How To Paint A Character in Photoshop Live Demo

[Music] welcome to the future you guys hello beautiful people we are live today on Facebook YouTube and twitch and we got something super special in store for you guys today Jonah's on the show today we're gonna do a Photoshop download he's gonna do some incredible things but before we do that I just want to say happy Thursday to all you guys Molly Erica how you guys doing Chris I'm doing great Thursday to you it's good to see you Molly good to see you Chris Erica how you doing I'm doing well alright so you guys will be monitoring the comments on Facebook YouTube and twitch because I'm sure Jonah's gonna have some questions for you guys and prompts and things like that it's gonna be a highly interactive show and in case you guys don't know who Jonah Loeb is let's cut to my deck here we go this is mr. Jonah Loeb he's a concept artist character artist illustrator just artists all-around good guy he's gracious enough to join us on the show today from Brooklyn New York super happy to have him here and I'm gonna show you a little bit of his work to kind of whet your appetite here we go check this out what happened to the screen there we are stay on the screen thank you very much so you guys know that one of my favorite games is Skyrim I've given many hours maybe weeks of my life maybe months even I don't know so I was just thrilled that a mutual friend Tony Lopez introduced us God is connected and lo and behold here we are will talk to mr. Jonah Loeb himself here's some artwork that he's created I pulled this from his site some awesome work and of course the Dragons the Dragons know I think well I'm gonna ask him some questions about how he got his start in Bethesda what he did there and how he transitioned and what he's doing with his career so all of you guys are interested in this line of work you definitely want to stick around and join that conversation some beautiful models here Molly yeah it reminds me of Game of Thrones yeah yeah I feel like there are some references here that are shared but I don't know I don't know about the whole origin of Skyrim but it does feel eerily eerily similar yes it does amazing work guys it is now the reason why I'm showing you all this armor is because I'm going to challenge Jonah to design an armor in the style of Skyrim so this is gonna be amazing we're not gonna jump to that yet okay guys come back to me all right we're a little bit too young on the enter key totally cool it's so cool it stirs everything's good let's roll the titles and talk to mr. Jonah Loeb in one second all right Jonah welcome to the show how you doing can you unmute yourself I'm yes you are sir all right so there's a lot of lot of fans I think they're excited to talk to you and kind of see what's in store for us so I have a couple of questions I want to talk a little bit about your story your arc your career how you got started can we go into that a little bit sure oh my gosh I think know where to start I always like art I've always loved monsters I don't know I didn't know exactly how I was gonna make it happen but I knew that monsters and creature design and special tactics of that kind of was going to be somewhere in my future and I just had to figure out how so I never did a job actually after college at Bethesda Softworks which I think maybe one or two or three of your fans has may have heard about and that was I was there for seven years and they were really really good years they were super fun and while I was there I was a character artist mm-hmm and that means that most of my job was to take beat concepts from the concept artists who at the time was a man named Adam Adam lowitz whose genius for anybody out there who's a fan of fallout 3 Adam did 100% enter the contest for that game so my job was to take those concepts talk to the art director or talk to the concept artist and then creates the actual creatures the actual items the actual armor have you in 3d oh I save them and get them prepped and ready so yeah so if you're a fan of Libyan Shivering Isles 5 3 all for Skyrim yeah I got I got you know a lot of stuff in a lot of creatures so you've probably been killed by my peers a couple times yeah you know I think your creatures have haunted me into the night I've run around many rocks bushes and trees trying to heal up throwing potions on myself and enchantments and all that guys just trying to survive but I got to tell you I'm a very powerful dark elf now or something like that very powerful I could just destroy people by looking at them these days okay so that's awesome so what what kind of software tools did you use in those early days at Bethesda great question so early on in Bethesda I started with we need to get max in fact I believe that was what we use kind of throughout all right a little bit of retooling on my end I used a Maya's Autodesk uh I don't ask Maya yes I'm like that and I did them good Photoshop a lot for string and then for actually we'll all the refined detail work of which I'm kind of a little maniacal about I use the brush and that's kind of like a digital sculpting program I think probably either weren't for zebra I don't know if I'd even I've gotten into the industry because I'm very artistically the design and driven individual I'm not a technical individual and I'm not a problem this Culver ZBrush was to me the smoothest transition from being from all the things I thought about art or sculpting would have you and putting it onto the computer and being able to use it pressure-sensitive tablet while doing that really gave it that kind of giving a more tactile approach I'm opposed to clicking around with the mouse and trying to make trying to give things penalty in life darn near impossible so yeah those are the main ones and then these days I still use a lot of the same software's but for texturing instead of Photoshop I'm using substance painter wait wait who what program instead of texturing program instead of Photoshop for texturing I use substance painter substance major nice baby yeah it's a it's a 3d you basically start painting on the model directly that you're on and maybe I can give you a people what that looks like but it's cool because you're not just painting colors you're painting surface properties so you're painting you know how metallic is this surface what kind of shine does this service have how does it interact with lights it's very cool it's super cool and a lot of fun and a lot more intuitive then back in the days when I would try to text or something that was three-dimensional on a two-dimensional plane in Photoshop okay that's a program I've never heard of before so that'll be very interesting so maybe perhaps if we're lucky of time permits in the next hour and a half that we have together maybe we take a peek at that just so that people kind of know what's up with that now I just want to let you guys know I looked you up on your Twitter stream so let's let everybody know how can they find you on Twitch because you you broadcast all the time right you know I used to I would like to pick it up more but these days I'm a little ground under with contract work and some own private projects I fully intend to make a triumphant return or it's certainly next year to because I have I have some some ideas for how I want to spend my time online doing that but yeah I did it for a stream for a couple years I'm still on there occasionally I love you know it started off for those who want to buy me by the way it's twitch.tv slash jonah lobe that's load like a lobe and I started off on there to try to promote an independent video game project that was working on and then I moved from there to game design and and the 3d modeling and texturing to try to again share the knowledge that I had with just general public I'm a big believer in free education and free learning yes you know the yeah absolutely and the internet totally changes the paradigm completely and so what I really love about streaming and and you know which is which is part of the reason I really want to get back into it is that there's no barrier to entry and the people that I'm able to reach and speak to and then go back back with and get my knowledge to you could be down the street or they could be in the Ukraine or Ethiopia or Puerto Rico wherever and that to me it's a really beautiful thing and and I really hope that kind of thing continues and I expected it will great I'm monitoring some comments here so hopefully I can figure out how to do this while we're talking so why don't we do this let's let's jump into the work and if you don't mind cuz I know you're good at this that you can paint model texture and talk at the same time since you're so used to doing these twitch streams so I'd like to just have you do the work and then we can continue the conversation is that okay yeah sure we can we can dive in I'm happy to just to start doing some some illustrations and start interacting so if anybody out there has AZ comments or thoughts or questions or suggestions you know throw them throw them on my way I'll okay looking at the twitch channel myself but I got you yes man on the job and so that sounds like that's that would be that would work for me okay so here I will share my screen oh you know what actually just because there's so many fans of it franchises out here I wanted to share with you really quickly some artwork maybe some artwork and some 3d artwork grades that's always super fun alright can are you able to see this yeah alright so if anyone who's a fan of 5/4 this is the my ruler King this is a program called marmoset which is just a basically a rendering program but for those who are just curious about my kind of character art pipeline and my creature our pipeline a lot of it comes down to referencing real creatures in the real world and trying to to come up with new ways for them to be built new ways for them to be designed and especially you know in combining human and animal Anatomy it's a super fun the process for me as well I'm here Chris here's this is free to you Chris if you're into sky and you probably fought a couple of those in your time um these guys were a lot of fun to do they were super fun to create this beaten metal look this ancients kind of Iron Age look was a lot of fun and to create the mummies themselves was was super super fun because I just got to kind of creep these beef-jerky that were yeah and the concept art for this again by that guy Adam Adam lowitz was just so fun to work with because it's kind of a combination of realism aka in this case you know a dead person but with kind of a much more artistic design so the flow of the of the the skin the ribs that kind of thing it's not this is not and I said I mentioned it it's just because you guys are you know design centric this is not how human anatomy actually works at all but it was kind of a cheat you know the way the striations here come down the sides and it's kind of a cheat to kind of take something that is normal but give it a more unique design so that's that kind of stuff it's fun I can show up a few more models but also I think they do we should probably jump in but while we're here I'll show you I'll do it although in all do end I got to go to e3 the year Skyrim was released and they built the whole life-sized Alduin which was really fun and then just literally I was on the treadmill it's just like a month ago and the ad for the Skyrim VR came on and all the ones heavily featured and I was like wow I can't believe nobody can told me that this is but yeah so there's there's a couple of things and if you want great so let's have a question about these models I believe when we were talking before when a err you mentioned like you were kind of working that lower position building these models and you've evolved way beyond that in the case of these characters that are you're showing us we was did somebody give you the concept artist that was driving us give me something or did you just make this from nothing so it's always a mix right and that was something that I really appreciated about the process of working at Bethesda so in the case of someone like Alduin or The Dropper or a great many of the creatures um there's anywhere from one to thirty illustrations that are given to me and these illustrations were a mixed of loose sketches or fully you know rendered paintings and what I would do is I would take that you know I'm somebody who appreciates autonomy who really wants space of my own to do my own thing right so while but then of course you have to balance that because when you're at a game company you're part of the team and you are ultimately creating a project in that is in service to a larger more unified vision that doesn't wholly belong to you so to make sure that I was kind of in that sweet spot where I was satisfying my own creative itch while also trying to realize the vision of the concept artists the league designers the art directors the executive producer Todd Howard I would take the piece of concept art I've taken to the art director and I'd say tell me what you like most about this concept art so that I make sure to follow that and not mess with that at all and then I would also take it to the concept artist because concept artists and I think we'll probably talk about this a lot today very creative people very hard thinkers and they and they really draw from a wide range of very unexpected references so I would often take the piece of concept art that they made to them and say well what were you thinking what were you referencing because I because you know it's it's one thing I think I think there's a desire on a lot of people who want to be artists part that you know you wanted to just create what's in your head all the time right but ultimately if we're not kind of in taking new ideas and taking in new concepts new references and kind of approaching things from an angle that we wouldn't otherwise approach we're not gonna grow and so I would take a lot of those concept art pieces of concept art to the kinds of artists and say you know let me know what you were thinking about because I need to have these original ideas rather than me sit down and do 100% my own take because I found that whenever there was foreign ideas given to me um my work was better and more original than it could have otherwise been it was just me trying to make that something up so that's part of the reason I wanted today incorporate yourself and Molly and whoever else feels like joining in with questions or comments or suggestions I would like for this to be a collaborative process because I would like when people throw me curveballs and it definitely I think the end results are usually more interesting than if I just went off on my own perfect so yeah and if nobody says anything I'm sure I will give you all the input you need for the armor that you're gonna build for man I'm sure of it I'm sure - yeah all right this is basic we see this yes we can this is a really quick sketch I did beforehand just to kind of define some Anatomy to find a couple key lines that I thought would be fun to work with and we're gonna go from here and this muscle last will be our kind of mannequin okay and and together I was hoping that we could create something cool original so with that said I mean uh I think well given that this is a Skyrim based concept we'll probably start with something that resembles like a lot of leather a lot of metal and not particularly finally cast metal I think something older looking would be fun I'm also a big fan of antiquity so that will find its way in there and I also will probably be referencing a couple armors from real life right so though in ewa tably there's lots of questions always about the tools that you're using I just want to get that out of the way so they don't keep asking you're working in Photoshop right now are you on a PC I'm on a PC ok indeed and you're using a Cintiq right I'm using the Cintiq it's like a seven year old Cintiq or something I wish I guess I could I guess I could show you my setup really quickly yeah that'd be great yeah if the camera will go come as far but this is where I'm working off on the dusty dusty screen is my monitor I'm always working with that's my mic and proof that I'm wearing pants don't worry anybody well I'm not so that's okay pressure okay very good so you have a giant seven year old Cintiq you know we would love to get welcome to sponsor us at one point and that way we can send the guest a brand-new Cintiq that would be lovely that will happen right yeah cool so I'm gonna get started here okay before you kind of start launching into questions and just so just if you won't understand what I'm doing I'm just gonna start I'm gonna fill in her basic silhouette with just a kind of a grey that's just gonna help me define her silhouette and get a better understanding of the mass the negative spaces that were working with that said there uh so just in case people are curious about this particulars today yeah and it doesn't look to me like you're using a stand-up desk right I am I am because I just got it actually um I'd like to get I think I think I've had some various kind of you know I'm an aging and aging individual and I'm feeling it man feeling it so I found that to kind of overcome that to mitigate that issue you know just being able to stand up sit down stand up sit down really helps so perhaps at some point when during this conversation I will sit down back and forth also I can project forward Lucas is saying I love this guy somebody else's you're you're a boss so there's a lot of loves a lot of happy faces and hearts find your way right now oh thank you guys if I could tell you I would send you thousand million hearts back to you guys for having me on the show and thank you to everybody who's watching I really appreciate you taking the time out of your days to come come join us today and and mess around with me and offer your suggestions or your thoughts or whatever yes so right now what I'm seeing Jonah do is he's got three layers he's got a base white layer and an initial sketch and the intermediate layer and the layer that he's painting on right now it's I can tell that it's on multiply so it's going to just darken the image underneath and he's just laying down some some gray tone right now I tend to work very kind of fast and loose I get really especially when I'm doing painting because you know I don't I don't do so much painting kind of professionally these days a lot of it is personal a lot of it is me trying to kind of grow be Chris you and I were talking about a little bit before this extreme and I find that so I kind of work a little fast and loose and that that has drawback drawbacks and that has advantages so you know with regards to the advantages I'm a huge fan of working fast and loose because as somebody who kind of considers himself perpetual student mark and who's always kind of hungry for the next bit of knowledge I find that the faster I can screw up and the faster I can kind of make mistakes the faster I learn and so I often tend to kind of work fast and loose and then encounter issues later on in the painting often issues that are somewhat unresolvable um but but it's okay to me because you know I think there's a lot of emphasis on portfolio building and on making pieces of art that are pretty that are beautiful that we can use to show off our talents and something we can be feel proud of but a couple of years ago I guess one of a couple years ago I would say six or seven years ago I began to feel like I'm gonna switch this layer and I began to realize that I wasn't producing as much art as I would like because I was a little paralyzed of the blank page so the idea of of the pressures that seemed to come along with with creating art that like would look good meant that every single time I started a new sketchbook page or any painting there was this pressure to perform and to create something that was you know this has got to be amazing you know if anyone sees it it's got to be beautiful and I realized that that was actually holding me back from from actually doing artwork so a couple years ago I just started committing myself to the idea of of kind of making like lots of bad art and just kind of diving in and not really worried about it because I really feel like we have to let go of that initial fear of failure really wanting to grow and we want to get better so that's something that I'm a firm believer in and and I would encourage you know your viewers to do the same you know don't worry too much about what other people thinking and don't worry too much about creating something amazing and gorgeous really just dive into the process of learning and kind of don't be afraid I did this thing where I basically started buying sketchbooks with the sole intention of making bad or the pages with art that I did not like because every piece of crappy art was an opportunity for growth and what I found ultimately you have this whole kind of bad art endeavor was that I created about three times or four times more art than I ever did before and thus I began to learn much faster than I ever had so if there's anything I can you know say they love that encourage people or kind of give reason to create and be proud of your bad art is because you know art art isn't meant to be cherished polished hung in a in a static place and admired in my mind or it really is about a constant exploration and a constantly commitment to study so every one of those of those sketchbooks I have none of which I showed to anybody if you know I it's like you it's a it's a project that you dive into and then you extract knowledge from if that makes sense yeah so we got a couple of comments here while you're working here KO Karos saying Jonah your sketches are always so cleaned you just draw it that way or do you clean it up for the stream my sketches are always so clean got it don't feel that way wow it is really nice no no I it is you know you can see that I've you know I've drawn some some lines for the face to try to block out the skull and to kind of frame the face but and then and then you can see where I've kind of aged him on the head you know I always draw a heads too big you know I think her cranium went back here or something like like alien or something I yeah I kind of clean it up a little bit but yeah I don't know I I don't have much of an answer for that I just because I'm I'm surprised at you think this work is clean why I guess I guess the answer the answer is no this is how you work and if you think it's clean then great you're not trying to do something special different for the for the stream no in fact you know that some of the my favorite scenes that I've ever done we're one so I just kind of started from the very beginning all right I'll show you just a couple images here they're ones where I had I started with nothing and then I just wanted the audience to kind of start throwing idea than me so I throwing concepts you know ones like this where basically the idea was you know give me a shape give me some animals there's some basic a color scheme or a mood to work with and that's that's for it and so I find also that just you know just starting and just diving in and it can be a really gratifying experience I'm glad you did that that got all the Christmas requests out of the way that was kind of like a strange reindeer creature I'll reindeer combo something like that Oh cute I want to read a comma here yeah I'm sorry go ahead John oh no I I asked my followers you know what what if I call this and they said they called it they settled on the Momo tack and I was like that's a great name yeah so yeah I think the paintings going well then I want people to name it as well great so Rachel Fowler thank you very much I work she says I work at a graphic design she says okay I work as a graphic designer professionally at fossil but I love seeing content like this as well seeing an artist at work is my favorite way to spend my lunch break well thanks for joining us for lunch mm-hmm yeah wait Rachel is it yeah Rachel mm-hmm thanks Rachel thanks for coming and I hope so you can feed your body will feed your mind exactly exactly wonderful so you're blocking out some you make you're turning a 2-dimensional sketch into a three-dimensional form by adding light and shadow and all that kind of stuff right that's exactly right um so at the moment I'm not too concerned with specifics I'm kind of looking at the big shapes I'm gonna rotate this 180 degrees the other way because often times we tend to jus raw right-handed or left-handed manner and our paintings are illustrations tend to become kind of a lopsided without us recognizing that that's the case I'm also going to go ahead here and probably just flatten this out because I'm a big fan of just again like if I make mistakes or if I have regrets flattening things out really actually forces me to just kind of really draw it and while that might be a like a time sink it's also a way for me to get better usually when we when we have to do the same thing twice it usually comes out of the second time so I'm gonna kind of go for it and just go hope things don't turn off out so terrible you know I feel like you guys have asked me a question and I kind of talked about something else you were asking me about oh the other sorry the values and the shading that's exactly right I'm trying to just do some basic carving out of forms just to kind of create some form of something some sense of mass that kind of thing uh-huh because that's gonna help me with lighting and also it'll give me some stronger sense of of the three dimensionality of this thing because that's so much of a hurdle right I mean the idea of taking a two-dimensional thing and making me look 3d it's super hard but you know exercising good values that'll mean like saying to people I mean like you know going in there and trying to get the blacks and the lights and the darks and the lights kind of just balanced a bit more can can definitely help in that carving out process so I work big I work with a big flat brush for the most part and I just kind of make make these overall changes so the biggest areas right now will be her armpits a little bit below our ribs or hips kind of are gonna come out a little bit so they're gonna be actually a bit more lift back up and so it'll be a while for me to kind of pull these forms forth and and that could be a little bit of a long process at times but it's if done well it's always worth it and that's something that I've really internalized in just the last couple years so taking the time to nail down those values and get think those balanced a little bit at the outset can definitely save time the law online I have a quick question for you in a couple of comments coming in first the first question is what resolution are you working at right now what's the canvas size that's funny I always get asked that I never ever from the outset decide so this currently is a three thousand two hundred twenty five by four thousand uh-huh if if this is something that you know this ends up being a piece of art that I would I'll keep and I'll do things with then I will go in there to image size and I'll up the resolution from 70 to here to three hundred which is pretty all right right um but because I'm not really output focused in terms of quality and I'm much more focused on the experience of just doing it I always get asked about resolution and I never know what resolution I'm working on crop the image larger if that's what's needed all right yeah that's really cool so it's about 3,000 by 4,000 pixels and I think it just is in alignment with your ethos about working fast just trying to get stuff out and not trying to make everything perfect that the experience is more important than anything else and not so much the result that if you can get over the fear of making perfect art you can learn a lot more in the process and probably as a consequence make better art despite yourself a couple other things I noticed here Jonah flip the canvas really quick he may or may not have a shortcut but it's just a canvas flip horizontal thing that he did there and I just want to mention that a couple other things here you guys may have noticed is that how is it that he when he's painting the shading that it's sticking to that layer because it's it's linked to layer underneath it so when he was first blocking it out that was the basic shape and so I while painting on the layer that's above it above it that's linked to it it will respect that the Alpha of the layer below it just want to let you know about that hey Chris yes question and for those lovers out there the way you would do that is you just create a new layer hold down alt hold between them and click and what that allows me to do is just go in with any random color oh I'm in greyscale see this is how people this is how not aware I am what's going on around me you can just yeah this is that what allows me to do all right very helpful so once you know once I've developed that silhouette which inevitably will change and become refined but once I develop it then I could start working kind of within those limits and creating create something cool so I'm I'm sure that that refinement will occur because you know for instance if I bring these levels way down you can see that my Silhouette is actually kind of mingled all over the place but again that's something that we're going to refine as we go and you need to kind of try to approach okay because a little bit darker uh-huh just to dance a little bit of that punching yes mm-hmm so Erika has a question for Erika what's your question so at one point does he start thinking about lighting and developing that part okay so Erika's question is at what point do you start think about lighting and developing that part I think you're working on lighting right now aren't you yeah I start thinking about letting right off the bat now with that said you know that's not something that a carrot artist might necessarily consider himself with often a character artists job is to simply create the object simply create you know whatever it is that's that they're creating they're trying to convey an idea and they're trying to kind of get something across so lighting might not be imperative because the object itself is kind of paramount but that said you know I could try to define at least some kind of soft lighting right off the bat because again without lighting we can't determine what our forms are and if we can't determine what our forms are well that's a you know that's the problem right right and so so to help me figure out where everything is and how everything's laid out I try to develop some kind of lighting right off the bat you know with that said an image like this does not have particularly strong lighting it's kind of a soft maybe an overcast and lighting because you know I'm not trying to go for a very dramatic scene but again if we're working on other things other pieces you know here the lighting is very is much more specific even though it's up and from above and it's coming down and there's another pieces of art where the lighting oops that's click on the Browse envision that's the whole thing there we go I'm much I'm kind of just mooning around here and trying to see you know if there's anything any good example right off the bat I did a penny what I was really excited about the movie so again a situation like this the lighting is more obvious you can even see the lines coming down mhm and that really helps me again carve out form carve out shape and in the case of this wizard here just kind of define like those those nice specular highlights and get him to look Yeley like right he should you know right um and then something like penny wise you know he's got a general ambient lights kind of coming from above but a little bit from the front but then a lot of the light is kind of coming from behind him anyone who's a fan of its neck recognizes the dead lights and so I like that bang that back look and it helps create this kind of fleshy translucence to the to the whatever you want to call this paper machine look around his around his neck so definitely figuring out lighting early is something I try to do yeah so there's a fan watching from Nigeria it's hard for now to pronounce his name but he's like it's 8:30 3 p.m. here I think he was on his way out the stream pops up he's like i sat back down I'm gonna watch this I spent a summer in Nigeria a bunch of years ago when I was 17 actually so I I don't know whether where they're at but I was in Lagos most of the time it was it was a very fun and informative summer yeah hey your buddy Tony Lopez says hey hey Jonah please name the character after me love you thanks her name is Tony female warrior I love it but Tony by the way when you went to UM cut elementary school middle school high school yeah me for a very long time he was very excited when he when he called me he was like hi I bet I mean these guys I really have this great idea you'll be perfect for it who's Suzanne so thank you tell me it's pleasure to be on here hey Molly the fans are asking for you to move the talking bar down to the lower left corner okay cuz we're blocking something yeah sorry lower less yeah then just bury it there cool some people are saying this could be Kratos from a different character creates us his wife more there's no gamers in here I'm a I'm a big fan of tough tough girls just any any any way that looks like she can take my ass I will also like it's a combination like I'm scared of you I'm also in love with you I just recently became from a fan of rose namajunas oh yeah sure she's yeah so the the bald head look it's just for you eros you're watching Rose is awesome she became the champ yeah she is she the champ that's how I know that's how you can found her I'm not you know I'm like you see but I'm not like a watcher but then I saw that fight and I was like what help I've got a new crush new celebrity crush mm-hmm she's she is and did you did you follow her story so I'm sorry did you follow her story with regards to that particular fight yeah yeah exactly that's that's another reason why I really you know who kind of thought that she was still cool cuz she has such a positive outlook and she's so you know she really approached it with a kind of very cool very just very kind approach to things right so cool and somebody who who professionally beats people down you know rayray um yeah I was thinking of adding some either fur or feathers back here fun because that's kind of a an opportunity for color and it's also something that's kind of unusual you don't see that kind of thing often in armor design and and yeah when I was looking beforehand just trying to look at real real life things in a real life armor rather and warriors from different different parts of the world I started seeing feathers like okay I'm a fan and it's not easy to do feathers to render those in kind of a 3d environment because the limits are of 3d or such that you know till what with that I think blood-borne I think they didn't have a lot of there's not a lot of feathers or fur moving parts in games because they're kind of hard to render right um what but this is so do you have to take that into consideration when you're designing and modeling a character that it's for a game environment and you kinda have to be smart or economical but how much geometry add to it yeah man for sure if you're if you're working on a game I mean you know it should never it should never be a limiting factor right collecting others there's usually a way around it and on something like for instance the the the Giants for Skyrim you know they have beards and they have dangly things and leather that's torn and all that you know so it should never it should never be like not you know it's never being not an option you should always a workaround but you know until recently game engines really they weren't able to render such kind of smaller items or you know dangly fluttery things were things that have a lot of alpha in them they weren't able to render render those any kind of fast or efficient manner so in this case you know we don't have to worry about that because this is just a painting and right most likely you just a painting so that's why I'm saying let's do it's good for the feathers if that's okay with anybody out there yeah let's do it so I think you have a couple of friends in here Brendan roses hey Jonah this is cosmic glad to see you're well my friend you know Brendan Rowe I do I do Brendan there's a follower of mine from twitch and then I went to Ottawa for the Ottawa international game conference it just so happened to Brendan lived up there and he came out and he watched the talk that I gave up up there which if anyone's interested you can see that talk on my website it's a talk called my heart has a nose and it's all about kind of my own journey kind of wallet the feza I'm inactive it does a really trying to identify what it is that I wanted to do with my life so if anyone you know if it's kind of like that kind of quest without of you but anyway he was he came up there we had lee taemin played a lot of x-men the arcade version that's like Street Fighter right the x-men version network is that right or no that was well this is the old one the old one was like the little like plastic controllers with the different colors and you could up to four players and you could each be an x-man so that I think that's a newer branching talking about this it was look like 1998 you know what have you and it's it's we're left become like Battletoads or something like that or or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles where it's a platform for or it's a scrolling game and you're going through and and fighting hordes and hordes of of sentinels and that kind of thing I'm gonna have done some little metal plates to this leather these leather straps here sorry I I got you know what it's funny I meant I went to a party couple days ago from sketchfab if anyone is familiar with a sketch bag which is a 3d modelling service and I met the woman there who is a professional fantasy armor or designer and I was like man you and I need to be friends I mean I need to like ask you questions I need to know things about armor I need you go like yes so I officially not many people could say it but I officially have an armor consultant so how fun that is fine yeah so I have a question here and I think I know what the answers gonna be but are you an avid gamer as well I'm sorry are you an avid gamer I am I am you know I'm not as much of a gamer as I as it used to be and a lot of that actually is skyress fault so when I was working on Skyrim and went more importantly when I was working on Alduin the last boss job I can I was showing you earlier I you know he's pitted he's a extra we'll be detailed and he's just got so much going on but it took me a really long time to finish him and I was working overtime super hard and I ended up getting myself tendinitis Wow and that has kind of plagued me for years since then so I used to be extremely avid I still play you know you know probably more than I should but you know I was I was into Counter Strike beta when it came out years ago I was really good at Counter Strike really good at team fortress love Team Fortress and then single player games like you know the new Wolfenstein the new doom huge fans of those the XCOM franchise has got me absolutely hooked and I just played through the sequel for maybe the third time with all the with all the DLC and all that so totally I'm a huge I'm a huge fan I did um I did a a tribute to one of my favorite earliest favorite games where is it oh here's the characters for me wait I looked wait oh that's cool I just wanted to do something this was it again this is me trying to change my art style and just really quickly run through the color schemes the layouts the silhouettes of the villains from that game but that was a lot of fun to do actually kind of I did the same for half-life as well but if I'm actually looking for one particular half-life painting it's right there I'm a big fan of it just because it was super fun to do I did it on streaming and it's for anyone who's a game player and who loves half-life this is this might you might have it all very very this is the end of half-life one and so I wanted to kind of copy that political look a little bit also get enough of the personality and you know time time to choose this is a big this is a big moment for me in video gaming half-life Jeff definitely changed my outlook on games altogether which I didn't even need because I loved them already but yeah are you are you guys I assume you all gamers yeah a lot of us are gamers yes not everybody Molly is not Eric are you gamer I'm a social gamer yeah the answers probably no then the girls here not so much but some of the girls like Jamie and Emilee they play those casual games but for for me I probably have logged in the most amount of hours into a handful of games one is Skyrim just because the nature of the open world it's never-ending multiple quest quest within quest just keeping track of my quest is I needed a personal assistant just to deal with that and then I put in a lot of hours into the original Ghost Recon from Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon on Xbox the original Xbox my gosh I was addicted to that game and I could tell because of it it wasn't advanced 3d graphics but the way they did it was it wasn't very rkt you would get shot once or twice and you're dead and you got when you hear a gunfire you just go prone just lay on the ground and you hope you can pivot fast enough to shoot the other person in the eye as I would try to call it but and if you die you you get put in the time timeout box and you just sit there and wait and so I love that aspect of it it puts you really on edge well and I I logged in so many hours to that game that if I if I hear gunfire I can tell what kind of gun that the person is using I mean the idea you know you're walking along and walking along you hear a shot you get peppered and then you've got it you've got about 0.4 seconds to spin your mouse around right you get the person behead or you're done guns out that's right I player here multiply layer just to kind of add some value here because I've kind of worked on some of the shadows I haven't necessarily nailed it but we're kind of you know we're closing in a little bit and I wanted to kind of add some darkness to her army here which I assume was mostly leather but but yeah and then I'm kind of pulling I'm pulling some of that out for the metal that's in in the light although the metal that's in shadow will probably stay pretty dark yeah so this is this just just to give you a quick rundown of kind of how it's been going there's a couple layers there's a layer here value later you know great I'm gonna yeah throw a new layer back in the background here and that'll be my new layer and I'm gonna keep it loose because you know with something like feathers you need a light touch and you're gonna need some some kind of detail a little bit and I I'm not ready for that you know not even I have but to get the suggestion to get the outline I'm gonna kind of start doing goes in okay this is a slightly strange question here from Dee's pants if he or she is saying hey Chris and Jonah I've got a question about Photoshop how do you usually save your file so you tend to merge the layers or reduce or up the quality and stuff like that what's your process for industry standards always save a Photoshop file as you can see I tend to again working fast and loose I collapse a lot of layers I think a lot of artists out there do not do that they kind of acute everything separates I try to keep everything pretty pretty flattened out but there's usually several layers going out at once so for instance right now I'm flattening out a couple layers just to make my life easier best to make things faster and again it's it's this kind of ingrained throwing myself from the deep end kind of thing where hey if I screw up that's I'll just screw up and I'll just kind of deal with it and in dealing with it hopefully I'll learn two more lessons so a lot of people kind of approach things very delicately and save everything out into different layers and make sure that they don't lose anything I'm a big fan of losing things all the time yeah I notice I mean otherwise I'll just try to save it at the most the highest highest quality that I can yeah I noticed you're pretty economical with your layers and maybe you're even more so now that you're mentioning that you're only working with two three layers at most and collapsing things down often yeah yeah you know you know especially in something like this you know it's it's I think we were probably what maybe a half hour into the stream you know I I hope to have something colored by the end of this stream and and something that's not finished and not flushed but something that's finished enough and so you know I'm not going to kind of waffle on things I'm not going to flip back and forth between layers I'm just kind of going for it and just hoping that whatever comes out comes out okay but for the time being I'm happy with where we're at and I'm just gonna kind of commit you know like just this is this is my little rose namajunas this is my Tony Lopez what it is I'm not gonna worry about trying to create any perfection on this stage let's go let's call our rose Lopez let's match the two together yeah Rose well done well Lopez is actually a very common name in the world of Skyrim so I want to keep you on point here and manage time so we are about five minutes away from 12 o'clock how much time do you want me to a lot for you to get to that finish point or finish it enough Oneg whatever you want to do Mendut you why don't you give me a target now let's just try to you know hammer it home if I can okay let's say I'm flexible you know okay okay so let's say this that you have 45 minutes to get done whatever you need to get done because I want to leave time open for questions and people come in just for us to chat a little bit okay sounds great all right so I'll keep time boom so pace yourself okay you mean her little breakneck speed so we won't distract you too much we ran weird questions here that's okay okay I can juggle you know you know a lot of the process of of painting is a lot of kind of problem-solving that doesn't necessarily require an incredible amount of cognitive engagement but it requires its own kind of attention and so I'm able to kind of do both in fact sometimes speaking can really kind of speed me along a little bit I say I think just because it keeps it keeps a part of me engaged maybe this is the same reason I like to draw well while watching TV on the other monitor where I'm not actually watching the television okay but the narrative is kind of keeping me engaged and keeping me rooted in the spot and not distracted mm-hmm she's got great arms you must be drawing Molly's arms right now look at those delts look Molly I'm not wearing pants you know all right let's see what's going on here on the chat let's see here I saw it as a comment from SSP he's saying I am from India it's 1:21 a.m. here yesterday listen my exam tomorrow as an exam but here I am watching this amazing stream love it you probably get some sleep actually but you know you can fall asleep watching us that's cool we don't mind fall asleep to the dulcet tones of our voice what's up India hi thanks for good day thanks for joining us that's so cool see this is why I love you name and this is why I love streaming so fun um marki Presley he says Chris you would love counter-strike go do it here's the problem - make this I'm gonna admit something right here right on this dream admit it I'm a console gamer I don't for some reason I just can't do the mouse and keyboard thing it's just so weird for me I'm much more like this kind of thing so that's that's why Peter strike yeah my leg me too yeah whatever oh you girls I do like games but you know I like James to play with boys boy that's true I just I'm I don't really game on my own that's all I have like 2d games that I have on my iPod whatever and I did do undertale that was my first the girls are talking about games I'm like fall asleep here okay DJ has a question for you he he I think says I'd like to know how much of an influence has World of Warcraft had on the development of your art style that's why did you ask that very little yeah it seems like a presumptive than statement or a question there no you know listen it's actually I think it's a very fair question because the Blizzard art style is I mean it's prolific and you know and a lot of the reason it developed in the direction that it did is because they were designing all these games Starcraft Diablo World of Warcraft Warcraft itself they're all top-down right so you need to create an art style that is chunky it is top-heavy and that reads from a distance they have really nailed that I mean they they are the kings of that mm-hmm and so I would never besmirch their art style I even have like a you know a big thick you know $70 book of all their concept art for those games I love it with that said you know it's such a defined style um that and it's such it's become this kind of industry standard a little bit not standard but I just see it all being emulated it all the time and that's just not really how I roll I want to I'm much more interested in things that are a bit more realistic I'm much more interested in things that seem a bit more practical um but you know I will always respect Wizards art style and they really made their mark but it's not it's not for me it's not for me just just because I think it's the style that kind of 10 - its subsumed so much of the industry so here's another question coming from Paulo Cortes he's asked this a couple of times now he's putting like bright emoticons right next door so I can't miss it his question is how big how big of a career gap is that if he wants to transition from being a graphic designer to a concept artist he says I'm a graphic design student right now but I'm studying art on my free time like Anatomy value perspective etc what's your take on that Jonah um you know that's hard to say you know someone - that is based on individual talents and and how much time you want to put into one thing or another it's always hard to transition from one thing to another but you know it's I think it's always worth it to push yourself into aim for something else so if you've done if he said he's doing graphic design is that right yeah he's studying graphic design but he's also really interested in art right so there's definitely like a lot of overlap I think between that I mean they're both visual disciplines so a lot of the principles of contrast composition lighting form shading a lot of these translate which is which is wonderful so in that regard he's not starting from scratch right but you know I wrote an article about that guy I mentioned before Adam Adam intimates he did he did he did you can find it on Kotaku it's called the life and creativity of the great Bethesda artist and it's about this it's about him and it's kind of his process and the way I reason I bring it up is because so much of what he does and what was what he did and what and so much of what made him a really good concept artist was his pursuit of originality and new ideas so the way that manifested was that he just kind of outputs all kinds of art all kinds of subject matter so fast and so quick and he took in and so many resources in doing it I mean I mean looking at architecture books or fashion magazines that kind of thing so to me the biggest gap between being a concept I mean being a graphic designer concept artists their role as I see it and I think this is probably fairly accurate is that they need to come up with really good ideas they have to come up with the concepts that are going to inspire the team and they're giving concepts that nobody's really seen before and to do that requires just a lot of time spent um trying to build up your mental your your visual library right um you can't create anything original until you've taken in all kinds of other things and then in your head you know you mix it around you stir it up and then you vomit vomit it back onto the page and to me that's really so much of where creativity comes from so it's fantastic that he's getting into that I think it's absolutely within his reach presumably again I haven't seen his work but and it sounds like he's doing exactly what he needs to do even studying Anatomy in studying you know contrast value architecture all these things that is exactly the direction he needs to take but he also needs to be creating original original content so not blizzard concepts you're not not necessarily fan arts only you know me really trying to create things that are a bit more original because your job as a concept artist is you're gonna fuel the team that you're working with with great ideas so that's gonna definitely the one of the one of the hurdles for him but it's not it's not nowhere is nowhere near insurmountable and it's totally worth his time and I'm sure that it's good I mean you know good luck good luck I didn't say that you that you you need it like good look you're gonna need it but just like good luck it's a it's a long journey and it's a really fun and rewarding journey and I think it's a kind of journey it only really improves you as an artist and as a creator so I want to take stock of what we're doing right now just for in case somebody's just joining us I'm talking to Jonah look he's working on a Photoshop out of his studio in Brooklyn and we're working on a fictional armor design for a female character in the world Skyrim there's some leather I think her shoulder pads may be metal metallic because I see that nice specular highlight there we don't know yet what it is and Jones just working through the problem in real-time with us I have some questions about what she's wearing right now as far as I can read this image it looks like she's wearing some kind of leather ex bra breastplate but she's she naked underneath that or oh now you're adding in some stuff here so it's not like warrior top I want something I know exactly I wants me form-fitting but I'm thinking some kind of I was looking at padded quilted armor earlier presumably I would you know a lot of these armors this kind of place would kind of proceed down the length of it I could definitely integrate that but part of me is also just kind of wants maybe something a bit more kind of like a Grecian a breastplate or something that it kind of its molded to the human form a little bit so trying to kind of cover her up well you know and still letting her be tough and sexy but also practical at the same time so that these these string from from the top here there's me there's kind of a loop up here right and these string the breastplate but then this whole thing is it's all one suit because I guess it's a lot like I'm looking at it it reminds me a lot of wonder woman's outfit um kind of what she had going on so I thought her did her armor design with was really cool like this also feels like it could be part of the road warrior world too like furiosa or something very tough very spunk salvaged materials of the ball of head the the kind of nondescript felt looking thing around the around the head definitely mm-hmm yeah I'm all into that alright so here we had a comment tastier he says this 11 p.m. here in Iraq and he's working on design project and watching the livestream at the same time happy face so some people have shared the article that you mentioned then they're saying they love that article come on thank you thanks guys thanks for reading it yeah the reason I wrote that article in part was because actually that the concept artist passed away on about a year so before the Festa really sad really sudden he was very young and so talented and so you know a lot of it was I released that kind of on the eve of fallout for his release because I you know nobody knows who are the individual artists who make these things right like everyone's really psyched you know to hear oh you worked on Skyrim you were done fallout that's so cool but you know no one's gonna know that unless they really ask or whatever so the fact that he designed so much of the concept art for Fallout 3 literally 100% of it so much of the concept art at least at least 50% for Skyrim and then he passed away during the creation of Fallout 4 but he he gave so much of himself to that game as well I mean he literally worked on concept art for that game from his hospital bed Wow so for me it was really it was really about I really wanted at the pivotal juncture of when fallout 4 was about to come out and everyone's frantically googling for information I wanted him to be known and to be recognized and to kind of people to know the name of you know the guy responsible for so much so much awesomeness you know because otherwise that kind of thing you don't you don't hear about it so hey Molly why don't we cut to my screen erican give Molly a chance to kind of skim through the facebook comments cuz okay I can't watch Facebook and YouTube at the same time so why don't we do that I have a question for Jonah okay go ahead ask it I so what are the deciding factors in making consistent designs whether it be four characters in the world all right very good question so Erica is asking what are the deciding factors in creating consistent design so that the characters all match within that world oh interesting interesting good question um whoever asked that so definitely having in mind place and time you know helps them enormous amounts so for something like Skyrim there was a lot of emphasis you know on this is kind of medieval level this is Nordic so we're gonna be thinking a lot about the kinds of technologies available to them at the time so some material types so again this is this is kind of what makes this fit more within the Skyrim realm is that she's wearing armor metal feathers she's got a bit more of a kind of tribal look and this that's gonna kind of help define where she is in the time in place for something like fallout that's that's quite a bit different obviously and that's gonna involve a lot of ruin right a lot of life remnants of the old world and a lot of a lot of rust a lot of like asbestos padding that kind of thing um another thing that ties a lot of these things together in a game world is color scheme honestly it sounds silly sounds minor but I guess given that this is you know you guys are design centric it's almost probably not not so crazy right it may be sense that you'd want to be things to be pretty consistent and if it was in a similar color palette so on something like um fall about the especially the most recent fallout the idea was a run down world drab colors everything's kind of grungy and kind of covered in this dust that is all actually a uniform color but then there's spots of color throughout the game world like real beautiful living in color especially blues especially reds you know the idea there is that yes the world is totally destroyed but we don't want you to feel absolutely depressed while you're playing with it and we want to keep you some sense that yes things are in ruin but the world is coming back and so that having an added benefit of as you're walking through the game world these bright colors draw your eye to the areas of interest so it it has kind of a multi-purpose kind of kind of thing for a multi-purpose purpose I noticed something almost every artist that I've ever watched and when they were doing a demo they tend to jump around they don't just finish the head or just the breastplate they jump around and I can see that it's consistent with you too when do you know when to stop working on than the nose or the eyes and then move on to the breastplate or or forearms or something like that great question um you don't want on a piece like this I'm definitely focused on kind of bringing the whole thing up um kind of at one time if possible so you know it's a bit like like working in clay or something you want to make it should've the overall balance of whatever you're working on is is working and so you can't really achieve that balance if you've refined one section and and then left another one on its own also you know especially when it comes to things like proportion and things like that um you never really know for sure if it's gonna be right until you kind of see all of it so it's a really a question of trying to jump around and kind of pulling everything along a path that is at least at least somewhat somewhat balanced with each other so in this instance you know I want her her face faces are always object of interest so even though that's not the focus of today's stream you know we're focusing on the armor it's inevitable that people are going to focus in on a head and so I want that head to be in that face to be just engaging enough where it you know it's worth your time to look at it but then I'm gonna kind of jump around to other areas so especially as I push the values so you can see here that I just started adding these little contact shadows that are extra dark mhm and they and what that does is it kind of draws your eye draws attention and it implies perhaps more detail than theirs otherwise they're so when I take it away here suddenly it looks a lot more you know more basic and then when I pull it back in obviously there's other things going on but you can see that whenever there's these shark contact points of darkness it feels like a bit more concrete so I try to kind of pepper those throughout and make that yeah so so it's definitely a process of bringing the whole thing up at the same time and I'll do the same thing by the way when I'm doing on 3d art game design character creation I will always treat the object as if it's like this piece of clay that must be kind of molded and pushed around kind of gradually because shapes lines forms these things feed off each other and and and derive energy from one another so you want to make sure that that things are working kind of in in synergy but in there working with each other you just want to make sure that everything kind of feeds and everything else in just the right way but you won't know that that can work until you have something kind of really figure it out shape wise line wise form wise so you know Bill wake up the forms is step one and then we refine from there and so I definitely think that's a big belief of mine and I would actually probably say most most successful artists unless you're you know kind of a savant and those are out there to do they're gonna build something up kind of gradually and in pieces because they want the pieces to work in harmony with one another and they're kind of going for it overall vision as opposed to you know getting this one thing right and then making everything else work around that because you could get that one thing right and then discover oh this is actually two inches off and that's just the worst feeling so definitely want to avoid that as much as possible perfect Chris yes Somali you ready for me you had some Facebook questions I do okay go ahead so they want to know Cole is asking I'd love to know how he went about learning about Anatomy okay that's a good question and as a follow-up question is is he self-taught or did he go to school to learn how to draw very good so Cole from facebook wants to know how did you learn about Anatomy are you self-taught or did you go to school tell us about that great question that's gonna a struggle of mine you know anyone who wants learning that I mean notice that it's not it's not easy it takes a very long time to learn I have some models here in the in my office which I'll show as we you know when we finish this is painting and we go back it's just the normal interview mode um but you know yeah I definitely just spend a lot of time looking at it I go on to websites and I draw a lot of figures I really focus on figure drawing a lot that's really kind of important if you want to be concept artist if you want to be creature designer you really really really need to know how things go and really there's not much you can do to kind of solve that information um but but bang your head against a wall and cry for the time and just try just try to to capture the things you see um you know I mean hands plague me the bane of my existence wrong hands yeah they're not kind things um you know faces you know I've worked on on heads and faces for for a long time and I'm still nowhere near where I want to be but they're definitely my stronger suit right um so it's it's a constant process but but I would say go on to wet the web find concept images just start your going and if I were to recommend a book or a three I would say Andrew Loomis is a fantastic resource that's a Mis and you can actually find those books of his um online for free because it cuz it he he he wrote in the 50s I think I'm so a lot of very good classic looking it looks like drawings from old fashion magazines but it really I mean he breaks it down an incredible incredibly intuitive way so I would pick that up for sure there's Michael bridgman George George Hampton we know sorry George Bergman Michael yeah Michael Hampton I came and I'll pull those out you know when we later um to show but you know I found that the most the best way to succeed and to absorb that information it was also the most frustrating which is copy you know that just look at the drawing and then just copy and it's incopy that's exactly as you can and there's no way around it it is a mind numbing experience but literally over the course of an afternoon or you know over an hour and a half of copying a page of that laborious Lee I will actually be better you know just then we would get better I will leveled up just a bit um but it's totally worth it so um a combination of books a combination of reference from the internet just live drawing so I definitely try to mixed it up right I try to do both the rigorous disciplines learning process and I tried to then take it easy and just draw what I see online and then when I'm on the subway I'll try to draw people that I see you know across from me and if there's no one around I will just try to construct human torso it was from stick figures that kind of thing and hope come on right and usually they they don't but that's that's okay because every time I screw up it's like I've learned something new you know all right so I just want to keep do a time check with you right now we're about 20 after so you have about 20 or so well now you have a little bit more nut that's see here you have another 35 minutes or so and I know somebody in here is saying Jonah we have to see you take this the color because he says when he goes to color that's where he gets lost and he can't figure it out but I'd also like to take this opportunity to kind of ask our audience both on or our entire audience on Facebook YouTube and twitch maybe we need to introduce one variable so that they have some participation in this piece of art so one person is suggesting a tattoo but before we commit to that you guys go and bomb the comment section what do you want Jonah to do or to add one component or something he can integrate into the strong so you know it's live and out of robot drawing this yeah that sounds great it sounds great you know I'll definitely I'm just gonna wait just one second to hear back for for suggestions I like the idea of a tattoo I'm all about it we can do want to yep you can do one on her arm she's she's got the arm tore it but yeah but or if someone else has a good idea I'm into quick but then yes I'll dive directly into the color and we'll try to do a really quick pass and won't look T sense but it will it will hopefully give people a sense of the process long another question from Facebook let's do rapid-fire there's a couple other questions coming here and you got something not just someone wanted to know where he gets his inspiration from oh wait you know what what before you asked that question Jonah you didn't answer the question will you formally trained do you take anatomy classes while in school oh yeah I took I took on one super giant class in college and and I was I was upset to find that most of the time it boxes anyway um but yeah I just ride I did a little bit of that but nothing nothing major so I was I was an art major but I didn't go to art school so I got to draw sometimes from life models but I didn't I didn't really get to dive been nearly the extent that I wanted so I wouldn't say that I've had formal training but I've had enough training to give me a foundation and a lot of otherwise has been a bit well I'm gonna just say this it's kind of sad because I've actually had four more training and figure-drawing I can say that I'm almost as good as you [Laughter] someone said Adam Mohawk I think that's okay so there's some hair suggestions adding a mohawk or some hair thing adding tattoos which I also like without the Cape a cape but she has her feathers oh no guys going let's keep this appropriate please dragon skull over the head someone said a silly hat let's make a silly one of those small time no not hair I don't somebody said feathers on the spear face paint I like her fault just showing what could look like if she had air I like your balls I think I like her more like shape head or very super hair this way to go okay that's what you want Chris that's what we're doing yeah feathers on the spear I can totally throw some feathers in there totally I guess there's not gonna scare a head at the moment so probably one of those kind of going off screen a little bit and then let's some bindings up here let's go dark with those someone said some kind of muzzle and that's the feathers lion head armor people being appropriate on the Internet some are but this is being stupid headband a muzzle somebody wants to wear a thong I mean come on guys Chris has glasses no this is ancient times guys go ahead and give her like maybe a head tattoo okay let's do it why don't we get some suggestions from people like what or or not tattoo whichever but while we throw some animals or subject matter at me some you know and I'll see if we can just really quickly design design a cool tattoo a bear somebody mentioned a lion or dragon dragon hmm dragon's skull okay but you know let's keep keep mine be mindful of time now we got 20 minutes left you're right so we got to do this quick and then a little headphones apple headphones come on guys Panther tattoo a panther I'm seeing yeah well that's something tribal could be really cool - yeah circles lines let's see what he's gonna do here you guys get it out it's a dragon yeah no it's a feature with two arms it's a squid no it looks a little simply to me in in keeping like at a time we would want to make a tattoo that is reflective of the technology and the tools of the time right so they'd be a lot more primitive mm-hmm yeah so why don't we do something that's more kind of lan-based huh yeah but line shape something right yeah okay so let's do let's do a dragon because why not okay [Laughter] I'm going to I'm trying to think of the best kind of like look like way too you know orc this right like we're talking a lot about synergy and about things kind of flowing together so this is always tough because every time I try to design a tattoo like this it's like well now I wanted to design a tattoo that I would want you know so it always takes a little bit longer we can we can come up with some some basic and general while you were doing this and working out the shape I noticed you don't rotate your canvas much and I know a lot of artists like to wrote their canvas to to make it more in keeping with like a sheet of paper so that your your stroke is moving with your body young yeah I guess I don't really um right now I'm standing up and so that kind of it's you know I also I can rotate my Cintiq tablet so I don't need to go in there and do like manual rotation in you know this way so I can do it but no I didn't end until I get to the fine detail I kind of just kind of go for it I think um yeah you're gonna rotate okay what's that Molly there's another question what's the question go ahead let's see this wasn't from twitch twitch yes all right what is one advice you would give someone wanting to work for the big games like Skyrim okay that's a good question this is coming from twitch what's the one piece of advice that you would give for somebody who wants to work at a big studio like once on Skyrim or something you're gonna laugh but it would be put the video games down and get to work on what it is you're gonna be doing lots for me sorry I said that's blasphemy put the video game down I I know it's gonna what do you do I gotta be I've got to be the messenger you know I think there's a lot of the people out there and you know I you know I obviously don't know the person who's asking on Twitch but what's up twitch nice to see you um but but um a lot of people are still under the impression that that working on games means playing games right expert in games and games you know you can learn an enormous amount and if you're in the game industry it's certain or almost certain that you will play some games right but with that said um I think a lot of hours can be poured into games that's kind of what they're designed for but ultimately you're not going to be playing unless you're QA you're not gonna be playing games while you're at the studio you're gonna be designing games and so if what you want to do more than anything is to create games for living and you want in these industries and you want in this in this business um you're gonna have to spend a lot of not fun time working on your craft because that's what's gonna get you the job it's not gonna be your great idea for a game but you have um I think a lot of people also would think that um you know I've got a good idea for a game I should be a game designer um the problem is a lot of people have really good ideas for games and if they're already game designers well they're gonna do their idea and not your idea so oh I would say put quickly games down for a while and really just focus on your craft and just become comfortable with with it not being so fun right off the bat and you know because remember that this is this is unlike any other and and this is this is a very competitive industry a lot of people wanna peel art 3 and it's a is a fast-growing industry but the number of folks who want to be a part of this industry is also growing really fast and there learning all the most recent tools and abilities and programs and if you don't know them those things that you're you're just gonna be the disadvantage and you're gonna you're gonna have your your dreams crushed so play those games enjoy them take what you can from them and then put them down and and and spend some time on your craft and just trying to get comfortable and have fun creating you know because that's that's really the most important part but but but yeah it's definitely a lot of work it's definitely hard working I think people don't don't totally get that there we go I've just faded it back into our scalp just a little bit nice girl with a dragon that cool color because I think he has right 15 minutes so Erica and Molly can you guys cut back to my screen when she's ready because I have to get ready for them to show with my screen yeah whenever you're ready so here we're gonna want to enter into color mode and Jonah's got about 15 minutes left here okay you can cut okay so what I've done here to start this off if they've created a gradient map now this is not necessarily how everyone works but a pretty gradient map and I'm adding it to her what ingredient map is and to create that you go to layer new adjustment layer gravity map now it's taking this bar of color here and map to chew my character you know the this you know the the whites are this color the blacks are that color you can you can flip them you can do crazy thing things with them you know you can move it around and you can really do some crazy things but it's a very powerful tool and it's a great way in my own experience to get started so we can either color this to be realistically colored or we can go you know kind of what we're looking at now which is a bit more grass I think with it so if that's appeals to you guys we can we can do either either one I think you should decide to that okay okay nice by the way sorry it's a nice trick that you're doing here playing it's done you know it's a great way to get started and this was a normal painting that I was working on I would keep this a lot more subtle so you know in the interest of just showing my coloring process yeah I'll do that I'll keep it subtle now relax but what I would do is so this there's a kind of a rule here that I like to abide by that I think is very helpful so that is if the rule of color contrasts right and this is a rule that transcends industry or genre or what have you um when you are working on a piece of art and you want that piece to pop and you want things to kind of really stand out from one another you is my my approach here is is cool on one side of this a color light spectrum and warm on the other so in this case I'm kind of taking this kind of subtle blue color and saying okay that blue color is the darkness and then when I move over to the lighter areas I'll go warmer right so I'm keeping it I'm keeping a pretty pretty neutral and I'm definitely trying to keep it subtle but I like I want to create that subtle balance between from one to the one to the next and that's just gonna help it pop a little bit more I don't know if you can see that actually changes into a color map there you go but they kinda the colors and the values and the visual interest just kind of grows a little bit when you add in that dichotomy um so I can go back in here and really kind of move the bars around really kind of finesse and there that provides me this nice kind of back-and-forth look really really value it yeah you're diving into color theory and how light works if you light so subject with warm lights and have cool shadows and in color correction for the cinematographers that are watching this show it's a very popular color correction style it's called the orange teal color correction so you get nice orange warm light and then you get cool shadows I got a quick question here coming in from Heidi my friend from Cairo Egypt she's asking if I would and she wants to put together a portfolio three to ten pieces for a gaming industry for as a concept artist well what do they want to see what are the three to ten pieces that they want to see in the gaming industry for concept artists great question well first of all it's got to be always your best right you're all always you know the the the 10 to 12 best you've got it's got to blow them away and it doesn't have to be 10 to 12 it can be any number and in fact in some ways you know the fewer the better the stronger the better as well so if it comes down to you know you trying to pick between you know 14 drawings with a couple they're not so favorite and then nine that are just top-notch you're gonna want to push put the put the put that foot forward so so narrow it down to whatever is a more or more demonstrative of the artist that you are or since we're all kind of cheating a little bit with portfolios the artist that you are promising that you will be and the idea is you will be that artist one day right so you know that's that's definitely how I got my you give a Thesz de I just I showed them abilities that were beyond my own and then when I got there I was like well time to do that then I guess I have to see if I can tackle it and and that but that's that's what you want to do so I would definitely focus on on quality first and then as a concept artist like I said before you're gonna want to create you're gonna want to show new ideas so one or two pieces of fan art is great and if you can tailor that fan art to the company you're working for that's even better because then you're demonstrating a real knowledge of where they're coming from and you're also demonstrating a plug-and-play ability you know they hire you well you can start work on day one you don't have to go you know you don't have to focus on on learning their style well your plug-and-play you're ready to go they can just sit you down on desk you're gonna start turning out great work with that said you don't want to spend too much time on unfun fan art in fact I wouldn't I and de-emphasize the fan aren't quite a bit so it's really can you believe good for your portfolio can you look at your online stuff but ultimately as a as a kind of artist you're going to be you're going to be demonstrated Emin straight your ability to create new fun original ideas so definitely focus on regionality and basically making something that when they see it they go wow who is this love their style that would be fun that'd be fun kind of style to embrace with the game it also just shows that you're versatile that you're knowledgeable and you know how to mix things up um so yeah so so tailor your work to the company but don't but don't be slavish to it create your own your own thing and show showcase what an amazing artist you are in your own right because that's really what's gonna sell you I think great all right one one technical thing that I did that maybe we may not have noticed this is a color layer that I have going on here but a lot of the problem with the color layer is that it kind of if I'll take this back it bleeds everywhere right it just it applies to everything equally but if I can pull if you go into blending options you can pull this around you can pull it out of the highlights you can pull it out of the shadows you know and so what I'm doing here is I'm kind of pulling on out of the shadows and letting that blue kind of still shine through the blue of the shadows just to create that nice to continue that balance and also as I'm coloring I am adding the I'm kind of layering in the colors and so at first it's going to appear not especially contrast II and I build up the color contrast as I go so that's that's that nice I'm glad you explained that yeah very cool you too and she's she's ignored two eyes yes no Mallya produces other options for Blue's hear you and then also you as that you know this is a quick color treatments that I'm doing and this is often when I start refining so I won't you know I used to refined a lot of the refining while in the black and white stage I will do a lot more fine at this stage here so you know once I've added in these fundamentals these basic colors you know and again I want to keep those colors somewhat muted not punchy right off the bat because punchy is gonna draw your eye and so we want to make sure that we are approaching this in the same way we approached the rendering which is that we're building up our forms we're building up our colors we're not diving in anywhere too fast but as we go we're gonna start working towards more and more contrast and brightness so with these feathers for instance I now created a new layer a normal layer just a regular layer I'm gonna add more contrast in there and I'm gonna start kind of painting a little bit on top um looks like it's bound to the layer beneath it there we go and adding in these kind of solid chunks of color that will kind of build up and and kind of start to catch your eye so yeah yeah yeah so Jonah with a question about the portfolio you gave an advice about fewer pieces of higher quality or good some fanart but don't try to put in your original stuff tailor your portfolio to the company that you're applying to but what subject matter should I include should I include character designs should I include weapons and armor like do you have a ratio of what you should include and and give us some guidance there sure that's a good question yes so you're definitely don't want to create as much of the picks as possible you know it's it's a bit hard because ultimately you really want to show them like I'm the best artist ever and I can do everything but if you're only good at certain things you know definitely play to your strengths um if you're getting characters do a lot of character design I think characters especially for concept artists like that does matter that it is important people are going to want that their team um with that said you're gonna want to you know if you're good at architecture then do that I do a lot of that showcase a range of abilities because ultimately as a character artist you're going to be tested on any you're gonna you're gonna have to tackle any number of subjects and you're just gonna have to do as good a job as you possibly can um but definitely played your strengths you know we are not you're never gonna have a portfolio that you're like well now I'm ready it's perfect I'm amazing I can get any job at all you're really you know you're just gonna have to kind of muscle your way in you're gonna have to fake a lot of it so don't feel like don't feel like it needs to be just so beforehand but a mix is always good because you're just trying to demonstrate versatility and that you know you're demonstrating an ability to dive in right off the bat and and create you know create awesome things that there one begin it so but again remember also that as a concept artist you are designing for a team of artists so orthoscopic views of of items is it was weapons armors outfits that's always helpful I'm gonna I'm gonna hint it's some kind of carving here just hiding some some darkness here and then adding a couple highlights in there on so orthoscopic views of items so that you know that basically tell a character artist a concept art an environment artist you know this is what you do this is what it looks like from different angles etc so that's important and then you know some characters you can do it and and some basic you know a perspective for buildings and that kind of thing yeah those little squiggly lines added a lot and you I don't know what it is but it it's kind of cool it's like some kind of carving on the armor oh it could be a lion a snake the family crest or something yeah some tribal thing Jax is indicating something this is definitely yeah this is definitely something I've been trying to do a lot more of recently which is not painting in every bit of detail but implying detail right like that's that's what the Renaissance masters did you know they their stuff looks photorealistic and then you stand in close and you're like wow you guys did so little I'm shocked but if it's really that mastery of kind of color and light and then I'm gonna use a word mastery I'm not applying it to myself at all I'm just you know yeah but it's all about you know if you can create these these broader forms that have a some sense of three dimensionality to them and in this case have some specular detailing that basically says these is metal then if you can kind of do some similar things there and you can you can imply a lot of detail and remember that small details will conform to the look to the larger shape so you know you don't want to do glittery shiny detail out here because ultimately this is in shadow right and so things are in shadow kind of tend to blur out and our eyes are attracted to areas of high contrast and they're gonna focus on you know areas like in the middle here so I could really go in here and just you know just to just to demonstrate I can really go in here and just kind of blur that out with a solid brush and you probably wouldn't even notice right because it's in the shadow it doesn't matter and if I doing that I almost think it looks better because it it pushes that to the background more and it makes it a little less attention to that and makes you pay a little bit more attention to the other places so creating this kind of money Nasseri --is were it doesn't matter if there's if you were looking at it that can be that can be helpful if that makes sense absolutely yeah another good tip there okay I say that we should put five more minutes more minutes into this and then kind of answer any questions just have a normal dialogue just people are wondering when is gonna be finished should you come on for a second or third episode where's the 3d model version of this they're greedy yeah they really you give them a little business spoil them happy you know you guys you guys if in a couple months or in a you know in a couple years or next week you know let me know okay all right awesome so we're gonna take you up on this so I think what we should do is try to find a logical conclusion to this phase of it in the next few minutes and then document this and revisit this in a few weeks maybe in the new year and kind of take it to the next level yes Mali's sounds great background we can add some fluttering banners in the background we can have something fun with it so graham Yin okay you put a little highlight on our lower lip there huh little lip gloss just to leave just a little bit of lip gloss I mean listen it's it's it's frosty up there man you got it then apply the lip gloss right right no I had chapped lips for your dragon warrior rose Lopes lips so people seem to be screaming for a 3d model but let's just relax guys just relax all right we'll deal with this later I have I have some cool 3d work that I'll show right after this okay just for fun so what are those little metallic squares that you've added to the leather band that goes across her breasts oh just just plates I mean just you know these are these are leather bands and then this is how a lot of armor was built back in the day you know especially if it's lighter weight this is not she's wearing halt rims but ultimately this is a fairly lightweight piece of armor um you know to design design to kind of maximize flexibility and that kind of thing so back in the day that's how this how a lot of armor was created it was it's leather so that it's flexible and then you kind of played it with these different pieces of metal that basically you know it's not it's not complete but it definitely adds to overall protection sure so and be given that this is kind of you know this is our center of focus you know I want to kind of shine through a little bit and look fairly decent so and again just pushing some of that leather back visually maybe I'll take this this is a cord kind of trying to cross your body maybe I'll make that yeah why not kind of a dull purple you're keeping the chroma values pretty similar throughout this and you're not gonna want to put in a supersaturated thing right exactly so I can I can for sure go in here you know and you know the chroma here is pretty bright yeah and that's cool because again like this is her face this is her head this is you know a lot of a lot of things are coming together attention wise so I want that to kind of come through well but for sure I would - a lot of artists out there I see a lot of over saturation color is a really powerful thing and it's good draw the eye right um in some really interesting ways so wherever there is greatest contrast in color and wherever the colors are brightest or more or more SMO saturated that's where your eye is going to go um so you know in areas like down here it wouldn't really behoove me you would look cool if I went into here and I added this you know I made this is kind of like totally gold and that doesn't look terrible there but what that's doing in essence if I did it and again that's not particularly chrome it out but if I would do this kind of thing well now your your it might look cool but your eyes now actually diverted down right right to a mall on an area so I'm trying to keep things real subtle and I'm trying to kind of build up the general forms of general shading with the is low colors and then you know I can go in here and then add you know some some bright blue highlights to the feathers if that's like a thing right like just just to add that contrast there's a great picture that I did and when I say great I don't mean it's a great picture I mean it's a great example of this here where this is something i did on the gobi stream a couple or maybe six months ago and me up and that's one just to point out the areas of greatest contrast you know of black and white so here it's it's blackest here and whitest here and in the areas of most colors so okay blue here blue here blue here and some purple here that's gonna pull your eye into this region and that's the most important region and everything else fades out so color and value is very powerful and wielding color and value to your advantage in in in exercising we're strength to start off with and then to go a little bit more created with a layer I don't even know if this perfect if just blue is the right color and probably isn't but just try make a point here right is that you know I I can control and anyone can control where the eye goes just by the amount of color and the brightness and the cetera that goes into those areas and the blue of her eyes for instance is going to hopefully you know um you know echo off of those blue of the feathers there and they will hopefully amplify one another I maybe I'll go into here oh you know what could be cool did a dull orange maybe tilted a little bit more into the red spectrum and again and you know if there's a color that is a little bit different from the others it can be a completely different if there's a spots of spots of this color here or maybe like a bit more red here you're gonna want hints of it you know down here just to really balance that out but um I can go in here and I can add you know some kind of oh I'm going in there with blush and then I could you know use the blend options and kind of pull it out of the darkest areas just a little bit more looks like Dragons bleed or I can also pull out of the highlights so that so it kind of bleeds that a little bit there as well you know that's something I could do you know I don't know but don't cut baby books particularly good here but again this is we're just experimenting and we're playing around and see what we get out of it and anyway I'll be finishing this you know next time I'm on so no no hurry right Yeah right I like that little bit of war pain that you put on her too yeah dragons breathing fire this is this is a great example where you have a dark desaturated bit and then I come in here with the brighter color oh no you know what what is the eraser brush I can go in with a brighter color and kind of just add just a bit more saturation just to really drive in a home really catch your eye you know hopefully that can do I can pull the viewers attention in just a bit more no go ahead and grab this dark color over here pull it down to the down of the darkness here and just kind of bad is that working yeah yeah yeah there we go so she's got some what do you call that Molly hi shadow yeah Chris don't act like you don't know that she's like saying like pretend like I I don't know what that is I've been that's a for many times man you know is all right so let's have you been saving this file at all have you saved this Jonah okay you have okay everyone smile ask an artist and it's like oh my gosh you have to name the file because I haven't saved at all yes okay so here's what I will see you next time you guys have the state stay tuned this is the cliffhanger ending to this so Jonah I'd love to get the layered PSD file to use as part of the thumb nail art for this and let me let's cut to Jonah fullscreen let's go back to you let's talk a little bit I think you wanted to show us a couple more pieces of art I want to give you time to do that and then I'm a little oh and I'll be in touch with you I'll keep it very fast can you see this ooh what is this this is the super mutants from fallout 4 with all their armor uh-huh those are fun this that's earlier this is the brush what are we looking at here this is the program that allows me to do such cool things and again this is I mentioned this at the beginning of the stream but this is the program that really got me into the industry learning this and being able to mess around with it I mean I can't I can't even tell you how much fun this program and you can just do such dramatic fun things with it I mean you can change a character you know so fast right like you could just do so many cool things I really just have a ball I'm the moment I'm working for anyone who's interested I'm working on a Pluralsight course photo site is this online tutorial video training training source and I'm making I'm bringing people through the the character art pipeline and not a much it's not so much I think you'd be interested unless you guys because this is not it's not a technical workflow it's a artistically driven workflow so we talk about a lot of the things we talked about today contrast color character design Anatomy this is is our kind of our test subject he's called the groving he's a giant amphibian brawler and I essentially take this from the concept stage where we painted in Photoshop to the reference stage where we kind of examine what's out there source wise and what we want to maybe emulate or borrow from and then we take us through the scoping stage from the berries first lumps of clay to this refined sculpt and then through the texturing stage and get it ready for whatever game it's gonna be on so this you know right now this is 16 million polygons most computers cannot compute that in a game you want something closer to ten thousand polygons so I went through that process as well so ocnz brushes I'm sorry if the down convert from 16 million down to ten thousand exactly okay exactly and so you have to be really smart about how you do that and then yeah then I color it and all that so if people are interested in character design and character theory keep your eyes up that'll be that'll be coming up okay so question Burnett a couple questions about your new course first of all how much is it going to be and when does it launch and what is the name of the site again please okay it's the site is called plural sites plural site and like more than one floor yes more than one site exactly and the the course itself you know if you're Pluralsight remember the course itself as I understand it is free it's just you know you have to be kind of on the website I said have a lot of different I mean I said there are courses on there that are available and so that's the and it's gonna be about four hours long putting a lot of my artistic knowledge as it is into that so hopefully hopefully people enjoy that okay and what did you say it's gonna be a sneeze what are you gonna be done with that the course I'm I'm aiming to finish the raw materials for it with and within this month and then okay I mean you know the way these things go it'll probably won't get released you know for couple months maybe you know February um but that would be awesome and then and then yeah join join in guys all right now do you have an exclusive deal with Pluralsight I think they were kind to me when it came to working out the contract but yeah they have a bunch of artists artists authors on there that cover any number of topics yeah it's though and so it's it's fairly standard but I you know you go she ate baby negotiate well maybe at some point I don't wanna put any pressure on you maybe you can do a course for us and we can do something together but I will put it there okay it is right about that time man you are so on the money look at that you guys just want to talk we're gonna wrap up the show first of all I just want to thank you Jonah for being on the show and I look forward to having subsequent episodes with you and we can take a look at this art I hope all of you guys that are joining us on Facebook YouTube and on Twitch if you enjoy this we will bring more artists like Jonah on the show if this is what you guys want let us know first of all be sure if you liked this episode smash that like button hit subscribe for us and I'm gonna take us out and let you guys know how you can get in touch with Jonah so here it goes I mentioned before I think he's on Instagram and on Twitter but the best way to reach out to him is on Twitter at Jonah Loeb and his website is Jonah Loeb calm he has a unique name so it's consistent throughout all his social media that's awesome and I think let me go ahead for instagram my instagram is hi I am Jonah low oh I'm sorry I am Jonah Loeb I am Joan a lot but you know what I think I signed myself up for Instagram years ago under Jenna lobe and I locked myself out because I forgot my password so I am John below you locked yourself out can't you recover your own password you know I think once I got into it I was like well it's too many now I'll just I'm don't elope I am gentle oh but on Twitter it's just it's just Jonah Loeb all right well thank you very much thanks everyone for tuning in we're gonna sign out right now I'm gonna start playing the music here we go [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: The Futur

Views: 28,664

Keywords: concept art, concept artist, skyrim, character artist, photoshop, illustrator, z brush, zebra brush, painting, live tutorial, fall out, how to, streaming, process, character, bethesda, gamer, game charater, character animator, video game company, live painting, live sketching, how to make characters, how to paint, education, concept character, fallout, 3d modeling, tutorial, learn, psd

Id: tgptsopSKA0

Length: 117min 14sec (7034 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 14 2017