Concept Art 101: Environments

Alright, onto the next tutorial: environments! Yes, we’re going to learn how to draw environments, concept art style. Now, there are a couple of principles that I must emphasize on before we begin. This is all prerequisite knowledge so if you don’t have a solid understanding of the following things, please consider brushing up on them before continuing.

1.) Atmospheric/Aerial Perspective. You should at least know what this means. If not, look it up. I will be using plenty of this throughout the tutorials (there will be more than one environment tutorial). Knowing how to use atmospheric perspective, combined with a good grasp of color theory, can mean a world of difference when drawing environments. It has been a fundamental principle of art since Renaissance times, and for good reason. It’ll help you create an illusion of depth and really allow you to draw the viewer into the atmosphere of your concept.

2.) General Perspective (sans Field of View)/Foreshortening. You HAVE to have a good grasp of perspective otherwise you will greatly compromise the believability of your concept. This especially applies to very natural environments (cliffs, canyons, forests, etc.) where things tend to be more organic and harder to foreshorten. Whereas urban, industrial or generally civil environments tend to be more rigid and can be reduced to perspective lines.

3.) Scaling. Scaling is a skill that comes from drawing things in meticulous detail. The ability to scale is pretty much the ability to make something look a believable size thru proper proportioning and disbursement of details. For example: this Lego building is very well scaled. Why? Because, in relation to the people, the aspects of the building (windows, fire escapes, scaffolding, etc.) are all believably proportioned. This skill will help out a lot when drawing massive environments as it emphasizes on the broadness of the PoV and the grandness of the objects therein. Note: working on a large canvas can make scaling easier but not all of us have that luxury.

4.) Lighting. When doing pieces with multiple (esp. colored) light sources, this skill comes in very handy. Also, learning how atmospheric light affects local colors (ex. what color is a green apple under red light?) can help you avoid clashing colors. When the colors of an object do not agree with those of the general environment, it is a huge eyesore.

5.) Basic Composition. You should know your composition do’s and don’ts and know how to create engaging, well-angled PoVs. Keep in mind things like Rule of Thirds. This one isn’t really as imperative as the previous four, though.

Once you’re sure you’ve learned these things, continue reading. I’m going to dive straight into the tutorial.

STEP 1: COMPOSITION/BLOCKING



1.) This is how all of my environment concepts begin. The canvas shown here is scaled down to 66.7%, the actual size being 1100×700 px. It’s always good to draw on a large canvas and scale the picture down later as it allows for minute detail without having to resort to 1px lines (which are an eyesore). Basically what I’ve done is established the fore-, mid- and backgrounds with very vague, low opacity shapes. You can see some precursors to (what will be) vehicles in the foreground, a structure in the middle and a tower toward the back. I would consider this my preliminary sketch. Depending on your approach, this first step may be very different. Some artists prefer to do a line drawing first or scribble out the masses. Others just jump straight to rendering. Do what suits you best. This is just my method, after all. You can see that, from the very beginning, Atmospheric Perspective is already in play. Notice how, as you visually advance into the background, things become less opaque and “fade out”. This is how most concept artists create depth in their pieces. You will learn more about it in the next step.



1. a.) What I’ve done here is add a Multiply Layer over the “sketch” and used a soft brush set to a dark gray on 25% opacity to wash everything. Things in the foreground have been considerably darkened. Now, this is not to say that, once this concept is colored, foreground objects will be of darker hues. What this really does is build contrast in the foreground objects so that, once we get to the rendering stage, we have more values to work with and can put more detail into them. This ultimately lends to good atmosphere, perspective and scaling. This also keeps them from being washed out by the atmosphere itself which you can sort of see happening to the background objects. What we’ve done in this step is establish a hierarchy based off of visual priority. Foreground objects will have the highest priority because they are the closest to the viewer thus granting them more detail, more contrast and keeping them from blending in with the atmosphere. Mid-ground objects have the same graces, just to a lesser extent. And background objects typically blend into the atmosphere: the atmospheric light overrides the local color and the objects are very shallow in terms of value range.



2.) Here, I’ve created some Overlay layers and, using a very large soft/air brush on low opacity, added a very simple color scheme to the sketch. When drawing environments, you should always try to move from black and white to color as soon as you think it convenient. You don’t want to end up with really dull values. If you save coloring until the very end, when everything has already been rendered in b&w, the Overlay will give you very bland, unrealistic tones. Instead, you want to start applying color when you are confident with your composition and are in pre-rendering stages. That way, you start off rendering in color and don’t have to do much in the way of color adjustment later. As for the color scheme itself: it’s rather murky, based mostly off purple and with yellow atmospheric light coming off the horizon. This will serve as a main light source. What we’re going for is a cool, dusky atmosphere. After laying down the colors, I merged them all down and, using a soft brush, blended them together a little. Notice that I’ve also begun paying attention to the geometry of the objects and laid down my colors accordingly. Think of it as a primer before you render.

STEP 2: RENDERING



1.) As you can see, I’ve begun rendering the objects in the mid-ground and foreground. When rendering objects, you want to keep the local colors intact while integrating highlights and shadows based on the atmosphere around the object. What I’ve done is detailed the body of the tower in purple (local color) and added yellow highlights on rigid edges to reflect the atmospheric color. You also want to keep in mind the “hierarchy” we established earlier. As you can see, the rock forms in the background are still very shallow and have a narrow range of values compared to the tower. That’s because I still want the tower to have more visual priority than the rocks. The color picker/eyedropper tool is your best friend as it allows you to stay faithful to the colors and values already established. You don’t want to flood the palette with a lot of foreign colors as it won’t look cohesive. Notice how the rocks aren’t actually “rock colored” but are rendered using preexisting values of purple and yellow. They still give the illusion of rocks but, because they work with the atmosphere, don’t attract too much attention. As background elements, they shouldn’t anyway. You also wanna keep the transitions between colors smooth. Notice how the gradation from yellow to purple is integrated into the rock forms. Anyway, I’m gonna continue rendering.



When I render, I usually follow a process:
- Smooth out the object w/ a soft brush (given that the object is meant to be smooth)
- Build contrast (using blending modes w/ dark colors)
- Add details

Also, notice that my palette becomes broader as we move into the foreground. This is because, as we near the viewer, we want to increase the detail of the environment which includes observable colors. Though the background should be limited to the atmospheric colors in order to avoid flooding the palette, adding a few foreign colors to the foreground (ie. patches of dirt, foliage) is excusable and even recommended. Doing this engages the viewer, increases detail and adds variety. Also, it’s more faithful to the local colors of nearby objects thereby lending to realism as well. How weird would it be to have a purple and yellow shrub? Besides, having a very small palette is just as bad as having one that is too broad. Also, don’t be afraid to add portions of high contrast (ex. puddles) to the piece. Remember, you WANT a large range of values in your foreground. And don’t make the mistake of assuming everything is a consistent color. Dirt isn’t brown throughout, grass isn’t all green and water isn’t solid blue. You want to mix it up every now and then for the sake of realism as well as expanding your palette. Also, you want to build up various textures and forms.

It’s just rinse and repeat from here out so I’m gonna end the tutorial. But that is the general workflow when painting an environment concept. Next time we’ll go over how to use blending modes to create atmospheric effects. See you guys soon.

Article source :  www.mangatutorials.com/2010/concept-art-101-environments

Concept Art 101: Value Sketching with Silhouettes

KK, welcome back. Last time I showed you guys how to value sketch and, now, we’re going to explore another method of value sketching that uses silhouettes as a basis. There’s actually not much difference between this method and the previous except that, instead of using darker values on a light canvas to block out shapes, we’re going to be using lighter values against a dark silhouette. Also, unlike the previous method, you start off with a pre-defined shape (somewhat like a filled-in contour drawing) for your entire character/object. That’s not to say it can’t be changed as you go, but you really have to have a solid grasp of the concept before you dive in. So this one is less procedural and more precognitive. To compensate for that, drawing with silhouettes tends to be easier and faster (basically you could just scribble on the canvas in black or use an applet like Alchemy) and also allows an artist to move through various concepts quickly. Don’t like this scribble? Make another one or edit it on the fly. Whereas, with normal value sketching, it takes considerably longer to create a basis for your drawing and longer, still, to decide whether or not you want to commit or start over.


NOTE: this was done in the Group Board, so not really representative of what one can do in a powerful program like GIMP

The reason I didn’t teach line-sketching is because everyone already knows line sketching. It’s the first thing we learn as artists and it’s a habit that’s not necessarily good for you. In fact, people tend to get too comfortable with lines and fail to explore values, colors and form which are all essential to higher-level art. At one point, an artist has to grow out of drawing in lines and realize that things are comprised of shapes, usually swatches of color. That’s not to say you have to abandon lines all together. In fact, a lot of concept artists use line drawings but they have explored and are well-versed in the other methods of drawing as well. So basically what I’m saying is: you need this knowledge to move up in art. Once you have it, feel free to do whatever you prefer.

Ok, so let’s get started!

STEP 1: RENDERING

Okay, so the first step is drawing a silhouette. This step doesn’t need much explanation. As I mentioned before, the greatest benefit of drawing in this method is being able to move through a large number of different sketches in rapid succession. This is because drawing the silhouettes–the foundations off of which you base your finished concept–is far more simple than making full value sketches. They could just be scribbles, if it suits you. But this method does require more precognition in the sense that silhouettes tend to be very vague. Also, the sheer accessibility of drawing these things (like I said, they could just be scribbles) may be overwhelming for an artist who doesn’t have a specific result in mind. If you want something specific, you have to go in with a very strong sense of direction otherwise you’ll get “lost” in the silhouette. Whereas, as you saw in my previous tutorial, value sketches separate the distinct parts by value which offers a little more guidance than just going in blind.



1.) Alright, so: there’s my silhouette. Apparently it’s some kinda avian/insect/dragon hybrid. It’s quick, rough and still rather hard to discern. That’s how I like it. It’s really up to you how “detailed” your silhouette is. Some artists I’ve seen make silhouettes so detailed that they look like stencil drawings. But I personally think that defeats the purpose of “sketching”.



1. a.) Since I taught you how to color using blending modes in the previous installment, I’m going to use a different method to color this concept. What I did here was lay gray (100% opacity) on top of the black to give the silhouette some features and then, using the “select by color” tool, I selected all of the gray areas and colorized them to become a desired color (in this case, maroon). Alternatively, you could’ve just painted maroon on there from the get go. Colorizing things is just as convenient and serve similar purposes to using blending modes. But you should take care when using this tool because it turns everything within the selection into a value of the same hue. For example, if I took the soldier from the previous tutorial, selected the entire canvas and used colorize, the entire concept would then become different shades of red. So be careful or you’ll basically mess up all your colors. It might benefit you more to play with color balancing tools instead. Note: using blending modes and using colorize are not mutually exclusive processes. You can use one or the other, or a combination of both. Most concept artists use both to some degree. I’m just trying to cover them separately so you understand the principles behind each.


1. b.) Not much going on here. Just using a soft brush (or an airbrush, if you prefer) and a texture brush to blend and establish more definition. Some highlights were also added. Excess black was erased.

STEP 2: COLORING

1.) There’s really not much to explain here since I’ve already gone over blending modes. To color this concept, I’m going to use a combination of blending modes and applying colors directly to the canvas. Not so complicated. The only part that requires any explanation is the translucent effect I put on the wings. Basically, I selected the flaps of each wing and applied a spotty texture brush in white, then painted sinews over them. Afterward, I applied an Overlay layer to make it seem like translucent skin. Also, I applied a blue secondary light source from behind just for kicks.



And voila! Here is a finished monster concept, born from a silhouette. Next time I’ll go over drawing environment concepts. See you soon.

Article source :  www.mangatutorials.com/2010/concept-art-101-value-sketching-with-silhouettes

Concept Art 101: Value Sketching

Lately, I’ve been getting into concept art. It’s a rather quick, easy and fun way to get ideas down that returns consistently good results, which only get better as you improve. Now, I’m no pro concept artist, but I think I’ve learned enough of the method to start telling people about it. And I think one of the greatest setbacks to drawing things traditionally (sketch>lineart>colors) is that it’s time consuming and discourages people from getting their ideas down on paper. If you learn the concept art method, you’ll significantly decrease the amount of time it takes to draw complex things like, say, a mech. Lol.

Keep in mind, this is not an anatomy, perspective, etc. tutorial. I’m writing this under the assumption that you already know how to draw, basically, and are familiar with your tools. This is a somewhat higher-level style that requires the practitioner to have basic knowledge of art. Now, I’m only going to cover styles of concept art that are lineless (they use values, as opposed to lines, to render). This is because: 1.) Lineart is time consuming 2.) Using lineart then coloring over it is not really different from the “normal” way of doing things, therefore you can probably just find separate tutorials for lineart+coloring if that’s what you’re into.

The first method of concept art I’m going to go over is value sketching which is using light and dark shapes (highlights and shadows respectively) to sketch out a foundation for your piece. The easiest version of this is to use really opaque lights and darks (probably 90-100% opacity in GIMP) and sketching with a hard brush. It’s actually similar to lineart, except you’re using a different set of art principles. You’re using your sense of volume, form and value as opposed to just laying down lines. It actually helps in the long run.

SO, moving on to the actual tutorial!

STEP 1: RENDERING

When concept artists have an idea and they wanna put it down on canvas, the first thing they do is Render. In fact, if you look at a concept page by professional artists, what you’re seeing is a lot of renders or the stage before colors are added. They can either be in lines or values but we’re going to learn the value method because we’re all familiar with lineart. The truth is, most of the gorgeously colored concept pieces you see in games and such start in black and white. This is because black and white (or, in some cases, sepia) are the easiest values to render and shade with. Whereas, when you deal with colors, you have to have a good grasp of color theory and light interaction, be able too blend colors and all of that other crap which is wayyy too time consuming for a “first” or “preliminary” step. There is also the chore of picking colors. Say, for example, you are painting a red piece of metal in purple light: how do you know what color to shade with? What color will be used for the highlights? So forth and so forth. So, for the sake of simplicity, we start off with black and white.

There are two ways you can start this off: from a silhouette, or just freeform sketching. I’ll go over using silhouettes later (as it requires a LOT of precognition as to what you want to draw) and just teach sketching. When I start a concept piece, I already have a vague idea of what I want to draw and I set the dimensions of my canvas accordingly. If it’s a landscape, I use landscape orientation usually in 1100×800. If it’s a person or a mech, then I use portrait in 900×900 and so forth for each circumstance. The general idea, though, is to start off with a relatively big canvas and shrink it down later. This allows you to have good control over details and paint in large, sweeping strokes as opposed to poring over single pixels and such. Painting in large shapes is essential.



1.) For this tutorial, I’ve chosen a subject that is dear to many concept artists’ hearts: generic military man in armor. Concept artists love this guy because he is a simple character to draw and leaves room for a lot of creativity. As you can see, I’ve laid out my values. The parts of the character that will be defined by dark colors are black, those which will be defined by midtones are gray and those which are relatively bright in color are left white. Nothing too complicated. Now what we want to do is start turning these shapes into actual components. Let’s start with the helmet. I usually zoom in to get small details.



1. a.) As you can see, I’ve defined the shape of the helmet more. It now wraps around the head better and has plenty more detail. I also added a new value in order to bring out different parts of the helmet’s design (ie. the lamellar type ridges on the back). Notice that I kept this value relatively close to the base color (black) so that it doesn’t “leak” into my midtones. Also, you can see some sort of body suit worn beneath the helmet peeking out from the sides. Now I will continue detailing the rest of the body this way.



STEP 2: USING BLENDING MODES



1.) Now that the character has more detail, we will tweak the shadows a bit to give parts like the pants more depth. Here, I will introduce blending modes which are a concept artist’s best tool for adjusting lighting and colors on the fly, as well as adding atmospheric effects. The ones I will be using (now and in the future) are Multiply and Overlay. Multiply allows you to add colored shadows or darken areas without affecting or drowning out the details. Overlay works to the same effect, except it doesn’t darken. This is how most concept artists color.

Here, I’ve used multiply on the areas that needed some extra contrast. You can still see the brush strokes from the original render except, now, everything has been darkened to proportion. Now we have darker values to work with, as well as some soft shadow. This would’ve been a lot harder if we laid black over it and attempted to re-render everything. It’s especially useful when you’re at the coloring stages because it saves you the difficulty of picking out your own dark tones. I also forgot to draw a face…so I’mma add that in there right quick.



1. a.) Now we’ll use Overlay to give this concept color. Beware, it’s not as simple as just creating one Overlay layer and slapping the desired color on there. Sometimes you have to layer them to create the desired effect. Also, the tones that Overlay gives you are not always realistic and don’t faithfully emulate reflected light, so you have to work around that by using many Overlay layers. In this case, I want a metallic blue armor that is reflecting some orange atmospheric light and I want to create somewhat of a haze effect. The first thing I did was create an imaginary light source behind the military dude. There will be orange light radiating from it. Then I created an Overlay layer, using orange-brown to add reflected light onto the armor from behind and merged it down. After that, I added three layers of blue Overlay and merged them down. The thing about Overlay is that the colors become brighter and more concentrated if you layer them as opposed to just using a single layer. Then I topped it off with another orange Overlay for the colored light. Now our concept is looking fairly colorful. Well, at least the armor is.

2.) Now, using these new values, I’m going to go back and refine the armor some: cleaning up details, adjusting the distribution of blacks and highlights, etc.



And we’re done. This is the most basic method of concept ‘arting’ and these are the kinds of results it returns. I’ll leave it at just the armor because this drawing was only meant to be an example. Stay tuned, I’ll be making more concept art tutorials.

Article source : www.mangatutorials.com/2010/concept-art-101-value-sketching