Original subtitles

[silence]

Yeah, and I mute everyone in class, but feel free to unmute yourself and talk, ask a question.

That's the point of the live class. It's very, I like to do it very informal. So, yeah, it's...

[silence]

Cool, cool.

Overview. So week one, we're going to do kind of a review, kind of like the basics, talk about value, simplification of form, and time to studies.

Week two, simple color palettes. This is kind of like first, like baby step into color.

Just breaking it down to warm and cools.

Week three is like the next bigger step into color, longer studies, adding more colors, more variation into your work.

So you'll start to really understand color more.

Week four, using photos, say, probably like 99% of the time, when we have like a project that we're doing at work or we're making our own illustration,

we're going to be googling photos and just using references that we find online.

So I'm going to talk about how to use photos and, you know, not just copying the photos, but turning them into like beautiful paintings.

Week five, this gets into a little bit more of like the style of painting, adding your personal touch to something.

So like brushwork, edge control, longer studies where you're really thinking about the texture, the paint buildup, more of the subtleties, getting more into detail.

Week six, taking everything we've learned, how do we apply that to original work, more like creative work, you know, those VisDev paintings that we see are like really cool and inspirational.

Yeah, so the goal is to just do tons and tons of paintings, like I'll give homework I'll say like I do like six studies. If you have the time, do like, do like 20 studies 30 studies do like as many as you can, because the more you do, the better, better you'll get the

faster you'll improve.

When I was, when I graduated college.

I kind of, I started to do, I started to do these like quick little studies, and I would do at least one or two a day.

I'd get up early I do one before, before like I had to do like my freelance work or whatever. And I do like a personal one at night.

And then anytime I like had had some spare time I would just do like, I'd fill my day I would just do like a ton of these.

I'd time myself like 15 minutes each 30 minutes each.

And that carried on to like, even after I got a full time job like an animation. I was always doing these quick, quick studies because I would just see myself improve over time.

And

yeah so it's very like rewarding and it's like I'm going to just keep this up forever because if I want to keep improving what I need to do.

We're not going to talk necessarily a lot about

this like simple value grouping stuff in this class because I talked about it in all my other classes and I have this short.

The short gum road tutorial as well, going into more depth into this. So if you if you haven't taken this I recommend that you do, or you, you take a few taken some other like similar class on value simplification.

Yeah, I highly recommend that like if you see this and you don't, if you don't understand, then definitely like take this.

Not to like pitch my own class in a class, but

yeah just, this is like kind of the key to everything. Simplifying the light and shadow designing your composition in the most simplest form like this, this will just set you up for success, every time.

Any quick questions on this before I move on.

Simplification and design.

Coffee.

So, one way to set us apart from all the artists like on on our station or whatever you know everyone on social media who's just like copying photos or like photo bashing using AI, all this other stuff is having a really strong great sense of design in your pieces.

So, you could take an image like this.

I've been really into boats for like a long time I don't know why I think it's water, boats, the environment is just like interesting subject matter for me.

But taking an image like this that when I see it it's like, oh, it has a lot of potential, you know, we've got the reflections of the boat water land mass light coming in hitting these houses back here.

But the composition everything is kind of boring, and it's not saying much like we're showing, we're just like showing the information. We don't really feel.

We don't feel the information, or we don't feel like the,

like the mood, or we're not like telling a very strong story with the life. So let's take this.

Question.

You know when Photoshop updates something, and you get used to like, like the hotkeys or like the way something works like even just like sliding an image over like now it like always snaps back to its original spot.

So like, why, why change Photoshop just leave it.

Question, do you usually keep rule of thirds in mind while creating compositions?

Why don't you mention that.

So the first thing

I noticed is the horizon line, or like this, this dark line right here it's right in the middle.

And that's usually the first thing that I look for, or one of the first things I look for.

Horizon line in the middle equals boring, you have equal space here, equal space here, equal space is just, it's boring.

You can, there's obviously a time and place for everything.

But generally.

This is, I don't like to say there's rules in creating paintings but this is close to a rule, I would say.

So let's just, just try something.

What if we take this horizon line we push it into the top third.

I'm not worried about like, you know, squishing the buildings and stuff I'm just kind of like squinting my eyes and looking at this piece overall. I'm like how, how can I push stretch and push things around to like create like a more striking composition, and already.

This is like way, way cooler.

Another thing we can do.

I'm going to

take all of this.

Okay.

Now, our brightest bright our area of focus is on these boats here.

I did like some of this light coming through and hitting some of these buildings so I'm just going to pick out some of these areas to

where the light is is hitting.

Brighten up the sky again.

So before, after.

Now it's like there's a sense of design to this piece because it's not all just like lit back there really being specific with where replacing those lights, and we can draw the eye

through this composition. We can create these areas of travel.

Question. How do I know if my value study was successful. You set any goals here before studying an image.

Sometimes you have to just play around with things.

Like for me.

Yeah, sometimes I'll see an image and I'll know like exactly what I want to do with the values. Other times I might have to try a few different things.

But in general, if your, your study is successful.

It's when you lead the eye to a focal point.

You create an area of interest, you have elements that lead your eye to this point.

And then you have secondary elements that create interest, allow the viewers eye to move around your piece.

And then if there's any like storytelling, if you have any elements that

you've got

like a fisherman on this boat. Sitting here with this cat. You know if there's any like storytelling elements that you want to add to your piece, you make sure that those are readable, and they make sense.

They're not confusing.

So, yeah, those are the kind of things that I look for when I'm doing a value study.

What brush am I using?

We'll continue to talk about brushes but like right now I'm just using

pretty sure my brushes are

are in the downloads on Gumrod, so you can grab them, it's just like the normal round brush.

And then I use this like square

pencil tool a lot, and you can use the, you can just switch it to the pencil up here.

This gives me like really crisp,

crisp and graphic. I use these all the time.

It's like the simplest Photoshop tool but sometimes the simplest tool is the best one to use.

So the focus is on composition leading the eye and ultimately storytelling. Yes.

I think, at least the first few lessons we're not going to be talking about storytelling, like with like characters and all that like too much. It's more going to be about

just creating beautiful images more. It's almost more like fine art, you know, you like go out and you do like a plein air painting, you like hang it in a gallery,

as opposed to like an illustration with like characters and like some crazy story that we're telling.

Because this is, this is easier. So we step in, step in this way, and then we'll start to add the more complex elements like characters and stuff as we go.

Let's do another version.

So,

let's get.

What if we do the opposite of this one, we bring that horizon line way down.

Okay.

And then we can use this as an opportunity to create a light pattern that draws us right to these boats.

Cool. So, much more interesting right?

And then, then of course like you would, you would paint this you would fix, you know, so we're just like stretching things.

Yeah, but. Okay, let's go.

We'll get some more examples.

So, look at this piece we want to design the rock forms and make some statement with the light and shadow. So, the solution I came up with was, was this, making the characters the dark, the darkest dark, and then pulling the,

it's not the horizon but it's pulling this, this rock shape down. So we have a small shape.

This is a big shape.

I'm always just like looking for these shapes and my compositions.

And then, containing the lights. Well, first of all I'm stepping the shadows back so they get lighter as they go back into space. So we get that depth, and then we're controlling the lights, sort of creating a pattern with the lights that draw us right to the characters,

and I'm putting the lights right behind the characters so we have dark over light read.

And that allows us to create like a nice strong focal point.

That makes sense. You guys understand the thought process behind that.

Awesome.

Sometimes you take a picture and it's like, so cool, you know you've got like tons of little things everywhere.

You're like, oh there's so much interest in this piece.

But, might be a cool photo, but how do you turn it into a nice painting. So sometimes you can can posterize it to help you to see

light and shadow or just to see like how the computer kind of like simplifies things, but ultimately you need to do that yourself.

So from this point.

Okay.

So what I'm trying to do is create some nice areas of rest and areas of detail, like if I want this to be the focal area like I drew in a couple people down here, like these people maybe they're getting into a taxi or something.

So if I want this to be the focal point, I can't have this amount of contrast like over here, because then it's going to compete with our eye. So that's why I'm pushing some of these elements back.

If you want to.

Let's push this into shadow.

I think that helps us a lot to draw our eye in, and maybe I put a shadow here too.

And then this line can kind of draw us right into this.

And then, what if I take that I crop down into like a cinematic kind of story, story moment.

And then, you know, now this feels like a screenshot from a movie or something, because I've taken all this detail of simplified it, area of focus is here, light and eye contrast, light versus shadow.

And I'm really directing the viewers I where I want them to look.

So going, going back to what I mentioned earlier about that simple value read.

You can do sketches like this when you have like, because you're not always just going to have one reference that you're going to like study from, like if you're doing something more complex, where you have like a few, a bunch of references that you're trying

to combine, you can do these kind of sketches that are just three values, sometimes two values, where you, where you plan out those light and shadow shapes.

Let me see we had a couple questions.

For our assignments, are we adjusting references to have better comps value structures.

I'll go over homework in one second.

So would you repaint the whole image again for the study or would you just play with the photo manipulation and painting over to you if you've made a successful looking image and move on.

Talk about that in one second.

Do you consider the direction of the light source, when you're when you make these.

Yes, I do.

Like in this image, it's going to be backlit like I put in a couple shadows that might not make 100% sense.

If this is backlit we probably get a shadow like this.

Yeah, I might refine some of these maybe there's some light coming through like that.

Yeah, something like that maybe. Um, yeah, so I am thinking about the direction of light, but

something you'll, you'll learn in animation is we can always like fake things or like if we need a shadow somewhere. We can invent that shadow or we can invent a light source to draw the eye to where we want it to go, where we want the viewer to look.

So, that kind of comes first instead of just making everything accurate.

It's, it's a balance because you want it to look accurate.

But you also need to draw the viewers eye to a location to a specific point.

So you have to make some of these choices you have to put in, you have to fake a shadow you have to fake a light source.

You have to pretend that there's a building off screen that casts a big shadow.

Yeah, I think you, you definitely have to do those, those kinds of things like, you know, when we're working on color tees in a movie.

Like on the spider verse for example we would just,

if Miles kind of like disappeared into the background, at one point we'd be like, okay, let's like bounce like a warm light and just like hit part of his skin, just so we can draw the viewers eye there.

We would do stuff like that to

help us help the viewer to focus on one area.

I think in my work I tend to go a little bit more realistic in terms of light lighting.

It's like, for my taste I like things that feel very natural, but have like that artistic touch to it so like pushing some colors, simplifying the light and shadow a bit, things like that.

I showed up a bit late Did you mention how many values.

You know you can do two values you can do five. It's, I'm not going to tell you an exact number.

For me personally I like to do them in two or three, you know, just nice and simple.

That way you can just do a bunch of them and figure out a bunch of different compositions quickly.

But right now we're just

taking photos and simplifying the values not thinking about like a number of values but just focusing on simplifying and drawing the eye to where we want to look.

As long as it's believable it's okay to change light in order to create an interesting focal point.

Yeah.

Cinematic bottom right looks great. How do you go from a block in above it to something like that. Is it mostly drawing.

Yeah, I'll show, I'll show an example. This as we go. And there's a couple of questions about like homework and stuff like that. Let me discuss that now.

So, homework. For homework we're going to do five Master's Studies in value.

Week one is just going to be grayscale value stuff and then the rest of the class can be in color.

Five value studies from photos or from film.

And then start collecting references. If you don't already have like a folder like cool images that you want to paint.

You know, throughout your, your day, like work or whatever.

Start collecting images.

I'm always like I use Pinterest to save all the cool images that I find. I'll share that link on the Discord if you guys want to draw from there as well.

Yeah, it's important if you have a folder in your desktop just some folder that you can like every time you see a cool image that might inspire an image, a painting, just just save it, because we're going to be doing a lot of these studies in class.

I also have.

I'm sure you guys have lots of sites you can look for for screenshots.

I'll share, share one that I use.

But I say most of the time I just, I'll just think of like a movie and then I'll like Google like screenshots from the movie or like I'll watch the trailers and like grab screenshots.

And then I'll do that for homework. I showed kind of like photo manipulation. That's just to like prove the point, but you're going to do that in painting.

So, it's not enough, I'll do it full demo so you can see how I did that.

Yeah, and the goal of this is to, when you do the master studies.

You'll pick up on things that these, these master painters do with in terms of simplifying value simplifying light and shadow designing their composition.

You'll start to pick up on those elements that they are, they're using and then you can apply those to your film studies and photo studies, so these photo studies will have more of a sense of design to them.

Do you ever think about project limitation when working in animation, I figured it doesn't matter as much in feature film but maybe VISTA is still early so it doesn't matter, project limitation.

It depends on what part of the movie you're on.

If you're in the beginning stages of a movie and it's just like blue sky just come up with ideas.

Just, you're just painting like really inspirational artwork.

Let me show you.

It's easier to talk when you're looking at images.

So my, my thought process always is to

do the most like epic expensive crazy stuff that I can.

And then I let I let the production.

Tell me that, okay, we can't do this, we can't do that. So I want to start in the coolest spot possible. And then we can always take things out so like the star crater for Puss in Boots it was like this huge epic crater just covered in all these like different colored

pieces of

pieces of crystal.

We have lightning hitting the star, like weird weather coming through.

We have rivers of like different colored stuff kind of like melting into the ground, we've got like little bits of star floating around, layers of atmosphere and fog.

All these different reflective materials. So like this is a very complex thing.

I don't know, actually didn't.

I didn't watch the movie so I don't know what they ended up with but they probably didn't do this. I'm just assuming.

Some of these are more straightforward.

Yeah, like something like this, like water, like water interacting with characters is very expensive in animation. So when they told me to design, like a lazy river that the characters can kind of like be pulled through.

I was like, okay, I'm going to make the most epic lazy river that you've ever seen.

And then we've got like these, these rapids that are pulling the characters up and down, moving them through.

Got like rainbows, and they'd be pulled through and they'd be lifted up, like opposite of gravity, like through these, these waterfalls.

Meanwhile, like flowers are flowing through the air.

And they're kind of showing that they're getting like pulled up and around these rocks just like really like weird water, which would be like super expensive to develop.

What if the water looked like an impressionistic painting, you know, and then you've got these, these weird plants that are like, I guess they're supposed to be singing.

Um,

yeah so everything starts like, like really expensive and then I let them tell me that we can't do that.

Um, sorry, let me, let me see if I missed any questions.

I took a bunch of screenshots from Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio. Every scene is like a painting. Yeah, that was a good looking movie.

Is Master Studies going to be environment focused or can we also do studies of Sargent for example, with figures. Yeah, you can do more figurative.

You know something like I like one of my favorites is Richard Schmidt and I love the way he paints his figures into a scene so I do like studies of that I do more environmental stuff but then I put.

And I look at his figurative stuff.

So yeah, I would do both.

I guess, generally, like this is a general painting class but like for me, personally I'm more focused on the environment side of things so like I'm always going to be like doing studies and studying like that side of things.

But if you're more into figures then then lean that way a little bit.

References should be put in black and white, I would keep it simple for yourself and change them to black and white.

Yeah, don't don't make your life hard.

They kept the star. Cool.

Yeah, I tried.

I tried watching the movie a couple times when I kept falling asleep.

Maybe it's because I, I worked on it for so long that I kind of knew what was going to happen so it's just like, well it's dark in my room I'm just going to fall asleep.

And examples you did. There are mainly paint over studies but you also showed a more blocky one that looked more like you made it from scratch, basically not paint, paint over.

So for our homework studies, which approach. I'm going to show that.

Do you always start thinking about the grayscale values, or you start with colors.

I have many different ways of painting and starting paintings.

I don't think it's a good idea.

Yeah. Okay, let me, let me talk about this for a second. So you can have a process where you, you do like a three value sketch, and then you drop your colors in, and then you like paint texture on top and then you have a finished piece, and then that's like

an easy pipeline that you can do for every piece forever for the rest of your life, but you have that process. It's straightforward.

Which is great to have that.

But the danger in that is that you're limiting yourself with what you can experiment with and allowing yourself to fail, and in those failures, you might learn something that will set you off on like a totally different journey.

And then you might find, find something like a little piece of something that leads you somewhere and then you create, you start creating pieces in a new way.

And that could like level you up, you could create something totally different and new something kind of groundbreaking and different.

So, yeah, that being said,

I, there's many ways that I will start painting sometimes I'll start in color.

I'll just use big blobs of color to start sometimes I'll just start with a big textural thing and like start pushing textures around.

Sometimes I do just grayscale, because that's kind of like a proven pathway to create a nice image.

Sometimes I'll start just blocking things in 3D and playing around with the cameras and creating like an abstract scene in 3D.

Sometimes I'll be in VR and I'll like sculpt something.

Sometimes I use photos and I like bash something together, kind of like what I showed earlier.

So I, I have all these different processes that I'm always like bouncing around trying new things. And that means that I fail a lot.

Like I might, I might start a piece this way and it just, it's not working so I have to start over and try a new way.

But in each of those failures and I learned a little bit of something, and I learned something in those, in that experimentation.

So, hopefully that brings like something unique to the pieces that I'm creating.

Yeah, I hope that that makes sense.

You know it's, it's not always the most like efficient way when you're like working on a deadline or something. You know I might take the safe route when I've got like a tight deadline.

But if I got a week to create some, some paintings that I'll definitely experiment and try a bunch of stuff.

Um,

working. Let me just catch up on these questions.

I'm working on invincible right now. Oh, awesome.

Like your earlier concept work is really inspiring. Oh, thank you.

When working in TV animation, you're definitely aware of time limitations, definitely hard to capture some of the really expressive colors and moods in your early business.

Yeah, I've never worked in a production on TV.

So I don't know much about like what the deadlines are like, just like whatever.

But yeah, like if I get hired for like some early, like this stuff on a TV show or something. And I'll just treat it like I would on the feature where they give you a few months to just like do a bunch of like crazy images and you just try to make it as

cool as you can.

But yeah, it's awesome that you're on invincible. That was such a good show.

One day we'll be crowdfunding. Zach watching Puss in Boots.

I know I need to just get some energy drinks and get through it I guess.

Yeah, next lightbox.

Um, I know some artists use 3D and sort of base their breaths around modeling, they built.

Do you think knowing 3D helps?

Yes, you don't have to. I've never once been asked to do anything in 3D, like as a professional. I just use 3D to help myself sometimes.

Like, for example, like if it's like a crazy city landscape or something, then I'll build a bunch of blocks in 3D, like very minimal. Just like playing around with compositions camera angles.

So yeah, it is helpful. But the amount that I know in 3D you can literally learn in like three hours of watching YouTube videos in Blender on Blender.

And that's it. Because if I learned anything more than that, I'm going to forget it because I don't, I don't use it in my everyday pipeline. There's no need to as a painter as a 2D artist.

So that's my thought on it.

And like at the end of the day I always want to be a painter I don't want to be a 3D artist so the 3D is just there to kind of just give me some ideas to help me with perspective stuff like that.

Do you ever get bored of doing studies for so long?

Yes.

Sometimes it's good to, you know, when you every time you want to like level up in life.

Not in life, but maybe in life but level up as a painter you just like spend a few days do a bunch of studies and then you kind of like get over like a art slump or something.

But yeah, you're just doing studies all the time that you feel like I need to do something more creative and something more that like pushes your brain, I guess.

Yeah, I'll show some of the old masters I'm into.

Now, how do you keep yourself from rendering? Do you have process that keeps you? Yeah, I always have a time limit for everything I do.

So if it's a short piece I'll just be like, okay, I got 15 minutes to do a sketch, and then I leave it at that, or if it's a longer piece, you know, I've got a day to finish this concept.

So if you just have a day, then that means you can't paint every detail in the background you have to prioritize like okay the details are in the figures, the surrounding areas, a little bit of detail here a little bit here and then the rest has to be loose

and painterly.

And then also keeping your painting small on your screen, so you can't like zoom in and get into detail too fast. And I'll show that. Was embracing failure something you learned to do with time?

Yeah, I think it was.

I learned with time.

And also like years and years ago I remember watching Craig Mullins videos, and he was talking about a similar thing where he would like, he would start doing a painting and it wasn't really like working the way he wanted to so then he'd use like a different

painting program and like do a sketch and that would inspire something and then he would like build something in 3D and like draw over it and then like put that into his piece.

So it was like very experimental.

But that's why when you look at Craig Mullins work it's like, this is, there's so much like interest and thought and

his stuff just feels authentic because he's putting so much time into these that,

you know, he's not just, you know, creating the same thing that we've seen on ArtStation, he's bringing something a little bit different, a little bit new to his work.

There's a lot of questions so let's, let me get through the lesson, and then, and then I'll jump back into questions afterwards because I don't, I want to make sure I get through like the demos and all that.

I appreciate the questions a lot. I just want to make sure you guys get all the information before we run out of time.

Okay.

So when we,

we have a piece like this with these trees.

You could go in there and just kind of blindly just like render all these trees. But as an artist, we need to figure out a sense of design to this.

So, we look at the light and the shadow, and we start to paint these shapes.

So what we want to do is think about the form.

So for example,

see, we're gonna paint

this tree here.

But if we look at this tree, this tree is a kind of like a sphere

egg kind of shape.

Darker at the bottom, the light is coming in this way.

So that's like its main form, and then we can break that form down into smaller pieces, like what I've done here.

So it kind of looks like you, like when you paint a tree you want to think about like how it's growing like these tree, like these branches are kind of like

coming out and creating these round forms with all these leaves. So I want to kind of like show that as I'm painting.

Creating a sense of design.

So you can, you can push these ideas in any direction you want if you want to go super stylized, you can do that.

If you want to go more realistic, you still simplify, you still keep all these ideas in mind, but you just you render it a little bit more realistically,

or you, you, maybe you don't push these shapes as, as much.

So we have light hitting the top parts of these

and cutting into these forms.

You can see I'm not just blind recapping this reference I'm thinking about the way that the light is hitting these

directions of light.

So I created a form that feels like it's being hit by light. And I'm simplifying the light and shadow.

And you can do that with, with everything that you see, like the structure.

You know it's a cube has this shaped roof, and then you have light hitting that casting shadow so you think about it as it's it's simple forms first.

So, study from masters. And this is where your personal taste comes in, like everything I do is based on my taste and what I like.

But that might be different from you. So I'm going to show you the stuff that I like, which may differ from you, and that's what will make us all unique as artists.

So some of my favorites, and feel free to use these, these artists for like great artists to study from.

I'm in Chung Wei, but I didn't say that too wrong.

I love his work, Lost and Found Edges.

Just beautiful compositions, the value, like, just like incredible, incredible stuff.

Simple versus complex, it's like everything we talk about.

He's one of my favorites right now. Paper Maggie.

He does like these really nice simple, simple color.

Warm and Cool, we're going to be talking about him tomorrow, next week.

His brushwork, I base my brushwork off of his a lot, like, like I'm really inspired by his way of

creating the feeling of this epic landscape but in just a few brushstrokes, because a lot of times as a biz dev artist or a painter like we just, we go outside we just have a couple minutes to do, do a painting.

So if we can capture what we're seeing in front of us and just a few simple brushstrokes.

There's, there's like beauty in that. And then as a professional artist, a lot of times, I feel like most of my job is doing these quick sketches these quick concept pieces where I have half a day to create an image.

And that means I have to just paint the background and a couple brush strokes, and then like focus my attention on some of these other elements, or if I'm painting.

Our script of a whole movie I've got like a couple days to paint the whole movie so I spend 10 minutes on each, each frame and I just like, throw in a few brushstrokes capture the lighting capture the essence of the shop.

That's why I love the Bernadine

Daniel Volkov.

Similar things like I love is like chunky brushstrokes.

I just bought this piece. That's funny. It's in my Google search.

Yeah.

I have this one.

And it's, yeah, this.

It's just, I love is like thick paint on the way you captures light.

And it's similar reasons to Tigranaghi it's very, you know, from a distance they look like almost photo real, like, better than photo real because he's just like captures the essence of the shop but then when you zoom in, and you realize that

how loose and painterly it is.

Richard Schmidt, obviously.

He's, yeah he's inspired me since the beginning.

His brushwork edge quality texture.

His compositions are a bit unique.

Just everything about his work is incredible.

A lot of times I when I'm painting I'm like, okay, what would Richard Schmidt do, you know,

Edgar Paine is these epic, beautiful compositions.

His color choices, the sense of light.

He captures.

I spent

a week of time, years ago where I did a bunch of studies traditionally of his.

Just because I wanted to level up my traditional art as well.

Rowley.

He's another one.

When we're talking about capturing the form.

Like that tree, like that egg shape, and then the light hitting that shape.

Rowley is someone who really captures the form.

He thinks about this rock shape as, you know, the simplest shape first, and then he adds in that complexity.

So it's even like this.

This wave is thinking about like the form of the wave and the light hitting that form is not thinking about every little detail everywhere.

The form comes first.

Let me look back at homework. Five Master's Studies in Value.

Five value studies from photos.

So, this is what you can do for homework.

Okay.

So, here's a homework example.

Say hi.

This is a, you don't see this cat as much. She's just a very fluffy thing.

That is Oria.

Okay, so this is an example of what you can do for homework. Here's the master painting.

And then here's the study of that.

You know, I should give, I should give a time limit.

I did 10 to 20 minutes. Okay, perfect.

So, 10 to 20 minutes you have to capture the essence of this. You're maybe not necessarily trying to capture every little brushstroke, every little texture.

We want to capture the values and the feeling of this image, you want to capture the forms.

You want accuracy in terms of shape design.

Yeah.

So, this is what you're going to do for the five Master's Studies in Value.

And then this is what you're going to do for the second part of homework, where you are studying a photo. So, this is my photo study.

It's kind of inspired by Jeremy Mann.

You know, these, he does these beautiful like painterly cities.

This was like adding some more detail to it.

So, this is like, you know, taking a photo that you're inspired by, then painting it in a way where you're

inspired by a master painter. So, you're taking some of these elements of like lost edges, and I could, I could push some of this more I think in the background.

Like I'm noticing like how we really like simplify some of this so maybe,

yeah, I have some more like lost edges back here.

I'm going to work into this a bit more.

These might take you a little bit longer maybe you're closer to the 20 minute mark on these 20 minute 30 minute, but don't don't spend like an hour on these, you know, keep them quick.

The goal is to do.

I'd rather you do

like a couple of quick ones, then doing just a couple long ones, because each painting you do, you will learn and grow, and then you apply that to the next painting, learn and grow, learn and grow, learn and grow.

So, yeah.

That was previous demo.

Let me, let me answer some questions and then I will get into today's demo, I'll be demoing exactly what you're going to do for homework.

Okay, talked about that.

Embracing features something you talked about that.

How do you keep yourself motivated.

Good question.

I don't know like for me.

I have short term goals and long term goals, and they change over time. Like I had a set of goals that I wanted to accomplish.

Before I was like 35.

And

I focused my life on all those goals in my 20s and ended up accomplishing all those and way more before I hit 30.

So if, because I was just so like tunnel vision focused on that.

You know, I made like sacrifices in my life like hanging out with with friends and doing this stuff because I just wanted to like work hard and accomplish this stuff before, before 30.

And it took me less time than I thought, like.

So, I think, making these goals for yourself like you can have a goal for today, a goal for this week.

Goals for the next few months, and then longer term goals like what's something that you want to accomplish in five years, in 10 years.

And really like think about those and write them down somewhere.

And by, by putting it down or having them very clear.

You can start to every step that you take during your day is the step you take towards that goal.

So, for example,

this week, set your goals that you want to accomplish for this class you're like, okay, Zach recommends doing 10 studies.

I'm going to do.

I'm going to dedicate time to do those 10 studies.

And then if I finish them sooner than I'm going to do. I'm going to try to do another 10 studies.

And then you've accomplished that goal you've done more than that goal so then you can kind of check that goal off for the week and the next week you, you do the same thing.

And you're like okay my six month goal is to,

to create a new body of artwork that that I'm going to then post online and that will help me to get new jobs.

And higher quality jobs.

So that's like your longer term goal.

Then, like your five year goal is to like be a senior artist that at a studio or something or to like art direct a movie.

And then, you know, every step you're taking you, you have that long term goal in mind.

Yeah, I mean that's that's how I like stay, stay motivated I create these goals for myself, because it's easy to,

to be like, oh it's, I'm kind of tired I'm gonna, I'm just gonna like watch TV today or play video games. But if you have these goals that you need to accomplish then you're, it keeps yourself.

It keeps you like taking the steps in the right direction so you don't let yourself slip because the worst thing is to look back and be like, I wish I, I wish I just worked a little harder.

In my 20s. And so now I'm like playing catch up or, you know, you don't want to get to like the end of your life and be like, I really wish I like chase this dream of working on a movie.

or being in galleries or whatever your goal is.

You know, maybe you, you don't.

Maybe your goals change over time but at least you, you've accomplished something great and you can look back at your life and be, be happy with that.

So I guess my, I keep myself motivated by my fear of being a failure.

You paint on different layers or only one, usually just one.

Now if it's sometimes I'll cut my layers out a little bit if I need to like paint in a background, generally I'm just painting on one layer.

And the reason why is because when we're painting we're using the right side of our brain, and it's just like purely like thought.

You're thinking about the brushstroke you're putting down and then you put it down.

If you have to think about the brushstroke you want to put down, click on the right layer, you're like okay now I'm going to paint the cloud on my cloud layer.

Now you've taken yourself out, you're thinking on your, your left side of the brain.

And now you're not an artist.

You're thinking about like the tool that you're using.

And now you have to, and like on the right layer and then go back to your painting and then put your brushstroke on the, in the correct spot.

So, for me I want to, when I'm painting I want to be purely a painter.

There are times, like when I'm doing something for production or like,

when I'm painting like backgrounds for my, my animation like I have to put things on layers.

So like things can move and stuff like that.

So there are times to where you have to be a little bit more technical.

But I would say, mostly for this class just try painting on one layer and just focus on being a painter.

As we're simplifying the values, values to simpler and cleaner shapes, is there a good way to learn to make appealing shapes more consistently and easy?

Is it just learning the theories, like juicy shapes, and doing the work to implement it?

Yeah, a couple things in creating appealing shapes like you saw when I was doing that tree demo.

I was using that egg shape, I was repeating that shape. So it's repetition of shape sometimes can create an appealing feeling. Contrast and shape like round forms versus like these sharper kind of light forms.

So that contrast.

And a lot of that will come from doing these studies where you'll just start to, if you do a bunch of Tip Bernaghi studies you'll start to see why, like how he designs a shape you'll pick up on some of these things you're like, oh, he uses this like sharp

edge that draws you from foreground to background and then he complements that with these like round more subtle shapes.

So that's kind of, there are some rules but it's kind of a journey that you can go on in this class when you're doing these studies.

And feel free to ask me that more as we go, because we'll continue to talk about it.

You know, schools and it's great. Craig is awesome. Yeah, Craig really helped me to like slow down a little bit and really think about every brushstroke I was putting down.

Which is a blessing and a curse, you know.

I feel like I've gotten slower as a painter over the years, but my stuff is more accurate in terms of like real light and color sometimes.

I struggle with keeping myself from rendering everything I love the painterly style but I can never stop myself from rendering. Maybe it's because I usually start with line sketch and a painting.

Yeah, so maybe it's a good challenge for you in this class, it'll be definitely be a learning curve if you're used to drawing first, but try this process of just blocking things in and really train your eye to see shape and light and shadow versus.

Okay, I see a rock now I'm going to draw the rock, so try it, it's going to be difficult but it'll be.

I think you'll thank me later.

Yes, this class is recorded.

And if you go on the camera you'll see all the previous classes. The idea is that I teach the class a few times.

Each class you know I make slight adjustments I updated, I make things a little bit better.

So you're always getting the most recent updated version of the class.

I always love watercolor even though I use digital only. Yeah, I can't do watercolor.

Traditionally it's like,

yeah, I don't know. It's, you really have to plan things out I think.

Hi I'm Hungarian, and not too nitpick, but just wanted to say that

name is not a vowel it's a J sound, so it's combined with a G.

The Y at the end of his name is not a vowel, it's a J.

That's, that's confusing.

I'll, thanks for thanks for letting me know I'll have to try that.

So Master's Studies is from paintings while the other studies are from photos. Yes, or movies stills, I'm going to probably do mostly photos but

portrait photographers use photographs we admire are not Master's Studies then.

Yeah, when I say Master's Studies I mean traditional old paintings, preferably done from life.

I mean, Tibber Nagy paintings from photos but

yeah, preferably people who paint from life, like, like the examples I gave. So, no photos.

Will you be explaining edges? Yes.

Anxiety to do crazy.

Anxiety can be a crazy motivator sometimes. Yep.

Good luck on work.

In the movies, do you, in the movies do you work on top of storyboard or usually a written idea with references, and you create it or both? Yeah, both you, there's tons of different ways to work.

Sometimes we're given storyboards. Sometimes you're just given the script and then you just create stuff fully from scratch without seeing anything.

Yeah.

Would you be opposed if we did some studies? No, you can use traditional if you want. That's cool.

Zach, do you always keep track the number of value groups when you paint, start to finish? No. I don't, I don't like do a painting I'm like okay I'm going to use five values.

You know, I just try to use as little values as, as I need to tell the story to capture the environment.

We add subtle variations adding contrast within the group.

Yeah, I start simple and then I add the subtleties.

I'm 19 I feel like a failure for not knowing digital as much as my peers do. Man, 19.

Yeah, I didn't, I didn't really start digital until a year into college, I would say.

So I think I was like 19 ish as well.

And then, yeah, and when I was in school they told, they told us, you know, don't, don't touch digital until after college, which was the worst advice ever.

So yeah, you're not, you're not behind like if I could, if I can do it you can do it.

It's great that you're 19 and you're taking this class and you're getting that head start.

We take a picture to study how do you imitate the style.

I'm going to show that.

Should we paint over the reference image or start from scratch and start from scratch.

Let me do these studies so you guys can see.

I do have to end my class on time, so.

So if I'm going to do these studies, I'm first going to just get rid of everything.

Okay, so what I would do for this piece.

First of all, I would do these studies about the size on my screen.

So very small thumbnail you're just trying to capture the feeling but for the sake of doing a demo I'll, I'll try to keep it bigger so you can see what I'm doing.

It's just gonna be a challenge for me to kind of like lean back in my chair that squint my eyes, so I don't get caught up in details.

I'm just going to pick out the dark shapes first.

Really just squinting my eyes trying to capture that essence of this.

So that's like the basic statement.

Now I can go in and I can use a softer brush maybe I got some of these edges.

And then I can use some of the accuracy in terms of light and shadow and like the basic essence of this piece, not necessarily trying to capture every

since these are very short time studies.

Okay.

I'm not judging my face too much right now.

It's like squinting and trying to

My mom gave me some moisturizer for my, for my eyes so I don't like get all like wrinkly, you know,

I'll be wrinkly if I can paint good worth it.

Okay.

I'll flip it horizontally I have horizontal and vertically as hotkeys on my tablet so I'm always just hitting them.

Like my between like screen recording zoom, Photoshop everything it's my computer kind of like lags down so I don't do that as much in these demos but when I'm painting on my own I'm always every couple minutes I hit flip horizontal, but vertically.

I'm always flipping it around so I can see

Okay.

Yeah, there we go. I think that's fairly, fairly good.

You know, and then you can, you know, now I'm like starting to like put in like details and trying to get like some of these brushstrokes and stuff but you can see like how

loose that is.

Okay, so this is an example of what you can do for master studies.

So let's paint this in the style of Tibbernet.

Sorry, I'll like, I'll work on his name.

This class I'm just so used to saying that.

These dark values in there.

Horizon Lion is right in the middle but I feel like this works like I like it.

I'll push it up a little bit.

Okay.

Dark values, let's get my lights.

Oh, I don't, yeah, I don't like this.

Let me move the horizon down.

34 but spirit 25. Yeah, there you go.

Yeah, I'm, I'm 32, and yeah someone's asking like, how do you feel being 30 is like I feel amazing like I'm in the best shape of my life, I be accomplishing what I want to in life.

So like, I used to be like scared of getting older but like.

I started prioritizing like staying fit, and

what I mentioned before like these goals in my life so like as you get older, just like, as long as I'm progressing, I'm like doing something, you know,

maybe I will this.

Just starting this. Cool. Well, this is a great class to take for just getting into digital because you'll just do a ton of work and progress.

See I'm pushing the shapes around a little bit.

Okay.

This one's so hard.

This one's so hard.

This one's so hard.

This one's so hard.

If you have any like off topic questions about this, this year on this about this demo or something, something else. Now's a good time to kind of ask, since I'm just painting.

No, no, go ahead. Go ahead.

What were some of your goals in your like early 20s? Kind of curious.

So, early 20s, it was to work in animation.

And

I think, yeah, I started out working at a game studio, and I realized that wasn't, wasn't what I wanted to do.

Pretty quickly I realized that. So then my main goal is just getting into animation. And then once I did that, then I was like, by the age of 35, I would, I would love to art direct a movie kind of like work my way up in the animation industry.

And then I did that. So as, as I did that, art director did something, production design something. Then, once I kind of like checked that off my list I was like okay I don't want to just like keep doing that.

My goals changed, and they turned into like simpler goals.

So, like, now that I'm in my 30s, my, my goal is like, I don't need to art direct, I don't need to production design.

I did that, that was, that was kind of hell.

I just want to be the best painter that I possibly can be.

So now every choice that I make is

helping me to become a better painter.

So I pick projects that I want to do because it's, it's, they're artistically like pleasing, things like that.

Yeah, in my 20s my main goal was to just like get into animation and, and do that job.

Be a fizz dog artist.

How long are you on like a project to project?

Like, like for Plissant Boots like how long were you on that project for?

Is this a three, three value study or are you just laying in values as you see them? Oh yeah, yeah, good question. It is a three value study I was.

Both of these I started in just three values, I felt like that.

That was a good number to kind of capture these.

How would you level up for painting materials?

I'm not sure what you mean.

Painting materials.

Do you mean the tools that you're using?

Oh textures.

For these, don't focus too much on texture.

And then, like, I could be doing this for just like the normal rounded brush.

But right now we're not going to be too into like texture and brushwork and all of that. I'm mostly just trying to capture the essence of this, if there's any like texture anything that like comes.

Then it's it's kind of like the secondary it's like okay, that's, that's great but it's not the focus of these right now. We'll get into that more like as the class progresses. Right now it's just capturing the feeling of these environments in a short amount of time.

I'm off topic, but I'm curious.

Always curious about daily routines of creatives, what does an average workday look like for you.

Um, last few months have been like pretty insane for me I've been like traveling, moving, all this stuff.

So my schedule has been like, not good but my perfect schedule. One that I did like since college was

go to bed at 10 or 11, get up at four or five

and just get a solid chunk of work done in the morning, like before the workday starts.

And then before 9am I feel like I've already accomplished like so much for my day then after that. It's like, okay, if I have a meeting, or if I'm working full time somewhere then I go, I go do that but I've already accomplished so much, whether it's personal work,

freelance, whatever I'm doing.

And then after my work day and six,

immediately go to the gym, do like a 45 minute hour workout, go home, eat dinner, and then the rest of my night is just like chilling, like watching, watching a TV show,

reading, going for a walk.

That's, that's my ideal schedule. So when everything is like going right in my life, that's what I do.

And I like that because I'd rather do that than stay up late, because when you stay up late there's no end to your day. It's like, oh, I can just stay up till three, 4am, whatever I get my stuff done.

You know, by getting up early you've already accomplished a lot and you set time for yourself, you're like, okay, six o'clock I'm done with work. Then I, I've accomplished so much in my day and now I can,

now I can relax.

I tried in the game industry and very quickly realized it wasn't, yeah, it's not, it's not for everyone. Games, my experience, like every other word out of their mouth is like, oh, the render or the polish.

I'm like, leave me alone, I just want to do like a beautiful painting.

So I realized, like, I know not every studio is like that but if I wanted to become the best painter I could then I needed to,

I needed to get into the animation and just do these like business paintings where they appreciated like painting.

"In the animation and CG animation industry, on the post production lighting composition, is it possible to move from post to pre production roles?"

Oh, that's cool. Yeah, I don't see why not, just, you're already in, in that world so you can start connecting with, with other people and other departments, start building a portfolio showing them.

When I was at Disney I knew like a few people who moved from like, who, who moved from like one department to like, and they wanted to get into like character design or like something like that and they, I mean that's Disney they kind of like help them

into that role, but yeah I've seen it happen. Sure it's, sure it's doable.

Yeah, I think I'll go, I'm not like presenting or having a table or anything but I'll go.

And maybe I'll set up like a meeting point we can all like say hi to each other at some point.

This describes me trying to stop the night owl, you know.

Have you seen the environment concept stuff done for Guild of Hordes? Yes I have it's,

it's amazing.

How was the new apartment train? Oh, thank you. Um, yeah, it's a little complicated I'm staying with a friend, I'm staying at my friend's condo for a bit.

And then I'm gonna move.

I just didn't have time to find a place yet but I'm good here for a bit. So, yeah, thanks for asking. It's good for now.

And then Pasadena right now.

Not gonna quite finish this one but you get, you get the point.

Does homework makes sense to you guys? I understand.

Annecy, not this year I wish I could. I know everyone's talking about I would love to go at some point.

So yeah, I'll definitely go next year or something like that.

The night owl works for you. Yeah, some people, that's their time they go to bed late. That's great. Day job, set up evenings to do other personal work and freelance studies courses, I finished around 10, then chilling.

I realized, follow my natural time. Yeah, that's great. For me, I tried the night thing, staying up late, I tried getting up early, both were kind of similar results. You know, after hours everything's quiet.

But for me personally, I liked the morning.

So yeah, whatever works for you.

Cool. We're at. I'll try to finish this one up later and I'll post it but yeah that's it.

Any last minute questions? I will, the PSD will be on, PSD and video recording will be up on Discord later today.

I always upload it within 24 hours but then I'll post in on Discord, I'll let you know when it's up and ask questions on Discord if you have anything.

Yeah, I think that's it. And then, yeah, and throughout the week, posting the homework as you're doing studies, you know, it's very informal just post what you're working on and we'll check it out.

I think he said, yeah 10 to 20 minutes.

I'll post it.

Thank you for class. Yeah, have fun with these studies.

Generally just finish before, before the next class. There's no specific time anything.

Thanks so much. Great.

Finishing my studies, visual, game design, trying to find various roles in the industry. Should I focus more on 2D, prop, character illustrations.

Yeah, we can talk about this more, maybe next class, ask me again. Um, but yeah, that's something you have to think about you have to pick one thing that you're really passionate about, like close your eyes meditate on it.

What do you see yourself doing in 5-10 years.

Is it painting environments is doing character designs. Pick one of those.

If it's loose if it's tight, pick one of those become the best you can edit. And the thing you're going to be most happy doing in your life, and you will get work doing that.

If you set everything to that goal, you focus on that.

Awesome. Have a great day.

Yeah, we'll see you next week.

Thank you guys.

See you, man.