Shape Design Workshop: A Pro Concept Art Workflow for Speed and Efficiency

I think we are ready to go ahead and get started get a few people jumping into the zoom room but um thanks for coming I've been really excited about this uh I love this topic and it's something that felt really weird to me when I was starting as a concept artist but it has like really changed the game for me uh so I I'm really excited to share this because it it's efficient it's something that professionals use to get a lot of work done quickly and it just feels like it it frees you in a lot of ways makes higher levels of work feel possible so I think it's a win-win I think you guys will really enjoy this um we've got a zoom room going on with some uh Academy alums and and current students so uh guys if if you have any questions just interrupt me anytime just like we do in class and for those on the YouTube chat uh feel free to fire away any questions and I'll have some help today so those questions will be passed along to me uh periodically so um interrupt me jump in if you have anything to add or any questions I would love to but um let's dive into it let's see okay so this kind of stuff um the shaped carve out technique is one of its main names but it's basically designing directly with shapes instead of using lines to you know make a shape if we were making a circle or a square instead of doing that let's just kind of go right to just the shape that's kind of it in a nutshell in terms of efficiency we all kind of come from line first I think that's how just when you first picked up a pencil and started drawing something as a kid that's like your first way to kind of encode art and actually our brains do an amazing job of you know imagining a line drawing as a solid three-dimensional object our brains are really good at that but this I think kind of like makes it even easier on your brains to just kind of instantly see and appreciate shapes so that's kind of the whole logic behind this the whole reason why this is so effective um it's just quick you just make that shape appear on your page you don't have to do any kind of mental dot connecting to make a line art thing into a solid in your brain it just sort of happens so you hear this from like every you know art god of the internet every uh famous concept artist it all comes back to shapes it's like the core most important thing so if you can let shapes do most of the heavy lifting for your design you're usually starting in a good place that was a hard lesson for me to learn because I loved rendering just making things look realistic or pretty that was kind of how I came at Art first and I had to learn all of this stuff second so the way I try to teach it now is you know I think the right way putting the the horse before the cart so that we we learn this shape stuff before we learn to render you know add polish and all of that fun eye candy stuff um okay I will start a demo actually I thought it would be kind of fun to just like uh challenge myself a little bit and have have like audience uh call out what I should design but I don't know I might warm up with a spaceship first and then then the challenge can be thrown down um I'm gonna use the Symmetry tool for this too and I have this brush that is flat and square I really like that just because it lets you make some some hard edges really easily which I enjoy especially for machine design hard to use a round circle and make something really angular um so let's make a spaceship um yeah I am just on a gray layer I have a color lookup just to give it this kind of nice uh color quality so it's not so flat and gray but um that's just a preference thing you can do this in black and white and it all works the same way all right what I try to do for this is start with something just kind of bold and wild like what is our iconic thing going to be about this ship or this robot if somebody had to describe it in like one sentence what would it be um you know think of all your favorite iconic spaceships like I really love the Milano from Guardians of the Galaxy um I mean the Millennium Falcon go on and on but I'm immediately getting kind of a fun like moth or Firefly vibe from this so just with that I mean five marks and a little erasing and I feel like I've got my thing for this like my what kind of ship is this and from there we can start pivoting into these really powerful fundamental shape design things that um my my Academy crew here will will know very well just uh it's incredible that if you can follow a few core principles just to guide you it it makes something that feels like you're you're trying to invent something impossibly cool out of thin air it makes it into more of a formula so that stuff is deceptively simple and and really works and um let's see if I can back that up with some actual results here so it's uh one that I'll I'll definitely be using a lot is just certain shape relationships just tend to look good together it's uh sort of a mathematic thing where we just arrange trios of shapes and it just ends up looking nice it's almost formulaic so I'm I'm leaning on that too another way we can manage these designs to look cool is to make it have equal doses of Simplicity just areas where it's kind of calm and not overly noisy or busy with those those areas of high visual activity so I'm trying to make like the wings kind of big and simple for example but then I also want to have little busy things happening little extras like these little fins hanging off the tips of the Wings little antennas little I don't know what these little leggy things are at the end but I can make them into some kind of a funnel for a rocket it gives it that nice like Space Invaders insectoid kind of vibe and with the Symmetry tool I love this stool it's like magic because if I made one of these shapes by itself it would kind of just feel like it's kind of whatever it would seem arbitrary it wouldn't really seem like it has a purpose or a function but if that shape that blob I just made is reflected perfectly onto the other side of the canvas suddenly it's something it feels like it belongs there like it was put there deliberately and when you're making machines that's kind of what we're trying to do is make all of this look really man-made and deliberate and cool and symmetry just really does that beautifully for us I'm trying to be kind of consistent with my design language I immediately found this like trapezoid shape is kind of that's like our our thing that we're going to be using here so I am trying to lean on that and make it work it's not working perfectly but actually I think that is part of the power of this is how easily you can pivot and just erase and throw it out and make another Mark if it's not feeling like it's working so another huge Plus for this shape carving technique is that you can pivot so easily and make things or change things on the Fly you know it it feels a lot like molding something out of clay which is really appealing to me in a way that sketching just doesn't quite do you can stretch things that's a little harder when you're doing a symmetry design like this but I'm going to do one that is not symmetry next you can kind of push and pull it's like you're grabbing a little hunk of clay and making it longer or whittling the shapes out a little bit it's carving I think that's the greatest name for this because that's what it really feels like is you have a substance a mass here that you are manipulating and subtracting from and adding to it's really cool Hey Hardy we've got a couple things come in from YouTube yeah fire away um someone's asking uh when you uh what do you do as a warm-up before like the begging work of the day or anything question I uh I guess I kind of just dive in actually these are really great for that because they kind of get you thinking about shape design stuff in this really low stakes quick way so this I think um now I wish I if I'm being honest I don't like come in and have have like a warm-up ritual I usually just you know pound the last third of the coffee and get to it but um this I think is a really good way to get into that headspace just to start thinking about shapes like the simplest possible way you can think about these things kind of the the base unit and and then you're off to think about more complex things like storytelling and design language you know what do we want this design to do for us what is our goal and I think this does an awesome job of getting like the the visual stuff just the making a cool looking thing part of it um that all starts to flow and actually I feel like I sort of got the bad design out of the way in the early steps of this and while I would love to be just infallible on YouTube live I think it's much more valuable and more real to see that you can pivot when it's not just instant perfection because iteration and kind of scratching around for that that thing that's going to work is concept art that is that is the job a great question there's there's sort of a follow-up to it as well around do you uh do you use like a reference image or are you just sort of like feeling around and totally just just scratching around for something that that grabs me here now if this were you know a professional assignment and actually just finished a sheet of spaceships a few days ago kind of like this I would have some homework to do before I got into this I would need to know you know what is the design language of the whole universe we are working within here usually there's a movie or game that gets pointed to a mood board something that gets you really keyed into what what we're doing for this project so I would want to like really soak that up be be very well versed in that so that by the time I send something back it feels like it fits like it it has the same DNA as as the rest of the project because you're you're almost always part of a larger team in a larger project as a concept artist um there's that I I usually go on Pinterest to get inspired just by you know Finding awesome stuff that that looks kind of like it has the same vibe that I'm trying to capture that's always a part of it for me try not to do that too much I think you can be over inspired and over referenced it can sort of start to take over what you're able to imagine yourself which which then can sort of have the reverse effect of of like stopping your creativity um what else yeah that's that's usually what I would do before this but I'm glad you asked that because I sort of skipped all of that Preamble and just got right to the fun part but that's that is not how it usually goes exactly good questions um all right I I think that's probably pretty good I think it's interesting it's doing that nice shape relationship stuff that I really wanted to um and I know all the concept art Academy students are trying to are shouting it out on mute right now but um hopefully I did an okay job there uh this is the fun part once you've got a silhouette that you like we're gonna make that second layer that like highlight in interior shape layer so I've just made a new layer and I'm going to make that clipping mask to this silhouette layer so if you didn't know to do that if you just hold down option and like hover between layers one and two it will clip Layer Two to layer one so then if I grab gray it will only appear within this silhouette which is super handy so that we can just make these shapes and not make selections not really worry about any of that stuff and I'm still on symmetry so I can kind of start doing a lot of the same stuff again I start by trying to be like bold make a big Bill shape somewhere you know just kind of like Splat that brush on the canvas and see what happens kind of move and then I'm going to start maybe erasing away find little mechanical details this is maybe my favorite part because it's like if I just make this shape here Suddenly It's like this back part is um thing that houses an engine it's like the little airfoil in front of it maybe I can bring that forward a bit uh we can make a cockpit or start implying that kind of stuff um just by making shapes and then carving out little windows kind of a stealth bomber Vibe here that I kind of like and symmetry once again just I mean these shapes are not super crisp or smooth like I'm doing far from a perfect job of making this look all machined Perfection but because it is perfectly symmetrical it's like it forgives you for that for some reason I think our brains just recognize that Symmetry and it just works now all of those shape principles that we did to create the silhouette they apply in here too so I'm kind of saying that out loud just to remind myself that it's sort of all the same stuff and yeah Hardy we have a bunch of questions on um how how to do complex shapes with this like how can you use this on character design how can you uh is there a way to use this if you have to have an asymmetrical drawing um is there uh a way to um uh build up some more complex images using this technique absolutely and the spaceship is kind of just a warm-up the thing that these are just the most fun and relaxing thing to design for me because you are limited by nothing like I mean it probably has to have some wings or an engine to make it look like a fast thing um you know it's good to be inspired by some kind of flying object like a moth for example here um other than that it's just purely visual design a spaceship or you know whatever fighter jet style thing can be anything if I need more shapes if I need the wings to be bigger if I need to just add little pointy thin things you're kind of just wide open and free to do that so I start with this because those other topics and characters I think are the most difficult they have a lot of other baggage to juggle first of all it has to look like a person right I mean that is the that's the hardest part of character design is like the person it has to have proportions that work it has to have um you know it can't have some weirdness of anatomy that will glare at your audience and sort of disqualify it um and even if you get all that stuff right just the psychology of interacting with a person it might you might design a character that is perfectly anatomically correct and has a nice pose but it just looks like somebody your audience member didn't like in high school or something you know they could have some weird reaction to your character design that that is not really your fault um so character design is always like the toughest but um that sounds like a good one to explore next so let's let's finish our ship up here and I don't want to Doodle this to death with details I think you guys are probably like getting it um hopefully that that shape design stuff uh Academy team hopefully that you're you're all seeing this and and kind of able to like name what I am doing uh at each step and just adding a little line work to kind of downshift a little and add some detail we can get is zoomed in on this as you want but something about like this I think is something I would you know do a handful of these on a sheet and then pass this to a client to see if if you know any of these are catching their eye what feels like a good step what do we take to the next level of Polish where we start you know applying some color doing more of a rendering um you know depending on what the project calls for one last little third level of Polish I love adding here is with symmetry the fun part about it is we can use it as another form of contrast you can have all of this symmetry to set up not symmetry asymmetry so for example we could make whoops let me turn symmetry off and we just add you know graphics on one side of the wing or some marking and it just makes it look I don't know it it gives it that dynamism that contrast gives it's sort of using symmetry is another thing to bounce contrast off of which we're always looking for is contrast in all forms not just like light against dark or orange against blue but even symmetry even theme even materials you know all kinds of ways to take that to higher levels so I I could get into decaling for hours that stuff's always fun it's like putting the stickers on your model kit you bought um but I think you guys get the idea so I'll well first of all any questions Sean or Celine on on spaceship stuff before I jump over to characters I think that's a that'll be a fun one to uh to do next yeah we've got one last one on um how do you choose to play secondary and tertiary details in the form uh use reference the big medium small rule or do you just like free form it it's totally just shape stuff like that I mean I am kind of free-forming it but um yeah it's it's big middle small type stuff it's just a ranging shape relationships in a pleasing way now things like these little angular lines that I made all of that is design language consistency kind of finding a look and sometimes that comes from something you're inspired by or if you're coming onto a project what's already established in the game world and it's something I'd like to I've gotten really good at kind of dissecting cool things and finding what those base ingredients are that's a skill that I think concept artists have to be really good at is kind of taking cool things apart realizing why they're cool and then using that to kind of reassemble it into your own cool thing so those things are what are guiding me there but yeah you nailed it kind of shape shape relationship stuff is key for this it's kind of what gives it dynamism what makes it feel for lack of a better word designing like a professional designer had their hands on something versus something that feels a little random and all over the place which is exactly what my like free design portfolio from seven or eight years ago I can see it so clearly now that it's all just random I was kind of rendering before I was designing uh great question though because I I know that can just seem like it's it's arbitrary but man when you have a formula to follow it makes that so much less scary and daunting than just blank canvas like you know what do we do good question okay um let's see somebody let's see I need kind of a design brief here so uh I grabbed a female character pose and I'm going to start there but um I don't know any genre somebody yell out a genre we could do one of the punks or fantasy or just straight up sci-fi or um anybody have any preference sci-fi sci-fi it is thank you Nick I recognize your voice um Okay cool so as you may notice I have totally skipped the hard part of a character design I am using a character template I do this in my own you know in Pro work just because all the stuff I said about painting people you know it you can spend more than half of the time just getting the pose right in fact I I keep this huge library of poses that I've developed over the years just so that I can skip that I can just grab a mannequin and start like designing costumes over the top of it because that way we know that the proportions are going to be more or less good to go the pose is going to be about right I really like this one she's kind of casual but not like so relaxed so this would fit with you know some casual person in NPC background character or this could be a warrior you know we could put a weapon over her shoulder and you know it it kind of fits a lot of things um so first and foremost just starting with that okay sci-fi um let's kind of go like Mass Effect Space Opera type thing so I am first going to just start filling in shapes this is where even character design starts becoming just shapes again we can use those same guiding principles that make a spaceship cool and design clothing masses and give this set of clothes some dynamism make make this character look like you know there are there are shapes that make it look cool and evoke something right now one thing uh one like shape design truism that I can share is that whenever we have two objects that are just right next to each other if those two things are exactly the same it tends to be boring if we just have square and square it's kind of like so what it just tends to look dead and static so what we're always trying to do is looking for opportunities to knock that out of balance to kind of make it into more like 70 30 instead of 50 50. it just tends to give it some energy it it is lopsided a little bit it creates movement instead of just being this perfectly balanced whatever um so with the human body we're always looking for ways to do that uh it's hard because we tend to be divided clothing-wise into like a top half and a bottom half your your legs are usually a little longer than your torso but if you just kind of have person with a belt and some khakis on and a turtleneck like they tend to just look sort of flat so we do things by like messing with that midline let's see if I can demonstrate that a bit okay here Hardy we've got a question around how are you locking the layer to to fill in the clothing oh awesome so I filled in this pose line art by uh let me back up a little okay I used the magic wand tool outside of this line art so I'm selecting like the negative space I also have to select this little shape and then I just want to select inverse and filled it in with a gray so once I have that gray silhouette layer the best part is that I can command click on the thumbnail here and it reselects it and that lets me apply Color on a new layer within that shape and I don't have to worry about going outside the lines super handy so just command clicking on a layer we'll select all of the pixels on that layer good good question and absolutely if any like Photoshop technicalities are not clear please let me know okay so let's talk about that whole splitting up the unfortunate boring nature of our like top half bottom half bodies um I love doing this with like either you can do it by bringing the waste up with like higher Belt Line that's always a good way to kind of just stretch that um you can do it by making long flowy cloak things that kind of cross over and you know make make the top half sort of invade down towards the bottom I'm trying not to just totally rip off what I did here but that is exactly the kind of thing that that I'm talking about there but let's uh let's see if I can be a little more original here um let's go with like high belt I mean this immediately like has a Star Trek sort of vibe like she's got her phaser built on type thing maybe even a pistol um it's sort of the form-fitting like base layer I think that's it's doing that but let's let's see what else I can do there so sci-fi we could go in a number of different ways like space suit um let's do that actually so first I'm going to add a little bit of bulk to her top layer here so this is kind of like the spaceship design silhouette part I'm trying to just make her silhouette cool I am trying to make it kind of calm and simple in some parts but busy and noisy in other parts one of the most important of those core shape design principles Silhouettes are really powerful especially with a human figure it's it's just something that we recognize instantly you know you can it's the reason that uh if you like leave folded up laundry on a chair in your bedroom in a hoodie like looks like a person in the middle of the night it scares the crap out of you because you are programmed to just immediately recognize shapes and Silhouettes so that is really powerful stuff that we can use that immediate reaction to shapes I'm going to stick with that angular type of look I just decided to change because these really curvy kind of pointy looking things didn't started like not feeling sci-fi to me started feeling more alien like insectoid so we just pivot when a shape is not doing what you want it's the easiest thing in the world to change someone's asking if you have like a library of shapes and design elements that you sort of like keep to the side to use hmm I don't really there are definitely a few that I think I'll lean on too much I don't want to like bust myself too bad on that because they're really cool and I want to keep doing it but um I'm definitely a big fan of like the rounded rectangle for sci-fi or sort of the instead of doing a line like this kind of mix in a little curve for that that right there is like really nice sci-fi-ness to me um but that is precisely what I go searching to be inspired by when I need to start a project is trying to find exactly those those things what are those base elements so I don't actually have a library of those stored away I certainly have memorized a lot that that have worked um but it's not really something that I keep a really tangible record of cool just trying to like bulk up her silhouette add some boots we may add a weapon over her shoulder at some point but I think that works hmm um Hardy we have a request for the brush you're using um oh yeah if you like we can throw that up on the Discord after absolutely I will um export it now so that I don't um so that I don't forget um export that's a great call always good to share brushes from one of these um shape brush cool and uh also um when making this type of character do you always use references or do you have a mental library of shapes to produce these thumbnails um just sort of trying to do from mental you know visual library but if this were professional work I would probably you know do more research first just to make sure that that it is like on brief it's exactly what my art director is asking for that can be trickier to nail down but it's it's nice when I'm just doing a free-for-all demo we can kind of make that into whatever we want um so if this were not just me kind of making something to demonstrate I would definitely go looking for specific references uh but for now it's just kind of some some shapes that I have used in the past and that I I know can work uh cool okay I think we have a pretty decent silhouette here so what I'm going to do next is it's kind of like on our spaceship how we create that layer and clip it to the base silhouette and we start painting in with a lighter color here's where we start doing shape design really it's where we start dividing these interior shapes deciding which parts do we want to be I'm going to do this over because this layer seemed like not a hundred percent solid okay better starting over okay we have our silhouette busy in some parts but simple and quiet in others let's start dividing these shapes up let's start making this more interesting than simply you know pants white below the belt uh shirt black above let's like add a color just to the top half of the shoulders let's make that you know the shape that that does something for us uh flipping the canvas I always love to do that too just to kind of keep things fresh in my mind's eye um but just that uh so glad that that worked so immediately because I really like what just that little detail does for us it kind of adds this shape she's got this bright spot kind of running down her arms it makes her arms and her shoulders sort of a unit um and you know I could probably work with that but I want to explore a little more to see if there are other parts of the body we could sort of do something similar Maybe have something on the side of her leg um maybe not go quite the length um I like that I think we will keep that but I hope you kind of get the the main point of this which is just it's it's still shape design it's it's kind of the same thing as the spaceship we are just doing it within the framework of a human figure and we are using it to you know communicate a design language to tell a story to do all those cool things that we need you know that we're being hired to do as a concept artist so there we go I kind of just have dark color light color uh dividing these spaces into those pleasing like big middle small relationships where I can in fact now that I'm thinking about that let's let's push that I think the shoulder is what I want to be the iconic thing here so maybe I will shrink these other areas of tone and just turn it into something like that um a big a middle and Maybe give her like cushiony soles of her boots to give us one more instance of this and I think that's pretty effective Hardy how did you uh flip your canvas there what keyword commanded to use oh yeah so I made a custom keyboard shortcut for that just natively on Photoshop there isn't a keyboard shortcut but you can go to edit keyboard shortcuts and you can specify your own um let's see I think this is a menu in its image image rotation flip horizontal and I just set it to be shift uh command f so that's that's it for me but really recommend setting one up for yourself just because that is such a handy thing to to have like really accessible uh it just makes these images kind of fresh in your mind's eye like I said but also sometimes it's just much easier to do a diagonal in one way than try to like do it in the other so you can just flip the canvas and make it easy just mechanically all right um let's keep going I think that works well enough and totally has a Sci-Fi vibe that I like uh you know I can already imagine like cool color schemes that we could do here like a something with compliments like an orange or a blue or something with just black and yellow or something for contrast um nice all right so let's do a bit more shape division in here but I want this to remain kind of a a really Stark light shape dark shape type of thing so I want to have one more shape but I wanted to just be Barely There barely lighter than what's already there and we might not do much of this because I honestly 90 of what I want to figure out with a design is sort of done at this point it's getting that initial um never mind getting that initial shape relationship stuff figured out where we have light and dark where we have you know those balanced out like busy areas versus quiet areas where we have those pleasing shape relationships where we try to make everything fit into that kind of a system um this is kind of just adding a little bit of value and description to and otherwise black area just to to give it some kind of information um really cool how there's pretty much no Belt Line like we have thoroughly abstracted the you know normal everyday clothing pattern that you see into something that that really goes beyond that something more interesting than just um Beltline so I don't want to get too tonal here this is sort of supposed to just be about shapes um let's do a tiny bit of whoops of line work I usually don't do this on anything else but it is kind of nice on a character just to Define some of these shapes with a tiny bit of line work so going a little bit against the theme of of the event here but I think this is worthwhile and not much and weirdly if the shapes are working and are strong the line art does not have to be incredibly beautiful or crisp it can kind of just do its thing um you know be there as a suggestion more than a fully realized line drawing hmm kind of making decisions here on which part of the suit I want to be it which you know which do I want the shoulder to connect to the little collar or or what so someone's kind of wondering um after the shape carving process do you do line art like a line art pass every time or just rendering or both not every time and actually pretty much never unless it's a character and I I just felt like she needed that little extra bit of description here um so I sort of regret that I I feel like I have to here because the beauty of this technique is that it it usually doesn't need anything um but I just think this is kind of a nice little extra polished step for this and helps us to figure out a few things gives us a few extra opportunities to like break some forms up and and I think probably a good decision here like for example if if I feel like I'm having too many Big Empty sort of boring spaces I can just use some line art to kind of break that up give it sort of a pattern and suddenly it feels more Dynamic it's feeling like we have just set that stuff off really nicely same thing with these little like holes and Vents and whatever you know sci-fi thing that always just kind of fills that design need of of doing what you need your your shape design principles to do for you but also just fitting with the narrative like we would need this suit to feel all techy and cool so sure there could be a little vent there it has to I don't know release carbon dioxide or scan the atmosphere you know you can make these things kind of work with the story and just visually look cool and interesting at the same time which is awesome um Hardy we also have a couple of uh of technical or tooling questions I guess um yeah what what art tablet are you using right now aha I am using a Wacom intuos Pro um it was a Christmas present I had used a Wacom in 203 for like 12 years before that and honestly there was nothing wrong with it I could have kept using it that thing was just one of the best built pieces of tech I've ever owned um but yeah walk them into US Pro absolutely love it um I have only ever used Wacom intuos products so I don't have much of a frame of reference on like if one company is better than the other but I feel like Wacom is kind of the the standard um any other like equipment questions uh yeah um what uh so when you record your speed paints uh for videos do you use OBS or what what software do you use for that I use Camtasia uh just because it's so easy to like um edit it's you know a screencaster and a you know video capture so I can do talking head videos really easily um that's what I use uh today we're just using zoom and YouTube you know native functions so nothing to uh too technical there and finally when you're creating this isn't a technical question but when you're creating these uh characters designs for clients how do they make those requests or do they like specific request like specific poses like the t-pos or a pose or how does that conversation generally go great question it's usually something that is you know we will have these conversations before I ever start working on anything for sure um usually it starts with something like this just as a shape exploration I think it's kind of nice to show the character and a relatively human pose but t-pose that's exactly I'm glad you brought that up because that's next steps is once we have this stuff figured out like what do we want to feel about this character What story do we want to tell what you know what shape design Solutions do we want to figure out then we need to start doing things like T poses for a 3D modeler Downstream so that all kind of comes next this is especially useful for just that first you know most critical part of a concept painting which is just figuring these things out just what do we want these shapes to look like sure would have been easier to design this gun not sideways wouldn't it um so that that's a good question Sean it it's something that we sort of um you know this is useful for those really important design parts and then those t-poses that's sort of like secondary descriptions like really making sure that when this character is going to be built in a 3D World or if it's for a tabletop game if they're going to be sculpted into a little mini we have to we have to show our team members what her back looks like what you know what does it look like in the parts that are hidden like on this side of her thigh is it just like this or is there you know some asymmetrical detail uh good question that that stuff usually comes after this step and I am sort of over designing a gun that will barely be seen but um just to make her into a cool space Warrior um yeah and then you know what I always am so focused on the costume that I kind of overlook the face the like person part of this and hair is is kind of its own shape design challenge one of the things I love about character design is how powerful changing the shape of hair can be and it's because it's like you're redesigning a person's face you are changing the shape relationships of her head just by making these few shapes um it's probably why just we as a species kind of fuss over our own hair so much is because it it changes your whole your whole vibe your whole design of how you look yet another place to kind of go shopping for cool references find some cool hairstyle I have gotten just way addicted to like that sort of a shaved on the side of the head but but cool and blowing in the wind for futuristic stuff but I I should probably be more creative and Branch out but this is kind of my my comfort zone for this stuff maybe give her like a a braid or something and while wind and movement are cool that might be overdoing it a little Hardy related to this a bit um how does this workflow change do you do fantasy concept artwork flow and if you do are there differences in workflow between design fantasy and sci-fi designs oh um no not really genre wise I would approach this the exact same way regardless of genre um it could really be be anything um it's kind of the same set of challenges really and the same things that we have to figure out and um we still have to get the you know same order of priorities I think um getting that mood and and story that we want to tell really nailed down uh then figuring out shapes and and going from there um if this had been a steampunk or a Fantasy character I think it would have gone virtually identically or that's that's certainly the idea good question yeah uh that's the best part about this it's it's genre it's Universal even for subjects if we're designing characters the same way we designed spaceships you know that's versatility cool maybe something like that um hair is another thing it's like a rabbit hole because it it has such outsized effect on just how she reads you know her whole vibe is changed completely between like bald versus just some kind of a look um in fact it's one of my favorite ways to show clients like you know if they want to see multiple looks it's so easy to just show multiple hairstyles and it completely changes how the character Vibes but it takes incredibly little time um so there we go we go very uh close cropped which actually I think she looks almost more sci-fi bald or like with really short hair um it's cool because it's not something you see every day you know in our world so it it makes her seem a little bit otherworldly and like she's yeah maybe there's some conflict that she's a part of so this very like no-nonsense military style haircut we can tell a bit of a story there really fun and and easy to iterate on and just to wrap this one up it's just if I add like I can't get enough of that little war paint things again it's like a way to add contrast you know asymmetry knock things out of balance a little bit and it just looks cool um cool that's probably going to sort of wrap it up for the demo part of this um two pretty varied things and I think more or less on par with uh with these others that I worked on just to kind of show you guys these others that I made for the thumbnail um works for environments it works for creatures it lets you really develop like nice energetic curves to your monster poses or um let's see we had this little like Ram thing and it's in its babies um it's really great for that so I would really encourage you guys to to try this it's something that will feel a little out of the comfort zone especially for all of us who started with line art um but if you can get over that and maybe start with some symmetry design stuff that just feels like it works like magic I think you're going to really feel the power of this and as a working professional this is just gold for how efficient it is how much it kind of just looks like a lot of detail and carefully measured stuff when really so many of the marks on this ship are kind of just a single click of this eraser tool or you know just some some very simple shape stuff happening it makes it feel you know you can see an engine there you can see all this cool mechanical Clockwork uh so give it a shot I hope hope this was helpful and I hope kind of eye opening to some of you but um really glad we did this and and I I kind of dig the projects it came out of it fun stuff um any questions guys I'll uh take a few questions then maybe we'll get to our like fun giveaway part of everything and uh and we'll call it a day but um any other questions how about I'll let the uh the zoom crew um jump in any questions guys I have I have one actually real quick yeah um for the spaceship how how would you develop that further let's say the client picked it they liked it a lot would you then keep like doing line art and rendering to talk to you or would you do like a side view or or how would you how would you how do you move forward is what I'm wondering both of those actually so uh I would probably do line art next and that's when I have to kind of really get in there a little more and actually figure some of these things out more solidly that I kind of just blast it out there because it looked cool it was a nice shape relationship now you have to actually be like well how do these things fit together you know where these hoses go to how does this little engine cover thing you know does it move does it have hinges so all of that can be done with line art and that's usually what I would do to figure out next but you called it as well uh side views maybe a perspective view um then from there color tests just sort of colorizing these things to see if our you know our heroes spaceship is gold or gray or whatever um that's where I take it from there um a 3D software is would be huge you know for artists who can work that into their workflow um I think that that makes those next steps kind of easy but in my career I've sort of just worked up to a point where I can describe it in a way that's very easy to understand and then hand it off to that other team member good question gotcha cool thank you yeah I got a question as well Hardy yeah so on the flip side of things you know when these designs come together they look awesome taking the next steps what how about the opposite side of the spectrum if something's not working when do you identify that and what's your turnaround for that sort of situation yeah well so early in the spaceship demo of kind of right after we started I really like that first Little Wing shape that I came up with that's when I was like okay I've got it but I struggled with the middle and what I wanted to have going on down here like it wasn't working and what I like about this is you can just erase giant chunks of this and start over and it's so low cost like it it takes an extra five minutes and you know copy the layer you're working on if you like part of it and then just aggressively slash away at it get if there is a part of it you don't like just delete you know get it out of there kind of remove it from polluting the rest of your design because I think we all have to you know be self-critical in that way when we are designing something and I mean this is like pure shape design just does this arrangement of random shapes look pleasing to my eye when you're figuring something like that fundamental out I think you have to be really aggressive with just like no no yes you know absolutely not and just keep going and this is so efficient you know just designing these chunks of shape these masses or erasing them or stretching them that you can be really aggressive in that way if something isn't working you can just get rid of it and build off the part that was working um I I feel like I was able to to kind of turn it around at that point even though I felt like I was struggling in the middle and I think exactly what I did at that point was just made a very big eraser and like scraped away the middle and just started doing something else um is that kind of what you're talking about Randy that's exactly it and you know what else Tiffany made a comment um here in the in the zoom call about the stuck project in your courses which is exactly it as well so it's a good reminder thanks Tiffany um and I do want to say I love your approach to characters by the way because myself being not a very character guy um it does break that down so much easier so it's really cool to watch this oh it's awesome thanks man um just in general thinking about things in terms of shapes uh really changed the game for me and that's usually an eye-opener you know I can usually see pretty fast Improvement for concept artists when that starts to click line art is awesome I still use it and I still like I think it is absolutely a useful part of a concept artist toolkit and you're going to be using that a lot you know as a professional but if you can do this to it opens up a really efficient way to do this it also kind of starts helping you to see things in a slightly different way if you can start thinking of the visual World in terms of shapes just light shape next to dark shape starts to change the way you render too like with painting actually you know making things look real like uh you know organizing things into highlights and shadows it's uh it's really eye-opening and it's just fun I love how it feels like you're throwing a lump of clay onto your screen and just whittling away at it and stretching it uh really cool oh no oh thank and right shout out to the stock design exercise right in the academy we actually have this exercise where I give you a sheet of designs that are deliberately something isn't working with them they're just kind of stuck and it's up to students to unstuck them based on all of these shape design principles that that we learn um in fact I will sort of use that as my super smooth segue into uh talking about the academy we um have our spring session starting next week so enrollment is closing for that soon um we have a few I think a handful of scholarship seats left available that will take 25 percent off so if anybody is thinking about jumping into this uh this Academy session definitely go to this link I think I'll ask Shawn or Celine to to post that if you want to apply for a scholarship seats are limited there but I always love uh you know to see applicants to review portfolios and I will get back to you with with a loom video kind of um checking out your portfolio so I would encourage you guys to do that if you're considering the academy um go ahead and jump in because seats are are limited and we start a week from tomorrow it's a really cool group too I always get really attached to to these groups the the current one is exceptionally awesome and I'm really excited about the the artists we've assembled for the session ahead so it's a really cool alumni uh uh Community as well a lot of friendly faces in the audience here so uh I would encourage you guys to check that out if you are thinking about it come work with me let's let's learn how to make concept art kind of demystified and make your work hirable and you know authentically valuable to an art director that's the whole idea um other okay yeah the giveaway of the day is we have made a coupon code for anybody to use that is it takes 70 off of all of our project kits uh the code is like kits for 10 because I think it makes them just under 10 bucks or something if you guys haven't checked these out these are awesome they're kind of just quick uh one-off projects I'm just kind of trying to release another one each month we have like a cyberpunk cityscape a character design and we just released this awesome robot kind of a drone design so I'm trying to do sort of a different subject every time it's a full tutorial it's every brush that I use it's things like custom shapes and templates for poses things like that so everything in the box kind of gives you everything you need to know to get a really cool portfolio piece pick up some new tricks of the trade and they're just a nice way to sort of dip a toe into our whole Learning Community here so uh check those out take advantage of that coupon code if you want to and um and that is uh that is our our giveaway so hope you guys take advantage um maybe we'll kind of uh wrap it up at that point but I I really appreciate everybody showing up today it was a a really fun demo great questions and I think uh I think our projects came out pretty well so I hope this is really eye-opening for you guys um if you have any questions about the academy uh or those scholarship seats that are remaining just reach out to somebody at our our team uh office at digitalpaintingstudio.com and we'll get back to you and uh just a reminder class begins for the next session next Thursday and we'll be closing enrollment soon so um so jump in and grab a seat awesome uh great being together guys thanks for showing up and I hope you like this and I will see you next time take care everybody

Channel: Hardy Fowler - Digital Painting Studio

Views: 33,841

Keywords: Concept Art, Digital Painting, Hardy Fowler, Game Design, Concept Art Portfolio, Concept Art Career

Id: rgqM156aRxY

Length: 71min 1sec (4261 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 15 2023