Bug...pencil to render

[lemorris]

Someone asked to see the steps here. 

This one is only a little different in the sense that I'm doing a little tighter work on the pencil end and then I'll add some color and other stuff in PS down the line.

This will ultimately be a wedding invitation and it's not due for a month so there's no hurry here.  I'll do 15 or 30 minutes a day until it gets there.

The method is pretty basic.  Sketch it out and then color it.

With the more tighter pencil I do have some shirt plans but you'll have to wait on those.  This is about the art part.

anyway


Base sketches:  I just used my trusty zebra 5mm and some old stationary from my moms real estate office.  I actually did have a rough before this one but I thought it'd be better to start here.

I did scan in my rough sketch and made it blueline in PS, then printed it out.  Then I penciled right over the top of that for rough sketch 2.  I tried to transfer it to a clean sheet, but all the character flew out the window, and I have an animator friend that does that pencil over blueline, and it worked well for me.





Pencil stuff:  Pretty basic.  Left to right, tryin to keep it clean.  I picked up some books by a guy named Hillenberry I think.  He has a pretty cool method.  The pencil part is just partially pencil.  I'm using charcoal and carbon so I can get those rich blacks (funny for me to say) and the depth in the drawing, without the graphite glare.  I'm finding that it also scans very very well.  I'm using a Generals HB hard, and a Generals 2B charcoal.  The only graphite I've been using really is a F.  I'm not blending the 2 mediums into each other much either...they don't mix right...not for me yet anyway...it's my first time so...anyway I like the overall results.  I tacked it to my wall beside this pickup I had done recently in pencil and there really isn't much comparison.  I know you can darker your pencil after you scan it and all that, but like I said...I have plans for these and this seems to be giving me somethin more.








Color test:  I scanned my step and made it a multiply layer and threw some color under it.  Once I get to the render it will be much richer than this.  I just blocked in some color to see it.  I'm usin a hard brush at 100 and 100 in PS for the base.  I paint "through" areas and then erase the excess outside the lines.  I'm using temp layers to paint the blocks, erase it back then merge it down.  I am also using group masks more than paths these days.  I like how they work in my flow. 



and it's kinda here....I will do an update in a few days.  I tend to have more posts on my FB art page so the steps will probably land there before here, but I'll explain here if folks are interested.

[Command-Z]

Nice work! I really dig the pencil look.

Now you're working in a method similar to what I do as far as coloring. I paint a grayscale rendering, only the color layer is on top of the grayscale and the Blending Mode is set to "overlay." 50% gray yields full color, and lights and darks retain their values.

[lemorris]

You know...I saw a guy on a cg site doin somethin like that.  He did these mechanical toasters or somethin fighting it was awesome.

You do a lot of brushwork.

Lately I have been setting my brush to a hard edge brush with opacity at 100 but I keep my flow pretty low...like 10.

I'll do the same thing when I use a soft edge brush and it helps me push color around a bit more.  I'm still pretty crude though.

Do you use any group masks or clipping masks, or just channel masks?

[Denis Kolar]

What happened to the second fog light? 2 right hand mirrors?
I do not want to be picky, but I would hate for you to get to the end and then realize it (If that is not intentionally like that)

Looks great, BTW

[Command-Z]

Yeah, I'm trying to get more out of fewer brush strokes lately, to give a more painterly look. Still mostly using the soft-edged airbrush though for body work, but those hard-edged brushes set to Shape Dynamics get more play nowadays than the old "frisket" method of airbrushing against a hard-edged selection. Especially in the chrome bits.

I use layer masks mostly to fade blurring effects and stuff like that. I try to avoid it for t-shirt work, since when I flatten for sepping, it can make things funky. Maybe I just don't know how to do it right.

Never used a group mask... I use about 10% of Photoshop actually. Up from 5%. Like you, always learning... I went to a Bert Monroy Photoshop seminar once (he's one of the first to use PS for illustration and his books are where I learned most of my basics) and he told us that the people who make PS don't really know all it's capable of. It's the users who tell the programmers what it can do, since most tools have a different purpose when they're invented, than what thy're actually used for. Pretty cool dude.

[blue moon]

Lemorris . . . you da MAN! That' all I have to say about it!

pierre

[Frog]

What happened to the second fog light? 2 right hand mirrors?
I do not want to be picky, but I would hate for you to get to the end and then realize it (If that is not intentionally like that)

Looks great, BTW

The foglight got knocked off in the same accident that broke the left rear axle, lol, at the same time that the mirror got rotated 180 degrees.
The hinge mounted mirrors are, I think, Alberts, the same as came stock on some  BMW bikes, mounted on the headlights (and as add-on bar-ends)

  who is this damn "frog" guy interjecting this trivia that no one else cares about?) Freakin' knowitall!

[lemorris]

Its in progress still

Thats why the one mirror isnt touched yet.  I,also,have a late model popout latch and a bad rack hinge.


I'll probably flip or liquify the far side before color and lock it down.

This person only has one fog light.  A lot of Vw guys do that.  Its a looks thing....not everything is for  function.
I have a friend that runs a stoplight from a schoolbus on their roofrack. 

thanks for lookin.. I appreciate the eyes. 

[lemorris]

Thanks for the brush talk to Scott.  Theres so many ways....crazy.

[lemorris]

Just workin it along the same path.  It's weird to take a week away then touch again, but this is my under-painting so the tonal shift won't be an issue. 

To address the mirror was easy...I knew it would be.  I made a selection, copied and pasted it on to a new layer.  Flipped it horizontal...(yes I made sure my selection did not include the mirror stem, just the mirror itself)....then I just hit ctrl+T and pulled nodes until it lined up like I wanted.  I also did a little bit of warp and turned off all layers except the mirror and used the liquify filter which is the coolest thing Photoshop has added in a decade.

Liquify is a cartoonist dream.  If you don't know about it...try it...wow.

anyway

here's where it landed and it sits while I work on the characters this week and get them integrated, then I go to color.  My deadline is still weeks out so I can slow and steady win the race. 



I love the twisted handle bars....every trike/bike I ever had growin up did that.  LOLOL...I'm an amazing driver to this day because of that.  LOLOL

[lemorris]

This is still a few weeks out from it's due date, so I did a round yesterday.



so...I want to use the car rendering for something else so I wanted it full and I figured I'd just drop the characters in.  A little painters tape on a clean piece of paper over a print of the drawing does the trick on the light table.



I created a rough sketch and made ovals to represent where the heads would be.  This part caused more confusion than it should have on my facebook page.  Clearly this was not the final but I had a hard time convincing people of that fact. 

It's a work in progress....it's going to grow and change as we go along...apparently I didn't make that clear....or maybe my ovals are just so amazing people can't see how they could not be finals...(eye roll)...anyway





I am not a caricaturist at all...not even close.  I'm much more a cartoonicaturist...I roughed these too out in a way and tried to be kind.  Slimmer noses, less wrinkles, less folds...more like a cartoon.



Then I redid them and tightened everything up



I had to enlist the help of my daughter on the lady hair...she wasn't too keen on helping right then, but she did and I posted a pic of her rat fink shirt.  She's awesome. (Note:  I am no where near as good as she is, so I was happy she helped as much as she did.)



I asked my cat to pose so I could draw the toon cat, but clearly he wasn't interested.





In any case I landed in a cat place I liked...it's all still sketch as it all has to be redrawn in similar style, but I like where it landed



I then dropped the lady and the cat in and erased what needed to be erased on copies of all the layers.  Once again...I want to use this car for somethin else so I made sure to duplicate it and work from there



Here's a look at where it will sit till later on this week.  I'm going to print out the people and the cat and transfer them to a piece of bristol and render them via pencil and charcoal, just like the car.  The styles will match up a bit better then.

The client is pretty happy with where it is so far so I'm not going to change too much.  Just stay on track and not worry.  (Yes I will flip the mirror again....Probably before color.

It's been fun and I'm learning so it's all good.

More in a bit.

[screenxpress]

All I can do is shake my head.  I am just awestruck with your capabilities.  Thanks for sharing.

[Dottonedan]

Yup.  I agree with screensXpress.


Nice.  Love the people. Love the bug.   The process, (step by step) is invaluable to many. You never really know how many people you impact by posting something up like that. Members and non members just lurking.  Good stuff. Good food to help a person grow big and strong.