25 January 2011

WiP: All Our Battles 2



Still not quite finished update. Im afraid there was a stoppage at the last hurdle of this piece... I got distracted *cough*Mass Effect 2*cough*

Well anyway, this is something I envisioned when I listened to Europa by Globus. I wanted something fairly epic in scale and heroic like a scene of a rally cry. I am a big fan of using up-shots to enhance the epic feel, like you are mere mortals looking up at these towering figures. I kept enlarging the size of the flag too, a small one felt out of place in the scale I was trying to convey so it kept being sized up. Ive included a second song too! Consider it the after theme for the painting. Its Proud Nation by Immediate Music (the same people as Globus).

Ive also attached a few progress shots to show you. I started with big shapes and then gradually narrowed down into smaller details. Think of it like sculpting, you need to chip away the big shapes before you go into the finer points, you dont jump in and chisel the nose of a figure do you? I also keep the values quite close together, I plan to add the darkest darks and lightest lights towards the end committing early is a bit of a trap as it gives you less control of where the best place to use light and darks. Also overlays and other blending layers alter your values anyway so I try to be loose with the grayscale and think of it as a base for me to build on top of later. The colouring via the blending options are just to block in colour with hints at what the lighting is doing, its just easier for me to think about things one at a time, then I flatten the painting down and paint on top of it normally.

Oh and another thing... If you are an animation student at the Arts University College at Bournemouth check out this new blog Geoff King set up AUCB Animation. It is a good opportunity to get some critique and feedback from the alumni crew. If you are a student I think you should take advantage of this opportunity. Cheers :D

4 comments:

Aquanoctis said...

Thanks for the heads up about that blog =] Great work as always.

Ruf Blacklock said...

Ohhh I love to see process pics, do you always start in b/w?

Great piece... always loving your values

Ben Ho said...

Aquanoctis - Youre welcome mate. Spread the words to the current students. Its just an awesome opportunity to learn something and to keep the animation family connected.
Rufio - Cheers Rufus! I dont have a single working method. I soemtimes think I should develop one but I keep changing. So this one is an experiment, I have had trouble trying to colour a grayscale image before but I have read some tutorials and thought about some ideas on how I could get it to work for me and tried it out here.

Simon Webb said...

This is great, I find this kind of stuff really inspirational! I'm slowly trying to get better a concept work myself and seeing your work really makes me want to work hard at it and improve my work. Loving the process pictures as well. Thanks for the inspiration!