This is an overview of my workflow of a design sketch that I did recently. I cover the design stages and the pitfalls of not having a sold composition planned out at the beginning.
Alien Buggy was started as a design sketch, then later I added an environment. I used mostly graphite pencils, sticks with blenders, Verithin for sharp edges. Then I cropped and added the border in Photoshop. I truly enjoy doing fantasy designs with unusal characters.
For lack of a better name I refer to this character as "Creature". This was done in pencil and finished off in Painter and Photoshop. The tutorial merely covers the basic process used in character design and is aimed less at "digital" and more towards "art". This is far from being a finished product but the design phase is a vital set in any composition.
Tool Presets in Photoshop is a very powerful feature that is also very easy to use. It enables you to save a brush and it's attributes with or without color. This speeds up painting tasks when using your favorite "go-to" brushes and tools ...it isn't just for brushes.
This is a graphite sketch on Bristol I did the other night. This is primarily done for design , though I did add the head tilt to add some personality to the little alien ...at least that is what I think he is.
This is a sketch I did the other night. It started out just as a contour line drawing of the head only, which I molded with values. The idea came from "Noise" ...what I saw in an abstract object.
KGamut is a very small but useful tool that enables one to view the color gamut of an image. It is great for analysis and creating color choices for to use in your own projects.
Have you ever wanted to capture or extract multiple images from a movie you took? In this tutorial I take a MOV file, convert it to AVI with Pazera and then save the AVI as an image sequence with Virtual Dub Mod.
There are very few programs that will allow one to paint or draw in
Symmetry, which is very usefully to designers and concept artists. This is not a "How-To" in drawing symmetrically but an overview of four programs that have a symmetry tool. I added a video walk through of the applications HERE.
Here is a video that I posted to YouTube last year but never included on my blog. Keeping in the theme of "Color", I demonstrate how to create and edit color palettes from an image automatically and manually in Photoshop CS5. The manual method is also compatible with GIMP and CS6.
This is an easy and fast way to add brushes to Photoshop without having to restart Photoshop. For years I have navigated my way through layers of folders to add or delete brush sets in Photoshop, then restart it so the new brushes were available. But by chance I stumbled on to a very simple way to accomplish it. Weather we are doing work on our laptops, desktops or other computers, It is very helpful to keeping various installations of Photoshop the same.