Behind the Pixels Digital Edition Spread

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B E H I N D T H E P I X E L S

Mark Molnar

From Sketches to Pol ished Concept Design


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B E H I N D T H E P I X E L S

Mark Molnar

From Sketches to Pol ished Concept Des ign


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Contents

Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4

W ha t i s co nc ep t des ig n? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

What is the job of a concept artist? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

Concept art in today s entertainment industry . . . . . .7

Chapter 01:Sketches . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . .. . . . . 9

Impor tanc e of l ife drawi ng . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Still Life Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Applying your studies to production designs . . . . 16

How to improve your character design skills .. . . 17

B uil di ng a v is ua l li br ar y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2

Brainstorming for NodeWorld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24Sketchbooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

T he Ar t o f Urban Sketch ing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

S il houe ttes and T humbnail s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Doodling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

L in e Dra win g for D es ig n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2

Scorpion Tank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Chapter 02:Speedpainting and Digital Sketching . . . . . . . 51

M aste r and Photo S tudi es . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Seascape study after John Singer Sargent . . . . . 54

Cre at iv e Ide at ion Exper iments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Thumbnailing How and Why it Works . . . . . . . . 60

C om po si tio n Sk et ch es . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 8

A rct ic Vi st a f or D& D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 0

Color Roughs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Col or Rough T humbnail s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Character and Creature Sketches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

The Chaser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Chapter 03:Character and Creature Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

S ha pe s an d Si lh ou et tes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 0

Droid 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Impor tanc e of Anatomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Originali ty in Creature Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

Per sonali ty thr ough Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

Asmodan , the Gr av ebor n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

Red Giant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

B uil di ng a ba ck -s to ry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 20

Pug Power Suit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

Usi ng Di ffer ent M ater ia ls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

Ets uko Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130

Chapter 04:Environment Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 37

Epic L andscapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

A po ca ly pt ic Pla net . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 40

Resea rch Bas e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

F ic ti onal Arc hi te ctur es . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

The Greenhouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

A rr ak ee n a t N ig ht . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 52

Designi ng around History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

Riots in Pa ris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

Inter ior and Ex te ri or Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

Abandoned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

Mereen P yram id . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

O bj ec t an d Pro p De si gn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 80The Fall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

Chapter 05:Mood and Key Conceptsfor Films and Games. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 93

P res en ta tio n P ie ces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 94

Star Ferry The Process of Finding Images . . . 196

Character s i n y our S ce ne s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206

War C hief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208

The Las t Ship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

Cinematic and Theatrical Lighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218

L ight ing the Ci ne mati c Way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

Matte and Background Painting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

Last s top . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230

D es ig ni ng M ot io n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 36

St or yb oa rd in g B as ic s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 38

Chapter 06:Marketing and Promotional Art. . . . . . . . . . . . 247

Cre at ing Iconi c Image ry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248

Bike U nit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250

The Alpha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252

Illustration versus Concept Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256

Orpheus P itch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258

Marketing Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266

DMC Flashback Back to the past . . . . . . . . . . . 268

Co ver a nd B ox A rt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 76

Hellblade C over . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278

Snow Warrior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280

Artist Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286

ISBN:978-963-12-1558-8

Published by Mark Molnar

Contents and Editing: Mark Molnar

Cover Art: Mark Molnar

Crowdfunding Co-ordinator: Patrice Leymarie

Proof Reading: Steve Turnbull

Book Layout Design: Dnes Dankhzi

Additional Graphic Design: Adrienn Gyngysi

First Edition: February 2015

Printed by PrintTeamin France

Behind the Pixels Mark Molnar

[email protected]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced

in any form without the written permission from the

publisher.

All artworks are used with the permission of the artist.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

means without the prior permission of the publisher, nor be

otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other

than that in which published and without a similar condition

being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Thank you everyone who supported the book!

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Arnd Empting, Gilles Ketting, Ivona Lenovil, Brandon Tolman, Dennis Present, Irina Kovalova, Nick Foreman, Graham Nightingale,

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Alex Falcon, Trent Gardner, Aaron Hofsass, Sonia Matas, Nil Castelltort, David de La Orden, Elaine Pletsch, Hojun Jang, Laura Weinberger,

Christopher Grande, David Matkov, Jay Chen, Alisa Romanova, Xingyun Wang, John Butler, Chuck Grieb, Rhys Nelson-Harrop,Matus Hmelar, Daniel Dorfner, Vicki Fortuno, Gabriel Vasco, Jesper Laugesen, Maria Elisa de Garcia, Agata Romanska, Andrei Lavrenov,

Jordan Adans, Jodie Boutin, Nuria Sanchez Moreno, Suraj Mistry, Muriel Seva, Jrn Zimmermann, Trevor Gamon, Antonio Robledo,

Alec Tse, Pierrick Gien, Clive Playle, Shanaire Blythe, Sheridan Casey, Jarrod Hasenjager, Henry Lam, Olivier Leroy, Paulo Sales,

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Dana Vertongen, Tung Chi Lee, Matthias Mittelmeyer, Stephanie Lee, Jenny Hall, Rachel Park, Sunil Kainth, Jake Doran, Carlos Restrepo,

Kristian Ntragkanof, John Bruckelmeyer, Elias Goransson, Neil Mali, David Metzger, Angel Nieves, Sarah Leckemby, Kenton Nicholas,

Samuel Tonucci, Joo Art, Kanishka Perera, Kallie Ennever, Victoria Koon, Kim Wagner, Li Shi, Guillaume Maucort, Amund Syversen,

Jason Pickens, Damien Rodriguez, Colin Ebanks, Miquel Gordo, Nicholas Dodwell, Przemyslaw Jablolski, Hao-Yu Liao, Will Baker,

Jodie Peat, Dave Baer, Jian An Lew, Max Emski, Carlos Prez Valderrama, Hjalti Gunnar Tryggvason, Jonathan Wai, Marc Giacco,

Serge Da Silva Dias, Diego Parra, Charlotte Lawrence, Charles Brepsant, Jetdilok Meeboon, Robert Cao, Radoslaw Pyzel, Vera Martinez,

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Charles Sutherland, Gary Smith, Liam Connell, Dakota Kamenz, Duncan Rice, Anna Pauline Dimla, Gabriel Raffy, Taksapaun Kittiakrastien,

Christopher Vasquez-Bartosh, Thomss Bauer, Stefan Thorsson, Saw Kyaw Lwin, Austen Mengler, Ian Holaday, Lili Csonka, Daniel Voss,

Rebecca Stonehouse, Andres Pascagaza, Julian Benson, Zoltn Laky

Tutorial Online Video Link
http://markmolnar.com/


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BEHIND THE PIXELS

Introduction

I have been drawing as long as I can remember.I was fortunate because my parents were alsoartistic and instead of pushing me towards beinga doctor or engineer, they encouraged me to getinto drawing at quite an early age.

I started to learn the basics of drawing from lifewhen I was twelve and w as hooked from the rstmoment.

I still remember my rst drawing class. Theteacher put a small red ball on the ground inthe middle of the room and asked us to simply

watch the ball for ten minutes. After the exercisehe asked what happened during that ten min-utes. At rst nobody understood what he wantedthen, slowly, the class began to mention differentthings: birds outside, sounds of people at thefront of the room, change of light, our changingpostures, etc. With that really simple exercise heshowed us that nothing exists on its own andeverything is connected to the world around it.I still keep this in mind for every concept designand piece of artwork I create.

The idea of this bo ok started ve or six yearsago. To force myself to draw more and getbetter, I came up with a daily sketch challengefor myself. Besides my work, I had to do onepencil sketch every day, for a 1000 days. I neverthought I could actually do this, but after a cou-ple of months it became a habit and I nishedmy little challenge without missing one singleday. Right from the start I wanted to create abook from those sketches, so that the challengewould have a real goal, but as I did the challengeI also experimented with digital speed-paintingsas well. So I thought it would be good to includenished artwork in the book and then maybeshow the rest of the process as well and thelist just got bigger and bigger.

When I began working in concept art and digitalillustration: there werent any tutorials; Gnomonand Ca.org had barely started; and I did not evenhave internet connection at ho me. I remembersaving images onto a pen-drive for inspirationat my university. I teamed up with a couple offriends and we tried to learn from each other andthrough our own failures. I went to an art univer-sity, so was lucky to learn all the fundamentals ofart and design there, but I had to learn everything

about concept art and illustration on my own.That was the period when I promised myselfI would try to give back my knowledge to thiscommunity as much as I can.

You can get most of the technical knowledgeonline now, but very few people talk about theactual thinking process behind artwork. You cannd a lot of resources about HOW you can dothings, but nobody tells you WHY. The problemis that as a concept artist or designer you willnot just be h ired to create pretty pictures, youwill be hired to create the world and the reasons

behind it.

In this book I am going to show the most com-mon steps of a production workflow from theviewpoint of a production artist and explain theimportance of each step.

What I have done is try to create the bookwhat would have been the most useful to mewhen I started in the industry. I hope you nd ituseful too.

Mark

What is concept design?

Concept art or concept design is a form ofproduction illustration to visualize an idea forlms, video games, animation and comic books.It is also getting widely used in other elds, likeadvertising, music videos, theatrical and concertproductions and theme park development.

I would like to handle the two terms separately,because they have a different place in the indus-try in my experience.

Concept art is much closer to the eld of illus-tration and is used to establish a general visualdirection for a project. This includes a lot ofexperimental artwork about various moods, envi-ronments, characters, creatures, vehicles, andso on. It mainly focuses on creating inspirationfor the production and on coming up with uniqueideas.

This phase usually happens even before theproduction of a project starts and blends into theearly stages of pre-production.

Most of the time the images published in Mak-ing of art books are like this, or are carefullytailored production artwork that shows the bestpossible side of the actual project. This can bemisleading for beginner artists, as this is notwhat the industry is about this is only 10-15%of the actual job.

Concept design is creating the actual productionartwork and it is much closer to industrial design,set design, costume design, make-up design and

VFX/ special effect design. It is called design,because the created artwork has to serve acertain function in the production. This type ofartwork is usually far less pretty than concept artbecause it is intended to visually communicatethe ideas of the director and art director to theproduction team as accurately as possible.

There are a lot of different techniques for thisfrom a simple collection of reference photosorganized onto mood-boards to the detailed andpolished 2D or 3D designs of various parts of theproject.

This phase of production art creation starts inthe pre-production period and runs until the veryend of post-production ending with conceptdesigns for VFX and visualizing nal adjustmentson the look of the game, lm, or animation.

I should also mention marketing art, which issomewhere between concept art and illustra-tion. Each production needs this type of artworkat various stages of the development, but itsmore commonly used in game production, wherethe marketing materials are usually created bythe production company. In the case of moviesand other types of production the marketing ishandled by the distributor and the art is createdby global advertising agencies.

Marketing art is purely about aesthetics; show-casing the main characteristics of the productusing materials created during the productionphases.

Dune Arrakeen Guard Mark Molnar

Rooftop View Mark Molnar


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BEHIND THE PIXELS

What is the job of a concept artist?

The main job of a concept artist is to help visual-ize the project (script of a lm / animation, worldof a game, etc.) or to help visualize the ideasof the director and art director. The key pointhere is this not just coming up with nice artworkand functional designs that are visually appeal-ing to the audience, but to save money andthats probably the most important part from theproduction point of view. It is s imply much morebudget-effective to experiment with differentdesigns in a 2D or rough 3D form before startingthe actual production period.

The tools used in the industry change all thetime, but this doesnt mean that one is betterthan the other. Digital painting and sculptingsoftware are industry standard now, but youcan be ne creating marker sketches, if you cancommunicate your ideas most clearly that way.

The daily work of a concept artist depends onthe phase the production is in and varies fromdoing sketches and rough speed-paintings tocreating detailed designs of production assets orpainting marketing illustrations.

This book roughly follows the structure of thisworkflow starting with early pre-production tech-niques and nishing with post-production needs.

Rough break down of concept artworkbased on production phase:

Pitch (Pre-pre-production) Phase:Sketches and speed-paintings

Mood concepts and key frame concepts

Mood-boards and reference boards

Pre-production Phase:Speed-paintings and color studies

Sketch, thumbnail and silhouette development

Line drawings and composition sketches

Mood and environment concepts

Character and creature concepts

Vehicle designs

Production Phase:Environment and set design

Costume design and design of accessories

Vehicle and prop design, and blueprint creation

Make-up and practical FX design

Post-production Phase:Matte painting and set extension design

VFX design

Digital make-up design

Design of digital color corrections

Marketing art

Concept art in today`sentertainment industry

Concept art, the phrase conjures up everythingfrom medieval worlds to epic space battles. It isthe culmination of 100 years of illustration, archi-tecture and production design. Concept designevolved from an illustration service to being theblueprint for most virtual characters and envi-ronment designs now. Its role has increased invisibility and prestige logarithmically. The speedand skill at which designs are derived nowadaysis almost incomprehensible in the days o f water-color illustration of set and costume design. But

the key component in concept design IS design.Robh Ruppel Art Director at Naughty Dog

Concept Art & Visual Development is one of themost integral Communication building blocksin the Entertainment Industry. Without the incep-tion of Narrative Visual Storytelling the Produc-tion wouldnt have a foundation to stand on.Whether it being for Feature Films, Animation,Theme Park Design, Stage Design, and VideoGames; there wouldnt be a focal point for theviewers to engage on. Lighting Design, LocationDesign and Costume Design are all facets in thelarger gear of Visual Development and conceptart. Concept Artists create hundreds of draw-ings, paintings, sculptures, and models beforeanything is green lit and the production goes intoeffect. These ideas are turned into reality andare carefully executed by the exacting team thatworks in conjuction with the Conceptual DesignTeam. As the tools such a software changes, sowill the adaptation of design; and the demandsneeded in the Production Design. Its a carefullyimplemented art form that should be invisible tothe viewer at the end of its process. The crafts-men has done his/her best work when there isno question why a lm, game or ride is the wayit is. That is when the concept becomes real, ithas taken on a life of its own. Concept Design isVisual Communication.

Jason Scheier Entertainment Design Instructor

at Art Center College of Design and Senior

Concept Designer at EA Digital Illusions

Concept art, especially in todays market ofvideo games and entertainment properties, hasincreased in value dramatically. Its value in idea-tion and concept exploration is unequaled in theproduction pipeline for modern IP development.Other than the facts, some of my greatest heroesare all concept gods: Iain McCaig, Robh Rupple,Daniel Dociu, and so many more... They are thefolks that inspire me, motivate me, and give mydreams wings.

Jon Schindehette Creative Director at

ThinkGeek Solutions, Founder of ArtOrder

A concept artist is an explorer, using their imagi-nation to nd a world that we have never visitedbefore. Once they have found the key to thisworld, a doorway is opened for the rest of theteam to step through.Tameem Antoniades Creative Director at Ninja Theory

The ability to deliver story in an efcient andemotional manner is the business of the conceptartist. We are at the vanguard of establishing theemotional experience of any movie or game.

Carlo Arellano Art Director at SuperEvil Megacorp

and Instructor at Concept Design Academy

Concept art is the best creative job there is. Allof the fun of coming up with sexy ideas, depict-ing them in a cool way and leaving it to others tosee it through! Concept artists are like chefs whocome up with ideas for recipes, but dont have toactually cook. (Btw, thanks 3D guys for makingthe actual games!)

Shaddy Safadi Art Director at One Pixel Brush

I think the industry is growing at a rapid pacethat has never been seen before. Just 20 yearsago not many actually knew the term conceptartist. Now, students all over the world d ream tohave a career in this industry. My advice to makeit into this industry would be to work hard, nevergive up, and more importantly have fun!

James Paick Art Director at ScribblePad Studios

and Instructor at Concept Design Academy

Afro Samurai Mark Molnar


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Chapter 01:

Sketches


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BEHIND THE PIXELS CHAPTER 01: SKETCHES

Importance of life drawing

Although I started life drawing at a really earlyage I still feel I have a lot to learn about thefundamentals, like anatomy, perspective, compo-sition and color theory. To understand why draw-ing from life is important in this industry, we haveto simplify it a bit. I always say to my students,who think concept art as creating technicalillustrations about an imagined world: the rulesof that imagined world can be different, but wecannot change human perception. For examplewe are used to seeing the world in perspective;we somehow know if the anatomy of a person isnot right; or what time o f day a certain tempera-

ture of sunlight shows. We simply have to followthese rules (or consciously break them) to beable to communicate our ideas in the best way.And the best way to learn the fundamentals ofthe world around us is simply to draw it.

Kan Muftic:

Drawing gure from life is an ancient old prac-tice possibly one of the oldest in the history ofpainting. And one of the most popular tools todo that is, and always was, charcoal. Made fromashes in our primal caves, this tool is as popularas ever. It is very hard to use but if used right,the results are beautiful. In fact, some say it is adrawing tool that paints.

Learning how to use charcoal means that oneneeds to be focused and to take time to makedecisions about where to place strokes, and thisis probably the best way to get better at drawingand very likely the reason why charcoal is usedin art schools across the world.

You dont have to go to art school to start prac-ticing life drawing. Just start with the objectsaround you. A couple of books, an old vase, oreven a simple everyday object like your mobilephone or game console controller can be yoursubjects. Use your desk lamp to set up a con-stant light source and try to vary the materialsand shapes of the chosen objects to keep yoursubject interesting.

After that you can move to drawing your furni-ture as a perspective exercise and your room indifferent times of the day or the view from yourwindow to study various lighting conditions and

more complex compositions. Remember, eve-rything and anything can be the source of yourinspiration.

study Mark Molnar

studies Mark Molnar

plain air sketch Ben Leon study Kan Muftic

plain air sketch Ben Leon


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Tutorial by Alex Negrea |alexnegrea.daportfolio.com

Still Life Study
http://itsartm.ag/alexnegrea


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plain air sketch Ben Leon study Kan Muftic

study Kan MufticHeli Copy Alex Negrea

Heli Copy Alex Negrea


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Tutorial by Alex Negrea |alexnegrea.daportfolio.com

How to improve yourcharacter design skills

When I started drawing, I soo n realized I hada certain go-to model I was drawing over andover again. It was really close to a standard Tpose that you see in 3D model presentations.That was because I had no understanding of themovement of the human body. The key to breakthat habit was a really simple one. Gestures!

You can create them anywhere as long as youhave something to draw with. I prefer to dothem on my computer because I have built a bigcollection of images I constantly reference anddraw from. The only rule I have for them is thetime limit. I set the time to 60 seconds becauseI feel this is the shortest time I need to capturea body pose. I avoid thinking about details suchas hands, feet or portrait. I recommend doing

a page of gestures each day, no excuses! Thegestures that I am doing look something like this.

I also recommend after each full page of ges-tures drawing a few poses completely fromimagination. This will make you focus even moreon the gestures you are doing. Its pretty easy tolet your mind wander and not learn anything afteryou get used to this exercise. Knowing that youhave to do some quick drawings will give you anextra awareness that will allow you to remembermuch better poses. Here are a few examples:

I spend longer on these drawings since its a bitharder to come up with a pose from imagination.But still I dont go over 5 minutes. You have torealize you are faster than you believe. If you do

Applying your studiesto production designs

Most life drawing and painting can be directlyapplied to concept designs.

The next step is taking your studies further andusing the same knowledge as references to

establish your designs or bring your artworks tothe next level. Using a certain shape language o ranatomical base could be a good cue to remindthe viewer of a real world reference, which couldmake your design even more believable.

In Search of Sunrise DarekZabrocki


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version to the client or art director. First you haveto make a selection that denes the edge of thecharacter and ll it with a color. This will be thelayer that were going to use to extract furthershapes as the armor, straps, skin and so on.Make selections for these groups of elementsand extract them from the base layer. To showsome volume just duplicate the base layer, ll itwith white and paint with black where surfacestouch or where you assume that light cant getin and once you are nished set that layer onmultiply over all your other layers. If you want toadd light sources, again duplicate the base layer,ll it with black and set it to linear dodge(add)mode and on it paint with a brush set on lineardodge(add) mode. This should take you a fewhours max. Once you are done with everything

you might want to add some textures to makeit look more natural. And TADAA! You are readyto send it for approval to get permission to fullyrender it.

A few thoughts:If you are a starting artist, there are no excusesto stop drawing. Everyone has to start some-where and the drawings you do in the begin-ning wont be g reat. I created my own fair shareof ugly drawings when I was starting out. Thelearning process is heavily based on makingmistakes. Only then you will know what yourproblems are. Once you know the problem youcan start looking for an answer.

When I started drawing I was doing studiesbecause I saw other people doing studies. ButI wasnt sure what I was studying. For exampleI would study environments and then I wouldpaint robots from imagination. They dont reallyconnect as you can imagine. I learned that itsbetter to start with a drawing from imaginationto see what problems you really have and thengo and study those problems. Start breaking bigproblems (for example, cant draw a full char-acter) into small problems and tackle them oneat a time (e.g. portrait, pose, weapon, clothing,etc). Make sure you set some time aside for yourstudies. Many of you might already have full time

jobs. But if you really want to get better at yourcraft you have to make sacrices.

One nal thing: You really have to do these stud-ies regularly, and make a habit of them. If youstop you will start to lose whatever it was thatyou were working on.

Alex

these exercises for a month on a daily basis youwill see some great improvement in your draw-ings. The key is to not stop doing them.

To better capture a great character you canstart breaking the big gure into s maller parts.Because of space reasons I will talk only aboutthe hands now. The same thing goes for por-traits, feet, ears, eyes etc. The same thing I dowith the gestures I do for all these smaller parts.The only difference here is that I dont really havea time limit because I like to note things down asI observe them and that takes extra time. Here isan example.

Each day give yourself from 30 minutes to anhour and draw a certain part of the body thatyou have trouble with. The more you do theseexercises the better you will get. Also a good tipwould be to keep a mirror near you all the time.Sometimes when you look at a p icture you cantreally understand what you are seeing. Trying toimitate the action in the mirror might reveal toyou some really important detail.

The next step would be to study what humanswear. For this step its important to go onlineand search for sp ecic items like: armor, weap-ons, hats, pants, hairstyles, etc. My weapon ofchoice is Tumblr. There are many pages createdwith these specic keywords. All you have to dois google keyword + Tumblr and you will ndsome great collections. And since these studiesare meant for me to build a visual library I dontset a time limit for studying them. I really like toanalyze them properly and to write my observa-tions down.

OK, now its time to have some fun! All thesestudies might get boring at some point. Theway I keep myself on purpose is by doing draw-ings from imagination to see how much I havelearned. Every time I do it I realize how importantthe studies are and how much they have helpedme improve myself as a character artist. Hereare a few examples of imagination drawingsbased heavily on gestures and wearable items.

Now lets talk about rendering for a bit. This isnot meant to be a nished render but it shoulddo the trick if you want to show some quick color


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The Last Fort Mark MolnarDesert Road Mark Molnar

environment sketches Mark Molnar Soldier Portrait Mark Molnar


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Building a visual library

The more you study from life and the more youdraw certain subject matter, the bigger yourimagined visual library gets and the easier it willbe to draw things from memory and imagination.

In the case of memory we are not just talkingabout remembering, but when you draw a thingit also becomes a muscle memory. You cantrain your memory with drawing pretty muchanything, but this can be channeled towards acertain subject matter really easily.

For example, before I started working on one ofmy previous projects based in the early medievalperiod, I did digital studies of Scandinavian andIcelandic landscapes which were close to themood I had in mind. In addition I did quick andrough composition thumbnails of ruined fortsand castles in my sketchbook with pencils andmarkers. This preparation not only helped meget into the right mood for the production paint-

ings, but contained the hard part of the visualresearch already done. Painting the conceptartwork went much faster, because I already hada clear image of the subject in mind.

You dont have to handle this that seriouslythough, I am trying to build my visual library justsketching around and having fun. It really helpsme to sketch out ideas effortlessly, it could b euseful for my future projects and help in solvingvisual or compositional problems really easily.

These sketches can vary from simple rough

thumbnails and composition exercises to morepolished designs. Try to start with somethingin your surroundings, see what sparks an ideaand let that idea evolve. Sketching without anypurpose may not come naturally at rst, at leastit didnt for me. I had to push myself consciouslyinto coming up with different themes and topicsfor myself every time I wanted to sketch. A goodtechnique or rule is to always sketch somethingtotally different than your previous drawing. Youhave drawn a skinny zombie dude before? Letscreate a fat astronaut girl then! The key is to keepyourself entertained and to have fun.

NodeWorld Line Drawing Mark Molnar

NodeWorld line drawing Mark Molnar David Sequeira


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these planets, coming from various humanoid,alien and more animalistic ancestors. All thecharacters are using high end technology to sup-port their explorations in these new worlds andmost of them has cybernetic implants. As theyare relatively new cultures they also have a tribalvibe representing the fresh start of the colonies.

After summarizing the general direction formyself, I took my sketchbook and simply startedto draw based on my rst impressions. I knowit is strange that I do not gather any references,

like in my professional works, but I start most ofmy personal projects like this. The process helpsme to spark new ideas and to come up withunexpected design choices. I can create withoutthe limitations and restrictions of other imageryand simply experiment around freely.

These are a selection of the sketchbook pages Iworked on before even touching my computer.

Tutorial by Mark Molnar |markmolnar.com

Brainstorming for NodeWorld

Nodeworld was an online fan project organizedby a loose group of artists after the successof its fantasy themed predecessor, Substrata.It was a creative exercise to design a ctionalgame universe in a cyberpunk world. Every artistimagined this world differently and interpretedon their own way. Unfortunately the project wascancelled for various reasons, but doing the

sketches and other designs and illustrationswere really useful to strengthen my creativemuscles.

I already started some p ersonal experimentswith an idea, what takes place in the far futurein the outer regions of the colonized space. Iimagined that strange hybrid creatures inhabit

NodeWorld Sketches Mark Molnar


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Sketchbooks

I always kept sketchbooks with me (when Iremember) and although I am doing far lesssketching than I used to I still think its a greatlittle tool to spend the downtimes of your daywith something useful. Just think about all thetime you spend on a bus or train each day or thevaluable minutes youre waiting for someoneat a cafe. You can also use the leftover half anhour of your lunchbreak for sketching insteadof flipping through the endless stream of yourpreferred social media platform. Or are you boredwatching a movie your girlfriend / boyfriendreally wants to see?

There was a time when I w ent a bit overboardwith my sketching habit. I had a sketchbookbeside my bed, one in the toilet, one in my j acket,one at work, and so on. I had a sketchbook basi-cally everywhere I could possibly have a bit timeto draw. Now I only keep two sketchbooks andthey are both with me most of the time.

I use a really small one for doing life-drawingsketches on the go, I use it on the street, in cafes,buses, airports, etc. The function of this is simplypractice. I dont want to create the prettiest linedrawings, I just draw what I see. Streets, cars,nature, people, everything and anything can beinspiring around you.

My other sketchbook is slightly bigger, but it stillts into even my smallest bags easily. I use thatto sketch out ideas for my actual projects and to

just simply doodle around from imagination. Thisis one of the ways how I build my visual library.

Airport Sketching Mark Molnar


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Tutorial by Kan Muftic |kanmuftic.blogspot.com

The Art of Urban Sketching

My sketchbook is my drawing gym. I carry iteverywhere and I dont miss any opportunity topull it out and draw whatever is in front of me. Inmost cases, when I draw, I am uncomfortable,standing in the rocking London Undergroundtrain, or hunched on a bench in a park. Some-times its very cold, rainy or grim outside. I am

using a 0.1 pen which doesnt allow for manymistakes and, very much like charcoal, forces meto think before I draw. Which is why I really likegoing to fancy coffee shops to draw the interi-ors and people. I nd that this kind of sketchingreally helps get my client work sketched and laidout easily a very important aspect of my work.


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sketch Kan Muftic

sketch Kan Mufticsketch Mark Molnarsketch Mark Molnar


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Exactly the same way as silhouettes, they are agreat way to solve your visual problems quicklyand easily before going into too much detail-ing with an artwork. The key for both of thesetechniques is saving time and energy, and beingmore efcient during production.

Most of the time my silhouette work is only doneas a personal exploration and the client neversees it. Thats simply because its a very earlyand abstract form of the design and usuallytoo far away from the nal. A lot of the time theclients are not necessarily good visual thinkersand it is much harder for them to judge the naloutcome of a design with a lot of missing details.Usually the rst thing I present is a line-up of

more detailed black and white sketches basedon the best silhouettes and thumbnails I havedone.

Some people nd it unnecessary to do silhou-ettes or thumbnails, but with one hour of reallysimple sketching I can come up with 30 com-pletely different ideas and save 5-10 hours ofwork.

Handle this process as a writer handles his notes they are visual representation of your purestideas.

Silhouettes and Thumbnails

Silhouette development is one of the mostimportant in character design. It simply comesfrom the fact that this is the rst thing our mindsees and how we used to distinguish threatswhen our life depended on noticing an attackinganimal in time.

Entertainers have used the power of silhou-ettes from the beginning of movie and produc-tion design. Just think about the iconic shapesof Charlie Chaplin or Mickey Mouse, but I cankeep going further back in time. Theaters andtheir costume designers are consciously usingvarious shapes since the rst theatrical piecesshown in the Greek amphitheaters, not to men-tion the traditional South Asian shadow plays,that are based purely on silhouettes.

Designing silhouettes is especially importantin case of video game development, becausethe player has to able to distinguish dozens oftypes of characters and creatures in moments tomake decisions. Most of the time the s ilhouetteincludes the costume, custom accessories andweapons as well as the overall body shape. If thecharacter or creature has a really uniqu e move-ment or animation, it is also helpful to includethat particular pose in the silhouette design aswell.

Thumbnails are the equivalent of silhouettes justfor designing compositions and scenes. Theycan be done in various ways, using simple lines,blocking in shapes or even adding some valuesto indicate depth.

HellBlade Rough boss silhouettes Ninja Theory and Mark Molnar character silhouettes Mark Molnar


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When Im doodling I u se three different approaches dependingon how I feel or if I already have a concrete idea.

1. Starting with a thumbnail, I enlarge it and work the interior;

2. When I have a fairly clear idea, I use a more developed thumbnail and do the same as 1;

3. Here is a drawing with a concrete idea most of the time one shot and a little eraser.

Theme: Warrior Aberration

The style depends a lot on the kind of project(realistic or super cartoony). For this one, thework was quite free-style. When you create asilhouette you need to show most of the body(dont try to hide an arm), try to make it directand easy to read. You are totally free to createdifferent poses to give the sensation how thecharacter moves (crippled, sexy walk, proud, andso on) and this also works perfectly for creaturedesign.

I use this approach to help me to get a structureto work with when I dont have a strong ideaabout details, like the armor design, what kind ofculture or historical background he comes from,and so on.

Moving on from there: I could draw all of theoptions, but I choose only one. I enlarge the bestsilhouette in size, adjust its opacity to very low(around 20%) and start sketching.

Tutorial by David Sequeira |davidsequeira.deviantart.com

Doodling

Initially I will try to explain my process when Imdoodling; the methods I feel more comfortablewith and which are quite quick. I know every art-ist has their own way of doodling, but I hope thiswill help you explore the one you like. Take timeto explore new methods.

When I doodle I try to imagine the shape orsilhouette.

Silhouettes are very useful for exploring ideas

and help a lot in games, movies, comics andillustration. It is also the easiest way to get agood lesson in form.

Imagine the following: you are in a room alonewith the door open and you feel a presence ofsomeone. You turn and you see only the silhou-ette of your mom standing there. You recogniseher instantly because you live with her, and youare familiar with her gestures and body shape.

You can even tell her mood based on her pose.

The silhouette is the basic form of the object,the contour. Almost everything around us canbe transformed into simpler shapes that youremember. And these shapes come out whenyou look at a cloud and see a dog, or a horse, ormaybe a demonic bunny.

Here you have an axe. Yes, its obvious but thatsbecause even without texture, material or volumeyou still recognize the shape. You can play withthis main idea and use common shapes to get astronger image.

The interior of a silhouette is a virgin place whereyour creativity is let loose. The same silhouettedoesnt necessarily need to have the same inte-rior. Explore, sailor, explore!

The top one here is a simple example using thesame shape, but with different end results with-out losing the main mental image of the axe!

Little exercise: creating one silhouette and try toll it in with various random ideas.

Certain shapes or lines convey different feel oremotion:Strong, crisp lines, give a sensation of hardness,evil, sharp, stones, ice, and so on.Curvy, gentle lines give the opposite: soft, elastic,organic, liquid, etc.

That might also seem obvious, but having it inmind can add a lot of flavor to your drawings.


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After nishing the doodle you cancreate more props to the character,like upgrading or levelling up.

Okay, now to the fun part: lets gi ve it life. Earlier Imentioned the graphic style, choose the one thatworks best for your project, cartoon and morerealistic design. After nishing this step you cango to a cleaner version and add colors or tex-tures depending on your desired result.

Some tips: Use references, if you dont feel sureabout how the armor works o r anatomy. Withtime you will become less dependent on refer-ences, because you create your own mentallibrary. Even so, keep watching everything aroundyou, sometimes you will nd an object or see an

animal that gives you new ideas for design, orspark ideas to create a new and fresh drawing.Watching bugs can give you ideas for aliens orfantasy creatures, even for props like armor orweapons.

Always keep your eyes open.

When I have a more precise idea I usethe base lines technique. It is quitesimilar to making illustrations, but worksperfectly for thumbnails.

If I am still not 100% sure about thedirection, I draw a more rened idea ofthe armor, props and details loosely.You dont need to spend too much timeat this stage, anatomy correction andclean-up are the next step.

Let the fun begin!

Grab the last version of the sketchand lower the opacity. Try to workon separate layers, if you want tochange anything later. I started withthe head and necklace, then added anew layer for the torso and correctedthe anatomy and perspective. Nextare the wrists and legs, etc. Its likeassembling a lego!

After I have merged everything, I gavesome extra white lines to the charac-ter. It adds more volume and weightand gives an idea where the main lightcomes from.

Practice and have fun! Find a tech-nique you enjoy and practice it untilyou nd it challenging, then jump to anew one!

Always carry a sketchbook with you,you never now when a new ideastrikes you!

Artist tip:The brush I really like to use is a trian-gular one, that mimics a more realisticpencil:
http://davidsequeira.deviantart.com/art/Brushs-And-Shapes-478982620


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Line Drawing for Design

Although silhouettes and thumbnails are reallyuseful at the rst ideation stage, its much easierto nesse out a design problem with a simpleline drawing. Lines are really tricky, because inthe real world they dont exist on their own. Linesare created when two colors or values meetand we translate what we see in to a more easilyunderstandable form. We like to think in simpli-ed structures to understand the world aroundus and the lines are the abstraction of thesestructures.

In my everyday process linework is usually the

second step in the design phase after the maincomposition sketching or the creation of thumb-nails. For example, in the case of a characterdesign, I take the most successful silhouette orblack & white rough sketch and I draw on top(in a separate layer). During this phase I am justtrying out different ideas about how to solve thedetails and most of the time I create multipleiterations from the same design.

After this I push back the opacity for both of mylayers and I start the ne linework o n top. Itsreally worth spending time with your ne line-work, because that is going to be the base ofyour overall design. This is the point where youcan lay down all the perspective lines and xevery anatomy issue.

Linework can be useful for any design task, butthe most valuable is in case of hard surface orindustrial design. The draw-through technique,where you are building a perspective grid andsketching up both sides of a vehicle, robot, orwhatever, is still the most frequently used tech-nique for hard surface designers working in theentertainment industry.

Nowadays 3D concepting techniques are moreand more common even in the early stages ofvisual development, but its always good to laydown your ideas with a much quicker lineworkbeforehand. There are some amazing 3D con-cept artists around, but usually its better tomove to a 3D modelling package with a relativelysolid idea, because your workflow can really slowdown and the experimenting usually stays moreon the level of small and medium details.

Robot Chicken nal Mark MolnarRobot Chicken line sketch Mark Molnar


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ammunition of Sabot 120 mm anti-tank roundsand you can see the ammo belt at the rear ofthe main weapon. All these details and thoughtson how the vehicle functions were achievedusing the proper reference. My visual library alsohelped but this is something that comes with

experience. You perfect your craft with practice,although I know perfection is something I willnever achieve. Constant improvement is some-thing that keeps me on re to achieve better nexttime.

Step 05.

Alright, although we dont have a nal prettyrendered piece that would do your mother proud,it is good enough for production. A good model-ler will be able to do their work and to make his

job even easier we take a small break from ournal presentation of the design and create someorthographic views along with s ome basic expla-nation of how this tank works. I personally nd itcool to make different views of a design, it givesyou a complete insight and it looks great if youput them next to one another. Although I couldhave done the rear and a rear three-quarter viewI wanted to continue with my render since I didthis view as a fast bonus.

Step 06.

In this step we give the tank its rst sense ofvalue, color and the overall mood. By giving thedesign a rst basic render pass the silhouetteappears, from here we can always adjust thedesign a little bit if needed. Other than that I play

around with the lighting. A good working knowl-edge of value structure and color theory helpsyou show your ideas i n a believable way. Themain light will come from the right. I use otherlight sources like ambient and bounce lightingonce I am starting to go into the details.

Step 07.

To have a feeling of how the smaller parts willlook like I decided to start with the ner details,and see how they look as a whole in my currentlighting conditions. I often zoom out, or standback from the screen, to see if the bigger shapesstill read well. I am also now relying less on theline drawing. The render will eventually replacethe line drawing and all the forms will be held bythe render itself. I put in a quick dude for scale

and a sense of setting. The tank is somewherein a post-apocalyptic desert with an infantrysoldier next to it. Hes just chilling and happy themachine is on his side.

Tutorial by Michal Kus |www.kus-art.com

Scorpion Tank

Lets take a look at how I approached a Military SF vehicle.Specically a redesign of Feng Zhus Scorpion tank which he designed for Command & Conquer 3.

Step 01.

One rst thing you want to do is to make sureyour design looks cool before you start creat-ing the nal presentation. These are explorationsketches, be loose and dont wo rry about makingit look pretty. Even though I know ho w the gen-eral shape will look I still want to sketch arounddoing these variations. I am getting warmedup and putting myself in the SF vehicle designmood. I advise everybody to do that because thetenth sketch will always look better than yourrst and here are some of the roughs I pickedthat t best.

Step 02.

From the selected roughs we make tightersketches. In this step we dene some of thedesigns. We give the client (or ourselves) a clearchoice of direction. Line drawings are prettyhandy for this. You have all the freedom youwant when you draw from scratch and not los-

ing too much time to show off an idea. Whendrawing digitally, remember to make straightlines from your elbow in a fast swift move anduse your wrist for the smaller details. In order tomake a design successful creatively its super-important to build up a visual library. For this SFvehicle I looked and researched a lot about on

how modern military hardware looks like andfunctions. Of course you dont need to knoweverything about military hardware because,as a versatile concept artist, you will be doingresearch about a lot of topics anyway.

Step 03.

Since there are a lot of tutorials and breakdownson how to approach concept design in 3D Iwanted to stay all 2D with this one. Here we aredrawing the nal design from a different, moredramatic, low camera angle that suggests theoverall mass of the tank. I will end up mixing allthree drawings from the previous step into thisone.

Step 04.

And here we are, we have spent some time mak-ing a nal line-art drawing. Since w e establishedthe look and various features in previous steps Itook time here to focus on details and how theyfunction. The gun is being fed by a large belt of


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Step 08.

From step 7 we just keep the ball rolling. Weflesh out all the details we designed into our nalline drawing and render/paint the sh*t out of it.I use smaller chalk brushes for the little detailsand large custom brushes with s ome nice metaltextures for the bigger surfaces. By this poin t theopacity of the line drawing is low and we see allthe forms thanks to the lighting alone. While Iwas detailing I kept the lighting in mind: Theres

a slight bounce light from the ground on thetracks; some specular lighting to highlight thesmaller details; some reflections with a nice bluehue on top of the tank; and the direct lightingfrom the right. All these light sources help thetank to pop out in a nice way while keeping allthe elements visible. Additionally I gave ScaleDude some love.

Step 09.

Knowing that the piece is nearly nished I usuallytake a break. I take a walk and listen to the birdssing. I swear it really balances out your state ofmind after designing a machine of death likethis. Then I come back and can see mistakes. Itweak the piece and add some ni ce extras: somevolumetric fog; dust near the tracks becauseIm imagining the tank has just stopped; and anice lens flair from the red optic system to makeMichael Bay happier when he sees it.


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Steam Mecha digital linedrawing Mark Molnar Skirmish Boat Europa Michal Kus

Cockpits Georg LoeschnerArmour Georg Loeschner

Nodeworld Creature David Sequeira


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Chapter 02:

Speedpainting andDigital Sketching


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BEHIND THE PIXELS CHAPTER 02: SPEEDPAINTING AND DIGITAL SKETCHING

Master and Photo Studies

Doing studies from real life is a great thing, butmost of the time we cannot organize a realperson modeling for us and it also would behard to travel to the other side of the world todo some pre-production plein air study of anancient ruin. We are lucky because we are livingin the digital age and we can get a huge library ofreference pictures online. We can study hundredyear old paintings, do endless quick-pose virtuallife drawing sessions with a timer, and even govirtual plein air painting, if we want.

Of all these things I think the most important

is studying the work of old masters. Its not acoincidence we call them masters. They mas-tered all the knowledge of image creation from

perspective, through composition, to lighting andanatomy. I know its really tempting to browsethe trending digital artists online on the socialnetworks, but the most successful artists todayhave the same roots and built their craft onto theexact same principles.

For studying the old masters you can just use asearch engine, but there is Googles art project(https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/proj-ect/art-project) and many world-famous galler-ies have online archives where you can view thepaintings in high resolution. When doing a study,dont just copy the image, but more importantly,try to understand the decisions made during thecreation of that particular work.

Observe the color palette, the brushstrokes, thegrouping of details, the handling of the focalpoints think through how you would constructthe image. You dont have to study all of this atonce though, stay with one topic for each ses-sion you do. For example, for studying lighting,pick the paintings whose mood captures yourimagination the most and try to study how thepainter achieved that with lighting and atmos-phere.

Studying photos can be really hard becauseits even easier to fall into a state of mindless

copying. You can apply the same principles Imentioned above, but your focus should be moreappropriate to the medium itself.

The most important things to study are compo-sition and real world lighting, or how the cameracaptures real world lighting to be exact. We areso used to seeing everything on screens throughcamera lenses that we adapted to it. In the worldof entertainment design its really importantyou learn how to imagine the world through acamera lens including all of its visual artefacts,perspective distortions and imperfections.

The best resource for this is movies. You caneasily pause a movie on your DVD or computer,but there are also a lot of cinematography web-sites where you can browse through a huge ar-chive of movie screenshots from award-winningcinematographers and photography directors.

No Country for Old Man color study Mark Molnar

Alphonse Marie de Neuville color study Mark Molnar


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Always try to think through how light reactsin real life. In this case most of the colors wesee on the waves are reflections of variousparts of the sky behind the painter.

04. I gradually move towards more satu-rated colors and I also extend my valuerange slowly. Usually I start with very limitedvalues and I move towards really dark andreally light colors. This gives me a much

greater control over my painting, but I canstill keep the dynamism of the workflow.

05. The nal stage is adding all the nedetails, the darkest darks, the lightest andmost saturated lights and the colors whatare slightly out of the overall color schemeof the painting, like the bright peach colorsand the desaturated blues of the foams andthe orange color aberration we can only seewhere the saturated reflections of the lightsource meets the desaturated complemen-tary blues of the ocean.


Seascape study afterJohn Singer Sargent

I wanted to choose a relatively simple paintingfrom an old classical master for this tutorial,because I wanted to focus on the subtle colorchanges. This painting from Sargent gives agreat chance to practice the different hues in onesingle painting and it is great for focusing solelyon the colors of its simple and natural subjectmatter.

The same process can be applied to studying

more complex paintings, the only thing you haveto do is to break down the image into its maincompositional elements (eg. background, char-acters, foreground) and handle those separatelyat the detailing phase.

I never pick the colors when I am doing studies,I always put the original painting or image onmy other screen and try to handle it as it wouldbe a window to another reality. I use very basicbrushes on only one single layer and the smudgetool with the basic charcoal brush to blendcolors and to achieve a more painterly result.

00. The original painting.

01. When I am doing studies I try to use thesame method, when I was painting with oils.Classic painters never really started with ableached white canvas. Here I tried to guessthe color of the base coat that Sargent mayhave used.

02. I am blocking in the main compositional

elements of the image with using desatu-rated versions of almost the same color asthe base coat. As I am going towards thegrays and this way in the direction of thecomplementary color on the color wheel,our mind feels that the color is gettingcolder.

03. I start to add various hues to my paint-ing. This phase is about observing thedifferent colors on the original painting, thesame way as you would obs erve nature, ifyou would do a plain air painting on the spot.

00 01 02 03 04

05


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Bride Lukas Esch

Kim English color study Mark Molnar

David Lidbetter color study Mark MolnarBig Ben color study Mark Molnar

No Country for Old Man color study Mark Molnar


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time limit for a piece like this is 10 or 15 minutes,which is just enough to block in the key things.Some of you may say wow, you are fast! butI am not that fast actually. This whole thing isnot about the speed, but learning how to makegood decisions during this process; how to focusyour energy on the most important things ; andhow to ignore everything else. Always try to thinkabout your focal areas and how you can drivethe viewer to look at those. Spend time on thestory behind the image and leave the rest to theviewers imagination.

You can apply the same exercise to any baseimage. Start the process with a photograph orone of your old paintings. The same thing could

work in 3D as well, creating quick speedsculptsor kit bashing together random objects basedon the same idea breaking the habits of yourmind.

The key for this exercise is to do it often and doat least ve or six images in a row. Sometimesit works straight away, but we usually n eed timeto rid ourselves of the shapes, forms, colors, etc.that usually come out of our hands the rst time.

Creative Ideation Experiments

We can all run into creative blocks, when noidea pops up when we want to draw or paintsomething. There are only a few worst thingsfor an artist than staring the blank white pageor starting something from scratch without anydirection. And the really scary thing is that youcannot allow this to happen if you are workingprofessionally. There are some ups and downs,of course, but you cannot say to your art directorSorry mate, not today. To avoid this situation Ibegan to do creative digital painting exercises, tohelp me to come up with random compositionswithout being concerned about the outcome orhow the nal result would look.

Its exactly the same thing we used to do as kids:watching the clouds and try to see something inthem.

I start with random shapes and just going withthe flow and rhythm of the creation itself. Dupli-cating and transforming the painted informationI have put down already, trying out layer modes,effects, lters there are no rules when you areexperimenting.

The next step begins when I discover somethingin the shapes. After this I start to build moreconsciously on top of that idea to make senseof the initial composition and describe as muchas I can, but also as quickly as I can. My usual

Scrap River Mark MolnarNo Mans Sky Paul Scott Canavan
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5eSrtUB4zBL3wXt1DUqJgeoRjmGT9WXx


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1. Good atmospheric depth range from foreground to

background.

2. Good saturation levels and range of hues, we can

see this in the histograms.

3. We dont have any clipped values.

4. Good amount of contrast/brightness.

Now that we have the image we need to simplifyit to see what makes the realism work on its sim-plest level. As you see in the examples which is asimple median lter applied is that we still havean image that feels real. Loss of details does notmean loss of the sense of realism. What createsthe sense of realism are hues in relationship andharmony as brightness and contrast is the framefor how dark/light relationships will be. Even withloss of detail, the main colors stay, all histo-grams are basically still very much the same.Even brightness shifts are very minimal.

This bottom image gives us enough to work withfor the next steps.

Tip: When introducing new hues in your painting,try to smooth the transitions between them sothe hues blend.

Viewing images small unies the core elementsof realism requirements.Ultimately our brainreads the same image. This also means thatthe strokes you do on a zoomed out image arelarger then you would do on a zoomed in can-vas. Changing an image becomes a very quickprocess.

Tutorial by Levi Peterffy |www.artoflevi.com

Thumbnailing How and Why it Works

My name is Levente Levi Peterffy, i am a VFXprofessional and have been working in games,feature lms and advertisement. I was given theopportunity to do a tutorial article so i decided towrite one about thumbnailing. Hopefully it will besomething you can apply to your workflow. Allof these images from the top i s created by thisthumbnailing technique.

Good representative image of hue-range and brightness contrast range.

Before we dwelve into the technique we n eed tond a good starting position. Since this tech-nique will be aiming at achieving a good senseof realism i felt we need to set the base there toexplain it better. This is the image I picked forthat purpose. Why we need it is because it hasthe following:


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Keeping the hue relationships intact doesntmean that it has to be the exact same hues as inthe starting image in the end, only the relation-ships between them should work. This meansthat the nal image can have a different paletteand what is truly kept is the lighting, which in

turn conveys realism. The following thumbnailshave a different palette but they still convey real-ism. This give us the conclusion that hue/color isirrelevent on its own. Light is the key that holdseverything together.

Tip: When blocking in painting, always paintzoomed out. This makes sure you focus on theoverall image and forces you to work with bigbrushes.

Saturation / Vibrance of Hues

Mid to high saturated hues allow wide range ofcolor shifts and tints. Low saturated hues givelimited range of hues to shift and tint. If youdesaturate your image too much it will be moredifcult to alter an images palette and colorsas it is close to greyscale. Overly saturatedcolors breaks the realism and makes an imagelook more like like a high dynamic range image.Somewhere in the middle is recommended as

you can view in the image sheet.

Tip: start painting with saturated colors as youcan dene and change your palette of the nalimage later in the process.

Brightness / Contrast

With brightness and contrast you can controlhow dark your deepest shadows will be and howbright your whites will be. This is independentof what color palette and hues you have. Thelevel of brightness/contrast has to be acceptablewithout ruining the readability of the image. Highcontrast clips values and narrows down the huerelationships, resulting in readability loss of theimage.

Tip: avoid using pure black or pure white in thepainting.

By simplifying and painting in thumbnail sizeand almost solely using big brushes we canblock out our scenes. What is key is that the huerelationships are kept intact and so the realism isstill maintained despite we alter the shapes andcompositions. In thumbnail size our brain unieseverything into believing these scenes as havinga sense of realism. The process is to constantlyinterpret the painting as a whole and respect thehue transitions and relationships that make thetop image work. The following images are basedon the understanding of those relationshipswhich we adapt to our painting. We create newimages with same realism. The grass has similargreen hues, the sky is bright but not too much,with hints of cool light blues.

Alternate Palette

Original Palette

Alternate Palette

Original Palette


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Journey Mark Molnar

White Death Mark Molnar

Ancient Ruins Mark Molnarsketch Alex Brady

Exploration Darek Zabrocki


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sketch Alex Brady sketch Alex Brady

Metropolis Darek Zabrocki

sketch Arnaud Pheu


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not reflecting any light and therefore completelyblack, and even the brightest lights are not 100%white. You can achieve a much more balancedimage with limited values and use your extracontrast and highlight to strengthen your storyelements and focal points.

You can also limit your values even further to useonly 30-40% of the full range. This technique isperfect for creating ultra-low key and ultra-highkey images, but you have to balance the overalldark or overall light values with some opposites.This is a really effective tool to create tensionand drama in your images, if you use it at appro-priate places from the storytelling point of view.

Composition Sketches

When developing environments or more complexscenes for a production, a really important partof the process is doing black and white com-position sketches. This is the step where youpush what you laid down at the thumbnailing orideation stage further, and where you establishthe overall value structure and lighting of yourimage.

Some people prefer to paint straight in color, butto work in black and white can really help youfocus and reduces the number of problems youhave to solve at one time. Dont forget the colorswe see all have different values at the same colortemperature so changing one color, if you are notcareful, could seriously alter your value structure.For example, some colors feel brighter becauseof the wavelength of the light that bounces backfrom them, but in real life they are exactly thesame tone.

The value range of your artwork can help directthe viewers attention. Usually the brightestareas attract our eye rst, but you can also play

with contrast. Consciously apply more bright-ness and contrast around your focal areas andyou can also place cues to direct the viewer inthat direction. Try to build up your value structureto follow the story of your image, this way it isgoing to be much more easily readable and feelcleaner.

In a production environment you are required todevelop multiple value studies / tonal sketchesaround the same environment or space. Theseare the scenes that help your art di rector ordirector to decide which direction could be themost interesting and also serve the project, andthe overall visual direction, the most. The keything again is to save valuable time and energybefore going into a more time-consuming detail-ing phase or before creating a basic block-inabout the scene in 3D.

Try to limit your general value range between15-85% of grey and spare your darkest andlightest values for the nal touches. In real lifethere are very few places and things that are

sketch Arnaud Pheusketch Arnaud Pheu

This is Not Mars Geoffrey Ernault Night Watch Bolton Better Run Gilles Ketting


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I added clouds to the sky plane and introducedmoist and aerial perspective between the differ-

ent space segment. I also painted in a point offocus to each image to add a little bit of a storyand life.

These were the sketches I have sent to the artdirector for review.

Step 03. Detailing

The client choose the rst sketch, depicting aboat sailing in the ice fjords. Although Dungeons& Dragons is a fantasy world, my art directorfelt that the ice shards are a bit too much, so wewent with a slightly more realistic direction.

I changed the right side of the image to the bot-tom part of a glacier and also introduced morerocks between the ice and snow to bring in a

variation in the color palette. From this point onit was just hours of detailing to get to the qualitythat I was after.


Arctic Vista for D&D(Art Director: Daniel Gelon, Copyright by Wizards of the Coast)

My task here was to create a location back-ground for the latest edition of D&D. Backgroundimages are used to illustrate certain scenariosand to establish the mood of various parts of thegame. As there wasnt really any specic land-mark or building in the image I could focus on, Iwanted to create nice composition with slightlyunusual mountain shapes, like giant ice shards.

As the key to this environment was to createdepth, I wanted to handle the different spacesegments separately. The easiest way to this isto block in each of them with pure silhouettesand then ll those out with details and texture.

After you have foreground, mid-ground andbackground, you can break those down intomore and more layers and apply extra aerial per-spective to strengthen the depth. If you handleyour layer structure consciously, the detailingis going to be much faster and it will be reallyeasy to introduce any changes that the clientrequests.

Step 01. Black & White Thumbnails

I have started with limited value thumbnails toexperiment with the composition and variousshapes. I knew I wanted the spiky shards tobe the main feature of the image, so I kept thehorizon line relatively low. This way the verticalshapes could dominate the compositions. I havedone about 12-15 of these, but I only show thethree I picked for further detailing. Usually I d ontshow these quick sketches to the client, becauseI want them to get a much accurate picture ofwhat I am after with the nal image.

Step 02. Coloring the Sketches

I moved further with the chosen black & whitesketches and added more denition to allthe mountains. I used color, overlay and softlight layers to color them up quickly and alsoadded some extra texture to them with custombrushes.

Step 01

Step 02a

Step 02b

Step 02c


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Xtypes Emrah Elmasli

Black Skull DarekZabrocki

Smoke Zone Scribble Pad Studios and James Paick


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Matrix movies, the sick brown-yellows of Se7enor the heavily colored fantasy movies, like theLord of the Rings trilogy or 300.

In video game productions the same process isincreasingly used to create a specic color pal-ette for the various levels. This is usually part ofthe initial exploration phase, where the nal lookof the game is still uncertain.

The main difference is that the actual gameusually goes through many more iterations thana feature lm. The nal look is always based onthe changes in story, game design and game-play, so it is much harder to block in the nal lookmonths or in case of triple-A titles years inadvance.

You can easily create the base of your colorroughs on top of your black & white sketchesusing various layer options, like Color, Soft Lightand Overlay. After you have successfully createdyour main palette, you can simply paint on topof these layers to introduce more colors outsideof your palette which can help emphasize yourfocal areas.

I prefer to start my color studies in color (ratherthan beginning with black and white) andapproach them almost the same way as I domy black & white thumbnails. The difference isthat I try to focus on the overall color palette andthe balance and ratio of colors. I care much lessabout the actual composition. What I have tokeep in mind is the story I am trying to tell andthe mood and emotions I want to connect toscene.

Color Roughs

Creating color studies in your production pipelinecould be essential in establishing a certain moodfor a project. With these relatively quick sketchesyou can easily experiment more and as a nalstep lay down your overall color palette beforemoving to more detailed illustrations.

The technique of painting rough version of colorkey frames comes from the development ofanimated movies, where it was really importantto see all different mood changes through thewhole storyline. This way the production design-ers and art directors could give a solid guidelineto background painters, character painters andanimators on how to handle the actual scenes.The overall sequence of the color roughs iscalled color script, because it follows the wholestoryline and tries to translate that into simpliedcolor sketches and palettes.

Besides associating them with moods usingcolors to differentiate the presence of dominantcharacters in the scenes is also very common.The greenish tone used for the evil character ofSyndrome in the animation feature The Incredi-bles or the red lightsaber and other lasers usedby Darth Vader and other villains in the Star Warssaga are perfect examples for that.

In case of movie productions you dont reallyneed to include this in the pre-production, simplybecause you have much more freedom to applypost effects and various lters even after theshoots. But this does not mean that color is notimportant in feature lms. There are many mov-ies where the director of photography handledthe color palette very deliberately. Think aboutthe overall green tone of the virtual world in the

Environment Demo Scribble Pad Studios and James Paick

sketch Ben Leonsketch Efflam Mercier


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Step 04. Thumbnails alternate hues

We alternate the palettes by using color balanceshifts, gradient maps to affect midtones, shad-ows and highlights with different colors.

To demonstrate how this method works in apractical way, i have recorded the progressionfor the following image. In it you can view howI start with the simplied image and use thatto redene it to new shapes and composition.Notice that the painting is not rushed as I amtrying to read the painting over and over again.Sometimes subtle hints. I am keeping the rela-tionships intact for the light to stay consistentwith our starting image. Meaning I use similardarks, similar midtones and highlights. So our

rst sketched image has naturally the samepalette and hue relationships.

The last step once I am done with the sketch isalter the hues, with color b alance and gradient-maps. These functions impact the image univer-sally so the overall image is changed.

Now that we have gone through the process andknow how and why it works, we can ask our-selves: What is the point of thumbnailing?

Simply put its a very fast technique to use forblocking out ideas. We can also achieve a senseof realism with it because it respects the huerelationships within a lit environment. All thiswithout spending any time on details. If thethumbnail works and is suggesting enough, thenthat serves as a solid base for rendering a highlydetailed image.

Another aspect of the technique is that youbecome more comfortable working with huesand light for an image as whole. It also forcesyou to not be precious about the strokes youmake in the painting. Reiterations become veryquick and easy. All in all I think its a powerfultechnique that unies a lot things in a very sim-ple matter-of-fact way.

The technique beforehand does require that youdo understand shapes, composition, perspec-tives and can dene things with painting.So ifyou lack that knowledge it will be hard for youto dene your thumbnails. With a lo t of practiceyou wont even need a starting image to simplify.Your knowledge of hue relationships will be wideand so you know which hues work togetherand how to connect them. But this comes fromencountering these hues and remembering whythey work.

Tutorial by Levi Peterf |www.artoflevi.com

Color Rough Thumbnails

Step 01. Start Image

Our starting image, witch one that has a goodamount contrast, depth and hues.

Step 02. Simplied image

With this image we can identify the following bitswe need to do our own sketch.

1. How dark the shadows go

2. How bright the highlights are

3. The palette showing hues across the whole light-

ing environment, how they smooth and connect

together. These are the hue transitions we need to

remember.

4. We see the kind of mood lighting we aim for.

Step 03. Thumbnails original hues

Based on the information we found from thesimplied image, we paint new thumbnails.These follow the same structure and relationshipas our rst simplied image. We use big brushes,zoomed out view and paint new shapes andcompositions.

It goes without saying that you need a solidbase understanding of painting, dening shapes,understanding form and composition.

Step 03

Step 04
http://itsartm.ag/levipeterffy


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Digital Painting Demo Scribble Pad Studios and James Paick

Black Pegasus Darek Zabrocki

Blue Color Speedies Michal Kus


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you time and you are probably going to end upwith a much clearer direction for the next step inthe process after the approval.

It always comes down to personal preferenceand what your client or art director requires youto do. The key is that you have to provide clearideas and it is also great if you can match thestyle of the sketches to the overall style of theproject.

The main thing is to create personality for yourcharacters and show their back story. You cansuggest certain things through their anatomyand proportions and add more denition withtheir costumes and accessories. At this phaseof character development you can also startthinking about different posing to show the mostcharacteristic movement / stance of your char-

acters and creatures. This could be really helpfulfor the actors playing the roles o r the animatorsbringing them to life.

You still dont have to clarify everything andnesse out all the details, but you have to showenough to indicate the main direction for thecharacter. Main characters usually need muchmore work and can go through a lot of changesand iterations during the production, but most ofthe changes are happening on the micro level.If you have an approved character sketch, thatencapsulates the essence of a characters per-sonality that is always going to stay the core ofdesign till the end of the production.

Character and Creature Sketches

The method of sketching out characters andcreatures can vary from simple linework, throughblack & white digital tonal sketches to creatingslightly more advanced color variations, but thegoal with doing more lo

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