Hello and welcome to The timelapse of the Rosa Rejects to celebrate vonn’s 23rd Birthday!

 Total Time: 9.5 hours

 Software: Photoshop

 Song: Royalty Free Music 154 (Outdoor Eight Bit Skating) Eight Bit_Video Game_8-bit

So for this birthday, I wanted to take and break and draw something for myself. I haven’t drawn my little Reject characters in almost a year, so I figured now was the perfect time for an update!

However, that doesn’t mean i didn’t want to challenge myself. For this piece I wanted to set some guidelines for myself that I had to follow:

• NO using more than the basic circle brushes
• NO overlay or multiply layers
• NO zooming in
• NO background
• NO levels editing

I am doing this to challenge myself as a concept artist and push myself to work outside of my comfort zone. You will see in the timelapse that there are some times that I struggle, especially for the times I was dying to zoom in and detail on a closer scale.

Another new method I was trying out was to not focus on one until the detailing stage and keep moving from one to the next to have them feel like they were being completed together rather than individually. I started with a basic thicker line sketch to figure out the poses and sizing of them. From there I made the brush smaller and started working on details to flesh out the character’s personality a bit more and to differentiate them from one another.

When it came to lay the color on, I created a new layer underneath the lineart and I was color picking darker hues and laid it on pretty solid. From there I would create new layers ABOVE the lineart layer and start working on my shading and value build up.

Rinse, wash, repeat for 9 hours and this is my end result!

The Rosa Rejects – September 29th 2012

These are my rejects. From Left to Right: Nubia Palacios, Dan Goslin, Tim Von Rueden (vonn), Angela Alessi

You may remember a chibi tutorial series I did last year with these same characters:

Exclusive: Drawing Chibi Style Characters

- If you are wondering what these characters represent or why they have meaning to me, they are the three friends I met in art school and we would do everything with each other. I started the “Rosa Rejects” as a joke but it stuck and that’s what we would become known for around the school. So ever since then I’ve been drawing different interpretations of the rejects ever since.

Thanks for checking out my birthday timelapse post! I hope you guys enjoy this as much as I did created it! If you have any comments or questions, feel free to leave them in the comment section below!

Hello and Welcome to this Timelapse of the concept piece, Submerged

I am currently experimenting with different ways of starting out pieces in the most timely matter. This piece, Submerged,d was started with the mindset that I will stay away from line art and over-rendering. It was quite the learning experience playing with color and brushes to create the final look. I am hoping this will continue into cutting down the time on my concept work.

Below are some stills from the time-lapse!

1. Grayscale Foundations

2. Color overlays and selection tool cropping

3. Detailing

4. More color overlays and detailing

5. Final Result: Submerged

Total Time: 1 hour 28 min

Song: Cold Water by: Clément Peres

http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/34408/cold-water

Hello and Welcome to this Eat Sheep Timelapse of the Desert World Select Screen with Tim Von Rueden

For this time-lapse I was given the task of creating the world select screens for our upcoming game, Eat Sheep. There is a farm, desert, and tundra level. So in this time-lapse I show you guys how I went about creating the second world select screen, the desert.

Total Time: 2 hours 40 mintutes

Software: Photoshop

Song Used: Kids Video Game 04

Below are some screens from the time-lapse

1. Fist I laid out a sketch of what elements I wanted to include in the scene.

2. Then I splashed some color into the piece, starting to get a feel for the mood.

3. Then a lot of clean up and detailing work follows.

4. The final result!

Thanks for checking out this Eat Sheep Timelapse, if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them in the section below!

Hello and welcome to the Review section of last week’s exercise, Drawing the Eyes.

Here was my thought process for My Eye Exercise and Timelapse.

In this exercise review I focused on drawing my eyes with color being my main tools. I laid down an initial sketch of the eyes highlighting the main features of the eyes and the area around them. While I was color picking I noticed how many different shades of the skin I was color selecting and adding to the image and not only that but how many different hues were going into it as well.

Using my custom skin brush I  blended the colors i laid down to appear more natural and skin like. I also tried avoiding zooming in at all to try and focus less on the smaller details and more on the overall composition. Another tip I learned was that shadows on the face can vary in hue depending on their location. The shadow from the nose was a scarlet red while the shadow under the eye was a neutral gray.

After I have the larger sections filled in, I then add the details on top such as the eyebrows, eyelashes, skin pores, and freckles using 2 more of the custom brushes and rather than using the standard circle brush which has a very refined edge, I used the skin brush on a much smaller scale to give a softer look to it and not stand out too much.

After that it was all finishing touches and minor details to flesh out with a slight overlay pass where the light was hitting the skin the strongest.

Included with the source files are the brushes I used along with the .PSD of the final piece. 

Below are some of the still frames from the timelapse that showcase different steps during the process.

1. The basic outline laid out as the foundation for the colors. 

2. Laying the colors down, notice how many hues go into the skin, just just one solid skin color coating

3. Blending and smoothing out the colors together

4. Adding the details: The eyelashes, eyebrows, skin pores etc.

5. The Final Result

Now here are some of the eye submissions from this past week:

This one was done by sviolanis. Great use of light in the eyes, I would focus on the placement of the different shadows in the areas around the eye. My biggest tip for you is to watch how you draw your eyelashes. They feel stiff and too straight. They have a natural curve to them and the positioning of them is important to. Make sure you follow the angle of the eye and curve it off of that. Lastly the two circles I drew in that are connected is an example of where one side doesn’t match the other in terms of the eyelash placement. Great start!

2. This piece was done by mymatt11. So the placement seems to be relatively right but it seems you worked a little too hastily on the actual rendering and shading of the eye. If you just go in and spend some time cleaning up with blending then you will see your shapes really come forward and give that sense of realism. And the placement of the highlight should be coming from the same direction, where as one eye the highlight is on the left and the other is on the right. Good start and keep going!

3. And lastly, aduahawen‘s eyes exercise. These are excellent sketch drawings and challenging because of the different angles. I can tell you understand the different shapes and forms of the eye so my only critique will be on the color selection. Very simple clean shading and while the form is great I would recommend adding some more color to flesh it out. Even subtle hints of red in areas where the skin thins out around the eye and you would be able to see it come alive a bit more. Other than that, great job and great eye exercises.

Thanks for checking out this review post! Excited to push more of these exercises out and keep challenging the community to improve and progress!

Hello and Welcome to this time-lapse segment by the talented Pui Che

Rather than focus on the traditional steps taken for concept art, Pui takes a more interesting approach finding form and shape in chaos.

Pui Che’s Tips:

The Painting process in the video it self involves channeling what may seem like a uncontrolled chaos, into something that is recognizable and useable in any sort of artsy industry.

- It invokes shapes, form, and recognition. – A good way to generate random textures; control and uncontroled.

- While the central idea is to let loose and cast away till your hearts content; Remember to enjoy, and mix in your own little tweaks and quirk to shape it into your own unique style and flares.

- Having multiple styles to switch about is always good, use the ones that best fit the situation.

- Be sure to combine shapes and forms recognizable to you into the blobs, so you have something tangible to hold on to while gushing the piece right out from your mind.

- Have fun!

Some of the Photoshop keys involve in the videos are::

(general photoshop shortcut keys)

B- Brush

(Shift +B)- Toggle through various available tool type under the selected Tool Set( Shift can also be use along with many other tool sets, give it a try!)

CTRL/Command + J – duplicate selected/lasso area into a new layer.

CTRL/Command + T – Transform.

CTRL/Command + B – Opens the Color balance option, a very nice color adjustment tool.

Color Dynamic settings:: You can have you brush release a mix of foreground and background color just by the pressure sensitive of your pen by doing the follow setting:

By going to the Brush setting, toggle on [Color Dynamics] and setting the Foreground/background Jittle Control to Fade and set it to 90(or any high number).

Pui’s Gallery: http://cgcookie.com/portfolio/puiart/

↓ Below are some still frames of the different stages the piece went throughout the process. ↓

Song

Ultra Violet by team9

http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/268196/ultra-violet

Thanks for taking a look at this time-lapse segment, if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them in the section below!

Hello Cookie Community and welcome to the Fall Contest Winner Timelapse: Mega Man vs. Unit-E3D

The fall contest was Concept Cookies first and it was awesome seeing all the entries, the different styles and interpretations.

↓Here is the image link below to the contest page for those who might have no idea what I am talking about↓

And here is the link to the winner page, with the top three chosen by the cookie crew and the one who received the most likes on our Facebook page.

Under the prizes section of the contest page, the winner would receive a fully rendered art piece done by their guidelines and specifics. The winner wasn’t specific but rather left it to me to interpret their piece. They asked for Megaman fighting against our own Unity cookie mascot in battle. And that was it. Even though a guideline I had was to only have one subject matter I went ahead and did it anyways. So I decided to have fun with this piece and I think it shows. I used the color building technique in which I just layer down color after color to get my results on top of a simple scratchy sketch. Overall I treated this piece like it was a painting and avoided outlining or over-detailing.

I hope you enjoy your piece, shrapnel. Your submission was truly worthy of the first place holder!

Here are some screens from the time-lapse below↓

and lastly, the final result!

Actual Production Time: 2 hours 10 minutes

Song Used: Deep FreQ

Artist: ThaZraw

http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/63581

Thanks again everyone who entered and hope to see you in our next contest

↑ In the Exercise Timelapse I take you through my process of drawing the hair based on the reference given last week. I start with the dark done colors and build up my shading and lighting. This was done using the color building technique.

Actual Production Time: 1 hour 45 min

Song
Title: Réalité
By: Silence

http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/830

↓ As for the steps I took with this drawing check out the stills below ↓

1. Laying down the base foundation color.

2. Quick underlying color

3. Blocking out shapes with shadow strokes

4. Highlights and detailing, detailing, detailing…

5. Final Result

↓ Thank you to those who submitted and here’s a few thoughts and ideas I had about them below ↓

Overall I was impressed with how many of the pieces captured the feeling of her emotion. It was a sad contemplative mood that was shown quite well throughout. As for the focus of the week, the hair, I noticed one overall mistake, even in my own, and that was how little variants in size the brush strokes were. There should have been more grouping of the hair to create more shapes that are represented in the reference photo.
Also I give credit to those that went ahead and tried the orange hued hair. This can be a challenge considering how lighting affects this color differently than a brunette or a blond. Color picking from the picture may have helped but that doesn’t always leave a successful finished piece. Also being the first color exercise I thank everyone who submitted!

Now since everyone has their own style I won’t be critiquing what style it is done in but rather point out some tips that are meant to help each artist grow in their own strengths.

I choose four that I feel stood out the most in terms of what I think was done right and those that I think I could point out some helpful tips for their future pieces.

fusobotic’s

For this piece, I see a lot of similarities in how I work a piece. It is soft, and the colors are slightly muted and around the same tone range. My suggestion would be to push those shadows and darks, that will really push the midtones even more. Also just some addition of fringe around the edges will give it more of a textured hair feel rather than the edge being very crisp and clean. Well done, it shows that you understand how to mix color and shading, my suggestion would be to continue pushing those darks and to keep going!

darianoir’s

This piece took the  reference and made it their own. So instead of trying to critique the hair since it is done in a different style, I am going to suggest working with a range of color variants from the dark tones to the high lights. in your piece I samples two colors from two different areas of where there is shadow and mid range. You can see how the hue is very similar so I took just created a multiply layer and laid on the same color pushing the darks forward and giving the hair more depth. I enjoy seeing this kind of style and well done on creating shapes with the hair, something I feel the rest of us, including myself overlooked a little bit.
shrapnel’s

Shrapnel has become one of my favorite artists to see on Concept Cookie. The work is always done in a recognizable style and It is always a pleasure to look at. With this one there wasn’t much to critique since I was impressed with this one. It looks like a custom brush was used for the hair and that’s the only area that I feel maybe should have been broken up a bit more with some shaping or even grabbing a standard brush to lay on top to break up the pattern a bit. One section looked a little flat and I think I over-pushed it out but I was just trying to round the hair around the head a bit more. Like the last exercise review, I’m just being nit-picky because I know how great of an artist you are, and me critiquing is meant to be constructive to enhance you as an artist even further.
jawsify productions’

I choose this one because I think it covers what a lot of people did for this exercise. This could be a specific style that this artist may have where the brush strokes are very strong and bold so rather critique based on how I draw which is more soft I’m going to offer some tips for you and this style. You should look at the shape dynamics on the brush so that their are more size variants in your strokes. The smudge tool might be a great starting tool, so I took that tool and did a quick 30 sec pass to your piece giving it  that softer look. But don’t leave it at a smudge state because then it looks well, smudgy so on top of that go back to a standard brush and work your details from there. Also remember that hair starts at the scalp so I highlighted where your brushstrokes seem to start and it comes across choppy but that can be fixed with your shape dynamics turned on. Lastly for highlights on hair I recommend using a lighter tone of that hair color and maybe an overlay but never solid white strokes. I would recommend using white as a defining highlight color so use it very exclusively on areas that are catching direct light.

Thanks again for submitting and I look forward to many more of these Concept Cookie drawing exercises!

Don’t know what this Exercise review is all about? Take a look at the first part here:

http://cgcookie.com/concept/2012/01/11/drawing-exercise-hair/

Jonathan Williamson keeps his blender up to date and hand in hand. He is always willing to assist others with their blender skills if only they’ll let him plug in.

Today at the office we are celebrating Jonathan’s 23rd birthday and it is accustom for me to draw my friends on their birthday, So here is Jay’s.
Actual Production Time: 3 hours 15 min
Song: Pieced Together Happiness
Artist: Theacematt2 –  http://www.jamendo.com/en/artist/gepetto/

EatSheep is CGCookie’s first internal studio project that will be coming out soon as an iOS game. This timelapse covers a quick look at creating Melvin, the star of the game. The color blocking technique was used in this timelapse.

Actual Production time: 43 minutes

Song: A Well Worked Analogy
Artist: Ozzed
(great 8 bit artist if you like this kind of music)

http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/361549

This fourth part is a timelapse using the techniques used in part 2 to create three more chibi styled characters. With the outlines given in part 3, this timelapse finishes up the these characters and places them into a scene, completing the Rosa Rejects gang in a chibi style.

The Song used: http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/66700

Artist: J.L.T.
Song: Electronika