Hello! I wanted to make a thread to show some art processes, and give some tips, feel free to ask about making art! I hope to release some more behind the scenes art sketches every now and then too!
I started the ingot design by roughly sketching out ideas, I collect a range of reference images first and look for shapes and materials I like. I wanted something a bit different then your average lump of metal so i looked at designs of round and tapered ingots. To keep them all a similar theme I experimented with notches which also served as a way of indicating worth.
I liked that idea and went with a more ornate design for the notch similar to the diamond used in UI elements. To differentiate a little I alternated if the design was extruded from or embossed on the surface of the ingot. Then roughly sketched out how the different tiers of ingots would look, I don’t want these to be perfect as they are just a guide or proof of the concept in action. The next step is to draw a refined version of these sketches, where I start paying attention to the perspective.
I used multiple grids made from skewed shapes in photoshop to make sure the edges where all aligning with each other, they act as a fast ruler of sorts that I moved around the canvas to check each edge wasn’t on an incorrect angle. Once outlined I shaded the image in greyscale to focus on the surface lighting rather then the colour, this way I could do all the colouring in one go to ensure they where cohesive.
The greyscale image also means I can play with colours in a non destructive way using a Gradient map, I added a slight orange glow in the shadows to help the surface appear more metallic. My greyscale images always tend to be low contrast so i used a level adjustment layer to make the shadows darker and the brights lighter.
On the bottom left I added highlights and reflections on layer 25 (artists never bother with names … or maybe im just lazy) using a mask to erase areas out. Using a brush I paint in a few more highlights over them and finish up by adding some sparkles, I use additive layer styles like Overlay, Screen and Colour dodge for these. I then generated a rough noise texture using photoshops clouds and add noise filters to apply over the top of everything. Its important when you use a texture that you don’t apply it over the whole image uniformly and make it appear flat. So I used a mask on layer 9 to erase out areas I don’t want the texture to be as apparent, mainly in the lighter spots.
I hope you enjoy the share, If you have any questions please let me know
As an artist myself, I like to see another artist’s workflow. I love that you used the gradient map adjustment layer. It’s an overlooked gem by many in Photoshop.
It would be great if you showed the process for making one of the pets or troops.
I’m glad you liked seeing it! The gradient map can take a bit to get the knack for but once you do its really powerful!
I don’t generally do troops or pets, but I might have a single ‘one’ in the future I can share! Have you seen the process videos that Salty uploads to facebook, they are from the art director who handles most of that! Redirecting...
Honestly this is silly but I’ve always really liked the ingot art. I want an ingot paperweight. Or an ingot bookend. The shape is really satisfying, so good job!
I started with some traditional kibble type shapes, and explored ways to display or store them, I’m still quite fond of spam in a dog bowl mystery food hehe
@GoldPhoenix0 Suggested making the food the shapes of each gem type which was brilliant, so I tested that out in the bottom row with an additional skull idea that wasn’t used. After trying the bowls out again I somehow magically came up with the idea of putting in a chomp mark and that worked perfectly as a unifying element! A set of icons always benefit from having something to link them all together!
About halfway through the star/brown I decided to move away from more biscuit like texture and explore jelly ‘elemental substances’ so I could do way more interesting things then just crumbly surfaces that would have looked boring overall!
When starting my colouring I sometimes like to use vector shapes to get a really smooth shape and edge, I also like to use layer styles like Gradient overlay, and pattern overlay to get a textured base. Then I handpaint most of the highlighting and shading over the top! I hope these steps are useful, sometimes it takes a lot of adjustment and textures to reach the final look! just keep building it up!
On stream i got a question about an art I would like to redo, I couldn’t find it on stream because I only test, I dont play (sorry >.<) but its these ones!!! So I’m going to show its process and talk a little about why it didn’t hit the goals I wanted!
So I got the go ahead and started drawing the lineart! This is where I did a little oops, I’ve since learned the style a little better and I know now to only do really basic lineart for outlines and strong overlaps, these images I went WAY to detailed so it obscures the painting underneath and doesn’t have the same visual look as the rest of the art anymore.
So you can see how the detailed black lines obscure the colours and make things a little more muted, a quick fix would of been to colour the lineart in and only have the outline black to help it but there is also a very cell shaded feel instead of paintery look to the colouring.
When I added in the highlights I put them everywhere, while troop art has the highlight coming from one direction, so I think my overall approach here was just too much
So there you go! looking back at your work can help you see the lessons you have learned a long the way!!
