To tell the truth, I am still learning a whole lot about the program, and am actually a little bit behind in the whole thing. Most of my hardcore intitial learng of PS came between versions 5.5 and 6.0. Then, all of a sudden, Adobe sort of “rocked my world” when they made major changes with 7.0. I was very confused and frustrated with a lot of the settings, as they seemed more complicated. When they came out with CS, they seemed to fix all of the things that bothered me about 7.0.

But I must confess- I do not do much exploring of the capabilites of this program. I find something that seems to work, and I sit complacent on that for a while, even if I do not understand it’s function 100%. For example- I still don’t understand the importance of the “flow” and “opacity” settings at tthe top… I just leave them alone, both at 100%. Call me naive, but remember, I never went to school for this stuff, and have pretty much “winged it” with success up to this point!

Only recently have I started to experiment a little outside of the traditonal hard edge/ soft edge brushes. I stumbled on th e”spatter” brushes, and messed tith the “scatter” settings, found that it made great realistic skin detail on photo-real portraits.

But all in all, I particalarly enjoy sketching with a hard round brushh the most. The smallest I usually have the brush set ot is “2″ or “3″, on a canvas that is anywhere from 7″ x 5″ at 150 dpi to 8″ x 10″ at 300 dpi, the latter being my most frequent.

ABOVE: Highlighted in yellow are my current favorite most used brushes.

ABOVE: My traditional brush settings.

ABOVE: “Dode and burn” are also my favorite tools to skethc with. (Dodge set to “shadows”, Burn set to “highlights”) Here are my preferred standard settings for those tools.

ABOVE: The “other dynamics” standard settings for those “spatter” brushes that I use for phot real skin, as well as the checking the box for “scattering”.

ABOVE: When you click on “scattering”, it of course opens up the settings for those parameters. Here are the favored settings I choose for example, on photo-real skin. The scatter slider can go up or down- all over the palce for me, depending on the effect I want to achieve in covering space.

The objective of this mattepainting was above all to improve my skills. I did not have an precise idea of what would give the final image. I wanted simply to carry out a urban landscape and to integrate natural elements into it.

The images used were found on the internet except the principal image which I bought on Fotolia.

Environment and Painting – Addition of a new sky created from several images of clouds found on google. At this stage, I start to “destroy” certain parts of the buildings, the panes, etc…

Flood – Addition of water. Render is a big work which requires a particular care concerning the lights and the reflections. The final texture of water is a mix of several photographs of rivers, ponds, etc…

Some steps for the water texture

The mix between different layers is done by using the blending modes.

Characters – The light imports enormously for a coherent integration of the characters. I still use «density» tools and blending modes to associate the different elements.

Vegetation – Same operations here as before

Final steps – The mains stages. Below, you can see all the elements added over the original image… not very aesthetic but helpful

I hope this «mini makin of» could help you Please email me if you have any query or suggestion
Download in PDF
by Pierre Fabre, France Web: www.gkaster.com

1
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I started with a few quick smudges to get down the basic composition and movement I saw in my head. At this stage I work in black and white, at a relatively small size (the document is small, maybe 1024 pixels, and I’m zoomed out to maybe 25%, so it’s about 2 inches wide on the screen. I use the mouse, not the tablet at this point as well, and keep the brush edge very soft. All of this is to keep it broad and simple. If the picture does not have strong bones, it’s never going to be able to stand. In some ways pictures only get weaker as you develop them, so they need to be really solid to begin with.

A lot happens in a short time with these early stages, which remain for me the most critical in terms of ultimately determining how good the picture will be. If you get these stages right, the rest of the picture paints itself.

2 – about 3 minutes elapsed
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Here I added another swish for the third figure, and a hint of a horizon line behind the main hill.

3 – about 5 minutes elapsed
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Now I’m starting to look more closely at the value arrangement, being very careful to preserve the gestures I’ve established. There’s so much randomness in those soft, loose marks, that you often don’t realize how critical some of them are to the growing illusion of atmosphere and space. At this stage it’s a lot like the “cloud game” (where you look at clouds and try to see forms in them). You’re half directing the process, and half simply responding to what’s come out.

4 – about 8 minutes elapsed
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Now it gets dicey as I have to start to forge actual figures, limbs, heads, features, etc. out of that mass, without killing the gesture…

5 – about 10 minutes elapsed
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I didn’t see it at this point, but here is where I went wrong. I’ve included this stage as an example of just how delicate the process is. Note how the minor changes to the shape of the main figure’s head have transformed his direction of motion from coming out of the picture in step FOUR (above) to moving more sideways (left to right, parallel to the picture plane). I broke it.

6 – about 15 minutes elapsed
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Still not realizing that I’ve slipped a bit, I continue to develop the main figure. I’m pleased with how I’ve been able to get more and more specific with him, and his gesture is still very strong.

7 – about 20 minutes elapsed
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Now both figures are starting to look like gnolls (hyena / human hybrids). But I now realize that the main figure should be thrusting out toward the viewer more, vs. just moving laterally. And I’ve also lost one of the figures…

8 – about 30 minutes elapsed
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I shrink the two figures, move them to the right, and add a new main figure. This way the three figures sort of radiate outward, and I’m back to my original composition. Ah, the miracle of digital.

9 – about 30 minutes elapsed
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Right here I feel like I’ve basically nailed the final image. The gesture is still strong and loose, and there is enough detail and specificity for me to move to more of a rendering stage. So I start to think about color…

10 – about 45 minutes elapsed
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I play around a lot with color… maybe too much. I always want to try new things, and remain open to whatever may come up “accidentally.” I work in Lab mode (sadly, not supported by Painter, but only by Photoshop), because it organizes the color (and value) space much more like the way the human eye does. I use color layers, as well as adjustment layers (e.g. color balance) to experiment with different schemes. I know I want it to be basically warm / yellow / reddish, to imply a sort of savannah setting, but that’s about it.

This is one of the schemes I explored.

11 – about 1 hour elapsed
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Here I switch the image to a vertical “portrait” format (I’ll have to make a landscape version as well for use in game). Fortunately that does not affect the composition much.

I change the layout, rotate the image a bit, and home in on the basic final color scheme.

12 – about 2 hours elapsed
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Now I start really painting. I switch to RBG mode, move into Painter and cut loose. I’m pretty much past the point where a single bad stroke can kill the image, so now I focus on things like costume and accoutrements, facial expression, and generally sharpening up the forms with harder and more opaque brushes. Unlike in the early stages, here a lot more time passes without the image really changing in any fundamental ways.

At this stage I tend to work on the focal points first, so that I’m sure to not overdevelop the areas that are not the main focus. For example, if I worked too much on, say, the grass in the foreground, by the time I got around to doing, say, the main figure’s face, I may find out that the grass is rendered too tightly and clearly. Instead I work on the areas that must have a fair amount of detail, then I move onto the supporting areas if they need a bit more (and only up to the point that they need).

13 – about 4 hours elapsed
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I continue to develop the details and sculpt the forms of the figures. A lot of beginners think this is the hardest part, but really it isn’t. If the underpinnings of the picture are solid, this part takes care of itself. Actually the only hard part is still that if you keep your focus too narrow, maybe work too zoomed in, you will find that you’ve gradually sucked the life out of the image. So adding the details and concrete forms is not hard in and of itself – adding them while preserving the gesture and composition is what’s tough.

I continue to adjust the overall value and color scheme as well, and add the sun behind the main figure to give the image more punch. I rotate the figures a bit and shrink them down so they fit in the composition better.

14 – about 5 hours elapsed
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Now I fine tune the main figure’s facial expression (make him look a bit meaner), add a few highlights on the helmet, a nice bit of drool from the main figure… some more detail to the background. I also tipped up the second figure’s weapon a bit, and add a few items of costume to him. I like the way the second figure is working a lot, so I want to be careful not to overdo him, nor to take focus away from the main figure.

15 – about 6 hours elapsed
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For the final stretch I move back into Photoshop, switch to Lab mode and bring the saturation of the image down just a bit. I tweak the levels and add a little bit of texture (mostly to the sky and foreground) via an overlay layer. DONE!

Six hours is not a lot of time, but then again this picture happens to have gone fairly smoothly. I could easily spend another 5, 10, 20 hours adding more and more detail, without the picture changing in any substantial way. Often that final polish is critical, though it can multiply the time investment a lot. For concept work you’re generally better off to produce three pictures at this level vs. one at a more polished level.

http://www.chrisbeatrice.com/gnollstutorial/index.htm

Aphex – Matte painting e compositing a Valle Giulia