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Art tips and techniques and some reviews by illustrator Joe Corroney.
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COMICS 101 for 12/05/2002
Star Wars Gamer #7 - The Anx
Week One: Digital Painting over Pencils - Thumbnails, Rough Sketches and Line Art
Personally, I really enjoy the Painter program over Photoshop when it comes to painting over my own pencils since it's more fluid and you can emulate more painterly effects and illustrative techniques than you can normally in Photoshop, which tends to be a more 'mechanical' program.
Don't get me 'wrong-o'. I have great faith in Photoshop. It's the 800 pound Wookiee of all artist's programs. There's really nothing it can't do. But "the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force", as Vader would say. In other words, the subtleties and complexeties of Painter can really take you places faster and farther than Photoshop when you've learned it's ropes abit. But if a strong and flexible artist knows the benefits of both programs, he or she can plan to efficiently employ the best attributes of each one in completion of the final, which is what I will in fact be doing here. Though the majority of this illustration will be completed in Painter, I already know I'm wanting to to do my final highlights and touch ups to my rendering using the dodge tool and darken airbrush in Photoshop later.
The assignment I received from Wizards of the Coast was to illustrate an article for Star Wars Gamer magazine outlining the alien species, the Anx, first glimpsed in Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace. It was my job to depict these roughly humanoid, prehistoric and reptillian looking creatures in their native habitat, surrounded by their flora and fauna, since the article went into great detail on their home planet, history, society and culture.
I started off with a few rough thumbnail sketch ideas coming up with a satisfactory composition that pleased both myself and my art director. I knew I wanted a painterly, landscape feel to this piece, almost like a historical painting or snapshot you might see in a Star Wars universe-type museum exhibit showcasing these dinosaur like aliens. So I planned early on to keep the final drawing in pencil and would work in watercolors using the Painter program, giving this a softer, almost slightly more pastel feel than my usual graphic coloring style. The following drawings are the small, rough sketches from my sketchbook followed by a slightly larger rough sketch I used as the basis for my compositional design.
The reference I have for these creatures come from a few of my Star Wars Episode One books along with the 'Art of Episode One book' in particular which had some great concept sketch designs by Terryl Whitlach (creature designer at ILM) which I used for reference. I was also fortunate enough to call on my contacts at Lucasfilm to supply me with some alternate reference of the aliens that they sent me for this project.
Once the line art is completed and sent into my art director and when he approves it, he then passes it onto Lucasfilm for their approval who in turn give me the go ahead to begin the final, full color art. The following artwork is the completed pencil line drawing on two ply vellum surface Bristol Board that I used to paint on digitally and complete the final.
The pencil artwork is scanned into my computer as greyscale and at 300 d.p.i. through Photoshop at full size which is somewhere around 7 x 10 inches. The greyscale artwork is then converted to RGB in the file menu under Image>Mode>RGB. I save the artwork as a TIFF file and then will open it through Painter to begin the painting process.
Check back in Comics 101 next week to see the first stages of my coloring process where I begin building up my first layers of color and value using the Painter program.
-Joe
<< 11/28/2002 | 12/05/2002 | 12/12/2002 >>
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