Workshops

Mathias Verhasselt
COUNTRY: France CLIENTS: Sega, Sony Ericsson, Microsoft, Warner Music Japan Mathias has been drawing for almost 24 years. He was introduced to digital art at a young age by drawing pixels with a mouse on early PCs, before he later discovered the tablet. mv.cgcommunity.com

CHARACTER SPEED PAINTING

he speed painting is a colour rough. Its very useful for creating moods, storyboards, or for proposing different ways to explore an illustration to a client. To achieve a sound workflow, its essential to be able to try and compare a lot of different moods and compositions before starting to paint a picture in detail and spending hours on it. Thus, the focus in this exercise is not on detailing or concept accuracy, but more on composition, light and atmosphere.

Photoshop

Create a speed painting, focusing on the mood, atmosphere, and depiction of a dynamic character with Mathias Verhasselt

DVD Assets
Photo by m4de.com

FILES: DVD1-5.psd FOLDERS: Full screenshots SOFTWARE: Photoshop CS2 (Demo)

In this tutorial Ill show you my own process for creating a colour rough from a couple of hours work. Here, as you can see in my picture above, Im designing a dark fantasy character. Its essential for this kind of work to pay attention to the light. If your light sources are correctly placed and you have a good idea of the volumes and planes of your subject, youll be able to make it solid with only a good silhouette and a few values, and a few details here and there to add some interest to the piece.

Speed painting is not an easy task. It requires a large visual library in your mind and a good understanding of lighting. I recommend that beginners make a lot of studies from life and photos, and try to understand how things work, before trying the exercise themselves. In this tutorial, Ill try to explain some of the concepts that you need to keep in mind while speed painting. The software used in this tutorial is Photoshop CS2, but the overall process can easily be used for other software.

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Quick technique Speed painting

should never make a subject brighter than its light source) and because compositionally it stands out from the background and looks menacing.

Add more definition

I add a bit more form, refining the silhouette of the character. You should be able to read everything in the silhouette by this step, such as tension, weight, movement, and so on. I also put some of the ambient light source on the top-facing planes of the character a cold tone coming from the patches of blue sky. This adds a bit of volume. Concerning the background, I define the clouds quickly with some soft brushes and add some elements reminiscent of a war setting: a banner, torches, and the like.

PRO SECRETS
Check values
To easily check the values/brightness of your image without the interference of colour (for checking that your atmospheric perspective is right, or that your shadow values are never brighter than your light values, for instance), create a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer (Layers>New Adjustment Layer>Hue/ Saturation) with -100 saturation on top of your layer stack, so that you can activate and deactivate it at will.

I start my speed paintings with a gradient between a dark (ground) and bright (sky) colour that will give me an idea of the lighting of the scene. You need to think about your light sources from the start. I had an idea of a dark piece with clouds and no sun. The only light would come from the patches of blue sky and some clouds diffusing the light from the unseen sun above them. I work with large round brushes, and refine that gradient with clouds and background forms. I also start working on a silhouette wielding two swords, which I keep dark because it shouldnt get a lot of light (you

Get the light right

ed Shift+Ctr l+C (PC) Shift+Cm nd+C (M Use this sh ac) ortcut to copy exac what you tly see on yo ur canvas not just w , hat you ha ve in your ac tive layer.

Copy me rg

By this step, all the key elements should already be there. Its all about silhouette, colour mood (the patch of sky, lit clouds, and torches), and a few details. I added some details on the character, such as defining the sliding-plate armour, mainly by giving the whole silhouette a jagged, hard-edged style, and defining the volume inside the silhouette with a few metallic highlights. For those highlights, I used a yellowish colour, imagining that in the sky above, there would be one very bright cloud. I also added some cold reflections on the upper facing planes, to remind of those blue patches of sky, and some orange highlights on the sides, to remind the viewer of the torches. Dont add highlights randomly though a few wellplaced, under-detailed highlights will look much better than a lot of detailed, wrongly placed highlights. You need to keep in mind the volume of your subject, and put those highlights where they should be reflected, keeping in mind the relative position of your light source to your subject.

Now for highlights

This stage mainly involves detailing the piece and adding more design into things. For a colour mood speed painting, working up to Step 3 can be enough. By this point, the picture has all the elements necessary to maintain a good grasp on the mood and composition of the piece. I mainly sculpted the character, using quick smaller brush strokes to add detail. Its all about refining the light and thinking how it affects each particular zone. If there are many armour plates in a zone, I just break the light I add on it, thinking of how the armour plates are organised. That way, you can quickly define a design without having to render everything. I also refine the background. Dont forget about atmospheric perspective when doing this, to keep the elements distinct. All the values in the background are lighter than the average values on my character, but they become darker as they get nearer to the foreground, in order to add depth.

Designs and details

Here I do the same as Step 4, just using smaller brushes. When you compare this step to Step 3, or even Step 2, you can see that the image doesnt change much in terms of mood and composition. This shows how important the first steps are, and how you can define a piece with just a few elements.

Use smaller brushes

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