A New Mentor!
Today I had a call with Ghailan (illustrator at Riot Games), my new art mentor. I was so nervous during the call but I think I have overcome that fear now. Just made a big jump, can breath now.
If I hadn't joined Gist, I would've never met him and taken much longer to get inspired by him. I'd seen some of his work often but never knew his name.
In this Skype call we talked about assignments and goals for each month. It's very simple. Ghalan gives a big assignment each month which we can choose between three subjects to work out. In the meantime, you HAVE to make lots of sketches and experiments and gather them in a folder. You have to paint or sketch from real life, but only the things you aren't confident about and need in your final illustration; certain type of plants, animals, people, rocks, scenery... If problems pop up or you get stuck, you tell Ghailan via Skype and he'll give you a call asap to discuss those problems and ideas and he'll give you feedback. At the end of the month (25th?) you submit your final illustration and together with 29 other students you watch Ghailan do a paintover and discuss the ideas, painting, etc with you while the others listen and watch. Every video will be recorded and shared with you, so even if you can't make it to call live with everyone, you can still get the feedback.
The mentorship costs €30 exc VAT a month. Sounds reasonable to me considering most mentorships cost hundreds more!
This and the conversations with Victor Hugo Harmatiuk made me think. I've searched for a digital painting course in the Netherlands for several years now and found only one this week. A ridiculously expensive one that doesn't look appealing to me at all. Maybe because the website is still done with only basic HTML and bad pictures of the lessons. *First impressions count!*
I'd love to improve my own art to start mentorships and start a tiny school in the Netherlands teaching digital painting for a more decent price. That would be my long term goal. The shorter term goal is to start working at a game studio.
This month I didn't draw for the assignment because of Gist. I followed his instructions, though. Kind of. Ghailan told me the colours I've used for my work on Artstation look washed out. To improve that I've been studying Ghailan's bright colours and the scenery around me, trying to implement them in my own work.
I did get to send in one illustration to receive feedback on :) I don't know if that will be in this Sunday's video session or written feedback, though.
Ghailan's avatar
Difference between Marc Brunet, Victor Hugo Harmatiuk and Atey Ghailan
Marc brunet usually paints painterly with a clean slightly transparent squared brush and uses the color picker to built his painting further. He paints like an artist would do with acrylics but the brush strokes have little texture in them. He often uses complimentary colours with strong contrasts but not too strong. The main characters usually are sexy females and look similar. Large breasts and hips. The paintings are colourful and look playful.
He usually works from shapes and builds them up with other strokes until a recognisable shape pops up. Traditional style. Marc also sculpts a lot and sometimes uses them as a base for his 2D paintings. I've tried that while painting that blue robot for my portfolio to show Grendel Games. You can find it in an earlier post and on my Artstation. (upper right corner of this page)
Atey Ghailan (pron. atti gailan)
Technique wise the opposite of Marc. Ghailan's work is often bright and playful like Marc's but Ghailans work is cleaner because he uses the selection tools a LOT to create shapes. He says that's easier than painting a square with a brush and editing that later. Some of his paintings look as if they're speed paintings. Quick short strokes. Marc likes to use only one or two layers and paint everything by hand (from time to time he doesn't) while Ghailan uses sooo many layers. Probably over 20 layers?
Victor Hugo Harmatiuk
Victor often starts with a black and white base and if the shapes, composition and lights are good, he paints over that layer with colours. From what I was able to see during our video chat session he uses 2 layers. One where he paints on and another as a back up (in case something bad happens to the other?). I think he'll have to work as less layers as possible if he wants to use the Mixer Brush tool because it doesn't work well with several layers at all. The Mixer Brush gives that traditional painting look. The strokes look like acrylic or oil paint. It's a great tool to create a smooth transition or a very messy one.
During the interview I got to ask him a question I'd been wanting to ask him for a long time. Why does he sometimes paint with dark colours and sometimes very bright colours? He told me it depends on the mood he is in.
Aaron Blaise
Art Directer and artist for Disney. Brother Bear and The Lion King definitely have his signature. He's an older artist who's drawn and painted traditionally for films until he gave in to digital tablets and started to like it a lot. Nowadays he does both. He's a pro in animal anatomy and animation. I think he works in several layers, too but nothing crazy. His paintings look a bit traditional because of the brushes he uses, they're quite rough. Starts with pencil strokes and draws basic shapes for the bodies first.
He's an AMAZING brush creator. Especially his cloud brush pack is amazing. I haven't used it in a while, though.
At the beginning of Gist I've watched several live video's on Youtube where he explained how to make animal characters abstract and add personality to them. It was so easy to understand what he was talking about! I've watched it with three other classmates, sending comments about the video through Whatsapp while watching the video.