Digital Painting. Help Please : (

[Sketchie]

Hey guys, I am not entirely sure as to where to put this. I am wanting to paint digitally using photoshop & my wacom bamboo. But I just dont know where to start. I have a sketch, I scan it into photoshop, then what?

some questions that go through my mind are...

Do I use one layer to paint on or paint different things on seperate layers? such as skin a tone layer, a white clothes layer, a red clothes layers, a layer for decals on those clothes.

What settings should my layer have enable, normal or multiple, or what?

What are these dodge & burn tools people talk about? Where should I apply these tools?

Why cant I find any very detailed tutorials on the internet that arn't anything to do with editing photographs or that may answer my questions? TutorialsI do find say "do this & use that setting" then I ask, "ok, but why? what does that do?"

Are they're any books you can recommend? not pdf, lol,something Ican hold in my hands. Basically I want to do character & creature design with funky digital paints of my ideas. I'm sorry if this sounds like a noob question, but to acheive a certain amount of realism would be nice. My results at the moment are somewhat on par with "cartoon network".

I really hope someone kinda understands me here. Thanks >.<

[ERADicator]

I'm new to digital painting as well. It's all about practise and experimenting.

I use brushes (size 24 scattered brush, scroll down in your brushes to find it). I then just scale up and down as needed.
I use the gradient tool as well, the eraser if I need to take some tiny bits out and the various selection tools to copy an area or colour only the selected area.
I put almost everything on separate layers (sometimes I forget to make a new layer but don't bother if it won't make too much of a difference to have certain things on the same layer).
Also try different settings for your tablet. There's a setting to make the pen pressure affect the opacity of your brush. It's in the Brushes palette under "Other Dynamics" and is labelled "Opacity Jitter". I think that might come in real handy. I only discovered it last night. If you get lost just use your PS Help and find the article called "Set brush pressure sensitivity for digitizing tablet."

I'm also getting cartoons at the moment but it's progressing.

I am wondering what kind of sketches you want to use. Are they just line or are they shaded?

[Sketchie]

I generally use sketches that are just line. Sometimes I will shade my sketches, but If I get a good sketch that i'd like to paint I wont shade it. After an extensive search I found some real good tutorials by Don Seegmiller. These explain every step of the way with some excellent tips tricks. I think these tuts are from a book called "Character Design & Digital Painting" It's fantasic.

I was getting real frustrated last night when I posted the message, lol, anyhoo, thanks for your reply

[AdamR]

This isn't the simplest thing to answer because it's different for everyone. Every single person has their own style of how they work and take different steps, have different techniques, and prefer certain methods in their workflow than others. It's all up to you. I'll try to help shed a little light for you though.


Do I use one layer to paint on or paint different things on seperate layers? such as skin a tone layer, a white clothes layer, a red clothes layers, a layer for decals on those clothes.


Up to you. The great thing about digital imagine software is that layers are extremely versatile in what they allow you to do. Some people are layer insane and will make a new layer for everything. Others keep them relatively small. Just think about it on your own though -- if you're about to make a layer, is it really a necessary thing to do? Pretty much how you've outlined it will work fine though, and that's probably how I'd do it to. Layer for skin, layer for a certain clothing article, layer for any tattoos they might possibly have, etc. Just ask yourself if it's needed or not though and there's your answer.


What settings should my layer have enable, normal or multiple, or what?


Pretty much your layers stay normal unless you are trying to get a certain effect. When you stay with Photoshop for a while you'll eventually get layer styles and what certain ones do, and what they could be useful for (and they are damn useful). For normal paint layers they generally stay on normal.

An example if a commonly used technique is to make a new layer and, let's say to give some contrast, they put the layer style to Overlay then paint over whatever it is they want -- it pushes up the contrast of all the colors of whatever you paint over. Techniques like these you'll learn over time.

Like I said though, for normal paint layers, keep them normal.


What are these dodge & burn tools people talk about? Where should I apply these tools?


Dodge and burn are tools that become useful in photography touch ups a lot, but I don't usually see them used a lot (if at all) in the painting process. Basically dodge makes things lighter, burn makes them darker. Just play around with them yourself and see where you might want to utilize them.


Why cant I find any very detailed tutorials on the internet that arn't anything to do with editing photographs or that may answer my questions? TutorialsI do find say "do this & use that setting" then I ask, "ok, but why? what does that do?"


There's plenty of tutorials. Search this entire board for the word "tutorial." Search Google. "Digital painting tutorial" You'll find TONS if info all over the place man! Put don't get too attached to the idea of using tutorials for everything. They're a great learning tool to learn some techniques but they will not make you better at actually painting -- that comes from you and practice.

What I like to do is (these aren't tutorials at all, but they are amazingly helpful insights) is go to CGSociety's challenge archive. CGSociety is a digital art community, and they have really big competitions in the fields of 2D, 3D, and video; and what people do is to post images of their progress. So people will post their thumbnail sketches, their rough speedpaints, their lineart, their coloring stages, etc etc. Golden stuff in there.

And of course you have the Digital Painting in Photoshop thread which offers wonderful help by our very own Bumskee: http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=107217


Are they're any books you can recommend? not pdf, lol,something Ican hold in my hands. Basically I want to do character & creature design with funky digital paints of my ideas. I'm sorry if this sounds like a noob question, but to acheive a certain amount of realism would be nice. My results at the moment are somewhat on par with "cartoon network".


www.thegnomonworkshop.com
www.designstudiopress.com


I had to type this really fast because I've got to head out to my brothers place, like... now! lol But I'll come back and clear up on anything that I missed or explained badly. Sorry.

Like I said, nothing is set is stone. Nothing at all.

- Adam

[Sketchie]

AdamR - Thank you sooo much. Your advice is awesome.

Yesterday I sketched in a pumpkin & tried painting all on one layer as it it was only one skin ( if you see what I mean ) It started out very well. Base colours, shades etc..using big brushes around 60 - 70% opacity. But when it came down to using detail, this is where I failed. So i kept painting. anyway, lol, eventually it ended up as one big mush. I will try again when I get back from work. Hopefully get some sketches done while I'm at work, he he, shhhh.

Mowbory - What's with the Wow gold? This is not helpful.

Another question - When putting downs flats or base colours, do you use stronger opacity? Like around 80 - 100%? then as you go blending through to detailing you do you reduce this opacity as you go? Like, the more detail, the lower the opacity?

Thanks for your help. I love this community ^^

[AdamR]

Mowbory is just a bot/spammer, don't worry. They come about a lot.

I'm generally in the mid-ground as far as layers go. It used to be I would load up on them but then eventually you get too lazy to even remember lol Layers are good; an excessive number can get kind of annoying/disadvantageous though.

And like I said, it's all personal taste. Most people however make base tones very solid, yes. Get the colors that are needed on there to establish your palette and then lower the opacity later on to get your blending done.

Manual opacity is fine if that's what you like but your brush settings with that tablet can make it so you don't have to. Window > Brushes to pull it up, then go to "Other Dynamics" and you can set the Opacity Jitter to pen pressure. The harder you press, the more opaque the color.

[Bad_Kat]

this is something I have been trying to figure out myself. My drawings are very sketchy, and they never seem to translate well to solid ink lines as they lose too much detail. I am trying to figure out digital painting to see if I can keep the details I see in my sketches and translate them into color.

[Sketchie]

Examples......

Also bad kat, I'm pretty comfotable with getting solid ink lines. I use the pen tool to do that. I draw the paths on a new transparent layer over my sketches, Right click then select "stroke path" then right click again "delete path" then do it over until I have all lines I want from my sketch. I'm ok with colouring my lineart too, by using more of a cell shading technique. But I am trying to be able to revert from the "select this area, put in this colour." I want to be able to "Paint it freely" & acheive realistic results.

Sounds as though we both need a little guidance. I hope my pen tool technique helps you in getting your sketches into solid ink lines.

[AdamR]

www.imaginefx.com is another great place for some help. The workshops are tutorials.

http://www.3dtotal.com/ Go to Free Stuff and then tutorials. You'll find Photoshop, Digital Painting, and Project Overviews extremely helpful. Project overviews has a lot of 3D stuff in there as well, but there's a lot of 2D digital painting work as well.

Just a couple more resources to help you out.

edit: http://www.imaginefx.com/02287754333461721512/tutorial.pdf a custom brush tutorial. Should help you out with some learning some tablet features and brush options.

Hope I was of some assistance.

- Adam

[res01ve]

Thanks for those links brother.
3d total is a sweet sweet site :.

[Sketchie]

AdamR, you are a fantastic help thanks ^^

[Stoat]

Sadly, dodge and burn are frequently used in painting. Applied sparingly, they can be useful -- but overuse is how newbies get that shiny, rubbery "balloon animal" look.

I have to laugh at the icons used for dodge and burn. Every year, fewer and fewer people will have used those tools in the real world and know what they are. As AdamR said, their origin is photography. Dodging and burning is what you did while the negative was in the enlarger and the paper was being exposed.

The "dodge" tool was a cutout paper circle attached to a thin wire. For some period of the exposure time, you would wave it around over an area that was coming out too dark in the final print, so it received less light from the enlarger. To burn, you did indeed usually make a "C" with your hand to cover most of the image, but let a small area get more light (and hence come out darker). As you might imagine, it took considerable skill to get this right once, and you'd never get it exactly the same twice.

This brings us to the end of today's Old Fart's Corner.

[tesher07]

Wait a second people don't draw there images in photoshop? They sketch them on paper and than scan it to the computer and into photoshop? Am I correct?

[AdamR]

A lot of people do, a lot of people don't.

Some people are comfortable with drawing directly with their tablet in Photoshop; others would rather make their drawing/sketches and then scan them in to paint them.

It's all up to you. It's like they say, when it comes to art, there's no wrong way to do anything. The same applies for digital painting. It's whatever works for you.

[fox01313]

Just depends on what you plan on doing with it but unless you are going to test out brushes or colors I've been finding a great tip in speedpainting tutorials that is 'have an idea of what you are going to paint before you start', after you have a basic idea then you can start playing with it to see where it goes from there as there might be a flood of ideas to continue the piece from another angle or with another subject to do a whole series.

Most people I know will either go all crazy with layers & use layers for everything but others will keep it simple where you have the background on one layer, figure/subject on another layer. During the creative process I tend to work on temporary layers and then merge visible so I can easily cut off an arm for example, rotate/scale it then merge the layers of the figure together and just repaint the spot where it was cut.

If you are doing comic art you will want to keep the lineart on a separate layer & just put another layer out there set to multiply for the flat colors and then if you want you can do another layer (also on one of the layer settings of multiply, soft light etc. - depends on what you are going after) for doing shadows or highlights.

Burn & dodge got popular as many people didn't want to keep sampling colors & just airbrushing when you could just burn/dodge over a color. If it works use it otherwise just stick to standard painting type brushes and just paint in the shadows & highlights.

Good tutorial sites I found are:
http://www.robertocampus.com/2007/06/28/photoshop-tutorial-wonder-woman-pin-up-digital-painting/

and tons of free tutorials here on DeviantArt (the link is for the Photoshop section), just be sure to click on all time for how recent to show the items as there might be days when nothing new comes up when there really is a lot to choose from that is there.

http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/tutorials/digiart/dpadigi/photoshop/

Since there are a lot of Photoshop books out there it really depends on what you are going for. For characters there is a good starter book out there but it is for the Corel Painter program & would be hard to transition over to Photoshop since Painter & the book has a lot of the tutorials using the native brushes & paper textures to Painter that Photoshop can't get to replicating yet.

Digital Character Design and Painting by Don Seegmiller (found on Amazon)

You might also look at some of the other fantasy art books out there that have come out in the last few years (ie. Bold Visions: A Digital Painting Bible by Gary Tonge). Hope this helps & have fun creating.