Technique

Cool new GIMP tutorial on Starbright

By The Illustrator | 2010/02/27 21:56 Posted in GIMP, GIMP, Graphics Tablet, Illustration, Technique, Tutorials | Comments (0)

I’ve been meaning to add tutorials to Starbright Illustrations for a long time. I’ve been putting a lot of effort into learning programs like GIMP and Photoshop and trying to get good results, and I thought it would be a good idea to share what I have learned. I wouldn’t say that I’m a power user or a professional or anything, but I have spent some time with these apps, and I have gotten some results that I’m quite happy with from time to time.

So here it is, my first GIMP illustration tutorial, and it is of course a science fiction image.

It took me about three days to create the image and I was exporting images from GIMP at every significant stage using the Save for Web extension.

The tutorial that has appeared on the Starbright site is based on a series of posts about a GIMP illustration project from this blog – that’s right you read it here first – and the blog version, which spans three posts, is still probably the more detailed version.

The image was made with my Wacom Bamboo graphics pad, but it’s a while since I used it. It isn’t supported in the Linux kernel yet and since my Windows machine died that means it just won’t work any more. But I’ve got my eye on the Mandriva forum, and a few other places – whatever Google throws up really – so I’m hopeful that there’ll be a solution, a kernel patch, a driver or something of the sort soon.

It’s the only thing missing from my artistic arsenal though, overall I’m very happy with Linux in general and Mandriva in specific, so expect more tutorials soon, just not for the graphics tablet.

GIMP Digital Spaceship Painting Tutorial part 3

By The Illustrator | 2009/12/28 19:55 Posted in GIMP, GIMP, Graphics Tablet, Illustration, Spaceships, Technique, Tutorials | Comments (0)

This might be the third part of this GIMP digital painting tutorial, but it’s actually a good place to join. If you have been following this process from part 1 then, as you can see from the main image, a lot of progress has already been made since the start of this spaceship painting process, and even since part two of this look at the creation of a science fiction illustration.

When we last saw the illustration it looked like the image on the left. The monster was still an abstract shape and the new improved space explorer had just been hashed in.

I was still a little unhappy with the look of the spaceman however, he looked a little too much like a superhero with bulging muscles.

So after a little more work our intrepid explorer now looks a little thinner and more vulnerable. His spacesuit is the same colour – basically – as the spaceship hovering over the scene in the background and that pretty much ties him to it, I think. But it is a little boring, and there is almost the danger that he might be mistaken for some kind of expendable exploration droid. I’m going to have to be careful to do everything I can to keep him looking human.

Here in this next image we can see that with a bright high-vis orange vest on his exploration/environment suit and some bright highlights he is looking a lot more interesting.

It’s still possible to mistake him for a robot though and he’s going to need a lot more work before he’s done, but right now the monster in the background is crying out for attention.

The monster is the focus of what we are doing in the next couple of images. Here in this first image I have started building layer after layer of detail onto the monster. When I’m happy with a particular look, or the number of layers has just gotten a little unmanageable I’ll blend the layers down, repeatedly using the GIMP function of that name, until there’s just one monster layer again, and then start over.

Here this process continues with ever more detailed layers of light and shade being added to the monster using my Wacom drawing tablet. It’s starting to look less like a smooth and ugly frog, and more like a frightening crocodile thing that could really do some damage to an unsuspecting planetary explorer. I’ve added more detail to the foreground jungle too.

Now the foreground jungle is casting a shadow on the monster. I created the shadow by adding a new layer, painting a black shadow on the monster, turning the transparency of the shadow down to something like 30% and then moving it about with the smudge tool (looks like a finger) to soften it. I was really quite happy with the shadow, it seems to turn the monster from a flat shape into a real 3D creature.

The last touch – for now – was to work on the transparent data screen in the explorer’s hand. Using the shift button to make straight lines and tidy it up a bit. I hope it’s telling him to look out behind him!

The image has come a long way during the work, with 7 different jpegs showing different stages of the progress in this post alone, but there’s still a long way to go. When it is finally complete I’m thinking of putting all the images of the different stages of completion together into an animation. It might end up being quite a long animation.

3D Model Spaceship with Interior in Blender 3D

By The Illustrator | 2009/11/14 19:03 Posted in 3D, Blender, Technique, illustration, problems, spaceship | Comments (0)

There is a huge amount of exterior art depicting spaceships, but a relatively limited number of examples of illustrations showing interiors, and I have decided – to even things up a bit – that my latest work in progress, “The Packard”, should have some interiors. Some detailed spaceship deckplans for role-playing games would be cool too, like these nice spaceship deckplans. But first I’m going to concentrate on creating some images of the interior.

I zoomed in on my spaceship mesh and the first thing I decided to do was punch a hole in the wall so you could see the planet outside. I immediately came across a problem however, I wanted big friendly windows with circular edges to the 3D mesh, but how would I make the edges of the mesh a perfect circular curve. I was Googling around thinking that weight painting might be the answer, when I encountered this great idea of simply using a guide and moving the vertexes by hand in 3D Model – Sports Car – Alex Salters Profile. I immediately gave it a try, and it worked like a charm, although it was quite fiddly and time consuming, it got good results.

With the new improved windows, and raising the floor of the spaceship mesh the room started to look a little more like the sort of space where player characters in a science fiction role playing game, or strange little space monsters might like to spend some time. There would be some places to play strange alien card games and listen and dance to alien music only just heard at the edge of human perception.

And it hasn’t deviated too far from the original concept sketch either, at least not yet, and that’s pleasing because it’s often very difficult to get a collection of 3D meshes and textures to produce just the effect you’re looking for.

I’ll be posting the completed Packard spaceship here, both interior and exterior, as soon as it’s done. And probably a few more in-between stages as well.

Zombie laptop back from the dead with an iso file, a USB stick and UNetbootin

By The Illustrator | 2009/10/26 00:48 Posted in Technique, problems | Comments (0)

A friend just gave me a laptop. A dead laptop, and on top of that, a dead laptop with a faulty CD drive. How on earth was I to get the life giving blood of an operating system into this computer, past the barrier of the dodgy CD drive.

First – to give the CD drive the best chance it was ever going to get I made a boot disc using one of the smallest Linux iso files I could find. Index of /pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/2.x/release.

That didn’t work, but it was because an iso file is a special kind of data that needs to be imaged to the boot disk, not copied. Software is required to do that, and I tried Image Burn. I chose the fileforum mirror to download Image Burn from.

That didn’t work so following some advice from a real talented geek I tried making a boot disk on a USB drive with UNetbootin. And my goodness it worked. I had to change the Bios settings to let the computer boot from USB, but it worked!!!

Tiny core Linux reported all kinds of errors on the ancient laptop that needed to be brought back from the dead, and when it was done all it offered was a command line, but now that I know it works I’ll try a bigger and easier to work with chunk of Linux.

Right now all my computer says is tcbox something or other, but that’s a whole lot more than it was saying when I started fumbling about with it. Right now I’m feeling a little geeky and proud that I’ve got that far.

Blender 3D: Adding depth to my spaceship – with Wikibooks

By The Illustrator | 2009/10/24 18:56 Posted in 3D, Blender, Illustration, Technique, spaceship | Comments (0)

As I was trying to turn a 2d sketch of a spaceship into a beautiful 3D image I ran into a couple of problems. One problem was that the mesh I was projecting my 2d image onto was becoming more and more complex as I tried to distort it – to add interesting lighting to the finished render.

So I looked for a way to make the poly count on my 3d shape lower. And I think I found one…

The Decimate modifier will do two things for us. Its primary job is to reduce the poly count of a mesh. A pleasant side-effect for our purposes is that it will begin to rearrange the topology into a more manageable heap of triangles and quads. Keep reducing the Ratio slider below 0.5 until it becomes as coarse as you can stand. You want the lowest polygon base you can have that still maintains enough detail in the limbs and shapes you made…

Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Making Your Creation Smoother – Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks

But as I simplified my 3d shape, and then made it more complex again in a repeating cycle of faffing around with the image my the renders got stranger and stranger. The mesh seemed to disintegrate.

First it twisted like it was going through a space warp, and then it broke apart all together.

I decided to go back to a simpler shape as the base mesh for the spaceship sketch to be projected on. It worked pretty well, but it still looks like a 2d image floating about in a 3d space.

I’m losing faith in this whole process and might go back to sculpting a 3d spaceship, and only using these 2d elements as decoration. I could use this technique to add airlocks, logos and such like to the 3d model that eventually gets produced.

I’m actually quite looking forward to sculpting in Blender again. It’s the most enjoyable part of the whole 3d process.

Fast like a 3d spaceship hyperdriving through a shaft

By The Illustrator | 2009/10/23 20:01 Posted in 3D, Blender, Illustration, Illustration Friday, Spaceships, Technique | Comments (0)

I’ve been experimenting at the interface between 2d black and white sketches, and full-colour 3d images again – this time with one of my cute little spaceships. I had had a sketch of a small elegant little spaceship hanging around for a while, here’s that spaceship sketch as if first appeared on Spiralcat, but when I saw that the word on Illustration Friday this week was “fast” I decided to work on it a bit more – and maybe turn it 3d.

On one of my many photosafaris I had taken a picture of a corner of a train corridor which I thought would look very nice as a high-tech background to a 3d image. The spaceship sketch cut out and made 3d by laying it on a mesh in Blender was already starting to look more effective – but I wanted it to look even more 3d illustration like.

I spent a few hours messing with the placement and intensity of the lights and sculpting the mesh that was supporting the spaceship sketch. I think the image is going in the right direction, but it’s far from complete yet.

I need to add a lot more 3d detail to the corridor that the spaceship is flying through and to the spaceship itself. Then the final touch will be using Photoshop to add some motion blur to the action in the background of the illustration. The whole thing has already come a long way from it’s individual elements though.

Spaceship artist out…

Guardian inspiration for my 3d CGI illustrations and…

By The Illustrator | 2009/10/21 12:58 Posted in 3D, Blender, Editorial, News Story, Review, Technique, illustration | Comments (0)

The Americans (not just the Democrats, the Republicans have voiced similar concerns) have told off the Tories here in the UK for embracing European partners with views that are a little too worrying, a little too closely. The Guardian comment piece that inspired this editorial illustration. I immediately wrote a little something for my blog Dragonbat when I saw this comment piece and of course, I would need an illustration.

I decided on something simple that told the story as directly as possible. So America’s anger is represented in the illustration as a big nasty 3d eagle with red eyes. As Europe is the backdrop to the story, we have the simple blue flag with stars in the background of the of the image, actually it is more accurately an image texture on the floor of the 3d space of the illustration. But…

How to represent the Tory party was a little more problematic, their leader David Cameron is a bit bland and hard to caricature, but I couldn’t think of a better option. I gave him a very dubious looking arm band in the European colours to signify the bone of contention in our story and there you have it, done.

From initial sketch to completed illustration the whole image with 3d elements added in the ever reliable 3d workhorse Blender and a few tweaks done in the more jittery and expensive, but still useful, Photoshop took about three hours. The picture isn’t perfect – and there comes a time when you just have to call it done – but the huge advantage of this illustration technique is speed, it allows you to add colour and interest even to something as fast moving and ephemeral as a blog post, and that can’t be a bad thing.

3d editorial illustration for article on internet piracy and copyright article

By The Illustrator | 2009/10/20 10:49 Posted in 3D, Blender, Editorial, Illustration, Technique | Comments (0)

This is my latest editorial illustration for Dragonbat (my illustrator/Guardian reader rants and sketches blog). I’m writing an article about copyright on the internet, and as usual I wanted a cool illustration to accompany it. The article itself isn’t finished yet – pressures of actual work that brings me real cash money, rather than the dribbles of virtual money these internet shenanigans bring, so I guess I got to prioritize it – but the article is shaping up to be about my half-baked theories on files sharing and other internet copyright issues.

This is the original sketch I did, well not quite in it’s original form, it has been scanned into a computer and I used Photoshop to colour it and turn it into a png 24. I wanted the sketch to have a really raw hand-drawn feel because I knew it was going to be part of a 3d illustration produced with the Blender 3d suite and that would add a nice counterpoint of glossy mechanical accuracy.

I think this comes across very nicely in the completed illustration, it looks like the sketches jumped right off the page of the sketch book and started hopping about in an empty studio as a photographer tried to capture the action on a really fast camera setting.

This idea of action really fits the feel of the image, which is to do with all those tempting files out there almost downloading themselves onto your computer. I mean even if you watch an episode of your favorite show on YouTube, in theory, your computer has to download the file – and some people even capture these files and keep them.

I don’t think this is particularly the type of file sharing that is always making the news as the industry futilely tries to stop it, but it’s probably just as illegal, and I think this dangerous tempting territory is what is invoked by the illustration. I wonder how many of us can claim that there are no pirated files of any type on their computer?

The illustration was quite quick and easy to make, with the usual png on a mesh plane technique, but I really like the results. Now I’ve just got to finish writing the article.