Howdy folks!
Sorry, no secret Steem Monsters sauce here. Maybe next time (if I'm allowed to share it).
Meanwhile, I figured I would share artwork just for fun.
I don't get much time to dabble artistically. I'm not sure I have the mentality to go full "artist" on anything. After all, art is often associated with a "when it's done, it's done" philosophy. Which is in stark contrast with the professional world I live in, full of deadlines and deliverables.
It would be nice to lovingly sculpt every shadow and refine every highlight to the point of absolute perfection. But who has the time, right?
I'm sure I could have spent a week on this piece, tweaking and polishing to the microscopic level. But at the end of the day, I feel pretty good about it. It was fun. It was relaxing. I fulfilled what I set out to do: conceptualize just one out of a ba-jillion different artistic styles for future Steem Monsters graphic elements.
Okay, so let's get down to it!
I've got a Surface Pro, which is pretty cool. The touch sensitive screen. The nifty stylus. I've made use of these things when working with Illustrator or Photoshop. However, something has to be said for the fluid and intuitive feel of the Apple pencil on the iPad.
For those who aren't already familiar with the absolutely beautiful drawing app, Procreate...well, it's pretty awesome. If you like creating digital art, go install Procreate on your iPad. The interface is well thought out and easy to use.
I decided that I would re-imagine Steem Monster's Lightning Dragon with a dose of hyper-realism. Nothing too crazy. Just enough to produce a frame of reference. A comparison of sorts.
As such, I didn't really need the entire body. The head would be enough.
So let's take a look at the original card art:
Honestly, it already looks cool to begin with. But if we stop here, I can't really justify this blog post. So...guess we should keep going.
I'm tempted to change the perspective. A full body side view is rather passive for my taste. Let's get dramatic. It's a DRAGON! I want the viewer to piss themselves in terror. I want them to wake up crying in the middle of the night. I want them to subconsciously shy away from lizards at the pet store.
But let's not go nutty.
The full-blown eye of the dragon stare-down can wait. Right now, we need to stick with the lines of the original artwork as closely as possible. There's a lot of cool elements to work with here.
Unfortunately, the fun doesn't come until later. We need to start with the flats.
For stuff like this, layer management is crucial. Each part of the body is organized on a different layer. It's important to label each layer because you might end up with a LOT of layers. So each time you create a new layer, make sure you name it accordingly. For instance, I have a layer named "Upper Body Base". Another layer might be named "Upper Body Shadows" or "Upper Body Highlights". So on and so forth.
This is good practice for many reasons. Procreate allows you to export as a PSD (Photoshop) file. You'll definitely want to have names associated with all those layers if you continue working in another program. From Photoshop, you might end up dropping your creation into After Effects (or similar program) for animation or multimedia. Again, you'll be thankful that all the layers have names.
Welp, I'm not gonna bore you with every little step of the process, so let's skip ahead to the end:
Yay! Scary dragon that can power all your mobile devices!
Here's my master plan: In between all my crazy work, I'm going to TRY to re-design existing monsters using different artistic styles. It'll be fun and hopefully help to facilitate discussions on what makes sense for when things really blow up in the future. As I unleash more of these examples, please continue to provide feedback on what you guys think is cool and what types of style samples you'd like to see next!
Awesome bro !! Cant wait to see what you come up with..
It is a fact and reality of life
Awesome stuff @nateaguila That is pretty cool that you can do so with an Ipad and procreate. Are you also using an Apple pencil?
I am not familiar at all with procreate but hopefully it I can learn it like photoshop. Thanks and keep up the awesome tutorials.
Yup, I used the Apple Pencil. Very fluid drawing experience. What's nice about Procreate is that it feels very intuitive. The interface controls are perfectly positioned where you're holding the iPad so that you can make adjustments to the controls with your fingers with minimal effort.
With Photoshop, you need to interact with panels, windows, menus, and sub-menus in a manner that is better utilized with a mouse. Even if you know all the keyboard shortcuts to speed things up, you're still taking the time to put down the mouse or stylus so you can tap the key combination.
Thanks for the reply @nateaguila Your work is inspiring that's for sure.
And hopefully I get to use a Apple Ipad Pro with pencil soon. For now I use mostly a mouse and occasionally an older Cintiq/Wacom tablet. I kinda of like the mouse better now that I am getting better with it.
This looks amazing!
Thanks!
@nateaguilla, nice! I was just browsing around steemit and stumbled upon your page....super cool that you are using Procreate for your art! You have a much better skill using the application than I do...I recently just started Procreate and still have a lot to learn :) Cool work anyhow, upvote your page to support
Never stop learning! Procreate is definitely a fun app. You might also like another app called Paper. It's great for sketches, doodles, and working on ideas.
@nateaguila yes I agree, Procreate seems like a very powerful application although I will need lots of patience and hard work to learn its full potential. Oh nice! Paper by Fifty Three? I am not sure if they are the same app, haven't tried it but gonna go check it out thanks for your suggestion! :D Have you used Paper for some time now? What's your experience with the app?
Yup, that's the one. Paper is great if you're ever in the mood to just draw. When you don't want to think about layers and precision. When you just want to toss something on "paper" and see what happens. It's great for artists with a short attention span and a carefree spirit.
Cool @nateaguila nice tip thanks for letting me know I'm gonna definitely check it out!
That looks really cool, just for reference, you could take a look into dungeons and dragons art, this dragon is pretty much based on a blue D&D dragon. I would also love to see the hyper-realism treatment on the Twisted Jester, give him a really creepy and disturbing smile.
@javo1096
Ah, D&D. Those were the days. Growing up, I remember many sleepless nights full of pizza, multi-sided dice, painted figurines, and fantasy-fueled mayhem.
I'll try to work up the courage for Twisted Jester.
I got really happy when you mentioned tabletop RPG's in your presentation post as Creative Director for @steemmonsters, definitely one of my kind of people. Really excited to see what your work brings to the table, especially coming up from a fellow D&D enthusiast!
@javo1096
Great piece of artwork!. I totally get what your saying! "whens its done, its done" mentally is what iv'e been doing for a while now and have a few unfinished works because i want perfection lol... but time is not on our side!
It could be one of the Pokémon. I like the end result. Good luck in your work!
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Nice one 👍
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Good post, I really like it !
Regards
Amazing! great job.
Thanks!
Fantastic, looks real! @ironshield
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