Tutorials for GIMP on creating concept art and sci-fi illustrations.
The selection of tutorials here at Starbright Illustrations is very wide ranging and covers the stages in a step-by-step digital apinting technique, applied to various different types of image.
Such as;-
Sci-Fi Spaceship Concept Art Tutorial.
A tutorial for GIMP that shows just what amazing results can be obtained with this free and open-source application, relatively easily. The tutorial takes you through the process of creating concept art showing a spaceship design, for a role-playing game for example, from the initial sketch to the completed artwork, and all using only GIMP.
Fantasy creature painting tutorial
This is a fun tutorial and it deals with problem solving. This fantasy children's book illustration ran into problems around half way through the digital painting process, not an unusual occurence, and this tutorial includes the steps I took to try and get the picture back on track.
In the tutorial, extensive use is made of the layers feature in GIMP, and being able to seperate the individual elemenets of the illustration and independantly alter their transparency proved to be very important, read this fun GIMP tutorial
Sci-fi digital painting tutorials
There are also tutorilals devided into different themes, so you can find a resource dedicated to exactly the kind of images you love to create. Including a selection of Science Fiction Tutorials
This first GIMP tutorialwas a lot of fun to do. I didn't use any reference, I just got out my graphics pad out and started sketching away in GIMP. It was a long journey taking the initial very rough black and white sketch to a completed colour digital painting. There were a lot of different things to keep in mind and quite a few tips and tricks to share.
Related Portfolios of My Art
Role-Playing Game Art
Role-playing games set a unique range of artistic challenges. The most important thing about game art is that it should be believably realistic, but at the same time totally fantastic. Depending on the sort of game in question, images including cutaways of spaceships, concept paintings of monsters or digital paintings of characters might all be required. And these elements are often set against the most fantastic of backgrounds – fantasy worlds of volcanoes rising from ice bound seas, sunsets over deserted asteroids, or primordial jungles stuffed with the most dangerous creatures that can be generated with the game mechanics at hand. Worlds of wonder, in other words.
Vector Art Portfolio
I originally started producing vector art as a source of images and logos to decorate my blogs and sites. Vector art has nice sharp lines, looks real neat online and can be scaled up and down without any loss of detail or too much pixelation. These particular images are a mixture of subjects, but tend toward being more light hearted - perhaps even childlike pictures for children's books. A complete children's book created from vector art can't be far away.
Sci-Fi Digital Painting Portfolio
You can find illustrations of all kinds of science fiction subjects here at Starbright. The sort of images used in designing and promoting things like role-playing games, films, animations and movies. This game spaceship concept art is an image created using three open-source digital painting and art applications, Blender, GIMP and MyPaint. The basic 3D model used to create the image was produced in Blender and then more detail was added using MyPaint. The final low-data web image was produced using GIMP.
There are lots of different types even of sci-fi art from golden-age rocket ships and giant monsters to gritty cyberpunk, and I love ‘em all. I enjoy the different challenges of producing images for each type of sci-fi background.
Illustration Friday Art Challenge Images Portfolio
This is a gallery of various different images, and the only thing they have in common are that they were all produced for the Illustration Friday art challenge site. The way the site works is that a different word is posted every Friday, and then artists from all over the world produce images inspired by that word and link to them on the site. It's a lot of fun and I have produced a great many illustrations in response to these art challenges over the years. You can see some of the best of them in this gallery.
I hope you enjoy journeying through these worlds of the imagination as much as I have enjoyed making them. You can read the stuff I've written about my images, just look at the pictures or even download a 3D blend file to play around with or use these ideas in your own fantasy role-playing games.
And you can also email me to get my artistic talents on your project, or read my blog where I talk about the exciting challenges of producing these images.
