The Second Mouse Digital Painting, Vin

So for my second digital mouse painting I decided to start with a drawing of a character from a book, as suggested by my brother. The book in particular is part of a trilogy by Brandon Sanderson called the Mistborn series. And the character of the books that I drew is the main protagonist heroine called Vin.

Just briefly for some context, I'll describe without going into too much fantasy detail. Our character Vin, lives in a land shrouded in mist. Some people are born with special abilities which basically lets them control metal for different functions. Vin can control all of them, people like her are called Mistborn and they propel themselves through the lands and cities by propulsion of metal. Their signature mark is their Mistborn cloaks. There, that's the easiest I can sum up the basic premise of the picture (and story)!

Anyhoo, I liked the idea of this drawing because I knew it would be more challenging than my previous digital painting. To start, it's based on a human figure, an area of art where I find myself weaker at. Second of all, the clothing and poses of the character in particular are quite elegant and ethereal as described in the books. The cloak in particular is described as ragged and long with ends like tendrils of silk metal. And third of all I was impatient to start so the drawing itself ended up quite basic in comparison to the finished product:

Original Drawing

However I went ahead and started even though I felt the drawing didn't exactly capture what I wanted. I started with the skin tones; in the original picture the moon was behind Vin but I quickly realised that that would mean I would be silhouetting her, thus leaving out detail and making the picture quite muddy:

Starting with the skin, and the moonlight has moved to the top left.

So I moved the moon to the top left corner, out of sight and decided that it would be represented with a glow. This made plotting out the colouring process much easier and allowed me to practice lighting the face and arms with greater definition. After some time I was pleased enough with the facial features, they were slightly Neanderthal but hey, it's all a learning curve for figure drawing right? Her clothing came out better than I expected with multiple layers (literally layers in Photoshop) applied until it began to look natural and have depth. However the main challenge was on the horizon, the tendrils of the cloak:

The tendrils proved a tough one!

I'd I spent 60% of the time on this digital painting making sure I managed to make these look as good as possible. In the end I didn't get the exact look I wanted but there was definition and fluidity there; I was happy with. So I took the stance of "it ain't broke, don't fix it" for fear that I may end up trying to improve things but end up making irreparable damage (and undoing all of that time I spent working on them!):

Tendrils, Check!

So with that the rest of the digital painting began to fall into place easier. The brunt of the work was figuring out the tones and colours, and then also capturing the look of the tendrils on the cloak. It proved a pain in the ass achieving primarily the second of the two, but it paid off as I was basically in the home stretch. I began filling out the legs and second arm, these proved less difficult and after the amount of time shading, erasing and altering the cloak, the legs and arm were naturally much easier to do. After another short amount of time I had them set in place and only came back to them to make minor shading adjustments:

All in place, this gurl need her hair done!

So with that, the only final piece in this character painting was doing her hair. This proved once again a little more difficult as I had opted to go with black hair. This meant harder shading in relation to the light and it was also an effect in digital painting I hadn't encountered yet. After a brief tutorial and setting up the right "brush" for the job I managed to capture a look I liked trying to make it appear as natural as possible. I don't think the final look of the hair is perfect by any means, there's certainly a lot of problems with it but I was pleased with my first effort.

As with my previous painting (I had finished the central character/subject of the picture), all that was left was the background. And as with the previous digital painting I opted to change to a more simple background than was initially planned. In the original drawing I quickly scribbled in some buildings rising out of the mist as the character is primarily based in a city in the books. However I decided that I didn't have the knowhow or time to starting painting buildings digitally (yet!) so I took a more simple ethereal approach: mist! With that said and done, I wanted to make it swirl downwards and have it enveloping the world below Vin, like it had a life of its own. It clings on to Vin as she launches above it and you can see some lights glowing on the land far below.

In the end I think the effect I wanted to give this picture was the character blissfully breaking away into the freedom of the moonlight from her misty world below, almost as if it is soothing her and letting all her worries drift away. The final picture I think is an improvement on my skills from the previous Water Dragon picture. And while I can certainly see a multitude of problems such as disproportionate parts of Vin, not entirely natural posing and some odd shading/lighting (amongst a multitude of other things), I'm very happy with the final result. One problem I plan to rectify in my next panting is to make it less soft. It wasn't intended in this picture but thankfully it sort of lends itself to the atmosphere, I think!

Vin, Mistborn - Final Picture

So that's number two in the bag and another for the portfolio. If you've read this far I'd also like to say that if you ever need help with something along this line of work I'd be happy to lend a hand. For my next painting it will be a Game of Thrones picture, fan fiction of Danaerys and Drogon, and don't worry it won't be spoilerish. It will be an entirely made up scenario! And if you've made it THIS far into the blog, thank you for taking your time to read about my adventures in digital painting!

Until next time, CAOI BEETCHES!

My First Foray into the World of Digital Painting

So in the last few months I decided to embrace some of my very few talents. As of lately I've taken up painting again. I'll post the two I have done in a later post but more recently again I've also decided to enter the realm of Digital Painting. I had always been daunted by this medium as there is such lavishly detailed pictures floating around the net, each with unique, colourful and wonderful styles that I felt I could never achieve such a sense of detail and awe so many of them inspire. That and I only have a meagre mouse instead of a tablet.

But I decided against my pessimism and pushed forward to give it a try! After a few brief tutorials on colour theory and which software proved popular for this sort of endeavour I picked out an old picture I drew in my transition year of secondary school:

-Transition Year Drawing

So with Photoshop in tow, I began to colour in the drawing, using all the techniques I had obtained from previous tutorials. In the beginning I wasn't very pleased with the early results. Without the drawing overlaid, the colours underneath had very little shape or form, appeared blunt and didn't have any sense of the detail the drawing did.

- Phase 1: The nearly giving up phase.

Around this time is usually where my old self would have given up. I don't know where I developed it but over the years I had a bad habit of expecting immediate results and submitting to defeat too easily. And I nearly did here too. But I pressed on. And on, and on. And then something wonderful happened. I was learning to use tools of the program outside of the tutorials, I was losing track of time and most of all I was enjoying it. And when you spend enough time doing the things you enjoy it becomes a labour of love with results that could possibly exceed what you initially planned. Such was my luck in this case. I learnt the virtue of patience all over again and it was paying off:

- Phase 2: Wait, what? This is sort of cool!

At this stage I was enormously pleased with myself. I was liking the look more than the original drawing and I had learnt vast amounts about digital painting. All because I actually had patience and took the time to do it. The funny thing is that, apart from having to draw the subject at hand, the colouring part is not that difficult once you get the theory down and have a bit of knowhow about light and shadow. And even in those regards I'm a beginner at best. But with Photoshop you have all the tools you could need to perfect and fine tune things right down to a small shadow, coarse skin or whatever effect you're trying to achieve. It just takes patience and time!

In the end the final product didn't stick exactly to the original picture plan. I altered the background slightly as I DID spend probably around 6-8 hours colour the picture over the course of time. I felt that I could do a quick fix for the background. But funnily enough the background which honestly took about 15-20 mins max ended up blending well with the picture. I feel like I should take credit for achieving the look of it, but honestly it was literally down to another thing I learnt with my first digital painting. Experimentation. By pure blind luck of testing the use of a few tools of Photoshop I stumbled across a background that is simply but compliments the "Water Dragon" I had created. The end result was this:

- Final Digital Painting "Water Dragon"

Simple background, all from messing about. Mind you that won't always provide results, but now I know how to get THAT result if I ever intend to use it again! In the end I think I can say I pulled off a good first digital painting. Of course, I wanted to show it off and have since been recommended to get  a tablet for drawing, which I do believe could greatly improve the time I spend on each one. Overall though the sense of achievement was something I haven't felt in a while and I hope this is the first of many I plan to post in the future.

So to close, for anyone who is intimidated about learning to digital paint, don't be. Like all things it takes time but you'll be surprised about how quick you can adapt. Get Photoshop or Corel, scan in your images and starting painting, you'll enjoy it, you'll get really pissed off and you'll be proud!

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

And here's a little sneak peak of the next one for anyone interested. It's based off a character called Vin from a book called the Mistborn trilogy. You may have to look her up to get the context of the picture but I'm hoping it will look cool none the less in the end, even for those who have no idea what the hell is going on in the picture:

The Dell of my Dreams

Well well, it’s been a long time since I wrote on this thing considering I have been doing video blogs and what not and as they say a picture tells a thousand words. Unless it’s my pictures, moving ones no less; they tend to be a little less subtle than what the medium generally aims for.

Nevertheless I have recently purchased a new laptop (and a great thanks to my sister who lent me the money for the time being) as my other more dramatic, tasteless, evil, demonic, bastardising HP laptop decided to go out quietly without letting me know until the last second. Wherever its soul (or lack of) resides now, I’m sure it’s gleefully playing in fire and ash.

"Look at it! Basking in overheated glory, feckin' HP!" 

In fact, I imagine some pour individual in the afterlife probably purchased my afterlife laptop thinking “Oh great! I can’t wait to use this perfectly ordinary laptop and go on Angelbook!” (Angelbook is my really lame joke name for facebook in the afterlife, I'm too lazy to think of anything wittier). But you see, this is the moment that individual will realise that they never went to heaven, only to hell for the moment they push that shitty little power button on that laptop they will have forever cursed themselves with 4 years of troublesome, overheating, battery faulting, charger not charging, dust inhaling monster that sits on their laps.

Anyways, my gripes have passed with HP as I’m never purchasing one of their products again. Instead I’ve replaced that shadowy dark hole of a place in my life with a lovely new, sleek, shiny, angelic Dell full of all the features of my previous laptop, times a billion more power (that might be slightly exaggerated) and all the free time I can muster. This means I can actually begin to do much more be it animation, video effects, editing and what not than I could’ve previously as I don’t need to worry that my laptop with explode taking out half of the neighbourhood.

"My old HP Laptop didn't turn itself off when it overheated, instead it went the next mile...splitting atoms"

I’ve even “acquired” many new training videos for all of my “acquired” adobe programmes which I will be learning to use in depth and become a multimedia whore, except instead of doing the cooch for a bitta silver on the corner, I’ll be doing an animation of me doing the cooch…. Actually that’s not the best example of what I’m trying to say here. The point I’m making is I plan to become good enough so I can build a massive portfolio of all things Seán, which if you’ve been following any of my stuff is a whole lot of crazy shit.

Anyways, I think my first thing in the tube to be fired out this week is a video blog so I must hop and skip to it! I think I’ll talk about my mild obsession with the horror genre for this one so expect the bizarre (although, I’m sure it’s to be expected already).

If anyone has any suggestions on things I could talk about in the future, fire ‘em out bellow or not, until next time, TOODLES!!

Blogs, Video Games & Flash Animation - The Worst Would-be Film Title

      As of late, this blog has been seeing the back of my hand a lot. Now, it's not because I hate blogging, I really love doing it in fact. But it's mainly become a syringe in my arm. A syringe full of Aids. This is because I am having a difficult time thinking up wonderful new ideas to compose (like my in previous posts.........) and it's become more and more aggravating, like Christian Bale would feel if he were caught in the middle of a light show or something. I wish I was more productive like the good ole days of my blog, 3 months ago, where every week I would post several new posts of meaningless rants and inspiring mush that would non-erotically satisfy me. Sadly though I have reached a point where I talk about either the same things or try to talk about something sensible and end up looking inbred. Although to many I might seem that way already:

"Duuuh, hi I'm Seán!"

     I'll admit that I have a serious lack of knowledge when it comes to worldly events such as politics or general news. It's my fault entirely of course, but if I were to tackle THAT sort of topic I would probably come out in the end resembling something of a cross between a frog and an ostich (A Frostrich! har har har!). If you can't picture than in your head, I'll tell you now, it looks really REALLY stupid (although imagine how funny it would look if it walked). On top of general knowledge, I have a very limited taste in music and a non-existent interest in sports. In fact if I really think about all I have just said, I have serious ice-breakers issues when it comes down to first conversations. I'm surprised I have friends! Well apart from ye of course, my readers and followers (which is down from 16 to 15 in the last week or two, talk about ENCOURAGING!). At least I can still check up on the number of views my old posts racked up, back when I'd get excited at the thought of someone clicking and even looking at my blog for more than two seconds, to which I'd think "OH MAH GOSH, they READEZ mah BLOGGGgggggggg!"

"Bluuaaaaaaa Read MAH BLOG, BLuauauauauaaasohappy!!!"

     Luckily for me though I've been slightly above average productive on several fronts. 3 out of 4 of these things actually count. I've cut down on drinking, am saving moneys and I am regaining my patience for being productive yaaaaaaay! What does this mean for you? Well nothing, but you should be happy for me, as my followers. Before I go on to talking about what regaining patience has helped me achieve, FIRST I shall talk about number 4 of my productive front, the one that doesn't count, but has proven to be awesome to me over the last few weeks.

      Number 4 is a little Wii game called Donkey Kong Country Returns. I cannot state how much barrels of awesomeness this game throws at you, no pun intended, har dee har har! While many people might scoff at the mention of a game on Nintendo's comparatively retarded hardware compared to it's HD cousins, I can tell you one thing. Cram it up yo' ass! Donkey Kong takes most PS3 & Xbox 360 games and wipes it's arse thoroughly with them. It carries the franchises' old school gaming lovingly into the modern era, like a bum holds his liquor. On top of that it sucks you in, chews you up and shits you out because it is so damn tough. Just getting through the game in general is probably enough to test David Blaine's patience and then once that's done there's tons of secrets and unlockables all hidden away in this innocent beastly package. And, no thanks to Retro Studios (the makers), the amazing art direction hides the Wii's underpowered hardware to produce some truely stunning vista's and animation that sits up there with the top of any of this generations console games, take a look:

    Now, I'm finished speaking of productive front number 4. Speaking of animation however, this is where my patience has become a virtue as of recently. Where as over the last few years my patience for working on most projects has eroded away like Michael Jackson's face (both living and dead I guess), I have recently begun rebuilding it as I took my first step into the world of Flash Animation. A year ago Adobe Flash settled quite nicely onto my laptop but became the neglected eldest child in my family of programs because I had little patience to work on it. However, I recently came across videos on character animation in Flash on a great but expensive website to download from. Luckily for me I "found" most of the videos else where online at the base price you would pay for, I dunno, saaaaay, nothing. They're great tutorials (which I have yet to finish) but even with what I've learnt from them I've found that having the patience to go through with animation has been rewarding. For example, I have made this already just to flex my memory of the tutorials:

    In retrospect it's quite shite, very spasticated, short and simple. That sounds like I'm describing myself actually. Anyways I have proven to myself that I can use the tools of the program to make the creature above and the same workflow I had on that can be applied to an entire animation, which is what I plan to do next. I took a step and now I'm taking a leap, let's hope I don't fall, like I did the in stockroom at work the other day. My next big project involves a comic I made of my friend Paddy and his irrational fear of people touching his hair.

So I'm going to animate Paddy going from this (he's the really happy one):

To this:

It will be fun and it is also very true to life if you were to try or be caught in this situation.

As for the first 2 productive fronts, I have already mentioned them. Number 1 is saving money and number 2 is drinking less, which is actually an offshoot of saving money. I want to save up for a new DSLR camera, as I have been planning for ages, so I can make better quality short films and I also want to buy a scanner/printer so I can do some frame by frame animation on the side too!

That's all for today mah friiiieeeeeenndss!

P.S. I actually wrote most of this earlier but accidentally DELETED ALL OF IT. And learned that Blogger doesn't save previous drafts as a result. Patience.....dwindling...... gaaaaahhhh.....