Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Day 7 - Learning manga style

 source: http://www.mangatutorials.com/

 

Wheel Basics


Wheel with White BackgroundBasics
The color wheel is comprised of main colors (on the outer ring): red, purple, blue, green, yellow, and orange. The inner ring are pastel versions of the main colors. If there was a third outer ring, it would be a darker shade.

The colors orange, red, and yellow are known as the warm colors. These colors are bright, cheerful, and are associated with anything hot which is why they are aptly called warm colors.
Purple, blue, and green, on the other hand are the cool colors. These three colors are are often used in shadows among other things which is why they are called cool colors.
Terms
Some useful terms that you should familiarize yourself with:

Hue
– A pure color; the color itself (red, yellow, blue, etc.)
Intensity – refers to the brightness of a color. In order to lower a colors intensity(dull down), add a small amount of its complement; its opposite color(more about complements later). For example, to dull down red, add a bit of green. If equal amounts of red and green are mixed, the color becomes brown not a dulled down red.
Value – refers to the lightness or darkness of a color. For example, to lighten a color add white.
Primary Colors – red, yellow, and blue. They are the basic colors that make up all the other colors of the color wheel. For example, if you mix red and yellow – you get the secondary color: orange. Mix red and blue – you get purple. Mix blue and yellow- you get green. And from there you can create tertiary colors like turquoise (a blue green color) or fuschia (a red purple color).
Secondary Colors – orange, violet, and green. These are made mixing any of the primary colors as explained above.
Tertiary Colors – Colors made by mixing a primary and its secondary color.
Neutral Colors – when equal amounts of two complementary colors are used, a neutral grey or brown is made.
Wheel with Black BackgroundUsing the Colors
Colors adjacent to each other are called Analogous Colors. These colors are beside each other in the color wheel such as red and orange, green and yellow, green and blue, blue and purple, etc.
Colors across from each other are called Complementary Colors. Colors such as purple and yellow, green and red (x-mas colors!), and blue and orange can be matched together.
If you try to match colors that are not Complementary or Analogous, they do not fit together as well. Try to stick to using complimentary and analogous colors as much as possible.
If you want to use other color coordination besides the one’s mentioned, you may do so but you might have to take up a bit of time mixing and matching.
The Other Color Wheel: CMY
The color wheel described above is the traditional color wheel where the main colors are grouped based on the classic methods of mixing color through paints. These are RGB (red, green, blue). With the advant of computers and printing, a new color wheel emerged called CMY (cyan, magenta, yellow) color wheel as seen on the right.
So, which one should you use? Either one is usable though most people tend to favor RGB in general over CMY.
Tips
1. When using color, you have to consider other colors as well. For example, if you use a white background as the colorwheel above right, the colors in the wheel look brighter whereas the colors with the black background above look darker. Colors take on the “effect” of the color surrounding it!
Color balance example 2. When you create a character, your choice of color will make the character look either a good guy or a bad guy. Good guys usually have “lighter” color clothing as opposed to bad guys which have “darker” shades of color. This does not mean that you have to give your good guy character’s all pastel colors — what it means, for example, is that if a good guy has a blue shirt then as a bad guy the shirt color will be blue also but in a darker shade.
3. Look at the composition of the colors in a picture. Try to achieve balance. Take this example here to the left. When I colored this guy, the orange stood out a lot. I mean a lot!! To dull down the orange I used a dark blue background – orange’s complementary color. That is balance. Try to consider it when you color your drawings or other images.

source: http://www.mangatutorials.com/

 

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Monday, November 5, 2012

Day 6 - Using brushes for blending

Day 6 -Using brushes for shading and color



And my result after this movie


pencil



used basic air brush opacity 20%







After using texture with overlay mode
with: dog hair texture download here

Thank for reading and hope you enjoy this.


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Thursday, November 1, 2012

Day 5 - Reading 2D Game Art

2D Game Art For Programmers - Part 1

source: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ChrisHildenbrand/20111015/8669/2D_Game_Art_for_Programmers__part_1.phps

Introduction:

Creating your own art work is a necessity for most independent developers. Due to the budget restraints or in a lot of cases the complete lack of a budget a lot of young indie game developer can't afford to hire an artist or buy art assets.

With the help of free software like gimp, inkscape, truespace, daz studio and vue pioneer (just to mention a few) combined with a basic understanding of art creation pretty much anyone can create impressive and professional looking results.

I will try to start with some basic ideas and exercises to improve this kind of understanding. All of the examples will be based on free software. The workflow will be similar if you work with different software like Adobe Illustrator, Adobe PhotoShop, CorelDraw or others. I will try to mention the different approaches for those software packages. With the vast variety of software available at the moment and the sheer endless amount of our art creation tools and techniques it is impossible to cover everything but I will try to keep my examples basic enough to work with the software of your choice.

Let me start by clarifying some common believes when it comes to creating game at.

"I need expensive software tools to create truly professional game art."
No, you don't! There is a huge amount of free tools available that offer a true alternative. Gimp is one of the most well-known examples in the 2D realm as well as Blender in 3D field.
For the full time game artist upgrading your tools to ' industry standards' makes sense. Especially when collaborating with others using standard file format makes sharing and exchanging art a lot easier.

"Buying an expensive tool will automatically create better art."
No, it won't. It's always the artist creating the art that makes it great. Given the simplest tools like pen and paper a good artist can still create stunning pieces, while the most sophisticated tools still need a good artist to create something special.

"I can't do art. I can't even draw a stick figure."

Yes, you can. This is where modern computers to come in and allow you to create good game art without having a graphic arts degree.

"My game is good as it is. I don't need art."
Yes, you do. The independent game market is getting larger and larger and is attracting a lot more attention than it used to a few years back. In order to stand out your game should be the whole deal - have a great game play as well as rewarding and consistent visuals and matching sound and music.


Common hurdles

High Expectations:
One of the main problems facing independent developers are the expectations they have themselves. For single developers or small studios it is close to impossible to create AAA games match the quality of big studios. You should try and aim for the stars. Making games is all about that. Do the best you can and constantly push your limits and improve your skills...
but thinking realistically and adjusting your expectations to your abilities and your budget is a big step towards creating the best game you can create.

Defining a theme:
A lot of the time game creation happens with a spark. We have an idea of how the game playing might work and start creating. Creating very concrete in game art in the early stages of development can often lead to problems as the game evolves during development.
It usually helps to create a working game engine/ core gameplay before starting on the actual art work. Once you know how the game plays it's a lot easier to find a visual theme that encompasses the whole game.

Consistency:
Creating a consistent look and feel is a key element in creating a good gaming experience. It starts with the icon, the splash screen and goes all the way through to the game over screen. The most common mistakes are:
- the overuse of fonts - stick to 2 or 3 for the whole game UI [unless the font is used in images as lettering for shops/ packaging/ etc.]
- drastic changes in light and contrast - keep screens on a similar level - you can progress through the colour realm - usually starting out less colourful and getting more colourful for boss/ epic scenes
- photoshop effects - they are fun but a lot of 'artist' think the more you use the better the image will be... My suggestion is limit your use of fx to a few and keep reusing and variating them
- lighting - look at your screens and imagine the light sources needed to create the highlights, shadows of your ingame/ ui elements... It's scary how often you find lights being randomly used for objects that appear on the same screen

Losing focus:
It is only easy to get carried away with your art work as well as game play or coding. We all tend to focus on those elements we like to do while neglecting those we don't. A good example is generally the menu system/ UI. These usually are implemented at a late stage in the development with motivation at a low point. Yet they are one of the first things the player gets to see and they can greatly define the look and feel of the game. 


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