and a highlight, leave it at that.
To blend between the shades I set my brush to either 50%, 30%, or 10% transparency, pickup one color tone and then start painting on top of the other color tone.
Typically, I don't even bother to cool my shadow tones and warm my light tones. Maybe that is lazy, but I get too stressed if I try to do this, debating if I have enough blue in it or whatever. A better solution is to cool or warm areas, just grab a color and glaze over the offensive area by using a brush with low transparency, boom done, no stress. To be non-destructive, just glaze on a different layer.
4. Block in the entire shape with those 3 tones. Add detail only if you have good reason to, like adding grain lines to make it look like wood. Leave it fairly chunky, let the 3 tones show, sucky paintings look like crap when someone is trying to work with more than 3 tones and blending too much and end up with smooth gradients (not good). Chunky shows dimensional form.
5. Work at a higher resolution than necessary. It doesn't really add more work, just make your brush bigger. It is nice having high enough resolution that if you need to do detail work you can zoom in and paint it, and not trying to wrestle with pixels. For background work, paint beyond the image view size by maybe 30% or more, you never know when you might decide to do a push in or rotate...
6. Zoom out. Work with the image small, so virtually far away. Now you can see the big picture (pun), you can see how what your doing may influence another area. What looks good far away, looks good close; what looks good close, does not always look good far away. As you block things in slowly start to zoom in to tighten up edges.
7. In Photoshop, hit the "F" key a few times and watch it get everything out of your way. Learn the keyboard commands to make the process quicker.
8. It's OK to become friends with Undo and the History panel, that's why you are working digitally.
9. Don't use Masks if you don't have to, and keep merging layers. Having 50 layers and 30 masks is not cool unless you are developing some mind boggling multiplane extravaganza. Otherwise you start painting and realize halfway through a section you were suppose to be on a different layer, and it becomes a complicated mess.
10. All this leads to our moment of Zen. Simplicity. Painting is hard and tedious. Cut out the fiddling, minutia and stress. Self-impose limitations like those above can be freeing. Amen.
joelstoryboards.com - (WinXP SP3, ASP 6.1)
Re: Background Art Only
Gorgeous.
I have a question about how you would use the background, I apologize in advance if this is too obvious.
I'm seeing two images, one being the background, and the other being the light rays coming in.
When you animate with this, I'm guessing the background would be your background in AS, and then the light rays are something that can rotate slightly with a scene pan, or change based upon the time of day for the story.
Is this right? If so, would animating the light rays be a matter of importing a separate image layer in AS? Or would you go with a Vector layer, perhaps with a low opacity? I'm wondering if in AS you can get the same affect animated - the gentle brightening of the light gently changing the scenery, as you can with Photoshop.
Definitely a gorgeous background, can't wait to see your characters.
I have a question about how you would use the background, I apologize in advance if this is too obvious.
I'm seeing two images, one being the background, and the other being the light rays coming in.
When you animate with this, I'm guessing the background would be your background in AS, and then the light rays are something that can rotate slightly with a scene pan, or change based upon the time of day for the story.
Is this right? If so, would animating the light rays be a matter of importing a separate image layer in AS? Or would you go with a Vector layer, perhaps with a low opacity? I'm wondering if in AS you can get the same affect animated - the gentle brightening of the light gently changing the scenery, as you can with Photoshop.
Definitely a gorgeous background, can't wait to see your characters.
Jahnocli, oh geez, yeah the trees next to the sign are a big too dark, I need to lighten them to suggest atmospheric haze. THANK YOU! See, always have your worked look at by another artist. Sometimes you can't see the forest through the trees...or signs in front of trees.
Rogermate, actually 4 images, background, plateau with sign, plateau with tree, and light rays. I'm doing a subtle push in and want to animate the effect of distance--like parallax.
I could do the light rays as vector and get a similar or identical look, but I chose for this scene to just use images. I actually have 3 images for the light rays, each a little different and I'll fade between them giving the effect of clouds passing in front of the sun.
In another scene where I need a similar effect, I will be using vectors with soft edges. Each ray will be animated.
Rogermate, actually 4 images, background, plateau with sign, plateau with tree, and light rays. I'm doing a subtle push in and want to animate the effect of distance--like parallax.
I could do the light rays as vector and get a similar or identical look, but I chose for this scene to just use images. I actually have 3 images for the light rays, each a little different and I'll fade between them giving the effect of clouds passing in front of the sun.
In another scene where I need a similar effect, I will be using vectors with soft edges. Each ray will be animated.
joelstoryboards.com - (WinXP SP3, ASP 6.1)
Woohooo! Amazing work!
I learned the hard way about freaking "custom brushes"... I paid for the dang program... it comes with all those cool brushes and settings... I should use them... But there is just no easy or quick way to use a bunch of custom brushes! It slows everything down!
There is however one cool trick I use a lot. I like to have at a minimum one "hard" edge brush and one "soft" edge brush. I do this very easily by using the eraser and the paint brush. The paint brush is set for hard edge and the eraser is set for soft. I then just lock transparency on the layer and can "paint" with the eraser just like the paint brush.
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I am one of those photoshop users who has dozens of layers and use layer masking extensively. It takes a lot of agonizing and thought before I am brave enough to merge or flatten layers and I usually do a "save as" first. I am a control freak. It has saved my arse on many occasions though.
-vern
I learned the hard way about freaking "custom brushes"... I paid for the dang program... it comes with all those cool brushes and settings... I should use them... But there is just no easy or quick way to use a bunch of custom brushes! It slows everything down!
There is however one cool trick I use a lot. I like to have at a minimum one "hard" edge brush and one "soft" edge brush. I do this very easily by using the eraser and the paint brush. The paint brush is set for hard edge and the eraser is set for soft. I then just lock transparency on the layer and can "paint" with the eraser just like the paint brush.
------
I am one of those photoshop users who has dozens of layers and use layer masking extensively. It takes a lot of agonizing and thought before I am brave enough to merge or flatten layers and I usually do a "save as" first. I am a control freak. It has saved my arse on many occasions though.
-vern
As you described it, I could see animations I've seen on TV that do that. There's a real kick for a hobbyist like me when we see what a pro can do with the same software we have. It's like teeing up a golf ball with the same brand of golf club that Tiger Woods has.Blue wrote: Rogermate, actually 4 images, background, plateau with sign, plateau with tree, and light rays. I'm doing a subtle push in and want to animate the effect of distance--like parallax.
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joelstoryboards.com
The Led Zeppelin storyboard on your web site is really cool.