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.