Original subtitles

Hello. Good morning. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello.

Hello.

Okay.

Yeah, so I, I moved to Arizona.

And then Sedona now.

I just rented a place for six months to try it out.

Yeah, thanks. So this weekend I just packed everything up, drove out here is like seven hour drive.

unloaded.

Yesterday I got my internet and everything set up.

So,

yeah.

I'm tired of LA. Um, yeah, I moved for for a variety of reasons. Main one is kind of this year when I had to pay my California state tax, which was, which was a lot because I have like my own business and I'm doing this stuff.

And I was like man government just took all that from me.

So it's that, and then my rent was raised at the same time.

Like the apartment I was in they just like raise the rent like crazy.

So those were like the main reasons. And then the area I was living I was living in Glendale, and there seemed the city was getting like, like Glendale if you don't know it's like a.

It's one of the nicer spots in LA, I feel like.

And I was there for a few years and I just saw it getting like dirtier and like more unsafe.

Almost got hit by a car like a few times.

And I was like, Jesus, why am I, why am I here. So I haven't gone into a studio and over three years. So I was like I don't need to be.

I don't need to be be in this city anymore.

Yeah, so yeah I chose Sedona because it's like I've been the past year I've been traveling around checking out areas.

And it's this, it just like it was amazing when I drove through here is so beautiful just like red rocks and mountains everywhere, like outside my window I just have a view of the mountains.

It's gorgeous.

Very low taxes low cost of living.

So, I don't feel like I have to like constantly working and like, I'm not like in survival mode you know I'll be able to like go outside and like sketch and like yesterday I just took a bike ride in the mountains.

It's awesome.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, there's so many.

I'll definitely miss LA, I think it's like the city there's so much to do so many people, our community. There's a lot of awesome stuff there.

But I think the negatives were starting to outweigh the positives for me.

Yeah, I didn't even have a car in LA because I hated driving there so much.

Yeah, I took two cats I took them. They just sat next to me in the seats on the U-Haul. One of them.

Every time there's a bumpy road she started meowing at me, she's very angry about that. And then the other one just climbed on my lap and like held on for dear life, but they did fine. Now they're very happy.

Um, cool. So yeah, question for homework, is it better to choose similar different subject matter for color palettes for example master painting, lay forest to paint a cityscape.

It's going to be more challenging to choose like a different subject matter.

So,

I don't, you can, you can definitely try it but just keep that in mind it's going to be, it's going to be more of a challenge so I would,

I would do some of both. I'm going to do a demo.

Later today,

where I'm going to want to paint this but using these color palettes, so it's like obviously same subject matter, because, you know, I'm making my life easy for myself, you know, because like I can look at the water and be like okay, I know like how I could paint

this water.

Based on this, but I could also take these colors and convert it to apply it to like a cityscape. And that would be interesting it would just be harder.

You know, I'd have to maybe take these blues and those would be like window reflections.

I'd have to push my colors around a bit more and try, try some things. So, yeah, do both.

Makes me nervous about planning to move to LA to find an in studio positions.

Yeah, I would.

I mean, before I like I was in LA almost 10 years before I moved there.

I feel like I made sure I had a job first, because it is very expensive.

They have the highest state income tax of all the United of all the states.

On top of that, depending on what what part of LA you're living in.

Each city has a different tax on.

What do you call it, like when you buy something.

There's an added like 13% on top of everything. So like I went. I was trying to buy a car.

And there's a 13% tax on top of that so it's like tax on tax on top of tax it's like.

So just keep that in mind it's pretty, pretty expensive so I wouldn't.

Unless you have the money to go there and like live for a little bit and like make some connections and stuff like maybe that's, that's great.

You can definitely. I think that might be worth it but best case scenario would be to get a job first, have a high salary, support yourself.

I'm gonna mute everyone I'm getting a lot of.

Here's my

mute.

Can everyone mute themselves.

I can't find the mute for some reason, let me look it up.

Sorry about that. I think they like change the location of that.

That is.

Oh, there we go.

So I have a question from homework and assumption I had going into assignment was that limited palette meant mostly analogous colors in the term limited palette also apply to complimentary patterns.

Yeah, it's basically I'm, I didn't put like too many constraints on the homework because I just wanted you to be kind of get in the habit of, you know, picking, picking a couple colors and staying within these, these zones so you definitely can use like a couple

like like opposites on the cover wheel or something if you want.

But I just didn't want you to go through and try to use like every color.

Every hue, you know, just, just limiting that a bit.

But take that, take that as far as you want it.

Sales tax that's the word I was looking for.

Live around LA near the metro stations better to just commute.

Are Leo.

I think the homework, all I did was focus on

power of gray majority of the palette leans one direction it's wild always surprised me when the saturated gray color peers, like the opposite color.

Yeah, cool. So it looks like you all like are starting to like see some of these like color relationships and stuff which is awesome.

Let's look at some of the homeworks. And yeah, I remember someone had a question about like how I painted that so I'll demo that in a minute.

I'm going to go first.

Beautiful.

Five minutes.

And then that's. Yeah, that's amazing.

Looking really good.

Yes, I can't click on them my internet's not the best right now.

Yeah, look at them small check them more after class but yeah these are all looking really really good.

Nice.

Great.

Did you, did you guys enjoy the five minute studies, did you feel like you got the panel like at all breakthrough and painting.

Yeah, use it.

Awesome.

Oh, yeah, awesome work. Any, any specific questions on the homework.

Yes.

Yeah, only sliders was fun felt like I was thinking more rather than just clicking randomly for a color. Oh, that's great. Yeah, if you have, if you kind of like create this like thought process for yourself.

When you're picking colors, then you'll be able to be creative with your color choices not just like randomly choosing colors seeing if it can work it's like you can think about how the light is hitting something and then you can like make that

color yourself and then use it.

Bit of pressure. Yeah, it's a good, good pressure for yourself. First frustrating but fun.

It's great fun to see if you shouldn't need to end up definitely won't read larger scale.

Interesting always had trouble with the sliders regarding both sides, ending in red but I think I finally found.

Nice.

I struggling suddenly on what color to choose as a base.

And in what color should I keep adding to the colors.

Um, yeah, it.

For me, choosing like a base color, like I would just look at.

Look at some of these.

It's a really helpful look at artwork where you can see like a bit of the process and the piece so like a, like a very loose painting, very like quick and a painting, where you can kind of like see how the painting was built up.

So for example,

we'll just look at it.

I think we looked at this piece like here you can tell he turned his.

So I would just look at a bunch of these like looser paintings and kind of see how these artists like tone their palate tone their do their under painting.

And then you can see like always using this kind of like this peach color for these kind of color palettes, and then you can just apply that you can kind of understand and apply that to different color palettes.

And then I think just just from using procreate but I'm having a really hard time it's kind of hard to adjust if the tone of color.

If you get it wrong compared to working clip studio paint, at least for me.

So I'm starting to be a lot more careful setting up the painting before jumping into the details.

Yeah, I don't, I don't use procreate so I don't know.

But I think they.

I'm sure I'm sure you can do it like I do, if I'm using like

heavy paint or something I'll do it the same, same kind of way.

I'll just, I'll just start with a color, like a middle.

I'll just start with a different color and then I just started like layering stuff on.

So, yeah, just, just keep at it.

Warmer colors. I was in the cooler parts of the hue slider, it seems like it's easier to get cool colors when working in warm than in reverse. Yeah, warm, warm colors, you'll go, just shift things more gray.

I got a bunch of like really saturated warm colors to get those cooler colors just shift things more gray to get the cools.

Do you have any tips about using heavy paint especially for photo studies and possibly after painting.

Maybe I'll try to brush up on heavy paint.

Next couple weeks.

And for some reason I was having

some difficulty. It works fine on my iPad but I had to struggle with it on the desktop version so yeah let me brush up on that and then maybe I can do like a little demo or something.

Is the deepest darkest shadow always warm.

You say always warm red.

No, the contact shadows will be the warmest colors in your painting though.

It could be a warm blue, it could be

a warm like red gray could be orange it could be any color.

But it's just in context you know you could have a painting that's all

cools, and then how do you get that that warm contact shadow being hit by this is like rocks and then like, you know, this might be the warmest color in my painting that, but that's because my whole painting is these cool grays.

Okay.

Alright.

Let's.

So week three.

We're going to start adding more colors.

So more complex color palettes. We're going to talk more about time of day and observe

what happens to the colors in the light as the sun is getting lower on the horizon.

We'll do some longer studies now so we don't want to lose the energy and the impact of those quick studies, but now it's just like adding. We've got some more time so we can start to add some more, more details and more accuracy in the color.

Okay.

See, and I remembered someone had a question about this, how I painted the light in this so let's do this before

we get into the lesson.

So what I will do a lot of times when I'm painting my characters into pieces. I'll just paint them kind of flat with no light.

So I don't think I had.

Okay, let me double check maybe I have

Sorry, getting my file.

Okay.

I don't have the actual file, that's fine.

Okay, so what you can do is see paint a character kind of flat, let me just get a good things

and a flat lighting.

And then

So the nice thing about painting it flat first is that it gives you some opportunity to

play around with the light shapes without fully repainting it every time.

So, I have my layer, I have my character here. And now,

let's say there's like, like a warm, kind of like, like the sun's coming up it's like hitting him in a warm, warm light. So,

now we just take that whole image and then we adjust it.

So I'm going to brighten it because we want that one light on him.

Then we can adjust the colors and push a bunch of

warmth, push this a bit more.

Now we have him.

We have his light layer. So now you can use this thing the square with the circle in it.

And that gives us a mask.

And now you can paint black to get rid of that.

Now you can just play around with that, that light, like how it's coming in and hitting this guy.

And to get like some of these like brushstrokes and stuff you can just paint this with a different brush.

[silence]

Let's go back to this and

move things around.

Maybe you want to add

another color, just do the same thing.

Yeah, so that's, that's how I would, I would do that so you can kind of preserve your original while like adding, adding other light sources and stuff to it.

That.

Does that make sense. Any questions on that?

I was getting frustrated with brushes going from pencil brushes to normal brushes.

It was annoying felt, block, and flow disturbed a lot.

Yeah, you don't, you don't have to use my brushes or anything it's just like I use, I use my brushes because it like works for kind of like my style and what I'm going for.

But, like, I use like the pencil tools to get like really graphic shapes and then I use like my more painterly brushes

to get that painterly quality and the textures and stuff. So, um, the more these master studies you do and the more you kind of develop the look that you want your paintings to have,

then you can start to create and customize brushes so they work the best for you.

Yeah.

How do they do the perspective.

Yeah, we do have a little extra time today so I can, I can show.

Just take me one second.

Find it.

Reveal my secret.

So for that India piece, I

made this section in 3D in the blender just really quick and simple.

And I, I just moved the camera around I took like screenshots of different things. This was the 3D that I painted over.

I think it was just flipped or something, so I just took this and then I painted it painted over it for that shot.

Yeah, you can see it's just what.

Yeah, it would have been cool if I had time to like paint all these.

Yeah, that's that.

I did use like simple 3D block outs a lot for like the spider verse stuff because I was doing these like complicated like city scenes.

And I'll share more of that as we go.

So, yeah, it's just faster to do it that way rather than, you know, trying to plot out all the perfect perspective and all that, you'd see I could just take a bunch of screenshots of different camera views and then I could just pick one of those to paint over.

Yeah, see another thing I wanted to quickly talk about before we get into more color stuff.

How to deal with muddy colors.

So, if you, if you look at your painting and it looks like there's like your, your colors are feeling muddy, dirty, whatever. It's usually either value.

Or it's a value problem or it's, you have too many colors where you're, you're kind of like doing a lot of like layering like this, and things are feeling dirty.

So if it's, if it's this problem what you can do is

you've got too many colors like layered so what you need to do is you need to pick one.

Adjust it, make that perfect color, and then do a couple bold brushstrokes on it.

So that's what I did with this piece is I picked a couple of these like bold brushstrokes and I just put them down, rather than like having a lot of opacity in my brushes.

And then other thing is value.

You need to make sure that the values are separate separated out.

Because if your values are too close together, that's going to create muddiness, you're not going to have like bold impactful, like light and shadow. It's just the whole thing's going to feel muddy.

So separate out your values and make some bold color choices, and that should get get rid of the muddiness.

I also mentioned brush economy, like having areas, you can have a lot of small brushes.

Small brushstrokes versus larger brushstrokes.

This also can contribute to muddy colors, like you want to have that variety. You don't want to have a painting that's like just fully small brushstrokes, and there's always exceptions.

But generally speaking, you want like large versus small.

Oh, is it lagging.

Um, let me.

Let me one second let me plug in an ethernet cable. Sorry.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Alright, so hopefully that should be good now.

Sorry about that.

Let's talk about how to train our eyes. So,

we're going to talk through looking at something like this and we're going to look at it in terms of being a, like how, how like a plein air artists would look at it how someone is like really observing the light and shadows, and these color temperatures

and how they would see this, and how they would push these temperatures, and these colors in an artistic way.

So first thing we can do is just analyze what we're looking at. So, obviously, blue sky.

We'll have. We all know what mid midday blue sky looks like it's the sun is out. We've got warm light passing through cool atmosphere.

So, that, that color.

The color of the light that's going to be hitting the light side of objects is going to be neutral kind of color. So we can mix that into the colors, these, these stone colors here.

So I'm looking at this we can find what the local color of this will be.

And I'm assuming it's going to be like a little bit warmer version of what we're seeing here.

Okay, so we'll say this is our, our building color.

This is the color of the light hitting it.

So that's the light side of this, and then we can, we can color pick this and kind of see,

see what's happening with some of these colors.

We got some that are more gray some that are more red. So that can help us to shift.

Shift these colors around.

There's some a little bit more yellow a little bit more red, a little bit more gray.

This gives us a nice variety.

A lot of hue variation in here.

Okay, and now we, we can look at this we've got these deep dark shadows in here.

And we know from last class, darkest points.

The darkest contact shadows, the areas where we're not getting bounce light from the sky from the ground.

These deep dark crevices are going to be the warmest and darkest parts of the painting.

Now, we also have cast shadows.

Yes, the light is cool because it's filtered through blue sky. This is like a common, a common mistake in, in this dive and paintings and everything because people think, oh, the sun is warm.

It's a bright sunny day. So let's make that light yellow, make it very, very warm.

But that's not accurate when it's when it's like a midday blue sky scene.

Okay, so now let's figure out this cast shadow color, the cast shadow color is going to have the blue sky.

And

you can see that setting these these cool colors.

So we're going to bring the sky color into into these. Now we get that cast shadow color.

Yeah, contact shadow, ambient occlusion, shadow.

They mean the same thing.

In my brain, the way my brain works I, I always say contact shadow because it just kind of. It's like two objects meeting each other and it's that that shadow in there.

So, it makes sense in my brain that way.

Yeah, things will get light will get warmer, and you'll see in our examples later, light will get warmer.

And the sun is closer to the horizon. So, like if we

take this

and push a bunch of warmth into it.

Like that's what's going to happen.

Sunrise sunset.

And if it's a midday we, we don't want to be painting objects with that much warmth, because then it's, it's going to be confusing to the viewer we're going to know something is off a little bit.

That's, that's why it's so important for when we're doing like color keys for movies and stuff like to understand this stuff.

It's, you know, if you paint, if it's supposed to be midday scene, but then you paint all the all the lights, like super warm. It's going to confuse the viewer because it's going to make us feel like it's the sun is setting.

So, the light is slightly cool going through the blue sky particles, but appears warmer than the areas in the shadows, not the occlusion areas. Yes, because the shadow areas

have only light that has bounced off more blue sky particles and reflect.

Sorry, let me try to understand this, because the shadows areas, shadow areas have only light that has bounced off more blue sky particles and reflecting more and more blue sky light.

The light side is just getting the direct sunlight.

Cool light versus.

Sorry, my brain can like not handle.

Um, yeah this stuff it's, it's difficult when we're like just talking about it in words.

Yeah, it's not your fault it's just, it's a hard thing to talk about that's why when I'm explaining this stuff. I take a photo reference and then I paint, like what I'm trying to describe so you can kind of like see.

Because, like, me, me as a, as a person and a learner like I'm like super visual.

Like this is something I struggled with like all through school and everything like you give me like a word problem.

And like I cannot do it, I need to like, I need to like see it.

So I guess that's why I'm an artist.

So sorry this is like the hardest thing in the world for me to try to like decipher.

But if you.

Yeah, if you ask me, like,

I'm happy to explain, like if you're like hey I don't understand like why is that shadow that color. I'm happy to, to like explain that.

Hope, hope you guys understand.

Yeah.

I think it's helpful to think of where the light sources are point light sunlight.

So at the midday shadows have to be warm, but not too much just slightly midday remember we're going to contact shadows and cash out of so contacts are going to be warm cash shows are going to be be cooler.

These, these cash shadows.

So, building off of this idea, going into something a little more complex with more colors. Here's another midday scene.

Um, let's look at some of these colors here, like, we got this like teal blue of the roof, the top part of this.

So we can kind of guess like what, what is that local color.

Something like this we know the sky color is a blue.

Um, and then the local color of this building is going to be kind of like a warm gray brown.

Okay.

So that ties in with what we're looking at with with this. You could have a way to kind of cheat this like the digital way to do is you could just select the light side.

You can add some warmth in it.

So that's the light side.

And then the shadow side.

And you can see how cool is in the photo.

Push a bunch of that sky color into it.

Let me get it that cool

from the sky.

So with these little like overhangs and stuff we're going to get some warmth in here.

Where this, this window is going to be.

So, yeah, that's kind of like the digital trick to it.

But before you do that you need to understand like what is actually happening with with the light.

So what I would do is, is go through that same process like okay it's midday sun.

Get that sun color affecting going to the sky we mix that kind of neutral.

Maybe slightly warm, neutral and then we make that color that we can then mix into here.

Get that color value.

Okay, now we get cool sky.

Mixing that into these colors to get that shadow color.

You can see an image like this you can go around and like pick out every different material in here and figure out like what the shadow color is going to be

neutral, neutral light.

And then we get the shadow color to get the roof.

So, yeah, that's how that's how you start to handle these, these, these other colors and making things feel like they belong in your, in the environment.

It's all about colors interacting with each other.

Another thing we could think about is like what if the ground was painted red right here.

It was like

something on the ground so that red would then bounce up into this, this object into this building.

And if it was like windows and overhangs and stuff.

And that red would hit these underside of these things, stronger.

Here.

I also think about colors bouncing around all over the place because the sky

here and then bounce up into these objects.

Little bit too saturated.

Should we avoid pure whites and blacks in traditional painting for painting key frames, or it depends on the project and it featured live action.

I think a general rule is to general good rule is to avoid, you know, straight white or straight black, especially black black is something is a color that like dead ends your richness.

It's like a dead color, or lack of color. So,

yeah, like when I'm doing my traditional paintings I mix, I mix my dark with like a green, a rich green and a red, so then I can make these like deep dark warm.

It's, yeah, it's a good idea to always have like a little bit of a color into your blacks. But yeah, like I definitely do use black here and there. And it does depend on the project.

Like Spiderverse we use black all the time for, you know, for that like comic book feeling, you know, like the rich black ink and stuff like that, and it becomes like a stylistic choice.

Maybe you're working on like something that's more of like a, like a darker like scarier movie and you want to use like blacks and like some more grays and stuff like that.

Yeah, I think

a lot of the concept art that we see for live action they do. They tend to go more like gray and black and stuff and I don't know if that's a way to just kind of get like a, like a photo kind of quality.

Because that's kind of what photos do, or if it's a result of like a lot of photo bashing.

Yeah, I don't know, as a painter like I like to, you know, bring some color into these, into like the deepest arcs and stuff.

Yeah, and on that topic we can look at some of these, like here, the deepest arcs.

Yeah, that's a good point like some movie, some like new art films, Gotham, DC, yeah.

They might go more black.

And then they're painting like this that's like observed from life and they're trying to like capture that quality of light and shadow and all these color temperatures, these darkest darks.

You can see they're not black, they're, they're like a, there's some, there's some warmth into them.

And you don't get those like dead colors.

So, we looked at some photos of midday. Now we can look at some paintings that are done in midday, you can see they all, they all have like a different kind of quality to the light and color.

So the way I kind of practice and got better at painting midday scenes was to grab a bunch of successful midday paintings and do what I'm doing here, like color picking.

Doing that same, same process that I did and from the photos, I'm looking at, like, what is the light source. What are the local colors, so like, this is like a sidewalk.

I don't know what this would be but we'll say it's like, like a tan color.

It's midday, so bright sun mixed with the blue sky.

A little bit too warm, but we can, we can mix these together and we can get that, that ground color.

And then to get those contact shadows.

We get that warmth.

We're just looking at this comparing, like our thought process to these colors and trying to understand why these are happening.

So an interesting thing with the shadows is they get really warm underneath the boats.

Like the boat.

They get really warm under the boat because there's not reflected skylight in there. And then as they come out they get cooler, because there's more sky color in them.

Let's see here, just mixing some of these blues in here, because we can now get

those objects, or that, that ground plane there.

Okay.

So that kind of gets into what we were talking about before it looks like the sun is coming down a little bit like we can tell like the shadows are getting a little bit longer in the mountains.

And the skylight is a bit warmer. So we can tell that, I don't know, I don't know what time of day, like three, or maybe like four, 4pm, something like that where the sun is starting to like get a little bit.

I guess, I guess these would get crunched together a bit more.

Okay.

Let's see here.

So, yeah, that's some color.

But as it gets lower in the sky, it's going to be more saturated and you can play with these colors like it's fun thing about kind of like understanding how this works is then, you know, this is what happens naturally, but then you know what if you change

the color to like purple

orange, it could be anything like a movie that I'm working on.

Now that there's like an action sequence that takes place as the sun is setting, and we use, we push these colors around to create an impact when like, it's like the most intense part of the action we go like super bold red

to push that feeling.

Why do you have warmer colors underneath the boat? Is it because the color of the boat, or the base color of the ground?

Yeah, it could be a bit of both here in this case I think it's more of the color of the ground.

Based on the color that it is in the light versus in the shadow like I can kind of make an educated guess that it's going to be like a, like a kind of like a neutral kind of warm, like cement or something.

So, what is the warmer, darker version of this, so we take this saturate this dark in it.

So we can say that that contact shadow is going to be

warmer and darker and we can get something like this.

This also depends on the color of the boat, like say the boat is like, like a blue color.

Then maybe the shadow, it's still gonna get warmer but maybe it's not as warm so we kind of make some of this blue into it, because that blue is going to be affecting whatever is down here.

Get some, some blue here that blues gonna take over the scene, a bit.

Yeah, thank you.

You know, yeah, this was like

a super red boat.

I can imagine like how, how hot, that would be under here.

And then reflect that that warmth.

And then also think about, like light is bouncing everywhere. So it's, it's hitting here bouncing up into here so all your colors are reacting to each other.

And that's what's gonna, if you keep that in mind when you're painting that's what's gonna make your paintings feel like real color is affecting things.

I guess it's more into this, but when you have a big painting with a lot of moving parts, spiders India market scene. Do you use identifying local colors as a part of your painting process or paint that overall light and shadow.

The limited palette process.

Um, yeah, like the spider stuff.

Um, pull that up so we can see what we're looking at.

Yeah, I think, when try this week to go through all my files and like posts, all the post all the

yeah so spider verse, we basically took every color rule or like all the stuff that I'm talking about now with like natural colors, we took that and we like threw it out the window.

And for me to paint like color keys on this movie or like to paint scenes like this, it was like, I had to try really really hard to turn that part of my brain off where I want to be like, Oh, if the sky is yellow we're gonna get like bounce light, and if this,

like the local color of this is going to be like, like an orange brown, but the rules of this universe is all the shadows are kind of blue. So it's like it's.

If you think about it too logically it just like doesn't work.

And you'd like drive yourself nuts, trying to paint.

Um, so yeah for this, it's more of like.

I had to come up with like that graphic.

That graphic statement

in value. So, light versus shadow shade, and then the rules of this world where all the lights are yellow. All the shadows are blue.

And then, then I could go in and kind of play around with push, like, okay, this part, the light is hitting so maybe we get like more we see more of the light, we see more color variation.

Not realistic colors or anything but like if this was done in like a printing process, like we could print like we've got like a green color a pink color yellow color, and then we have to like make those make something that feels like there's a lot

of like interest and stuff going on without painting too many, or without painting the local colors.

Yeah, it's hard to explain it's like,

it's like, still, even after like working on this movie it doesn't doesn't like fully make sense to me.

Yeah, because it's it's so far removed from reality, like someone who's studied realistic light for so long and then you're asked to make something that goes against all of that it's like really difficult thing.

Yeah, it was like for the chess.

Like, yeah.

India festival yeah it's cool.

Usually, like spider versus like a, like a, like an exception to the rule like pretty much every other like animated movie. There's a lot of like realistic colors are based in in realism, but then we just push things a little bit so I'm showing you, like,

the realism how color works, and now, once you understand those then you can make like informed decisions on where to kind of like push things.

So, like how we analyze this, you can, you can take this and now you can like, you can be like, Oh, if I want to add like a mood to it.

You know, you could take this.

You could push a bunch of color into it to like create a mood for storytelling, whatever.

I'll just look at this one quick because I like, like what your pain is doing here.

If you look at the shadow colors of the rocks close to us very warm, very local color, and then as they step back, they get cooler.

We get more blues introduced get more of that sky color affecting the shadows.

Less saturated.

Okay.

So, taking that same process out, kind of speed through these all because I think you are understanding

how to go about these. So, previously we looked at how that light color is going to change as

as the sun is getting lower in the sky, and we can see that effect happening here.

The midday scenes that light was very neutral. These

am or pm scenes that light is getting very like peachy and warm, we're getting, you can see where we're kind of in this zone now.

And for me, what happens in the shadows is up to artists interpretation, up to the atmosphere. There's so many different things that can affect what we do for color shadows like this one.

We're going more blue, we're putting a lot of that sky color

into the shadows.

But what you want to keep in mind is the shadows, you,

you have to pick one which pick one for the intensity of color, most amount of saturation. So you never want to have the same amount of saturation in the light as in the shadow.

This is like super important for for everything but even more so I think for

sunset scenes or sunrise scenes, because if we take,

just like a problem I see a lot.

Like here the lights are a bit more saturated than the shadows.

We take this.

We saturate this.

Now they're, they're kind of like the same amount of saturation.

And it looks kind of cool, but it's, it's not.

It's not realistic.

You don't get that amount of saturation in both.

So we, we always have to pick. Do we want the saturation the shadows saturation and the lights.

This is, this is something that kind of like drives me crazy a little bit in animation where they're just like, oh we need to like make it more saturated so they they bump up the shadow saturation and the light saturation and for like a trained,

like a trained artist who's like studying this stuff like outside for for so long.

And you know that it's wrong, it kind of like irritates the eye a bit.

So it's like, I would only use something like this if it has like an important like story impact, like, we just want to like throw a bunch of color and in your face for like emotional impact.

Here we can see, we go like very gray, we use a lot of these like cool gray colors, and it's that variation, which is like really really beautiful, I think we get that variety of like these peachy colors versus these grays, and it just allows our eye

to kind of rest and take in the scene.

I make that mistake all the time because I want it to look cool.

But yeah, like, like I'm telling you these, these kind of rules that you can use, but I mean you're, we're artists we can like push things any, any direction we want. I remember one movie I was on, they wanted me to hire a couple color key artists and so they gave

me a group of portfolios they really wanted like, like the way it works at some companies is everyone who sends their work into, into the company,

into

everyone who applies to the company.

They'll look through the artist managers will pick ones that they think are the best.

And then they'll look within the studio to pick out some, some artists that who are going to like roll off of a different movie.

So they're, they're pushing a couple of these artists onto onto my movie, and they're like, oh wait, this person's like amazing at color we like love their colors so much.

And as someone who would like oversaturate everything.

And, like, for this person's that the artist manager, like their eye, they liked that oversaturated look. But for my eye and my taste. I don't like that oversaturated look.

So I was like, yeah, their, their colors are cool but it doesn't, it doesn't fit the movie that we're trying to make. So to like kind of retrain someone to like see colors in this way to get that more natural feel.

It's going to be difficult to do.

But yeah, just kind of like a long way to say that everyone has like their own kind of like taste and color, and all of that.

Would you show quickly demo example saturated light, saturated shadows look.

Yeah.

Yeah, today's demo, I'm going to jump into that shortly.

Yeah, maybe I'll start painting, and then I can like move stuff around and

I hate my own saturated work, I just can't break the habit to save my life.

I will take this this week as an opportunity to like to force yourself to kind of like push that in your work, because it's easy.

I'll do something like this where it's like more, more use of grays, and then you can you can take that and be like, okay, I did this painting now that the art director wants me to, to fit this into the color script more and we're, we're going more like

blue green shadows in the scene so now I like push a little bit of blue green into these.

So you can, you can do that.

But I'd rather start at a realistic place and then start to like add in, add in the saturation mean you can always go the opposite way like selected them.

So nighttime and talk about night for a little bit.

Nighttime is another time of day where we can like push colors around a lot like if you live in a city

with a lot of like pollution and like light pollution and like a lot of particles in the air, then any light source you have, like, there's a lot of like blue green lights, and it's going to turn everything very blue green.

If you have a lot of warm lights it's going to turn everything kind of warm.

So this is just like a nice kind of high key kind of painting.

Let's see.

Yes.

I think this is edited a bit but if you have like a big purple, like light

sign thing that like that lights up the sky, because of the it's hitting all those light particles, or all the small particles in the air.

Like I remember,

you know, I lived in Santa Monica for a bit, and we had like a hot tub, we'd like chill in the hot tub and like look up at the sky and like on the more like smoggy foggy days.

The sky would just be orange because all the lights from the city.

Yeah, it's pretty interesting. So, yeah, it gives like if you're painting night scenes, especially like in cities or whatever you can shift these colors around to be anything you want, basically, you kind of like throw out all the rules.

And once again, to just create a feeling with the color.

So let's go to

sample.

This.

So, this one.

So what, what photos do in nighttime is they crunch the values, they crunch the shadows the lights. So to bring some like atmosphere and feeling back to this we always have to

take the foreground elements, keep them as is take the background,

start stepping these values back.

If we don't set these values back then

in a painting or in a movie, it's going to feel very flat, not cinematic.

It's going to kind of crunch everything, and it's going to feel.

You're going to miss out on that that realism that you could bring to it.

Another thing you could do is bring more warmth to the foreground.

We're going to do a background cooler. So let me push this stuff back even more we create more depth and atmosphere.

So I'm going to go ahead and do that.

Homework I'll show you some examples.

So, for this week I'd like you to pick one master painter, like your favorite or just someone who you're kind of interested in right now, and do two 10 minute studies.

I want you to go through, like when I was.

When I was going through these and analyzing these colors I want you to. This is an opportunity for you to, to take the time and analyze the colors and look at them really like understand like how this painter is

painting, and then pick five photos, paint them in the style of the master painter.

Your focus for these is on color temperature, so you're going to go through, you're going to try to apply the colors of the master painting to the photo.

And this will help you to retain the information retain these colors a bit more.

And get rid of that kind of just photo quality that paintings can have.

And, yeah, keep them around 30 minutes, I don't want you to spend like too long on these they should be like quick efficient.

And so that way you can do, you can do a lot of them.

Yes, here's.

Sorry, there's a lot of images. So this was a photo I found that was cool.

It's a similar palette to what I then painted.

But what I did was I looked at this piece, and I was like, can I, this, I like the purples blue greens and stuff. And I apply this to this.

And I did start to think about some of like the brush quality and stuff like that, but the main purpose is to think about

the color.

So you can take this piece and you can analyze be like oh these deep darks.

We're just talking about black this goes like fully black there.

These deep darks are kind of purple. So I'm going to make my shadow colors purple.

You can't see the sky in this but you can make an educated guess, and then I'm using kind of these like greens bouncing them around.

And it's helpful.

I probably wouldn't pick like a grassy field painting, and then apply the colors to this like that might be cool I don't know, but I try to find something that at least relates a little bit.

Yeah, it's it's totally up to you though.

So, let's do it.

Cool.

So if you're studying any master painter you're, it's probably gonna be some kind of limited palette but the difference between this week is where we're opening up the palette a bit more so you're not trying to like stay very specifically, and like one part

of the wheel or just picking a couple colors like here, I can see there's a lot of different colors going on so yeah, feel free to try more.

You can pick with the eyedropper to test yourself to kind of like check your work, but you don't want to do your painting just grabbing from the color, using the eyedropper from this, because you're not going to learn what these colors are.

You want to go through and think about like,

why, why is the water this deep red color, or why does it feel deep red. That's because it's in shadow, we're getting a little bit of reflection of this red boat.

You want to go through that thought process with every single color that you're that you're trying to mix here.

And that will, by, by doing that forcing yourself to go through and think,

if you are expanding your color knowledge, you'll be able to do paintings quicker and more accurate in terms of color.

This is Edgar Payne. Sorry I should, I should write that.

I think.

I think this one is Edgar Payne this one is Daniel Volkoff.

I'm going to start with

warm neutral palette.

Yes, someone had a question like how to like start your palette.

You know I'm just looking at these I'm thinking like what kind of color would be a good base to then paint on.

So I'm looking at like some of these

sales and using these colors applying them to this.

I'm going to do like a bunch of like these messy brushes just to kind of get like a loose painted feeling.

The, maybe like a green, deep green.

So like the green in these boats.

The water will be.

I love the water color and that's when they will try to get some of these like saturated colors.

I'm going to do a little bit of a brush.

I'm going to do a little bit of a brush.

And then once you get like a bunch of colors down, then you can then, you know, you've got a lot of colors that you can pick from, it makes the painting easier.

I'm going to do a little bit of a brush.

Yeah, this brush.

This is one of the first Photoshop brushes I ever made I was like, looking at all these traditional paintings and I wanted that like thick like oily feel with some color variation.

So this brushes. I don't know, probably 15 years old, and I've just been using it.

Yeah.

I like this gray back there.

Make that gray color.

See how I'm just going through, I'm mixing these colors together and noticing like some of these blues and peaches and grays.

Like I can take this.

Bring a little bit more blue to it.

Like that blue in there.

A little bit more yellow.

Yeah.

Is intent to also try to imitate brush work.

In addition to color.

You can do that a little bit.

Kiki Cho.

But the main focus is going to be just the color and temperature. Later on in the class we're going to do like a lesson really talk about like brush work and kind of like why we use brushes and all of that edges, soft and hard.

So yeah, feel free to start thinking about that but you're, you don't have to copy the brush work exactly mean this is kind of like a natural way for me to paint like very like loose and

my cat really wanted to go in there, of course.

Cool, let's

go down looking at here so we have the local color of this just kind of like this yellow we can attend color.

But then I was like, why does it feel green and the shadows, and it's because the water is green and it's bouncing up into that so we can take the water color

and bounce that into this, this object.

So we get that that realism to the light.

And then we're gonna get some cool from the sky, hitting the top parts of this.

And that always comes first.

Let's

like how we feel the light coming through this. So

get that quality

subsurface.

Some of these.

Okay.

Cool reflected light.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Let's get this feeling of water.

That's going to help tie all this together.

Painting in this water, grounding everything.

Thank you.

But he massive having to mix colors.

A couple weeks ago or something I'm like, like I have it all contained in a box so like I just keep it all. So I'm not like making a, making a mess. That's, that's helpful for you.

But sometimes it's fun to make a mess and get your get paint on your clothes and it makes you feel like you're like a real artist again.

That like purple at the horizon is interesting.

Okay.

Okay.

I'm looking at this top reference more than the bottom one. So, sometimes that'll, that'll happen. I think, I think I liked both of these images.

But then, as I was going I just kind of was more inspired by the top one.

Okay.

Okay.

See how it's looking.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

If you were planning to make a finished painting would you start with the same loose process and then slower slowly render detail near focal areas. Yeah, exactly.

I always start very like quick and loose, I don't change my process.

If it's a loose painting versus a tight painting.

It's a similar idea to doing like the five minute study, we do quick loose five minute study, we make some bold choices.

Bold, like brushstrokes and stuff like that. Then you could take that five minute study, pick out the areas you want to add in more detail.

And then the more finished you want your painting, the more, the more time you spend on it, you just continue painting the same exact way you just maybe you have to collect more references as you go so you kind of know

you have some more information or different objects and things.

Have you ever gotten pushback for using reference.

No, never.

I mean, what do you mean by using reference.

Because I use.

For me, using using reference means,

like, like this to me as a study this isn't necessarily a very like original piece that would be a concept painting.

So this is a little different but like for me using reference means I'm designing something, I'm designing an environment. I'm looking at multiple images.

I'm taking bits and pieces from multiple images, and I'm creating something new that's never been seen before.

So,

I have.

I think if you don't use reference, you're only taking from what's already in your brain. And we've, you've only seen, and you've only brought so much into memory, and you can only refer back to so many things so you're, you're really limiting yourself.

Like if I were to paint a boat from memory, without using any references.

But it would be so it'd be so shitty, like I wouldn't like, I think these shapes are really interesting back here.

And that comes from looking at these shapes, looking at these shapes.

People think artists just pull ideas out of the clear blue sky.

I mean, unless you have like a photographic memory, but even so like you're still just referring back to things that you've seen, like for me I want every painting to be a little unique to have something a bit different to it.

So I'm going to look up tons of references and create something.

Yeah, I was, I was thinking about that I told the story one time I went into a job interview and this, there's some like crazy lady.

Like everyone like love me they're like, always, you're so amazing like we love your paintings like like everyone. And then like one of the.

Was it one of the, like the heads of the studio or something, they want to like show her my work.

And she was like so how are you creating these images. And I was like, well I sometimes I take my own photography so I look up on Google.

I create a bunch of references for myself I watch YouTube videos I have all these different ways of coming up with reference. And she was like, oh you use reference, and then for in her brain she was like, oh, I'm going to discredit everything you've ever

done because you've you just copy things or something like that's how she, how her brain worked I guess.

So I spent some time, like explained to her as like, I don't just straight up copy a photo like I look at like maybe 10 photos and I create something new, like a new unique piece of artwork like I might look at this one.

For like the design of these boats and I look at this one for the water, I might look at this image for color inspiration so it's all these things like coming together to create something.

Anyways, I didn't, I didn't work there, that would have been.

She just could not wrap her head around it I think her being not an artist she, she thought that I should just everything should just be pure imagination.

And that's what kids do, like, like when I was like a five year old like I'd sit there with my sketchbook and just be pure imagination, they'd be like the shittiest drawings but it'd be like a dinosaur biting a robot or something.

But now like as, as an adult like I would take that idea dinosaur fighting robot, and then I would spend half a day, coming up with references building stuff in 3d building it like an environment and bringing like some realism and like sense of design and all of that

to it.

I think the sort of bashing is a requirement nowadays. Yeah, and some jobs.

And imagine such people exist in such positions.

Yeah, as you go through the industry you'll learn like some of these people become executives and producers and it's like how did you get there.

Like you're, you're telling me how to do stuff.

Oh they're disappointed when you say it's digital.

Yeah.

And if you like painting digitally like I use the same process digitally as I do traditionally just digital just makes a little bit faster, able to change things.

Last person who approves usually is the least educated in art, and more in marketing. Yeah, exactly. It's a good way to put it.

So all their choices are like, oh that's too too scary you might scare scare away like some of the younger audience, so we can't do that.

Yeah, everything's kind of based on on that

chain of approvals.

Yeah, I think one of my favorite movies, I worked on was at like a really small studio there's just like

I think 40 people total like the VisDef team was just like five small, small story department, maybe it was less than that maybe it was like 30, 25-30 people.

Yeah, and then we were making something like, like really unique and cool and we didn't have to get stuff like approved by like five different executives, it just.

But yeah that movie didn't get get made because we couldn't get like a larger studio to to produce it to finish it and like release it to the public.

So there's all this cool like VisDef out there, and really cool story that may never see the light of day, which is sad.

Bulldogs are trending Can you make the sailboat until a Bulldog? Yeah, exactly.

Um, let me just put, where's my greatest bright gonna be?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, put my greatest bright in there.

Maybe the sky.

Sky can get a little greater.

Yeah, I think that feels pretty good.

So yeah, do do a few of these for homework.

And, yeah, I hope you can see that like the difference between just like if I were to do a photo study of this versus like applying the colors of something like this you get something original very like a sense of sense of light and color to it.

It's hard for studios to approve new and original ideas because it's a big risk, and why we keep seeing all these live action remakes. Yeah, exactly, like a passion.

We see in things like Spider-Verse and other projects. Yeah, exactly.

That's part of the reason why I went independent. I just kind of freelance on a bunch of stuff at my own studio where I can just like make exactly what I want, while doing like a couple of these other client things.

It's hard to get like fully dedicated and work on a movie for so long and then kind of see it like, like, oh, we can't put that in there because, you know, for this and we, we lose some of those like really cool original ideas, so like, like, like the passionate

artists in me like wants to see some of those ideas like get made.

I think to be fulfilled as an artist I kind of need to do that.

Yeah.

Should I be working with the reference next to me like that I usually have them on a separate screen.

However you want to work.

Part of the reason why I do this is so everything is here for when, when I'm demoing you can see, like everything, but I've, I kind of do my paintings like this as well at least like the first like sketch phase.

Sometimes, or I will just like split my Photoshop screen and have another document down here with references. It's really however you want to work.

Try different ways see see how you like it.

Thank you. Thank you.

Um,

do you use more original ideas, people would still watch. Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of a lot of people are worried about like getting into animation now because there's not many jobs studios aren't making as much like pretty much every studio has slowed down

and cut back on movies so

there's always like ups and downs and in the animation industry I talked to some older people about this who've been in animation for, you know, 20 years or whatever they say that this, this happens.

So hopefully this is a good thing.

Hopefully this generates.

You know, people aren't watching as many movies maybe, maybe that'll force studios to make some new original ideas, something that everyone will be like oh that's different like I really want to go see that.

Instead of like, you know, the fourth version of the fourth sequel of whatever.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I'm like optimistic and hopeful.

You stay away from air brushes on these studies, because it's not very traditional feeling.

Um, I use it very sparingly, I didn't use it at all in this. But, you know, if you want like a soft edge somewhere, like, feel free to use it like,

yeah, go in here and I soften up a couple of these, these edges.

I want like a lost edge back here.

Um, you know, you can, you can totally

do that. Just, I try, generally I tried to be more bold with my brushwork so if I do have like a soft edge then I have some bold, bold stuff next to it, bold brushwork next to it.

Want to work smooth gradient in quickly in the sky. Yeah, totally use this, use a soft brush but then continue to work into it don't just, you know, figure, looking at this.

You know I could have painted the sky.

I could have painted the sky like this to start with.

And then if you do that, just make sure you, you're like observing you're like, okay, they've got like some broken color. I want to add in some of that warmth kind of like peeking through

some cools and here, so you can kind of use that as a starting point and then

work, work out from there.

Awesome. Any, any other questions homework makes sense.

I have a question if that's cool. Yeah, go ahead.

Cool. Um, it's not like directly related to what you have on the screen but this class has got me thinking that like being a color key artist is something that must be an exciting position to work in.

I was wondering, for having a portfolio designated towards that I see a lot of people have a lot of like prop design, especially when it comes to this dev and like line art, but those aren't things that I find much comfort in or like very exciting to explore

this class is like really put me on to like, oh, I would really love to just paint. Um, do you think that it's useful to have those things in your portfolio or is it useful just to have like a portfolio full of paintings.

Um, you might

you, it'll increase your chances of getting a vis dev job. If you have, you know, portfolio paintings with like a page or two of props.

A couple like tighter designs, things like that.

Because they, because if you think about it.

The might take like three years to make a movie. They'll keep you on a project for the full three years if they know that you can design stuff in the beginning, do a bunch of like props and like textures and stuff like as we, as we go through the movie

and then at the end, put you on color keys have you do color keys.

So if you, if you want like job security and you want to increase your chances of getting a job.

Then, yes, definitely you can focus on color keys, but I would put in at least a page or two like props and like couple like tighter designs.

But at the same time there's also artists who, who are just color artists who just do

just do color keys on a movie and then once that's done they move on to the next movie and then do color keys.

So, you, but in order to do that you have to be like,

like really, really masterful at that, I would say.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cool. I mean my advice would be kind of like, if you want to like get into the industry.

You know, increase your chances as much as you can and then you can be picky. Like, as you've worked on a couple movies.

Cool, cool. Thank you.

Yeah, that's true. Nastya distribution is what pays the bills. So yeah, imagine competing with Zach for a color key.

Well, not to like sound like an asshole and brag but like, I get more job offers than like five of me could take.

Or 10 of me could take so please compete with me and take some of these jobs.

I'm more inclined to doing color keys too but I hate doing props muscle into character design. Do you think these would be good character design, like environment concept.

I think there's stuff like all the stuff that I teach in my classes is geared towards environment color, all that character design is like a totally different thing you usually don't switch over, like it's very rare that they'll want like a visit of ours

to do like characters as well.

You can start to choose one or the other and then like, as you go in your career, if you want to like,

like study character design more, and then use that to improve your business paintings.

Honestly, like, when I started I was like, I don't want to do props, but like when you're just doing paintings for like months.

It is kind of nice to just like chill spend a couple weeks doing, doing some simple prop designs it's kind of like a way to kind of like recharge and then get back into those like fun paintings again.

Yeah, that's that's my experience I like now I love doing props here and there.

What do you pay attention to if you want to be a colorist, or do color tees.

What do you pay attention to.

Well, what got me my first jobs as more of like a color artist was, I had a portfolio I showed that I could paint, like a variety of different colors.

Some were like more pushed color schemes.

A lot of like more natural stuff.

And then I showed that I had some traditional paintings where I was like studying outside, and that's what got me a job at Disney because they were like, oh, he comes from a traditional background he's got

the traditional, or the, the quality, light qualities color and light qualities from someone who's like studies outside and has that like realism.

So yeah, basically prove that you can paint in every every lighting situation.

Midday.

Sunset sunrise stormy weather.

And you can paint humans in that as well so that's why I always say like, visit before they'll come up with a story with humans, and then paint them in all these different situations.

Drawing figure, little bit more easy.

It will scraps colors my favorite thing to work on. Yeah.

Is there a difference between Vista for games and animation. I haven't worked too much in games like I started out in games, but they were like mostly mobile games for like web and iPhone and stuff like that.

So like the main difference was like games you were more of like a generalist, like I was doing like effects animations, even like character animations UI design background painting

splash art, all this stuff.

And the animations, you seem to be very focused on one thing like if you are a vis dev artist.

You're, you're going to have like your strength like it's environment design and you're hired to basically do environment design and like give you other tasks here and there but mostly you're going to be doing environment designs.

I would say that's the main main difference.

Also an animation they, they love paintings to feel like paintings, at least that's been my experience in games, they're always asking for like more Polish or more render.

And like I've learned to just like hate those terms and like, like, Polish, they're like, Oh, can you polish this more like, Oh my gosh, tell myself.

I do character design but wanting to learn to do better illustrations.

It's awesome.

I do teach design to like line art and props.

I get into that more in this dev to, and I want to make a class, trying to figure out the best way to do it, whether just to do like a three day workshop or like, or like a longer term class like this.

But focus purely on like design line are process for doing that stuff like building things in 3d.

Creating like textures, all like the, the nitty gritty kind of stuff. So that'll probably come, you know, I don't know, in the next six months or so.

I would consider Craig Mullins a visitor, I've worked on a handful of movies with him and he just does a bunch of loose, awesome paintings.

I'm self taught so it's hard to do figure painting.

I think I would urge it in the same way as a landscape. Yeah, I think the best way to paint figures is to not think about painting the figure, like, just paint the color and the light, and these shapes create the person or the figure.

Yeah, longer class.

Cool actually, since you're all here and we've gone over time I may as well just ask, do you want to do

like a three, like a three day workshop

design or six week. No feedback or like an eight week with feedback

class design the things that I mentioned like, like, like all like the nitty gritty stuff. If you could write one, two or three in the chat, that would be, that would be cool.

I'll see.

Oh, everyone says three, two or three.

Yeah, I could do all right three three wins. Cool.

Alright so the most amount of work for me, I see.

You'd like, like one. Yeah, cool.

As long as they're all free.

Yeah, well I'll send you guys a discount, a discount code.

I need to, I need to make a, make a little bit of money here, I can't just get it all away for free.

My cats need a meet their treats.

Cool, cool. Thank you. Thank you for answering that.

Awesome. Thank you guys.

I will, yeah, I'll talk to you on Discord throughout the week.

And, yeah, hope you enjoy.

Enjoy these exercises throughout the week.

Can't wait to see what you make.

Alright, see you guys.