Intro to the making of Week 10: 27/11/17: Background continuation

Continuing from last weeks sessions of intro to the making of we continued our work on our concept art backgrounds and multi-plane pieces that we would be playing with in After Effects next week. The night before I had already begun work on my background piece using a tutorial that I'd found on creating nebular like backgrounds that I was learning from to perfect my understanding of space based artwork. See below

Nebula tutorial found on Pinterest

Last nights progress. 

Nebular for background piece.

This was started in Clip studio paint (Photoshops cousin) so that when I finished the piece I could save this as a Photoshop document to import into the video file for editing and multi-plane effects in After Effects. During the devils and demons character designed mini brief I learned that the macs in room 3.04 didn't have a wacom tablet driver installed since without it the tablet wouldn't work so for today I brought in my own Mac computer and Wacom tablet so that I could do my better work as in digital illustration work I like to work with the feeling of a pen in my hand as I draw. Continuing from where I left of last night I applied dark umber like colours for the stone and rocks of the planet fragments in the scene, these were coloured on separate layers as I didn't want to contaminate the base colours of this illustration piece at least not until the next stage. This same colour I used for the surrounding asteroids and planet fragments to maintain cohesion within the colours.

On the base I took my leave of colour from some of my research boards using elements like yellow and white pipes on the top of the base but for the tower and extended cabin bridge of the base itself I wanted to try a different tactic that I thought could help in terms of metal texture. Several years ago whilst looking into ways to make lineless backgrounds I came across an artist on Deviant art who's work seemed very life like much similar to what style you would see in traditional anime films and in some of his work it included a link as to how they were created. The one element I caught on was how he was using shapes to capture certain elements in the scenery, and I was wanting to try it but never did so now I figured it would be a good time to try it out : link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BaB9gYK9FM

I made several rectangle shapes in different shades of grey to go onto the tower and the extended bridge outpost and then using the magic wand tool to select the shapes and outlines I deleted the areas on the outside deleting the hanging off areas then using the soothing watercolour brush I blended the colours into what would be a metal like texture in the tower and outpost. 

textures and colours. 

Last week we had been doing hand rendered textures for our backgrounds and concept art and so I decided it was time to put them to good use. I had scanned them into my computer the night before so that I could use them and so I started by using the charcoal rubbing piece that I was thinking would be great for rock textures on the planet fragments and ground elements of this background. To apply and test them I imported this into clip studio and using the soft eraser I got rid of the white areas surrounding it. The layer itself was then set to overlay as from experience I knew that layer had a good effect of delivering an overlayed texture on the base colours and the overall backgrounds much like overlaying an illustration with paper texture.

Amazingly I was right this created the desired effect on the ground and planet fragments surrounding the mining outpost and so I made layer copies of theses textures and applied it to the surrounding fragments and Cliffside's.

Texture and glowing cracks. 

Whilst working on transparent images like the glass in the windows I decided to add a glowing element to the surface in the form of cracks which glowed with the element that the alien colonists were mining before the planet became destabilised and ultimately blew up into fragments. For this I used a light spray of bright blue colours to be the after glow from the cracks, and for the cracks themselves Clip Studio Paint had a feature containing textures and pattern elements for an illustration one of these was artificial cracks. I had these cracks set to glow dodge so that it would work with the after glow of the bright blue still present.  

Glowing cracks from the planets surface. 

However I could see that the glow needed more finesse and so using a glow dodge layer and a soft spray tool the soft glow from the cracks was added and made it more realistic this I thought seemed to be one of the more favourite elements within the piece. In terms of textures I tried an overlay element using the tissue paper rubbing from my hand rendered textures on the pipes and tanks in the area however this didn't create the desired effect and thats when I realised that different layer settings had different effects. I therefore experimented with different layer settings and found that the two most successful settings in this instance was the soft light and hard fix which seemed to focus on the darker areas isolating them and this created a rust like effect on the base colours which was what I was hoping to achieve as I wanted to show the station decaying and rotting away.

Over time I needed to make sure that when completed the layer elements needed to be done in background, mid ground and foreground for when we did the after effects element of this mini brief and this meant making sure everything was in the right layer and group so that when animated it would run smoothly. To accommodate this, I created a duplicate of the sketch/inked piece I was working with then erase the elements not needed on each element as these would represent the three background elements. However this was a difficult process as this was a multiply layer that I was working with and I needed to make sure that the area surrounding the lines was erased and so using the magic wand tool the surrounding area was selected and then deleted from the area. However some areas needed to be done by hand using a small eraser tool on elements like the cables or on the rocks. One issue arose when the background and fore ground elements were flattened into separate layers as some of the paper had come through with it but by looking at the layers carefully these were easily erased or coloured over to avoid compromising the piece.

This did have a positive effect of creating a form of glow effect on the rocks and planet fragments though so it was also essentially adding more to the piece. In my original sketch piece I had implemented the idea of having some moons or planets in the landscape to make it look more of a filled galaxy.

original sketch. 

So it was time to place this into the frame and thankfully I had learned how to create a realistic moon in illustration formats. To begin a simple circle shape was created in the colour grey, which was then isolated with the magic wand tool so that the textured elements could be applied to the circle to create a realistic effect. The textures of which were applied using the different water colour brush effects such as blurred which created a texture effect. I soon discovered an interesting element within the Chinese ink pens and inks element of the software which had the effect of creating a texture and shadowing like feel to the moon and this made me consider how I could utilise this in my future illustration work.

Moon of the system. 

For elements like the faded atmosphere or outer glow of the moon I used the soft spray tool on colour dodge to create a realistic atmosphere on the moon and using the blur brush I made the moon more sphere like adding a touch of 3d to the moon. For the sun I decided to try using the glow dodge and colour elements to create a realistic glow of the sun I used orange and yellow to create the glow from the coloured circle. I wanted to spread the flares coming off the sun so I used the soothing water colour brush to spread out the flares coming off the sun which in turn affected the glow colour around the nebular. Whilst working Annabeth wondered what I was using and I explained the matter of Clip Studio being the more artistic version of Photoshop but then Annabeth showed me a feature on Photoshop that gives the user more brushes to access and I was amazed that I didn't look into this and it was a file called legacy brushes which gives a more artistic brushes in watercolors and other elements. I decided to look into this further later tonight as there could be potential in this element.

Sun and moon. 

Looking at the piece it looked nearly finished and all that was needed to do was apply the final effects such as the colour surrounding the background and foregrounds so I played around with the colour balance to give a more green like colour to the planet fragments and having looked at colour elements from galaxy based animated series such as Voltron I learned that the outer colour of the nebular translates with elements on some  asteroid belts or destroyed planets. Therefore I implemented this element on the base. However I wanted to see if I could deliver a realistic element in shadowing and the glow from the sun so I decided to play around with tools like the brightness and contrast. Whilst playing around with the sliders I discovered an effect this was having on the background elements such as the darkening shadows on the back of the moon and the planet fragments. I decided to use these elements on the rest of the piece and on the background and it gave a very dark space like effect. 

Realistic elements from brightness and contrast experimentation.

Following this was the glow effects from the sun which I created on a dark yellow colour as darker colours gave a good glow effect as light or mild colours would and on the moon or planet fragments it added more realism in the background and the colours affected the glowing cracks on the planet surface and the fragments. This was clearly something I needed to look at more in my own illustrations. With the final elements applied I saved the piece as a Clip Studio and Photoshop Document ready for what comes next. Looking back at my work today and the last weeks elements its shown me what could be achieved within using hand rendered textures with our style of digital art which was something that I had learned from my College end of year show project when I tried combining painted elements with digital illustrations.

One thing that I didn't expect was that there was more to photoshops brushes than first appeared, which demonstrates that once again the programs we use on the course have features and abilities that we haven't even discovered yet. I feel that I'm learning more academic ways of approaching my work in illustration and background art and wonder if I will develop and perform greater than first imagined. In conclusion I was looking forward to next week and may even perhaps try doing some motion effects in After Effects over this next week to get a better feel for the software and even develop a short motion comic from this experience.