Guest posts by Cryotube

1

Card Art / Re: Impending - Shard Golem Card Art

« on: March 11, 2012, 08:42:29 pm »

You mentioned this project is a lot about learning and practicing; let me know if you want critical feedback.

Thanks vrt, it'd be great if you could provide any feedback at all to help me improve 

2

Card Art / Re: Impending - Shard Golem Card Art

« on: March 10, 2012, 11:42:31 pm »

nice video- would you be willing to briefly outline the techniques/tools you used within photoshop? it all kinda went by in a blur

Updated with process in the main post, glad you liked it.

3

Card Art / Re: Impending - Shard Golem Card Art

« on: March 10, 2012, 06:23:51 pm »

Badass.

Again, great work! (And just wondering - do you use a tablet?)

Yeah, I have to use a tablet - I specifically use a Wacom Intuos 4, though the starting tablet I had was a Bamboo Fun.

4

Card Art / Impending - Shard Golem Card Art

« on: March 10, 2012, 06:00:33 pm »

The second illustration for Elements -
The Shard Golem, to be summoned by combining shards using the Shard of *Integrity.

   Shard Golem


Process is actually available this time:

Steps taken:
Original image size was ~1200 px tall

Tools used:
Brush set to Shape Dynamics and Other Dynamics - Opacity control
Color picker
Eyedropper

1. Shade out main silhouette of the figure. In the video, switched from head-on view to lower-eye view (though it switched back as I was painting it)
2. Add lighting in the form of whites and greys - Comes with experience, but you have to be able to check to see if the image 'reads' correctly - If you can't tell the character apart from the background, you have a problem. I fixed this by just having a strong backlight to the golem, while having a strong internal light coming from his chest and hands.
3. Wash over color using an new adjustments layer (I used a layer set to soft light, then compressed). Some basic color theory is necessary, I usually use a semi-monochromatic (in this case, blues and purples for cool colors) but it may have worked better with a slight split complementary color addition (i.e. yellow or red if the main subject is blue).
4. Paint everything while zoomed out (Macroscopic style). The reason why you do this is because it's how your eye works - nobody's mind sees thing in ultra-high resolution, so you don't have to paint with your screen zoomed so much you only see 20 pixels at once. In fact, not only would that take forever, it'd actually look terrible once you finished since your mind isn't used to seeing so much detail in one spot. (like white noise)
5. Res up when necessary (change image size to ~4000 px tall at 300 dpi) when you feel that the painting is 'done' at the macroscopic level
6. Paint in details, background - in this case, I just added seams in the stone as well as arcs of lightning

This one took less time than the Seraph, thanks to the lack of wings. The number of corrections needed to be made on the body was really high, since it was difficult to make the body look 'correct' with random stones everywhere.
Anyway, hope you enjoy!

5

Card Art / Re: Card art for impending card: Seraph

« on: February 27, 2012, 03:55:49 am »

Holy-  And I thought your art could not get any better.

My artwork's been improving by leaps and bounds, especially in the past few months (been practicing in ALL my free time.) However, it's still not at the level where I could secure myself a stable career just by freelancing - however, it's encouraging to know not all my effort has gone to waste.

Thanks for all the compliments, guys. I really appreciate them. 

6

Card Art / Card art for impending card: Seraph

« on: February 25, 2012, 11:48:13 pm »

Earlier this month, I made a gravity-themed card art and posted it here:
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,36482.0.html (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,36482.0.html)

One thing led to another, and I started making card art for Zanz directly.
This is the first illustration of the requested cards:

  Seraph


The first fire card to have strong light synergies.
Seraphim are the highest ranked angels, beings of pure light burning with undying flame.

Unfortunately, there's no process available this time since the recording was corrupted midway.
Hope you enjoy!

7

Card Art / Re: I made some Gravity card art. Please have a look!

« on: February 22, 2012, 09:25:34 pm »

Please someone show this art to Zanz. it will surely push him to do a card just for this art!

I'm actually making card art for Zanz now, so you'll probably be seeing a lot more of my art in-game.

8

Card Art / Re: I made some Gravity card art. Please have a look!

« on: February 11, 2012, 04:00:24 pm »

Very nice art I wish you make more that we can use for news cards, if you allow us to do that ?

Thanks to the positive response, I'll definitely be making more card art in the future!

9

Card Art / Re: I made some Gravity card art. Please have a look!

« on: February 10, 2012, 10:11:33 pm »

Cryotube, how much time did approximately took to draw this piece?
And also, do you have some suggestion for beginners that want to learn?

The piece took 2 hours - you can count the clock flying in the background. Beginners that want to learn digital painting should definitely have some foundation and understanding of artistic skill - I'm pretty much self-taught while looking at tutorials people had online.

By far the most useful tutorials I had available to me was Feng Zhu's online channel video series he started about a year ago - my skill has grown by leaps and bounds since practicing with Feng's tutorials in mind.
http://www.youtube.com/user/FZDSCHOOL?ob=0
*Edit: watch his videos in order, they make more sense that way

Other than that, just a ridiculous amount of practice (I've been doing this regularly for 4 years)

10

Card Art / I made some Gravity card art. Please have a look!

« on: February 09, 2012, 10:31:10 pm »

I'm new to this forum, having played the game but never discussing it.

Being a high school student, it's my final semester before graduating to university - I'm scrambling to build a portfolio that would land me into a good program after my interviews. I just happened to create a Gravity-themed card on a whim, thinking about how the Gravity deck didn't have any cards that were particularly 'heavy' other than Armagio.

 Behemoth Turtle        (name subject to change)



Painting process for those who are interested:

Edit: now with annotations
The turtle's crest powers its near impenetrable armor, but makes its shell extremely heavy. The turtle crawls over land, crushing and deforming everything in its wake.

Making the art, I didn't really think about what the card's abilities would be at all - I just thought it would look cool with a Gravity crest and Armagio-style armor.
Not sure if this was the appropriate place to post this, but any advice would be appreciated!