Self Managing Development
This week, the plan was to expand some of our skills by following a tutorial to improve on any skill we wanted to work on; such as getting more practice with an industry software, an art medium or try something new to expand our skillset.
Since I want to work with illustrative industry work with concept art through character designing, I decided to expand my skillset in digital painting as I haven't really experimented with it much and the last time I did it; I used photoshop instead of my main digital art software (FireAlpaca)
As last time I did a digital painting (seen above), the shading wasn't blended very well in places and the bold, black line art really overshadows the softness painting is supposed to show. For this experiment, I followed the Youtube tutorial video by CicadaSkies as it's focused on how to do it via FA; as well as using the character Emma Cole from Balan Wonderworld as my painting subject of choice, as I adore the character designs from that title. I'm also using one of her darker skin tones in this experiment as I also wanted to practice implementing different skin colours into my works.
Step 1
I created the base for my painting, by drawing the main line art of Emma and filled it in with white as to help keep an eye on where the line art is and help separate each section of the character (hair, skin, etc). I also added a purple circle background to give the small pic a proper portrait feeling to it.
Step 2:
Next, I added the base colours into four different multiply layers: skin, eye, clothes and hair. This was so that they wouldn't mix into one another as I was using the watercolour brush through the whole process to make it feel more natural.
Step 3:
This was where the real meat of the process was done, as I added the shading onto the different layers to again save on mixing the colours up yet. I also added some blush onto Emma's cheeks to help make her feel more 3 dimensional.
Step 4:
Then, I merged all the paint layers and the line art layer onto one layer, which means that I would be able mix the black of the linear with the colour and shades; adding more depth into the painting.
Afterwards, on a new add layer, I added some highlights onto Emma's hair, face, eyes and hoodie buttons with white and blended them in with black to finish the piece.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I really love how this came out! It's much more of an improvement compared to my previous attempt. The lack of line art really makes the painting feel soft and the shading really adds to the 3D feeling digital painting can sometimes feel. The best parts of my painting being her fringe, her cheeks and her hoodie.
Her eyes could be tweaked to have more colour instead of seemingly black and there are some mistakes where line art is still kinda visible. But overall, I heavily enjoyed this experiment and I'm proud of this final result!
Peer Comparison
Now, for the final task for this week, we were asked that after going through our tutorial, we should look at what another student did with improving their skills.
The student I looked at was Harry Green, as he went more for developing his animation skills in ToonBoom Harmony; mainly with his knowledge on how to rig a 2D puppet on the software as to quote Harry: "The reason I chose this skill is that I know that many do not enjoy rigging as many things can go wrong during the process. As a result, studios are in constant demand for people who know how to rig (both in 2D and 3D)." So he spent an afternoon working with the software and following the tutorial by Oli Putlands "How to Rig in sweet harmony".
However, the final result from his tutorial session didn't end with an animated rig; Harry did get some advice and knowledge on how to improve his rigging skills for future use, from how to use different tools within the programme to how to mess around with the line work to make some line art disappear and change the concours to help with the art. Each skill he learnt was also accompanied by a slideshow of images showing the step to step process to visually explain what he was learning.
So, while his tutorial may not ended in a result he wanted; Harry still had fun learning more about a industry standard skill and feels more prepared to continue his studies, by starting with small, simple shapes before going into more detailed characters.
