Pr esen ts
how to draw and paint
FREE! Crysis 2
StarCraft 2
240 MINUTES OF VIDEO WORKSHOPS!
Enslaved
Paint Dynamic character art Discover how professional artists create unique characters for video games
Learn from…
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Robh Ruppel Marek Okon Stephan Martiniere Daryl Mandryk Luke Mancini Maciej Kuciara Jung Park
GAME ART
WORKSHOPS Easy to follow step-by-step tutorials in Painter, Photoshop and SketchUp
See Patryk Olejnicz ak ’s Mass Effect 3 art inside!
create amazing
digital art
Concept art skills from the makers of Uncharted 3, Batman: Arkham City, Guild Wars 2 and more!
Concept sketch for Alessandro Taini ’s Enslaved character design: see page 34
Video games take years to make, with hundreds of people having an input into how the final game looks and plays. But often just a handful of creative artists can determine the style of a game. Concept artists will work on the visual foundations of a video game, designing characters, vehicles and worlds, and setting the rules by which everything will work. It’s a vital and skillful role. To gain a greater insight into how concept artists work, and how you can create your own art for video games to a professional standard, we’ve teamed up with some of the industry’s best artists, who between them have worked on Uncharted 3, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Rage, Fallout: New Vegas, and many more best-selling titles. In our Character Art chapter, starting on page 32, Naughty Dog’s Maciej Kuciara shows how to design a heroine with multiple genre references. On page 50, Rocksteady’s Kan Muftic reveals how he redesigned DC’s anti-heroine Harley Quinn for Batman: Arkham City. In our Creature Design section, Blizzard’s Luke Mancini demonstrates how to paint the Zerg from StarCraft 2 (page 60), plus chapters on environment painting and vehicle design, including a workshop from the amazing Feng Zhu (page 22), will prove indispensable. Everything culminates in our ‘live project’ from the artists at Leading Light studio, who demonstrate how all these skills inform a game’s pitch and product design. If you enjoy this special issue of ImagineFX, why not try the others in this new series? See page 115 to find out more!
Claire Howlett, Editor
[email protected]
From the makers of We’re the only magazine dedicated to fantasy and sci-fi art. Our aim is to help artists to improve both their traditional and digital art skills. Visit www.imaginefx.com to find out more!
Subscribe to ImagineFX today and save money off every issue! See page 49
The finest artists in the world offer you the best guidance, share their techniques and offer inspiration in our video game art workshops.
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Workshops
Practical advice from professional artists in 18 step-by-step guides
16 Vehicle design
Explore ways to make video game vehicles 18 Sci-fi vehicles for video games 22 Create your art in parallel 28 Add colour to a space battle
32 Character art
Breathe life into your game characters 34 D esign your own game hero 38 Develop poster art for Crysis 2 44 Design a space opera princess 50 Recast a classic comic character 54 Unify a range of fantasy genres
44 50
58 Creature concepts
Create monsters that will surprise and shock 60 P aint an epic alien battle 64 Paint dynamic concept art
70 Environment painting
Create working environments for video games 72 M ake a setting feel believable 76 Establish the scene of a game 82 Introduce unique visuals 84 Visualise a game world
88 Production design
Design every element of a video game pitch 90 94 98 102
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Lead character The environment The enemy Story developer
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Game Art
6 Art spectacular! Art from the pros behind Guild Wars 2, Syndicate, Mass Effect 3 and more.
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106 Artist Q&A
Real-world portrait issues solved… Remko Troost Ubisoft artist Remko shares his advice on creating mood paintings and where to start when thumbnailing vehicles. Philip Straub Discover some new tips on creating spacecraft for video games with this 17-year veteran of the industry. Jonathan Standing Learn to design modular characters and add decals to space armour designs with experienced concept artist Jon.
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Gary Tonge Having worked for Sega, Capcom, Eidos and more, who better to reveal what exactly a concept artist does?
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Daryl Mandryk Improve the speed and impact of your painting workflow with EA’s leading concept artist. Daniel Dociu Learn the value of setting achievable goals for your concept art with the Guild Wars 2 art director. Aly Fell Master the rules of better character design, and discover why all concept art needn’t be digital.
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Free resources
Sketches and videos to help you learn… Video workshops
Watch our contributors in action and pick-up some vital tips, with video workshops from leading concept artists including Maciej Kuciara, Luke Mancini, Kevin Chen and many others.
Andy Park Let the God of War 2 concept artist show you how to overcome your fear of painting in colour.
Includes four hours of video!
Resource files
Use our artists’ layered hi-res PSD files for inspiration.
Custom brushes
Recreate workshop techniques using the artists’ own custom brushes.
See page 114, or visit http://ifxm.ag/game06art
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Gallery
Gallery Get inspired by the creativity of the professional artists behind some of the biggest video games
Kekai Kotaki H
awaii-born Kekai has been working in video games for 10 years with ArenaNet. He started as a texture artist and, eight years after landing his first job, is now concept art lead on Guild Wars 2. Kekai’s impressionistic art style is instantly recognisable, and he has been given a lot of freedom on Guild Wars 2 to create a world that “we thought was cool”. He says the team didn’t set out to change how fantasy art is perceived: “We were trying to find new ways to express the core ideas that make up the fantasy genre. I’ve always tried to
add that hard edge to my work – to make things cooler, full of motion and emotion.” The game takes place 250 years after the first Guild Wars, so there was plenty of scope to develop the look of the world, but freedom brings new trials. “The challenge was operating with this freedom and getting that high level of work done without falling on our faces,” says Kekai. Kekai’s art demonstrates there’s room for new ideas on the biggest stage if you’re prepared to meet the challenge. www.kekaiart.com
Restrictions on art have been loosened quite a bit, enabling us to explore and get some epic moments into the game Wise words
“I think of it as designing monsters that fight heroes and heroes that fight monsters; everyone needs to be the hero in the game. More important, everyone needs to feel like they’re the hero in the game.”
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Kekai Kotaki
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Gallery
Sean A Murray
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principle concept artist at Todd McFarlane’s Big Huge Games/38 Studios, Sean A Murray has had the enviable job of designing a new fantasy world for the video game Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. “Our goal has been to present a mysterious world teeming with magic and mysticism, as opposed to a world of pure reality,” he says. His work on these pages demonstrates a colourful, original world that blends classic fantasy with a bit of the ‘old west’, as seen in the concept for the game’s Detyre Mining location. With a background in illustration Sean combines traditional and digital techniques,
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producing detailed pencil sketches that are then scanned into Photoshop, such as his depiction of the Adessa Tower from Reckoning, which was “a more functional piece of concept art”, Sean says, “showing how to combine various modular pieces into a unique Gnome tower.” The early painting of Bolgan Forest, however, is one that Sean looks to when summing up his work on Reckoning. “This is one of the very first images I did for the game,” says Sean. “I think it really set the stage for what we wanted to go for visually in terms of colour palette and creature design philosophy.” sketchsam.blogspot.com
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It was not a typical setting for a fantasy universe. We wanted to infuse a bit of Old West into it
Wise words
“The most successful concept artists are those that put an emphasis on communication and storytelling before picture making.”
Sean A Murray / Alessandro Taini
Alessandro Taini
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aving worked for UK developer Ninja Theory for eight years, Alessandro Taini is now visual art director for the BAFTA Award-winning studio. Alex’s concept art has a unique painterly feel. His female characters, particularly Trip from 2010’s Enslaved: Journey to the West, are beautiful but capable heroines. Like his other heroine, Nariko, from Heavenly Sword, Trip is a flame-haired female lead character imbued with beauty and brains. When Ninja Theory was chosen to reboot the Capcom series Devil May Cry, Alessandro began creating mood paintings for the studio’s concepts for the popular Japanese video game series. Tapping into his Italian heritage, Alessandro created a stunning Renaissance-inspired depiction of the game’s hero at play: “With this image I wanted to illustrate the personality of Dante,” comments Alessandro, “a young rebel without a care in the world.” www.talexiart.com
This image illustrates one of the characters of Enslaved to explain her background outside of the game’s context
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Gallery
Bradley Wright A
s part of the concept art team at Starbreeze, working on the remake of the video game Syndicate was a thrilling challenge. “This game, and the genre it sits in, is a dream for any concept artist to work on,” says Bradley. Bradley’s approach to the project was to go back to the 1993 version of Syndicate and start pulling out key elements, visual markers, and “legacy elements… vital design features and principles that we could stick to throughout the production time”. For a game set in a sci-fi noir future filled with flying cars and gleaming towers, surprisingly Bradley says he enjoys designing the nuts and bolts of the game’s world. “The challenge of making a chair fresh and interesting is something I strive for,” says Bradley. “It takes time to get something as simple as a chair from concept to model to in-game, so you want it to look good.” These elements of a game’s world seep into the subconscious and begin to form a larger, coherent picture that allows the team to tell a story. “Starbreeze has always had a strong history of developing storydriven games with characters and atmosphere that have depth and layers to them,” says Bradley. “The concept art – and equally the game design – feed into this philosophy. We seek to push and explore these depths with innovative ideas and artwork.” bradleywright.wordpress.com
Wise words
“It is important to understand how 3D is produced. This aids me in creating more detailed, faster concepts and lets me integrate more with other disciplines, such as modellers and level designers.”
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Bradley Wright
The freedom to stand up and say this does or doesn’t work is great for a team environment
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Gallery
Joe Madureira
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oe Mad entered the comic book industry at the age of 16 when he joined Marvel. After 15 years on Marvel titles including Uncanny X-Men, as well as launching his own series Battle Chasers, Joe called it a day and delved into video games. After a stint at NCSoft, he left to form Vigil Games and designed his own colourful world for the Darksiders series of games. The sequel, Darksiders 2, features the new iconic anti-hero Death. Although Joe has taken on the role of director for Darksiders 2, he has still found time to create the central character. “We knew that we wanted Death to be a lot more nimble than War. He moves faster and fights more acrobatically,” says Joe. “Therefore, his weapons had to be smaller and lighter, and he had to wear much less armour. All of these things start to paint a picture. With all that in mind, I try to think of the ‘attitude’ that I want the character to convey.” The Joe Mad-style – part western comic, part manga – feeds into video game design perfectly. Although Joe works with a team of artists to convey his ideas into the game world, this comic book legend’s stamp is clearly delivered. So what would his 16-year-old self make of this new game? “This is exactly the kind of game I would dream of playing, never mind working on,” says Joe. vigilgames.com
Wise words
“There’s always room to get better, and there are always people doing things better than you. Never stop learning, I guess, that’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned.”
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Death is more aggressive and intimidating than War, and has zero respect for the laws that govern Heaven and Hell
Joe Madureira / Kan Muftic
Kan Muftic
R I basically just start drawing with all of that stuff popping around in my head, and hopefully something cool comes out that people are excited by Wise words
“It’s important to consider the character in-game instead of thinking about the pretty drawings. It’s useful to know what the character is doing in the game while I’m drawing, because it’ll help me give him personality.”
ecreating an iconic character and its world is one of the biggest challenges facing a video game concept artist. Working on the award-winning Batman: Arkham City meant redefining the look of one of the world’s most popular comic characters. Artist Kan Muftic picks the game’s environments as an area the concept art team focused on to give their game a new look. Each area of Arkham City had to feel unique while fitting into a consistent world, which involved everything from Gothic and Victorian architecture to glass and iron Art Nouveau décor, creating layers of styles that highlighted the city’s evolution.
The museum in Arkham City is one such design that Kan is rightly proud of. “I pushed that idea from the very beginning of the project,” he says. But this wasn’t simply an exercise in aesthetic design. “Gameplay is king,” remarks Kan, referring to the need to ensure that his designs for the game met with the direction the game’s scriptwriters and game designers were going in. “I spend a lot of time talking, consulting and suggesting things to the team. It’s not all about the drawing.” The end result was one of the best games of its generation, a visual spectacle that is as fun to play as it is good to look at. kanmuftic.blogspot.com
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Gallery
Patryk Olejniczak
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s the new concept artist in BioWare’s marketing department, Patryk Olejniczak has the enviable job of bringing Mass Effect 3’s cast of characters to life. Patryk focuses on pose, expression and background detail to tell a character’s story. “During the whole process I try not to forget about the importance of a proper eye-catching character pose and expression, which encourage a viewer to study the ‘story’ of the painting,” says our cover artist. “I often start with loose, basic brush lines for the characters. I like to play around with random photos and textures until I am satisfied,” he says, explaining how he uses ingame screenshots to reference the realistic lighting and colour tones. “I put a great effort into trying to present them as detailed as possible, but somewhere along the line I took the liberty of applying some of my own tweaks,” Patryk reveals, explaining why Zaeed’s gauntlet is a different shape from that of the game’s character. Patryk uses different blending modes and the Dodge tool to create his realistic, brooding character portraits. Detailed research helps too, especially when rendering Mordin’s armour: “It needed proper research of shiny materials and careful application of them,” says Patryk. “Challenging as it was, it made me more confident in the style, which is always rife with realism.” garrettartlair.blogspot.com
Wise words
“Try not to forget about the importance of a proper eyecatching character pose and expression, which encourage a viewer to study the ‘story’ of the painting.”
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Each character brought me the same amount of excitement for a variety of thoughts and reasons
Patryk Olejniczak
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Vehicle design
Create exciting vehicles for video games
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Feng Zhu
One of the world’s leading concept artists, Feng Zhu has worked for the major developers and publishers in the video games industry, including Sony, Ubisoft, NCSoft, Epic Games and EA studios. Learn to draw inspiration from painting two images at once. Turn to page 22
Workshops
How to paint vehicles for games 18 Sci-fi vehicles for video games with Kemp Remillard Design vehicles from sketch to final render in Photoshop and SketchUp. 22 Create your art in parallel with Feng Zhu The legendary film and game artist works on multiple images at once. 28 Add colour to a space battle with Ryan Dening Use layers to create a spaceship scene from Star Wars: The Old Republic.
How to create tanks and planes for games 18
I’ve often found that problems in one image can lead to solutions in another Feng Zhu, page 22
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Vehicle design
sci-fi vehicles for video games Massive Black’s Kemp Remillard explains how to take a concept from sketchpad to video game… esigning vehicles for video games can seem like a daunting task. Depending on the project, the concept artist can encounter design challenges that range from “we don’t know what we want – show us something cool” to “we have about 20 requirements that need to be in the concept – and make it look cool”. Here, I’ll go over some of the decisions and methods I use when designing sci-fi vehicles for video games. The whole process is an odd mixture of research, planning, experimentation, layout and illustration – all while working closely with your client to
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ensure that the concept fits the needs of the game engine, story and aesthetic. While there are many methods and approaches that concept artists use, designing vehicles can be fun and rewarding with a little research, planning and creativity. Science fiction vehicles can take on many forms, depending on the project. For this tutorial, I will focus on that special brand of sci-fi that I love the most: the near future. I’m fascinated by military and space technology, current events, history and sociopolitical interactions as a whole. These interests are elements that I try to infuse into my creative concepts daily. As a general
philosophy, I feel that the more real I can make something fictional, the better the concept and final illustration will be. For the two vehicles in this project, I will play the roles of art director and concept artist by creating a brief describing the criteria for the concept to meet, then designing the vehicle around that criteria. Along the way, I’ll show how to go through an iterative process using both Photoshop and SketchUp to design functional science fiction vehicles of the near future that can be incorporated into a sci-fi video game’s production pipeline with ease. Hope you enjoy it!
Kemp Remillard Country: US Kemp is a concept artist with Massive Black in San Francisco. Kemp has designed vehicles and created concepts for highprofile clients including THQ, Hasbro, Sega, Nintendo and NCsoft. www.kempart.com
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get your resources See page 114 now!
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Brief and background
The first order of business when concepting vehicles for games is to review the client brief and understand the background of the world that the vehicle will exist in. The goal here is to create fictional military vehicles that might exist in the next 20 years or so. With that in mind, I begin by doing research on possible future military projects. In addition, I read up on stealth technology in aircraft, and what design concepts go into actual armoured land vehicles. This research and information will be vital to the outcome of the final design.
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d Copy Merge e st Pa +
ift+C, Cmd/Ctrl+Sh rl+V then Cmd/Ct layers Copies all the e, that are visibl then pastes.
Sci-fi vehicles
Set up Save Selection
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Reference
Gathering good reference is vital to a good design. One great site with lots of images from around the globe is www. militaryphotos.net. If you want to understand vehicles, take some time to look at them and study their features and subtleties. Then try to understand as best you can what the functions of the various parts are. Shown here are the rough sketches for a proposed VTOL (vertical take off and landing) transport jet with stealth capabilities. Real-life jets like the
F-22 and F-35 were referenced, possibly belonging to the same family of aircraft from a single manufacturer. For my project, I decide to be a nerd and name my planes the MV-35 and the MV-36, M for multi-mission and V for its VTOL capabilities. One overarching consideration when designing stealth aircraft is to make sure that none of the angles in the design are perpendicular to the radar’s angle of incidence – in other words, everything has to be swooshed back or diamond-shaped to reflect the radar. The tank is more loosely based on modern units like the Leopard 2 and Challenger 2.
When doing vehicle illustrations, set up Save Selection regions in Photoshop for both the interior of the vehicle and the exterior. That way, you will keep your edges consistent and have a way to make quick masks for painting broadly in both areas.
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Thumbnail sketching
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Refinement
Now I am ready to begin sketching out simple thumbnails of my vehicles on paper or in Photoshop. Depending on the client and brief, this first round can be loose and fast or a little more refined. I prefer to work in a plan view at this stage to get a quick silhouette, but a threequarter view can also be useful for showing up more information. Usually, once an option is selected I then move on to a block-in model in SketchUp, but more revisions may be necessary later on.
Revisions are a fact of life when working on video games; often a whole team of people have input on what a particular asset will look like. My initial directions for the VTOL jet proved a bit impractical in its look and construction. So after a little more study, it’s back to the drawing board where I arrive at a much more practical design. Still, I am unable to choose between the two directions, so I take the decision as art director to finish them both, just so I can get an impression of what each of them could potentially be like when finished.
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Vehicle design
Assign shortcut keys
Shift+Alt+Cm d/Ctrl+K Use this shor tcuts manage r to assign Func tion keys to replace br ushes.
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Block the models in SketchUp
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Photographing the model
I find the use of 3D indispensable in creating a product that the client can understand clearly. SketchUp is a great, accessible piece of software that can be used for creating simple or detailed models of your vehicles. Once you become acquainted with the program and start modelling with it, you can assemble a library of components to add quick detail and interest. Just make sure you change the component shapes so that you deliver something unique.
Another great by-product of designing in 3D is the ability to move around the model and find the best angle to present your concept from. If time is on my side, I like to make multiple screenshots for collection and review. Finding the best shot can make all the difference in the world.
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3D geometry for orthos
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Design for function
The goal with these concepts is to incorporate real-world characteristics into a fictional design. For the MV-35 and MV-36, considerations include available cargo space and the placement of forward engines for the VTOL capability. The new F-35 has a special nozzle on its engine exhaust that points down during take-off and landing, so I incorporate that into the MV-35’s design. Also, cupboard door-like
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panels are placed over the VTOL lift fan openings near the cockpit. These doors will open during take-off and landing, then close to preserve the aircraft’s aerodynamic shape during flight, like landing gear. A side effect of the lift-fan door arrangement is the appearance of horns near the head of the craft. It never hurts to give your design some subtle anthropomorphic qualities to add some personality.
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With vehicle and tech designs, it is incredibly helpful to have 3D geometry available to set up your orthos. The more detailed the geometry, the less time you have to spend, since each detail is repeated in each view. If you don’t have a particular detail in the model, it will need to be added in Photoshop. Bolts and fasteners can be added in Photoshop and Shift-dragged to copy through the design.
Design for aesthetics
The bottom line when doing any asset for video games is that it has to look cool (some might say badass, but that description can’t always describe everything!). Either way, it has to look sexy, and that’s especially true with vehicles. Although I pay close attention to construction and engineering, I am always trying to push the design into a sleek and interesting shape. Distinctive lines and interesting angles are the order of the day when working as an entertainment artist. Making the asset work and look great is what it’s all about, because if your design is lacking in either department it won’t make it into the game. Ultimately games, and everything in them, are there to entertain people. Taking the time to formulate opinions on what looks cool and what doesn’t is as much a part of the job as the process itself.
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Orthogonal views
This is the stage where the final assets are prepared for delivery to the 3D artists as a plan or blueprint. Each studio’s requirements for the ortho are a little different, but overall, more is better. The more information you can convey with your plan view, the better understanding your client will have about what you intend your vehicle to look like. Orthos can sometimes be overlooked as an afterthought to the concept process; I prefer to see it as the step where the final blueprints are drawn up before assembly.
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and detailing 10 Surfacing For the MV-35 and MV-36 planes, each panel needs to be designed at an angle to properly deflect radar. After studying the reference, I notice that one of the coolest characteristics about stealth jets is the very subtle but complex segmentation of the panels. The divisions I add might not hold up to an engineer’s eye, but they’re close enough to the real thing to make it look authentic. The panelling, graphics and paint scheme for the MV-35 and MV-36 are added in Photoshop over a SketchUp render when the ortho is assembled.
Setting up the final Illustration
Once the whole concept is approved, I like to prepare an illustration that shows how the vehicle might look in its environment. This is as much for me to sell the concept as it is for the game technicians to get a feel for how it could be finished in the game. I want a battleworn background for the tank, so I use a few custom brushes to paint in the smoke pillars and obscure the horizon line. Then I use a royalty-free image to block in the ground plane. Photo textures are a great way to add realism to your image. Once the background is in place, I adjust all of the values in both the background and the tank. All the elements need to have their value ranges harmonised to suggest that they exist in the same space – that means making sure the image is not too dark in the shadow area and not too blown out where it’s illuminated. The best part for me is painting in the dirt and battle damage with custom brushes. Once I have the dirt in place and the values lined up, I usually clean up the edges with normal layers and full-opacity paint. Look for accents and rim lights to accentuate when cleaning up. At the end, decal graphics and lights can be applied. If something’s not working, experiment until it does.
Photoshop Custom Brush: Chislrok BRUSH TIP SHAPE Diameter: 20px Roundness: 100 per cent Spacing: 25 per cent Dual Brush Mode: Overlay Brush: Textured Rocks Diameter: 17px Spacing: 25 per cent Scatter: 0 per cent Count: 1 Other Dynamics Opacity Jitter: Pen Pressure Flow Jitter: Off
I like this brush for adding rough and dirty texture to the panels of the tank. Its shape is that of a long rectangle, making it good for texturing surfaces that recede in space.
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Vehicle design
create your art in parallel
Putting together concept pitches can throw up many problems along the way. Star Wars: Episode III artist Feng Zhu shows how working on multiple images at once can uncover a variety of solutions…
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Create your art in parallel
wo is better than one – that’s the theme of my workshop. Whenever I’m doing client work, live demos for teaching purposes or personal sketches and paintings, I always focus on producing a series of images rather than just one. In addition, I usually work on all the images simultaneously. For this workshop, I’ll produce two production paintings at the same time. I’ve found that this approach has several key advantages. First, by working on several images at once, it keeps my brain and eyes refreshed. Whenever I get bored with looking at one image, I’ll switch over to another. This method will keep the workflow interesting, no matter how long the project lasts.
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Feng Zhu Country: US Feng has worked with George Lucas, Michael Bay, Luc Besson, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron. He now runs his own successful studio, Feng Zhu Design Inc. www.fengzhudesign.com
get your resources See page 114 now!
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Vehicle design Second, by going back and forth between images, I can spot mistakes a lot more easily. This has the same effect of walking away from your work for an hour: each time I switch images, I’m essentially looking at it with fresh eyes. Third, I can achieve a lot more in a short amount of time. Working on a single image until it’s finished can be dangerous in my line of work, because there’s no really accurate way to measure your total production schedule. Clients rarely ask for just one image – they always want to see as many ideas as
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Set up a save system I always save multiple versions of my Photoshop files as I work. I start with the letter ‘a’. For example: fzd_imaginefx_ demo_01a.PSD, 01b.PSD, 01c.PSD and so on. I use this naming convention for two reasons. One, it gives you an easy way to view your progress; and two, I get to have multiple back-ups just in case one of the files becomes corrupt.
Sketching the scene
I start 90 per cent of my paintings with a rough sketch. I find it hard to be creative on the fly, especially if the project has design restrictions. In this case, I’m designing two vehicles and scenes that fit into a universe that I’ve previously developed (an intelligent bug planet). I also want these two scenes to
paint a Daytime desert Battle
possible in the shortest amount of time. Therefore by starting on several images all at once, I can roughly average the total completion time. Fourth, by producing multiple images you’re essentially creating a series. In a designer’s portfolio, those drawings or paintings that fit into a themed project look a lot more impressive. This shows your ability to adopt a design language and solve potential design issues. Fifth, forcing myself to multitask images enables me to stay loose. I can’t afford to become too focused or waste
time on unnecessary details when there are a set of images to finish. Sixth, working on multiple images also has an evolutionary effect. For example, I might sketch out an interesting shape or find a cool way to render metal. I can then immediately adopt that technique or design on another image. Finally, it’s just fun. I feel more accomplished when I can finish several images all at once – which builds confidence. It keeps the fun factor high and reduces the chance for boredom. Okay, now on to the actual workshop!
contrast with each other. Therefore, the first image takes place in a nightclub or bar setting where alien celebrities are arriving. The second image (see the boxout below) is a battlefield scenario. The first vehicle faces right while remaining stationery, while the second one faces left and is in motion. One scene is set at night, while the other is in
daylight. Finally, one of my vehicles is a civilian transport while the other is military in nature. These contrasting points are all related to the key points that I’ve mentioned previously. These sketches don’t have to be super tight, but they do need to communicate the design package as well as establish the shot with proper camera and perspective.
Running alongside Feng’s futuristic nightclub scene is his daytime image of the bug battle. The primary differences between the two are the lighting considerations…
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Create the sketches
The initial sketches don’t need to be tight, but must convey the mood and direction of the artwork. This second of the two images is the opposite of my main one, so where the first image is set at night and illuminated by all manner of artificial light sources, this one will be pictured during the day and so I’ll need to take natural light sources into consideration. Furthermore, while the first image features a static subject, I want the craft in this image to be moving. In this manner I can feed off one image to inspire the other.
Create your art in parallel
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Blocking out values in the scene
At this point in the process I’m just blocking in the local values and colours, trying to capture the overall palette, lighting and mood. The line drawing is separated out onto its own layer. The resolution at this stage is 5,000x2,128 pixels – which is the ratio for widescreen films. There are just two layers active. One is the line drawing and the other, the background layer, is where I’m putting all my colours.
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Defining the light sources
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Finding some form
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Mirror image
Now that the primary values are locked I can start on the first pass, tackling form details. The goal here is to define all the major shapes. At this stage, the line drawing layer has also been removed and I’m down to just one layer.
Now I start to separate out both local and global values according to the light source(s). Without good values these paintings won’t read well, so it’s pointless to start painting details until this stage is completed. For the nightclub scene there are several primary light sources: the club window, floor, background city lights, headlights and cabin interior lights. I want this scene to feel busy, so multiple light sources are a plus.
Tips for Wacom users I don’t use Wacom’s sensitivity for Opacity, I control it manually with the 1 to 9 keys. You can turn off Opacity by pressing F5>Other Dynamics>Opacity Jitter and setting it to Off. To set up random brush patterns – great for creating textures – turn on Angle Jitter: click F5>Shape Dynamics>Angle Jitter.
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Colour process
At this stage the sketches are finished and I feel that I’ve got a sense of the composition, which is a fast-moving battle scene. Now I can start working on the tone of the piece. I separate the line art out onto its own layer and then create a Color layer to work from. As before, I only use two layers for this image.
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Defining light sources
Unlike my nightclub scene, which features numerous light sources, I want this battle painting to have just one primary light source. I decide that this will be the sun coming in from the right. However, the desert ground will act as a very good bounce board, bathing the bottom part of the ships in warm light.
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Once all the major forms are defined, I can spend the next few hours refining the look. On this first image – my nightclub scene – I’ve mirrored the composition. This is another way to keep things fresh and help spot perspective and composition mistakes. I often don’t decide on the image orientation until I’m nearing the end of the painting.
Defining the form
I’ve now reduced my layers to just one. By removing the original sketch layer I’m able to give my full attention to defining the form of my military vehicles. My goal here is to finalise the major shapes that will form the bulk of the craft. I refer back to my night scene to see what design choices I made for the civilian vehicle.
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Vehicle design 6
Combine laye
rs Cmd+Alt+Sh ift+E (Mac) Ctrl+Alt+Shift +E (PC) Keep the numb er of layers down by copy ing the contents of all layers into a new on e.
Increase the document resolution
It’s time for the finer details. To reduce eyestrain and pixellated brushes, I’ve doubled the resolution to 10,000x4,256 pixels. This document size can cause slower PCs to come to a halt, so to counter this I’m working on a PC with an Intel Core i7-960 processor and 12GB of RAM. There’s no image or brush delay on this system; I simply can’t stand lag or stutters, and I’m sure I’m not alone!
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Work on both images
The next two hours are spent adding details to both images. I tend to work for about 20 minutes on one and then switch over. In total, I spend about five hours painting both scenes. The second – the battle image – is a lot easier to paint simply because of the reduced primary light source. I have some trouble staging the nightclub scene because of the multiple primary lights, which can flatten the forms, so it takes up roughly three of the five hours to complete.
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Beginning the refining process
I begin loosely adding refining elements to the background and to certain areas of the primary craft. My somewhat cautious approach enables me to see how the scene will take shape. I’m careful not to spend too much time focused on one area – the trick is to see the big picture develop.
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Final thoughts
Well, I hope you guys enjoyed reading this workshop and getting a glimpse into how I work. Creating multiple images like this can be tricky but also has its benefits: I’ve often found that problems in one image can lead to solutions in another. Please visit my design studio website for additional images. We also offer lots of free video tutorials on YouTube (youtube.com/FZDSCHOOL). Have fun!
Add fine details
After increasing the resolution of the image to 10,000x4256 pixels, I can begin adding the finer details to the scene that will bring it to life. These include giving more definition to the combat ship in the background, reflections seen on the hull of the craft and improving the look of the large rock structures in the distance.
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Dusty dilemma
The next two hours are spent on detailing both paintings. The nightclub scene causes few problems but, because I don’t work with layers, adding the dust-trail onto the second image was tricky. I knew that if I messed up the dust would be hard to remove, so I built up the dust layer slowly with Brush Opacity at only 10 per cent.
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All images ©2011 Lucasfilm Entertainment Company or Lucasfilm Ltd. All Rights Reserved
Vehicle design
add colour to a space battle
Ryan Dening Country: Canada Ryan studied illustration at Sheridan College. His first job out of school was working on Legoland Germany for themed-attraction design firm Forrec in Toronto, Canada. He’s currently a senior concept artist on Star Wars: The Old Republic. www.deningart.com
Ryan Dening conceptualises and paints a space conflict, while making the most of Photoshop’s layering ability
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pace in the Star Wars films is typically black with stars. The are no nebulae but there are battles in the upper atmosphere, in asteroid fields and in orbit around large planets. For Star Wars: The Old Republic we wanted to push further, so the player’s visual experience varied significantly between space missions.
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We explored a lot of ideas and the one I’m focusing on here is set in a gas cloud that’s being vented from a dying star. Ships are laying mines in the cloud and your mission is to clear the area and take out the enemy vessels. I’ll be relying heavily on Photoshop’s strength in layering. I’ll start with quick thumbnail sketches, and from there I’ll
work on the final image maintaining most of my layers for flexibility. I’ll also take elements from other art pieces that we produced for the game. This can be useful when time is tight, but getting it to feel integrated can be a challenge. I’ll finish by using Adjustment layers to vignette the image and produce the levels I want.
Colour a space battle
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Exploring ideas
I usually begin with thumbnails to get the creative juices flowing. Even if I have a clear picture in my head, exploring it further often brings out better ideas. Here I’m trying out a few different settings and compositions. I like to keep these sketches small, quick and simple to keep me from overthinking them. Sometimes if I’m having trouble getting ideas to flow, I’ll swap out the media and use paper or sticky notes.
Sun surface
I start with a star field, into which I’m going to place the sun as an anchor. For the surface I start by creating a different file, roughly the size I want the sun to be, with equal height and width (square). On my second monitor I’ve collected some imagery of Earth’s sun for reference. I begin by laying down colour, using textured brushes, over the whole image area to approximate what I’m seeing. When I’m happy with the surface, I open Filter>Distort>Spherize and crank it all the way up to 100 per cent. This gives the texture the impression that it’s wrapped around a sphere. I turn on Rulers and drag some guides off the top and bottom to find the centre of the image (I have Snap To Guides turned on so I can do this easily). I use the Elliptical Marquee tool and drag from the centre while holding down Alt+Shift. I cut and paste this over the star field.
Layer selections
To make selections based on the contents of a layer from the palette, hold Ctrl and click the thumbnail. To modify selections hold Shift+Ctrl to add, Ctrl+Alt to subtract and Shift+Ctrl+ Alt to intersect. If you’re working within an existing layer’s pixels, making a selection and doing this will change opacity and give you crunchy edges, so lock the layer’s transparent pixels with the square grid button near the top of the Layers palette. To do this in layers, make a new layer above then right-click and select Create Clipping Mask.
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Vehicle design Brush size
[ and ] (PC & Mac) re bracket Use the squa se and keys to increa h size as decrease brus you paint.
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Painting the clouds
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Sun rays
I use a rough texture brush to enhance the feeling of depth in the midground with clouds. I scale down the brush as I get closer to the sun. I duplicate this layer and put a copy behind the sun. To help give the sense of a vast space, I squish and stretch the copy. Because the angle changes due to the compression I rotate the cloud plane to match the foreground. I duplicate and scale these a couple more times. I lock all of the cloud layers and paint in the colours with a Soft Airbrush. I use the Smudge tool to soften the texture and imply movement. The clouds in front of the sun still look a little flat – what they need are shadows, so I duplicate the cloud layer, select its contents, contract the selection by a couple of pixels, invert it and hit Delete. I lock and paint this top layer with a dark colour, move and squish it a little until it looks right.
Layer effects
To achieve a glow outside and inside the sun I use layer effects. In the bottom of the Layers palette I select Outer Glow from the Effects drop-down. This brings up a dialog box that enables me to set the size, strength and colour. I duplicate the sun layer a few times so I can control the glow colour better, using a larger, warmer red for the bottom layer and a smaller yellow glow on the top layer, giving me a rich colour gradient. I apply an inner glow to the top layer, with the blend mode set to Linear Dodge, to add heat bleeding inwards.
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Photoshop custom brushes: rock
This brush has a lot of randomisation settings, which enable me to quickly lay down the asteroid ring. The roundness setting is like using multiple brushes. custom brushes: dry paint
I used this rough paint brush to add hard highlights on the clouds for definition. It looks a bit like a Dry brush, so I’m able to produce a lot of implied detail quickly.
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Asteroid belt
I’m using a rock brush I’ve made to paint the asteroid ring. The brush can give me different-looking shapes with only a few strokes. These settings include Scale, Roundness, Scattering and Foreground/ Background Jitter. After laying in the base ring, I lock the layer using Lock Transparent Pixels, and paint over the small rocks on the far side of the sun using a soft brush so they appear lit. Because the pixels are locked, I don’t worry about losing the silhouette and it doesn’t change the transparency of the edges. With a Textured Round brush I rough in highlights on the foreground rocks to make them feel backlit. The changing scale from back to front, mixed with the implied lighting, gives the sense that the rocks are orbiting the sun.
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custom brushes: rake
If you don’t have one like this already, try it. The bristles follow the direction of your strokes. I used it in the sun texture, and sparingly in the thumbnails. custom brushes: square chalk
I use the Chalk brush a lot in Painter, to sketch in volumes and lay in colour. This brush is an emulation of that for Photoshop. It follows the direction of your stroke.
While painting in the clouds, I found that the sun looked too much like our healthy sun to be venting all this gas. I merged my group of sun layers with effects and used Hue/Saturation to shift the colour towards red. I also scale it up a little to sit better in the composition. For the rays, I lay in some rough lines and use the Filter>Liquify tool to distort and move them around. This quickly gives the lines a fluid feel. I set the layer blending mode to Linear Dodge and duplicate/transform it a few times to fill the sun out. At this point the overall image is looking really orange/red, so I duplicate one of the layers and hue it blue to get the heat colours you might see in a welding torch. I add a blue burst that I made by putting some coloured dots in a separate file, and use Filter>Blur>Radial Blur set to Zoom and cranked up.
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Foreground
To give the feel that you’re flying in the clouds I paint some colour in the rough shapes using a Chalk brush, making sure they’re backlit like the asteroids. I use the Smudge tool to distort the edges, then duplicate and transform this layer around the image until it feels like the viewer is in the middle of them. I select the layer contents of the asteroids and erase some of the clouds so the rocks sit among them. I also add some highlights and shadows to the asteroids to imply that they’re pitted with craters.
Colour a space battle 11
To further focus the viewer, I’m going to brighten the centre of the image and darken the edges. I click and hold the Adjustment Layer icon and select Levels. I bring the light values in from the right side. I want to vignette the image so I select the Level layer’s mask and fill it with black. I pick the Gradient tool, set it to Radial and select the second preset. This uses your foreground colour and fades it off to 0 per cent opacity. I pick white and drag the gradient out from the centre of the sun to the far left of the image, and repeat this until I get the brightness I want. The sun has some blown-out spots so I paint those back in the mask with black and a soft brush. I create a new Normal layer and use the Gradient tool again – this time with Linear selected – and drag a little black in from the edges to enhance the effect.
Copy merge
(Mac) Shift+Ctrl+C (PC) Shift+Cmd+C tion from Copy a selec without multiple layers d/merge having to fin y. them manuall
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Adding a vignette
Ship sketch
I start with a really loose sketch of the ship to get the rough design. I then add perspective lines and block in major zones to harden out the shape. Some linework is added to frame the design. Next, I paint in the main highlights and shadows to give the design some form. For the details I use a Screen layer and airbrush in a brighter metal, erasing out some of the panels to add some surface variation. I increase the contrast if needed to make the image more dynamic.
time 10 Laser I choose blue lasers for the main
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Merging in outside art
To save some time I’m going to use some of the game’s concepts for mines and ships. This doesn’t always work, but since we’re in space, I can get away with a lot of potential perspective issues. But you can see they don’t sit well: they look flat and the lighting doesn’t match the environment. To blend these in I create an Overlay layer directly above, and lock it to the pixels of the concept layer. (To do this I right-click the layer name and select Create Clipping Mask.) I paint in shadows using a mid-dark grey-purple and use a light, warm colour for highlights. I create two clipping mask layers on top: one Normal to lighten the values and a Color Dodge layer to pop the surfaces hit by the sun. I select the source layer again and erase some of it out to imply that they’re sitting in the clouds.
Managing layers Here are a couple of tips for working with layers. Hit V to get the Move tool. In the Options bar select Layer and then uncheck Auto-Select. With the Move tool selected, hold Ctrl and click the image: the top layer in that location will be selected. (Check your palette to make sure it is the one you want.) Also, group layers into key components to keep them organised. Select the layers you want, then hit Ctrl+G. If I’m working fast, naming the groups is usually enough.
ship, to draw the eye in, and add an explosion for good measure. It needs a bright edge on everything where the sunlight would fall. I create a new layer and paint in highlights – a huge step that can dramatically increase the quality of the image. I create Linear and Color Dodge layers to brighten areas and add glow haze. For shadows coming from the mines, I create a Multiply layer and use the Polygonal Lasso tool to draw selections from the centre of the sun out past the edges of the mines.
12 Sharpening Photoshop tends to make paintings soft, even when using a hard brush. To sharpen the image I Select All (Ctrl+A), select Copy Merged (Ctrl+Shift+C) and Paste. This creates a new layer with all the layers flattened together. I select Filter>Other>High Pass and set it to around 1.2 (if the image is low res, try selecting a lower number). This creates an odd-looking grey layer, but if I change the blending mode to Overlay, the grey disappears and everything crisps up. I adjust the opacity of the layer to finetune the effect. If it’s not sharp enough I might delete the layer and try again with a higher setting, such as 1.8.
13 Curves I want to brighten the image overall because I noticed on my coworker’s monitor that it looked too dark. A powerful way to lighten or darken your image without destroying your lights and darks is to use the Curves tool. Create a Curves Adjustment layer and grab the middle of the line bisecting the Curves graph. Pull the point up a little and you should see the mid-range starts to become brighter. Once again, I mask out some of the areas around the sun since they are too bright. And that’s the image done – hope you like it.
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Character art Paint unique and compelling heroes and heroines
I’ll create a character that unites contrasting worlds into one consistent and appealing painting Maciej Kuciara, page 54
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Maciej Kuciara
Polish-born Maciej has been working in video games since 2004, and worked on Crysis and Crysis 2 for Crytek. He now works for Naughty Dog on the studio’s next major project, The Last of Us. Design an iconic character with multiple reference points. Turn to page 54
Workshops
Learn to design game characters 34 Design your own game hero with Alessandro Taini Use colour and composition to create a heroic character. 38 Develop poster art for Crysis 2 with Marek Okon Use 3D and 2D to create a highquality game promo image. 44 Design a space opera princess with Kevin Chen Add story elements and a bold design to your characters. 50 Recast a classic comic character with Kan Muftic Rocksteady’s artist show’s how he recreated Harley Quinn. 54 Unify a range of fantasy genres with Maciej Kuciara Mix genre styles in one image for original results.
Design a bold heroine 44
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Character art
Design your own game hero Alessandro Taini defines character with a heroic pose and reveals his approach for painting the leading man in Enslaved: Odyssey to the West t the earliest stages of Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, it was decided that we would base the game on a 400-year-old Chinese novel, Journey to the West. My task as visual art director was to present to the team how our game hero would look, which ultimately determined many of his traits. Even at the very start, a piece of art
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Alessandro Taini Country: England Italian-born Alessandro started his art career in Milan as a creative designer and visualiser. Since then he’s been a graphic designer and book illustrator, and is now visual art director at Ninja Theory, working on the games Heavenly Sword and Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. www.talexiart.com
needs to say so much about the game’s character – in this case, Monkey’s strength and attitude. In this workshop, I’ll show you how I’ve taken a character concept through to final colour illustration, keeping it full of personality and strong expression. I’ll focus mainly on my stylistic approach but will also give you technical tips.
get your resources See page 114 now! 2
photoshop Monkey Brush
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This tool gives a thick, paintbrushed effect. I’ve used it in the Enslaved workshop to build up the character’s skintone.
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Initial sketch
The first stage is to create a pencil sketch of the character and try to convey their attitude and personality. In this case, my inspiration is Monkey from the novel, so I know I have to be consistent with the story and yet give the character a unique feel. I find that a pencil gives you the freedom to follow your instincts through your hands. However, I do sometimes sketch straight into Photoshop.
Presents Game Art
Adding definition
Now it’s time to take your initial sketch and add more definition. It’s useful to keep in mind the purpose of your character. With Monkey, I know he’ll be fighting huge enemy mechs and climbing a lot, so I exaggerate his silhouette, making his back and arm muscles prominent. I also give him extraordinarily large hands. With my characters, I like to take human aspects and really push them, but not to the extent that they become cartoon-like. Take one of my other characters, Nariko, who features in Heavenly Sword. She’s realistic looking but her eyes are larger than a real person’s, and that helps to give her a really strong facial expression.
Character art
r tricks
Laye V (PC) t+C, Ctrl+ Ctrl+Shif V (Mac) d+ m C , ift+C Cmd+Sh yers but la ur yo To flatten lect the them, se not lose press en th d target an bo. m co y this ke
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Adding a base colour
I add a brown Color Burn layer to push through the pencil texture and give background colour to the image. This provides the image with a rough, chalk-like texture. Brown is a great skin tone to give a character because you can add lighter hues to really bring them to life. Once the Color Burn layer is in place, I take the white layer (layer 1 in this image) to bring the silhouette to the forefront.
Halos of light In Photoshop, a dramatic lens flare effect can be created using the Lens Flare filter instead of the Paint one I mention here.
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Muscle details
I want to make the muscles anatomically correct, so I refer to photographs of bodybuilders to ensure that they look realistic. As long as the lines themselves are correct, you can exaggerate the muscles while keeping a level of realism.
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Background considerations
At this point, I want to separate the character from the background and create specific ornaments or designs that will crop up again and again in Enslaved. I name these ‘art techeau’: they combine the curves of Art Nouveau and the composition of electronic circuit boards. Some of the game’s villains, or mechs, have these designs on their backs, and they feature in the game menus. The same symbol style is also used for Monkey’s tattoo-like battle scar. For this image, I want to use the ornament as a background, giving a small taste of the game to supplement the character’s frame.
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Adding detail
I then apply lighter tones to give more depth to the skin. I work with one of my own soft brushes, which produces a paintbrush-like texture and look, and use light shades on the face and body to bring the skin to life. The eyes are the most important features for showing attitude and engaging the viewer; even at the sketch stage, they can be powerful devices in terms of conveying character. In your image, find out what your focus point is and spend time detailing it and getting it right. In my work the eyes are the first port of call, followed by the face and then the muscles. With a realistic skintone in place, I notice that the proportion of Monkey’s head to his body is wrong, so in the final piece the head has been made larger.
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Creating a character 7
Tattoos
Using the same art techeau style, I add tattoo-like scars. First, I create a black tattoo on a white background and place it on the body where I want it – in this case, on one shoulder and the back. Then I change the layer mode to Soft Light. This gives the perception that the design is integrated with the body. After this, I add some light to the edges of the design to create the perception of depth – these tattoos are intended to look like deep scars, branded with hot metal.
Speedy switches Ctrl+T
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(PC), Cm d+T (Mac Use this co ) mbinatio n and then right -click to br ing up the Tr ansform ation menu qu ickly.
The mask
I want to retain consistency with the novel and decide to take inspiration from the original Monkey mask. For this, I use a Chalk brush to give a body paint effect. It’s both minimal and tribalesque. It’s also clearly visible but doesn’t intrude on the allimportant expression on Monkey’s face and in his eyes. If I’d painted a full mask, it would have looked too tribal and obscured his face. This is a human being but I’ve given him features consistent with the book’s simian-like character.
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Blend the subject
To merge the character with the background, I like to finish the piece with a Blend brush and add an oil paint effect. This can be done in Photoshop using the Smudge tool. I also like to import the image in Painter and add the details myself using the Water Rake.
Hair detail
I don’t need to paint photorealistic hair for this image. The most important thing is to keep the powerful silhouette with aggressive spikes – if the mane were lifelike, this aspect would be lost. I use a thick brush to make a jagged silhouette and leave realistic texture by the scalp. It makes the hair and head seem like one, resulting in a strong outline.
Lighting
10 In the same way that many photographers do, I like to use one main light from one side (Caravaggio style) and a softer, coloured one on the other to bring my characters to life in three dimensions. This is a technique often seen in comic books. I have a simple but effective way of using layers to add lighting to highlight a subject, in this case the Monkey character. Firstly, I add a new black layer to the image, then select Color Dodge from the Layer menu. Then I select the correct lighting colour; here, I’ve used natural colour light around the rim of the character from the left and a red glow to the back. When you select Color Dodge, the black layer becomes transparent and you can paint your light effect over the top. Linear Dodge can be selected instead of Color Dodge to create a softer light.
Choose a focal point Select a key area for your work and spend time getting it just right. It should be where you’re conveying your message and character, supplemented by secondary focal points. If your background or character’s legs aren’t a focal point, then you don’t need to go into a lot of detail with them.
a final texture 12 Apply Giving the image a uniform textured effect suggests that it has been painted on paper or a canvas. There are a couple of textures I like to use, which I have as separate layers that can be placed over the whole picture. One gives a dirty, gritty, rusty look, and is better for the background than the character. I use another texture over the whole image, which gives the image a painted feel.
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Character art
Develop poster art for Crysis 2 Promo images must be of the highest quality and remain consistent with an established brand. Marek Okon’s Crysis 2 art scores on both counts reating a promotional image for a popular game series is a prestigious job even for the most seasoned of artists. It’s a demanding task that requires you to work with various media to ensure that the subject receives the best possible treatment. It’s also a high-profile commission: the image will receive a lot of exposure and be discussed by gamers interested in that particular franchise. It’s crucial that any promotional image must match whatever’s already been established in the game universe.
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Marek Okon Country: Poland Marek is a freelance illustrator and concept artist who’s been in the industry for over five years. He’s most famous for his work for Games Workshop, LucasArts and Crytek. www.okonart.com
get your resources See page 114 now!
Consistency is also important at the technical level: you need to integrate any production assets with your painted elements so that they work together well. The first thing I do, even before painting the initial sketch, is to consult with my art producer Magnus Larbrant, who will lead me through the image production process and make sure my art is consistent with the game. It usually starts with him giving me some ideas of what he’d like to see in the image, and then it’s up to me to modify and piece them together. In this case the key
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Sketching the idea
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Review the two rendered elements
The first sketch is usually very rough. It should only tell the art director, in the simplest of terms, what’s in the picture. So I don’t worry about anatomical errors, lack of details and stuff like that. There’s a good chance that I’ll have to overhaul the sketch or even draw a few different versions of it. Combining the cityscape and broken asphalt isn’t easy because I have to show elements that are low on the ground while looking up at them. After a short brainstorm with Magnus we decide to use a low-angle camera shot, looking up from one of the cracks in the ground. This gives us a nice view of the building’s rooftops while conveniently placed asphalt pieces frame the shot.
With the sketch in place it’s time to check the production assets: Crytek’s rendering of the cityscape and the nanosuit. These could be painted of course, but using 3D guarantees a high level of accuracy and consistency with in-game material. It’s up to me to alter and combine them in the best way possible. You might think that having high-res renders at my disposal makes this an easy task, but it’s not – they’re very clean and lack atmospheric effects. I need to make them look more painterly and natural by adding missing elements, correcting shadows and adjusting light levels.
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elements that had to appear were: the nanosuit; the lead character of the Crysis franchise; New York in the background; and a hole in the road that’s dripping alien biological matter. I suggest that we add a fire in the background and flying debris to turn a static scene into something more dynamic and eye catching. We talk about whether there should be any alien creatures in the picture, but in the end agree that it would be too much to squeeze in; the composition might become too cluttered. With the idea for the image in place, I start to paint…
Character art 3
Painting the background
I start with the background because I like to have a strong supporting structure in place before working on the main subject, which in this image is the nanosuit. I paint with a broad textured brush that has jagged and irregular edges to cover the buildings with clouds of dust. Another textured brush results in hardedged debris flying all over the place. Both brushes were created by Mathias Verhasselt and you can download them (along with other great brushes) from this conceptart.org page: bit.ly/91ir9m. I use the Smudge tool on some of the clouds and debris to imply that a gusty wind is whipping things up.
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Saving time
I use some stock photography to add a Remove a r car and a fire. Again, selected laye c) C & Ma (P e ac sp ck Ba these elements could be e quickly delet Press this to you painted but using stock the layer that . have selected images saves time – which is important in production work – and maintains a high level of detail that’s consistent with the renders. I paint black smoke pouring out of the fire with the same brush I used for the dust clouds, only with a smaller diameter. Remember that smoke and any particle-based objects are volumetric, so they’ll react to light and shadows like any other solid objects – that’s why the smoke is illuminated at its base by the fire. Finally, I perform some contrast and colour adjustments to make the background look cooler. This will create a nice depth effect later on.
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Photoshop custom brush: Chalk2
This is an excellent multipurpose brush that I use to produce dust clouds and patches of dirt. custom brush: TM@_ Round_Brush_Hard_ TextureLevel3
I use this brush to render flying debris. Different texture scale and soft edges produce really interesting effects. Both of these brushes can be downloaded from bit.ly/91ir9m.
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Improving the suit
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Keeping the suit’s details
Now I start working on the nanosuit. Although there are plenty of details, the suit looks too smooth and the lighting is dull. I start by adding a direct light source from the upper-left corner. I duplicate the suit layer, play around with Curves until the image is brighter, and then I set it to Overlay mode to pump up the colours and contrast. Then I add a mask to this layer and erase any areas that don’t receive any light. I repeat this procedure, this time adjusting the Curves to produce a darker nanosuit and use a mask to erase all lit areas. Now I have lighter values to indicate where the sun hits directly and darker values for the shadow area. I return to the masks on the lighter and darker layers and create more defined edges of light and shadow by finetuning parts of them. I repeat this stage twice, for the ambient blueish light from the sky and the local orange light source coming from the fire. On top of that I make a few minor adjustments and some local colour corrections.
You may wonder why I don’t just paint lighter values over the original Nanosuit layer using a Clipping Mask and different blending modes. That would work, but in the process I would destroy some finer details of the original render. After combining the nanosuit with the background, the effect is quite pleasing because of the matching lighting and colour scheme on both elements.
Crysis 2 poster art
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Grounding the image
The texture of asphalt is very fine and distinctive. Because I need to match the detail level of the renders, the best way to reproduce it is to either use stock photos or a properly textured brush. I start by painting simple solid blocks, with basic lighting, that represent the layout of the cracked asphalt. Next I overlay real textures on proper surfaces. Note that the edge of the asphalt has a slightly different structure to its smooth surface. If the crack goes deep enough – and in this case, it does – I have to remember to paint the different layers that are used in road production, such as gravel and the ground itself. When the texturing is finished, I create a new layer above it and correct the lighting on any objects that stand out. I also repaint some asphalt elements so all the textures are consistent – both with each other, and with areas of the image that are already painted.
9 Make use of masks Remember that adjustment layers have masks, enabling you to localise changes to your adjustments. By shifting hues or values and masking the effect, you can easily separate different planes from each other. Grouping those adjustment layers in folders will give you greater control over their transparency and blending modes.
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Tackling alien matter
Searching for proper values for the Crysis biomass, I place photos of jellyfish on top of an image of sliced meat and play around with the opacity and blending modes. I start to paint, attempting to depict differing biomass structures and density in a number of places by adding subsurface scattering effects and variations in surface gloss. This randomness enhances the organic feel of the substance and makes the viewer feel that it is made from different materials, which are part of a greater – and as yet unseen – whole. I also add moist, sticky strips of goo and string everything together, essentially giving the biomass a more alien look. I emphasise its organic origins by using different blending modes for yellow/pink hues of colour. Overlay, Soft and Hard Light modes can produce convincing light scattering effects in semi-transparent materials.
Implying depth of field
For the upper part of the asphalt crack I use the same procedure as before, but then I notice that planes of different depth have started to blend in together. So I reach for a photographic depth of field effect that basically blurs everything in front and behind the focus area. This effect is great for creating a false sense of depth in the image, but it must be used wisely or it can look gimmicky. I separate the foreground into four different layers, depending on their distance from the camera. The uppermost asphalt and biomass with all the strings hanging from above are on the first layer, because they’re closest to the camera. The middle asphalt blocks are on the second layer, the absolute bottom parts are on the third and the higher bottom parts are on the fourth layer. I apply the Lens Blur filter to all of them, with the strongest values on the first layer and weakest values on the last. If you want to avoid transparency issues, make sure the areas around the layers’ edges are overlapping slightly. Because the background is much further away from the focus point than the asphalt crack, a single blur depth should be enough. Our depth of field effect is ready.
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Character art moving 12 Adding particles I need to add some foreground particle effects. Those include light debris that’s flying all over the place, and small stones and dirt falling down into the asphalt crack. Because most of these particles are going to be out of focus I’m using the same brush I used for background dust, only with larger texture sampling. Then I use the basic Smudge tool to add a subtle motion effect to the debris. It doesn’t have to be too precise – just enough to fool the viewer’s eye.
out final 13 Carrying adjustments
the suit 10 Distressing Because the nanosuit is combat
Aim for a unified look Consistency in your image’s details is key. So if you’re using either stock photography or a texture that has too much detail, don’t hesitate to reduce this using Median or Blur filters. Applying too much detail in areas that aren’t your focal points will do more harm than good to your image.
armour, it should look worn – dirty, scratched and dented. First I paint a dirt layer, using a Clipping Mask over the base suit layer. For the dirt texture I use two brushes: one broad with smoother edges and one that’s slightly rougher, which produces a subtle noiselike pattern. You can use any blending mode for the dirt layer, but I prefer to keep it on Normal with reduced opacity. I sample the colour of dirt from all over the canvas. The next worn layer is dents and cuts, and just like before I create a Clipping Mask over the base suit layer. The best way to create believable dents is to sample light and dark values in one area and paint them next to each other while referring to the light source. I often use dents as a way to differentiate areas of a uniform surface, such as the strips of nanomaterial on the shoulders. The final layer is made up of hard scratches. Once again I create a Clipping Mask and then paint scratches with the Hard Round brush. Most of the abrasions are on a material’s hard edges so I ensure these are the most visible. I also add a mask to my hard scratches layer and apply a grainy texture for extra realism. Finally, I add few blinks of light on the main reflective surfaces, and make some minor lighting and colour balance tweaks.
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Checking the colour balance
I match the colour balance of the image with the reference colour palette used in Crysis 2, using a combination of Colour Balance and Hue/Saturation adjustment layers, with masks separating different planes of the image. I want to achieve a gloomy, yellowish-bluish cast over the image that will emphasise the terrible atmosphere of a city invaded by aliens.
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g Start clippin C)
(P Ctrl+Alt+G (Mac) Cmd+Alt+G releases or es ch ta This at ing mask pp cli a as a layer that’s er lay e th to below it.
I make some minor tweaks to the colour balance. I warm the nanosuit and the foreground’s colour tone slightly so that they immediately pop out from the cooler background, and make a few minor paint adjustments. And that’s it – the image is done. Over to the marketing team!
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Character art
Design a space opera princess
A bold personality and readable silhouette help to make a character memorable. Kevin Chen walks you through the design process good character design creates an iconic image that helps to establish a project’s identity, its storytelling and the clarity needed for a smooth production. In this tutorial, I’ll share some of the design tips and working processes I’ve learned while designing characters for video games. Designing for games is different to designing for film or animation. The characters have to play a double role –
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Kevin Chen Country: US A freelance concept artist and founder and director of Concept Design Academy, Kevin’s recent projects include character and costume designs for Bulletstorm. http://ifxm.ag/k-chen
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Do some research
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Pose the character
Before starting the drawing, I like to spend some time thinking about and researching different ways I can approach the character. Other than knowing that she’s a princess for a sci-fi project, I’m asking myself questions such as: Who is she? Where does she come from? What job does she do? Why is she in the story? When does the tale take place? Asking myself these questions helps me get to know the character better so that I can come up with some interesting answers to design around.
I pose a generic mannequin that’s both accurate in its proportions and has the right gesture to help convey her personality and attitude. In this case, I want the princess to be proud, so I give her an arching spine and shoulders to push her chest out and show her confidence. When posing a game character, it’s a good idea to keep the limbs away from the body so that there’s a clear view of the design. Classic three‑quarter front and back views of a character are ideal for this purpose because they enable the modeller to see the most information.
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they’re storytelling archetypes as well as being great interactive avatars that enable the player to immerse themselves in and interact with the game world. Illustrating a character for CG production is also slightly different to creating a print illustration. Our goal is to communicate the design clearly to the modeller in terms of form and texture as quickly as possible. We often use many photos to speed up the process, and the
rendering isn’t as important because it’s the final game model that counts. As character designers, we’re the least expensive way to explore many ideas early on and to establish interesting designs that will help inspire the team to be excited about the new project. My demo for this workshop illustrates how I’d take a rough design idea from line to colour finish for early pre-production pitches. Let’s get started!
Character art
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Define the face and body
Personality is paramount when creating a character design: it motivates everything and is what will leave a lasting impression on the viewer. I want to define my character with a distinctive personality, facial structure and body build. I’m focusing on making the face interesting just through the larger skull structure. I want to give her a European, aristocratic face along with a fencer’s body type.
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Flesh out the design
At this point, I find that the mechanical left arm needs to be clarified, so I’m sketching some ideas on the right to help resolve the design. The overall costume is looking a bit busy, so I’m doing a small thumbnail sketch on the left to help me see the big picture more clearly. (I’m also thinking about how her blade can break into a whip.) I usually take at least three design options to this level for the art director to pick from before I move on to the colour phase with the chosen design.
Think in 3D. Design in all views
m Free Transfor
Ctrl+T (PC) ) Cmd+T (Mac e top of the Right-click th d Warp selection to ad image an h etc str d an . over a surface
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Mask the character
To help shorten the clean-up time, I paint a selection mask so I can separate the character from the background easily. I like doing this phase because it helps me see how well the silhouette of the character is working without the internal details. You can do this same process with the Lasso tool, but I prefer using the brush because it gives me more control.
Amplify the animation Often in a platform game, you’ll see a character’s full body as it moves quickly around the screen. To help the animation read better, a common trick is to have the important animation areas amplified in shape, value or silhouette. This way, it will echo the animation read whenever the character moves, so the viewer can track the movement easily. A good example of this is Shinobi’s scarf in the eponymous series, which enables the player to follow his whereabouts.
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Soft Light or Overlay
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Compose the costume
When designing the costume, it’s important to think of both front and back views – especially for a third-person platform title or first-person shooter, where the character is seen from the back for 80 per cent of the game. For clear composition, vary the costume into small, medium and large shapes. This will create a nice stage for the areas of detail to become the focus. The face, hands and upper back of a major game character are important areas for player identity, animation and user interface design reasons, so you need to take this into account.
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Ambient lights
Using the mask as a selection, I start to add a gradation to the background from dark to light. To help the character pop, I use a reverse gradation on her. To keep the drawing showing through the gradation, I apply the layers with either Soft Light or Overlay.
Design a space opera princess 11
Plan costume in 3 values
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Design the local value pattern
Before I add any fancy lighting, I want to paint the character as if she’s in ambient light. This helps to guarantee that she’ll look good in both shadow and a well-lit scene. When designing the local values, I use three values in small, medium and large proportions for clear staging.
Render the major forms
To help me save time on rendering, I’m painting a cylinder and ball to superimpose on top of the major body forms using Soft Light or Overlay. You can see them to the left and right of the character in this image. Using this technique, I can very quickly establish the big masses with light and shadow. In situations where I need to paint more quickly and when time is of the essence, I’ll use photographs at this stage of the process. The photographs provide me with many subtle details and colour variations that are time-consuming to replicate by hand-painting.
Curves for skin tone
Colour palette 9
Test the colours
I try to use colour palettes that will evoke an emotion. I’m using the royal flag colours as a base for the design to reflect her personality and heritage. It’s crucial to organise or desaturate your colour base to a warm or cool tone so you can stage up an accent colour. As a general rule, keep colours simple if you have a sculptural form and complex if your forms are flat.
Curves
Flesh is transparent
Ctrl+M (PC) Cmd+M (Mac ) Quickly vary saturations and add neut ral grey and saturated sh adows to a flesh tone.
to create 10 Begin the flesh tone I start to rough out the flesh tone to help me key the rest of the colour saturations around it. Skin is an interesting material because it’s a neutral warm grey sheet that will take on any colour you shine on it. It’s also a transparent material – the light can pass through the fleshy areas, giving it a rich red tone in the shadows. The key to painting a good skin tone is to use the red tones only in the fleshy areas.
the materials 12 Establish To start the material rendering, I like to first establish the softest and hardest materials. In this case, it’s the skin and the metallic armour. For skin, I use the Curve tool to help control the saturation of the shadows and introduce the subtle grey into the skin tone. For the metallic parts I use the Lasso tool to give a clean edge, and the Colour Dodge layer to give a nice saturation while I paint the reflective lights on the metallic surface.
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Character art Design for gameplay In game production, the gameplay experience is the core that all designs need to follow. When creating enemies, it’s important to give them a clear shape hierarchy so you understand who’s the boss and who are the grunts. You need to design with a clear sense of direction, so the players know which is the danger side and where to find the blind spot. When designing main characters, the back and weapon are important because they often serve as a display for player health and weapon quantity.
Flesh Gun Metal Latex
Cloth
Color Dodge to create rim light
Copper or Gold
layers, three materials 13 Three Once the extremes are established, I focus on the different materials in between. For a believable costume design, there are always at least three layers of clothing and three types of material present. When I have a hard time indicating a material, I often paint it separately as a ball to figure out its colours and reflective quality. Once I solve the rendering problem, I can then colour pick and apply it to my character.
gradations 14 Colour To help unify the colours further and give a better sense of lighting, I often apply another gradation layer over the character and background. In this case, I introduce a warm to cool gradation to mimic the natural fall-off that occurs in a lighting situation. For lighting up a subtle gradation, Soft Light is my favourite tool to use because it has a very gentle effect on the colour and value.
drama 15 Adding To give the character a dramatic feel and make her pop out from the background, I apply a kicker light behind her to give a nice rim light and show off her silhouette. To paint the rim light, I use the Paint Bucket tool to create a black layer and assign it a Color Dodge layer property. When I paint a warm white on top of that Color Dodge layer, it gives a nice glow effect that mimics the saturation that happens when strong light hits an object.
Soft Light photoshop custom brush: Ellipse brush
adjustments 16 Final After a few more tweaks, the design is ready. Often it takes several revisions to get a main character approved for 3D modelling. Once approved, it is standard to create a material call-out sheet for the modeller to reference and a turnaround drawing to finish the design package.
The Ellipse Brush, set to a spacing of 1,000 per cent, is a simple but useful tool. I use it often to help me clean up ellipses and cylinders on mechanical objects.
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Character art
R ecast a classic c omic character How do you paint a compassionate portrait of DC’s villainous Harley Quinn? Rocksteady concept artist Kan Muftic shows how it’s done he world of DC’s heroes and villains is incredibly rich, offering a fantastic variety of interesting characters for any artist. Having the privilege to work on such exciting characters on a daily basis would turn me into a 10-year-old boy every time I sat down at my desk at Rocksteady Studios. Working on countless concepts for Batman: Arkham City has taught me one thing, though: you can’t just go in and mess around with these characters. Some of them have been around for 70 years
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and the world’s finest comic book artists and illustrators have all contributed to their evolution. In this workshop, I’ll paint a portrait of Harley Quinn. She’s famous for her extreme mannerisms and affection for the Joker. What I aim to do is contrast this image and present her more personal side. I pick a moment when she’s on her own, lost in her thoughts. The events of Arkham City are dramatic and the love of her life, the Joker, is terribly ill. She’s changing her outfit and gearing up for her upcoming mission.
Kan Muftic Country: England Kan is a concept artist and illustrator with extensive experience in the video game, film, advertising and music industries. www.bit.ly/kanm
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Painter
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Composition
If you want to tell a story with your image, you have to spend time exploring the composition. In Painter, I take the idea of Harley changing outfits and start roughly sketching some ideas. I don’t want to make a pretty drawing here (I never go into any detail at this stage). I sketch several versions to explore different ideas, angles and poses. At this stage, once I’ve created a few sketches, I line them up and submit them for approval.
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Sketching out
The first sketch has the strongest impact, so I crop the image and double the size (Canvas>Resize>Width 200 Percent) while making sure the Constrain File Size box is checked. Next I start picking colours and laying them straight down on the first and only layer of my painting. It’s a bit unconventional but I have a good reason for doing this: it keeps me focused, while improving my skills for painting edges and exploring colours. I’ve found that when working with many layers it’s easy to drift away in an endless set of options, and of trial and error. Working with a single layer forces you to carefully think through and commit to chosen colours and structures.
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Standard brushes: Oil Pastel
This brush was used for 99 per cent of this piece. Blender Bristle
Another favourite of mine, this creamy brush makes digital strokes look traditional.
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Following design and adding elements
I block in some basic design elements of the costume, adding smudged mascara to her face, which gives a subtle hint to the game’s backstory. I also roughly add some other elements to the sketch. These will be detailed later – I only wish to position them at this point. I think it’s important to avoid fleshing things out too early, because at this stage it should still be about exploration and playing with the paint.
Recast a classic c omic character
GAMES ARTIST Discover mor e of work on Rocks Kan Muftic’s te Batman: Arkhaady Studios’ m City on page 13 and be inspired by great conc ept art…
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Character art Iterative save
Ctrl+Alt+S (PC ) Cmd+Option+ S (Mac) A great, simple way to save sequen tially numbered ve rsions of an image.
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Cropping and blocking in
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Moving things around
I decided that the image has too much space opposite Harley so I crop it. Remember, composition is king in visual storytelling. My Oil Pastels brushes are working a treat and I’m getting some wonderful edges, even at this rough stage. When using these brushes I make long, broad strokes across the canvas. It’s a very therapeutic process.
I realise I have to make some changes to the image. I find that once you start putting down colours it’s hard to go back and work on your composition again, so it’s probably best to go back now and get things right. Using the Lasso tool, I select the left part of the image and move it away. I then block in Harley’s missing shape, which reveals more of her costume.
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Fleshing out
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Putting it all together
I feel like I’m on the right track at this point, so I decide to enlarge the image. The reason for this is that I still want to work in swooshy strokes even in the detailed areas, and not fall into the habit of scribbling minor details of the picture. I start fleshing things out and add Harley’s purple boots that she used to wear in Batman: Arkham Asylum. Purple gives a nice touch to the overall palette.
From here on I work on the smaller elements of the figure and the environment. I try not to zoom in because I don’t want to lose the overview of the image. I have enough colours on the canvas, so I can pick them instead of mixing them from scratch. Still, every stroke is bold and confident. It’s crucial to place your strokes into each other instead of scratching them in or carefully placing them next to each other.
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Facial expression
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Edge economy
I add a cheeky little smile on her face; she looked too angry and slightly out of character before. Again, thinking of the overall story of the image always helps you come up with interesting details. I’m still relaxed and my arm moves loosely across my tablet, even when I’m creating intricate details such as the character’s face. Strangely, I produce better strokes when I just let go.
This fancy term – edge economy – refers to the relationship between the soft and sharp edges in a painting. Using Pen Pressure, I create sharp edges and, as I slowly lift my pen up, the edges become soft. Here you can see an example of edge economy in Harley’s hair.
Adding personality Painting superheroes is really good fun, but it’s a good idea to make them as human as possible. That way, you give them personality and the viewer can identify with them that much more.
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Recast a classic c omic character Seek feedback If you’re getting paid to draw, that means you’re not drawing for yourself but for your client. Send back a lot of progress shots and request extensive feedback. That way, you can make sure everyone is happy and you won’t need to change much of your piece as you go along.
15 Highlights Clever positioning of highlights and their edges can make or
10 Stockings These stockings were an iconic part of Harley’s outfit in the first game, Batman:
break an image. That’s why it’s important to know what materials you apply the highlight to. In this case, I have a leather corset and that means that I can’t just add some random specular reflections – the surface has a texture that absorbs parts of light and doesn’t reflect it in the same way as metal, for example. So my highlights are slightly smudged and muted, which gives the impression of leather.
Arkham Asylum. As I start blocking them in, I realise that I’ve never painted stockings before. It’s a delicate material with a flexible shape, so it’s not easy to get right. I try searching for some references online, but find surprisingly few pictures of loosehanging stockings. It becomes rather draining browsing through loads of irrelevant and obscene images to get to the right one! I don’t have time to get some real-life reference so I just try to use common sense and make it up.
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The boot
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Boost up the contrast
I put some details into Harley’s boot design while trying not to destroy it because I like how the edges look so far. The material is smooth and shiny, so I use some nice specular reflections to make it pop. I try to ensure the boot looks and feels different from the cloth next to it.
armpit saga 16 The Until now it’s been easy to get her posture, the facial expression and the colours right, but I’ve been delaying working on this area… and now it’s time to solve the difficult armpit/shoulder area. I know I’ll struggle because I’m not exactly sure what the arm looks like behind the obstacle. This is one of those moments where I regret not doing more figure drawing from life. I push paint around, trying to find something that’ll look right. If you get stuck, do some proper research, shoot some reference photos or ask someone to pose for you. It sounds like a lot of work, but it will take more time to struggle with the mistakes you make if you don’t.
I quickly switch to Photoshop and add an Adjustment Layer (Layer> New Adjustment Layer). I push the contrast up by moving the outer sliders to both ends of the ‘black waves’ that represent tonal information. This could also be done in Painter, using the Equalise function, but I find Photoshop more accessible for this stage.
details 13 More I change Harley’s smile to look
face 17 The After having spent too much time
a bit more natural and add some details such as black nails that help flesh out her character a bit more.
painting the armpit, I move on to her face. This is the most interesting part for me: I find faces to be challenging but rewarding if you get them right. Even though I zoom in, the strokes are still placed on top of each other loosely. Her face needs more form but I have to keep her looking young and pretty. A delicate touch is the key here. Sculpting the paint gently gives me the result I’m looking for.
14 Corset Having enriched my image with contrast, I switch back to Painter and pick some creamy Blender Bristle brushes from the Artists’ Oils menu. They’re great for rendering leathery surfaces and skin, so I zoom in a bit and start working on the structure of Harley’s corset. This is one of the most difficult and time-consuming parts of the process, and it shows just how important it is to do a lot of drawing of all kinds of things from life.
intervention 18 Outside Just as I’m finishing, my art director asks me to crop the image Customise ke
ys Edit menu>P references> Customize Ke ys (PC) Painter menu >Preference s >Customize Keys (Mac) Assign your to ols to specific keys .
so that Harley Quinn’s costume more accurately represents the one she wears in Batman: Arkham City. I’m happy to do this if it means the image is more up to date, and I’m sure Harley wouldn’t mind…
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Character art
Unify a range of fantasy genres
Maciej Kuciara shows how to design an iconic heroine, encompassing several different elements and unifying the concept with colour or this workshop I’ll be guiding you through a few simple steps on how to create an interesting and unique character design – one that’s not tied down to any specific genre. I’ll try to break down the boundaries by dropping interesting elements into the mix and creating a character that unites contrasting worlds into one consistent
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Maciej Kuciara Country: Poland Maciej is an art director and concept artist who’s spent six years working in the video game and entertainment design industries, specialising in creating concept art and matte paintings for Crytek and Naughty Dog. www.maciejkuciara.com
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and appealing image. I’ll take a look at a couple of different aspects, such as presentation and brainstorming ideas into concept sketches. Finally, I’ll take my preferred sketch through to a finished image. The subject for this workshop is a heroine – a mistress of all the genres. I have a strong idea in mind of who she is and how she’ll look. She’s a
hot, badass blonde pilot wielding a submachine gun, with a katana sword strapped to her back, riding a tamed dragon and destroying anything that stands in her way. But there are still issues to overcome. I’ll show you how a strong control of colour can unify the disparate genre ideas into one image. Are you strapped in? Hold on tight!
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First you need to consider how you’re going to present your character before you start thinking about specifics such as value, colour and detail. Depending on your chosen subject, the character design can be shown either as a standard portrait shot, or as an action/cinematic shot that puts our hero/heroine in a specific situation. Each option has its own strengths and weaknesses.
2 Photoshop custom brushes: Hard Soft Edged
This simple brush works like a charm for sketching purposes. Its opposing sharp and soft edges also help to enhance surface specular highlights. Chalky Textured
This simple Chalky brush is ideal for bringing an oil paint texture into the artwork. It blends nicely with paint that’s already on the canvas, so I use it for blocking out colours.
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Brainstorm some ideas
Choose the right idea for the subject
Taking a brief moment to sketch a few dirty strokes on paper, or in Photoshop, will help you to make your decision. For this workshop I worked up three different sketches – two were passive and active cinematic shots, and one was a simple portrait sketch. I tried to think about different subjects that go together well: fantasy, sci-fi, postapocalyptic fallout, vintage and the modern world. I found that my third portrait sketch held my attention the most. It gave me the opportunity to show interesting costume details, revealing part of the heroine’s environment and introducing some welcome storytelling elements.
Character art 3
References
Sky co
Before I get my hands dirty and start digging more into my sketch, I always try to spend some time researching the subject. I find it helpful to have a decent collection of photos and photo-textures on hand when painting. Because I like my art to have a realistic look, I’m always studying photography and nature to try to understand the way light and colour work.
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lour
li Sun
Work on values
ght
Once I’m happy with the story my sketch is telling, I start to work up some detail. This helps convince me that the idea I’m planning to work on for the next couple of hours is heading in the right direction. I continue building up values, creating mood and a lighting scheme that will strengthen the ideas. I try to put enough detail in black and white to know where I’ll use my colours. Using a few custom brushes to build up interesting shapes and patterns helps me include the key ideas that will evolve in the colouring and detailing processes.
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Bouncing light
Time for some colour
When I’m happy with the values and detail in the sketch, I start colouring the image. For my pilot heroine character I try to create a lighting scheme that puts the viewer in mind of a World War One aerial battle. I add a dramatic sunset that lights my character with sharp rim highlights. Blue ambient light beaming through the clouds gives the scene a range of contrasting dominant colours: blue/ teal and yellow/orange.
Custom brushes
Once the major colour strokes are in place, I continue to add colour on top of the sketch with my custom brushes. I use these brushes to slowly build and integrate the colours into the lighting scheme I have in mind. At the same time I start to fill the artwork with detail that will enhance the main character.
Enhance a custom brus h
F5 (PC & Mac) Edit your custo m brush’s texture. Selec t texture layer, then Ed it> Define Patte rn.
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7 Spot mistakes Bind the Flip Canvas option to easily accessible keys. Seeing your canvas in the mirrored view will reveal composition, value and detail balance mistakes.
Pay attention to light sources
As I build in the colour, I pay special attention to what my light sources are and how the light will play on the character. In this case I’m using strong, sharp and warm sunlight, combined with a soft, cold sky colour, to create ambient light. I continue on this path for a while, trying to unify the amount of work I’ve put into the image so that the various elements all hold nicely together.
Unify fantasy genres
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Add details
When I’m satisfied with the amount of detail in the colour values and shapes, I begin to add details into the focal areas. I always like to keep sharp edges and clearly defined textures in areas that are central to the image. In my sketch, the focus lies on the character, while the dragon’s skin and the sky are kept loose. With this technique, even with the intense lighting of the background, I can keep the viewer focused on what’s important in the picture: the character.
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Colour correction
The image finally has enough detail to consider it close to being finished. At this point I usually take a few steps back and try to gain a fresh perspective, to see if the result is satisfying or if it still needs more love. I decide that I’m not yet happy with the colours – they don’t fully embrace the idea in my head. In this situation, I usually try to see if there’s any way to enhance the values and contrast using the Channels.
ups 10 Touch I adjust the colour through Color Edit your colours You can easily tweak or push specific colours that you’re not happy with by creating a Hue/ Saturation adjustment layer, and choosing the colours you want to work with from the drop-down menu within the settings. You can also tweak the hard and soft range for the colour on which your changes will operate.
Balance, Levels, Hue/Saturation, Selective Colors and Vibrance until I reach something close to what I had in my mind. I don’t limit adjustment layers to general settings – instead I play with Photoshop’s advanced options, such as controlling levels per channel (blue, red, green) or hues per colour (green, yellow, red and so on). I spend time making sure I end up with colours I’m happy with.
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Final touches
After I’m happy with overall colour grading results, I add a few more touchups in areas that could use more detail. I also try to fix some of the dirty brush strokes I applied in the early sketch stages. Finally, I try to make sure that even the dark areas of the image hold some definition. I sample colour from the darkest values of the image and use a custom Noise layer, which I paint on with my custom brushes.
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Creature concepts Paint expressive monsters for games
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These creations often help to inspire the team, or to generate discussion within it Daryl Mandryk, page 64
Daryl Mandryk
Having worked in the entertainment industries since 1999, Daryl has put his name to many projects, including Turok, SSX and TRON. In his workshop, he reveals some of his secrets to creating dynamic creature art.
Put your creature in a scene to inspire the art team. Turn to page 64
Workshops
How to paint amazing creature art 60 Paint an epic alien battle with Luke Mancini Compose a vivid showdown scene between two alien combatants. 64 Paint dynamic concept art with Daryl Mandryk Create an action scene to showcase your creature design.
See how the Z erg are painted 60
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Creature concepts
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Paint an alien battle
Luke Mancini Country: US Luke is an Australian concept artist who moved across the world to sunny California to work at Blizzard Entertainment on the video game StarCraft 2. http://ifxm.ag/luke-m
Discover how to get close to the action as Luke Mancini creates a vivid clash between two powerful combatants n the real-time strategy game StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, the player has an isometric bird’s-eye view. This works wonderfully for masterminding your opponent’s defeat, but it can leave something to be desired from a more dramatic artistic perspective. To this end,
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I’ve decided to show a single moment in the midst of a battle. The image is of an encounter between a Protoss Archon – a massively powerful warrior – and the most terrifying ground unit in the Zerg swarm, the Ultralisk. My aim is to capture the unrestrained energy in the seconds just before the two
warriors collide, and emphasise the contrast between the feral, organic power of the Zerg beast and the pure, focused energy of the Archon. While battles in StarCraft 2 regularly involve hundreds of units, I’ll focus solely on this duel, relying on close cropping to suggest that there’s a greater conflict surrounding them.
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History Eraser Holding Alt/Option while using the Eraser tool enables you to erase on your current layer to an earlier version of your image – you can set the destination in the History palette to any point in your process to clean up new work easily. You can also set your Undo levels quite high and set your History Options to Automatically Create New Snapshot When Saving to make full use of this tool.
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Rough it in
I start with a quick rough sketch to get the composition sorted out, and after doodling a bit I settle on a shot that gives the two characters a roughly even presence in the image, while still emphasising their dramatic difference in scale. I keep my strokes broad and loose at this stage to try to capture the energy that I’ll aim to maintain all the way to the final composition.
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Tighten the underpainting
Next, I delete the pale layer and start refining the colours underneath in a new Normal layer to match the decisions I’ve made with my linework. I start thinking about the lighting here, although I’m not doing anything too dramatic in that regard in this image. I want a general ‘sun’ light over most of it, with the energetic blue glow from the Archon supplying a dramatic second light source.
Begin to paint
Now I begin the stage that takes up most of the work in an image such as this – rendering it! I start painting over the top of the tighter lines, trying not to go too high with highlights. I’m focusing on getting the forms reading right at this stage. It’s better to get this all worked out first and then add your brighter specularity and lighting later, to make sure it stays consistent.
Lay colour in early
I already have a fairly strong idea of where I want to go in terms of colour, but I need to lay it in as early as I can to see if it’s going to work. I darken the sketch layer so it receives colour better, and then block in my first pass on a Linear Light layer. The blending mode I use here varies from piece to piece, but will always be an Overlay type because this enables you to push lights and darks with the colours you’re using.
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Start working in some of the details
Once the basic colour stage is complete, I go back in to add some more details over the top. Since the rough sketch that I drew of the Archon and Ultralisk in the first step is so basic, some more decisions about the design and composition need to be taken before I can make a start on the painting proper. I add a white layer at around 80 per cent opacity, just to be able to see where I’m drawing, and then I begin to flesh out the character’s details in linework. At this early stage in the painting, I’m still not going too far with the detail – I’m focusing on the main points of interest and leaving it looser towards the extremities.
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Continue to flesh out the details
I normally try to avoid painting in effects so early in an image, but considering that the Archon is a being of pure energy, some of that needs to be taken into account at this stage. To that end, I compromise between rendering some of his armour as if lit by the general scene light, and having the rest illuminated by his own glow and silhouetted by the bright cloud of energy.
Copy merge d
Shift+Ctrl+C (PC) Shift+Cmd+C (Mac) Separate, tra nsform and adjust are as of a layered imag e without flattening it.
and light 10 Details Now it’s time to go back and finish
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off the rendering on the Ultralisk and pull the piece together. On a new Normal layer I add specular highlights and finish details such as his eyes, teeth and some extra spikes. I also add some secondary blue lighting from the Archon’s energy, which helps to pop his face and upper shell out from the background.
Work out the background
Before I start on the effects stage I want to get the image feeling more whole, so I move on to the background in order to pull it together. With a smeary opaque brush and judicious use of the Smudge tool to keep a sense of movement, I roughly paint in the swirling energy around the Archon and the hooked claws of the Ultralisk, which form something of a frame for the centre of the piece. Photoshop custom brushes: Smear
I use this to paint clouds, glows and effects. This soft, oily brush gives a subtly painterly feel that’s a great choice for creating backgrounds and blending.
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Final effects
Using two new Effects layers with the same Linear Dodge layer properties as earlier, I add the rest of the energy effects: the Archon’s bolt of psionic lightning, the transparent tendrils extending from his armour, and a second pass of blue lighting across the Ultralisk. Again, it’s important here to use dark colours in this layer so that these effects don’t wash out.
Square
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Get energised
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Pushing the Archon’s energy
The angle jitter on this brush can give more life and texture to your painting than a regular round brush. I use this brush for the majority of the painting in this piece.
Once the Archon’s armour and basic cloudy glow are all painted in, I can start working on the psionic energy that surrounds him. I use a new layer set to Linear Dodge, with a dark blue Outer Glow also set to Linear Dodge, to start painting in the energy lines on his armour. Depending on the colour underneath it, a Linear Dodge layer can be very harsh, so I stick to dark blues at this stage to stop it blowing out to white.
When I’ve got the surrounding glow painted just how I want it, I start to work on the energy that forms the Archon. This creature embodies the pinnacle of the Protoss’s psionic technology, so the energy is a key feature. Using the same layer, I paint in his hands and the power arcing off and between his armour plating. At this stage, I also use the Gradient tool set to dark blue at a very low opacity to push the saturation around the character. This helps to emphasise the brightness of the Archon’s glowing energy, so he seems to really pop out of the page.
texture and sharpen 12 Tweak, As a finishing touch, I add a low opacity Overlay concrete texture over the image to provide some grain, and use a Levels Adjustment layer. I mask off both of these to be stronger over the Ultralisk, where the contrast needs to be pushed further. The last step is to flatten the image and apply a light Unsharp Mask filter, which tightens the edges and some small details. This can be important if you have used softer brushes in the painting process.
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Creature concepts
Daryl Mandryk Country: Canada Daryl has worked in the entertainment industry for over 11 years, first as a 3D modeller and texture artist, then as a concept artist. His clients include EA. www.mandrykart.com
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paint dynamic concept art Daryl Mandryk shows you how to get imaginations fired up as you take a game scene idea from sketch to completion
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Paint dynamic concept art
orking in the games industry developing concept art, part of my job is to visualise moments in a game. These creations often help to inspire the team, or generate discussion about the project. Sometimes these ideas will be provided by others, and sometimes you’ll be asked to come up with things on your own.
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In this workshop I’ll develop a quick doodle from scratch then develop it into a finished product ready for presentation to a client. I’ll take you through the steps I use to flesh out an idea and, as I go, I’ll share my thought processes regarding idea development, composition and colour. You’ll also see how I create the lighting for my scene, learn a simple way
to help give your image a photographic feel and find out why more detail isn’t always better. You don’t need to be an expert in Photoshop to follow this workshop – in fact, many of the concepts explored here will transfer over to any program you happen to work in. So open up your favourite software and let’s begin…
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Creature concepts Maintain momentum Paint as much as you can in one sitting. If you constantly start and stop a painting, it’ll take you a long time to finish it and you’ll end up losing creative momentum. Take the time to really get absorbed by the painting process. This approach will also teach you to work more quickly and efficiently.
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For this image, I imagine a moment in my head. When I don’t have a specific idea or brief that I’m working towards, I like to start very loosely, almost painting in an abstract manner. I try to get something on the canvas quickly, just using a few different texture brushes, exploring and trying to see something emerge from the fog. When I think I find something in the shapes, I know I'm ready to move on to the next stage. If nothing appears then I'll just keep exploring in this way until something does. It’s okay to take your time here; eventually an idea will spark but sometimes it just takes a while.
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photoshop custom brush: Dust brush
This is a versatile brush that can be used for many different effects. For this image, I used it to create the dust clouds, as well as some atmospheric effects.
Make a quick start with abstract forms
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The finished sketch
I’m happy with the composition and don’t have to make any drastic changes, so I continue to flush out the sketch and quickly paint in a face for the monster. This might change later on, but because it’s a focal point of the image it’s important to get something in there quickly to set the mood. I’m keeping the image greyscale for now – taking colour out of the process early on can simplify things and help you concentrate on just building a good composition.
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Try to work the whole painting
I tend to zoom out and work on the image as a whole, picking out areas that need attention and tightening them up a little before bouncing around somewhere else. This keeps me from getting too obsessed with a certain area and lets me see the big picture. I add another character, who is being smashed by the giant fist. I really want to sell the impact and capture the action. I make a mental note to add more dust and debris at a later stage.
Composition and idea development
I start to see an image in my head of what this could be, so now I choose a standard chalky brush and start refining a few areas. I picture an angry monster laying waste to an unfortunate adventuring party. This could be a boss encounter that the party is a bit too low level to take on. This early on, the details aren’t important – I’m just trying to make sure the big shapes and composition feel correct, and offer a sense of movement and action. There will be plenty of time to detail and render later on, but for now I just keep things sketchy and messy. I’m most interested in creating a strong base to work from.
Colour is added through a combination of many layers 4
First colour washes
Digital tools make adding colour easy. Here, I use a combination of several Colour and Overlay layers to quickly add life to the painting and establish a basic palette. It isn’t exactly what I want but it’s a good base to work from. Colour can be very tricky and I find it evolves as the painting progresses – I treat it the same way as any other part of the painting.
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Use dramatic lighting
I try to keep my lighting dramatic and interesting. This usually means strong lights that are at a pleasing angle to the subjects, and cast good shadows. I don’t feel it’s necessary to light the entire scene – instead, I’ll have certain areas fade out into darkness or fog. I try to use lighting as a tool to guide the viewer’s eye and highlight the focal points of the image. Also, lighting is the best tool you have to describe form, so if something is feeling a bit flat, cast some light on it to help it pop off the page.
Primary directional light
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Secondary point light
Paint dynamic concept art Inverse selection
Ctrl+Shift+I (PC ) Cmd+Shift+I (Mac) Paint within an d around a selection qu ickly.
special effects 10 Spell I mock up some special effects for
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Check the composition
I quickly flip the image (Image>Edit>Flip Horizontal) to see if it works in reverse. If the composition is strong, it should work just as well when mirrored or upside down. I usually flip the canvas a number of times as I work, to give myself a fresh perspective on things and check for errors. I tend to wait until the very end of a painting to make a final decision on whether to keep it as is, or mirror it. There are really no rules here and I just pick what seems the most natural to me.
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the hero’s magic blast. I draw a pattern in 2D and use the Free Transform tool (Ctrl+T) to position it where I need to. I mess around with some layer effects and overlay layers to give it a magical glow.
Push the light
I make a new Curves Adjustment layer and brighten everything up a bit. Then I fill the box beside the layer (the Layer Mask) with black to hide the layer’s contents. With a Soft Airbrush selected, I can go back in and start to paint white in the mask channel to reveal the brightened layer. This is a good technique to brighten certain areas of your painting in a nondestructive fashion. It’s more of an imageediting technique than a painterly approach, but I believe in using whatever tool gets the result you want. Try it out.
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Add debris
I try to imagine the forces of cause and effect in the image. I want the viewer to feel the force of the impact, so I paint in some blocky shapes and then add Motion Blur (Filter>Blur>Motion Blur) to give the impression they’re being sprayed upwards. Little touches such as this can really help to give your images a photographic feel.
Add atmosphere
I want to create a bit of distance and scale, so I pick a big, blobby airbrush and start lightly painting in some foggy atmosphere here and there. I do this on a new layer so I can easily dial it back if I overdo it. This also functions as a form of contrast control – adding a layer of fog brings the values of the paint below it closer together, reducing contrast and pushing it backwards in space. Using this technique, I can pick out parts of the image that I want to jump forward, such as the monster’s knee.
puddles 12 Perspective I use the Lasso tool to make some Actions are your friend Use custom actions to automate time-intensive tasks. For example, if you have a set of brushes you like to use for specific tasks, make an action that loads them with one keystroke. Another good example is making an action to flip the canvas horizontally, which I do all the time. The seconds you save add up when you find yourself doing the same thing a thousand times.
quick selections to paint within. These will be puddles of water on the ground. They serve a dual purpose: they help to give the ground more interest, and smaller puddles in the background work to push the space back, and help to sell the illusion of a 3D space.
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Creature concepts h Scroll throug layers
Mac) Alt+[,] (PC & yer tab on my I keep my La nitor, so secondary mo select I can quickly . various layers
photographs 13 Use Here and there I like to composite parts of photographs into the image. These are either pictures I’ve taken myself or photos I’ve found online. They’re a quick way to add detail in certain areas that would otherwise take too long to paint, and in production these little time‑saving tricks are very important.
overdo it 16 Don’t While detailing an image I constantly remind myself not to overdo it. This figure is in motion and, although he’s close to the camera, how much detail would your eye really pick up? If I were to go crazy and detail out every last bit of armour, the result would be stiff and unappealing. Sometimes you just need to get across the impression of something and the viewer’s mind will do the rest.
in dust and light 14 Put I add some more dust, filling the bottom left of the image, and start to play with the strong light coming from the side. I use an Overlay layer to show some of the light-bleeding effect. I try to imagine the light travelling through all the dust and debris that’s being kicked up, and the way it would scatter in the scene. It’s a tricky balance – the light should be diffuse enough to suggest atmosphere, but bright enough to suggest daylight.
home stretch 17 The One way I know my painting is nearly done is that the law of diminishing returns starts to kick in. Brushstrokes are having less and less impact, so eventually it just feels like I’m overworking things if I continue. Now is a good time to put the painting aside for a day or two, and look at it later on with fresh eyes. I’ll usually see something I want to change.
the image 15 Refine I start to feel like everything is in place and working well together. Now much of the painting process turns to refining and improving my ideas. I start to add some details to the elf’s armour and begin to think about how to refine the design. It’s time to tackle the micro‑issues in the painting – but I’m constantly zooming out and checking to make sure everything still holds together.
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perspective 18 Fresh A day later, I make some final adjustments to the focal points of the image – the monster’s face and the elf wizard. I don’t necessarily add more detail; instead, I want to concentrate on making sure their designs read well and are strong contrasts to one another. When I’m satisfied with these last changes, I call the painting done.
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Environment painting Master the rules of composition for better art
Knowing the landscape of the real world helps to create better environment art Jung Park, page 76
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Jung Park
The awarding-winning concept artist, who has worked on God of War III, Starhawk and Guild Wars 2, shows how to create a unique video game environment to establish a scene for gameplay designers. Create an exciting, believable video game environment. Turn to page 76
Workshops
How to paint original game worlds 72 Make a setting feel believable with Robh Ruppel How to guide a player in your world with Uncharted 3’s leading artist. 76 Establish the scene of a game with Jung Park The God of War III artist shows you how to paint an emotive, real scene. 82 Introduce unique visuals with Stephan Martiniere Add story elements to your environment painting. 84 Visualise a game world with Joe Sanabria See how one of the key locations from Fallout: New Vegas was made.
Learn to create playable game worlds 84
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Environment painting
Turn a street into a compelling game location by following the expert advice of Robh Ruppel, as he shows how to generate rich, detailed scenery
Robh Ruppel Country: US Robh designs for films, video games, theme parks and print campaigns. His clients include Naughty Dog. www.robhruppel.com
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t’s a common misconception that concept work is all about blue-sky problem solving – meaning that anything goes. This couldn’t be further from reality, because most design work has some kind of restriction involved. Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is a realistic game, in that most of the locations are based on real places. These are heavily researched before we begin to
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work out the details. In this section, which is based on Yemen, the player races across the bridge but shouldn’t be able to leap down. The designer added long bars as an indicator that gameplay needed to be blocked here, but none of the details were worked out – that’s our job as artists. The designers finetune the playing experience and we figure out how to make it look intriguing. This simple model is called a blockmesh, and a lot
of what we do involves making these look alive, purposeful and believable. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to set the scene for a video game. I start by creating a rough layout, then lay in some textures and add background detail, before refining the image with lights and set dressing. Along the way, you’ll also see how I give life to a scene through the extra little details, making the location look more vibrant and inhabited.
Make a setting feel believable
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Rough draft
Before I start the painting, the first step towards creating my scene is to make a very quick colour rough. This sets in my mind the mood, colour, time of day and tonality required for the final image, and means I don’t spend hours floundering and searching for the right look. Now that I have the rough in place, everything I do after this has a clear goal.
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Lay in textures
I start laying in textures but they need modifying: details have to be added, taken out and repainted. Working flat helps to speed up that part, and then they’re ‘tipped in’ using a range of transform tools – mostly Free Transform, Perspective and Warp. No photo texture is ever spot on, and once they’re tipped in the depth will need to be readjusted.
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More texturing
Here you can see my first pass on the texture on the underside of the buildings on the left; I also add more to the right side of the image. There’s no easy way to do this other than painstakingly adding and adjusting until you achieve the look you’re after. Have patience, though, because your hard work will pay off eventually.
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Environment painting
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Add the fence
This is my solution for the wrought iron fence: it’s ornate but pointy to discourage the player from scaling it. I start with a flat design that, once the section is set, I duplicate and add to until I have a full-length structure. Then I use Free Transform to fit the perspective of the scene. You can also see the beginning of the stairs on the right. The tonality is critical: if they feel real in this version, the details will just enhance them later.
Work with your grids Always check your perspective against the grids you make. Solidity and believability come from consistency and that’s based on the forms working with your established vanishing points. Remember that this affects everything from the thickness of a wall to its texture.
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The occlusion pass
Next I work on some more details, adding pipes, beams and supports to the buildings. Most of these are stroked paths to which I add a little light and shadow. Then it’s time for an occlusion pass. Occlusion is the subtle darkening that happens when surfaces meet and the light rays bounce less and less between them. I do some simple airbrushing on a separate layer, set to Multiply.
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Let there be light
Now I can turn on the sets of hanging lights that I added in the previous step. A radial gradient set to Color Dodge gives them a nice glow and adds to the atmosphere of the scene. Light travels so, once they’re lit, I need to add the effect on the pavement below. This is done on an airbrushed layer set to Screen.
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Create the car
I want an older European model of car, so I use Google’s library and make a simple render inside SketchUp for perspective. All the reflections and details will be painted in later. Adding the stairs needs precision and care, so drawing and perspective are the next things I need to concentrate on. I work out all the stairs’ thicknesses in perspective by using paths to accurately lay them out.
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I add more details on the stairs, and at this point the file is over 1GB in size. I feel good about my progress so I flatten and rename it, then continue to add more levels. One disadvantage to painting everything flat is that when you tip it in perspective, the depth is thrown off. I go back in and add thickness to the cobblestones and pavement trim: these extra steps sell the reality of the image.
dressing 10 Set So far it’s just a lot of flat planes and textures – it needs life! My typical procedure is to work in flat shapes first, and then add modelling, texture and so on. I block in bins, boxes and other elements you might find in a real location.
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More details
Keeping the solidity of the simple geometric shapes in mind, I add lighting and detail to the objects on the pavement. This is all very loosely done and indicative, but the illusion makes it seem like there’s more going on than there really is.
e Distort mod
C) Ctrl+T, Ctrl (P (Mac) Cmd+T, Cmd Transform Bring up the , then hold tool, transform d to flip down Ctrl/Cm de. to Distort mo
Flatten the image
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Hanging lights
Once that’s done I can begin adding the hanging lights, which will be strung in a few rows between the buildings on the left and right of the image. I’ll be using lots of them, so this is not the time to make things complicated for myself: the wire is a stroked path and I keep things simple by making one bulb and duplicating it. I take some time placing them correctly in the scene. I’m still thinking about other aspects of the composition as a whole at this stage, and I add the shadow in the foreground where the car will go later on.
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Make a setting feel believable
lighting effects 14 Add Here are the streetlights blended
and tear 12 Wear I continue to add set dressing, which helps to make the environment look inhabited – and therefore more realistic. You can see bits of paper and other rubbish on the pavement, and I also work on some subtle wear and tear on the road. This is all hand painted.
streetlights 13 The Now I add the streetlights, using the same workflow as before. I design the light flat, work out the basic colour value and then tip it in perspective and add modelling, lighting and so on. There’s more set dressing too – some electrical conduits along the shops on the left. I use the same procedure here as for the pipes.
into the scene with some lighting effects and subtle modelling added. I take particular care to get the perspective right, and to consider the viewer’s eye as I do so. I use a little Transform Warp to get the ellipse of the lamp to seem as though it’s above our eye level.
painting 17 Hand It’s time to add the group of people standing in the street and the effect of the lights on the ground. Lots of hand painting marries the characters into the scene. It’s worth remembering that no reference is ever perfect – a good artist sweats these details.
it character 18 Give Next, I add another character in the foreground. I keep all the people looking into the picture – they’re there for scale and ambience, and this stops the viewer focusing on their personalities. This is primarily an environment study. Also, there’s a subtle three-point perspective going on here that I have to conform to. The broad strokes sell it and the details support it. You need both!
on the car 15 Work It’s time to make that car sit in the scene. First, I add the reflections – having drawn a lot of cars at art college, this is pretty easy to fake. I also darken it down the sides and add the reflection of the light sources. Then I make a subtle perspective shift based on my grids to finally tweak the object into the perspective of the scene.
detailing 16 Distant I correct the perspective on the red awning and begin to add distant details such as adverts, posters, trucks, cars and pedestrians, all of which flesh out the scene. None of these can be faked or done haphazardly because that will blow the illusion. This is where a lot of artists don’t follow through and the work ends up looking ill‑conceived or unfinished. I add far away lights, making sure they recede in the distance and maintain the same height as the foreground ones.
Find a layer
V, Ctrl-click (P C) V, Cmd-click (Mac) In Move mode (V), Ctrl/Cmd-cli ck on something to instantly find its layer.
final image 19 The When I’ve made the finishing touches to the environment and the foreground character, my image is complete. Here’s the final piece with all my grids turned on, so you can see how they relate to the composition. Solidity and believability are grounded in consistency, so make sure your perspective is correct.
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Environment painting
Establish the scene of a game Jung Park’s expert advice will ensure your concept art really sells the setting of your proposed game
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Jung Park Country: US South Koreanborn Jung has spent the past eight years working as a senior concept artist on a range of titles, including Guild Wars and God of War III. www.jpconceptart.com
get your resources See page 114 now!
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art of my day job at Sony involves coming up with environment art for video games. Presenting my ideas to either external clients or Sony’s art directors isn’t always easy, but coming up with cool design and fresh, unique images in the first place is easily the most challenging part of the whole process. Nothing is more daunting than starting with a blank canvas. I believe that any successful concept starts with visualising an abstract shape. I usually start by throwing down large brush strokes here and there to create volumes and shape the environment, without straying too far from the client’s brief. Painting abstract shapes can help
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you produce different kinds of concept art. Thinking too much about your image can slow your progress, and makes the painting look stiff and boring. I guess it’s the same for character art, in which you’re using silhouettes to come up with interesting shapes. Simply pushing and pulling your values enables you to create the illusion of depth. My inspiration comes from looking at photographs and watching movies, and studying organic matter. Knowing the landscape of the real world helps to create better environment art, and in this workshop the process will be aided by the use of different Photoshop brushes and lighting to define the space and mood of the composition.
Establish a game’s scene
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Environment painting
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Paint abstract shapes
I explore the canvas by painting abstract shapes with big texture brushes while keeping to my basic idea for the image. Texture brushes help to break up the large, flat areas on a blank canvas, and I use between five and six different brushes to add visual noise. This step helps me to get a feel for the painting. It’s important to keep the thumbnail size small at this stage: I rarely zoom into the image, instead preferring to see the overall shape and concentrate on creating a decent amount of contrast.
Photoshop
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Custom brushes: Sketching brush
Great for a painterly feel. Note: the default Round Brush looks too digital! Texture Brush
I use this brush at the start of a painting to create textures and introduce levels of noise. Smoke brush
This brush enables me to paint softer edges or smoothen areas that look too hard.
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Introduce colours
I start adding some colours to my black and white sketches. I decide that a colour palette that implies metal and a rusted bronze material is suitable for my steampunk factory environment. I also introduce a human figure just to show the scale of the building. As you can see, I have layered images of background, mid- and foreground elements; I keep these aspects separate when painting because it’s easier to see the image’s depth of field.
Draw a rough sketch
After playing around with the abstract shapes, I start to roughly develop my scene. My favourite fantasy setting is steampunk, and I’m keen to paint something from the genre so I decide to depict the exterior of a lava processing factory. I’m pretty satisfied with my sketches that I have because I already have large, medium, and small shapes. You will probably want to have these different sizes of shapes when you start painting images, to make your environment more interesting. I’m pleased at how the shapes are laid out. Sometimes these shapes also define the scale of the look, but at this stage I’m not locked into this design. Instead of getting stuck with what I have right now, I keep on exploring the painting until I get a result that I want to develop further.
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Color Balanc
e Ctrl+B (PC) Cm d+B (Mac) Use this to ac cess the Color Balance menu , which will help you to ch ange colours on yo ur image quickly.
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Adding to the mood
The colour that’s present is essentially monochrome, so I want to introduce some warm colours originating from underneath the factory. It’s an industrial building that handles red-hot materials so I primarily use yellows, oranges and metallic shades. This injects mood into the piece and gives it a dramatic voice. Here, I’ve overlaid a grid onto my image to ensure the perspective is correct. A lack of realism can seriously undermine your artwork. If I didn’t check the perspective now, I’d only waste time trying to correct it later.
Establish a game’s scene
Vary your shapes It’s crucial to include large, medium, small and more detailed shapes in any painting of an environment. Every design that you see in the real world – be it a computer, phone, printer or even a house – has those shapes in the design. If you start introducing too many similar sizes of shapes into your image, it’ll end up looking boring and even cartoony.
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Painting pipe details
Many modern industrial buildings feature pipes and ducts, so I start to add some pipes to the factory exterior to make the painting more realistic. Previously, I noticed that the building was mostly made up of large shapes – there aren’t enough smaller elements, and the introduction of the pipes is the solution. I flip the image frequently to check for mistakes and to ensure that it is well balanced.
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Stepping into the focal point
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The Warp tool
I realise that there’s no focal point to the image. The focal point is an area that needs to contain more contrast and is the point that I want the viewer to see first. It needs to be eye-catching and interesting. So I add a bright light to the lava that’s dripping down from the domeshaped machine. In this way I can tell a story: this is the area where the lava is processed. Getting a feel of when to use different brushes is always important, so you can get the most out of them. Here, I use the Soft Cloud Brush to create smoke from the lava.
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Masking the shape
Masking the shapes while you paint is important, because it’ll save you time and help to create both clean and soft edges. It’s also a good habit to get into. You might think that this step takes too long and is rather boring, but in fact it will save you time in the later stages of the painting.
Having my perspective grid turned on helps me to find mistakes, if any. The ellipse on the harvest machine seems a little off – I want to give it more contrast. So I use the Warp tool to correct this (Edit> Transform>Warp). This is one of Photoshop’s most useful tools.
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Environment painting
Check your values
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Check the Navigator palette
Once I’m satisfied with the progress I’m making, I start zooming in to add details to different areas that I want to work on. At this stage it’s important to have your Navigator palette open. Otherwise you can end up overworking certain parts and upsetting the balance of the painting. Always keep the big picture in mind, even when you’re working on the smaller elements. I also try to follow the values of the area where I’m painting, otherwise it’ll mess up the entire value structure.
real-world details 10 Add I realise that the image has too many hard-edged shapes, so I add some decorations such as wires, screw bolts and fences to the surfaces. These decorations will give life to my painting. As I work, I’m still trying to maintain my focal point while letting other areas fade away throughout the environment.
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Create a New Adjustment layer of Hue/ Saturation and place it on the layer to check your values regularly – values are the key to creating believable environments. As long as your values work in your image, you’ll produce awesome visuals – no matter how badly you colour them! I always remind my students to check their values.
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Lighten layers
I want to have a little bit more lava dripping down in the background, so I duplicate the image and transform it into a smaller version. Then I choose the Lighten layer mode to create noise in the background. This will save me a lot of time rather than recreating each lava flow. This technique comes in useful when you want to pop out some light areas.
dynamism 12 More When I started painting this image it was a two-point perspective view. I now realise that it’s not dynamic enough, so I transform the whole image into three-point perspective view using the Distort tool (Edit>Transform>Distort). This introduces a more active camera view – the viewer is now in the scene, looking up at the factory.
Establish a game’s scene
Curves dialog
Ctrl+M (PC) Cmd+M (Mac ) Quickly acce ss the Curves screen when altering your image’s brigh tness and contrast.
light rays 13 Painting I still feel that the environment is too dark, so I decide to introduce a secondary light source. I create five soft brush dots, then transform them and make them look like vertical light beams. It enables me to paint light coming down from the sky. Again, I set the layer mode to Lighten and erase out the part where the light doesn’t hit. It gives the painting a more natural feel. In this way, I can have nice highlights on top of the harvesting machine, which redefines the space and shape.
Almost there... 15 To make the building look more imposing and reduce the sense of emptiness, I add bridges high up above the factory floor. Even though I’ve added them at this late stage I still try to make them look very subtle by using values that are appropriate for the area, so they don’t change the whole composition of the painting. Right before I finish the painting, I notice that my image seems a little sharp and has too much noise. So I apply filters and use Smart Blur tools to soften some of the edges; I also erase some areas that need a more clean and sharpened edge.
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Use the Marquee tool
I’ve already mentioned the importance of having hard and soft edges in painting. Because the harvesting machine is one of my main focal points, I want it to have more crisp and sharp edges on top of the dome area. So I select the Elliptical Marquee tool and place it exactly on the area I want to change. Then I can paint it cleanly and introduce some highlights.
16 Finished! After eight hours’ work I’m quite happy with how the image has turned out. Once I tackle one side of the factory I can develop more designs of the industrial space through the use of different viewpoints. For instance, painting the scene from the top of the factory would take in the surrounding land, resulting in a totally different painting yet one that stays true to the original concept of a lava processing plant.
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Environment painting Composition considerations This is my first step towards establishing the composition of a ship graveyard. I often think of an environment as a two-dimensional abstract painting: this helps tackle mass, colour and balance of shapes rather than details. Negative spaces are as vital as positive spaces. I’m careful to overlap shapes without cluttering the scene.
contrast, es sh li b a t es t h g li l Natura ows in d a sh e c a pl o t e m enabling s and draw the viewer’s certain areahere it ’s needed. attention w
Introduce unique visuals
get your resources See page 114 now!
Stephan Martiniere hints at events to come with this exclusive look at his concept art for RAGE Stephan Martiniere Country: US Stephan is art director on id Software’s latest game, RAGE. www.martiniere.com
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n the second half of our game RAGE I wanted to introduce something visually different. As the tension in the story builds up I was keen for the environment to reflect that tension and give the player a sense of danger. The clear blue sky from earlier in the game gradually changes and is overshadowed by ominous dark clouds, while the sand colour shifts from beige to red. I also wanted to open up the
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landscape and introduce new architectural elements not seen in the other part of the world, as well as reinforce the game’s post-apocalyptic feel. I started from the idea of dried-up seabeds and imagined devastated coastlines and ruined shipyards. A graveyard of boats seemed like a great idea: carcasses of cargo ships buried in the sand would replace canyon walls and give the player a new visual experience.
This particular painting was the first one to introduce and explore the visual language such as mood, light, texture and detail that would define the second part of the game. This image was also a narrative exploration; I tend to consider the visuals and the gameplay intricately connected. As such, the visual vocabulary is used for aesthetic purposes, but is also used to instil a broader and more immersive feeling.
Unique visuals
Natural light Natural light
How I create…
a metal canyon
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Warning signs
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Vehicular activity
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Down to size
Graffiti and tags are a big part of the RAGE landscape: they are the territorial markings of the many bandit clans infesting the land. From a gameplay standpoint they can give the player some clues and warnings, but they also serve to bring colour accents to the monochromatic palette.
Visual flow In RAGE you walk, run, fight and shoot, but you also drive, and so it’s important to establish a composition that enables the player to quickly understand and navigate their surroundings. I also choose to use a variety of boat pieces to create visual diversity in scales and shapes. This helps make the area more natural and interesting.
Research and references The first step is to undertake some research. I spend several days looking for references of ships and deserts, and anything that relates to the ideas I have in mind for the scene. I never take anything for granted. There are some incredible references on the web or in books and I’m always looking for something that will surprise and inspire me – as well as the player!
Other details such as tyre marks are a good visual clue to tell the player where to go, as well as introducing human presence. Detail such as oil stains or rubbish give the scene scale and also add realism and narrative.
I always include a character or a recognisable element to set the scale. Sometimes several elements might be necessary when the scene is complex.
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Environment painting
visualise a game world
Speedpaints are vital for giving direction to the team that’s working on a game, as Joe Sanabria explains orking on a real-life video game like Fallout: New Vegas can throw up odd demands. My role as art director is to offer direction to the team and define the final look for everyone to work towards. During production of a game it’s not unusual to rely on visual reference from various sources, such as Flickr, books and DVDs, to communicate an idea. However, there are times when a more direct image is required to deliver the
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Through the player’s eyes
My first step is to work on a rough sketch. To approximate an in-game view I create a new image at one-quarter-size of 1080 pixels. My goal is to visualise the gate from the player’s perspective and, in the time allocated to me, I need to focus on the critical parts rather than trivial details.
right message, and a speed concept usually does wonders for getting a team heading in the right direction. In this workshop I’ll detail the steps I used to create this concept of the main entrance of The Strip in Fallout: New Vegas. I’ll also demonstrate how it’s important to create the scene a player will see as they play the game. This is useful for the whole team to see, and to get a feel for what the final in-game experience should feel like.
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Composing the scene
I use the traditional ‘rule of thirds’ and place the focal point in the upper right quadrant. At this early stage I think of ways to frame the sign in an interesting and appealing way. Working quickly and loosely to flesh out the idea, I try to avoid sweating the little details otherwise they will eat into my work time.
Joe Sanabria Country: US Joe Sanabria is a 15-year veteran of the games industry. He dropped out of college as a physics major and moved to southern California to focus on a career in art. Currently Joe is an art director at Obsidian Entertainment, busy working on Fallout: New Vegas. http://ifxm.ag/j-sanabria
get your resources See page 114 now!
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Working on perspective
Once I’m happy with the initial layout and components of the sketch, I create a new layer. Then I select the Gradient tool and draw a gradient using one of the default presets to define the horizon. I also put down a wash of colour to start establishing a palette that will suit the scene in the game. At this point I lay in a perspective grid on a separate layer, and set it to Multiply Blend mode with a low opacity setting. Now the real fun begins as I build up the painting, using the grid as a guide to keep things structural and grounded in space.
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Visualise a game world
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Adding textures
Over the years I’ve found that tool presets come in handy for adding texture and details to my concept art, as a realistic alternative to introducing photographs overlaid in layers. There are plenty of Tool Presets that come with demos or they can be found online, but Quick it’s just as easy to create Transform Ctrl+T (PC) Cm them yourself with just a d+T (Mac) Hold Ctrl/Cm little work. For this d after the transformati on dialog example I start with a appears and pull on digital photo source, in the corners. this case some paint drips on an area of concrete.
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Environment painting 5
Defining a source image
I invert the image and then, in the Channels palette, select the channel with the highest contrast. I then Select All, create a new layer, paste in the channel selection, set the Blend mode to Overlay on the new layer and then merge the two layers. Now I remove the colour and convert it to greyscale: go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation (Ctrl+U) and reduce the saturation all the way down. To give it some pop I sharpen the details using an Unsharp Mask file with the following settings: Amount 127, Radius 1.0, Threshold 2.
Use presets Tool presets are one of Photoshop’s many hidden gems. By using presets, the Brush tool is capable of doing more complex operations: scaling, dual brush, scattering and so on. Like faux-finish brushes they’re great for creating texture or details, and when used correctly enable you to quickly paint the details, rather then scrubbing in a bunch of brush strokes.
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Tidying the texture
To remove the rest of the noise in the background I create a quick selection with Select>Color Range, then select the Eyedropper tool and click the paint drips. I set the Fuzziness to a level that gives me enough of the details without the unwanted concrete texture.
Hide Selectio
n Ctrl+H (PC) Cm d+H (Mac) This enables you to remov e the ‘marchin g ants’ that your selectio n creates, while still holdi ng on to your selec tion.
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Creating a brush
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Practise brush management
I invert the selection and fill it with white, and then clean up any stray pixels with a plain brush. I adjust the contrast by going to Image>Adjustments>Levels and tweak it until there are some rich blacks present. This image is quite large, so I’ll change the canvas to 1000x1000 pixels and then Select All>Edit>Define Brush Preset and name the brush. The new brush should now appear in the Brushes palette, ready for use.
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Adjust the settings
I now create a new document at 1920x1080 pixels to test the brush and play with various settings until I’m satisfied with the effect. What I’m looking for is area settings that create interesting patterns and textures, and let me work quickly and loosely. I finally arrive at the results shown here. In addition, in the Scattering menu Scatter is 30 per cent with a Count of two, and Other Dynamics has Opacity and Flow set to Pen Pressure.
I save the brush as a Tool Preset, then in the palette menu select New Tool Preset and name it. As you create other tool presets or acquire them it’s a good idea to organise them and remove any obsolete tools periodically. This keeps your workspace clean, enabling you to focus on the creative process.
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Visualise a game world the lighting 12 Setting As I’m building up the detail in the image, I usually find it helpful to establish a lighting direction at this point and start working in with values, to begin creating depth in the scene and help separate elements spatially.
layers 13 Managing After a few sips of coffee and some time, the layers start to build up. Although keeping everything on a separate layer offers me a great deal of flexibility, it can become difficult to manage. So I use a little-known Photoshop shortcut: press V to switch to the Move tool and then Crtl+click on an area you want to edit – Photoshop will autoswitch to the layer that pixel is on. This saves me the hassle of naming layers and organising them into group layers, which lets me stay in the zone and keep things flowing.
the canvas 14 Flip As I work on fleshing out the Focal points Whenever possible, try to use other elements in the scene to draw the viewer into the painting and help create a strong overall composition.
large shapes 10 Painting Using a few various brush tool presets, I create a new layer and start to build up
details I periodically flip the canvas vertically and horizontally to help spot any problems or errors, so that I can address them sooner rather than later. Flipping the image is also a good way to look at your work: it gives you a fresh perspective and forces you to view it in a different way to your initial sketch.
the paint while at the same time changing the brush size using the square brackets – [ and ] – to vary the texture. I then select the entire layer, pick the Transform tool (Ctrl+T) and then right-click in the Transform bounding box. I select Distort from the dropdown menu, use the grid to get the right perspective, and then try different blend modes and opacity settings until I find something I’m happy with. This process is repeated over and over until all the large shapes are blocked in.
final stretch 15 The As I work my way down to the smallest elements, I regularly
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Tackling the details
Now that all the major shapes are correct – value, edge, colour and so forth – I start to break down the large shapes into smaller ones, starting with the largest details and working my way down to smaller ones. I adjust the opacity of the perspective grid to make it more pronounced now that the contrast is building up, just so I can see it more easily. I’m also continuously zooming in and out, making sure that the major elements are not lost in the noise and that the image still reads easily.
zoom in and out and then decide to call it a day when I reach the point of diminishing returns. Now I’m ready to add some of the finishing touches. I sharpen the layers and soften others in the background and foreground to create depth and a focus and, after some overall contrast and colour adjustments, the image is finished. At this point I feel the concept communicates what we’re expecting the game asset to look like and how it’ll relate to its surrounding in the game. I can now walk away from the concept satisfied that it has achieved its main goal. It’s now ready for an environment artist to take it from 2D to 3D and eventually into the game.
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Production design Learn how concept components work to create a unified project
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Matt Allsopp
All hell has broken loose, and it’s time for the villagers’ sole hope, Nate McCready, to step in and save the day Matt Allsopp, page 102
Freelance concept artist Matt has worked on Fable 3 and Killzone 2, among other titles. Here he adds his ideas to the pot to show how to create a pitch document for a new video game. Add all your designs together to showcase your video game. Turn to page 102
Workshops
Put together a video game project 90 Lead character design with Christian Bravery Use photo reference to create a hero pose and character design. 94 Environment design with Pete Amachree Create an exotic island setting for the game’s action scenes. 98 Create the enemy with Matt Allsopp How to design a creature to fit an existing game world. 102 Develop the story with Matt Allsopp Create a key frame illustration to set the video game’s mood.
Design a unique environment 94
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Production design
Part one of four
lead character
Christian Bravery takes you through his thought process and concept designs for a prospective video game, starting with the hero
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Christian Bravery Country: England Christian runs Leading Light, an art and design agency that provides character and environment concepts for the video game and entertainment industries. http://ifxm.ag/ll-design
get your resources See page 114 now!
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here’s so much talk and hyperbole about the term ‘concept art’ that the phrase has almost become meaningless. In this four-part special I’ll try to unravel the mysteries of concept art for budding artists. Actually, make that four and a bit parts. Back in ImagineFX issue 40 I designed a futuristic vehicle called the wasp-copter (it’s in my workshop folder on the disc). In this instalment I’ll be designing the wasp-copter pilot, who’s also the hero character in our production – as such, he’s an important one to get right. I’ll be following a fictitious brief that suits the purpose of this workshop series, which also mirrors the kind of commercial brief that the Leading Light team regularly works to. This means that I can give you an insight into the various stages of production design for video games, rather than simply churn out a piece of nice-looking art that lacks context – the big picture, if you like. Once the team gets the brief, the first task is to design and visualise all the key story elements. I’ll be expanding on these over the four instalments of this tutorial, and so you can look forward to seeing the main pilot character; a village and its tropical island archipelago location; and
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use when approaching a character design. So, let’s get started!
Bring on the brief the enemy – weird, giant insects that attack the village. The final task is to create a key moment production illustration that draws all these elements together, depicting the battle between our hero and the invaders. There are many great workshops published each month in ImagineFX, and most of them cover the specifics of painting and finishing techniques. Rather than go over old ground, I want to offer an insight into my thought processes and some of the preparatory techniques that I
This production design brief was created for a near-future sci-fi action adventure video game. Part of the story takes the player to a sleepy, backwater island archipelago in the tropics. The scene starts in a small fishing village where our hero is enjoying a relaxing break. Suddenly the village is beset by strange happenings that culminate in an invasion of weird giant insects that are hell-bent on devouring the villagers. Our hero is pressed into service to save the day. Pictured opposite is the initial brief from the client…
Lead character
is it enough?
If we’re going to capture the essence of the hero, we’re going to need more details This is a typical character brief, but where possible I ask the client to tell me more about the character, their background and personality, their motivation and their role in the story. Sometimes this information comes easily, but occasionally my requests make the clients realise that these are questions they also need to find the answers to. There’s a huge difference between a character design and a costume design. For example, everyone knows that Conan wears a loincloth and carries a sword, but if you put that outfit on Woody Allen, he’s not going to convince you he’s an invincible barbarian. So, character design is about describing the person, their demeanour, lifestyle and the role they play in the game, book or film; it’s not just about what they’re wearing. So after the client has expanded on its initial brief, we can add the following information: Nate is a military pilot who has come to the archipelago on R&R. He’s seen and done a lot in combat that he’d like to forget and he’s here to do just that. The last thing he wants is more action and excitement, but as events unfold he realises that it’s up to him to save the day. Nate’s persona sits on the cusp between youthful cockiness and the dawning cynicism of early middle age. He’s the reluctant hero, perhaps even an anti-hero. It’s important for the character design to exemplify not only his costume design and general look, but also his inner character.
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Production design
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Creating the character
I set about collecting images of existing flying suits, from World War One examples through to space suits. Always avoid referencing existing entertainment industry designs or imagery, otherwise you’ll quickly end up with a copy of a copy of a copy, which is plain
wrong. Once I have my references, I create a set of colour thumbnails with the aim of finalising the costume design and colour scheme as early as possible. Here I’ve taken inspiration from various eras and used my reference materials as well as my imagination to help me come up with a good selection of options.
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The benefits of real-world poses
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Capture some action photos
After selecting a shortlist, I enlist my right-hand man Matt Allsopp for modelling duties. For tasks that require realistic proportions I use photos to capture character poses. This isn’t always applicable, but in this instance I find that photographing someone captures the subtleties of character. The danger of drawing from memory results in the repetition of preferred poses and a less realistic, more stylised finished piece.
I use a Canon 50D and shoot in sport mode. I like to keep the model moving, directing him as we work while keeping the camera rolling. The shots I get have the movement and life that most posed shots lack – it’s really useful for capturing action shots if the model can move freely. I can achieve the kind of shots that are impossible for a model to hold for a picture, such as jumping through the air, running and so on.
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Finalise in pencil
I import the best photos into Photoshop. Sometimes I work directly onto these, but in this case I want to do a further stage of drawing before I commit to a pose and costume design. So I start drawing in pencil, using my studio photos as reference for the poses and my research images as
detail references for the flight suit. I do three drawings, taking different elements from the references, mixing them with my ideas but staying focused on invoking the demeanour of the character and incorporating them into each design. I select one design and scan it in. This is the one that I’ll work up as a final image.
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Commit to a colour scheme
I now have all the elements together I need to finish the painting. Next comes the underpainting. This is based on my earlier colour thumbnails and provides the groundwork and colour plan for the detailed painting to come. For this stage I open the drawing in Photoshop, add a new clean layer, and lay in some quick greyscale shading as a Multiply layer. Then I add
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a second layer, set it to Colour Burn and quickly add some colour. At this point I just can’t resist putting down some alternative colour schemes before committing to one. With this method of working, the shaded greyscale layer works hand in hand with the Colour Burn layer and offers a speedy way to lay in what amounts to my underpainting for the piece, but it’s also another great way of quickly trying out colour options.
Make your character memorable
A great art director once said to me that a good character design is one that an eight-year-old can draw after seeing it only once. It’s not always applicable, but it’s a great adage to bear in mind. It’ll help you differentiate your designs from the plethora of others out there. Here I wanted to use the archetypal white scarf worn by World War One pilots as a motif for two reasons. First it harks back to those bygone days of early flight, which evokes feelings of heroic bravery. Second, by simply changing the signature colour of the scarf from the typical white to red marks him out as a unique character but he’s still clearly a pilot.
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Render the finish
With the detailed design and the colour plan in place it’s a question of working into each element to render the type of required finish. When painting each material that makes up the character, I spend time thinking about the texture, environment and local colour, as well as the lighting and shaded areas.
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Snapshot of a hero character
I’d like to wrap up this instalment by commenting on the pose and attitude of Nate McCready, the game’s hero. I’ve tried hard to evoke the persona of a troubled spirit. Hopefully any observer can quickly tell that he’s a brave man with a dark past. Here I’ve pictured him gazing off into the near distance – he’s clearly thoughtful and somewhat melancholy, but his stance is strong: he’s a man for the moment, someone to rise to a challenge. He’s more than simply a costume design, he’s a fully formed character!
Turn over for the next instalment… The project focuses on the game’s environment: an exotic island archipelago.
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Production design
Part two of four
The Environment
After establishing the game’s lead character, Christian Bravery passes the art baton over to Pete Amachree, who tackles the exotic island setting reviously Christian Bravery established the character design for Nate McCready, the game’s hero, who gets caught up in an alien attack while recuperating from his latest military exploits. All this happens on a tropical island on a distant planet, and this is where I come in. My brief is to create the rag-tag fishing village that’s set on this lush, off-world archipelago, which is where Nate first runs into the hostile aliens. On the opposite page is the client brief for the game’s setting.
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Pete Amachree Country: England Pete’s an industry veteran who’s worked for Electronic Arts, Lionhead Studios and Blade Interactive. He’s been a concept artist for the past five years. http://ifxm.ag/pete-a
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My first thought was for the islands themselves. Although sci-fi gives us licence to depart from the real world, I thought I’d rein this in and base them on rock formations that we’re used to seeing. I think fantasy works best when one foot is firmly planted in the familiar, while the other rests on something unexpected. So, where do the inhabitants of this fishing community live? Their traditional, basic lifestyle rules out anything grand or or even firmly established. Indeed, their environment must reflect their own precarious existence. Aesthetically, I
found rich pickings in the design ethos of a shanty town or favela, like those found in Brazil. These ramshackle places grow without the guidance of a town planner. With quality building materials at a premium, ingenuity must take their place. Furthermore, from an elevated point of view there’s also a strong horizontal bias in many of the source images of shanty towns that I collected for this project: flat, corrugated iron roofs that stretch off into the distance. This should work well with the compositional arrangement that I’m developing.
The environment source material Pete has this vital piece of advice when generating concept art for a client…
Here I’m very crudely establishing the point of view of the scene
In this tutorial I try to show the value of research and looking for inspiration in unexpected places. If time permits, give your client as much source material as possible. Loose sketches will show the direction that you mean to take the project, while mood boards of inspirational images from the internet or your own photo collection will add clarity to the story you wish to tell. This groundwork is always time well spent, and will help the project develop smoothly.
Project:
Leviathan Brief
The action takes place in and around a village situated on a tropical island archipelago. The setting is far in Earth’s future, or perhaps on an alien planet, so you can go pretty wild. Try to come up with something new – a fresh take on the typical tropical paradise image, but with recognisable roots in that archetype. Just remember that this is a real physical and natural place, and above all else it needs to feel viable and believable.
This is evidence of the villagers’ scavenger nature, where items recovered from the sea are used to help construct their homes
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Production design 1
Get the basics right
At this stage I’m not committing myself to any detail. I’m simply blocking out the composition of the larger elements and establishing the light source. A thumbnail like this will usually be enough to set the scene, and give the client a chance to project their own ideas onto the canvas. Compositionally, the edge of the foreground island and its shadow provide a pleasing frame for its neighbour, which will be the main focus of the painting. There’s a horizontal bias developing here: the painting will be divided into distinct horizontal bands of tone, to improve the flow and break up the broad expanses of water and sky.
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Add colour
A college tutor once told me that there’s nothing more daunting than a blank canvas; it was possibly the best piece of advice I’ve ever been given. So, with that in mind, I’ve slammed down some really basic colour. But even with strengthening the tonal arrangement a bit more and loosely blocking in some of the manmade structures, the palette is still far too limited. The setting is tropical, with azure skies and turquoise seas, but there’s still considerable chromatic scope within these
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seemingly narrow guidelines. See Caspar David Friedrich’s The Sea of Ice for a great example of this. For now, the ochre of the rock formations contrasts well enough with the deep blues, but at some point I will need to introduce much more variety. However, most of the middle of the island will be covered with manmade structures, so time spent painting subtle, nuanced rock texture would be time wasted. Now is not the time for fancy brushes or layer blending modes.
Build some scaffolding
I block in some more broad structural elements and composite a water image from CGTextures.com. This is a quick way to get some realistic texture into the water. The art director likes the idea of the settlement being supported by rickety scaffolding. How can I create an intricate network of spars and poles quickly with naturalistic lighting, and integrate it convincingly with the rest of the structure? The answer lies in Photoshop’s channels feature. On the Layer Options tab I click New Group and name it Midground Struts. Within this group I create a new layer, fill it
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with 100 per cent opacity white and hide it. I also drag this group to the top of the stack. Now using the Line tool I alter the width, change the colour to black and begin dragging out lines where I want them with one eye on perspective and another on creating a ramshackle pattern. After I’m done drawing I reveal the white background layer (this must be at the bottom of the group) and click the
Channel tab. Because this is a greyscale image I can drag-select the red, green or blue channel down to the Create New Channel button at the bottom of the Channel tab. I name this new channel Midground Struts Mask and, with it selected, go to Image>Adjustments> Invert. Now I hide the Midground Struts Mask layer group and create a new layer called Midground Struts. Next I load the Midground Struts Mask channel and click the Add Layer Mask button. Before I start painting, I make sure I have the layer – and not its corresponding mask – selected. With my layer mask in place I’m free to have as much or as little colour and tonal variation along the length of a scaffolding pole as I wish. Some parts may be in bright light, with others in deep shadow. To avoid any unwanted overlap, I create a separate Foreground Struts Mask layer group and go through the same procedure again.
The environment
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Vary the colours
The limited palette is starting to jar. So I introduce some more subtle variations, conscious of not letting any one colour dominate the mood and of my wish to keep the loose horizontal banding of colours a chromatic theme of the painting. Occasional flashes of vibrant colour on the tarpaulins and rooftops of the buildings also add to the palette. The introduction of the boardwalk at the bottom of the image also helps to break up that expanse of water, and guides the eye into the central focus of the painting.
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Break up the foreground
I’m not yet convinced with the direction the buildings are going in, so while I’m mulling that over, I concentrate on the foreground sea element. It’s not bad, but I think it would benefit from being broken up some more. I introduce some giant water lilies that break up the expanse of blue, introduce some new colour and also strengthen the sense of depth. The speedboat moored at the jetty also helps give a sense of scale.
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Add points of interest
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Finishing touches
At long last, the clouds get some much-needed attention, and I’m tightening up other areas that have been neglected: the foreground landing platform and a perky little island-hopping copter perched on one of the landing platforms of the main island. We’re almost there.
The copter needs a bit more sparkle, so I add some highlights to the tailfin and engine housing. I also increase the brightness of the areas in direct sunlight by going to Select>Color Range and clicking Highlights. This creates a selection marquee around the areas of the image that Photoshop deems are highlights. With the selection still active, I go to the Create new fill or adjustment layer button and select Levels. This increases or reduces the luminosity of the selected part of the image. I’d like to restrict the boosted light levels to the island, boardwalk and jetty, so with the Brush tool I paint out the areas of the Adjustment layer’s mask that I wish to remain unchanged. I also add another quarter or so to the right of the image. It opens the image out more, and provides a greater idea of scale and distance. And that’s me done.
Introduce a sense of character
I’ve hinted in my initial sketches that much of the building materials were salvaged from derelict vehicles, advertising hoardings, cargo containers and whatever else was available. This gives me a chance to tip my hat to some of my heroes, the titans of sci-fi and fantasy art from my childhood – namely Ralph McQuarrie, Chris Foss, Ron Cobb and Angus McKay. Their weird and wonderful environment and ship designs often have strange logos present, heightening their sense of otherworldliness.
turn over for the next workshop…
Our artist tackles the project’s creature design…
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Production design
Part three of four
The enemy
It’s Leading Light’s Matt Allsopp’s turn to work on the game, as he fills the alien archipelago from part two with a hostile insect creature design o now we have designs for the game’s hero, Nate McCready, and his vehicle, along with the island environment in which the game takes place. My task is to explore and develop designs for the enemy creatures that Nate and the villagers face. At the beginning of the project it was decided that these creatures would spawn from giant eggs that have appeared overnight in the ocean. Once
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Matt Allsopp Country: England Starting off at Alpha Star Films, Lionhead Studios and now at Leading Light Design as a concept artist, Matt’s ambition is to work in the movie industry with his favourite directors, including James Cameron and Christopher Nolan. http://ifxm.ag/m-allsopp
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Matt says, “The design should lend itself to being more like a stick insect or maybe a praying mantis, both of which are really cool looking!”
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hatched, just like frog spawn, the creatures will begin their lives as tiny tadpoles before developing legs and leaving the water to wreak havoc on the surrounding populated islands. Looking at Christian Bravery’s concept for the copter design, I can see that it resembles the anatomy of a wasp or a dragonfly. It’s small and compact with short legs, so my instinct is to design an enemy that is bigger, elongated and has
long, spindly legs. Peter Amachree has already laid down the aesthetics of its environment, and I can quickly see how this long-legged creature idea will fit in. I will still explore the idea of a smaller and more compact bug that’s reminiscent of the copter vehicle, but the stick insect approach definitely appeals at the moment. Essentially it’s going to be a mechanical fly versus a naturalistic and beastly fly, which should be fun.
The enemy Project:
Leviathan
Brief – The enemy
One morning the villagers awake to discover that the sea is covered with what looks like giant frog spawn. Soon the eggs hatch to reveal huge, hideous and aggressive insectoid creatures. The task is to concept and refine these creatures. A blend of sea crustacean with insect would be a good launch point. Key defining words are insect, crustacean, ugly, horrific, alien, winged and multilegged/multi-eyed.
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Visualising ideas
Here are my very rough initial bug sketches. These are just two-minute doodles on paper that I make after first reading the brief. I’m not too worried about the quality of the illustration; it’s more about just getting the ideas down. This part is really fun and enables me to freely experiment with various concepts, shapes and techniques.
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Readable silhouettes
Cross-bred species
This is more of a classic fly approach, but with a twist. He’s more like an arachnid fly, with loads of small, pincer legs at the front. He can swoop down, pick up prey and inject them with poison, or maybe implant them with a flesh-dissolving virus.
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A chunkier bug
Another spider-based approach, this time with an unusual head design. This sketch enables me to see what a shorter, stockier-looking bug can offer. I want it to contrast with the insect copter, and so I prefer my visualisation of more delicate and lengthened design features.
I move over to a digital canvas and start throwing down some values. I’m trying to find some nice shapes and readable bug silhouettes. This sketch sticks as closely as possible to my initial idea, and takes references from the stick insect and praying mantis.
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Plotting its evolution
I like my first sketch, so I’m going to make a quick evolution board to try to get my head around the creature’s growth process from sea to land. Watching real-life documentaries on the transformation of insects is fascinating, if a little grotesque. This provides great inspiration for the progression of something vulnerable into a more mature and deadly beast.
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Production design 6
Iron out the design kinks
So let’s take my first sketch: I think I pretty much hit the nail on the head with this design. There are a few things that I don’t like about it, but I can iron them out along the way. For starters it needs to look a little less like an Alien Queen from the films. I really like the look of the arachnid fly – it’s fresh looking and pretty gross. But I think the longed-legged stick insect will fit the environment a lot better, and so I decide to develop this creature further.
Get flipping Flip your canvas horizontally to check your perspective and composition. It’ll quickly show whether your perspective is leaning to one side. It’s also good to flip your painting to make things a little less awkward for the wrist.
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Form and function
I feel that the body proportions and anatomy of the creature are dynamic and engaging. The large muscular strength of the forearms have a kind of gorilla-like aesthetic about them, while adding a rather unpredictable array of legs provides an interesting contrast. Converting the initial sketch to greyscale helps define the design intentions and strengthen the silhouette, dimensions and features already present. I make the hind legs taller and exaggerate them to imbrue the creature with power and aggression. These legs are important for making the subject appear more agile and speedy. To generate a convincing beast, it’s vital to understand the functionality and purpose of each part.
Injection of colour
Adding the colour to a greyscale piece is when your concept can really start coming into its own. Even just by adding a quick colour pass, you can start to build a narrative and focused intention for your creature. For example, I originally envisioned the creature to be relatively dark in tone, fierce and shadow-like. However, to build a narrative suggestion I started to consider the insect among its intended island location. It seemed far more feasible that the creature was camouflaged and deadly – here I start to make colour changes that suggest it’s well equipped to remain visually undetectable. Adding earth tones and colour choices that are similar to its habitation helped define the colour key for my next process. If you’re unsure of finding correct tones, you can reference from a photograph and use the Eyedropper tool in Photoshop to extract the exact colours you need.
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Make the concept readable
Now that I’ve got a clearer image in my mind about the creature, it’s time to draw a concise and readable concept. First I create a nice linework over the top of what the rough sketch. To do this I fade out the rough and on a separate layer generate clean, confident and definite line markings. Then I use my reference material of insects to define its skeletal and muscular structure. I want to make the creature look threatening, so by introducing certain features I’m able to capture the creature’s character a little more. Things like the strange and delicate pincer-like feet that project from those massive untouchable forearms, and spikes and spear-like points that emerge from otherwise vulnerable points around the body – all these are great snippets of design ideas that lend themselves perfectly to the game’s storyline.
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Light and shade
I make the background dark to offset the bug and make it stand out. Then I duplicate the layer and use a Glow brush to define light sources. On this light layer I use an eraser to reveal darker tones and create a shadow effect where necessary. These highlights and shadows ensure that the creature looks three-dimensional, rather than remaining a flat design.
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The enemy
Textures in Painter
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Real-world textures
Here I’ve painted in some skin textures with a Chalk brush after looking at natural skin patterns and insect markings. You could go a step further and create a distressed and organic-looking finish by setting up your own custom texture in Photoshop. I usually scan my own handmade textures – it can be fun having an element that’s physically in your hands one minute, and then being worked on digitally the next. When combined with my painted skin markings the effect is pretty successful, and prevents the bug from looking too flat.
A great way to add texture without overlaying a photo is to use one of Painter’s preset textures, but I often find it best to make my own. To do this, load in a photo and mask out the section you want to act as the texture. Then select Capture Paper in the drop-down menu on the Paper tab. This will add your new texture to your Paper library. Now using a brush that interacts with the Paper, you can add some suggested detail and subtle texture.
wings some 13 Adding 14 Apply Wings suggest a huge advantage for finishing touches the bug over mankind. It also brings up the possibility of a swarm of the things, or an aerial battle. I referenced some insect wing shapes and found plenty of variations that suited the design. Once I’m happy with my chosen painted shape, I lower the transparency to make it look slightly translucent. Then I add some highlights to the wings, noting the light direction and light source for the piece.
Finally it’s time to introduce some details. I put in darker skin markings, and on an Overlay layer paint in some very subtle blue and darker tones on the head to draw attention to the focus point. I’ve also put in some nice touches of hair that can be created using a fine Hair brush. These final touches give life to the creature and make it look tangible and convincing.
the design 12 Refine Using the Chalk brush again, I layer in some highlights and darker shadows between the shell-like tail articulation joints. If you’re struggling for where exactly these should be, try looking at a similar creature that possesses these aesthetic traits, such as an armadillo, which has a comparable configurative function within its natural design. I’ve also used dramatic highlights and shadow to further ground the main element, and to project a feeling of weight.
turn over for the next stage…
In the final instalment of this workshop series, the artist of Leading Light Designs works on the money shot: the production illustration.
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Production design
Part four of four
Story developer Matt Allsopp highlights the importance of cinematography as he creates a key frame illustration for the game using the existing designs
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Matt Allsopp Country: England Starting off at Alpha Star Films, Lionhead Studios and now Leading Light Design as a concept artist, Matt’s ambition is to work in the movie industry with his favourite directors, including James Cameron and Christopher Nolan. http://ifxm.ag/m-allsopp
get your resources See page 114 now!
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t’s time to take all the concepts for this project and merge them into one epic key frame illustration. Christian Bravery has established the design of both our hero and his vehicle, Pete Amachree has created the tropical environment and I’ve realised the aesthetic of the enemy creatures. So for this piece I’ll be thinking about atmosphere and mood. It’s important to show off as much of these designs as possible while creating a cinematic shot, but I don’t want to overdo it – the client can always refer back to the original design sheets for more details. As far as the story is concerned, the creatures have hatched and are causing havoc on the surrounding islands. All hell has broken loose, and it’s time for the villagers’ sole hope, Nate McCready, to step in and save the day. With the narrative in mind we need to create a battle scene between man and insect. The temptation to adhere to bright, tropical environment colours diminishes as I see the piece as dramatic and powerfully dark. I decide to go for a strong enemy creature silhouette by creating the shot at dusk. I want to make the bug look invincible and deathly frightening, overshadowing and overpowering our hero. I should be able to use the bug’s arachnid legs and sharp pincers to help do this.
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First I draw some thumbnails. I’ve got all the previous design references up on screen, so I just need to composite all the elements together in these thumbnails. I don’t want to cram too much visual information into this single shot, so I’m going to concentrate on the hero and the creature; the interaction between them is the main focus of the piece. I’m going to hint at the islands in the background to avoid confusing the readability of the image. So, now that I’ve got an image in mind, let’s crack on with some sketches.
Project:
Leviathan
BRIEF 4 - The Battle
This production illustration will bring the design elements together and show our hero in his copter, engaged in a battle with the creatures. The aim is to punch up the flavour and impact of your concept. A set of good quality production images will tell the project’s story, attract investors, inspire the imagination of your team and tantalise your public.
aerial battle scenario. The My first mock-up goes with the obvious, but very cool, y clear indication of things sketch only takes five minutes and gives me a prett I’ve got something else in to come if I were to proceed. I think it’s working, but mind before I make a decision…
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Down to earth
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An aggressive stance
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Picking the time of day
I draw some more quick thumbnails that picture Nate crashlanding his craft. Giving the creature a more domineering pose expresses a strong narrative. I’m going with the topleft thumbnail, but will alter the camera position to put the viewer at the heart of the action. Thumbnails are invaluable; they enable you to experiment with various concepts and techniques freely.
I scan in my chosen sketch to develop it further. I’ll have to reposition the legs of the bug to allow for a more aggressive stance while keeping it realistic. The legs mustn’t affect the silhouette of the copter either, as conflicting shapes could be a problem. Finally, adding some wings fills the space, giving the creature a much bigger and more powerful presence.
I’m not sure what time of day to set the scene: midday or dusk? Taking a saved template of the scene, I quickly paint some colour tests. The bottom-left image is certainly the strongest: it allows the foreground to be silhouetted nicely, but will also shows up some of the details on the bug and hero. The misty atmosphere will also help to create a frightening presence. I might lose some island background detail, but I think I can live with that – this shot is more about cinematography than design.
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Clean up the sketch, ready for painting
I keep my chosen greyscale sketch and colour palette open as I prepare to start my final version of the painting. They’ll provide essential guidance and ensure that I don’t stray from my intended vision for the piece. The bug is looking powerful and dynamic, even though the arrangement of legs differs slightly from the original design. It now towers over Nate, putting our hero in a vulnerable situation. Now, before I start the painting I first need a linework drawing. This gives
me a chance to iron out those sloppy marks that I made during the creation process. I drop a white tracing layer onto the original greyscale sketch and redraw the bug. Keeping my creature concepts to hand, I can get the shapes of the huge forelegs correct, as well as those long extruding pincers… and the rest! I’ve also got the reference material for the hero and his copter. Finally I tilt the horizon and add some skid marks from the crashed vehicle to bring energy and momentum to the piece, as well as providing the basis of the narrative.
Tie things up Adding a photo filter at the end of the process can often help tie all your colours together. If you want something to look a little more realistic, you could add a cool blue filter. Make sure you’re not too heavy with this though, or else it’ll look a little contrived.
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Establishing the narrative
Adding value and tone alongside colour starts to bring the shot together. Nate is the first element to be read, which is great for the illustration’s narrative – because he’s now the primary focus of the piece, the viewer can participate in the story. He has crashlanded underneath this giant bug he’s fighting, which for all we know was the cause of his downfall. We’ll probably need to put some sort of aerial battle in the background to help strengthen this storyline. I mask off the image into three layers: the creature, the foreground ship and the background. Using the chosen colour palette I start to paint in the backdrop, using an Airbrush for the graduation and the Glow tool for the sun. I’m keeping it a little more muted compared with the colour test… for now.
6 Strong outlines It’s always a good idea to have strong silhouettes in your concept or design. A concept for a film or game will only be seen for a second or two, so it’s important that the image reads well first time. The key is to nail this during the sketch stage and try not to stray too much from it during the colour phase.
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Creature feature
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Identifying a problem
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Painting the insect’s wings
The creature is the most prominent character, so I’ll tackle him first. I paint in the details and lighting with the Chalk brush. I wasn’t completely happy with its skin detailing in the original concept, so I’m going to improve the finish and texturing. I also add a beach in the foreground to help define the crash site.
Referring back to my original configuration of values, I can see that something is affecting the composition; it’s not hard to see where the problem lies, though. The ground is lit intensely and the colour saturation is far too high. A quick Multiply layer using the blue/grey sky tone should do the trick.
Adding the background
I’m already starting to stray from the colour test. I’ve made the image a little warmer by extending the glow of the sun. I like it for now, so I’ll see how it goes. I also add some distant islands; keeping these subtle with just a two-tone value will allow them to sit nicely in the background and not interfere with the foreground battle. To add to the mood and make the sky look a little less airbrushed, I add some smoke and haze: this is also a great way of knocking back detail when two objects are conflicting in the same space. I find that Painter’s Chalk brush is usually best for this job. I’m happy with the simplicity of the different elements so far, but I’ll have to start adding detail soon.
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Until now the wings have been lighter in value to their backdrop, but I think they’ll read more coherently if I make them darker. I lower the transparency to make them look translucent and add some texture. I also crop an insect wing from a photo and lay it over each wing. I set the layer’s attribute to Difference to kill the white of the photo. Once I’m happy, I reduce the opacity to make this texture subtle, then set about painting my own highlights, details and textures using the Chalk brush.
Story developer
detail to the 10 Adding downed copter The one area that still needs addressing is the crashed copter. I want to maintain its form as a silhouette at first read, but I’m going to have to add some detail to sell it on closer inspection. Using the Chalk brush I mark in some lighter grey tones where the light would be catching the surfaces. The rear lights could also do with a little extra glow to help pick out the vehicle. It’s nice to have a little artificial light, rather than all natural, but it’s best not to overdo it. Finally, I’ve been a little cheeky and changed Nate’s scarf and coat trim to blue. It should be red, but it was starting to clash!
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Finishing touches
It’s almost there, but detailing and colour tweaking can make all the difference. Again with the Chalk brush, I’m putting in some sand marks, shine and dinks on the craft, and extra markings and highlight details on the bug’s legs and face. You don’t have to spend long doing these extra touches, but they really give the piece life and make it look more convincing. Finally, I make a colour tweak. I much prefer the bluer, morning feeling that was present in the original colour test sheet; I’ve changed my mind about the red. So using Photoshop’s photo filter and colour adjustments tools, I pull it back to my original direction.
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Artist Q&A
Got a question for our experts? let us ease your art-ACHE at
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Remko Troost
Born in Amsterdam, Remko is a senior concept artist and illustrator with several years’ experience, he currently works for Ubisoft.
www.remkotroost.com
Philip Straub
Philip is a highly experienced art director with more than 17 years in the industry. He currently works for Warner Brothers game division.
www.philipstraub.com
Jonathan Standing
Jonathan is an English artist and illustrator. He’s currently based near Toronto, Canada and works for a developer in the video games industry.
www.jonathanstanding.com
Gary Tonge
Gary is concept art director who has worked for everyone from Ocean to Capcom. He is the author of Bold Visions: A Digital Painting Bible.
www.visionafar.com
Daryl Mandryk
Daryl is an experienced concept artist in both video games and film and has worked for EA, Lucasfilm and Propganda Games.
www.mandrykart.com
Daniel Dociu
Transylvanian-born Daniel is a video game art director and concept artist. He lives in the US, and is currently working on Guild Wars 2.
www.arena.net
Aly Fell
Aly Fell is a UK-based concept artist for Eurocom Software. He has created some stunning pin-up images, including a cover for ImagineFX.
www.darkrising.co.uk
Andy Park
Andy is a concept artist who works for Sony. He has worked on games including Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonshard, and God of War 2 for PlayStation 2.
www.andyparkart.com
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The industrial design – the craft’s function – must work with the image’s overall mood, and the two can be worked on hand in hand.
Question What’s the typical process when designing a vehicle for a sci-fi game? Answer
Phil replies I’d say there probably isn’t a typical approach for designing a vehicle for a science fiction game, since I’ve seen it tackled in a number of different ways. Usually I like to handle this type of assignment with a two-pronged attack, focusing on both the overall mood and attitude of the vehicle along with the industrial design, form and function. In many cases creating the isometrics (typically the front, side and back views) can be handled simultaneously with the mood piece. To keep things simple for this question, I’ll focus on the mood piece. Since I want to generate the concept quickly to recreate the workflow most concept artists
experience on the job, I’ll be applying my speed painting technique. The goal will be to create a consistent design that melds with the environment as quickly as possible. I also start to think about the design by thinking of the ship ‘in the round’, as the saying goes. This is industrial design terminology for thinking about the object in three-dimensional terms but it’s still valid in fantasy artwork. I like to try to imagine walking around the object I’m going to depict, as if I’m physically there, surveying the overall design from all angles. The more you practise this technique, the more depth your paintings will have.
Core skills advice Step-by-step: From simple shapes to fully furnished spaceship
Question Do you have any tips on creating mood paintings?
I usually start with very simple shapes, trying to find the overall look and design of the vehicle without going into any amount of detail. Using large brushes and keeping the image at thumbnail size, I rough in the basic image background and colour palette.
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Keeping your canvas at a low resolution helps you to avoid losing time on details, leaving you to concentrate on the mood. Here, I’ve used a custom cubic brush with Texture and Pen Pressure on.
As I begin to finesse the overall shape, I decide to go with an organic design that has a silhouette resembling a bird or other winged creature. With the overall design working pretty well, it’s time to begin detailing the ship further.
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Answer
Remko replies
Let’s create some additional visual interest. I do so in this image by introducing some abstracted pieces of machinery, air vents, and designs on the ship body. To enhance motion and scale, I also refine the exhaust.
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Mood paintings are fun to create and are an excellent way to generate ideas about atmosphere. They can also be a very useful way of finding colour schemes that could contribute to giving a place a recognisable identity. With mood paintings, you can create emotions within a scene too. You might, for example, be working with dark, desaturated colours and very little light, perhaps on a forbidding canyon scene. Or you might be working the other way around – with bright, joyful colours and in full summer light, for instance. I start by gathering as much documentation and reference as I can, either by getting out with my camera or by surfing the internet for inspiring photos. With these images, I then create a library
or a mood-board focused on the atmosphere I’m searching for. Then, often while listening to some epic movie music and squinting my eyes, I start observing these pictures while keeping them quite small. This helps me to feel what I actually see. That’s exactly the way I work on mood paintings too – with music on, a low-resolution canvas and some reference beside me. I try not to worry about forms or details. I paint what I feel as quickly as I can, and not what I see. I try to stay away from the Colour Picker as well. This helps me to choose the colours on my own and thus better understand them. I generate several moods (spending around 10-45 minutes on each) to see if the atmosphere I’m searching for works or not, and then proceed from there.
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Artist Q&A Question How do I design quick decals to add to military armour?
Question How do I create modular characters that share assets but look different? Answer
Jonathan replies The most important element to consider here is a character’s silhouette; it’s what the player’s eye will read first. There are many examples of games that have tried too hard to rely on other visual elements, such as texture and colour, and have ended up with repetitive characters as a result. After making your initial thumbnails, it’s generally a good idea to find out what
parameters the game’s engine has for supporting modular characters. It’s also helpful to have some idea of how the characters will be put together. Assuming that the game engine is quite basic, I divide up my character into parts that can be joined together. To make the task easier I try to address the character’s extremities rather than his torso, which affects his silhouette less.
Using gradients on the flat colours of the decal gives it some volume. Without this, it would look flat and fake.
Answer
Jonathan replies First, put together some reference materials to fuel your ideas. What kind of military unit are you portraying? Is it one with a rich history of pageantry, or one that’s primitive or tribal in nature? There are millions of images in books and on the internet that are good examples to inspire you. For my design, I begin by making vector design elements in Illustrator. The wings, bulldog, handprint, banner and skull are among many separate graphic elements that I create. Then, referencing what I’ve seen in a book, I combine the different pieces to make the Flying Bulldogs insignia. I import the vector art into Photoshop and then skew and warp it to conform roughly to the curvature of the armour plate. To make it look less clean, I place an Overlay texture of lumpy, stippled paint over the design and then begin to try to mirror the distress on the armour on the design as well. Successfully integrating a vector graphic into a painted image can be tricky and it’s often best to run a filter on it or dirty it up a bit. Finally, I add a highlight that’s cast over the metal and the paint, which helps to blend the images together.
I use a drawing of two different bodies as the base for these game character thumbnails. This way their proportions are identical, which means that they can share the same rig and animation sets.
Question I can never seem to get my ideas right on paper. Where should I start with concept design? Answer
Remko replies
It’s important to make the insignia appropriate to your fiction. This design started out in the same way as the other one, but ended up completely different.
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A concept often begins long before you put pencil to paper. It’s important to have a story behind it, so brainstorm and try to find out about the role it will play. What’s it for? Where will it be used? Understanding your subject will help you when drawing your first lines. I usually make a few rough sketches before I start looking for reference, to avoid being influenced. If I need real-world examples to make my design more believable, I can search for documentation to fit with my direction.
Here, I’ve started a concept for a futuristic two-seater jet fighter. To achieve the technologically advanced-looking shapes, I use the straight line Lasso tool to create several small black silhouettes. Once I’ve found acceptable forms, I like to focus on one or two. I redo a select few thumbnails and add some detail to them. Sometimes, I play around with my thumbnails by flipping them, mirroring them and placing them on top of each other with different layer modes. Doing this can help you generate even more ideas and possibilities.
Core skills advice Question I hear the term ‘concept artist’ all the time, but what exactly does a concept artist do? Artist’s secret
Answer
Gary replies A concept artist comes up with ideas and solutions to a design brief or ‘problem’. There are several different roles within a concept art team, and concept artists come from various backgrounds. In my job as a concept art director, I work with the concept team as a whole, helping them to generate a variety of imagery and ideas that can be anything from illustrations that show how areas fit together, to colour keys and much faster pencil sketches that are invaluable to the modelling teams for creating cohesive shapes and details in game worlds. When creating art myself, I tend to focus on either colour keys or principal images. These images are imperative to game art production, as they are intended to draw together the basic ideas and shapes for an area into a cohesive illustration that encapsulates the essence of how that part of the game world will look. Because they are so important, these images can take a lot longer to produce than regular concept images – in fact, I find that anywhere from 10 to 20 hours of painting time can be spent on creating these pieces. I try to encompass the textural feel within these images, along with a strong
Get emotional
evoke the sort When creating concept art, try to lates the apsu enc t tha ge of emotion in the ima ative imagery intended gaming experience. Evoc an area is If e. alik inspires developers and players that. Distil show k, dan and hot and arid, or cold d distinct worl e the essence of what makes a gam light, r, colou of use er and individual with clev position. com t grea , ntly orta imp t texture and, mos
Gary Tonge, concept art director
suggestion of how lighting, shadow work and special effects (such as subsurface scattering or volumetric effects, for example) should be balanced. A couple of my principal images, combined with a cluster of other illustrations and sketches, can be put together into a solid ‘pack’ of art info that can then be taken into production, to show the teams the way forward in the next stages of game development.
Concept art shows the production artists which direction to take.
Step-by-step: How to make concepts easier to design
I use the Lasso tool to create my forms quickly. It’s also a handy way to create masks inside your forms to pull out some perspective, if needed. This is an easy way to create simple shapes that can be built up into interesting forms.
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Don’t forget to identify your thumbnails with a letter or number. It’s easy to get carried away and forget that a client or art director may need to pick some of these out. I’ve also used figures to show the scale.
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Now I play around with my shapes to increase the chance of finding new ideas. Here I duplicate my layer, double the background, rotate it 180 degrees and put it in Multiply mode. Chasing happy accidents is all part of the fun.
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Artist Q&A Question I’ve heard that production artists need to be very fast – how can I improve my painting speed? Answer
Daryl replies It’s true that artists in a production environment have to pump out high-quality artwork within very tight schedules – something a lot of new artists have trouble adapting to. While I don’t advise anyone to rush their artwork, there are certain things that you can do to make your life easier and increase your speed in the process. Before you even boot up your software, make sure you have a clear understanding of what you want to accomplish. Draw some quick thumbnails on scrap paper, write out a few rough ideas, give yourself a bit of a roadmap to follow. Unless you have weeks on end to iterate on an image, having at least some sort of plan is vital to the whole process. The next practice I would recommend would be to configure your workspace to meet your personal needs. Spend some time setting up hotkeys and actions for all your frequently used operations. I have hotkeys and actions set up for creating layers, flipping the canvas, running filters
– basically any of the functions that I know I’ll be using frequently. This all sounds pretty obvious but it can save you huge amounts of time. When painting, try to concentrate on the big shapes and the design as a whole; don’t worry about the details yet. It’s more
important to nail your composition and overall values initially. Finally, practice! The more familiar you become with your tools, the faster you will be able to work with them. Try to arrange a schedule for yourself that includes a little art workout every day.
Don’t get bogged down by small details when painting. Focusing on the big shapes and overall design will enable you to work much faster.
Step-by-step: Four simple ways to become a faster painter
Alt/Option+F9 brings up your Actions window. Actions can be used to simplify repetitive tasks, and are great for anything that has multiple steps involved. They work by recording the steps, and then playing them back with one keystroke. You can even save out your actions and import them to another computer, in the same way you would with custom brushes.
Improving your knowledge of your tools will definitely help you paint faster, but not necessarily better. Do studies from life, anatomy books, movies – basically anything to help you build up the visual library in your head. Here is a fast sketch I did of an action shot from the Russell Crowe movie Gladiator. Speed sketching like this teaches you to keep things loose and fluid.
Set up your workspace. Alt/Option+Shift+Ctrl/ Cmd+K in Photoshop brings up your keyboard customisation options. Memorise the really important ones, and try customising them in ways that make sense to your workflow. The less time you need to spend hunting through menus, the more time you will have to concentrate on the act of painting itself.
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Try to think about your painting in broad terms: sometimes it helps to zoom out and look at your painting as a simple thumbnail image. Train yourself not to get caught up in unnecessary detailing that doesn’t add anything to the overall picture – it’s a waste of time. If you zoom closer into one of my images, you can see that most of my detail is sketchy and suggested.
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Core skills advice Question What are the expectations from the production team with regards to the translation of your concept designs into 3D game art? Answer
Lighting plays a significant role in the look of a game. The atmosphere of many titles depends on the successful coding of a lighting model.
Daniel replies More often than not, my concept work leaves a lot of scope for the 3D artists to contribute. I encourage them to interpret the theme I’ve established, to add layers of depth that I hadn’t envisioned. Of course their contribution needs to be based on a thorough understanding of the functional and stylistic requirements of the design. It’s a risky path to take as you can get very different results from different modellers. This is where an experienced artist with good knowledge of the game and sharp intuition can take a half-baked design to the next level, while someone lacking those skills can’t see its potential and may totally ruin it.
Question When creating environmental space concepts, how important are technical specifications?
This concept piece was the basis for an in-game design, although the details were loosely adapted.
It’s this ability to analyse, understand and build upon an idea that separates the true 3D artists from mere modellers.
Question Because video games are a digital medium, is it necessary that concept art for them should also be digital? Answer
Answer
Gary replies
Aly replies Although video games are digital, concept art is just what it says it is, concept art – and, as a drawing, it doesn’t exist in the game. As a result, concept art can generally be produced in any medium the artist prefers, although the client or team may have specific preferences, so being able to work to requirements is essential. These days, however, it’s better if the artwork can initially be presented digitally, so the designs can be easily swapped between the different departments. A hard copy can always be printed out later if needed. A lot of artists start their image traditionally, sketching in pencil, and then scan the image into the computer and work it up digitally. In the end what the digital medium has created is greater flexibility in the options for artists. Personally I vary my work process, sometimes sketching on a lightbox and scanning the image, but often I create a quick sketch that can be easily emailed once completed. I work with Photoshop and a graphics tablet, or with SketchBook, which has a Send Mail option built in.
Petra Hepburn, produced in Photoshop for a Concept Art challenge, has a traditional look.
My experience with video games has taught me many things, the earliest of which was to understand technology, at least on a technical artistic level. Some of the most important factors when working on conceptual illustrations for game environments are understanding the target platform (console/ PC), the likely interaction the player will have in the game world, gameplay ‘real estate’ (area sizes) and how the code is to be written (or, in many cases, is already written) to visually represent the game world. This final part can include a plethora of rules that control the options you have for environmental representation. Lighting systems are a big factor in this – a great many games have their look dictated by how well coded the ‘lighting model’ is. When painting conceptual images early in a pre-production cycle, it’s important to work with tech to develop the code so that certain looks can be achieved. A few years back the options for distinctive game worlds were restricted greatly by platformspecific deficiencies, but the recent jump in specifications for next-generation consoles greatly increases the scope for interesting ways to use shapes, materials and lighting. In many cases, it’s important to be able to supply these artistic ideas and requirements early on to the code department. In turn they can write systems to accommodate the new visual skews. Communication is all-important when it comes to working up new ideas, so that code and art fully understand each other in order to develop great ideas into working game worlds.
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Artist Q&A Question What are the goals you set when starting on a new piece of concept art? Bonedog is intended as a productionready creature design. Depending on the skill level of the modeller, orthographic views may not always be necessary. The idea is to first concentrate just on issues such as design, form, silhouette and values. After those problems have been solved, you can focus on introducing colour.
Question Are there any methods to help me reduce my fear of colour when approaching a concept or painting? Answer
Answer
Daniel replies
Andy replies Well, I believe I can offer you one approach that can help. My first recommendation is that you sketch out the design in black and white initially, especially when doing concept artwork. It’s a very good idea to approach a design in this manner because it’s unrealistic to try to solve all those challenging issues of designing all at the same time. Breaking things down into steps will only make the process more manageable. Of course, there may be times when it makes sense to incorporate colour into the initial design phase, but I find that most of the time black and white sketches or paintings work really well. It also tends to be good for the production process. The art director – or whoever is going to approve the designs – can then concentrate on the design itself, which makes their job much easier. So it’s helpful for everyone. After you have painted up the design, create a new layer above the black and white painting in Photoshop. Set the blending mode of that layer to Colour. Now you can paint in that layer with whatever colour you want and it will colourise your black and white painting without covering up any of the detail you’ve created up to that point. And because of that, you can experiment with your colour options to find the right choices, and thus lose the fear. The Colour Mode layer is just the foundation for the colouring process. It’s there to give you a solid base to work with and, now that you have that base, you can continue painting and refining.
Play around with layer blending modes. When properly used they will make your paintings shine.
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The criteria that determine the approach are multiple, but I’ll just touch on a few aspects here. It is unlikely to satisfy all design requirements as well as selfimposed standards equally well, therefore it is important to prioritise them. The concept pieces I generate usually fall into one of three categories, with rather arbitrary and fuzzy boundaries. High-level concepts involve addressing product positioning, style and the nature of the world that the game takes place in. These are intended as dialogue starters and inspirational pieces for both game design and the art team. Look-and-feel concepts focus on location-specific environments. They touch on the general overall movement of the terrain within the scene, the level of technology and the complexity of architectural structures, colour palettes and lighting. The focus at this level of zoom is to assess the piece from the
standpoint of how this particular moment is integrated within the larger experience. Production designs are intended to be handed out to 3D modellers to be materialised into game-ready assets. The delicate balance here is to provide an amount of information that is sufficient yet not redundant. Depending on the category, I try to identify the elements of visual expression that best serve the purpose of the piece, and make early decisions accordingly. I choose the perspective: anywhere from the forced, three-vanishing-points type (for the sake of drama) to a mundane three-quarters view (for good form description); the composition: from dynamic, tense and conflict-suggestive to static, serene and objective; texture: realism versus illusion, generic textures versus material-defining ones and accents versus supporting surfaces; and lighting: from moody, dramatic and capricious, to even, impartial and descriptive.
Clockwork is an example of a high-level concept used as a visual aid in pitching an idea for a game.
Question When designing game characters, are there any specific rules to follow? Answer
Aly replies Initially, you should be given a brief by the client that will outline the basic features of the character and its role, the time period, the personality and the degree of freedom you have in designing the character’s outfit and accessories. If you are simply producing a one-off character piece, which usually has a straight-on view, five main points to keep in mind are: 1. Ensure the whole character is in view. If the understanding is to be able to see the character from behind, then a second drawing showing the rear view would be necessary. Ultimately, a three view ‘turnaround’ or orthographic would be required to see the character from all sides.
2. Keep the lighting simple and revealing. The priority of any character concept work is to present the maximum amount of information to the next stage of the process. 3. Research details. Don’t just think you know what something looks like when a quick internet search will confirm accuracy. 4. Expression. Get an idea from the client what the dominating traits are and try to represent that in the artwork. 5. Posing. You could draw an action pose, but initially the best bet would be something more relaxed that enables maximum information to be presented. Make sure your character is presented in full view; don’t be tempted to draw only from the waist up. Details count.
Step-by-step: Create a detailed game character from scratch
This design is based on a specific brief. The female character that I’ve been asked to create is a desert-dwelling, ‘savage’ sort of character in a future setting. She was intended to have a firearm, and specific items of futuristic apparel. This was the initial sketch.
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After a couple of changes to the first sketch, the idea was approved by the client and I started blocking in some basic colour. At this point, I looked for some reference materials for the clothing and thought about whether any background would be needed.
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This is the final design with a texture overlay added, which tightens up the image, making it easier on the eye against the original white background. Further development may be required from this point – specific details of some of the accessories or expression information.
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Downloads
Resources
Includes four hours of video!
Watch videos, examine Photoshop files and install custom brushes – download them from http://ifxm.ag/game06art
Kan Muftic
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Images and brushes
Watch Kan’s video workshop as he paints Harley Quinn from Batman: Arkham City.
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[email protected] Contributions Kemp Remillard, Feng Zhu, Ryan Dening, Alessandro Taini, Marek Okon, Kevin Chen, Kan Muftic, Maciej Kuciara, Luke Mancini, Daryl Mandryk, Robh Ruppel, Jung Park, Stephan Martiniere, Joe Sanabria, Matt Allsopp, Pete Amachree, Christian Bravery, Remko Troost, Phillip Straub, Jonathan Standing, Gary Tonge, Daryl Mandryk, Daniel Dociu, Aly Fell, Andy Park, Kekai Kotaki, Bradley Wright, Sean A Murray, Joe Madureira contact us Post ImagineFX Presents, Future Publishing Ltd, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW, UK Phone +44 (0) 1225 442244 email
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[email protected] Editorial Paul newman group senior editor Steve gotobed group senior art editor ROBIN ABBOTT creative director Jim Douglas editorial director
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Learn from the BlizzardResources concept artist as he paints the Zerg from StarCraft 2.
See how Maciej unifies colours to help design an iconic heroine character.
See 50 minutes of character creation as Kevin designs a space opera princess.
As well as videos, you can download all workshop art and artists’ custom brushes.
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“If you want to tell a story, you have to spend time exploring the composition” Kan Muftic, page 50
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The complete guide for artists on how to design, create and paint characters, creatures, vehicles and environments for video games Develop your digital art skills and learn to create stunning concept art for video games. In this workshop collection the professional artists behind some of biggest video games, including God of War 3, Fallout: New Vegas, and Rage, share their techniques for creating stunning and original art.
