Creating this piece took many long hours, an unhealthy dose of the Redbull, planning through several different steps of production, each to be reviewed and approved by my teacher and some good ol’ gut feeling.
Starting with very rough Sketches, and doodles, I try to keep composition and loose perspective in mind. As I doodle I’m also trying to find within the lines interesting forms that could be developed further. I keep this stage of development for my eyes only, and it’s used for my own personal inspiration. It is from the ideas I gather from these loose doodles that I will then translate to the thumbnail phase of the given project.
The following images are a small collection of thumbnails generated for the project. I had my heart set on doing something futuristic, but I still tried to change the thumbnails enough for them to be different from one another. It is important to explore many different compositional ideas so that you may have many to choose from. Most times then not, you’ll always find one better then the last. With that in mind, the more thumbnails generated the better.
I did try experimenting with vertical compositions for variety.
Ultimately, I decided to develop the above horizontal thumbnail.
The Following image is the rough image that was drawn directly from a blown up copy of the final thumbnail. I will blow up the thumbnail with a copy machine, put a sheet of paper over it, turn on the light table and redraw the thumbnail elements on a new larger sheet of paper. This stage is especially important as it is here that I will correct any perspective issues from the thumbnail and correct them, I was fortunate that the thumbnail chosen used a 1 point perspective setup. So there where very little perspective mistakes to correct as I was able to have the perspective pretty much nailed in the thumbnail phase. None the less, I will still determine my vanishing points (or in this case vanishing point), draw all perspective lines and ensure that all elements are true to the scenes perspective. As you can see, in the rough image below, I have drawn in all perspective lines leading to my vanishing point.
Rough Drawing with perspective construction lines.
Having completed the rough, the next step is to tighten up the lines and create a rough/clean version of the image using a clean fresh sheet of paper and the light table. Adding more detail where necessary. At any step before this stage, I’m free to erase parts and redraw elements I’m not happy with, as I try and figure out the design. When all that has been done, it’s time to set it in stone (or final line to paper) and begin the final clean drawing. When I’ve hit this stage, all elements of the scene have already been figured out. I threw a new sheet over the Rough/Clean drawing and begin painstakingly putting the final line to paper. With all my composition, perspective and designed elements already figured out in the Thumbnail/Rough/Rough-clean stages, here I am free to clear my mind of all these elements and focus purely on line weight.
Rough/Clean in blue with final clean drawing overlayed over using photoshop
Final Clean Line drawing of drawing.
Hello,
These are my first two attemps at painting digitally. As I worked on them, I was learning how to use the tools at my disposal and these are the results. The goal was not to produce highly rendered pieces, but rough images that would suggests the elements that made up the scene. As always, I encourage you to share your thoughts and comments. Tare it apart if you must 
Enjoy,
-Matt
Hi everyone,
I had fun with these.
These are very preliminary thumbnails. At this stage, details are excluded to keep only composition and shape in mind. as I begin to warm up, I then begin to suggest more details and texture through very loose and rough lines. Before beginning my thumbnail, I always draw down a quick floor grid suggesting perspective, at times, i’ll also throw down lines defining my rule of thirds. It makes for lines everywhere in the shot, but during the quick process I will end up incorporating them to the final thumb. While working on each thumb, I was always trying to keep composition in mind. It was also important to me when thinking up the different shapes used, to keep them simple and not over complicate them as is true in all things.
Here are some silhouette excercises i did for fun. I picked up this technique from “The skillfull huntsman”, a book published by Design studio. I simply used a fine point sharpy marker on plain white 8.5×11 sheets of paper.
Here’s an update for my buddy Jay, It’s a sketch of the background i’m planing for a shot. It’s going to be of a nice family oriented neighbourhood. The kind of neighbourhood where kids play hide and seek, mom works on her flower garden on the weekends and the neighbours invite you over for BBQ. Lemonade, Sand boxes and squirrel chasing galore! In this scene, a dog will be jumping in from off the scene and into the foreground beside the fire hydrant.
Hope you like it!
For my very first post, I decided to put up the final rough\clean version of my church assingment. This was the last assignment we had for our design class before hitting the holiday school break. (they call it a break, but i’ve been working full time since it started)
This assignment was very open to our imaginations and we basicly had no limitations. The only guideline was it had to have a church. It is very obvious to me some areas have room for improvement, but overall i am pleased with my end result. I hope you enjoy.
