#rogper

Hey again web surfer Pal,

During the free times, on the last 3 months I've been making something epic (by my standard that is ). It's intended for the Ezine nº2 - Science Fiction arranged by the Desenhos, inks e rabiscos community, that will be released sometime soon.

So, I've tried to make an illustration of a time/space Sheriff, the person responsible to maintain the law and order in the continuum universal... humm... thing. Maximo is just one of those persons, he's the man that prevents life to collapse by jumping trough space and time to capture bad guys. Using is special chronometer he can breach space and time and use that in his advantage to place himself in the hot spots.

I received heavy critics on the readability of my previous Illustrations, mainly on the lack of depth and exaggerated overhaul saturation and detail. On this one I've tried to address those issues... but doing it so I've just seem to have created new ones :)

Time and patience is the most efficient brush to paint something like this. Is no longer about if you can do it, it's more how much time you can take until you quit on doing it.

Button line I liked the end result, surely has margin for improving, but I guess that is a good thing. I would like to thank my wife (Rute Perdiz) for all the critics, ideas and support and which without I probably wouldn't had done it.

Until next time my friends!

with the best regards

Hey again,

This is my second illustration for the "Ezine Fantasia" an on-line magazine intended to showcase digital art and is creators.

I named it the "Red one", to distinguish it from the previous that I called the "Blue one"... but for you it is: "The Battle on the Fire Fish Planet".

Like on the previous illustration I've used the method of progressive refinement painting were you start with something very rough and work until you are satisfied with the result.

I've been learning how to use color to guide the eyes. It was particularly difficult to create depth while keeping everything from gain too much attention, or, even worse, the less important things to receive all of it. Also as I see it now the trick is create "contrast" and keep away from black or whites. All the shadowing and shading was done with dark blue, greens or reds.

All of this is of course done with open source software like Mypaint, Krita and Gimp.

Hope you enjoy it as much I enjoyed making it.

I wish also to give a special thank you very much for Rute Neves (my wife) for all the constructive critics and corrections and João Raz for the invitation to join the Ezine authors.

Until next time

Hey there!

I recently made two illustrations for an on-line magazine know by the name of "Ezine Fantasia 2013".

This one is titled "The Duel of the Fire Mages".

In the past I've been trying several methods of drawing/painting. One that I seem to get along is the progressive refinement method. 

This method consists basely in making something that roughly describes your basic idea and then polish it continually until you get tired, or you reach a result that you consider suitable for the purpose.

A cool advantage of this method is that you sometimes have afraid of working a bit more on your paintings/drawings because you can potentially ruin it... well, this way, you already have a mess, so the only possible way to make something out of it is keep on working.

I guess I could have worked a bit more on this one, but I still had one more illustration to make and my time was short, so I called it done and proceeded to the next one.

Until it, best regards

Hey again friends,

Today I've remembered the old days when me and my friends used to trow money to the arcades machines like if there was no tomorrow.

Inspired by the old shooters I decided to give a try designing one of those space ships. This time for software I've use mostly Kryta and a bit of Gimp to finish it up.

On my old 8 years old workstation I couldn't use kryta because it would just crash repeatedly, but now on my new one it's pretty much stable... I'm enjoying it.

Until next time

Best regards

Hey there,

So for this time around I've been working on the conceptual image of the Resilience Satelle world (the scenery as seen from far away).

I've been asked if I had all of this in my head and just painted what I imagined... well, although there may be someone that can actually do it that way, that sure ain't my case. This is just one more version of the many many versions that I've previously done. It basically grows like a kid grows. It starts by something very basic and then it becomes progressively more detailed and complex.

I've been learning a lot from the new render engines that work by progressive refinement, like Blender Cycles or Octane renderer.

They show you a blurry and noisy version of your object at first and then it clears up, as time goes by, presenting you with a full detailed version soon after. I've mimicked that wile painting.

Once again this image was mostly done with Mypaint and a little help from Gimp both software opensource and freeware that you can use legally even for any purposes... and yes, "any purposes", it does includes commercial ones.

How it was done:

  - First I've painted big blurry strokes, just the enough to outline the object and get a rough ambient lighting;

  - Second , with a fine brush I've painted details all over the image, with no specific order (when I got tired of some area I would move to another one). I've also use a great amount of blurring strokes;

  - I've constantly mirrored the image to refresh my brain and see better what''s going the wrong direction. Sometimes I had to load the image to Gimp for small adjustments. 

  - Finally I've chosen a light direction, as if it was a Sun in this case, and highlighted it accordantly;

  - For polishing I've color corrected it using Blender (Blender color corrects allot better, due mainly to it's 32bit per channel color engine, and intuitively then Gimp, I think).   

Until next time,

Best regards

hd image here

Hey there,

So here are the three characters properly colorized.

This was achieved by loading a layer to Mypaint with the gray shade version of this image. On the layer blend type I've changed it to Multiply (that pretty much converts all the white on the layer in transparency), added another clean layer bellow it and started the painting work. In the end I added another layer on the top of everything for the final touches.

If you ever gave professional eye attention to an anime series, you probably noted that all the characters usually have different colors (turbo rangers clearly go over the top with this). That is usually done so you can easily identify who is who even at long range. I followed that concept and gave them the RGB treatment. This should ensure a proper clear reading.

Next comes the 3D CGi work, starting by the low poly versions (1000 triangles).

Until next time, best regards

This is Noam. Noam is armless which makes him a very frustrated and sad character. The scarfs were a way his mother found for him to somehow feel better as they resemble arms and hands. His side pack was hand made, with a special lock mechanism, so he can unlock it by pulling the sphere with is mouth.

This was completely unintentional, but he turned out to look a bit like MacGyver, no?

The cloths for him are a bit less formal/fantasy(ish) then the Moget and Shar ones. I've include pockets on the trunks pretty much just to annoy him even a bit more... my intention is that almost everything around him feels like requiring arms and hands. For the sneakers I went to the same asymmetric style then Moget.

On the side pack it's a key, hold by magnetism, that opens his house front door. To use it Noam has to unlock the side pack, detach the key and with is feet toss it to his mouth.

Next comes color for them all.

Untill then, best regards

This is Moget. All the procedure was pretty much the same then the one for Shar.

For this one I had the cloths more or less established, so the increase on the complexity of it wasn't too much of a problem. It's somehow hard to come up with ways to make it work, like making sure that everything is wearable and that it can be dressed and undressed.

I deliberately decided to make right sneaker different from the left wile  maintaining the same look so it still feels like a par.

I'm not sure about the eyes... there is something not working with them.

Next time is Noam.

Best regards