Lee Greatorex Photo/3D blog

I had the weekend free to do some sculpting but ended up getting not far with it. Sometimes clay or Zbrush doesn't want to play. I didn't want to waste the complete weekend though so tried my hand at some quick concepts/ portraits.

2D/painting is not my forte but I've grown further understanding in it based on my own inspirations. Traditional skills are very important so always good to practice them even if it's not your particular strong suit.

Above: after watching an incredible video based on Dune concept art creation I was inspired to make my own 'industrial planet' concept design. High in the smoggy clouds overlooking a neighbouring moon. 45 min doodle and ended up using part of 1 of my photos for the moon in the background. The emphasis was on blending colours and providing some depth in the composition.


Above: Monk: tried to be subtle with this one on the colouring/shading. Using photos as reference on the other screen just for lighting the face. I'm happy with this but liquify saved me a number of times!

Below: Noir: Tried a different style as I wanted the contrasting tones from the rim and shadows to shine through. It didn't work great due to out of practice scaling/sketching but for the bold style I just worked with a duplicated later which I then cut out, overlaying the painted layer on top for a stylised look.


Overall I'm happy with these, each one not taking too long (all under 1hr each, the industrial concept being under 45 mins!). Each of these I tried to make an emphasis to try something new but add colour balance and blending along the way. Liquify is a great tool if you're not too comfortable/not that well practised in drawing facial proportions and I think over I'll need to use it less and less.

Got interested recently in a FB group called Spitpaint. Similar to lunchcrunch it gives a rough topic to choose from then you have 30 minutes to create an image from scratch (no photos/phototextures allowed).

Thought I'd brave it, it is incredibly challenging, particularly as I don't put too much time in to painting. I think it's very important though as it helps immensely with colour blending and image composition. For saying my most knowledgeable area is photography I tend to find colour tone and composition my weakest area in painting/sculpting.

Here are my first few goes at it anyway;

Above: No particular theme for this one. I was just trying out new brushes in PS. Kind of imagined a rocky canyon/shipwreck. This one took about an hour after getting new brushes recommended by a friend (they are Peleng's brushes, made available on his blog).

Below: This was the first entry I put in to the spitpaint group. Taking about 27 minutes. The theme was 'tunnel entrance' although ended up making it more like the exit!






Above: just some very rough landscape thumbnails. 1hr in total for all 4 trying to work with brushes and composition
Right: very rough portrait, topic 'Apache' 25 mins. Very tricky to do portraits (for me anyway) in 30 minutes.



By doing this it also improves my sculpting workflow for concepting. Here is a quick sculpt knocked together and then a rough colour/texture test taking roughly 1 hr;


I'm making progress on my clothing modelling, slowly chipping away at the model side. I've also started re-learning some vfx, this time for use in realtime engines. The tutorials are from the great ImbueFX. Bill Kladis is an excellent teacher for UDK/Unreal engine particle effects and has worked on titles like Mortal Kombat and Injustice: Gods Among Us. I'll try and get some stills up in my next post as my current rig probably isn't great for capturing realtime effects!

This week I've done a bit of everything. Drawing in photoshop, sculpting in Zbrush and working in Super Sculpey polymer clay.


 Clay: I spent about 3-4 hours on this guy so far. It's my second go with super sculpey and it's great fun! For the eyes I used cheap pearl beads from a craft shop. I am still working on the shape the aluminium gives me underneath when I build the armature.

 Photoshop/2D: These were both done in photoshop.  I added a filter using snapseed on the ipad for the demon.


Above: 'High Demon' based on the sculpture by the Shiflett Brothers (minus the wings!)
Below: Still going through Casey Love's design and sculpting video on Stan Winston school. It's improving my concepting a lot and I'm enjoying just sketching in Photoshop now. 






Finally this wasn't done this week but I completely forgot to upload it on here. This is a torso based on Scott Eaton's anatomy course. It's a course I'm really interested in taking in the future so wanted to see if I could get to some level of anatomical understanding before.



The timelapse of it can be seen here;

I did these in the lead up week to Pacific Rim (after watching it I can't recommend it enough, go see it!). They were all done within about an hour and a half. I even tried some 2d monster sketches in photoshop (I haven't done 2d stuff for literally years!). It was great fun and will do a few more themes like this in future:

Tools used: Zbrush+Photoshop - Wacom Intous 3

Above: This was the first one. Like an evil dinosaur-tortoise head. I tried basing the first 3 kaiju on animals loosely.

Below: This one is kind of a rat-shark. I didn't really know where to go with this one but wanted something with huge teeth! The timelapse and turntable is also below



Above: A bird based one. Wanted to make a beak. This ended up looking like a smaller monster due to the humanoid proportions. The making of is below (minus the beak as they are separate subtools). The video shows more of a dinosaur looking base for the model (kind of looks cooler now I look at it without the beak)


Below: This was the last of the Zbrush sculpts. This was the only one done pretty much directly after watching the movie. I tried going for the smaller eyes closer together and the huge jaw. The parts aren't fully defined and I think the over the nose jaw gives it a bit more comic/cartoony look.


Below are 2 sketches done in photoshop, still under an hour. These were done while going through one of the Stan Winston school courses based on digital to practical design. Explaining very basic and simple techniques just to get some characters roughed out for sculpting in clay.

You can check the full course here. I can't recommend those courses enough



I hope these are enough to get others doing some monster drawing/sculpting, go watch Pacific Rim if you haven't already! Next post I'll review some of the books I got in a recent art book haul!

Base mesh done in Maya based on a quick tutorial found in the book 'Zbrush Digital Sculpting Human Anatomy' by Scott Spencer - You can find it on Amazon here

The book itself is great for learning how to sculpt anatomy (I have no real traditional training so learning as I go). Although it is based around using Zbrush the same sculpture lines /techniques still basically apply.

I just started working on the torso for a heroic/comic style character and kept proportions in mind.

With a base mesh done and a basic form created you can just start tweaking with the grab tool to make quick prototypes for other body shapes. (Click images for larger view)



The preview render style I am showing here is just a few different materials (still in sculpt mode) rendered out and layered in Photoshop. I then make a smart layer and duplicate that, one of the layers I apply a cutout filter (then choose soft light as the layer type) for a hint of cel shaded/hand painted shadows then the other I created a very think glowing edge using Filters> glowing edges. You then switch the layer type to linear dodge(add) or Screen for the desired effect.

Have a play around yourself anyway, enjoy!

Sculpted in sculptris. PC still crashing a few times when going in to paint mode (My knackered pc and not Sculptris' fault). Click for full view to see profile shots and passes:




I just added some Colour balance + contrast in PS as well as a poorly shaped eye grabbed off the net just to see how it would look if I added a decent eye model/texture to it. It is a bit out of shape but good to at least get an idea.

Only just got photoshop back on this PC so I stitched a few shots I took last year together (around august/sept time) at Crosshaven, County Cork. I only had my 50mm with me so I had to rely on stitching about 4-5 images together which can be troublesome but these came out ok.

Here's a quick idea for those wanting a bit more control over the final look of your sculpt if rendering in sculptris. Paint your object as normal, texturing and adding bump where you want. Once this is done clik options > save image and it will render out what you have there at the time. Then simply change the material type and save the image again (perhaps describing what kind of pass it would emulate ie image_ambient).

After you have multiple images saved open them in photo editing software (gimp is completely free if you want the free route, in this case I used photoshop but most photoediting software comes with the ability to add layers). Using layer types you can then start combining your rendered images in to one. Ideally start with a flat texture /ambient pass on the base layer adding different ones on top. Some materials emulate rim lighting and such which can be to your advantage, others may offer some nice specular properties. You can also mask parts of these to get the ideal look you want.

Below you'll see a simple sketch on a sphere with some texture and bump added, along with the passes used to create the overall image.


Above - the final composited image. I used the rim light render last and duplicated it to get a nice crisp edge where I wanted it. Rather than a completely flat ambient pass I used a 50/50 pass which just adds a tiny bit of depth to increase the texture.

Below - The 4 passes used Left to right, rim and specular, Kicker, key and ambient (50/50 pass in this case).



Give it a go anyway! All of this can be done with completely free software such as Sculptris and Gimp. Enjoy!

My girlfriend recently bought me Artrage . Great and affordable art package based around emulating traditional brushes/pens. I'm having lots of fun with it so far. It's simpler to use than photoshop if doing straight artwork so my plan is to use it in a general workflow, doing the main design, shading, colouring in artrage then taking over to PS to add any more final touches (textures, level adjustment etc).

Here's a sketch anyway done in Artrage. (first quick sketch but I'm happy enough with it!)

Edit: Just tweaked a in PS for a little more contrast and gave it a subtle tone. (see below)

Just been trying Autodesk Sketchbook here's a quick zombie sketch/concept with it, put a few textures in via PS. It seems like a good tool for fast concept work. It's also great fun for just doodling, very simple interface but great for tablets.

Rough Sketch from my sketchbook.


Update: Here's after some neatening up and messing around in Photoshop. Looks like he'd fit in more in Deadwood now mind but I still like it.

Recently after scanning in some of my sketches I've been using the liquify tool in Photoshop to modify and test concepts for characters. While this technique may not be art 101 or considered as 'cheating' for traditional artists it's a great way to get quick character ideas from 1 basic sketch. I see it as a similar thing to using a basemesh or a Squirkle in Zbrush for some quick character concepts (sculpting and moving the original mesh).

I don't think Liquify needs much of a tutorial, the icons are self explanatory and you will find it under the filters menu (near the top). Alternatively if you want a shortcut for it --> Shift+Ctrl+x by default.

For this example I scanned in a sketch I did a while ago;


After doing some basic colouring for this an extremely rough blurred skin highlight and lowlight and a blue shadow layer, gaussian blurred and then flattened. I bulked the character out a bit and raised his nose, mouth and shrank his ear a little to help with the proportions.


Following on from this I tried a few more things, a bit more extreme but just to show the range of characters you can create. These were both done extremely quickly so things like the collar are still distorted but are just examples;




While I wouldn't recommend this for final work it's great to just get a few ideas going or work on expressions or proportions of characters. I'd personally recommend just sticking with the move brush for bulking out characters as the bloat or pucker tools can quickly get out of hand - use the reconstruct tool rather than the global reconstruct option to bring major distortions back. Worth giving a go anyway!

Here are some of the sketches from my sketchbook. I've just cropped some of them and put them on 1 big page. Varying styles. A lot of it is just character work / study but some doodles are related to my 3D work (such as the street/ market scenes).



Below is a quick painting I did of the Goblin (top right in the sketchdump). I've always found Orc/Goblin skin tones a bit easier to build up, I think mainly because when I first started painting models they were the first I gave a go and simple Highlighting techniques worked. Ugly characters are easier to draw/paint as well! You get a little more leeway. The next one I'm going to try is the girl with the Goggles (steampunk esque). Anyway enjoy!




PS for those that haven't had a look head on over to the new Digital Tutors site. Now all of their tutorials are online and ready to learn with a monthly subscription. I think it's an excellent idea and as soon as I get payment sorted I'll be signing up for 6 months straight away!