Concept Art Workshop: Live with Jerad Marantz

got a little overzealous alright guys how's it going give me a quick shout out let me know if you can hear me you can see Jared's screen over here hey valor now hey Alex okay we got like Sylvia Kyle Allen all right great hey Corey how are you doing man alright fantastic okay guys we get started - just a touch early we're going to give it just a second for everybody to kind of cycle in time difference we gave people it's just not a lot of notice today so thank you so much for joining us while we are we've got something really cool to kind of show and we kind of to rush because Jared actually going to get busy next week so everything kind of fell together at the last minute but give us just one moment to get started well everybody kind of cycles in hey Kimberly is all right okay it looks like we are evening out perfect let me check ASA set Lana Tom hey Peter Nathan mo Flint how are you my friend Massimiliano how many years has it been same mark Frank how you doing I got your email Frank and there we go cool all right let's get this thing started so I think we've got about a good amount of people there that are signed up for it already kind of set in so let me kind of stage here for a second and then I'll bring in our guest so we are in for a bit of a treat today jared is going to talk to us a bit about the creative process and concept and a little bit about how his class works over concept art workshop and then also a little bit about his process and how he goes about things in terms of dealing with clients and doing briefs and elements of that nature and that will also introduce you to a little bit of the process that he's in it demonstrate and then he's going to walk you through in his course over a concept art workshops which is a combination of drawing as well as sculpting and working within ZBrush to kind of iterate through designs and get something kind of really cool as quickly as possible so without further ado let me bring you on Jared thanks so much for taking time out I know you're going to have a crazy busy week so I'm glad you found some time for us today yeah Menno life wise I really love doing this all right well why don't we set up a little bit of space for these guys so tell us a little bit about what you do what you have been doing because I know you've been on some high profile projects recently yeah yeah well I mean the industry has been slow so I've been taking some time off I've just been writing and directing my own films so you know when you have the free time it's best to take advantage of it because the industry tends to pick up really quickly and before you know it you kind of disappear and then from your friends and family you get into work mode so taking the time when things are slow really important you know having a plan and not panicking when things slow that's something that takes a while to set in but before things slowed down and unfortunately they're about to pick up I mean I guess that's good I was working on Justice League then I was doing what I do I did Avengers infinity war over at Marvel and then I went over to Fox and I was working on Deadpool 2 for a bit so there were all just a lot of fun projects then that's awesome so tell me what for people who are kind of new to this what is the what is it that you do what's a day look like what's a work product look like well it changes a little bit based on who I'm working for but typically what I do is I solve design issues around creatures and and character designs I usually get a prescription from a clients so you know what they want in their film whether it's a superhero costume or you know some weird alien um I look at their references I look at whatever they have to give me and I just start concept thing and it really depends on how I execute those designs based on who I'm working with if I'm working with a client that you know responds positively to my loose sketches in my portfolio then I get to draw for a bit if they don't even acknowledge those sketches then I'm doing a stuff in indie brush I'll give myself a little bit of time to do a couple of drawings so that I have a good game plan going in especially if I'm under the gun but you know the clock is ticking can't just rely on hoping I'll find it in 3d so I'll do a little doodling before I jump in and then I'll just start working in dynamesh very much like what I'm doing right now this started off as a basic sphere I was working with it pretty low in dynamesh till I found you know the shapes that I liked and I just increased the resolution a little bit I just start finding those details so it is really dependent on the climate of the concept artist you have to be that flexible you need all of these tools in your arsenal you have to be able to draw paint sculpt photo bash and of course the stronger your foundation is the better you are as we're doing all of those things awesome and so now I took a good look at your course and we're going to get into that and this I really love this way in which you kind of you create this structure for people with the reference collage the different groupings of the animals humans things it's really insightful but before we get into that how does this con industry work how how does somebody even start to approach getting work building a living a career out of this it's it's a combination of a few things but I would say primarily its portfolio your portfolio is the starting point it's the second to networking you have to have to home you're your crown it doesn't mean that you have to be the best with this before you start networking but you have to be employable and that is in your hands by you know working every day by drawing every day by filling in the gaps in your portfolio and the weaknesses that you have artistically you will eventually get a portfolio if you're honest with yourself that makes you marketable and you know there many ways to do that and there are varying degrees of success mainly based on people's ambition and drive and so first and foremost work really hard get a decent portfolio that opens those doors and then you can really just start contacting those companies you want to work for I recommend that everybody start off working for a company whether it's at the effect house a video game company or a practical effects house because you want to get a feel for the industry before you take it on by yourself before you you know get into a union or try to open up your own studio but first and foremost foundation education portfolio does that answer it it does and one thing that I noticed a couple years ago I saw a group of group like it would seem to be I don't know a collection of people that were they all just kind of started their own studios and really and you know really I think ZBrush was like their key thing so they started their studio ZBrush they really excelled at they really made a name for themselves and kind of grew it from there and they even seemed to take some of the steam away from some of the older guys doing no clay and things of that nature yeah and how does that work now for people if they're going to you know let's say you're saying go work for somebody else but there are these other roads how is it for people who want to kind of start their own company and just you know build their own collection of clients well okay I mean starting your own company which you know I've been I've been approached to do people have often wondered why I haven't done it myself when you're when you're about to start your own company you're accepting delegating at that point and hopefully you're enough of an artist because your education your mileage on your practice is about to go on hold because now you have to juggle clients deal with you know their feedback and then give that information to other artists and coach them and move them along so that everybody's happy so starting a company right out the little tricky like I recommend that people do it because it will freeze your personal development as a as a concept artist um zebra it opens a lot of doors or used to open a lot of doors for people when ZBrush hit um it kind of leveled the playing field for a little bit it was a very weird thing and for artists that have a solid traditional foundation years of traditional drawing and sculpting um we we saw the floodgates kind of open and I mean I came in around 2005 this is Joe started you know so we didn't see a lot of it but what ended up happening is there were prerequisites for being able to work in this industry you had to be able to draw paint and sculpt and ZBrush was so user-friendly that a lot of those prerequisites kind of went out the window of to a degree I mean you have a wide range of you know clients and tastes that you're working for and no matter how much design you study I mean I have a degree because from from Art Center one of the most humbling things to realize when you start working is that the people that you work with don't necessarily share your tastes in design and so you're essentially just designing for them and for what they think good design is so in many ways no design itself and what is good and what it's bad is subjective depending on who you're working for and whose vision you're helping to put on screen so that being said there are a lot of guys starting off who could kind of get through you know they could they could get the shapes they could uh you know sculpt these forms and contribute to the design phase and that did a frustration still does frustrate quite a few traditional artists in regards to those traditional oriented artists you know it's a very funny I've heard quite a few get angry and you know everything that people were saying about a zebra they said about Photoshop and I'm sure before Photoshop you know I mean painters used to create their own paint that used to find their pigments and mix them into oils and I'm sure at one point when the store-bought stuff came around people you know some that too so it's it's always people always get a little sketchy around the newest toy and diverse is no longer enjoys toy it's a it's an industry standard so they better get used to it but also if your responsibility I think is a concept artist to stay on top of the tools that are getting the best results the industry doesn't slow down for people and I've got into a few arguments with professionals about it and the thing that usually ends that conversation or argument is that the film industry has always embraced the things that make it more advanced they're always they're always holding on and looking to the newest technology and this has been consistent from day one you know um and right now zebra is a standard sonar gauge to it and I answer to I went on a tangent there no no you sounds great and really what I'm not what I was wanting to do is you give them people a sense of people who are aspiring to do this a sense of how they can do this and also the elements that they really need to kind of focus on to get that kind of job and yeah well okay um how they can do this well being right now I am just straight consenting um in zbrush this was actually I was getting warmed up because I've just been you know writing and editing in the past couple of weeks and so I needed a muse this whatever talking and noodling it but well yeah let's talk a little bit processed and let's open it up now to talk process and also guys if you have questions feel free to shout them out in the questions section I will pass them on and and we'll go from there and we'll also open it up at the end for Q&A but let's talk a little bit about process and how you progress because I know here you're at kind of you know you're far along on this so please I started this 20 minutes before signing up for the webinar so this is this is a pretty fast a fun technique um and I can if it's that I can you know start from a sphere again or you know I rough this thing out but um process in what in what context like process on the job process and just someone gives you a design brief they give you a project and so then what are the stages of starting to make that that happened now here of course you're justyou're you're doing your own thing and working from your own ideas but now if somebody has got a job in terms of what they have to do where the stage is that you go through to to start to develop the idea well okay you know obviously firstly you had your meeting client probably is going to pull some images from offline that that he likes whether it's you know animals they've seen sometimes it's like concept art or things that you seen before I've shown up in meetings and you know go into the room and I'll just see cork boards full of concept art and they'll be like we were thinking about something like this or you know just cork boards full of photos or fashion reference you know stuff like that you know so that becomes the jumping-off point in you you you you look at those reference boards and you just start concept other times and this happens more often I'll just end up with a brief description and I'll create my own collage of reference I get that for this demo right now I'm just noodling this warm up but for this demo I threw this together because I was thinking about doing some kind of Rhino each looking thing and so I had the basic idea in my head and a wino ate looking thing is just as good as any description I've gotten on you know some creature films and so this is my starting point I'll go on while I look at photos and I start sketching and I had this in front of me while I'm working so that my designs are grounded in reality now that's one technique let's say I'm working on something a bit more extreme let's say I've been spending a couple of days in ZBrush and I'm unconfident and I just like let's start something sometimes I'll grab a sphere and I'll just push the shapes around until I find something that I like and I'll ask myself you know before I start detailing what in nature is close to V shape so right now I've been just messing around with this guy and I could you know go on Google Images I could pull up reference of hammerhead sharks stingrays um there's a little praying mantis in this and I can just go on Google Images pop out on my secondary screen and go from there so you know there are a lot of different processes depending on your level of confidence I have techniques for um you know if I'd been in ZBrush for a couple of weeks just you know refining a character and then I get suddenly a new character that that happens you know a lot of studios like you know when I was on Avengers you know we get bounced around a bit one day I'm on Avengers and you don't need to watch it take a stab at Black Panther or maybe I'm doing a main character and I'm waiting for feedback they're like oh there's this background species and they need a lot of options quickly so then I have to go back into Photoshop and so I've developed techniques for getting the job done even though I'm not warmed up with 2d art I'll start with a grayscale piece because you know I'll be more familiar it shape and form after sculpting then I will be with the line so I'll just rough it out in 2 3 values in upgrade game Photoshop and then I'll probably draw on top of that after finding the design that way the bottom line is you have to have a solid foundation you have to be able to bounce around from discipline to discipline at the drop of a hat and you have to be able to do that and print do something everybody can reach so foundation is a big one and also you know being a good designer is about messing up for years it's about trying and failing over and over and over again until you get to a point where you're just not failing as off and the best way to achieve that is actually in drawing because you know I mean right now I'm I'm doing this thing I've had a lot of fun some good results but in the amount of time it took me just to get here I could have designs you know ten of these heads with a ballpoint pen and a piece of paper so jumping into a zebra too quickly is a big mistake because it will stunt your growth as a designer simply in the amount of design mileage you can achieve with traditional materials the other factor is that rolling will make you a better sculptor by having to create the illusion of shape and dimension when you're actually dealing with shaping dimension you will be able to handle it a lot better so it's a juggling act really and you have to keep everything going all at once and produce constantly it's just fun it's a real rush and you will develop your own techniques for working predictably being able to you know make things have been dinner in a short amount of fun but it takes time great alright so enjoy the client comes in gives you gorilla rhino thing you won't be done the mileage so you know some of the elements design that you can kind of experiment with and kind of work how can the student build it like of course number one I want to make sure people know you you've got a class at concept art workshop and one of the key things is if you want to learn you always learn from the people who are doing that's why we were professionals like Sheridan that's the key thing but what if somebody can't take the class what can they do to help build and develop that mileage well that's how we start the class I mean I I worked pretty hard on developing a curriculum that I think is commercially viable the things that are happening now the developing the skills that will help you survive in today's industry and so we start off the class designing in Photoshop working in 2d and finding the the creature design in the class that I was teaching I'm going to have a lot of fun on this one because in the last class I just did it straight a bat creature you know and to change things up I'm doing a humanoid alien with a subtle costume and so to begin that process it's going to start in a similar way as my mind like create your class last term but what we're going to doing is we're going to be deciding um a team of like rogue Elyas it's going to be subtle we're going to stick fairly close to a human silhouette we're going to tweet out the anatomy we're going to do all of that exploration in Photoshop we're going to spend about mmm two to three weeks getting it right and then picking our best design and starting to flesh that out from scratch with these Spears in ZBrush and hopefully the gold will have these could have at the very least 70% of that design result before we're pushing Polly's around in in ZBrush because you know most people don't have the mileage to create something solid just by goofing around with the program you need a game plan and even though um you know I started this just with just by finding shapes um I committed to something and then I visualized you know where to go from there as an artist you want to be at the very least ten steps ahead of where you currently operate your money and doing the drawing really helps that especially especially in a classroom setting I just want people to be developing those good habits and not fall into those design pits where you're you know on the job you started something in 3d uh and you shouldn't have and you're just pushing and pulling this thing trying to uh make it work but it's not you know this is a terrible trap to be in when you're on the clock that's I that is a great point and I experienced that actually firsthand I think him I was brought on kind of as a 3d guy on Green Lantern which I think you mentioned you were on as well and I was just on there for a little bit but I was on there as a 3d guy to do what ultimately had to be a 2d person's job and the requirements or the expectations by somebody who's kind of new to 3d it just takes days to do stuff in 3d you know especially Susan um I am I is a two-hour journey no matter what you're doing uh-huh so yeah you can common a stay okay and so the key thing is keep yourself in Photoshop and so is this photo bashing is this drawing what is this that you end up doing in fact in Photoshop well in Photoshop um photo bashing actually takes more time than just rolling if you draw well then like okay let's talk about a scenario where the client will look at anything that is completion that happens on um and so if that's the case you need to have a pen and paper next to you and be able to do it will inform your game plan there if you can't erase those drawings those concepts for yourself so that you can find the best design before you start noodling something in ZBrush because it doesn't really take that long to UM dip your shapes where they need to be in ZBrush and you're just you know resolving skin texture and and detailing you know the design the design is done back here I mean we already know what it looks like so we can get really caught up in the minutia at this point so being able to get your start and get your plan going on a paper or getting Photoshop is the best way to you know power through one of these concepts and chances are you will have someone in your pipeline that can read a drawing you might be working with a production design so even though say the director can't read a doodle production designer should be able to and you can only show those options to him and then he'll filter out the ones that he believes are are you know not correct and put you into the direction you know what you want unpassed on because that's that you know are in the right direction hmm so do you got it do you think I could talk you into some photoshop just kind of because I know for a draw the idea of drawing is a bit scary to a lot of draftsman but one of the things that I've made a point not dressing with the sculptures and ZBrush well those are the things that I made a point of talking about is just this isn't draftsmanship like this is in you know neoclassical drawing right you have a very specific way in which you show people how to draw oh yeah oh you want me to get into photoshop yeah do you mind just and just so we can unpack that for somebody because they're one of the key that I'm getting from you is that iteration is important and love being flexible is important so ZBrush is here and you know we've got lots of stuff to show with people but I want to see if we can introduce people to other ways data rate oh definitely um all right yeah let's pop pop into Photoshop really quick and yeah I didn't I've been I break down as simply as I possibly can um and so bunch of stuff let's go file so here we are we're in Photoshop it's going to get 300 PPI and that by eleven sheet waver because that's what I'm the most familiar wisps are my dog is market it turns any night is I work it well let's just go in here and something I start with something simple for uh so let's say you haven't been growing for a while there are there are rules there are things or that must work yeah I don't know why my daughter's doing them there we go yeah well like Jer soon that's the key thing that I want you guys to be thinking about not is not whether or not you draw or you can draw what I want you to be thinking about is ways to work that help you grow that up amber not me yes now the uh yeah all right let's go alright so you know with a very simple brush and I'm just going to go with one of the default repeated spheres that's all that's all this is um and you know I do I use variations on this thing but if you can tell it's just you know I thought that that repeated and I'm going to take this brush I'm gonna work grayscale and I'm the Kleinman signed by just focusing on the things increase your design that don't really change you know depending on what kind of job you have if you're dealing with an alien there's only so far you can go before it's not recognizable if it's basically humanoid if it's if it's anything like this and we do have quite a few different types of animals here but the one consistency that we have is skull ribcage pelvis skull ribcage pelvis no matter what the orientation what the configuration is I can always rely on that for I would argue ninety percent ninety nine percent of the potential assignment I'm gonna grab my reference project just for the hell of it and see where this asparagus just bring that in because I want reality with me and on my desk I have anatomical figures I have an act charts everywhere around me cannot have enough reference but let's say you know a client wants to start something um so this initial phase is about reveal it's about showing the client what the concept is and so you're not going to have an incredibly dynamic pose you're going to have a three-quarter pose so first and foremost um I didn't know what I'm gonna draw I'll just goof around and see what happens something a beer I know eight you know whatever let's go here and I might make this a little bit more precise like I have the art pen which is really fun uh on my Wacom tablet and the great thing about that is you can actually get D for us to rotate so you just kind of turning around and arrange gives me a few options I like to work a little flat squash the brush now you can see I can rotate it by rotating my my fingers while holding the bright so I'm going to go in here and let's do something kind of basic I'm going to want this design in three quarters so I'm just going to find a ground plane let's dial that back heads I'm going to leave a packet e alone for now and I'm just going to like basics if you're drawing it from the top of the head to the bottom of the ground as quickly as possible so that I can get all my proportions to work so we think it's doing gorillas or women are entering a seeing Rhine open okay so I'm gonna come in here and we're going to start with the basics let's zoom in on this it's the old IRA it's hang and Ryan out of stuff is about there so we're good alright it's in front of me let's play so it's going to be a loops going on there only combat that that should be Adam maybe I should turn off I don't know my momentum okay my caffeine both will go down as I keep adding okay let's go up six alright so head ribcage pelvis alright we know that's going to stay the same on on anything relatively humanoid let's get to the ground there is a ball and socket joint that should be then uh let's go to the femur and the tibia and fibia here as well go down and at my grand plains a little off but whatever let's go here boom alright so now I have a basic three-quarter pose let's find where the arms are you right here a radius and ulna here and then let's just make them kind of big big long arm so now I have this very contained concept I'm going to find my center lines I'm gonna find my eye line and as quickly as possible I got from the confident head to the bottom and I'm going to start connecting the dots you know what's the squash and stretch on this what's the contrapposto these are all figure-drawing terms you know everything in art is pretty much connected I also want to know what my eye line is so if my eye line is here then all of these forms that are above the eye line are actually going to bend or are away from me you know these forms are going to start to overlap past this point everything below this point is going to bend away and you can see that I'm able to indicate volume just by showing what forms the anatomy are overlapping or receding away from it so you don't need a huge you know the perspective grid you know to get some ball rolling this will do the trick so there you go you might want to lip occasionally just to make sure you haven't screwed anything up and it's kind of reset your perception of your pose I turned it into a hockey on my tablet I love I love doing that um but just helps you to make sure that you're seeing what you're doing correctly a lot of people don't really understand what vision is your brain when you're actually looking at stuff most of what you're seeing is being completed by memory and it's not very accurate and so this helps to just kind of reset your perception of what you're looking at not a lot of people realize that there's only a very small area that you're seeing in real time majority of vision is completed by memory and only a small area is actually in color and in focus so perception is relative it's very interesting and this just helps me to reset my perception of what I'm working with that's why if you don't flip your image and you do it at the very end you'll see a good drawing turn into a bad drawing very quickly another trick I think people used to use is they would stare their work in a mirror that also flips the image when I was working in clay I would look at my skulls in a mirror and that would help it I'm just going to go here hurry up let me direct you real quick here because um and just see if we can get a sense of things because now this is the stuff that you're doing now is the stuff that can be a little daunting to people but the very beginning when you work that was you know a stick figure oh yes and how much more does somebody need to know to be able to go from there because you have a lot of information already established in the stick figure my wrong yeah well is by the young as I mentioned before everything in art is connected and so when I was working in clay I would sculpt a bunch of had a bunch of models of what you know a critter suit would be or what um you know even a CG character would be and so I would try to get a subtle pose in that armature in the wire under structure of the sculpt and that taught me a lot about the stick figure um if the wire armature doesn't show the character's personality it doesn't live on its own before there's any play on it you're in trouble same thing with the stick figure try to get your stick figure to personify that character because that's your base that's those those are your bones those are your structure then um and at six a year I mean you'll know within less in a minute whether or not you've done something successful or if you failed completely um as you can see here I'm blocking out another one not even a minute you know it's super super fast you know what what kind of pose do I want for this character and no matter how complicated it is let's say you want to do something with four legs um there is a way to find it in this simple stage do a thorax of find where these legs are um you know in place so no matter how bizarre a creature is you can start very simply and find the ground plane where does that go very simple it's always it's always a simple start to some of these you know incredibly complicated designs that we see see I can turn the head this way just by showing where the center line is and dump minutes yeah laughs in seconds and I know what they're not I can blow this up and flesh it out so you don't really waste any time greatest artists of the greatest simplifier as always there's always an easy start there's always a simple beginning and creature design is one of the easiest things I would say to to overcomplicate this guy's looking a little yeah a little narrow for a Rhino guy comes to distort a little bit there we go Gina in a question might be relevant at this point too because then there is so some people will work with 3d paint overs you're familiar with with that free access I don't know how does that relate to this and what you're doing and also in just into the industry what you should be expected to know um well that relates to a lot of things well first off um you know the paint over stages are really valuable you don't want to go back in the model and just keep tweaking over and over again because that takes forever whereas you can bring something into Photoshop and you just paint into it using all values of color from the render you do like the push-pull even liquify and you know that's great for exploration and option this plays into it just in I would argue the setup I mean it really depends on how you're using utilizing 3d paint over some people it will model out the entire thing and then do a costume variations in paint other people will actually just you know rough out a character here um and maybe they only have a section in 3d like I've done tons of you know alien heads and then I'll screengrab one from ZBrush and I'll just pop it into Photoshop and I'll complete the body a lot faster than sculpting everything else so that that definitely works its way in um and you still need to know how to paint when doing that stuff so again you know just in order to get iterations you're relying on a foundation you're not relying on a program for that it's not fast enough you got it and this is something interesting I see happening so tell me if this is maybe what's going through your mind or not but it seems like in the early stage you're focused on the head the ribcage the pelvis you know you're thinking on the bones and the basic gesture on this like they're a gesture drawing really yeah now at this state like you put in even more gesture like for example on the thigh I can see the gesture of the vastest ladder was coming down into connecting to the to the patella and then it creates the you know the me has that beautiful gesture but now you seem to have taken that a step further now it's almost like you're thinking silhouette you're getting shape I am I'm thinking I'm thinking pieces really like you'll notice that uh you're I'm at a stage right now where finding flat planes I'm just squaring everything off and I'm thinking almost in terms of low geometry I'm thinking about how pieces are fake together you know where is my front plate where is my side plate how do these planes turn and how do these pieces these Anatomy anatomical masses lock in and fit in and so at this stage yes I am definitely thinking about silhouette but I'm also thinking about volume and dimension of something that actually is helped me with this very necessary stage is low poly modeling going from blocking something up in these spheres and getting that very low adaptive skin looking at UM at low res models and seeing how the planes turn and that's exactly how I'm thinking now I'm basically modeling right now and then pushing and pulling simple forms I'm finding the straight line that I'm defining you know where these planes turn in order to create a solid model you know this wouldn't look that different human zebra person wouldn't be posed at this point but yeah that's what I'm doing all right cool right see I can see the planes I can see the structure I can see these straight lines and so what is the value of straight lines I know there's research out about how humans straight lines or something that we can measure curves or something that are very hard and so I do see some curvature here but what is the value of really emphasizing these straight lines at this stage well straight lines um you know get you there faster it's easier to plot and the problem with a drawing is people come to overcomplicate for you know and so when you're initially going I seen guys who are just doing round shapes on top of brown and everything gets really bubbly and a lot of that is based off of you know old master growing some old master drawings and so straight lines are a bit of a more modern way to plot to figure down there they're uh two schools of thought when it comes to figure drawing for example and in LA and definitely in the entertainment industry straight lines kind of dominate and are more commercial it's the difference between DaVinci and you know JC Leyendecker for example and when Devon came out a long time ago you'll notice it's work his paintings are still very straight and flat and structural and that's what the straight line is about is about finding that structure because you know you start with the initial straight line of just finding the bone and then the other lines on the outside could define the volume and I'm going in on adding more planes eventually all of these straight lines add up to a curve suddenly but they're plotted and they're on the bone and they're they're solid so it's all about structure and form and things will round out eventually just like adding density to a ZBrush measure any any mesh increasing the subdivisions will turn your forms so you really want to take advantage of the straight-line stage so that you can build these things as quickly as possible and you'll notice you did mention a silhouette earlier but I didn't start with a silhouette I started out by just plotting these forms and finding these shapes because that's another school of thought that I'm adamantly against where people just do solid black to the left and anyone can actually make an exciting solid black silhouette uh but not everyone can figure out what's going on inside those shapes so I do recommend that people gain mileage really building and finding form this way first also when it comes to straight lines eventually this will be a piece done in value and you're going to want to know how light rolls over the shapes and so this technique follows Bo is with a copious ro head do you remember that think if it is it a thorough ed is a great a great head and it's just defined is a few straight planes it looks like a low poly model and it's incredible reference for how light rolls over objects what planes light hits depending on the angle of the light etc so if this stage now I would probably start to fill in the silhouettes element dial back pass me increase the flow because I still want to see my line work and I'm just going to fill this in and just go look at what the overall shape is without losing any of my structure and typically what I do at this stage is I might lower the opacity of this piece and I might go in and just draw take the brush that I'm currently using decrease the size so that it is a pen tool and find the character there but now I have this really strong base to work on top up now at this point I'm not lifting my pen I'm just filling in the shapes and I'm just seeing what works and what doesn't because people have to remember that a line is an abstraction it does not actually exist and it's a way that we quickly define an image but but you know when we're looking at things in the real world we're looking at a shape and volume and color not why there aren't lines around people separating them from you know the background it's just simply their form their color overlapping for forms in color often edition so worn shape that's more accurate division so when we get to the silhouette phase now we can really see the character in its entirety of an object taking up shape and volume you'll notice that I kind of didn't even bother controlling the hands I find that hands are a lot easier for me to rough out in silhouette and again straight lines that's something like that I was going to ask you about that and and also kind of one of the things that happens in in students you are they cheating are they you know only themselves cheating is a weird term yeah I think the there are some misconceptions of one you know people think that using reference is cheating which is ridiculous because every artist I've ever admired uses reference and reference is necessary especially if you ever want to get to a point where if it matters to you where you don't use reference that just means you've been using reference for years yeah and they're all in reply such a nova point they've built up the mental library so now they get to fly exactly exactly you earn that you earn that you only earn that by by growing everything so now I'm going in with just some value and I'm we're going to work with these two values that we have two values right now and I can start to uh chisel out shapes under pretend that there's a light source over here and I'm just going to work with the middle value and the dark value to find the the character find the design and I'm just doing a little bit because I'm going to dial this back in opacity and I'm just going to start drawing on top of it and refinement the character but right now I am thinking in terms of again flat plains and shadow shapes you know what shape is a don't make as it rolls over an object this is a very sculptural way of working and it really is completely in line with sculpting and 3d it's all connected and crazy everything it's basically all the same process and is this all in one layer you're not adding multiple data and so all just the one Oh God yeah the background layer in this thing and I'm just gonna keep going till I like I have enough information to draw and I'm thinking about again I'm thinking about geometry you know subdivision one was before the silhouette state now a months of the two and I'm adding you know more planes that I'm trying to figure out the complexity of how these forms are turning and what is hitting the light or what is going away from the light was rolling away from Hawaii now for those who want to develop this facility this this ability is it figure drawing is it what is it and how do they develop this because this is a mixture of analytical drawing that you have going on here and just drawing a whole bunch of this couple of things merging but in in terms of them developing this ability themselves of course this is one of the things that we really I think is really special about this class is that it really is that bridge between 2d and 3d yeah and so then if we wanted to get even you know further along in this in this development you know what is the things that they can do as you're drawing yeah a figure drawing drawing from reference studying value you look at photos of models turn the color off desaturated forget what the values are doing and limit your values I'm only working with two now and I'm able to get a lot done um now I was to be frank not a very good student so I've learned a few things in school but then you know I just suffer through the first couple of years and and catch up a bit there are a few things that I had to learn and correct on the job one thing I had to learn on the job was a 3d no one warned me about that but yeah my my perspective I neglected when I was in school was always very stubborn I hated he learning things that I didn't instantly understand how it was utilized is going to be utilized professionally so I neglected collectively but you can go to workshops you can actually go online and you can type in a figure reference or they even have timed figure-drawing where you can just go on YouTube and you will see a series of photos of news that will be time like a figure drawing class you'll have you know 30 seconds to lay in the gesture and then another photo comes up during it another 30 seconds and goes up to a minute and it goes up to five minutes and then the individual a 20 minute session to copy the figure in front of you but instruction is really valuable it will make you grow a bit more quickly because I do recommend a good figure drawing class just to get you here at this point so I have a dis stage enough information confinement character if I wanted to I could start to lay in simple values for a costume but I think I'm like well let's just do a loincloth because I don't want to run into that problem let's take this down so now I can take this and let's dial it back a little bit now there are a few things that I've been doing differently lately I've been um blow this up I've been actually emailing myself JPEGs of value studies like this and then opening them up on my iPad in procreate and I've been doing my line work there which has been pretty fun I still struggle with line work a little bit on a tablet on what I used to do in games quite a bit as I would get to this stage and just print it out super light and take a pencil and draw over it scan it back in for the line works because that was the factor so let's let's dial this back concealing coffee right then all right so now now this is a good opacity I can see everything and I have a combination of structure here but because it's so light if I want to improve upon the design I'm not going to be locked into into the concept because the lack of opacity is just making it more of a suggestion and not a definite game plan so now I'm going to zoom in and just like in 3d like if you can figure out the head of a creature those rules those patterns just like with a set of armor everything I do here every material and create everything I indicate will have to repeat itself throughout the body in order to create a cohesive design which you'll notice in reality the same materials the majority of materials do repeat themselves up through animals eyes are isolated um but even you know fingernails toenails repeat themselves the majority of materials that show up in a head show up through the rest of the body so this is our game plan so let's find the character and I'm just going to style this back I want to make a good drawing tool I'm still probably going to do some under drawing trying to figure this out all right so first and foremost centerline let's increase the resolution on a clean line let's just go 400 see what that does you do do all right see that's 100 all right we're in good shape I'm gonna dial this back a lot because I want I want the freedom to scribble and find it all right so centerline I line so if these are any things over here and so now I'm just going to start to bounce that cool okay see there's already a lot of character there to work with and so now I'm going back the line I'm going back to straight lines and I'm just plotting you'll notice I'm going past my previous markers for where the nostrils were where the eyes are I like this this really sad I like it's like slope down here I might make you know he shapes bigger here and it's going to be kind of weird and alien so maybe he's all like that overhead or something so I'm just going to come here now if this was paper it would be a lot faster if I was in my iPad it would be a lot faster so half the trick um is knowing yourself and being honest with yourself so if I was on the job I would email this to myself immediately just because the direct you know hand the surface um quality would throw me through it faster just because I'm more accustomed to drawing on paper I'm only now considering getting it something I don't really like some pigs um especially when it comes to sculpting I don't like my hand being in the wave stuff unless I'm actually drawing so I'm plotting this out and the key to drawing characters is drawing from the inside out I built this from the skeleton out it's the only way to really know what your form is doing the angle of the bone Herrmann's how the muscles lay on top of it if you rotate your wrist if you supinate if your palm is facing the sky your forearm does something very different from your palm facing the ground so by knowing what the skeleton is doing you'll know what the muscles are doing and it's really the only way to draw things that are organic that's one of the reasons why you know environment artists often struggle with the figure because environments and objects can be accurately drawn without really knowing what's going on these like you can paint them out without knowing about all of the layers and you know the evolution of that now you can paint a car without knowing where the engine is because it is just surface and that surface is fixed whereas flesh and bone muscle and skin it rolls and it changes and so you have to know what those bones are doing ah this is cool let's go in here I'm trying sealing this this shape in here so you'll notice I'm finding small structures to work with and I'm going to do a layer on top of this just to find the character um but there's still many things to plot and find here but we're just getting more subdivisions we're just getting into smaller polygons right now so it all it all relates really does areas you starting to show up let's take the sternomastoid II think neck balls and they have this really interesting flappy thing I don't know if I'm gonna go with that I think we're just going to we have a big edge and we need these big sternomastoid big neck muscles these dominant neck muscles to move this head around so we've got a really interesting skull here to work with ya know race just a little bit you'll notice I haven't really array anything yet that's my first erase if I'm mistaken let's find it let's find these shapes or let's separate the muzzle from the cheekbones you know all of these elements can be isolated it's just one object stacked on top of the other one objects coming forward now there's foreshortening happening even in the face we're just plotting that out and so I'm taking the reference I'm taking reality and I'm manipulating it into into these shapes that I've designed area is that big neck big trapezius here find now I can move a little faster because you know we don't have all of these multiple complex plane changes of anywhere else in the body it's going to be much more simple because you know there really aren't any forms that are on top of anything is complicated at a skull called the skull has multiple plane changes you know there's a lot in a skull to accommodate all of this function all of the function of expression and everything really complex muscles that push and pull in different directions trying to articulate the mouth that does not exist as complicated anywhere else in the body you know arms are very standard legs are very standard so I can go bigger I can go broader but I'm just giving myself enough information here and so now that I have this loose start I can go into that head so I want I can dial that back a little bit I can breathe strongly let me breathe just a little bit more life into it as I can find them more complex shapes so let's do that right here I'm just going to zoom in on him bump this up and let's really start to commit so all of these lines that I've created they're just landmarks I'm just getting to a place right now where I can start to really find the character I have earned that um and it would take me a while to get there when I was younger because I'm very detail-oriented I wanted to get into eyes and pores as quickly as possible and that screwed up my drawings and so I wrote down a to-do list and I put it in the corner of my page and I would write down stick figure secondary forms tertiary forms um and I would not move from one stage to the next until I had taken each stage as far as I could but I had to write it down and I had to have it in front of me otherwise I would fall into that trap of just you know rewarding myself with you know these fun wrinkles and details so now I get to bring this guy to life put a little soul in there find the eyes so we're really just looking at as three layers and you know trying to find the structure trying to find a character um passed this point because it's just a line layer I can do all of my complicated of value work right under that then I can use a color layer to bring in the color into the character and then I would probably add another opaque layer to just paint into it um there are a lot of ways to work and it really depends on how much time I have ideally I would love to do this thing entirely from scratch but I might get to the value stage and the client might want it in an hour and I'm going to have to grab photos you know I don't I don't have that luxury but the design is already resolved the design is done as plotted and photos are just really wrapping papers dressing in details is not you know entirely the design process I'm not relying on it and that's that's the trick know the tricks but know that if you're relying on them to get the job done you haven't pushed your foundation far enough that any questions any comments absolutely let's open this up a little bit and I ever got some here that I want to start with so just Jesse's asking now what do you know now that you wish you knew when you were just starting out uh to work more from observation I really wish I I knew that I wish um you know my child ego um could say to take a back seat and I would have gone to the zoo and I would put on more animals um because when I was a kid I would always draw you know creatures and aliens just from my imagination but what I didn't realize is that you know I was repeating a lot of the same shapes over and over again I was growing the same things over and over again I wasn't really growing and so it was and I mean I was able to solve that problem quickly because I was taking some classes and I was obsessed with becoming a concept artist as soon as I started looking at reference i just opened everything up but I wish I was studying that I wish I was studying perspective also when I was really young that was uh that was a mistake that I had to correct the hard way get that out of the way got it and then um Frank is asking well we're actually answering thanks questions very good excuse me we're right on the highway so you turn the the ambulances Corre during the exploration phase if you find something you like do you stop there or keep trying to find new ideas uh well there's always new ideas I think what people don't might not realize until they're actually doing this job is what makes you stop is the amount of time you're given so there isn't a lot of freedom to you know keep trying new things that's why um sketching and getting your ideas out before you start to refine anything is so important because you never know when you're going to have to you know show something but it's not really a matter of what you can design at times it's a matter of okay what can I get done today you know what can I get done in this deadline so um you don't really have the luxury to keep exploring um sometimes and its really controlled by the show you know if you do a sketch that's why your first past is actually so important because oftentimes clients will just build on what you give them you know and you won't get a chance really to explore other ideas you might just get locked into variations of what you've already presented and that happens very often um very very often that's why in a lot of you know big design studios like marble or whatever though they'll have multiple artists taking on the same character because they want concepts that are fairly well result but they want variation so instead of giving it to one artist what they end up doing is you know giving it to four or five and usually these the way people get those to stay on those characters is if they got the closest to UM to what the director had find and that's usually how it goes got it all right now let's see Jared all intimate outside Kyle's got an industry quest nice and I'm a junior level concept artist just starting getting noticed from large companies sometimes during this time the companies they get very absent from the conversation before during the project then later they admit that the project has been postponed or dropped this a frequent thing in the industry or am I just unlucky happens all up I get calls all the time I start on projects they usually say all right we're going to start really quick and that very rarely means that they're going to start really quick projects and Bob and slow down all the time they start uh and then you know people change their mind or projects lose funding or they lose money in the day they drop say they stopped and it's very common happens a lot and it happens even on shows that are are greenlit I've worked on shows where you know they're constantly adjusting the budget while I'm designing so I might have been on a character for a couple of weeks maybe months and they realize like oh we don't have a money for this one let's rewrite the scripts are constantly being you know rewritten and it's very it's very organic very organized and that leads to you know a lot of indecision and a lot of people changing their minds just because they have to work within the limitation of of a budget um what's really helped me to understand that actually is uh directing and writing my own films I started to do that recently and a lot of resentment that I've had with you know the higher-ups as kind of melted away because I've just I've it was like oh that's why they had to cut me or oh that's right we're on set and this part of the script actually doesn't work you know when you're when you're doing it for yourself you you see the other side of the job it really starts to become more apparent you know how organic the process of making anything is does that answer yeah yeah all right Val got a question or an issue so Val saying I'm curious to know when you draw do you set limitations I'm having the problem when I draw I keep making cool new shapes and never looks like a coherent whole design well I think yes I said limitations well it's not actually limitations is the wrong word um you need to commit so um what's happening is that you are constantly exploring instead of establishing cool shapes and committing the executing them um so I would recommend doing a lot of loose doodles and then committing to something and then just executing it from there that is how you propel forward everything that I've been doing every mark that I've been making in Photoshop everything that I was doing in zebra all the progression of in piece is is committing and then building on top of that committing and building on top of it until you were done so when you're experiencing is indecision and that may be the result of not enough exploration prior to moving into a piece that you intend to finalize got it speed date first yes then you get married exactly Fowler do the in discuss the industry favor skill or creativity or both and this is really fascinating question for me is there a connection between the two like how what's what is it important if you see any difference between them or if you favor one of the other skill and creativity uh so this metaphysical of skill and creativity are not actually I mean if we're talking about you know being about concept art um it's very hard to find a separation even skill and creativity because if you're highly creative you're motivated to execute those ideas as convincingly as possible so the most creative people I've met are the most skilled just because they have the desire to execute their ideas as clearly as possible does the industry favor to them um a creative person uh is typically skilled and so I would say yes because it's very hard to find drastic separation between the two um that answereth now let me know uh Noah does a Jared just use Photoshop and he does not he uses a drawing paper pencil all that stuff and Photoshop sense it makes Chan and procreate I'll use procreate okay procreate chances asking them and this is an old question such as you left let me know if this answers it or not but you've asked and how you manage proportion and things of that nature which I assume is just through your skeleton the simple chance that you make first yes Jane getting from the top of the head to the bottom of the foot as quickly as possible and that's in your layin and that that's just a figure drawing rule I didn't come up with that that's finger growing 101 everything that I've actually been doing is you're growing 101 I'm just working it around a humanoid a creature with that is obviously grounded in reality all right and for those who want to know more about the zebra side of this also when I think you the replay it'll be on a page that has Jared going from drawing two to a second drawing and then into ZBrush where does the vSphere sketch so there you'll get to see kind of the process there and in the beginning of this you have to see some of how Jared gets in and finds details and it really works this now let's see if we can dial this into what stage are we at now what's our aim here because we have left 3d yeah or in for this character we actually haven't even got to 3d yet so right of the stage that we're dealing with what's how does this fit into our creative life our job uh well right now I'm just looking for um you know those those details I'm looking for the actual a character here and if I was going to resolve this I take the drawing a bit further um but as a rule of thumb when it comes to these designs you know a lot of this is result so what I would probably do is I might start up painting directly because I have enough information to start working with just a flat color which is really fun for me so I might I might take the value work a little further and then I might treat is just like direct direct painting if I'm going to present it I mean if this is just for me this would have been a napkin doodle and I would have taken it uh quite this far I wouldn't I wouldn't needed to um but yeah if this is present then yeah I would I would start to add more value something to dial up the opacity right there hmm uh the previous layers I have some white up here I didn't need to do that erase that so yeah at this stage I can just paint under this thing look just a face yeah some select these values and I'm just good start to you know fill this in remember we're pretending that there's a light source up here and let's just go go all of this and fold into shadow again straight lines whenever I can and let's look at something that maybe lit a bit more and now go canard well everything's hooked up on a Mac product I know that happens to me when I record it is so infuriating yeah it's so obnoxious I don't even know how to undo it been there night yeah and it's probably just spammed - that's what drives me crazy it's never it's never an actual call it's someone trying to make me buy solar panels or someone like a friend right yeah anyways ok so again I'm just limiting the value all of this is falling into shadow and I'm just selecting and like okay what is like hitting so it's all in medium values and I can add let's darken this up make sure we're you know showing the eye sockets and everything what are the what are the shadow shapes here so you know it doesn't really take that much to show a dimension so I'm just going to go in here there we go eventually I love the opacity but line work as well but it's a good guy so I'm now going to grab a value darker and do you have a measurement like are you is it exactly 25% black is how do you gauge I'm just eyeballing us um and it really depends on my level of confidence like if I want to keep exploring then I don't I don't really make a lot of bold marks um but I'm able to keep exploring uh while moving forward so I'm just kind of like sneaking up on it same thing like you know what skulls or anything like that if you will get primates ahead wrinkles you'll also notice I'm pretty far away from that face you know I'm not zooming up and I'm not obsessing if you look at traditional painters um you'll notice or let's say you go to an artist or whatever you look at the paintbrushes you'll always find a few paintbrushes that have these really long six connecting to them and so artists painters can get as far away from the canvas as possible so that they can absorb everything they're doing and that's one of the great things about working in Photoshop is I can just zoom it in a help but I recommend looking at everything for as long as possible while you're working it'll make you move a lot faster if you work small for a bit and then you can zoom in later that's great I've actually I've seen Carlos Puentes do that and then I remember the old pictures of sorolla I'm painting on the beach with like these three-foot brushes yes yeah you got to you got to keep it away as a matter of fact like I think there was an article a while back I can't even remember which magazines the stocks gay magazines about you know what was the worst what it was the best thing about working digitally and what's what's the worst thing and the zoom is both the ability to do that but you want you want to keep things far away for as long as possible hmm let's just keep it simple another really great example of what I'm doing here look at Mike Mignola's work if people aren't familiar with that the guy who created Hellboy he is a very yeah simple process and he'll be implicit things in straight lines and solid shadows um and it everybody's work is incredibly dimensional with his limited value range there we go alright so I've got I've got three values now to work with and yet it's starting to feel dimensional and I can just go in and notice the orangutangs have that weird I don't even know what this is no idea what purposes this thing had but it's awesome alex is asking to attract a company to what level should your ideas be explored saying I see a lot of very refined examples on artists sites but you also have simple designs like the one you're creating Oh what do we what is expected well every client wants something different I think the goal is just to make yourself marketable and I think that a good portfolio should have well resolved pieces but should also have a process and it is process I would take this design and I would start to execute it in 3d and I think it's very important to show in your portfolio these beginning stages so you can have rough sketches next to a finalized a 3d model or you know maybe I take this really far in Photoshop for those but it's important that you show process because process indicates what it's like to work with you uh through all of these stages you know not every time you know the client looks at your screen it's not going to be a completely done piece so if you're working with an art director he's going to want to know what those stages look like so that he can work with you if you were a you know an environment artist you'd want a couple of finishes and help thumbnail you know sketches paintings in varying degrees of completion but but refinement same thing with creatures you know you might want to just have you know a couple of 2d pieces because you never know and your job is to make yourself marketable um one of the biggest problems that I see in portfolios is students develop a style in their book um and that contradicts concept art that's not one concept art is you are at best hired here two cents for what you bring to the design process and it's about how they can use you to get their idea across now they don't have a solid idea and so that's where your two sons come into play but if you have a portfolio that is highly stylized you're really limiting the amount of work that you can do and that's why I try to get students to execute their creatures as realistically as possible but yes let's keep that in mind you're creating a book that shows the client that you can resolve their design issues and you can actually shape a career with a portfolio a lot of people don't realize that your entire career is in your hands and the pages of the book I've done quite a few things but if you google me you'll only find super heroes and monsters and the reason because I don't really want to get paid to anything else um and the true reality of it is that you'll never get paid to do something that you haven't already shown that you can do well so that's what this portfolio is about you can shape your entire career as long as your portfolio supports it and then once you're through the door it gets a little easier because I'll be on a job and come they might ask me is like a major do you ever do any hard surface is better the other if I wanted to pursue that I could just have that work at the ready to show and next thing I know I'm doing a hard surface stuff if I want to do environment same thing I don't really want to do hard surface and I don't want to do environments but the you know if you you have that freedom which I have told me from you know doing this for 20 years then yeah be picky you know you can spend a lot of time doing this job it might as well be doing things that you're passionate about and that you love so you know focus your portfolio on developing the career you want and make sure your good is doing those things that make you happy that's great yeah all right so we have definitely gone over and you've been incredibly generous with your time so uh so what what should people expect out of your class what should they what's going to be the the work product what is it that they're going to get I know portfolio pieces one of the things that's important for for them in their career and it's important for us to make sure they get and what else so in the previous class we did a creature design in to be very much the same way that I just demonstrated during the the webinar this shows the stages or the line or grayscale staining with color and then creating color patterns is taking it a little further this is more than enough information for me to start working in 3d so for the new class we're going to be doing the same process but with humanoid aliens in a subtle costume once we have the design I'm going to start walking it out in Z Sears we're going old school with it and I prefer to work with Z series because you can create an adaptive skin or a low res mesh that easy to manipulate so from here the adaptive skin is created and I am just pushing that limited geometry around to get the planes to match my concept there's another view and another view from that point we're going to work low to high and we're going to get our Anatomy we're going to block that in and our details until eventually we have a more result model so this was done entirely from scratch from the Z series I went into dynamesh uh to add the membrane and the only sub tools that are different are separated are the teeth and the eyes everything else is one piece from there I go into poly painting I even applied some fiber mesh to the model did some test renders in Keshawn just looking for the palate is very important to get into keyshot sooner rather than later you really want to know what your painting will translate to in different environments and different lighting setups and then from there we pose the creature and we know there's the full body there it is all the paint work and then from there we pose the creature out and I captured him from multiple sides just because I wanted to show them off and here he is in fiber mesh zoom in on this guy and this is a very common for how I present my work these days clients really want to see everything especially for a creature design the characters that will either be a creature suit or a visual effect it's very important that everyone knows what this abstract character is going to look like and aside from that and rendered out just a few close-ups of this guy so oftentimes my final presentation includes a few final render a turntable of the character of the creature and a resolved image so that's what we're going to be doing in class but we're going to be doing that with humanoid aliens and I think I have a few examples of the types of designs that we'll be doing things that I want to resolve let's go to the sketches so this is a character that I'm pretty passionate about I think just modeled him out of 3e I don't know but as you can see it's a creature design it's grounded in reality it seats basically just a humanoid pitbull from space and there is a minimal costume you're examples of just simple block ins introducing color and our final guy another example might be this guy it's pretty fun but the costume may be too complicated so that's what I look forward to tackling in our class starting in just a couple of weeks if you're interested feel free to sign up looking forward to it alright my friends take care of yourselves have a great evening thank you for coming out and joining us and I will shoot you off an email when this replays up enjoy get sketching and get to ZBrush in Joe

Channel: Ryan Kingslien - Vertex School

Views: 3,890

Rating: 4.9663863 out of 5

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Id: qnK7O5YBN7U

Length: 97min 22sec (5842 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 28 2017