Hello Everyone and Welcome to the Drawing a Sci Fi Character Series Part 3.
In this third part, Tim Von Rueden takes you through adding color, shading, and textures.
My FAVORITE step in creating concept art is the process of laying down the colors and adding shading to it! So for this one, I decided to pick the one that I saw the most potential for myself to really explore different bold splashes of color to express emotion. So, naturally, the first one, the Rugged Manual Laborer, was my choice. I am a greater fan of the older looking sci-fi suits and I felt this one already had a story behind the image so adding color would just enhance the picture as a whole!
This is part 3 and I know I would like a part 4 to cover creating an environment for him to sit in and I might have a part 5 for bringing it all together and finishing it.
Below are some video stills from the different stages of this tutorial!
1. Getting a solid darker hued color base to work on top of
2. Laying on color on top to create values and an out of frame light source for placement of the lighter and darker colors.
3. Adding in extra details and other built in light sources that has to be carried and bounce accordingly around the character.
4. Grabbing appropriate textures to place on top in different blend modes.
5. The final outcome of part 3!
FIRST!!!
Cool. I love your tutorials!
Excellent.
I am really glad you did the Natalia series in real time but I don’t think it is necessary every time. The voice over was informative.
I agree, I believe it would help to have both types of tutorials for those who want to watch every step in real time and for those who would rather watch a time-lapse with an explanation given on top.
Yay! third!
Smashing stuff!
I learn so much from your tutorials. I come from a traditional background and know my way around paper, pencils, paint and whatnot very well. On the computer side of things, 3D and photo manipulation come to me quite naturally. However, the digital painting stuff is still eluding me sometimes (I blame it on the screen size, but I suspect it’s me that’s the problem, not the equipment) …. To be honest, I’d be lost without your tutorials!
Thank you! I also was very traditionally focused with art, just colored pencils and paper until about 3 years ago when I first opened Photoshop with a tablet. It takes some getting use to especially having to look at the screen and not what your hand is drawing but in time it will come to you very fluidly if you keep practicing
thank you soo much for the tutorial!
I just wanted to know what size canvas you normally paint on?
When I normally paint characters, I mostly use an 11 X 17 but it can vary sometimes with an 11 X 14 and 8.5 X 11.
This really helped me ! Will you make a fourth video ? I really want to see how you do backgrounds, thanks
You bet, I have a fourth one on my next set of tutorial to-dos!
This is an amazing set of tutorials. I’ve watched the silhouette tutorial like 2x and this color one is also great. Color is such a challenge, but once you get past it, the detailing part is such a blast.
One question – do you keep your brush a solid 100% opacity or adjust it the opacity depending on what you’re working on?
Thanks! and I normally do keep the opacity set at 100% the entire time when I work. I find that I use the tablet sensitivity to work as my opacity control.
Thanks so much for the series! I’m kicking myself for not having seen it earlier and I’m eagerly anticipating the fourth. A question: How do you get the colors to mix so well like in the face and on the shoulder pads where it hardly looks painted? I can’t get mine to look right with the hard edges on photoshop brushes and it’s holding back my progress.
Thanks man! Areas like the shoulder pads I used a metal brush to help create a rustic look to the metal surface and then the face I did a lot of eyedropper, picking up the color, and blending the face over and over again. When I just can not get the face to blend correctly I have a skin brush to help blend the face wonderfully. Sometimes you can’t get a nice blend in a sufficient manner with just the circle brush so that’s when custom brushes can help out big time!
Hello and thank-you. To me Art is like rocket science. Math, computer science etc seem so much simpler. I’m past middle age and trying to embrace beauty aka the arts. Just one question/request; towards the end of the third part of this tutorial series you are applying textures from a blue tarp and other sources in the environment. My guess is that you photographed these ‘things’ and transferred them to Photoshop; I will be using Gimp. Will you point to some on topic tutorials or make one that describe this process? If you supply the technical name/terms I can search myself. I just need to pick your brain a bit to keep my education on track. BTW, your commentary in the vids is more enlightening than you will ever know.
Allan
Thank you, when I use a texture in my work, I will normally set the “blend mode” to “multiply”. Gimp also has this blend mode feature, it is found in the layers section. The actual meaning of Multiply is this setting will Look at the color information in each channel and multiplies the base color by the blend color. In short, it will lay a texture on top with keeping the values you had underneath still in tact! Hope this helps
Very good written story. It will be valuable to everyone who usess it, including myself. Keep up the good work – can’r wait to read more posts.
Great to hear!