Preliminary Arm Shading. 10/15/08

I started shading the arm a bit so I could get an idea of how the light hits it.How I’d like the lighting to come from is to from behind the left of Jarhead’s face and from above. It is by all means not the final product, but it’s to get me started.

I have a lo-ve-ly bunch of .. uh .. bu-bu-lets. 10/15/08

Well, they’re not quite as “lovely” as I hoped, but this will suffice for now. These bullets will have to go through a bit more cleaning and detailing done later.

16 – A (crappy) guideline for bullets. 10/14/08

I didn’t get as very far today with the picture since I was working on a bit of music, but I tried to start giving myself more concrete guides on what to do with the remaining bullets. As I mentioned earlier, I’m having a lot of trouble with the bullets in making them 3D, and now making them actually flow along a curve. I drew a very, rough pink curve on both ends to help me establish my guides. There’s a portion in the bullet strap that I want to look “scrunched up” to give more depth, hence the transition to smaller bullets where I last left off, but it’s becoming more cumbersome than it’s probably worth.

I just can’t wait to get the bullets done..

15 – The shaded bullet set. 10/13/08

Well, it was much easier to shade this time around. I like how they ended up looking a bit more 3D than the first three bullets I made. There’s a lot of cleaning up to do with it, but I’ll do most of the clean up work once I get the rest of the bullets done and make them blend a bit more with the vest.

14 – Another take on bullets. 10/13/08

One thing that had been giving me problems with doing the top three was the inconsistencies I had with each of them in terms of perspective and shading. So instead of working on each bullet individually I decided to try another approach by looking at the bigger picture and working on a set at a time. First, of course, is painting the base but it was hard to first visualize the 3D bullets into 2D, as well as bullet tilting on different planes. Though, I would say that looking at a set of bullets helped.

I’m not too happy with the end result of my base painting, but I decided to move on. I also changed the color of the vest to a more gray-ish tone.

13 – “I’ve yet to see someone who can outsmart bullet.” 10/12/08

If there’s anything that I wasn’t looking forward to in this picture, it would be working on the bullets. It was something that I foresaw would take me the longest time, considering that in shading the large cannisters drapped on the shoulders in Meet PANDA | Pyrrhus took me about 45-60 min for one. Granted, I know that it takes me a long time because I’m still learning, but it’s still a pain in the butt and is a bit monotonous as compared to drawing/shading a face.

The picture that I’m referencing for the bullets is the picture of the Heavy holding Natascha. What threw me off with the bullets is the small detail with each of them (the “wrapper” around it), which was something I hadn’t taken notice before until now. Also, I’m having a bit of trouble with shading the bullets properly due to their shape. Hopefully this is something I can fix as I continue working at it because it isn’t as intuitive as I initially thought it would be.

12 – See My Vest. 10/12/08

I continued where I left off from the collar by adding the trim to the vest and adjusting the color slightly using a combination of Hue/Saturation and Brightness/Contrast. I’m still not sure what color the vest and pants truly are in the game since, depending on which screenshots you look at, it can be either gray or brown in hue. I’m starting to lean towards the idea that they’re gray, and that the brown colors come from reflections in the game environment, so that’s what I have going on with Jarhead’s vest right now — a combination of gray and brown. As the picture starts getting closer to completion, I’d like to add more to the environment this time, compared to Meet PANDA | Pyrrhus. Maybe the blue aura around him from a Medigun? We’ll see.

No drawing only petting. 10/8/08

This isn’t really an update to Jared’s picture, but I came home to Mochi flopping on the floor, and as I walked towards my room she zoomed right past me and immediately laid right down on top of the tablet. I’m assuming she knew what I was going to do right when I came home.

10/8/08, 10:22pm: Incidentally, I hurt a joint in my hand today. I hope it heals tomorrow.

11 – Collar. 10/7/2008

It’s been a while since I last updated, but then again I’ve had a pretty eventful weekend. Now that things are slowing down again I can get back to this picture. I’m starting with Jarhead’s head down, so I started on the collar. I worked a bit on the blending and lighting, and will have to start cleaning it up with some detailing later.

Oh, and I’ll also have to get my layers under control. It’s getting a bit disorganized now.

10 – Sean’s Layer. 10/3/08

Sean wanted to try out the tablet! Jarhead doesn’t have a parrot on his shoulder, though — he has a Tux. :)

09 – Color Me Jarhead. 10/3/08

I colored the rest of the body with a dark color so that I can start shading it. I had to constantly refer to the Heavy Update site, and even up to now I’m still not quite sure what color the Heavy’s pants are. They look gray, but on my TF2 wallpaper they look black, and in some in-game screenshots they look brown. Also, I had to fix some shaping with the gun. It’s a bit hard to tell on the above screenshot, but there are some differences from the sketch. I’m also getting to the point where I’m thinking about a background, and I’m thinking that perhaps an “action screenshot” would be good, whether it be from the game itself or from the TF2 Meet The videos.

Well, it looks like I’m going to have to play some TF2 to figure out the (perceived?) issue with the pants, spectate to get some good screenshots, and snipe a few heads. “Thanks fer standin’ still, wanker!”

10/2/08

No update today. I’m pretty exhausted due to work and from my travel to Kansas City. I’ll continue tomorrow though.

08 – Color Manipulation II. 10/1/08

After manipulating the color settings, brightness/contrast, and levels, I finally came across a more natural skin color. I added a bit more details here and there, and I think the head is done. You can kind of see the slight differences between the sketch and the painting when the sketch is toggled on/off. The shadows in the chin area are a bit blue-ish as a result of playing with the colors, but I’ll fix that later when I start the body tomorrow.

07 – An earnest Van-Dyke. 10/1/08

Something seemed a miss when I looked at the picture, until I realized that I was missing the Van Dyke. Instead of messing around like I did last time, I added an earnest Van Dyke to Jarhead’s chin. It’s much fuller than it is on the reference picture that I’m using for him. (And the reference picture I have is a bit misleading too, since I guess Jarhead shaved a few days before I took it.)

06 – Color Manipulation I. 10/1/08

The plan for today was to 1) add a full head of hair on Jarhead and 2) fix the coloring. I planned on fixing the coloring by fiddling around with the hue/saturation features, but I wasn’t expecting it to be so hard as well as time consuming. I started doubting whether or not starting with dark colors was the right thing for me to do.

05 – Some Detailing. 9/30/08

Continued on with detailing. I fixed some proportions that I had with the cheek as well as the mouth. But this is as far as I’ll go tonight. The chin is a bit sloppy with the highlighting, but it’ll be covered later anyway with scruff.

And on an unrelated note (sort of), if you’re curious about my work area (read: makeshift art “studio”) you can check it out here.

04 – Eyes & Mouth. 9/30/08

I started working on the eyes and the mouth today. I’m at the point now where I can “let go” of the sketch layer so I can focus on shading/highlighting/blending. The picture above is a comparison with the sketch layer on and with it off. At the moment, Jarhead looks quite tan, but I think it’s best to start out dark especially with not having a background in mind yet. When I get to the point of having a background done, adjusting the colors later will be easy. I also changed my skin color swatch.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtz-3M0iyQE]

03 – Optional Van-Dyke layer. 9/29/08

It came to my attention that I’m not sure whether or not Jarhead has a Van-Dyke or not. From the reference picture I have of him, I can’t quite tell. For now, I have a layer which I can toggle on/off for now.

02 – Preliminary Base Painting. 9/29/08

I changed the sketch layers to an opacity of 40% and created a layer, “Base”. A quick Google image search on “skin palette” saved me what took me hours to figure out when making PANDA | Pyrrhus. The skin pallete I found, and am tentatively using, can be found here. At the moment, I’m kind of playing around with colors and seeing what I like in terms of lighting.

01 – Sketch. 9/29/08

I start out with a rough sketch. I’m usually off by a bit here and there with my sketches, but somehow the proportions fix themselves as I go along. Though, the thought bubble and the sandvich won’t be on the final version. In actuality, Jarhead doesn’t like the sandvich very much…