Fan art Wallpaper - Naruto VS Sasuke Finished

Hi, its me again,
I've manage to complete my artwork, which I would say, this piece takes the shortest time compared to my other wallpapers. I'm experimenting few things, here, especially the water effects, the character shading and the sky.

You can download full size 1920 x 1080 by clicking the picture above.
Thanks

Fan art Wallpaper - Naruto VS Sasuke WIP 1

Hi,
I'm really fascinated by naruto fighting scene compared to Bleach. The fight look very detailed and full of action. I'm trying to capture the best moment from Naruto fighting scene, and this one are inspired from episode before Shippuden seasons.

I've updated their proportion and clothings to match them on Shippuden. So here it is, Naruto VS Sasuke. Its still work in progress, as you can see here the only thing that is done is the sky.

As you can see, there is a splash of water there, because in the episode in which I inspired of, they are fighting on a lake side below a high cliff, and they just came out from the water which they both being thrown down.

I'm experimenting different technique for the clouds, and I feel it works. I'll post more as I progress.

Comparison Wacom Intuos 3, Bamboo Pen & Touch and Genius Tablet

Hi,

As I stated in my last post, I'm currently attending a 3 month + training on Animation Pre-production. On the class, we were given the opportunity to use Wacom Bamboo Pen and Touch that is provided in the computer lab. We also were given permission to bring the tablet back home to do our assignments.

Three of my friends brings their own tablet, one of them bring Genius M609, the other M609X and Genius G-Pen 450.

Curious with the difference, I've asked permission from them to test all the tablets throughly in Photoshop, while also playing around the sensitivity using the tablet driver control panel. Of course I also tested the Wacom Bamboo Pen and Touch.

The specs for the tablets are below :

Wacom Intuos 3

1024 pressure sensitivity
Tablet resolution : 5080lpi.(line per inch)

Wacom Bamboo Pen and Touch
1024 pressure sensitivity
Tablet resolution :2540lpi

Genius tablet, M609 / X
1024 level of sensitivity
Tablet resolution :4000lpi
 

 Genius tablet, G Pen 450
1024 level of sensitivity
Tablet resolution :2000lpi

 The spec written makes Genius and Wacom seems on par, but there is more than that. What is the most important thing in tablet is how natural we feel when using these tablet to draw something digitally. We want the feel to be as close as traditional pen on paper feel.

Genius use battery on their digitizer pen while Wacom pen doesn't need any battery at all. This makes the pen on genius tablet a little bit bulky than wacom.

I test the tablet by drawing a few strokes in Photoshop.
First thing I notice  that Genius pen tip feels a little springy and spongy. Wacom Bamboo tips meanwhile feels solid and little bit hard, while Intuos feels just nice.


The tablet surface of both Genius pen feels like scratching on hard plastic. Wacom Intuos surface feels very smooth and a bit slippy. Bamboo surface feels just nice, like writing on paper.

Both Wacom Pen has dual sensors, bottom for normal pen tip while on top has a bigger pressure sensitive button for eraser. Both Genius Pen doesnt have that.

Wacom Bamboo Pen is shaped like natural ball point pen, with 2 sided single buttons that fits right onto our thumb.

Wacom Intuos3 Pen is cylinder shaped, longer than Bamboo Pen with rubber grip and 2 sided single buttons. The button is ergonomicly design to fit on the side of the thumb, but little bit loose fitting compared to Bamboo.

Genius G-Pen 450 Pen is closer to fountain pen shaped, with a handle to hang on our our shirt pocket. It also has 2 button, however the button doesnt fit onto my thumb perfectly.
Genius M609 Pen design is also like 450, but much bigger and bulky. The pen also have 2 button, also doesnt fit onto my thumb, it is place higher than my thumb when holding the pen in natural way.

The brush strokes produced on both Genius is quite good, with variety of strokes width as I play with my hand pressure. However, as the pen tilt 60 degree to 180 degree, the pen fails to register. The strokes that I draw snaps into pieces as the pen tilt. This is quite annoying as most people will never hold their pen at 90 degree straight. The problem can be repeated over and over when drawing a curved stroke, where the pen tilted as our hand rotates.

Both Wacom intuos and Bamboo doesnt have this problem. Intuos has a tilt sensor to simulate a natural brush bristle that has uneven surface at different angles, while Bamboo doesnt.


From my test, I have decided that I prefer Wacom tablets better than Genius. Genius is good, but Wacom is better. Wacom Pen feels much more natural in my hand than Genius Pen. The pen tilt issues on Genius pen annoy me the most, while I have no problem with Genius Pen pressure sensitivity.

I recommend Intuos series the most, with Bamboo Pen and Touch 2nd. If you want to buy a tablet with tight budget, I really suggest you try getting a second hand Wacom tablet instead of Genius.

Scenery background - Recreational Park

This is actually an artwork done in November 2010. It is based on a really nice recreational park, Taman Rakyat, Klang, Selangor, Malaysia. It was created as a background for an animation that I am working on. It takes 4 days to complete, done with Wacom in Photoshop.


The process are quite the same as my previous work, Inside a forest (I know its a lame name but who cares. haha..)

 I start with a simple sketch, and then I draw using Negative space technique, closely follows the reference photograph. Note that I do not trace the photograph at all.

 Then I paint the rock shape on the rock wall using basic paint bucket tool. Next I create a new layer on top of the rock layer and add a texture using brush tool. I then set the layer to clipping mask. Walla, the rock is now textured. Next I paint the dry leaves using plain brown. For the ground just side of the leaves, I use
plain brownish color and stroke a slightly dark brown horizantal lines over and over to simulate ground texture.

I enhance the rock wall with green random strokes and dark shadow to simulate dirtiness. For the bushes at the top of the rock wall, I paint a plain green for the base color.

I add a yellowish green on some leaves to simulate depth and the sun shines. I copied the line art layer on top of the color layer to darken the bushes. It also increase the sharpness and contrast of the bushes.

For the 3 steps above, I enhance the light and dark areas of the bushes, and paint some branches of some trees in the bushes

Just like the bushes on top of the rock wall, I paint brightest area of the leaves with yellowish green and dark green for the shadow area. I then copy the line art layer and paste it on top of the color layer.

For the cliff between the upper bushes and the bushes on top of the rock wall, I use soft painting technique, where I define the texture of the cliff using brush strokes. I start with yellowish brown as the base color. Then I use the color picker and choose slightly dark color to define the cliff texture. After that I choose slight brighter color than the base color to define the cliff contour that receive the sunlight.

Once done, I proceed with the forest on top of the cliff, behind the upper bush. I define the forest with soft painting technique too as I stick with my previous paint style where I use negative space drawing on for the foreground while the background I've used soft painting.

The trees on the forest are painted one by one for the first few, to make sure they are unique to each other and the details are clear. Then the far forest at the left of the canvas was done as a clump, because details are not clearly seen on such distant.

Then I paint on the sky. Its experimental so  I'll not cover the details here.
Hopefully anyone who read this can learn my digital painting technique that I use here. Any comments and questions are very welcomed.
Thanks for reading

Happy New Year 2011

Hi,
Happy New Year everyone.
Its already 2 month since my last post, but that doesn't mean I sit idle okay. I'm currently working on a personal project, which is a 2D animation, which is similar to japanese anime. The plans starts since last august as far as I can remember, but while the production start, I always go back to the planning stage. This is because I want to make sure that the story is good enough, the storyboard is working so that the animation can be accepted by the audience.

The story part is always my weakness. I want to create a sci-fi kind of story but due to the animation length constrains, the story need to be revised back and forth to make sure audience can understand. I'm working alone, so the longest animation that I can do with at least the same quality as the japanese anime may be quite short, maybe around 20-30 minute.

Last time my friend from facebook has refered me to a training set by a a goverment agency, named Multimedia Development Corporation (MDEC), under trade name CGSkill. They provide a free class which are Pre-Production, Games art and 3D Animation. The training offer came right on the time as I just graduated from my Uni, but then I have to choose only one.

I decided to take the offer, and I choose Pre-Production. The reason is that I dedicated to develop my own 2D anime styled animation and those other two courses are more to 3D. Pre-Production covers Scripting and Storyboarding which is essential for creating an animation. Im not sure whether they covers the concept art and model sheet but they do said they have sketching class.

Anyway I still have a long way to go, and this is just a beginning.
Anyway, thanks for reading and have a great days ahead!