A Suite of Books: Duality
Volume VII
Swordsman
A Suite of Books: Duality
Volume VII Swordsman Shuren Dong
Copyright © 2023 by Katherine Cavanaugh
A Suite of Books: Duality Volume V We Are a Wanderful World
All rights reserved. No part of this book can be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without permission.
Cavanaugh Studio Printed by Lulu Press Inc.
Published by
Vol. I
Vol. II
Vol. III
Vol. IV
Vol. V
Vol. VI
Vol. VII
Vol. VIII
Vol. IX
Vol. X
Vol. XI
Vol. XII
Vol. XIII
Vol. XIV
Vol. XV
Vol. XVI
Vol. XVII
Vol. XVIII
Vol. XIX
Vol. XX
Vol. XXI
A Suite of Books: Duality
Julie Ammon
Emma Ballerini
Liliana Bauman
Kai Brennan
Katherine Cavanaugh
Matthew Dembiczak
Shuren Dong
Maddison Fuller
Nelson Fulton Fernandez
Avery Gabavics
Abdiel Gonzalez
Klarissa Hillegass
Hailey Hollenbeck
Dikchhaya Karki
Jessica Keefer
Chenqian Leng
Aspen Littlejohn
Katie Lorine
Pam Martinez
Connor Morschella
Matthew Rankin
Illusions Illuminated
Cravings
Morphology of the Phoenix
Extermination
We Are a Wanderful World
Reverie
Swordsman DreamCatcher Stargaze
From Pikachu to Paycheck
Scenes in the Mind
Heart Eyes
Star Wanderer
Physical Existence
Fourth Boyfriend
An Astronaut’s Confession
Two Worlds, One Self
All of Our Wildest Dreams
The Grand Scheme of Things
From Chance to Change
Nora and Via
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Vol. XXII
Vol. XXIII
Vol. XXIV
Vol. XXV
Vol. XXVI
Vol. XXVII
Vol. XXVIII
A Suite of Books: Duality
Kaitlyn Reynolds
Kira Smith
Taylor Smith
Marisa Sparrow
Liam Vaughan
Yiming Zhao
Benjamin Zock
Perception of Beauty
Figures of Everything
Deception
OLYMPUS MONS
Finding a New World
Gradient
Wavering Purpose
Foreword
In 2018, I introduced a book authoring and publishing project for the Realization Studio course I teach at Penn State. This course is part of a prescribed sequence of studio courses for Digital Arts and Media Design majors in their second year of study in the program.
The Suite of Books project derives its name from the traditional practice of collaboratively editioned and published print suites often created by artists and printmakers where “suite” is generally defined as a series of paintings, drawings or prints linked by a common theme.
Carlos Rosas, Professor Digital Arts and Media Design School of Visual Arts
Penn State
In 2023, I joined Carlos in guiding students in the creation process of the book authoring. After a few brainstorming sessions, the class picked the theme of Dream/Reality, with the title Duality as a link to this series of book volumes.
Andrew Hieronymi, Associate Professor Digital Arts and Media Design School of Visual Arts
Penn State
April 2023
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A Suite of Books: Duality
Volume VII Swordsman
This book is mainly offered to people who want to have a deeper understanding of digital painting. I have broken down one of my paintings into many small steps and provided theoretical knowledge for each step as a way to help people have a more systematic painting process.
I use a character design of Yasuo from DragonFly Studio as the concept of the character, starting from the human body structure, to line drawing, costume, stylization, black and white volume shaping, and finally lighting, coloring, and background, hoping to help people who want to go deeper into digital painting through a
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Introduction
Human body structure
In our work, we often use a simplified human body, that is to say, when we start to draft, we can divide the human body into a few simple large geometry to remember, so as to facilitate the subsequent stylization, in the complex perspective can also be drawn out the human body.
The widest in the shoulders of men, the widest in the hips of women
The rhythm of the human body: chin tucked, chest up, belly tucked, buttocks puckered. The thighs have a slight tendency to move forward, and the calves are reversed.
The rhythm of the body, and the body's center of gravity
The most taboo thing is to draw the human body too evenly, standing posture must stand out of the character, stand more "vivid". Just like posing, vivid standing posture may be different head and body orientation, the height of the shoulders are different, followed by the body's center of gravity is not in the middle.
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It is important to see the shape of the entire silhouette first, not how the muscles are going. The reading of the silhouette is written in the human genes, so whether the silhouette is good or not is the first impression of humans. Sometimes there can't be no negative shape at all ah, if the character itself is cool to stand there, then refine the negative shape.
One layer each for the head and body, then merge Men’s shoulders can be drawn a little exaggerated ah. Deltoid, biceps brachii, brachioradialis.Create a new layer to draw the legs, noting that there is a gap between the roots of the thighs.First set the knee (between 5,6), then set the center of gravity.(Note the stylization of the legs, the height of the nodes)
We can fix the middle line of the chest, to the abdomen, navel, back, humerus, (anyway, where to look unpleasant to repair a repair, liquefaction or something all use, the better)
Then you can enter the details, turn down the transparency.
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Character line drawing
When drawing the line drawing, you should pay attention to the following points
1. The beauty of the line (the more output the more skilled)
2. Some places need a little design (design experience)
3. Line thinning (precision will be higher, in order to facilitate the subsequent on the tone)
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Black and white tone I think is a particularly deep part, black and white tone can see a person's skills, and this skill definitely can not be practiced in a day or two.
JiHun Lee is the most solid painter in terms of tone in my opinion, bar none. He is a painter who especially likes tones. I especially like to come to him to see things because I learn something every time. The painting is just as solid as the 3d modeling.
Now we do this part, in fact, is the most difficult, if this part you can follow down, then the later coloring and lighting is basically no problem. Because if you do not up the sense of volume shaping, there is no thick coating, the socalled sense of atmosphere, weight, texture, all built on the "sense of volume" and "light and shadow", if you are the worst of these two points, do not mention the cool feeling.
Masking is a particularly tedious process, so I won't take up valuable time here. Here are a few points you should pay attention to.
1. first turn the line into a positive overlay (so that the lines do not disappear)
2. according to the object layers and material relations, do the mask layer before and after (some rigorous, even the cloak can be divided into two sides of the turn)
3. do not have to completely and line fitting (because the refinement will be adjusted later, so it does not matter)
Volume 12
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Lighting the Character
The importance of light
- Focusing the eye on where we want the viewer to look. If there are too many bright places in the picture, the human eye will look everywhere. It is common to have 1 or 2 visual centers of gravity in illustration, and many people fail to do this because they lose a sense of control. The more contrasting places in the picture, the worse your picture will look!
- Give the image to the attitude and atmosphere, most of the sense of atmosphere is also from the light
- Gives the picture realism and volume (helps cut out extra nice shapes)lose a sense of control. The more contrasting places in the picture, the worse your picture will look!
Direct Light
Ambient Light
Back Light
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Attenuation of light
One situation is deliberate on the part of the painter, and the other is that there are a lot of particles in the air, both of which can make the light attenuate badly. When painting a little to consider the attenuation of light, in order to have a sense of seniority.
In these two Rembrandts, there is a clear decay in tone, which gives a sense of volume to the visual center of gravity, the colors are cool and warm, and the picture gets flatter as it goes around, which makes for a particularly strong sense of seniority.
Here is a very good example, the further down the flatter, there is smoke in the air, which is a use of light attenuation.
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Four layers to handle the light part
3. color lightening (generally used to “refresh”, the part of the light has been collected to continue to strengthen some sense of light, color lightening do not cut to any object inside, only as a normal layer, there will be this halo)
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One of the tests of light is the sensitivity to shape, and the second is the test of the core basic skills of sketching. What kind of shape light will cut an object into actually depends on the shape of the object, so we have to see it
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Color theory and coloring methods
Coloring can generally be done with three layers
1. Stacked color layer (the main force, easier to get the effect, not easy to change the tone)
2. color lightening (can change the tone as well as saturation)
3. positive overlay (suitable for use in bright tones on the case of no color)
However, there are always exceptions to everything, and the following three layers may also be used when coloring.
Soft light: usually we want to change the character skin tone, with color lightening, if the original tone is very bright, it is easy to draw burst, so will use soft light layer.
Color: adjust the saturation, let’s say if you think the saturation of the whole cloak is too high, that is, too colorful, I will use the color layer pressure, it is very simple to choose the color into black and white, and then a painting is not removed, and then the opacity is adjusted down a bit, so that the entire saturation is not down.
Division: This layer is very strange, are reversed, if you choose the red painted up is green, if you choose the bright tone painted up is dark, so you want to choose what color on the color ring to choose the right color. This way the metal comes out at once, much better than the effect of color fading on the metal, color fading is not very good for the dark.
Common problem 1: The color does not go on Solution：The tone is too bright, can not eat into the color (with positive film overlay color)
Common problem 2: The color is too dirty Solution: the overall color saturation is too low, the picture can not find a higher saturation of the color, especially the middle tone of the part (color saturation is too low in the whole image)
Color harmony: 3 kinds (do not need to study so much, basically not used)
1. monochrome (sketch)
2. pair of split colors (one color and his entire opposite tone, but the angle can not be too far apart)
3. Adjacent colors (comfort is particularly strong!)
Practical application
1. let only a small amount of bright colors exist in the picture (so that the colors will be conservative and not ugly)
2. open up the grouping of light and dark in the picture
3. open up the contrast between warm and cold in the picture
4. use color Balance or overlay to do the environment color (adjust the layer color balance and overlay)
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If you want to draw the material well, you only need to consider the following three points: reflectivity, shape, and surface texture.
Reflectance: The reflectance of different objects is different, reflected in the picture is the difference between the tone is large or small. For example, there is a very strong range of 0 ~ 10, on the contrary, the fabric will be much smaller.
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Material
Shape: Each material has its own inherent shape law, once you draw the shape, even if you do not consider the reflectivity, you can see what it is like.
Surface texture: Many painters do one thing, which is to paste photos into it, just like matpainting in movies, which is fast and efficient. But in fact, inside the painting, this is to be taken into account at the end, even without doing it, you can draw this material well, all expressed through the reflectivity and shape, so that it is the best. Because our real-life material is too limited, too eye-catching, it will make your character look overly real, and this is sometimes absolutely bad. Too real instead will have the feeling of stitching, if you do not have to paste the material to express it, the texture brought by the material can play the role of the finishing touch, people should use it as a magic, do not start to paste. There is help to paste, no help not to paste, definitely not a must have item, but the material and reflectivity is missing.
Colorize the principle, starting with the largest area of visual focus
1. skin layer, copy it to leave a bottom, ctrl + U, the colorize point open
2. First select a Hue, and then from the lowest saturation upwards (directly look at the highest saturation eyes will be shaken, resulting in you want to get very high saturation), and finally get black and white (try to fine-tune, in order to reduce the destruction of the previous sketch relationship)
(Tip: first suck a color with a straw, point colorize is directly the same color) (feel the wrong place can be adjusted back and forth)
(Look at the color when the eyes “microphone”)
(The darker the place to the blue bias, the brighter the place to the green bias, work experience)
(hair can not be pure black and white, the picture must not appear pure black or pure white so that the color will look particularly dull)
(Reflection: the relationship between light and dark places should be divided into small objects before)
(no layered places first set a correct color temperature, and then saturation pulled very low, then you have to draw ah, cut overlay layer, select a hard brush ‘good with hard edge’, select a color to add)
(saturation is a little lower, it does not matter, you can add to the back, but the high reduction will be more trouble)
(If a character’s design does not have a jump color, then you have to find the richness of the color inside)
Then we add the background...
