MONSTERWORK SHOP - FINAL VERSION DUE TONIGHT (MONDAY)

[Cerno]

Week 2 Step 4 backlink

Detail work, slow progress. Needs plenty more work, still got a lot to learn, need to research more, I guess.
Tried a different pen for the hands, which now somewhat clashes with the rest of the image.
The wizard's shadow is most likely wrong, at least the pole should not cast a shadow with the light source on top.
Thought about drawing a giant wang, but I fought against that notion... for now.



@dactylopus: Adding some reds to the smoke was a really good idea as it reduced the contrast against the monster. I need to research volcanoes and clouds to start the detail work there.
@cat: Thanks for the hint. Added some red to the wings, this will hopefully also help in texturing them (black makes that quite difficult I guess). It still looks quite generic and not lit from below though.
@SookieSock: I have that website bookmarked, but thanks for the reminder. I am always baffled by how people can actually use it though, as I have quite a poor feeling for colors. For instance, I couldn't possibly think of anything to do with the palette you posted, nor would I choose any of the colors you presented if I had to. However I know that seemingly unfitting colors can be used to great effect and I am sure that most people here would know exactly what to do with your palette. I just don't have a grasp on the topic at this time. Any "colours for dummies" resources? Anyway, I'll try to play around a bit with your colors and maybe something will go click in my head
@miguel: Thanks for the input, I'll try to find some more reference material if time permits.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Cerno:  Your image reminds me of one of those medieval stained-glass windows in a cathedral .  I would almost suggest trying to make it look like a stained glass scene, just to see how it turned out.

[waheela]

ThreeOhFour, the details and shading you're adding is absolutely amazing. I love his translucent skin! Can't... stop... staring... at his junk though...

Mordalles, agghhhhhh! Gushing love for your pic right now. Especially love what you did with the shell.

Misj, so sad you're dropping out! I'd love to see more updates from you, even if you're no longer in the running.

miguel, really nice colors. I like the warm light hitting his body. I agree with Shane's comments, but I'm not quite sure how one would go about fixing this. Quick fixable thing, the wall next to the monster's head looks like it should be in front of the monster, and putting the head in front of the wall looks a little forced. Just to see how it looks, maybe clip off a little of the head so the monster appears to be inside the hole a little more?

cat, awesome seeing your monster come to life! I love his little gill frills. Hmmm, I agree with Cerno a little when it comes to the arms. Also, if this isn't the look you're going for then ignore me, but he doesn't look very fierce or threatening right now. I think it's the eyes.

Cerno, wow, your piece is really coming along well! Great colors!
The pose definitely looks better. If it were me though, I'd probably bend the front arms back a little for a more natural position, since he'd only really need to grab with his back legs. All up to you though.



My update:



Added detail and shading to the cards to the hands. Based on your guys' feedback, I also made Lord Jagged's hands bigger, and I'm planning on re-shading his midsection tomorrow. As always, feedback welcome.

[loominous]

Prog:

Still think the piece has some kinks on a macro level.



This is a blurred scaled down version, which helps focusing on the big picture, and reveal the major shapes of the pic, which I usually call "blobs".

We see a few brighter regions, but they're very scattered, and placed mostly around the edges of the image.

This creates a rather dull overall impression, which details can't really fix.

One way to fix this though is by creating big blobs, preferably around the center of the image, to draw our eyes into the picture, so they'll stay there and explore, rather than on the edges, where it's easy for them to drift off.

In this edit I created a big blob in the center, and subdued the contrast around the edges, to pull the focus inwards (with the exception of the right side, as I wanted to emphasize the silhouette of the monster):



The subduing of uninteresting areas is as important as making interesting ones pop. You often also have to subdue areas that you like, but which have to be sacrificed for the good of the whole, which is another reason to go easy on details before everything is working out, as otherwise one is reluctant to hide these darlings.

Here's a comparison to hopefully explain what I've said better (or just confuse things, not really intuitive when I look at it):



Anyway, so on row three I've marked the major blobs. You usually want this to be an interesting shape, and preferably somewhere in the centerish region, to keep the viewer inside the image.

On row four I've marked the spots with the highest contrast. As with the former, you usually want them somewhere around the center, or at least close to the interesting part of the image, as they're basically huge signs saying: "look here!".

On row five I've created arrows to show how the eyes are lead (just my impression), where in the edit, you have the 'gravitational well' in the center left, being the bright blob, surrounded by subdued areas, pulling the eyes and hopefully keeping them there, whereas in the original the eyes were kinda drawn away from the center, lead instead toward the corners.

To illustrate this further, I added Ben's entry, which I think work well on a macro scale:

[cat]

Water dragon, week 2, step 3 - Anatomy

I changed the eyes and arms as suggested. Lots of cursing included. I also tilted the head slightly for better consistency in perspective.

Back to initial post



dactylopus I agree with Snarky here, regarding the flashlight. The shadows have to be a lot harder and there has to be more difference between lit and unlit parts.

Cerno I like the progress you are making! For shading the structures on the wings: take a look at 304's shading on the skin surface, he did a great job there.

Mordalles Nice details!

waheela Wow, also great progress here - I like the cards.

miguel You added lots of highlights - I think now your pic is just in need of some deeper shadows. The door for example looks flat - add shadows to make the different boards it is made of 3 dimensional.

[selmiak]

    selmiak:
Not scary, but a nice comical touch.

selmiak:
That monster looks kind of cute, I can't help it. It might be the mouth or the "what's up?" kind of face. Don't know if that's what you were aiming at.

I hope I got rid of that hypnotoad resemblance with these skribbelings

and since drawing penises on your monster is en vogue atm I added a mouthpenis. I don't know if it will stay though

Also added a very sketchy human, but I have no clue on his stance. I want him to hold a sword and a torch for additional lighting but having both sword and torch visible in a more or less natural approaching stance seems harder than I thought.

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/60aUC9k.jpg[/imgzoom]

[waheela]

cat, the eyes and arm look a lot better!

selmiak, lol! All them sharp teeth, that's a horrible place for a penis.
I like your monster changes! The only thing that distracts me is that tiny little eye antennae branching off from the middle one.

*******************

Here's my update...
(Link to original thread.)

I tried adding a more scaly texture to Lord Jagged's belly, but I just didn't like how it looked. Too distracting, so I reverted to the original design and added to it more....

               

-Further developed Lord Jagged's other hand
-Added more contrast to the pic in general
-Colored in chest blazon. (Not quite happy with it.)
-Fixed (hopefully) the pillowy stomach

Tomorrow, I'll work on fixing the embossed leather (just doesn't look right, suggestions welcome) and developing the background. After that, I'll just continue to add more details to the pic until the deadline.

[miguel]

Progz: I'm paying the price for pasting it into the background, you got that right. I'm slowly working on it...
              The texture on your monster is looking great.

mordalles: new shell is looking great

waheela: thanks for your input! I'm trying to avoid putting the head behind the wall, does the new update improves or not?
                I like your Skyrim monster, you know that, the mouth looks absolutely terrifying! But the leather prop is going to be difficult to achieve.

cat: you're right about the highlights, working on it...

selmiak: that's the biggest penis of all monsters, so far...

Update 13 - The Divine Laundry Day

[imgzoom]http://i293.photobucket.com/albums/mm54/miguel20000/step13_8x6_zps6560d4c1.png[/imgzoom]

Here I'm trying to fix a screwed up image! To all you aspiring artists: follow my example of things NOT to do when painting!

[ThreeOhFour]

I really think the slight adjustments have done a world of good to both cat and selmiak's images, they really look better! Loving everything else in here - a slight suggest for waheela: I really love how this is turning out, but some shadow under those scaly hands would really make them look a lot deeper, and push them into the image. They kinda feel a bit off without that shadow!

As for my own progress, I'm slowly rendering more detail into my image, just doing a little bit each day. A couple of things that have been challenging me: 1. my eye for anatomy is weak in places, so certain areas take me much longer to get looking right. 2. I'm unfamiliar with painting at this res, and so I tend to over-render a lot of things with brushes that are probably too small for the job. This means stuff takes more time to paint and to render smoothly needs a lot of working in. Anyway, here's how I'm progressing:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/phhsaxk9gmtt4xf/Sketch8%20copy8.png

[Andail]

Ben, definitely good progress. Now I think you're ready for some level 2 c&c

What I'm missing now is some kind of story. Some expression, some action, some movement. So you have a monster here, and being the only living figure he's the focal point of the scene, and at the moment he's not doing anything in particular. I can't even read if he's angry, if he's violent, or if he's just waiting for someone.
It would help immensely if we had a second figure, perhaps a human, a conjuror who just finished the summoning ritual. Or someone running away. Or hiding. Without a second character, I really think your monster has to do something, or express something, maybe pain from being summoned, maybe frustration, maybe he's raising a clenched fist against the moon.

On a technical level, I think it's looking good, but not all of the veins work. The veins on his thigh, for instance, look more like worms than anything belonging to his body. One reason may be that we don't see enough muscle tension or definition - veins typically bulge out on top of really defined or articulated muscles. Apart from that, I think there's too much highlighting on him. Consider that it's the moon emitting the light, and the moon is pretty low. Much of his left side should be in darkness, as well as his calf and most of his rib cage.

[Cerno]

waheela, awesome detail. I love the card designs.

A suggestion for the belly: try googling crocodile belly, lots of nice references.

I took the first image I found and slapped it on Lord Jagged's belly.
I hope you don't mind, although he will probably kill me for that: http://i40.tinypic.com/30rpjbn.png

While this hack looks pretty crappy, it shows how straight lines might make the belly kind of lose its bloated look (unless that was intended)
Also the scales tend to get smaller towards the edges. This might need some work translating to the bipedal Kus, since I think the smaller scales are there to allow better sidewards movement which evolution would have shaped differently for your humanoid crocodile.

selmiak: The teeth and mouth shape looks really threatening, I like that a lot. Nice shading on the cave entrance. I also like the general idea of eyestalks growing out of eyestalks, but I think it might look better if it was either the same size (like a birth defect) or many small ones (wild chaotic eye growth)

cat: Awesome arms! I love how the pose looks very tense as if it's pushing its arms back with great effort going for high speed while straining to open its mouth wide. Very nice and streamlined. Only the legs don't quite fit to that concept.

dactylopus: Having little experience I like your flashlight approach, even if apparently it's not realistic. One thought: If the cave was really foggy, then the light would be clearly visible and not as hard on the creature. Maybe you can stress that angle.

miguel: The only thing I can put my finger on is that the head appears to be behind the door but casts a shadow as if it was in front of the door, maybe you can overlap the head with the door on the right? Also maybe you can overlap the claw with the stair to make him look more like he is standing on the edge of the step?

ProgZmax: Love the details! The lightning seems to go strongly diagonally from the back to the front. No idea what to do about that though.

Mordalles: Watching this unfold is a great pleasure, nothing to add.

SookieSock: The shading in your piece is an inspiration. And please tell me you spent at least an hour on the horse. The tree face gives a nice focus and in a video game it would perfectly show the player what to do with it

[cat]

Thanks for the comments! I will also try to change the legs with the next update.
@Andail: I noted you earlier comments about the size, but I had (and still have) no idea how I could overcome this issue. I think adding any human size reference would destroy the composition  I'll just pretend the bite is venomous to make it more scary...

I started to try shading the dragon, but I'm somehow stuck here. I tried to use brushes with lowered opacity, layers with different blend modes and using solid brushes with gradually changing the color but I'm not really satisfied with the outcome. What is the best approach to go for shading? Is it good to mix different techniques? It would be very helpful if some of you could describe their workflows for shading



selmiak Great changes, looks much more scary now. About that guy: Now sword and torch both point upwards which looks a bit boring, maybe he could hold the sword pointed at the monster, as if to keep it at bay?

[Cerno]

cat, I think it might have to do with the kelp which is usually tiny and thus makes the the monster look small.
However, decreasing its size might drastically change the composition.
If you have to add reference, maybe you can use a fairly large fish, but that would ruin the simplicity of the image.

In my humble opinion: Just to keep it as it is. I love this piece!

[waheela]

Thanks for your comments and feedback, ThreeOhFour, Cerno, cat and miguel!

cat, underwater lighting is hard, and I haven't nailed it, so I don't envy you. I tried to find some lighting photos that might help you out a bit...







These pics have roughly the same light source direction as your piece. I'd study the lighting in these to help you decide how you want to shade your creature. Something to keep in mind is that the deeper underwater you go, the more the lighting and shadows become dull, diffused and subtle.

When I shade (and I don't know if this is the "right way", self-taught), I make a greyscale layer on top of my sketch where I shade everything with blacks, whites and greys. Once I'm more or less satisfied, I set the layer to "multiply" and paint in color in a layer below this one. When shading or doing color, I sometimes use a really low opacity brush (10%ish) then build up over that again and again with the same brush (especially when doing skies). I also use the smudge tool a lot to blend anything that looks patchy. Hope this helps, and if anyone has a better way of doing this, please chime in.

[ThreeOhFour]

Andail, you make some valid points. I've thought about the idea of adding a human in ever since Ilyich told me on skype that my image lacks a story, and unfortunately everything I've thought up so far is repulsively cheesy looking in my head. I agree about the lighting being out of order, this is a pretty bad habit I have, but I usually ignore realistic lighting in order to make a character more defined/readable. No doubt this comes from a lack of doing studies from real life!

cat, I broke the 'no paintover' rule to do a really quick example .psd of how you can add some simple shading to your pic without relying on blending modes or special layers. Every layer is titled with the method I've used on that layer - although I normally paint all on one layer, I've done it like this to give an idea of each brush used. A bit rough, but I only spend a few minutes and maybe it'll help! Here's the link https://www.dropbox.com/s/km5qa5g0i1phvzy/Shading%20Cat.psd

[Kasander]

Week 2, step 1, 'Better late than never' or 'Coloring the damn thing'  

I thought I'll be more active in this week but life got in the way  Only today I could find some more time to paint. I'll give you guys some feedback later

While painting, I've experimented with different color variants (using Color Balance in Photoshop), looking for the one I'd like most.



I wanted colors to be vibrant, but not too vibrant. Oversaturation, as seen on the middle thumbnail in the lower row, was out of question.

After few attempts, I've found the color palette I like. 



Here's the same picture, only with Curves adjusted in PS:



I'll probably do something in between.

I'm afraid I won't have time to experiment with changing the scenery or making the cave less generic, but it's not that important. Next, I'll work on details with small brush. There's also that monster's opponent to paint. I'll probably have to make canvas bigger to make room for the human. Still quite a lot to do with that painting.     

Feedback is most welcome

Read my monster thread

[cat]

Awesome guys, thanks a lot! I'll have a closer look at the reference pics and fantastic paintover when I come home this evening.

Kasander Interesting style, I'm looking forward to see where this is going

[waheela]

Kasander, hmmm, I absolutely love your monster, but the pastel colors and chalky painting style kind of remind me of a children's book illustration, which makes it less scary for me.

[Kasander]

Kasander, hmmm, I absolutely love your monster, but the pastel colors and chalky painting style kind of remind me of a children's book illustration, which makes it less scary for me.

Don't worry, getting into details is my next step

@Cerno:
I'm glad some of my suggestions have worked out for you You've made a very good decision to use such strong, powerful colors. And a bold one! Sometimes people shy away from using bright colors - like the reds in your painting - so I can only applaud that. And it suits the theme of your composition - which is 'clash of two elemental powers in the hellish land of volcanoes' - very well. It has a  poster-like, expressive look (I mean like proper pre-1990s poster) - simple shapes and colors that draw attention.
I think now is the time to introduce more details, as well as different shades of red and blue, to your painting.
As for the colors, perhaps it would be a good idea to make the blue color near the center of wizard's orb brighter (after all, his orb is acting like a source of light).
Be careful about the volcanoes - the lava is naturally supposed to be bright, so it tends to draw attention away from the main heroes of the composition (monster and wizard)... The volcano with flowing lava streams on the left from wizard is a good example of such 'attention grabber'. You could push it to the back, darken it or make the platform on which wizard stands bigger, so it will obscure the volcano. 
Regarding the monster itself, try to vary thickness of its body, especially limbs and tail. Have a look at the references we've gathered in this thread so far (as well as that simplified monster drawing in one of my previous posts.
I forgot to mention: I also like the flames coming out of the dragon's eyes . I have no idea what they are/how are they possible, I'm just suspending my disbelief here;) That's pretty unique, a dragon with flaming eyes - literally

@waheela:
I like how accurately you've drawn the fortune teller's hands - well done! Also, the monster's grin is great. 
If you have problems drawing embossed leather try to just make it brighter, 'push it forward' by painting with lighter shades.
The bright background with cemetery and the clouds (I like them a lot!) draw too much attention, imo. Perhaps you should think about making the monster brighter? There's also the possibility of changing the day for night and using the artificial source of light (like lantern) to lit  the cards and table. Maybe you could paint some thumbnail sketches to try out some other options and see which one works best for you? I can't help noticing the fortune teller's hands are still very small compared to the lizard:)

@Selmiak,
Change of scale paid off. Introducing an opponent for your penisosaurus was a good idea.  Before that, I've imagined the monster to be only slightly bigger than a frog. Now I wonder if you are going to paint that tongue.

@ mordalles
Brilliant It's getting better and better. I like the ribcage on monster's back! I hope you'll have time to color it.

@ SookieSock
i like your monster much better now. It's really more believable than it was before. Also, I like the shading. Carry on!

[selmiak]

@Selmiak,
Change of scale paid off. Introducing an opponent for your penisosaurus was a good idea.  Before that, I've imagined the monster to be only slightly bigger than a frog. Now I wonder if you are going to paint that tongue.

I'm wondering too...  should I?



and please explain how you color these b/w lightvolumes pictures. I always wondered how you do that? Some special layer overlay setting in PS? Or just paint over it with 100% opacity and use the b/w image as a pointer? I am also interested in how Mordalles does this.

@cat: with shading, do you mean just how to make the body of the waterdragon appear 3dimensional or how to give it some scales like texture?