Howdy! I am a concept artist and illustrator based in Austin! 🦄✨ I specialize in character design with 5+ years of experience designing and illustrating for games and interactive media!
Great video! I’m working on some character designs for a comic me and my friend are working on, so this helps! My only question is: are those silhouette drawings considered the same thing as “thumbnail sketches?”
I have not tried two colors for a pattern, but if I had to guess, you could prolly just use red and green and completely ignore the blue, and then in the workshop just only mess with the red and green sliders 🤔
I use Adobe Fresco because I already pay for the subscription and I can beam my files over to my pc quick and easy. But for anyone just getting started using the iPad, procreate is by far the best, but if you want something free you can try, Ibis Paint X, MediBang Paint, or Sketchbook
I am still a noob so I have had zero skins accepted (and I haven't found time to make any new skins as of recent sadly). I won't be able to answer the last two questions, but I can tell you how long it took for me to make my most recent skin and I think it was around 2 weeks from sketches to a final submission (imo 2 weeks is slow cause I was still figuring out my design process, but once you get a process down you can pump out designs much faster) 💪😎
This will do wonders for my character designs, collecting refs was another issue so thanks for that as well! Great video as always and Im still excited for the next character in the series. Speaking of which I was trying to watch it again but I couldn't find it I hope it comes back soon
I'm glad you found this video helpful! I unlisted the video because it does not fit this channel since its not a tutorial video and it kinda goes off the deep end lol. Im still doing the series, just on a new channel that I will announce some time in July 😎
This was very helpful! Just starting out and this has really cleared up questions I did and did not have yet lol. I'm very much in the dark when it comes to becoming a concept artist so I will now binge all of your videos 😌
I probably won't make an extended tutorial for pattern skins, just cause they aren't really my jam, but I should have made that part of the video waaaaay more simple so here is the simplified version: Photoshop Layers (if you don't merge everything) Layer 01 Top of Design Blue Hex: 0000de Blend Mode: Screen Layer 02 Middle of Design Green Hex: 00de00 Blend Mode: Screen Layer 03 Bottom of Design Red Hex: de0000 Blend Mode Screen Layer 04 Fill with Black, Blend Mode: Normal All you gotta do is take the different parts of your design separate them into 3 layers and lock the pixels. Than use the hex code to get the exact color for rgb and fill in the color for each layer, and then set each layer's blend mode to screen, then adjust the opacity if you want, and then export as tga and you will be good to go to import into the workshop Hope this helps! 😎
When attempting to overlay my color onto the shaded layer it just looks super muddy. How exactly are you doing it? Is it a layer setting or is the “rendering” on a seperate layer from the gray
So the very bottom layer is the grayscale and then above it I clip mask my color layer and set the layer's blend mode to overlay. If the colors are not dark enough I add a black layer in between the color and grayscale layer and then I decrease the opacity till I am happy with the colors. From there I add a new overlay layer on top of everything and this is where I paint in the bounce light and give more color to the skin and clothes. Finally I paint on top of everything any missing details or throw on some textures. I hope this helps! 💪💖
Thank you very much for sharing your insight. I think I will shoot for a similar goal (about 40 books..) due to not having a huge audience by any means and wanting to keep the initial idea fairly modest. I really appreciate you mentioning a specific publisher option, as well as how much you had set your Kickstarter for. Congrats on getting yours published and sincerely thank you for putting this together to help other people curious about the process <3
The rendering with value vs rendering with saturation is something i have litterally never heard off-.. but i feel like it makes sense even if i cant really get it in my brain yet... Regardless i feel like this video is explaining so many knots in my brain-
I recommend making a duplicate and putting the greyscale version on one side and the side being the actual colors you want to use. Then you want to match either your value or saturation map with your final colors like if one part is more grey than you want to make the color desaturated same thing with value if one area is darker you want to choose a darker color
Color may or may not exist as an objective thing in reality, but our experience of color will always be based on our individual experiences and biology making that experience of the reality subjective, like anything else we have to interpret in some way (sounds, touch, taste etc).
7:11 When this diagram starts to fade out, you can see that the line linking the two small orange blocks is a different color, even though the whole point is that it's the same color.
Its less that the line is a different color and more the fact that the orange line and the color block in the back are at different transparencies. The orange line connecting the orange squares is kind of "overlaying" the squares which causes a change in the color-- in essence, if the line is 50% and the squares are 25%, the connecting points of the line+square are at 75% (not how that works but just as an example). A color at 25%, 50%, and 75% transparency looks different. So yes, the line and the color blocks are the same color. I checked by color picking as well.
Things rendered using saturation instead of value will be more "greys" than strong lights or darks. If you look at a digital color wheel (even just the one shown in this video when talking about choosing saturation) you can clearly see that it means picking mostly midtones, and avoiding the top or bottom of the space that will have the white and black because the goal is to work just within the space of a single color (hue) and moving it between high saturation and low saturation. If you open up a digital art program and pick a hue, there should be a slider that is only for saturation that you can play around with to directly see the difference between adjusting the saturation of a single hue, versus working with no hue and only grayscale black to white. While using values means working exclusively from black to white with no hues, so you get a full range of dynamic light and shadow to work with. So yes a saturation shadow color is going to be less intense and also more colorful (because it has a hue) than a value only shadow. Keep in mind that black is not a color, so when doing a value based artwork, we speak in terms of "darker" and "lighter" values, and mostly mean more or less black. Hope this helps.
Firstly I can't believe you split yourself in two to make this video, it takes a real hero to do that I hope she doesn't have a villain arc. But really I love the fact you drew attention to color temperature and exposure, I feel a lot of people's focus is on the big ideas of color theory and tend to forget those small but impactful parts (myself included at times) btw i love using values more than saturation when i render This video was insightful and it indeed inspired me to really look carefully at what I do when I get to coloring. Also it was entertaining and funny as heck, I wasn't expecting an existential crisis we just learning colors 😂😂😂
I realized that I contradict myself way too much so I thought why not show the whole internet my inner turmoil, soooo a villain arc is highly probable lol Despite this video's set backs I am glad to hear you found some tips helpful! 💪😎
@@stallout_art I honestly didn't even notice, I was absorbing the knowledge just fine whilst enjoying the comedy. It was pretty straightforward imo. Also I'm looking forward to the villainy (she deserves her own name lmao)
"...if we were all more transparent we would just be seeing each everybody's guts.. which could actually be cool." RU-vidrs trying to not sound exactly like my intrusive thoughts.. Jokes aside, amazing video! If I wanted to give a tip to anyone that.. is most likely totally unusable, but I'll write it down anyways.. is don't forget your bounce light! I literally forget to add it every single time. I start making a piece with the clear intention of adding bounce lights in the end, then I tunnel vision myself into missing them.. then a week later I look at my piece and realize that I didn't add the bounce light. It's more like a bad habit of just not even thinking about it almost all the time.
😂😂 I’m glad I’m not the only one with these intrusive thoughts! Funnily enough, I’m actually the opposite when it comes to bounce light and I tend to go crazy with it 💀
Yeah I think this is one of the most comprehensive video on colors I've seen ! Especially love the scientific stuff and the value vs saturation rendering method ! I now know that I'm primarily value focus and some things make so much more sense ! Really great and in depth video ! You deserve a lot more view !
In case you wanna skip around to different parts of the video: 1:20 What is color 5:02 What is theory 6:33 Color hierarchy 8:01 Pick color with value 8:07 Pick color with saturation 8:55 Color temperature 10:04 Value of hues 10:30 Color combos 11:24 Psychology of color 12:23 60 30 10 rule 13:37 Natural lighting 14:14 Artificial lighting 14:33 Color exposure 15:18 Render with value 15:52 Render with saturation 16:49 Subsurface scattering 17:39 Bounce light hope this helps! 😘
As a total newbie, silhouette seems like a great way to create something without getting frustrated that nothing looks cool when trying to build something
Silhouettes definitely make it easier since you only have to figure out the shape of your character and not all of the details that make up your character 💪 Just make sure you don’t get stuck in the never ending loop of making silhouettes for days on end cause news flash, you won’t have a design to show for after your days on end making silhouettes💀
I've made skins for 10 years now and while my workflow is different as a texture artist (substance painter), this is a pretty good guide for people who have no experience designing skins but has a background in art! One of the better guides I've seen tbh, nice production too it was pretty high quality for such a niche subject.
@@stallout_art "only" 3 sadly, it's very hard and especially these days with the competition and how few cases are released. It's def something you need to enjoy or you'll lose your mind trying to accepted tbh lol. But I think just focus on coming up with unique themes and color combos for guns that don't have them, that seems to be what Valve wants the most imo. Just make sure when someone looks at your skin it's obvious what the vibe /theme etc is, I think that is something some beginners miss out on. But if you aleady got experience as a concept artist I'm sure you know quite well what works and what doesn't, most people starting have no experience at all so you do have an advantage there! It's hard to make a good skin that uses pbr and the lighting as an illustrator alone so a lot collab with texture artists. If you look at apel who has a lot of accepts almost every skin he works with a different artist, he does the textures, lighting etc and they give the art. Tldr: Trying to get accepted might drive you insane so only do it if you enjoy it too, but getting a skin accepted is for sure a life changing thing so even if it takes a while it might be worth it in the end.
For some reason the reply isn't shown with the video, but I can see it in my YT studio, but lemme say your advice is pure gold! And getting 3 in game is crazy impressive especially since there is an extremely low probability of getting a skin into game!! 💪😤 I kinda had an inkling that valve prefers designs with themes, so im glad my theory is validated by you and I am even more excited to keep designing skins based off of themes! In your opinion tho, do you think there is more success for an illustrator based designer or a more texture based designer? Im asking because I already have the illustration part down, but im curious as to how much emphasis is placed on the texture aspect, and if i should really dive in and learn some texture skills (especially since i have been making all my texture files with 2D editing software like a noob lmao)
