The explorations of an artloader.
Here’s a dark acolyte digital painting using Gimp.
I’ve been using some of the techniques I’ve learned from ctrlpaint.com.
These techniques were:
Here’s a quick concept sketch of one of the Dark Acolytes from my digital comic.
Done in Gimp.
He’s shaven headed except for that pony tail.
He’s wearing a long leather coat.
He’s got a big ‘M’ tattooed onto his face.
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After pondering my priorities for this project, I have moved the goal posts on myself and decided that no-longer will Timescales be the over-riding priority.
Instead Quality will be the over-riding priority.
The reason is that I am enjoying the journey as much as the thought of the end-goal so I want to continue to take the time to explore interesting avenues as I find them.
My Make A Steampunk eComic Dashboard page has been updated accordingly.
Tasks completed over the last 2 weeks:
Tasks planned for the next 2 weeks:
Here is a concept picture of The Dark Temple Of Mymosule from my upcoming digital comic.
In Manga Studio, I imported the planetary rings render I did from Blender and added a bunch of digitally painted layers:
I’m not sure the temple really looks like a temple so I will do a bit more research into dark temples and maybe do a 3D model to get my head around it all.
After studying some reference photos, I played about with the planetary ring texture a little more in Blender.
Also, the sun is now shining from the lower left and has a bit of a red tinge to suggest a sunset.
I then scaled the whole model up by roughly a factor of ten because I will then locate a camera on the planet surface and take a render with the rings coming down from the sky to the horizon.
Hopefully I can use the render as a background for a digital painting of the Dark Temple Of Mymosule.
OK so I decided to use the colour ramp method from Experiment 2 and put together a simple scene with a marble textured planet.
The rings are actually made from a single disc, it’s the colour ramp texture that makes it appear as multiple rings. Colour ramps allow you to specify transparent areas so I’ve just got a single ring with some transparent areas on it.
I then followed Reaping Fire’s YouTube tutorial on making a star field.
Here’s the result of my Making Planetary Rings In Blender Experiment 3:
Continuing from my Blender planetary ring experiments with the Wood texture type yesterday, I thought I’d try out the Blend texture type.
I created a ring mesh by extrude-scaling a circle.
It took me ages to understand the different Blend texture parameters but I’ve found the following settings yield good ring-like patterns:
I then had to play about with the Mapping – Size X and Y values.
After that I made a concerted effort to finally learn how to use the Blender Colour Ramps (they’re flippin difficult to understand to begin with but once you learn how to use them, they’ll help you to world domination!)
So here’s the result of tonight’s experiment:
I’m working on an environmental picture of the Dark Temple Of Mymosule. It will be dusk and the planetary rings of Undomea are to be visible in the sky.
I’ve decided that I cannot draw the perfect arcs of the planetary rings by hand so I’m breaking out the heavy machinery: 3D modelling in Blender.
Firstly I created a sphere with a ring around it:
Then I positioned the camera as if it were on the surface of the planet looking up at the rings.
After that came the time consuming bit: messing about with the Blender textures.
The following was achieved using a Wood procedural texture along with a lot of tinkering about in the Texure – Mapping section:
Lots more to do but time for bed now – I’m a bit tired after a friendly bout of food-poisoning the other night, but you probably don’t want to hear about that.
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My digital comic project went off the rails a bit over the last 2 weeks when I decided to re-write the plot. It didn’t reveal enough about Benevolen’s stealth abilities.
Now it does.
I’m starting do reconsider my over-riding prioritisation of timescales. Quality is starting to matter more to me than getting this done quick.
Hmmm meditate upon this I will …
Work Completed During The Last 2 Weeks:
Work Planned For The Next 2 Weeks: