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He has an extra black layer on top with the blend mode set to Saturation. When it's toggled visible, it makes all the layers below it have the same saturation as it. Since it's just plain black, it'll turn everything grayscale.
i stop at 01:03 and realize things that can do with scraps . now, i use your techniques like sketching a scrap into overlaying a photo to them. and it really really works. thanks alot.
I have watched this video about 5 times and I still cant even begin to contemplate the amount of detail and talent that has been put into this artwork... its on a another level. I try and squeeze out at least 1 digital painting a week. Love it so much, i hope to reach your level one day...
I was watching this with the sound off, then I turned it on and instantly recognized Feng's voice from the Gnomon videos! When I realized what FZD stood for... No words how excited I got. :D
The guy is correct. The mechs in the background are way too huge if they are supposed to be the same size as the one in the foreground. Just look at the buildings around the mechs in the background. Then look at the doors. now you have a good idea how large humans are back there.
I have the same problem... Mister Feng has one of the most incredible trained skills I have ever seen: a fantastic Visual Library. He is able to "fill in" all these imaginative details by just tapping into his visual library gained by years of reading/drawing/watching/copying etc. I think he has a video on that topic if you are interested to hear more.
FZD SCHOOL OF DESIGN - UA-cam 100k Subscribers Contest To appreciate all our Design Cinema fans, our 100K subscriber contest is now live! Come enter and win Flight to Singapore + 3 nights stay in a 5-star hotel. For more information, please visit: fzdschool. com / contest. html
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@n3rmin Areas out of focus should be blurry so if you resize your painting during the early stages of production, the blurry areas will gradually become invisible to the eye as you add more and more detail. The eye naturally stays focused on areas with most contrast and detail. If you resize an already finished painting/photo, the ugly pixels become the main focus as they are easy to spot, but if you afterwards decide to add more detail on top, the focus shifts and the pixels disappear..
@n3rmin I never had an issue with this. Unless your original is tiny, there shouldn't be much blur. The default size for this was around 2000 pixels wide (ending at 10,000 pixels wide).
@Koutetsujeeg Best way to learn PS painting is to stick with the default brush and avoid any filters, effects, etc. Treat PS like a traditional canvas. For the animations, that was done by my graphic designer in Adobe AF.
At the beginning of the video you talk about how the colors on your palette are balanced out. What should we look for while building up a palette so we can make sure that the colors will end up working well together as yours do? Thank you so much for your lessons.
he is a traditional painter and manually controls his values. to increase texture you can use a lot of the opacity jitters and position/size jitters in the brush options. I think I found out how he can control his saturation. seems adobe has improved their code for dodge and burn/ blending modes with CS4 which I am still a couple Versions behind on my photoshop.
@m4lm4n4 Thank you for your interest in FZD School of Design and its program. In regards to the breakdown of the course, you may check the Program Fee section on our official website. For additional information, you are welcome to email us and our Course Councilor will be glad to assist. We hope to meet you one day at our School!
You have a great eye for perspective. 3 Point perspective is difficult to achieve, especially at the ground eye view you chose. I agree that just using the brushes are a good way of evolving your shapes, it adds that elusive texture that is presented in every great piece. Well done :-)
Set opacity to about 30% get a soft round brush and you could also turn transfer on, then take some values from the sky or near the value range of what you want to put it over, then go for it. Take it easy unless you want to make it waaaaayyy far away like this stuff, its not very hard though to get the hang of! Hope that helps!
@m4lm4n4 You may refer to the Before & After gallery on our website to see the enrollment portfolio from our students and the portfolio that they have when they graduate. Hope it helps. Thank you!
@zepher234 you can achieve that easily with simple camera projection in a 3d program, or after effects. Basically project different layers onto 3d planes with set distance, as you move the camera you will feel the parallax.
@Howi3 With digital, I don't do much thumbnails anymore. Now you can start one thumbnail and keep morphing it into another. Back in the days, you had to re-draw each time you want to make a change. So essentially I'm still doing thumbnails, but it's one big progression thumbnail.
@FlankCobra actually you're right. Those mechs are too big in the distance so it's definitely a perspective mistake. I should have went in and changed their designs a bit to match the scale. Just need to remember next time.
I want to start by saying that I love Design Cinema! I find your videos to be a great way to start the day before sketching, I came to a realization today that brought on a question: How do you keep a finger on the pulse of the entertainment industry? What news sites or forums should one be tuned to? This question sprung up when I suddenly found out that JJ Abrams might be doing a Half Life movie.
Superb work Feng. One minor point; the scale of the foreground humans on the mech doesn't really match up with the others. They appear to be towering over buildings, I would have maybe upscaled the foreground mech/brought the humans down in size considerably. Doesn't detract from the painting, just an observation :)
can you make a tut on which kind of brushes to use and when to use them? not like the EXACT brush we need, just a tut in terms of what type of brushes should we use (soft edge, hard edge, spread out brush, etc.)
thanks for the comments everyone. This painting was done in CS1 btw, not CS5. I really don't see much a difference between the two (for what we do), except CS1 is much faster :) @Nahelus I don't show the layers for two reasons: 1. It blocks the canvas 2. I don't use layers much. Most of these paintings have only 3 or 4 layers, and they are always on default setting. And the colours are from my custom swatch.
@gordon1201 He opens a new layer, paint buckets it all black, and sets it to overlay - so he can see the values clearly without the colors interrupting him. Then he makes a new layer under it (I'm pretty sure this one's on overlay as well) and paints over the parts where he wants to darken or lighten. Hope that helped!
„Ich habe Dinge gesehen, die ihr Menschen niemals glauben würdet. Gigantische Schiffe, die brannten, draußen vor der Schulter des Orion. Und ich habe C-Beams gesehen, glitzernd im Dunkeln, nahe dem Tannhäuser Tor. All diese Momente werden verloren sein in der Zeit, so wie Tränen im Regen." - Roy Batty (German)
"i've been working on this guy here (awesome speed mech biker), not for very long 2-3mins)".....2-3mins in his times is like 3 hours in mine, great videos, awesome art
@biffington Try painting things in black and white, and then just do a bunch of overlay layers to try out different colours. If your colours are too distracting, then chances are they're too bright, or clash with other colours. Make them subtle first, and then pick out the main ones a bit more.
@fullfist yea, but the ships were not meant to be the "selling point" of the picture anyway, regardless of their size. so i dont agree that they lost impact.
@PresidentChoob Thanks for the reply! i always forget about colour overlays! i suppose i could learn what colours work naturally by what the resulting overlay's make of the black and white painting,
it didnt really bother me much. the focus was obviously right in front but to my eye it felt like all three where relatively close, close enough for minimal shrinkage. if its far enough for major shrinking its right under the ships and it didnt feel like that.
"I've seen things you people... wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain." - Roy Batty
@LAOK242 when you finish customizing new brush you can save it by pressing new layer icon in the same brush customization pallet. search for it :) hope you understood me ;D
Feng, You need to hook us up with your Swatches and stuff. Put a pack together for people wanting to try there hand at it. Have it include; Swatch packs, Brushes, Patterns, and some Royalty free pictures. etc. I would defiantly appreciate that :D Heck I've even pay for it.
Another great video, thanks alot! Question - i have alot of trouble with drawing environments, part from the obvious of practice alot are there any techniques, tips or methods of practice which can help improve your environment skills? Thanks again
@n3rmin Weird that there's a been a few questions regarding this. But each time I up-scale, the image looks fine. I've never experienced any problems. Maybe your starting res is too low? I usually start at 2,000 or 3,000 pixels wide. If you start at say 800 pixels and up-scale to 5,000, then yes, the image will definitely be blurry.
@dosig as Feng stated some time along, it's better if you make your custom brushes and patterns yourself, because if he just gave you a bunch of brushes you wouldn't know how to use them like him
@Fengdesigns Also a few friends of mine told me the same! They say "Use only the default brushes till you feel confortable with them". Since I wasn't able to draw and paint the way I want, I tried using lots and lots of brushes but they didn't help at all. I will follorw your advice. Thx
Thanks a lot for answer my last question about age and get in to industry. Now I have a new one: this is problably in the same spirit: Do thing that in this moment it,s very hard to "start" compare to few years ago? I mean I feel that there is a lot of new peolpe trying to get in to in industry every day and new schools or centers appears too. So, is there enough amount of job in these days to feed all the people?
I would really like to see what brushes he uses. I imagine he probably only uses the same 2-4 brushes for a large majority of this painting, and would be interested to see what he likes to use. I am new to photoshop, and am sort of overwhelmed by brushes. I often find myself using mostly the chalk brushes that come standard with CS 5.
yes he uses a graphic tablet, you wouldnt be able to pull off this level of painting with a mouse, and i know some people say they can but yeah its pretty much impossible to put in this detail and standard of painting with a mouse, he is using a tablet.
this is really amazing :D thank you so much for posting this I am actually planing to buy a tablet and start with digital paintings, and I find these tutorials really helpfull. Just thought you should know :)
This is a really nice painting, but the scale of the mecks bothered me quite a bit. The meck in the background is way too large compared to the one in the foreground, especially if you look at the humans hanging from it. unless the background ones are a different bigger kind.
Look at the top of the Mech in the foreground. The top of it almost touches the top of the image. Then as you go back in perspective the Mechs in the middle ground and distance are in perspective. Seems roughly close but, it is subjective if it looks wrong to you then that's cool. The mechs are closer than the large ships.
It is possible, but it is much much harder (depending on the person) and takes more practice than tablet since there isn't as much freedom and flow. One of my old friends who's currently going to college for design only draws with a mouse and is quite amazing at it, but can't do shit with a tablet, haha. I, on the other hand, am the total opposite. Small Bamboo tablets can go as cheap as $60 bucks (and even cheaper when on sale) at the right store. Start small, and if it works, upgrade later!
You animated it a little at the end!!! Is there any way to do a tutorial on that? I think animated concept art is extremely cool, and would like to try it... but I'm not sure how to even start. Any ideas or tips?
With all honesty, not having drawn in many, many years but being an artistic person that I am and totally into digital art, do I stand a chance, as a 36 year old, to learn all these techniques? If so, where does one even begin?
does Feng Zhu respond to questions because I would like to know what he does to swap back and forth between B/W and color? how do you keep control of your saturation when modifying value?
All those moments will be lost in time...
***** Perhaps death could heal the pain ...
BLa-bla-bla, now go and paint!
4 year termination date.
Still on of my favorites. Fun to watch and very nostalgic now
He has an extra black layer on top with the blend mode set to Saturation. When it's toggled visible, it makes all the layers below it have the same saturation as it. Since it's just plain black, it'll turn everything grayscale.
i stop at 01:03 and realize things that can do with scraps . now, i use your techniques like sketching a scrap into overlaying a photo to them. and it really really works. thanks alot.
After only three minutes, it already looked better than anything I would be able to do.
I have watched this video about 5 times and I still cant even begin to contemplate the amount of detail and talent that has been put into this artwork... its on a another level. I try and squeeze out at least 1 digital painting a week. Love it so much, i hope to reach your level one day...
These videos are really cool to leave running in the background, whilst doing a Digital Painting... Helps you relax into the painting frame of mind..
man this was beautiful. Its visual poetry you pull off right there
I was watching this with the sound off, then I turned it on and instantly recognized Feng's voice from the Gnomon videos! When I realized what FZD stood for... No words how excited I got. :D
Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to produce these tutorials! I'm learning so much.
The guy is correct. The mechs in the background are way too huge if they are supposed to be the same size as the one in the foreground. Just look at the buildings around the mechs in the background. Then look at the doors. now you have a good idea how large humans are back there.
I have the same problem... Mister Feng has one of the most incredible trained skills I have ever seen: a fantastic Visual Library.
He is able to "fill in" all these imaginative details by just tapping into his visual library gained by years of reading/drawing/watching/copying etc. I think he has a video on that topic if you are interested to hear more.
One of the best videos of yours yet!
Just wached all your videos till now; thank you so much
FZD SCHOOL OF DESIGN - UA-cam 100k Subscribers Contest
To appreciate all our Design Cinema fans, our 100K subscriber contest is now live!
Come enter and win Flight to Singapore + 3 nights stay in a 5-star hotel.
For more information, please visit: fzdschool. com / contest. html
The FZD Design Cinema Contest deadline is approaching soon. Be sure to submit your entry by September 30, 2013 to win a trip to Singapore. Good luck to you all~~
thank you so much for all your videos! very nice of you to take the time to make them. i really enjoy watching them. thank you alot!
@n3rmin Areas out of focus should be blurry so if you resize your painting during the early stages of production, the blurry areas will gradually become invisible to the eye as you add more and more detail. The eye naturally stays focused on areas with most contrast and detail.
If you resize an already finished painting/photo, the ugly pixels become the main focus as they are easy to spot, but if you afterwards decide to add more detail on top, the focus shifts and the pixels disappear..
Honestly, I've learned so much by watching your vids.
Oh oh, the parallax animation... talking about selling the piece to the clients! :)
All those memories...
@n3rmin
I never had an issue with this. Unless your original is tiny, there shouldn't be much blur. The default size for this was around 2000 pixels wide (ending at 10,000 pixels wide).
Really great to watch and hear your thought processes, thanks!
Feng, you are awesome.
@Koutetsujeeg
Best way to learn PS painting is to stick with the default brush and avoid any filters, effects, etc. Treat PS like a traditional canvas.
For the animations, that was done by my graphic designer in Adobe AF.
At the beginning of the video you talk about how the colors on your palette are balanced out. What should we look for while building up a palette so we can make sure that the colors will end up working well together as yours do?
Thank you so much for your lessons.
@SmritiP30
THX. I know a few basics of After Effects but I never heard this "3d mode". Next time I will use it I will try it...it's fun to see.
Love it how the mech gets pulled out n moves the arms in the end:)
Woah I think the painting tried to escape near the end there. It was just THAT good.
Incredible work. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and techniques like this.
he is a traditional painter and manually controls his values. to increase texture you can use a lot of the opacity jitters and position/size jitters in the brush options. I think I found out how he can control his saturation. seems adobe has improved their code for dodge and burn/ blending modes with CS4 which I am still a couple Versions behind on my photoshop.
@m4lm4n4
Thank you for your interest in FZD School of Design and its program. In regards to the breakdown of the course, you may check the Program Fee section on our official website. For additional information, you are welcome to email us and our Course Councilor will be glad to assist.
We hope to meet you one day at our School!
like the little animation at the end!
Awesome play by play.
No problem...thanks for the feedback! I'll take any I can get.
You have a great eye for perspective. 3 Point perspective is difficult to achieve, especially at the ground eye view you chose. I agree that just using the brushes are a good way of evolving your shapes, it adds that elusive texture that is presented in every great piece. Well done :-)
Set opacity to about 30% get a soft round brush and you could also turn transfer on, then take some values from the sky or near the value range of what you want to put it over, then go for it. Take it easy unless you want to make it waaaaayyy far away like this stuff, its not very hard though to get the hang of! Hope that helps!
@m4lm4n4
You may refer to the Before & After gallery on our website to see the enrollment portfolio from our students and the portfolio that they have when they graduate. Hope it helps. Thank you!
Simply put, you are a genius! Great work, thanks.
@zepher234 you can achieve that easily with simple camera projection in a 3d program, or after effects. Basically project different layers onto 3d planes with set distance, as you move the camera you will feel the parallax.
@Howi3
With digital, I don't do much thumbnails anymore. Now you can start one thumbnail and keep morphing it into another. Back in the days, you had to re-draw each time you want to make a change. So essentially I'm still doing thumbnails, but it's one big progression thumbnail.
@FlankCobra
actually you're right. Those mechs are too big in the distance so it's definitely a perspective mistake. I should have went in and changed their designs a bit to match the scale. Just need to remember next time.
I want to start by saying that I love Design Cinema! I find your videos to be a great way to start the day before sketching, I came to a realization today that brought on a question:
How do you keep a finger on the pulse of the entertainment industry? What news sites or forums should one be tuned to?
This question sprung up when I suddenly found out that JJ Abrams might be doing a Half Life movie.
Superb work Feng. One minor point; the scale of the foreground humans on the mech doesn't really match up with the others. They appear to be towering over buildings, I would have maybe upscaled the foreground mech/brought the humans down in size considerably. Doesn't detract from the painting, just an observation :)
can you make a tut on which kind of brushes to use and when to use them? not like the EXACT brush we need, just a tut in terms of what type of brushes should we use (soft edge, hard edge, spread out brush, etc.)
thanks for the comments everyone.
This painting was done in CS1 btw, not CS5. I really don't see much a difference between the two (for what we do), except CS1 is much faster :)
@Nahelus
I don't show the layers for two reasons:
1. It blocks the canvas
2. I don't use layers much. Most of these paintings have only 3 or 4 layers, and they are always on default setting.
And the colours are from my custom swatch.
Боже, пошли мне такой же талант, как у этих художников :(((((
@gordon1201 Sorry, but I was incorrect about the black layer's layer mode, you need to put it on saturation instead of overlay.
@gordon1201 He opens a new layer, paint buckets it all black, and sets it to overlay - so he can see the values clearly without the colors interrupting him. Then he makes a new layer under it (I'm pretty sure this one's on overlay as well) and paints over the parts where he wants to darken or lighten.
Hope that helped!
Great work thank you for shareing
dude you are awesome, really makes me wanna paint.
My main problem ist, i suck at painting.
„Ich habe Dinge gesehen, die ihr Menschen niemals glauben würdet. Gigantische Schiffe, die brannten, draußen vor der Schulter des Orion.
Und ich habe C-Beams gesehen, glitzernd im Dunkeln, nahe dem Tannhäuser Tor. All diese Momente werden verloren sein in der Zeit, so wie Tränen im Regen."
- Roy Batty (German)
@MrMadalien i think he uses the standard square chalk brush. he uses that most of the time.
"i've been working on this guy here (awesome speed mech biker), not for very long 2-3mins)".....2-3mins in his times is like 3 hours in mine, great videos, awesome art
@biffington Try painting things in black and white, and then just do a bunch of overlay layers to try out different colours. If your colours are too distracting, then chances are they're too bright, or clash with other colours. Make them subtle first, and then pick out the main ones a bit more.
Nice tutorials. I really hope you do one on painting values
probably painted on an overlay layer while keeping the Black colour layer visible so he could only see value changes
of course thank you!!!
@fullfist yea, but the ships were not meant to be the "selling point" of the picture anyway, regardless of their size. so i dont agree that they lost impact.
@PresidentChoob Thanks for the reply! i always forget about colour overlays! i suppose i could learn what colours work naturally by what the resulting overlay's make of the black and white painting,
feng zhu is ginormous !!!
I'd like to see a video on creating some sketching/lineart brushes such as the one you used in episode 33, 32.
it didnt really bother me much. the focus was obviously right in front but to my eye it felt like all three where relatively close, close enough for minimal shrinkage. if its far enough for major shrinking its right under the ships and it didnt feel like that.
yes... when u start put the human on foreground robot, i think the back robot is way tooo large.. But maybe they have variety of size :)
awesome again
"I've seen things you people... wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion...
I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears
in the rain." - Roy Batty
could you make a video of your brushes and settings please?
Tasty tips! Cheers Feng
The size of the mechs is a little messy.
The two furthest away look way too big yet incorporate the same forms as the foreground one.
@LAOK242 when you finish customizing new brush you can save it by pressing new layer icon in the same brush customization pallet. search for it :) hope you understood me ;D
@CT2507 it not like something that HUGE can even be anything otherwise. pushing back is what you DO with huge things
.
I hope so too, I wanna see some anti gravity racing
@BaeconOmlet Actuall not Overlay, but "Color" or "Saturation" (same thing, in the case of black or grey)
I do like those paintings, make more ;D
I was just about to point that out :) I guess he was distracted or something so he wanted to finish asap :) Even Feng is a human being lol :D
@FlankCobra Ty kind sir:3 didnt know what button is for.
Feng, You need to hook us up with your Swatches and stuff. Put a pack together for people wanting to try there hand at it.
Have it include; Swatch packs, Brushes, Patterns, and some Royalty free pictures. etc.
I would defiantly appreciate that :D Heck I've even pay for it.
Another great video, thanks alot!
Question - i have alot of trouble with drawing environments, part from the obvious of practice alot are there any techniques, tips or methods of practice which can help improve your environment skills?
Thanks again
Great scene. And now, 1,000,000$ question... What is Your favorite music playlist to stay in such a creative state of mind ? ;)
@n3rmin
Weird that there's a been a few questions regarding this. But each time I up-scale, the image looks fine. I've never experienced any problems. Maybe your starting res is too low? I usually start at 2,000 or 3,000 pixels wide. If you start at say 800 pixels and up-scale to 5,000, then yes, the image will definitely be blurry.
hee hee "buggersome" good word!
Holy unholy. What am i missing? What cruel fate left me with this brain setup?
its so awesome i may cry :P
Hey man could you make a video of apply the textures when u have so much details of several objects cheers!
@dosig as Feng stated some time along, it's better if you make your custom brushes and patterns yourself, because if he just gave you a bunch of brushes you wouldn't know how to use them like him
@Fengdesigns
Also a few friends of mine told me the same! They say "Use only the default brushes till you feel confortable with them". Since I wasn't able to draw and paint the way I want, I tried using lots and lots of brushes but they didn't help at all.
I will follorw your advice. Thx
Thanks a lot for answer my last question about age and get in to industry. Now I have a new one: this is problably in the same spirit:
Do thing that in this moment it,s very hard to "start" compare to few years ago? I mean I feel that there is a lot of new peolpe trying to get in to in industry every day and new schools or centers appears too. So, is there enough amount of job in these days to feed all the people?
I would really like to see what brushes he uses. I imagine he probably only uses the same 2-4 brushes for a large majority of this painting, and would be interested to see what he likes to use. I am new to photoshop, and am sort of overwhelmed by brushes. I often find myself using mostly the chalk brushes that come standard with CS 5.
i like what u do but i would love to see u drawing a cityscape in pencil and paper
@saprissa9
ah, learn something new everyday! Thanks for the info. Always wondered what those were called.
I wonder what the "Yeah" counter would be at? He ends nearly every scentence with it :D
I couldn't have blocked that ship.. My OCD would have kicked in and I would have rage-quit, haha.
yes he uses a graphic tablet, you wouldnt be able to pull off this level of painting with a mouse, and i know some people say they can but yeah its pretty much impossible to put in this detail and standard of painting with a mouse, he is using a tablet.
this is really amazing :D
thank you so much for posting this
I am actually planing to buy a tablet and start with digital paintings, and I find these tutorials really helpfull. Just thought you should know :)
This is a really nice painting, but the scale of the mecks bothered me quite a bit.
The meck in the background is way too large compared to the one in the foreground, especially if you look at the humans hanging from it. unless the background ones are a different bigger kind.
weird. I just noticed that too!
Look at the top of the Mech in the foreground. The top of it almost touches the top of the image. Then as you go back in perspective the Mechs in the middle ground and distance are in perspective. Seems roughly close but, it is subjective if it looks wrong to you then that's cool. The mechs are closer than the large ships.
Yep I get what you mean. I have heard that sometimes you have to technically fake stuff for the sake of the composition and overall feeling.
amazing thanks feng! :)
It is possible, but it is much much harder (depending on the person) and takes more practice than tablet since there isn't as much freedom and flow. One of my old friends who's currently going to college for design only draws with a mouse and is quite amazing at it, but can't do shit with a tablet, haha. I, on the other hand, am the total opposite.
Small Bamboo tablets can go as cheap as $60 bucks (and even cheaper when on sale) at the right store. Start small, and if it works, upgrade later!
You animated it a little at the end!!!
Is there any way to do a tutorial on that? I think animated concept art is extremely cool, and would like to try it... but I'm not sure how to even start. Any ideas or tips?
With all honesty, not having drawn in many, many years but being an artistic person that I am and totally into digital art, do I stand a chance, as a 36 year old, to learn all these techniques? If so, where does one even begin?
does Feng Zhu respond to questions because I would like to know what he does to swap back and forth between B/W and color? how do you keep control of your saturation when modifying value?