[Amaakir]

Spotlight Winner - TwoDD

Anatomicae #28 - Fog, Lights and Rock & Roll!
Challenge based from Blindrat's suggestion

Due Date: June 18th, 2012, 12:00 PM PST

Please make sure to visit the
Reference Image guidelines
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How to Attach Images

Challengers! Hereth lie the rules for this round's challenge! Make sure to read them entirely!

"A Madman's Ramblings (Introduction)"

Anatomicae Challenge #28 comes rushing in with hot, flashy new looks! And right at the middle of the spotlight is TwoDD's winning entry from Anatomicae round #26 - Human Chimera! I hope the design for the new banner is to everyone's liking

Anyway, let's get back to business, folks. This past weekend I had the time of my life, I went to Diablo Swing Orchestra's Concert at Guadalajara City, Mexico. Not only that, but I got a backstage V.I.P. pass and actually got to meet them.
However, as we awaited for the appearance of this band, one which it's public cried for with such fervor, like the damned crying out for the gods to save them, I couldn't help but remember Blindrat's suggestion for a challenge in the suggestions thread.
As white fog rised and deep flooding colors kicked in, the band appeared, fading silhouettes dancing amidst an ocean of clouds and colors I thought to myself "Well, painting this would really be interesting!" and recalled Blindrat's suggestion of a challenge using fog and lights to study how light would act on solid objects and through fog or gas.
I'll quote Blindrat on this one so you can all get a better picture:

Originally Posted by Blindrat

Something those who wish to be storyboard artists and cinematic illustrators. There are man scenes that involve lighting that is blocked full or partially by smoke, fog or some other substance of the gas like nature. you re to paint/draw a scene in or outdoors that displays the understanding of lighting not just on solid/organic objects, but through and on gas like materials as well.

Using Blindrat's suggestion for a great study, I decided to make it just a little bit more interesting and added some rock and roll into the mix! That can never go wrong...right? :P

Objectives

Challengers will be tasked to study how different colored lights react upon solid objects and through mist or fog. To do this, the challenger will be tasked to paint a concert scenario filled with fog and colors.

Rules and Requirements

- Challengers are required to show their WIP and Reference Materials. These challenges are an opportunity for all of us to make contact with other artists and be a part of a growing community and it would be unfair for the artists who are making an effort to share their work and ideas if you are allowed to enter the finals without participating in the WIP thread.
- Challengers are to paint any member of a concert (or the entire band if you wish!) enveloped almost entirely on theatrical fog (At least half of your final image must be filled with smoke) and splashed with colors like those found on a concert stage.

Some Tips to get you on your way...

- Strong silhouette and bold colors will help you a lot here, so be dashing and experiment!
- You can choose from any member that would likely be on stage for the concert, go ahead and look up pictures of your favorite, singer, drummer or guitarist or the entire band!
- Here are a couple reference images:



























Have fun, guys, and welcome to round #28!

[hieveryone]

Good subject, I like that.

I did a quick sketch tonight, but I think I'm gonna do some more tests before starting to work on the final entry.
I really need to do a lot of practice.

[zeichenwut]

Going to give this one a try as well.

Wip 1:


Reference:

Originally from http://fav.me/d2vtwvg

[uisolui]

Cool challenge- glad I have some time to work on this one Really liking your work hieveryone, colors and silhouette look spot on. Zeichenwut liking your treatment of the fog, really looks like its enveloping the guitarist.
Here's my WIP so far, still figuring out how to paint the fog:




Along with generally referencing the images Amaakir posted these are my other references:

[zeichenwut]

Here's my final one. I meant to do another wip, but unfortunately I forgot. Sorry…

[Amaakir]

Finals thread is up, guys!

http://cghub.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10655

Go ahead and post those finals, see you all in the next challenge!

[hieveryone]

I found the time to paint another one. Practice, practice, practice.

Thanks uisolui, I like your work as well. Do you use painter?

Nice job with the smoke zeichenwut, you achieved a good sense of depth. Maybe you could have worked a little more on the smoke's forms and the light bouncing on some parts of the body of the singer, like his fingers, to give a sense of depth to his silhouette as well. I think we both made the same mistake of not choosing references with more detail on the singers bodies.

I didn't posted two wips of the same work, so I'm adding a making of the last piece. I started with a simple outline silhouette of the singer, then I worked on the volumes in grayscale, contrasted the image, corrected the details, added the colors, glows and then stretched the final image to make it match the reference.

I find odd that almost nobody participated this time, though.

[Amaakir]

@hieveryone: Awesome work! I really love how you worked out the lights on your entry! I guess people are busy with other challenges or stuff on their personal/professional life or just didn't like the challenge :P Great work guys, Lets see them finals!

[hieveryone]

Thanks Amaakir.

Yeah, I think you're right, some really interesting contests overlapped at the same time. I myself tried to participate in a couple of them, but time is limited (of course I'm completing my entries anyway, I don't leave business unfinished).

[LongJh]

Hey guys, great stuff here, sorry for joining in so late. I've always wanted to participate in a challenge since I joined CGhub, though sometimes finding time is a little difficult, although mostly it's cuz I'm just a little afraid to join cuz I'm afraid I will suck.

But I've been doing studies and practicing and stuff for awhile now, and the theme for this challenge is really interesting too, soo I decided to give it a shot! My primary goal here is really just to study and practice, and to see how far I've gone. And also to see what areas I need to improve on.

Soo for this challenge, there are a few interesting things to study, but I main subjects I'll be focusing in will be -

Lighting - This is a big one, main focus will be to practice painting proper form and also to study the theatrical/concert lighting stuff. It's waay different from the usual sunlight/random-single-light-source stuff junk that I've been doing

Fog Effects - I've done fog and misty stuff before, though most of the time I'm using a soft round brush or someone else's custom brush (the ones I made for myself in the past didn't seem to work so well), plus in this case, rock and roll fog isn't just some soft blurry effect. The smoke actually has a bit of a solid, organic quality to it that will be pretty cool to study. Plus hopefully this will give me the opportunity to make a proper fog brush.

Colour - One of my biggest weaknesses. Choosing the right colour and finding a good rendering workflow always causes me to go into a rage. Concert lighting is pretty interesting, so this will be a nice challenge.

Gesture - I think gesture is pretty important for drawing figures, especially from imagination/memory. For things like rock and roll especially where this is a lot of energy, I getting the right gesture and movement is pretty useful. Also useful to create a strong silhouette.

Female Anatomy - I decided to do a female rocker (just, because!) so this will be one of the big ones. Proper convincing anatomy always seem elude my drawings/paintings, so I'll be practicing that. Mostly it'll be on posing the character, hands (more specifically hands holding a microphone and a guitar) and hair (I haven't drawn much hair before)

Composition - I haven't done many full illustration before, especially ones with a character in it, so I'll be taking this opportunity to do a picture with at least an interesting composition. My goal here will be to create an image with proper balance, depth (meaning foreground, midground, background) and with a strong focal point.

Whew, that should be about it. Here we go -

First, my reference! All just a bunch of screenshots from various music videos of a band I like.



And from those I chose poses that were the most interesting and did some quick gesture sketches of it. Next I attempted to draw the anatomy using the gestures as a base, where I discovered that I suck at drawing hands - which lead to some hand studies.



So I had 3 poses drawn out. The next step was to try to come up with a nice composition. Here you can see me shamelessly using my reference to do these. I think using the instruments/amplifiers as foreground elements give pretty good effect (plus a nice POV).



Next is a fog/smoke study. I used only the round brush and chalk brush to "hand paint" the fog so as to understand how it meant to be painted.



Then using what I learned I made fog/smoke custom brush and used it for another fog study (it's amazing how fast you can paint stuff like smoke and fog using custom brushes). I think it works pretty well.



And finally, onward to the final image! Here's my WIP. I did the linework first because I wanted to practice my line drawing as well, it's quite scribbly - I struggled a lot with the face, despite liberally consulting my reference, it was pretty difficult draw the right expressions and everything.

As for the 2nd part - I just scribbled in flat colours with no opacity - of course this didn't turn out so well when I put in the background because the colours didn't match at all! So I had to use a bunch of photoshop tricks to colour correct everything (curves, etc).



Aand here's my final! It's really just adding the lights (lens flares) and more fog. Colour dodge is really a brilliant tool to create all those neon-type lighting effects. I think I relied a little too much on the reference. Basically only the background, lighting and fog is different, bleh.



And that's it! So sorry for the long and tedious post and thank you!

[hieveryone]

Actually that was very interesting and informative about your creative process, so thanks for taking the time to write down all that. At least for people like me, who are still learning and practicing, is very useful.

I like the composition and the singer's dynamic pose. You did a very good job on the fog, maybe the final result is a little too uniform. It seems you blurred it, that is noticeable especially on the spots behind her; due to its cartoony feel I personally liked more the brush sharpness on the previous step but that's just me nitpicking.

Nice job.