Thursday, September 8, 2011

Creature Thumbnail Process

Oh my yet another one? But not Sci-Fi? I'm fucking original here. Alright so for this tutorial I'm going to praise the tool called "Soft Touch" which is a brush in Painter 12 created by Android Jones. And for those who have never heard of him: You may bow to his greatness here.

So lets start this tutorial:


First I create my silhouette (I did not need spell check to spell it this time) and instead of using a solid brush I decided to start soft. Now I really really enjoyed doing this because it made rendering faster in the end for me. However this style may not work for you and if you find it hard or irritating I'd advice finding your own way to create a thumbnail you enjoy. 

The Tool

Soft edge. This tool gives a unique feature of applying a hard edge yet giving a soft edge (if you work it right). Which is why I love it.

This next step is still using the soft edge. I really want to get the design right. And to tell you the truth I like the design here better than the final. I'll explain my errors soon enough. Don't worry about it.

For Step Three I use a combination of soft edge and Wet Oily Blender in order to make my creature more solid. But what is this? My creatures head? It does not look as good... More shall be explained in the final step.

PS: The soft edge tool makes really awesome wings without any help really. I lay down a solid shape and simply go over it with the soft edge.

So now I render a lot with my wet Oily Brush Blender to make the creature solid. And that's it really. Now for the explanation of the face and how I royally ruined it from step 2: I forgot to put down a layer over top of the design I liked and just continued to render. I rendered and rendered and eventually I forgot about what the other face looked like and by the time I made this tutorial and looked at the face of step 2 I realized that it looked better than the final step...Sad really. - So remember if you make a design you like, put a layer over it so you can remind yourself what it looks like in case you get carried away like I do... 

Want the tool? Get it here:

Just save the files based on what system you use (Mac or PC)





3 comments:

  1. Thanks for the walkthrough! You do great work :)

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  2. Nice work, so like a variable edge brush.. that's pretty qwl.. I haven't used Painter much.. should get it out again =)

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  3. Fuck yes you should. It's always underrated for concept art but the only thing you really need to get used to is papers and how the pattern brush works. It miiiight be a bit irritating if you never played with traditional mediums before. Like I love using the Real Oily Brush Blender tool because it's how I'm used to mixing my colours in real life.

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