Digital Playmat Design Process: Part One

Something a bit different this time as I'm going to go over the first half of the process of creating a piece of art digitally. Usually you see a bit of this as I work my way through producing a mat by hand but this might be the first time I've shown the process end digitally. In this first post I'll be covering concept art, compositing, and going over the production of 3D elements. I'll save a look at the processes of colouring for part 2.

Step One: Concept This.

Theres no real design brief for this project outside of 'do whatever you want but keep it to the dimensions of a playmat with 0.5 inches around the edges clear to allow for colour bleed' if the design gets printed.'

With free reign to do whatever I like the first decision I make is to do something completely original, I'm going to avoid using existing characters from existing media. This limits things slightly but in the grand scheme of things and with the vast worlds of my imagination to pull from it doesn't really feel like it helps much. We need to narrow the theme down a lot more before be get started on any drawing.

I quite like the idea of working with a limited colour pallet. Since I'm working digitally a super-flat style is an option its a style I've been coming back to since secondary school but always end up philosophising about how its not truly flat until you can produce things one atom thick 

Day at the beach,
warning neon
Trees. 

I start going through a collection of colour pallets, I'm very much aware that none of my art teachers ever really tried to instil in us a proper working knowledge of colour theory, 'heres a colour wheel get on with painting those flowers' was about it so while I'm very comfortable working in black and white having colour swatches, saved pallets from previous projects, samples from films and TV shows and an app that can check my colour choices is rather reassuring.

Finding some halftone patterns in rather garish shades of blue and pink that I quite liked I decided to do some quick digital sketches to see how it might look. Its not quite super-flat but I do like the mix of elements and colours. The idea of having so much black in the image will come up again in part two.

At about the same time I start wondering about the story the mat is trying to tell and end up in a train of thought that goes something like this. Its a design for a competition where I can draw what I like but whats the end result for? Prizes for competitions? Who gets one of these, the winners? The best of the best who have clawed their way up through rounds of swiss and then a knockout top cut? Apex predators? People like dinosaurs right?

Perhaps its about how sometimes you find yourself sitting down opposite a monster, maybe that player who for whatever reason you just cant beat or one of those big fish you hear about who play at the big events. I like dinosaurs. If you strapped jet engines to a T-Rex it would be at least twice as cool right? Maybe thats too obvious? What if the T-Rex wasn’t the biggest monster in the image? What if the T-Rex could fire missiles?

A rather odd chain of logic to be sure but it was enough to get me to somewhere to start, there was nothing for it but to draw a Jet-Rex and some missiles.

The initial missile concept came out of one of the designs I had done for a project at university which involved a round smiling character with weird eyes which even before that had started as a doodle of a potential signature. The T is upside down the M in the form of teeth. You could also say this line of thinking eventually led to the Altermidgard logo but as much as I like logo design that is a topic for another time.

He was called Byte, and now he has some firepower.

At this point I also had the idea that it might be fun to make some elements in 3D which is why I ended up drawing the Missiles from various angles, working out how the thrust vectoring would work, nosecone variations, possible fish based missile launchers and so on. As I drew it became apparent that there was a distinct animals as objects theme creeping in.

J-Rex came fully formed, it took quite a while to work out his pose, I had to go and research T-Rex skeletons before it started looking right but once it did he almost drew himself. The main differences between this image and the final piece is the placement of the head to make him look sleeker and the way the tale wraps around.

On the flip side Paige came about because I had noticed I was drawing animals and so just started sketching armour made out of them. Paige became the real villain of the piece when I drew the mini J-Rex in the bag, 'well of course' I thought, 'she's wearing all these dead animals, why wouldn’t the J-Rex want its kid back'

Then I wondered what weapons she would use, they would be animal based obviously, initially drawing a rabbit laser sword was just a joke but then I drew the cat to make a pair and wondered why not? The fact the ears and tail make very good hand guards was just too amusing not to use. Its not as apparent in the final piece but the reason the weapons are different colours is because the rabbit was sun themed and the cat themed for the moon.

Step Two: 3D That.

It had been some time since I had done any 3D work so this was a perfect opportunity to get back in shape as it were (that shape being a teapot). Since I wasn’t going to be using these models in a game engine or anything and I also didn’t want to spend too long on this step since in terms of the project as a whole it would be eating time while only providing reference for the final piece I therefore didn’t worry to much about optimising the mesh of the missiles. They could have been lower poly especially in the spherical areas but as reference images they would be fine.

The swords on the other hand were done properly. Starting with one polygon and extruding the edges to gradually build up the object until I had what amounted to half of the whole object. Because obviously if you make half of something that looks the same on both sides it takes half the time and you can guarantee both sides are the same when you apply a mirror modifier to it.

Being more confident and having remembered the skills that had lain a bit rusty, by the time I made the cat sword I decided to go back and remake the rabbits spine based on the cat's so as to make the two look a bit more like a pair. they both also needed a bit of rescailing to bring them in line size wise. After that I spent some time messing around with materials trying to find something that would look cool when rendered the glow effects were nice enough but in the end I didn’t use any of them and just smooth shaded them ready for use in the final image.

I also had a go at adding particle trails to the missiles but since I wasn’t making a movie they never looked quite right, I had this idea in my head that stars would make an interesting trail, perhaps I would try that.

Finally in this stage I had to figure out Paige's pose, at which point I got a bit stuck and ended up going back to basics and testing the poses out on a mannequin. I could have got what I was looking for by using a program like Poser but sometimes its just quicker to do things the low tech way with wooden figures Blutack and Gundam weapons.

Step Three: Composite All.

All the disparate elements now created I could start putting things together.

production pipline. Imagine all the images
from above feed into here.

First things first lets work on the sketches. Paige is still a bit basic at this point and I wasn’t happy with J-Rex's head.  Combining the various parts on top of an image full of golden ratio spirals (heres one I prepared earlier) I cut, cropped, rotated, moved, squashed and stretched until I had things lined up where I wanted them, mostly following the patterns of the spirals and points where they intersect. For example Paige is built entirely on the idea her head is placed at the top left intersection of the rule of thirds grid and her limbs and swords follow other spiral lines. Once I had everything set up the way I wanted I went through a few stages of redraws and then the image was ready to be combined with the 3D elements.

On the other side of things I pulled the various 3D models into one scene and placed a box that I could apply the 2D sketch to so as to get a better idea of where the missiles should go. Placing each instance of the missile model became a case of moving them closer or farther away from the camera and rescaling them where required, if you could look at the 3D space in motion it would end up looking a bit like one of those perspective tricks you see on that car advert at the moment.

Placing the swords was a similar process slightly complicated by a slight issue with one of the rotation axis. Once everything was in place I set the render options up to give me a bright background I could chroma-key out later and after making sure the camera was in the right position I rendered the scene in the highest setting I could.

The 2D and 3D sides of the project are then combined, and flipped in the case of the 2D, part to create another image that I will print out at full scale and use to redraw the final image so I can add the final stages of detail. The star missile trails get added, J-Rex finally gets his long metal fingers sorted and Paige's clothes are finished.

Once scanned back into the computer the job of colouring it digitally will begin and in part two I will discuss how much choice of raster over vector influenced the final look of the image, why layer options are so powerful and most likely a number of other things I haven’t thought of yet.

Until next time, roar like a J-Rex.

Skull Servant Custom Playmat

Last time was quite a long post so lets keep things a bit lighter in this one. Which today is going to take the form of two short stories that while meant to be fun with will weave in elements from the development of the Wight mat. Without further introduction I introduce:

The Master

Upon my arrival at the address my apprentice had scrawled on a scrap of paper I found much to my surprise not a house as I was expecting but a dilapidated graveyard. This sort of error could not be tolerated, I made a mental note to reprehend the scoundrel upon my return. I was just about to turn and leave when a tall moustachioed gentleman stepped out from behind a large tomb and held out a hand in greeting. Sir Wightmare, as I would later discover he was named, was by all accounts a rather jovial fellow which seemed rather at odds with his rather extreme gaunt appearance. I took the offered hand and found it to to be equally if not more desiccated as his face.

Sir Wightmare assured me I was in the right place and escorted me to meet the rest of the family. They were a pleasant enough bunch if like Wightmare perhaps a tad in need of a decent meal or two. I pondered this as I set up my camera, it was rather odd that they could afford my services and apparently a butler but all appeared grossly under weight. Being the upstanding Victorian gentleman that I am needless to say I kept this observation to myself, it wouldn’t do to insult the clients even if Lady Wight appeared to be almost skeletal.

Sir Wightmare and his nephew Wightprince were the only members of the family who were apparently ready for their portrait to be taken, dressed as they were in their finest outfits, also because I am an upstanding gentleman I did not mention that said finery was clearly not of the latest fashion. It almost seemed as if they had been wearing it while rolling around in the dirt, stained and frayed as it appeared.

The way Wightprince ran around with the family hound made me think this was likely ti be the case.

Lady Wight was in something of a state over her dress, she went through a number of costume changes all of which were in a rather rich chocolate colour. After many such changes I felt time slipping away from us and suggested that perhaps she should just go with her newest garment, an outfit who’s lower half featured a strong sharp outline and interesting if somewhat plain fold design. It was clearly within the fashionable trends of the era we are living in, if perhaps a tad basic for a Lady of her apparent standing. Again as the gentleman that I am I did not make this last point to the lady herself.

Lady Wight's husband King was perhaps worse than his wife. Arriving late and refusing to remove his work clothes he was in the end persuaded to put on his most fancy work garment which featured frilled cuffs and a high collar. His brother in law also managed to get him to put on a rather sharp looking waistcoat and tie. I had to admit with the pocket watch as a fine embellishment he almost appeared the very model of a fine Victorian gent. This despite his refusal to wear any shoes.

I never did discover what line of work the head of the household was in, something to do with civil servants I believe.

With all members of the family gathered the next task was getting them all to stand still while the photographic plate was exposed, there was a near constant creaking, Lady Wight had to lean both against a tombstone and her son so frail did she seem. I was glad however that all the horseplay had exhausted the hound since the bat that became entangled in the Lady's hair almost caused the picture to become blurred with its frantic attempts to free itself. 

The delay to calm it gave one of the families butlers time to wander into the frame apparently to offer refreshments. I hate to say it but I lost my composure removing the lens cap I bellowed at the servant to remain perfectly still. 

Being the gentleman I am I of course apologised for my outburst as soon as I had replaced the cap and allowed the family to move again. It turned out the family did not feel overly aggrieved by my shout, the butler in question had been with them a great length of time and was now rather ancient.

I did note however that somehow old Skull was decked out in the most up to date of butler attire perhaps he wasn’t as senile as they seemed to think.

I declined refreshments as I indicated that I must be on my way my next appointment. The family seemed rather upset but I insisted.

When they fell on me and I noted my life flowing out of me I did not make a fuss.

I was, after all, a great Victorian gentleman.

The Apprentice

When I came to open the photography emporium I am apprenticed to I found the masters camera and belongings left on the step of the rear entrance. Of the master there was no trace which was unusual since he is a most punctual man and often reprimands me for my tardiness, even when I am in fact never late.

Once my morning duties which mainly involved the cleaning and upkeep of the store were taken care of I set about developing the plates that had been in the masters bag. By force of habit I also checked the camera and with little surprise found one plate still inside. The master could be somewhat forgetful at times.

The resulting photograph was somewhat shocking featuring as it did what appeared to be a family of skeletons posing in front of a crypt. An otherworldly purple sky was contrasted by eerie green clouds, or trees, or possibly both.

I had to admire despite the subject, that the master had managed to frame the image almost perfectly I did feel however that the way the interior of the crypt was the same colour as the sky needed some slight correction before I handed over the final image.

Applying a selection of chemicals to a number of copies of the original image I managed to produce a number of variations. Most shocking was the variation that seemed to reveal a portal, to where, my sane mind would not let me imagine.

I spent the rest of the day behind the counter awaiting my masters return. Near closing time when he had not I set about wrapping the days photographs for delivery, I would hand deliver a number of them upon closing the shop.

The image for the Wights I would pay to have delivered.

…

Until next time .

Lucario Custom Playamat Or How to Draw a Lucario

While thinking about how I could present this post I realised that for the most part I tend to give a overview of the process involved in creating the mat but very rarely do I go into the details of how to actually draw things in the first place. So this time as we look at the Lucario mat I'll go though some of the stages involved in sketching out the character at the end I'll also go over a few of the other techniques involved in colouring it.

The main idea here is to give an insight into the theory and technical processes at each stage, while I encourage people to follow along its more about the process than a final product so saying its a  'How To Draw Lucario Tutorial' in the title is probably not entirely correct but still.

We have a lot to cover today so with the preamble over lets dive straight in.

Stage One: Starting Somewhere

So you have a rather intimidating sheet of paper in front of you and a pencil and eraser to one side and your stuck because you have no idea of where to start.

Click on the image to enlarge

Thats relatively easily resolved since your not starting here but will first need to go to your preferred connection to the internet to do some research and gather reference material. Two paragraphs in and I already have you doing homework but this stage is important, we could work from memory of course but human memory is incredibility unreliable when it comes to this sort of task I could draw Lucario without reference but how much detail would I be missing and would the various body parts be to scale?. Go to your search engine of choice and do an image search for Lucario.

Well at least now we have a basic idea of what our subject looks like. Lucario has an essentially human body plan with a fox/wolf head and very odd knees and lower legs. I want to liken the process to life drawing, except we aren’t trying to copy the poses or style.

Back at our blank sheet of paper unfortunately nothing much has happened in our absence. We will rectify that by drawing a circle. Don’t get hung up on making it neat, sketchy is fine better at this point anyway. You can see that I've just roughly gone around a few times and got something that is mostly circular.

The next thing to mention are the various digital overlays.

The Green line is where I initially placed the characters feet, the Purple line represents where they will end up by the end of the process but we wont worry about that just yet.

The red box represents the general space that I want Lucario to occupy. Going over the lines isn’t an issue, in reality the box is purely imaginary, but if your too far out it might be an idea to check to make sure the various limbs are actual as long as you have made them.

The blue I-bars represent the length and width of the head and will later show up again used in the characters skeleton. The length/width of the head is a universally important measurement for working out the scale of the rest of the body so its a useful trick to know.

You will notice that my Lucario seems like he is only going to be two heads tall with a bit extra at the bottom thats because I've already drawn the final image and this is a redraw so I know exactly how things will end up looking. Normally you wouldn’t know though and in Image 2 you can see that there are two sets of circles.

Look back at your reference material and hold your pencil up to the image with one end placed at the top of Lucario's head (ignore the ears) Place a finger/thumb on the pencil where the bottom of the head would be then move the top of the pencil down to where the head meats the neck you should notice that the area between the top of the pencil and your finger/thumb is filled by Lucario's torso. Moving down again and the area between them will be the upper legs and then finally the lower legs. This lets up know that Lucario is usually 4 heads tall if he is standing up straight.

In this example though our Lucario is going to be closer to 3 heads tall. Its not because he's short but because we are drawing him in a more dynamic pose causing various body parts to get tucked in behind or foreshortened. Foreshortening happens when elements of an object are closer to the view than others, in this particular case Lucario's head and the front of his upper legs are the elements closest to us and its torso and right arm are further away.

So in Image 3 instead of placing the circle for the torso directly below the one for the head we shift it up, the top of the circle will help us identify where the neck would be (in this instance it is hidden by the head) We can also use the bottom of the circle to tell us where the torso joins the upper legs at the hips.

While in Image 2 there is only one circle representing where the legs will be in Image 3 it has been replaced by two, there are after all two legs and they wont be directly under our character. Much like the torso the lower legs will tuck in under and behind other elements of the body which again will result in Lucario not being 4 heads tall.

Normally at this point if I didn’t know exactly what I was drawing I would just be laying down circles and seeing what positions looked good. We would have ended up with a selection of variations that looked similar to the one in Image 7 but we aren’t skipping ahead to that point instead we are going to go over a process that can be quite helpful when it comes to drawing characters.

So at the end of stage 1 what do we have to show for ourselves? Mostly a bunch of circles and a slightly better idea of the placement of various body parts. In part 2 we will look ad turning those circles into something a bit more substantial.

After the break I will finish off the main tutorial, mention a few other techniques and wrap things up.

Step Two: The Leg Bone's Connected To The What Now?

With the rough outline in place its time to work in more detail. In Image 4 the circles have been swapped out with dark blue I-bars to represent the characters bones. The new smaller circles represent where the various joints and hands would be and the light blue line helps us place the shoulder joint that would mostly be hidden by the head it could probably do with being on the same diagonal as the upper bone on the leg to the right but we wont worry about that to much right now..

In Image 5 I have added the let arm bones in red, the other red bones represent things like the ears, right arm, feet and the weird section that sits between Lucario's shorts and the knees. Its a slightly strange leg layout which is one of the reasons i've hidden them in behind.

In Image 6 we can start to apply flesh to the bones so to speak, the easiest way of doing this is with triangles. The upper legs obviously aren’t triangular, they are more like sausages, but we can fix that in the next step. The triangles however do give us a good shape to work from when it comes time to figure out how the various muscles are going to shape the limbs.

Like I mentioned at the end of Step 1 this stage is more theory than a process that I go though every time I draw a character but at the same time its something you need to know in order that you don’t have to bother going though the steps, you could even take it further and start pinning real muscle groups onto the skeleton building up more and more detail so as to give a better base to work on when it comes to adding the skin you may for example find that where a group of muscles twist in the torso the skin should be under tension. Another stage further and having added the skin you could then tell areas where clothes would be lose or bunching up. Its all about how far you want to take the level of detail and in this instance since Lucario is not exactly the most detailed character to start with we wont be going as far as al that.

Image 7 (which can bee seen bellow) takes us back to our sketching, and we can see that I've rounded out the upper legs and blended them to the torso. Everything else is also somewhat more rounded because its a physical sketch rather then an example done on the computer but you should still be able to make out how the triangles on the arm connect tot he shoulder and hand to look like ice cream cones just like in the previous image.

I have also added a circle to show where Lucario's nose will end up being and a curved line that runs from the top of the head down the middle of the body to help me find the center line which will be handy when I'm trying to get the eyes and spike on the chest in the right place.

Step 3: Splines

Usually I would just get a darker pencil for this next section and draw over what I already had but since that tends to result in something somewhat less than easy to untangle visually I'll start over on a fresh piece of paper.

In the last section we figured out our pose and scale then moved on to an initial attempt at fleshing things out. With that image as a guide we can now go a bit further and start to add more detail and generally be a bit more careful and clean with our lines.

Image 8 shows the first stage of the redraw and I am attempting to keep the lines much more fluid using single strokes. While this might not be the style you choose to use every time (theres something to be said for sharp angles) I am currently somewhat obsessed with drawing everything using S-curves.

This has partly come out of the fact I tend to use a lot of spirals in my layouts and partly because of other artistic influences I have been exposed to recently. As mentioned above you don’t always have to do things this way but one of the benefits is more natural looking shapes and another is that its quite an easy way to draw smooth lines especial on the computer using a graphics tablet.

In any case Image 9 highlights where most of the various curves are. You don’t have to stop at one S either they can flow into each other like the long snaking line that starts by the ear on the right and goes all the way down and around to bellow the elbow.

This Image also starts to show how the body bulges around joints, in a human there would also be more definition in the arms but Lucario isn’t exactly a weightlifter and even the slight hints of muscle I have added aren’t really cartoon accurate since normally the upper arms would be almost flat.

At this point increasing the level of detail is just a process of repeating the last few stages, take the curved image and redraw it again adding things like the eyes mouth and accessory’s (in this case the spikes and the fur around the neck and ears). The hardest part of this particular image I found to draw was Lucario's nose it took a large amount of tweaking before I got the angle right and without the nose in the right place its hard to place the eye on the left. Much like the rest of the image the mouth is just a really curved S, its just one side is much wider and bigger than the other, drawing eyes also involves an S for the brow followed by an elongated circle with the top cut off for the iris.

Step Four: Check, Edit, Enlarge

At the end of the last Step you will have been left with an image that is almost finished, theres just one problem you have have hit a wall in terms of the detail you can pit down at the scale your woking at. The two main option would be to start using a light box and mechanical pencil to create finer lines or to go big, since mats are large anyway my preferred method is to scale up to A2 (if you don't have an A2 piece of paper a piece of A3 set up vertically is also fine in this instance)

First though we need to do a little more editing. You could do the next few sections on paper as part of the last step if you wanted, I've just chosen to split them off and and talk about then here since I will be doing this next section on the computer after scanning the image in.

In Image 10 the blue lines from Image 1 are back I've also added a diagonal grid to check how the various components are lining up and while I like the way the ear in the right leads down to the nose and the leg on the left also follows that diagonal I have noticed the elbow could possibly do with being shifted to the left slightly in order to get the angle of the arm more in line with the leg on the right.

After pushing the body up to the purple line I also notice that the legs and arm might be a tad on the thin side in comparison to the head so I have enlarged them which has had the added effect of hiding more of the leg on the left.

All this messing about adjusting things, including any changes that you notice need making after mirroring the image are based on an eye for detail and form that you will build up over time, much like any other skill its not something that your going to have straight away however if you are looking at something you have drawn and can sense that there might be something not quite right even if you cant quite tell what it is thats a good start.

By now you should have redrawn the image enough times to have a reasonable ability to draw it at a larger, scale either freehand or by printing out an enlarged sketch and working from a light box. The greater scale will give you space to add more detail you could even combine all the methods and add a mechanical pencil to the mix if you were going for super detailed designs .

By this point Lucario had also gained a tail and those weird things that make the black thing over his face look like a mask I had left them out up until now since they didn’t add much to the tutorial side of things but again like the rest of the image they are made up of S-curves this time flowing in the same direction as the special effects to add more sense of movement. Just remember the tip of the tail needs a crook in it. The extra space available has also let me get a more pointed feral definition to the shape of the head and I have spent a bit more time moving the arms into positions I found more pleasing in relation to the ball of energy and the other limbs

When your happy with your finished design you can either go straight to redrawing it on the mat or scan it into the computer and mess about with it more there. Or you could start over and create another or perhaps do some sketches of other Pokemon and add then into the design. There’s really no right or wrong at this point.

That said this brings us to the end of this section of the tutorial, in the next Step I will look at some of the colouring techniques.

Step Five: Because This Tutorial Wasn’t Long Enough.

Finally I'll skip ahead now to the end of the colouring just to quickly go over a few other techniques. Since I wasn’t going for a cartoony look anyway I decided to add a fur effect. Adding the effect mainly involves spending some great deal of time painting alternate light and dark patches, first in lines following the contours of the shape (knowing where the muscles are would be handy here) and then moving up to an area above that line and doing the same thus creating a layered effect.

Similarly by alternating light and dark in larger patches you can create a better impression of realistic lighting. You can use this effect to create edges by having a shadowed area follow a line of light or vice versa.

Taking the idea one step further you can create quite realistic metallic objects especially if your careful with your gradients and make sure it looks like its reflecting the environment around it.

Step Six: Wrapping Things Up

I realise its been quite a long post today but I hope that perhaps others may have picked up at least one or two things along the way. As it turns out it was quite a useful exercise for my own learning also since it forced me to try and find a way to get the various concepts that I take for granted across through the use of images and text.

It also showed me why many people charge for teaching others things, because putting together all this stuff can take quite a long time.

Next time, hum the adams family theme, or the musters for that matter because we are going ghoulish with the Wright family.

Blackflame Dragons Custom Playmat

This time we are going to look at a mat full of dragons, go through the general steps involved in this mats production .and go over the general Yugioh dragon style guides, but first.

An aside on the nature of mat relocation.

Before that however i must first note that the owner of this mat had it with them at YCS London this past weekend (October 2014) where it was stolen, while there are a number of my mats that I know of that have gone on to explore the world with people other then those who they were originally designed for, in this particular instance its obviously not an ideal situation so if anyone comes across it in their own travels I would be grateful if you let me know, either on FB or the contact form. 

Going forward in addition to the logo, date, and unique number on each mat i will most likely be adding this sites web address. As I have mentioned before i cant help thinking that it would be quite nice to have some way to track mats, even if its just a web form that people can fill in,  it occurs to me that had I known this when I was working on my final year project at university it would be the sort of thing that would be a relatively easy First, assuming of course you could get enough feedback.

And now back to our regularly scheduled program.

Musings on potential apps aside this mat called for the cramming of as many dragons of both Yugioh and Pokemon verities as possible into the space available, while simultaneously maintaing enough room for a complex background. As discussed last time theres a scale limit to how small you can go doing the Pendulum mat first definitely helped get me in the right frame of mind. Design wise Its relatively straightforward to take a group of characters and squeeze as many as possible into the available space, i have done it before myself with both the Vampire and another mat I don't believe I've talked about yet. It's mostly a process of Tetris-ing everyone until you find poses that look right and fit the correct scale while working within the golden ratio layout for example. On the other hand having to get sixteen characters to fit on a background that the viewer has to be able to parse mentally as an actual object is a tad more difficulty and requires slightly more in the way of design preparation

Your initial sketches are going to have to take into account things like how the creatures wings have a tendency to make them at least twice their body size and can obscure large parts of the background for minimal gain. theres a good reason a number of dragons are placed around the edges of the mat for example.

All the colours of the rainbow, well five anyway, if one of those is dragon.

Thumbnail sketches done the first thing I started on was the background. Strangely it felt a bit like I was working on a cycle of basic land for Magic the Gathering. Admittedly though that may have had something to do with both Yugioh and pokemon also having element systems and the fact that the background needed to feature a mountain with ice fire earth lightning and sky areas.

Even all the way back at the twilight mat you could say I have a particular style when it comes to drawing crumbling rock. The glacier, mountain, and lava areas on the other hand did require me to spend some time looking at actual reference material, the way the trees and grass on the lower slope gradually become more spares as the gradient increases or the way the snow and ice build up at the edges of the glacier are not just things I've made up but are actual physical phenomena that I have noticed looking at the world around me and reference images.

Most of the time when I'm doing mats these days I'll work on the full scale sketch that includes everything in it and go from there. In this instance however I wanted to make sure I had a real place fully designed before I started adding the dragons. Doing it the other way could have meant large blank spaces opening up in the background if i suddenly decided that I didn't like the placement of one thing or another which would have then needed filling back in and thats just more work, also you cant always guarantee you will get the same look.

After the jump we look at turning Pokemon into Yugioh dragons and finish going through the process of describing how I went about making this mat, theres pictures and everything.

What a big nose you have. All the better to impale you with.

With the background done the next task was to go through and Yugioh-ize the Pokemon. its actually a relatively easy process in some ways, at least when it comes to dragons because Yugioh's particular brand tend to follow a pretty strict style guide which seems to read as follows, assuming the person who wrote it is mildly sarcastic:

If you have wings you will likely have some sort of bizarre protrusions from what on birds would be the wrist joint. It could be anything from spikes to engines and/or assorted gems or other paraphernalia. In addition the chances are quite high that the bones that make up the wings will be highly visible and/or made of metal even if your not a skeleton dragon.

Next up we come to the head area and if your a Yugioh dragon you can look forward to having either some sort of pointy nose protuberance or a large angular chin and/or some sort of spiky looking assemblage of horns or skull extensions. Like the wings chances are you will have at least one gem inset into your head somewhere.

In terms of the body chances are high that no mater if your made of metal, stone or some from of sentient plant you will have an overlapping armoured section somewhere about your person even if its just the tail. Theres also a high chance that this armour will cover your chest and again your likely to be covered in gems, or spikes or some sort of lined area that just so happens to be a complementary colour with the rest of your colour scheme.

Finally if your a fire monster you will either be literally made of fire or your background will make sure that concept is clearly apparent.

Sticking to these principles I worked my way though the Pokemon that would be on the mat. Gradually nudging them more into line with the style we are going for. This Tyranitar for example gets his normally rounded edges made angular with added spikes (1). The various holes in his body get adjusted slightly I wanted those on his legs to be more vent like (2). He already has lines on his chest so we can just extend that element all the way down and along the underside of the tail (3). Obligatory gem in the forehead, the head gets a slight shape change (think Blue Eyes White Dragon) which lets me add the ridges above the eyes (4). Finally we dd a pointy chin and fill the mouth full of needle like teeth (5).

When i was finally done with everyone I had a large pile of sketches that could be scanned in and added to the background design.

Gestalt mode.

The next phase was slightly complicated by, as you may have noted, the fact that the various combatants are mostly fighting within elemental groups, if your aligned with the ice element for example chances are your over in the glacial area mixing it up with other of your kind. It took some time to move things around scale and flip them until i was happy with how everything was looking, just play around in your image editor of choice moving layers about until you get things roughly how you want them. Next up we print the resulting image out and redraw the whole thing in an attempt to make sure the various characters looked as if they were in the space rather than pasted on top. which as it happens is the main downside to this approach.

A few more passes between the computer and physical sketching and finally I had the design laid out on the mat. I could finally start on the colouring.

You've got a point.

My comment about pointillism last time wasn't just a throw away remark.After initial colour being applied to the background i spent a great deal of time drawing dots all over it to add an element of texture. The benefits are that you have more control of the flow of the materials if your only applying tiny dabs. On the other hand you do have to be a bit careful of RSI, not so much on individual projects but if pointillism is your whole deal then yeah get a wrist brace or something I guess. The trees were done in much the same way, darker dots were set down and then a lighter colour was applied over the top to give the impression of depth.

The design probably doesn't need trees and houses but they help to tell the eye what the scale is, much like the Pokemon in the background work a bit like scale birds, the artist is trying to show the audience that something is big by showing them something they should know the size of to compare it against.The use of little dots also extends to the reflections in the water and some of the scale textures on the dragons themselves. I'm not sure of the likelihood of doing an entire mat this watt though.

Blue is the new orange.

For once we also have a blue sky, mainly due to the fact orange and green were off the table because of the colours I had already used in the image. The way it lightens towards the center is mainly an attempt to draw peoples attention inwards, while the creatures are roughly placed in a spiral the main layout is just a straight rule of thirds grid.

Once the main colouring is done I work on the spell effects which in this instance is mainly just the ice beam attacks so thats quite straightforward, even if it does seem a bit unfair Trishula gets three beams to everyone else's one. all that done its time to seal it and we are done.

For a few dragons more.

If this mat doesn't turn up i will likely be called on to create a second version which will be interesting since I don't normally do repeats. Luckily I tend to keep all the working files and materials involved in a mats production so I wont have to start over from scratch. It will be interesting to discuss what changes and differences there are between the two images so that will be fun. As to why I call it the Blackflame mat thats mainly due to the fact Horus breathing fire seemed like he was one of the inspirations behind the who project.

Next time either skeletons or more Pokemon. Until then keep your style guides handy.

Pendulum Custom Playmat

Almost every piece of art starts from a different place (assuming you don't keep working from the same style guide). Its as if there's a large panel of dials, sliders, buttons, flashing lights, and each time you start a project they are all in different positions and states. In this instance the slider for teeny tiny details is set to max and the dial for 'theres a very specific set of parameters required' is at 11. This time I'm going to be talking about the first mat I've designed with the pendulum zones in mind, covering the various restrictions I had to work under and explaining the outcomes those restrictions produced.

The main details for this mat were all locked down pretty early in the process of discussion with the person who had asked for it. Sometimes people don't really know what they want beyond a vague topic or initial set of characters (and we will be looking at one of those in that category at some point within the next few posts) This can give you a great deal of freedom but equally can cause a bit of a headache when your trying to figure out what sort of things they might like or are trying to form a nebulous concept into something solid.

On the other side of the coin we have designs like the one we are looking at today where the person knows exactly what that want right down to the placement of the individual elements. In instances like this you have a very solid foundation and have to find the best way to implement it and any of the design flourishes you may come up with along the way into a cohesive whole. I would imagine most designers, much like myself, like to start from a position somewhere between the two most of the time it is however nice to be forced to mix things up, to be forced down avenues your wouldn't normally consider, restriction as they so often do create new opportunities.

In this instance our restrictions as follows are:
The zone layout of a typical Yugioh field including the new pendulum zones.
The fact that specific artwork has to be at specific locations.
There needs to be a skull near the graveyard
That it would be quite nice if this design in some way referenced an existing mat, most likely in the form of the colour scheme of the background.

So lets work out way though each element

The zone layout is straightforward enough. Most of us should be relatively familiar with it if we have spent any time playing Yugioh. I wont mention what I think of the choice of placement of the new pendulum zones but it is what it is I suppose. I will however point out for a game with no other limiting resource system the fact that they haven't used the way the field can naturally limit things is a bit odd, for example what if Syncro/XYZ materials remained in their zones and the monster replacing them sat between them therefor taking up two zones, how powerful could a creature that essentially reduced your zone count by 1 be? would you risk playing a powerful monster that said the spell zone behind it couldn't be used?

And breath.

My thoughts on game design aside this part of the process is all about measuring 9000 times drawing, well, more than once as it turned out, What really helped was setting real cards out on a blank mat and moving them about until you think you have the placement that seems about right. Through this process  for example I realised that the 5 Monster and Spell zones would have to be closer together than I had originally thought if everything was going to fit. It also solidified my belief that it was best to keep those zones away from the top or bottom of the mat, the top because that a bit far to reach and the bottom because people have a tendency to rest their elbows there and things can get lost or fall off the table by being brushed by arms.

The zones on the outer edge of the design also went through a number of placements. I could for example have aligned the main deck with the exile zone above it, however that didn't feel quite right from a number of perspective most notably the mat's overall design balance, I didn't want the right side with its extra card to 'weigh' more than the left than it really had to.

Similarly putting a boarder around the central section servers both to emphasise the main play area and means that while keeping that area relatively clutter free to help prevent mental fatigue I could add a more complex border area.

In this image I've blown up a number of the elements from the mat for a closer look

The most tricky element of this design was that the materials I use have something of a minimum scale they can work at, basically once you start getting down to trying to draw the little stars and write the element names on the circles you start to find the materials want to flow more than you would like and have you actually looked at Xyz Universe? I was seriously considering doing it in pointillism,

My favourite element is probably the Soul Release, not only partly because its one of my favourite cards but also because I think it turned out really well in terms of matching the original, perhaps it has something to do with digital art these days being done at such high resolution in comparison to back in the late 90's early 2000's.Luckily for me the issue of real estate for the card art itself was somewhat alleviated though the use of the anime style boarders otherwise things would have been even more tiny. It did however requite me to spend some time working on making sure they looked right in their new scale, a oblong Seal of Orichalcos would have been a bit odd.

Its always a little surprising how much material plain backgrounds can use up I almost ran out of blue working on this one. Design wise while in this case I'm riffing of the colour scheme of the original mat the center point this time is in the bottom right and spreads out in rings from there, these quarter ring segments come together to form something of a linear rainbow gradient that with the help of the pendulum pulls your eyes across the image. The interference patterns caused by the crystals are mainly there to break up what would otherwise be a much larger expanses of colour and again add an element of movement.

I could have gone with a more standard skull design for the graveyard however after deciding to have a clean central area and a more complex boarder I couldn't help thinking that perhaps everything should be tied into each other a bit more deliberately. 'Well'  I thought, 'theres a tree right there why not extend the art out of the card and have that area of the boarder made of vines? what do we have on the other side, artefacts huh well then gears seem appropriate'. Admittedly the circuit board design element of the bottom around the extra deck is a little less obvious as its more of a reference to the design aesthetic of the Yugioh Zexal cartoon but still. Finally these elements are fused together with vines morphing into lines, flowers becoming gears and the pendulum bringing it all together with a mix of everything.

In the end I can say it's a design I wouldn't have necessarily ever considered creating by myself which is one of the best parts of doing designs for other people. It definitely pushed the limits of where I was in terms of level of tiny detail at the time. But as we will see later this month (well November probably) it certainly was a valuable experience for what would come next. So until next time embrace the restrictions and see where they may lead you

Custom Playmat Blue Eyes White Dragon vs Kuriboh

Today I'm going to look at the Blue Eyes vs Kuriboh mat, but a little differently from usual as it will be in the form of a conversation, the fact the conversation is between myself and I is irrelevant.

You hope. Also its technically a Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon but the title is long enough as it is.

Anyways, perhaps we should start from the beginning. 

Design brief, birthday present, BEUD (Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon) and Kuriboh / Winged Kuriboh fighting.

But was that each other or against something else?

Well looks like thats been left up to you to work out.

Fine against each other, its more fun that way.

True, true, but ah, what version of BEUD are going going to draw

What do you mean theres only one, checks google, well ok two, maybe 3 if you count anime version, four because the toys is 3D... look I'll work something out I've drawn Blue Eyes enough times now I should know what it looks like.

Quite.

Helpful, anyway lets see, I prefer the wider variation on the head, geez they can't even keep the tattoo thing exactly the same, and hmm lets go with the spiky wings, its a little bit more Red Eyes style but this thing is going to take up most of the mat already the last thing we need is no background.

Its going to be the sky, and its going to be orange.

Hush, you don't know that for certain.

Right

...Moving on, I think the dragon should be fly towards us out of the middle of the screen

Mat

That too. The other two heads can be slightly further back but I want the primary one to be after the viewer.

May as well get burst stream of destruction in here somewhere too.

Finally a good idea! one of the other heads can be doing that which leaves the other one to, ah, get beaten up by a Kuriboh, you know even things out a bit.

Embarrassing if you ask me.

I didn't, and did you want all the Kuriboh's to be exploding or something?

Well...

No, not going to happen, I'm going to have to draw who knows how many anyway I'm not making them all just balls of light. 

Aww..

I've been thinking about the layout how do you feel about the dragon in a V layout with a spiral from top left down around and up to middle right?

The Kuriboh's make up most of the spiral don't they?

More of less yes, and oh! We can have one hanging on for his life riding the dragon and another getting crushed and... 

Your getting a little to in to this, can we just start it already?

Fine...

-Some time later-

All it needs are some skulls and flames and todays mat would look right at home on a vinyl slipcover.

That wasn't really the inspiration or where I thought I would be heading with this design but I'm pretty happy thats were it ended up.

And the sky is orange I notice.

Its red! and thats only because you didn't like the yellow.

It didn't 'pop' and you know it, its also why the BEUD had green highlights if you will recall. I will allow that the chain is a nice touch.

Its good to vary the sides up a bit, don't want them getting too mirrored

I notice it cuts down on the number of Kuriboh's you had to draw also 

Thats slander my friend you can't prove anything!

...At least some of the  Kuriboh's are exploding and the one doing a Shoryuken on the right head makes it slightly less embarrassing for the dragon I guess, where did he learn that by the way?

The first rule of Fight Club...

Sure are a lot of the blighters though...

Yes, luckily the two big groups meant I didn't have to shade them all individually. Just work up thought the lights and blend in the shadow areas. Getting the lighting right on the dragon took long enough.

I was there I remember, it did seem to change quite often. 

I got there in the end, and the glow effects on the attacks helped a great deal to define where the lighting should be coming from.

Anything else you want to say? 

Join me next time... 

Hey!

...When I will be discussing another mat design, possibly something more structural 

By myself.

You hope.

karakuri Tokens

This week something a bit different as we take a brief look at some tokens I have recently completed.

Usually for tokens I will work in a vector drawing program, the benefits being that you can scale the graphics to any size with no loss of detail.

This time though I decided I wanted to mix things up and try something a bit different so after drawing the initial sketches by hand and scanning them in instead of opening the vector program I opened a more traditional drawing one instead.

Of course doing it this way means a fixed dpi and since these are going to be printed out the higher the better, on the other hand my Mac is getting on a bit now so lets set it at 600, since thats going to be what the printer outputs it at.

The next step was to paint each sketch in greyscale (it helps to set the pallet to greyscale also so as you don't get tempted to use colour.) Having a graphics tablet is extremely helpful at this point, a mouse isn't exactly the most efficient drawing tools, my particular tablet is essentially 1 to 1 with my screen size but smaller tablets have the advantage of requiring you to move your arm less and are probably the best place to start for new users.

You may be wondering why I chose to do the images in grayscale first rather than jumping straight into colour there are two main reasons.

1. Its quicker: With four images to do and at such a high resolution, limiting the choice of colours cuts out quite a bit of the thinking time involved for both myself and the Mac, with a mild grey laid down I can set  the brush to lighten or darken and then set the opacity and those will be the only tools other than the eraser I will need.

2. It leads to more consistent images; Since I'm essentially building with light is very easy to tell if something doesn't look right and to keep the shading consistent across the whole image. if I was to section each area of the image off based on colour and work on the shading of each area individually theres more opportunity for the shading to differ between areas.

Finally it  means when you do finally add the colour you don't have to mess around with working out what the light dark and mid tone of each colour is and its relation to the other colours in your image all you have to do is paint the colour over the final piece and set the layer properties to colour and the shading will magically appear.

Having coloured and printed the images out I have to apply the image to the foil and in this case I decided to splash out and get something a bit snazzy.

And thats about it, I definitely enjoyed doing the art this way so no doubt I'll do something similar again. Next time we return to your regularly scheduled playmats.