ALH
February 25th, 2009, 03:38 PM
Im sure this kind of thread has been posted a million times before, but my browsing of CA for answers hasnt been fruitful yet.
I'm a little stuck in terms of having a workflow for environment concepts. Characters, weapons, vehicles, standalone buildings i understand-
- Get silhouettes down then elaborate and refine them so you have a little selection of more detailed examples,
- Pick the strongest ( or your boss picks em) then do a tighter version
- ???
- PROFIT
However when it comes to sketching out environments with the same speed and confidence as one can take doing silhouettes i hit a bit of a wall. And i know its one of those short walls too that you can see over but just cant seem to get past.
When i do characters/object silhouettes/thumbs i know to pay attention to the relationships between lines and curves, of anatomy, of intended purpose. So a cliche example- evil character = pointy, so use lots of triangles and make him hunched over like a vulture with claw like fingers.
But when it comes to environments i kind of fritz out and dont know where to start- then my imagination starts to move faster than i can get anything down and i end up with a bunch of scribbles ( but not the good kind of scribbles that you can use later on)- or, i go the other extreme and get so caught up in tweaking the perspective that i end up with something that looks like a render from google sketchup.
I should probably add on, because its proably important- that im talking about environments from a video game perspective, where the environment (and associated lighting, texture etc) is the main focus of the image rather than as a 'background' to characters or the likes within a scene.
Phew.
So what im wondering is-
- When doing environment thumbnails, what are the absolute bare essential things to keep in mind?
- Have any of you had a similar problem? How did you get over it ?
If anyone can recommend tutorials,books, videos- anything involving environment concept development, that would be like, awesome.
I've looked through a lot of ' heres how i did image X' tuts, but they tend to focus more on adding detail to an established, illustrative idea- not generating the idea itself with the intention of it being made 3D at a later stage.
I cant help but feel like the answer to this is staring me in the face- i've been grinding away on environments for the past year after a long period of neglecting them (outside of 3D models), and i've came close to finding a flow that works for me but i still lack that 'eureka!' moment where it all makes sense.
I'm a little stuck in terms of having a workflow for environment concepts. Characters, weapons, vehicles, standalone buildings i understand-
- Get silhouettes down then elaborate and refine them so you have a little selection of more detailed examples,
- Pick the strongest ( or your boss picks em) then do a tighter version
- ???
- PROFIT
However when it comes to sketching out environments with the same speed and confidence as one can take doing silhouettes i hit a bit of a wall. And i know its one of those short walls too that you can see over but just cant seem to get past.
When i do characters/object silhouettes/thumbs i know to pay attention to the relationships between lines and curves, of anatomy, of intended purpose. So a cliche example- evil character = pointy, so use lots of triangles and make him hunched over like a vulture with claw like fingers.
But when it comes to environments i kind of fritz out and dont know where to start- then my imagination starts to move faster than i can get anything down and i end up with a bunch of scribbles ( but not the good kind of scribbles that you can use later on)- or, i go the other extreme and get so caught up in tweaking the perspective that i end up with something that looks like a render from google sketchup.
I should probably add on, because its proably important- that im talking about environments from a video game perspective, where the environment (and associated lighting, texture etc) is the main focus of the image rather than as a 'background' to characters or the likes within a scene.
Phew.
So what im wondering is-
- When doing environment thumbnails, what are the absolute bare essential things to keep in mind?
- Have any of you had a similar problem? How did you get over it ?
If anyone can recommend tutorials,books, videos- anything involving environment concept development, that would be like, awesome.
I've looked through a lot of ' heres how i did image X' tuts, but they tend to focus more on adding detail to an established, illustrative idea- not generating the idea itself with the intention of it being made 3D at a later stage.
I cant help but feel like the answer to this is staring me in the face- i've been grinding away on environments for the past year after a long period of neglecting them (outside of 3D models), and i've came close to finding a flow that works for me but i still lack that 'eureka!' moment where it all makes sense.