firefly grove workshop

Over the next week I plan to spend much more time on the overall site design and layout for fireflygrove.com.  I’ve been putting it off “until things are perfect,” which gets you in the trouble of making things perfect for way too long.  Of course, things will never be perfect.  I can spend days and weeks and months slowly learning CSS and HTML and PHP and layout skills, the entire time excited to one day implement these skills.  But that “one day” is something you have to make happen now, or it never will.

A goal of mine is to have the main fireflygrove.com page be a portal between this blog and a few others.  As of right now, I haven’t touched it (the main page) in almost three weeks.  This neglect has to stop!  So, expect more changes in that front (in the near/immediate future) instead of me keeping up with Illustrator stuff as I have been.

Some general timelines for my goals:  by Friday April 28 I will have fireflygrove.com updated to the point where it points to this blog, my journal blog, and my forthcoming guitar/songbook blog.  I’m not concerned with how pretty or “perfect” any of these pages are — I just want to get them up.  Once them up, I’m quite sure, the ideas and further improvement will come.

By Friday May 5 I will have my first “story scene” created in Illustrator.  Up until now I’ve only put together characters and items.  This has been great, but I’m finding my inner-self yearning to fully piece together a “scene” as visualized from my story/mythology project.

I’m sure other stuff will be done in the meantime, but these are my self-imposed deadlines.  I have bound myself to these and will produce results.

Determined as hell, I set off at the first chance I get to reclaim the treasure I had lost last night.  I found it again without much trouble at all.  And it probably took me a third the time.  Additionally, I’m much happier with this version, as well.  This bad-boy probably took me an hour, tops.  It is great to know that I can “recreate” pieces I’ve already done in much less time… it is a sweet taste of the realization of progress.

Thoughts:  When I made this illustration last night, I spent way too much time nit-picking over how exact I was in tracing the photo.  I probably ended up doing three different traces (last night) to get the final forms I wanted.  Seeing as my pencil/pen sketch style seems to be sort of frantic and wild (with many stray and unconnecting lines), this wasn’t too intuitive for me to switch over to Illustrator.  The solution, I’ve realized, is to use that very same intuition — and just feel out the general shape I’m tracing.  Don’t worry about sticking to the exact lines — go for the overall feel.

What I Learned:  The trace process, which usually takes up at least half of the time of the overall illustrations I’ve been doing, took a ridiculously small amount of time today.  The shading wasn’t at all bad either, given that I’m embracing the more simple approach.  Additionally, my use of layers was as flawless as it has ever been.  For example, in this piece my layers were as follows:  1) boots, 2) legs, 3) tunic, 4) arm, 5) head.  Underneath all of these layers was the picture I was tracing.  In the past I’ve found myself going overboard with the layers — this can waste precious time and make your task harder than it needs to be.  Layers are there to help you.  As simple as this piece is, there is no reason for each boot to have its separate layer or to separate the hair from the face or the stick from the hand.  Simple arranging (bring to front, bring to back, etc) can take care of this.

Notes on Shading:   I learned a very valuable lesson with shading in the creation of this piece.  Of course, I’ve been ranting about embracing a simpler style of shading, but this has to do with something else.  In the past I’ve talked about using semi-transparent shades of black and white to add darkness/light to objects.  The benefit of this is that you can change only one color (the base color of the object) and the shading will change correspondingly.  This is good in its own way.  However, using black and white alone doesn’t always give you the best coloring.  Most of all, I’ve notice that using black can make its underlying color much to gray — and the impression is lost.  At first, I did shading with black and white for this piece.  In the end, however, I went back and did color specific shading.  For the brown boots, for instnace, the “light” part (at the toe) was created by matching the toe to the overall boot color and then moving all the color values (CMYK) all up correspondingly (“up” meaning toward their maximum value meaning toward white).  This creates a lighter shade (or a darker shade if I had moved them down) which isn’t blatant “black” or “white.”  I’ve included examples of both below.  The differences are very subtle, but perhaps most noteworthy in the hair and the tunic (the dark shade is hardly seeable in the black/white version).

Learned a very hard lesson tonight.  Illustrator  hasn’t crashed for me once in the 3-4 weeks I’ve been using it… but tonight was the night.  And I was literally putting the finishing touches on a 2 hour project.  And it was so good!  Man!  Well, now I know, and knowing is half the battle.  I’m gonna recreate thebad-boy tomorrow… it shouldn’t take long.  I learned a lot.  Don’t feel like uploading the picture right now… check back later, perhaps.

My latest creation, here you go.  This one was totally spontaneous… I started messing around with Illustrator while the web was slow this morning, and soon found myself on quite the lucrative trail.  Over a few hours, bit by bit, I chipped away at this.  Here is the result.  Took me 2 hours at a very casual and relaxed pae.

Thoughts:  In my last two posts, I described a yearning to pull away from the style direction in which I’d been heading in regard to shading.  For a good chunk of my first several illustrations, I found a groove with a shading style that involved three shades of black and one shade of white around all objects.  This looked good, in my opinion, but it ate up too much time and began to consume me in the direction of insatiable detail. I seemed to want more and more and more.  And I recently realized it had to stop — I was getting too far off the path.

In my previous post I put up some inspiration pieces — illustrations which looked absolutely great and used a much more subtle approach to shading.  These had been on my mind, and I found myself yearning to experiment.  It is noteworthy (at least in regard to my track record) that this illustration was put together without any pre-game sketch… I simply started with the hand, moved up the arm, and banged it all out in Illustrator.

What I Learned: This illustration taught me how much fun a different approach to shading can make.  I also utilized Bezier Curves — which are in stark contrast to the “jagged corner” approach I’d utilized in most all of my previous posts.  It was fun to mess around on the other side of the fence (the smooth curve side), as it makes me appreciate the curves as well as the jagged lines I still hold dear. I also learned that I have a lot of work to do with faces.  This is one area where a pre-sketch (on paper, scanned in digitally) would have helped me tremendously.

What’s Next:  In the spirit of this illustration, I want to continue on down the path of simplicity.  I’m sure there is more ground to explore along those lines, and quite the amount of treasure to retrieve.  If for nothing else than an exercise, I’d like to experiment with creating characters in a style very close to the cartoon-Zelda theme.  It would be good practice, even if its not the ultimate look I’m going for.  But I do appreciate the simplicity a great deal.

Not exactly sure what my next illustration will be.  Today an awesome idea came to me for a landscape (of sorts), one that I’ll probably work on today or tomorrow.  I have the sketch all planned out, so implementation wouldn’t be tough.  This piece in question is the perfect “next project” to test out this new shading style on a non-character.

Here are two pics that are far-and-away the mental examples I’m using for inspiration. Notice the shading — it is done with such a simple beauty. This is the direction I want to go next. I have plenty of character sketches to work with — I want to emulate these styles in bringing forth my work. By the end of the week — look for something. It will be hard to wait, I know.

The first one is by artist Monica Calvo [blog]. She has a lot of other great pieces up on her site, all slightly varying in style. The picture I posted above is definately my favorite. I discovered her work through browsing “Veerle’s blog 2.0“, which is an incredibly designed graphics/design blog. I’ll probably devote a post to the awesomeness of her page sometime latter.

The second of these is, of course, our hero Link from the Wind Waker edition of Zelda (Gamecube). When I first saw this cartoony style, I wanted to rip my eyes out with a set of door hinges. After playing the game, however, my opinion shifted drastically. The cartoon look was absolutely perfect. Again, note the thick black lines (which you know I love) and the simple coloring & shading.

This is the illustration I’m currently working on.  At the moment I’m about 60% done after 2-3 hours of work.  I’ve completed the boots, legs, tunic and am about to start the arms.  In a way, this is a follow-up to the post I did last week of my first-ever story character.  This one is the same general “type” of person in the story.

Thoughts:  What I’ve noticed, though, is that I set the standard a bit too high for myself in regard to detail.  And once you start something like this, its hard to go back.  As a result, I’m finding my motivation to finish this illustration is quite low… I know I have at least 2-3 more hours to go, which I cannot wait to finish.  So that is what I’ll have to do — finish.

And when I do finish, I cannot wait to strat something with the explicit goal of using a lot less detail.  Take shading, for instance.  I’m generally using 3 dark shades and 1 light shade in addition to the base color (whether its skin, clothing, or anything else).  This has served me well so far, but I’m finding its too much.  It has become more than the inner-me wants.  I want to experiment with less shading, with simpler characters.
What’s Next:  Of course, I want to finish this illustration.  I hope to have it banged out by Wednesday, at the latest.  It all depends on my schedule.  After that, though, I am quite excited.  I have several characters other I want to draw, and look forward to a much simpler approach.

Here we are. The second of my story characters. This one probably took about 2 hours. The good thing about making all of these story characters into illustrations is that I’ll be forced to come up with names!
Thoughts: This one (and the many that will follow in its footsteps) were largely inspired by the Dragon Warrior series of RPG games. You’d walk around and randomly encounter enemies, who would appear only as an image. Throughout the game, you’d fight the same (visual) monster as you progressed… but there would be subtle differences (different color, more weapons, etc). In the general mythology of my storybook world, this would be a “middle”-level demon. In honor of Dragon Warrior, here is a quick throw-together of such modifications.

What I learned: With this exercise, the thing I found myself wondering about the most was how my “style” of illustrating will change as I progress. In a very real sense, I would argue (at least in my experience so far) that your style is slightly refined with each illustration you create. And with this one, I found a small part of myself deviating from the direction I thought I’d be going. For instance, is elaborate shading necessary on more simple drawings (like this one)? I don’t think it is (to get the effect I ultiamtely want), but I still used it here (as I’ve been using it previously).

After my moonbeam post yesterday, I went on a little curiousity rampage in search of “the way” to produce the effect I’m looking for. To guide you through my problem, check out the below illustration. Object A is a simple solid-red shape. Object B is that same shape with a simple gradient applied. Instead of an object being filled solid with a single color, a “gradient” is the filling of an object with multiple colors, spaced as you desire. This can be done in a linear fashion (left to right, top to bottom, or any angle in between) or in a radial fashion (from the center of a circle outward, like the shading on a sphere).

The problem with a simple linear gradient, however, is that it does not “bend’ when used on a curved object (as seen in Object B). This can create a big problem if you want to create an at-all realistic looking fade. For instance, imagine my moonbeams as being faded from a solid color (on the outside) to a transparent or lighter color (on the inside). This transition would only look good if the contour of the shading follows the contour of the curve. In Object B (regular gradient), this is not the case.

The answer, or at least one possible answer (as there are usually many solutions), is the use of a gradient mesh. These apply a sort of “grid” over top of an object, the contours of which curve with the contours of the object. You are then given the opportunity to color each “mesh” section of the grid. In Object C, the left two columns (which you cannot see) are colored red; the right two columns are colored white. Because its a gradient mesh, I suppose they’re setup to “transition” from color to color in a smooth manner. Object D is a super-quick attempt at adding some dynamic vertical shading as well. Doesn’t look that great, but its good to know there is much to learn.

I have found several different tutorials describing how to use this tool, some more accessible (and helpful) than others. Regardless, this is a perfect starting point to answer the question I posted in a previous post. I would love to update the appearance of the moonbeams (below) to involve these gradient meshes. I’ll surely have to practice some more (I spent only 10-20 minutes since my last post), but I’m feeling quite good about things.

I hope to have a real-deal drawing up that uses this technique in the next week or two, depending on my progress with other illustrations and my rate of learning this skill.

Here we have it — a bucket, filled with (what else) — moonbeams. Took me about 2 hours. “Buckets of moonbeams” is a line from a Bob Dylan song. Quite a wonderful image it evokes. Here is my representation.

What I learned: Some of the limitations of using layers. Or, said another way, I learned how I possessed many misconceptions about how to use layers properly. For those of you unfamiliar, Illustrator allows you to put groups of items into “layers.” Layers allow you to organize your objects with much ease, which is especially crucial when it comes to applying shading and such. Using layers gives you much more flexibility and control (and convenience), but learning to use them (properly) is not a simple task. Still, I came out of this stronger, and that is the point.

Thoughts: Perhaps the biggest question this piece has me asking is how exactly I shall learn to use gradients for more complex shading. Yesterday I started another piece, which I had to abort due to a severe lack of skills to get me the representation I was looking for (I’ll post the picture this piece was based off of later). The moonbeams are very similar — a misty, luminecsant, and somewhat transparent object. Gradients are nice and good, but as far as I’m capable (at the moment), I cannot “bend” them as I will need to. I stumbled upon a tutorial about how to do this a few weeks back, and I’m sure I’ll figure out how eventually. In the meantime, however, I’m gonna keep on pumping out stuff I’m well capable of doing.

What’s Next: I have several more story character sketches I hope to have up before next week. I’m quite excited for all of these. Look for the next one to be finished no later than tomorrow.

After my last Illustrator creation (directly below this post), I find myself wanting to take some time and catch up with the layout & design of this blog (and others on the site). So I’ve started digging around with Wordpress, which is the blogging software I’ve installed on my server to run this blog. Going into this stage of exploration, my confidence was sky-high: I was sure I’d be able to quickly learn, pick-up, and apply my vision to the site without trouble.

And to an extent, I was dead-wrong. Wordpress turns out to be far more complex than I imagined (in regard to what you can do with it). The last two days or so I sort of ran into a wall — all of my confidence and assuredness sort of left me high and dry when I figured out it would take more than 5 minutes to learn. Last night, however, I collected myself and feel quite good about everything today. After all, the fact that Wordpress is so incredibly flexible is a very good thing as far as what I hope to get out of this experience. There is in fact so much you can do with it, the possibilities are quite high. So, I now know that in a few months time when I have a much more firm grasp on all of this, I’ll be that much closer to where I want to be (toward mastery of web design and all that).

I’m quite happy (at the moment) with the layout as of now. It is certainly not how I plan to keep things in the long run, but its a sold start. By the end of the week I hope to have a few more Illustrator creations posted. I’m quite excited to follow along the lines of my previous entry (the story character). I have a bunch of other sketches I want to bring to life… some of which will take an hour or so each, others (two) which will take 5-6+ hours each. Its quite exciting stuff. The progress shall continue!