/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

the videos are interesting. i wish there was commentary though

>>4246094
Damn, based Nurik making it from fucking aktobe. Hella inspiring!

That whole "let's imitate a GPU shader" workflow seems pretty gimmicky to me.
like you need to separate ambient acclusion, core and cast shadows into separate stages like a fucking computer instead of just painting shadows directly. as if that gains you something.

>>4246167
Hue has a value too. That on top of the "isolated" value makes it difficult to get what you want. Have you ever tried it?

>>4246167
I can see this workflow very helpful for a lot of reasons
>rapid prototyping
>learning to illustrate the form
>fun
>works
>demystifies a complex process
>can make cute chibi's with big butts
should i go on

>>4246181
>>can make cute chibi's with big butts
that's all you need to say

>>4246095
Link?

>>4246178
Separating value and color into separate stages generally gives poor results in painting. Color is not something that you can just plop on top of values, it's an inherent part of the image. Also, using colors directly can give you a greater value range than just greyscale, as differences in intensity between various hues can be utilized for finer overall brightness control. In fact, the painters with the best values and realistic lighting that I know of work alla prima.

>>4246181
>rapid prototyping
Doing several passes on the same image isn't rapid. Painting shapes directly is rapid.
>learning to illustrate the form
You mean learning to light the form? If you want to learn the form, drawing is your best bet, not painting. The ability to hint forms through line thickness, direction and overlap is incredibly helpful for studying the form.
>demystifies a complex process
It's the opposite. It complicates a simple process. The separation of lighting into several stages (ambiient, core, shadow, etc) is an artefact of real time graphics processing and GPU architecture. Such a process was invented to allow computers to simulate semi-believable lighting in real time, due to GPUs being too weak to simulate bouncing photons. It is literally not how light works. That technique is also being obsoleted by raytracing as we speak, which simulates lighting the way it works IRL - as a single, unified process where photons bounce around an environment.

So this technique teaches you nothing but how to imitate another artist's "style". It's like one of those "how to draw an eye" tutorials on deviant art. Teaching process rather than understanding.

>>4246211
>Separating value and color into separate stages generally gives poor results in painting
This technique is used by artists make good artwork though. Isolating hue and value(and making passes in general) gives you greater control, a non destructive, and a modular workflow by letting you mess with each pass individually, alongside adding or deleting work in-between/before/after other passes. Computers mostly work in the same way as painting software's blendmodes when it comes to passes. It only follows that there's no problem with doing the same thing with blend modes. How light bounces has nothing to do with passes. Heck, you could do all the lighting and colors in just one pass. You can have passes in raytraced solutions, too- the way to calculate lighting, for example, is just a means to an end. t. shader artist.
>So this technique teaches you nothing but how to imitate another artist's "style". It's like one of those "how to draw an eye" tutorials on deviant art. Teaching process rather than understanding.
Right. This style of painting is based more on realism, I'd say. Still, I couldn't find the tutorial OP mentioned, so I can't say if they helped understand the process.

>>4246245
>This technique is used by artists make good artwork though
Subjective.
>Isolating hue and value(and making passes in general) gives you greater control, a non destructive, and a modular workflow by letting you mess with each pass individually
It also makes for bland, uninteresting colors that are just flat blobs overlaid on greyscale.
I'm not the biggest fan of Marco Bucci, but this video explains pretty nicely why the color overlay workflow is undesirable:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJitss58XKc
In short, an image is made up of shapes of colors, and your brushstrokes are those shapes. Each shape has to have a color correspond to it. By not having colors and shapes correspond exactly (for example by having areas of color larger than areas of shapes), you break that relationship, creating a less interesting result.

Regarding computer graphics, I wasn't talking about shaders really, but rather about the fact that in the rasterization pipeline, calculating ambient occlusion (faked ambient occlusion, mind you), lighting and shadows is done by three different algorithms, and then combined later. The whole concept of ambient occlusion was born from the need to fake indirect shadows in a real time pipeline, as GPUs aren't powerful enough to do ray tracing in real time. The only reason to do ambient occlusion with a raytracer is to then bake it onto a texture to fake indirect shadows real time. There's no separate "ambient occlusion stage" in ray traced rendering. Or in real life, for that matter.

>>4246269
ok but back on the topic of the op i just really like the way the artist does his stuff so i enjoy the tutorials even if they are limiting to his style because well
i like the style

>>4246208
https://www.cgpeers.com/torrents.php?id=51342&torrentid=51286#torrent51286

and here's his gumroad
https://gumroad.com/nbekkaliev

>>4246273
Just how limited are you willing to be?
Notice that literally ALL of his works can be described as "figure standing in void" with a bland color overlay on top.
Doing an ambient occlusion pass is not a viable strategy for any composition more complicated than that. Imagine doing that for a landscape or a scene illustration with background detail, like in a room or something.

Also, there are a lot of lighting scenarios where there's little to no ambient occlusion, like under direct harsh light.

>>4246167
At first it looked like he referenced dolls and action figures but at a second look it seems like some 3D shader.

>>4246291
I'm not on cgp. Also that's real dangerous posting that link on the clearnet.

>>4246269
>Subjective.
Explain how "poor" results aren't subjective.
>It also makes for bland, uninteresting colors that are just flat blobs overlaid on greyscale.
That depends on the artist. Again, there's more than one way to do passes. You can achieve ANY result you want, even the same results as alla prima if you wish to.
>In short, an image is made up of shapes of colors, and your brushstrokes are those shapes. Each shape has to have a color correspond to it. By not having colors and shapes correspond exactly (for example by having areas of color larger than areas of shapes), you break that relationship, creating a less interesting result.
As for the video- drawing in passes is just another skill that you have to master. The reason he and his students felt like it was a patch job was because they simply sucked at it. About the color changing with form and light direction- the color doesn't change without any environment - only the value of the hue does - provided you have a white light. Which again reinforces the point that they just suck at passes. Either that, or he's talking very specifically about just putting a single color on top of grayscale, which is very cherrypicked but is definitely a beginner trap if you don't know about reflections and ambient lighting. At around the 13 minute mark, his solution itself is using a different way of utilizing passes. He's aware of color modulations, for example. Passes are just a way of making a non-destructive and modular workflow which also gives you granular control over your results. His abstract field near the end is also, again, a cherrypicked example. Like I said(and even he demonstrates this in his painting and verbally), there are multiple approaches to do passes, and of course, painting. I'm not saying one way's better or one way's worse, both have their pros and cons and which one to use is largely subjective and context-dependent. I myself prefer doing switching mid-painting when it suits me.

>>4246315
>ran out of word limit
>The only reason to do ambient occlusion with a raytracer is to then bake it onto a texture to fake indirect shadows real time. There's no separate "ambient occlusion stage" in ray traced rendering. Or in real life, for that matter.
Like I've said, the existence of an ambient occlusion stage in real life has nothing to do with wanting to separate passes. You can make NPR and PBR, because you have 100% control on your canvas. You could even make both, just by the virtue of being able to switch, apply add, multiple, order, and other operations. The options are practically infinite compared to alla prima, which has only 1 possible result unless you want to erase all your progress.

>>4246315
>You can achieve ANY result you want, even the same results as alla prima if you wish to.
Not unless you somehow manually assign a unique color to each and every brush stroke in the painting, at which point you might as well have done it all in color in the first place for less effort. I'd really like to see you make a glaze layer for each stroke of a dry texture brush.
Glazing is an outdated technique from 5 centuries ago, and its only benefit is that with computer assistance it is easier and faster. It gives worse results than doing an impressionist style color painting.

>About the color changing with form and light direction- the color doesn't change without any environment - only the value of the hue does - provided you have a white light.
I'm not talking about form, I'm talking about shapes. Basic fundamentals here. Even then that's wrong. Color can change for any reason. Pigment, worn out layers of several materials, just because the artist feels like, it, etc.
Then you have to coordinate all of these layers so that they all correspond to their shapes. A lot of pointless busywork when you could just paint colors directly.
>The options are practically infinite compared to alla prima, which has only 1 possible result unless you want to erase all your progress.
A competent alla prima can painter can knock out a dozen variants while you're fiddling with your layers. Iteration > elaboration. And no, simply putting blobs of colors on a canvas IS 100% control. You're working at a pixel level, manipulating the image directly. Color pass workflow limits control in favor of modularity or whatever makes it easier for the computer to do your work for you. You have to structure your painting in a way that the workflow can accommodate. You don't have the freedom to just change anything on a whim instantly. That's giving up control.

>>4246334
>Not unless you somehow manually assign a unique color to each and every brush stroke in the painting, at which point you might as well have done it all in color in the first place for less effort.
Complex selection tools with a lot of options exist.
>I'm not talking about form, I'm talking about shapes. Basic fundamentals here. Even then that's wrong. Color can change for any reason. Pigment, worn out layers of several materials, just because the artist feels like, it, etc.
How the color changes doesn't matter. You're adding in new factors for some reason, which again, can be considered in passes. No restrictions. It's just a way to separate work.
>A competent alla prima can painter can knock out a dozen variants while you're fiddling with your layers. Iteration > elaboration.
Using passes doesn't mean just using layers. Passes have iterations, too. Not just elaboration(which again, is a cherrypicked beginner's trap). You get ton of options pertaining to what kind of operation you want to perform. It's effectively the same as choosing a color, but the results can go from simple to a lot more complex.
>And no, simply putting blobs of colors on a canvas IS 100% control. . . .
I never said that putting colors on canvas isn't 100% control. All I was saying that using passes is 100% control, too. The point was that you can perform any kind of operation you want with them, in any order you wish to, which is the benefit of passes.

>>4246356
>Color pass workflow limits control in favor of modularity or whatever makes it easier for the computer to do your work for you. You have to structure your painting in a way that the workflow can accommodate.
My whole point here has been that passes give you granular control, modularity and a non-destructive workflow. Color pass workflow is a skill, just like alla prima. You have to get good at it.
>You don't have the freedom to just change anything on a whim instantly. That's giving up control.
That's the thing; you do have the freedom to just change anything on a whim instantly in passes. A vastly bigger freedom like I've described in my previous posts. Also, no one is stopping you from erasing paint on your canvas just because you use passes.

>>4246293
i dont plan to become a ripoff, i just like cute clay characters in a void and i would like to be able to do them even if i will use other techniques for my full pieces

>>4246356
>>4246359
Well, I'm willing to agree to disagree.
it's just that I have a traditional painting background, and I find painting directly to be a lot more enjoyable than using a program interface to tweak settings and stuff.
But if you could post some paintings you enjoy done with a shader/filter/pass workflow, I'd really appreciate it. Just for educational / inspirational purposes. I'm always willing to concede my points and admit I'm wrong if the evidence is staring me in the face.

>>4246273
I get you, it has its appeal. It's very limited though. Probably not a good idea to learn from a one trick pony

>>4246366
Oh well, good luck and hope you'll find what you're looking for.
But you should definitely look into getting a cgpeers account, it's basically the only place to reliably get art related video tutorials.

Another advice I could give you is, if you're looking for references to study, you could download models off of sketchfab and then import them into a 3D rendering software of some kind, and do an ambient occlusion render of them, to get access to effectively limitless supply.
Some models on sketchfab have AO baked in and available right through the interface, but most don't.

>>4246380
>it's just that I have a traditional painting background, and I find painting directly to be a lot more enjoyable than using a program interface to tweak settings and stuff.
Yeah, choosing what kind of workflow to use/invent is subjective and dependent on the person, which is why I've been saying exactly that. The first post wondered what reason one could have to use passes, I'm just trying to answer that. As for an example, I don't collect any specific pieces of artwork, so I don't have one at hand. A quick search I found on Google may be interesting enough, I think.

>>4246211
>tfw can never go from step 3 to step 4

>>4246245
What If I told you you can internalize value and colour into the same part of your decision making process, and instantly speed up your process.

>>4247146
Why why would you do that when you could be a brainless retard and play with the hue/saturation slider instead of actually understanding color theory.

>>4246211
>>4246269
>>4246334
You're a crab mate. Just because you watch a youtube video doesn't mean you're a bastion of intellect. Every single artist in history has done b&w to study values. I feel like your paintings are probably shit. You've probably never done a value study. Concluding you've never even done a proper color study.
Stop dismissing people to feel better about yourself. It's unproductive and it also serves to misdirect aspiring artists like OP.
OP is making an effort to learn and develop his knowledge of rendering. I think you should do the same, instead of trying to inflict an air of superiority with your current level of knowledge, simply to smite others.

I have nothing against you. Hope you do well in life. Just have a moment of self reflection, please.

>>4247146
>>4247158
>not reading the whole thing
Pathetic. Not even worth replying any sense to.

>>4247260
Not the anon you're replying to. But.

I don't think it matters which method somebody uses. But painting directly in color is a useful core skill for any artist to have.

The methods artists use to create results isn't what matters. What matters is having the skills to do what you want the way you want to do it.

You should probably tone down the attitude. Deciding that someones' art is shit because they have an opinion you disagree with is the height of bigotry. The anon you're replying to never told anyone that they couldn't colorize B&Ws ever again. He explained in a fairly cogent manner several times why he doesn't believe in it. To disregard that because you think he's trying to be "intellectually superior" by making intellectual arguments kind of implies that you care about appearances way more than you should.

>>4247260
Imagine being so insecure that you feel like anyone who tries to make a moderately well elaborated argument is talking down to you.

>>4246356
>Complex selection tools with a lot of options exist.
So you're going to surgically select and separate thousands of tiny little shapes made from textured brush marks of various opacities as well as correctly identify them with the corresponding brush marks and then assign color to them? Let's just accept that unless you have some kind of AI tech that does it for you're simply not going to be able to achieve the same result as painting directly in color with spontaneous brush marks.

>>4246094
Bold of you to assume that I watch tutorials or read books

>>4247386
Is redditposting the new thing now? Is that the new "thing" to make peoples day worse?

>>4246094
What's the tutorials? Can I have it for free? Thanks

>>4247371
>So you're going to surgically select and separate thousands of tiny little shapes made from textured brush marks of various opacities as well as correctly identify them with the corresponding brush marks and then assign color to them?
You do have selection tools based on color, value, and edges(and more that I don't know of). They have tons of options(like thresholds and samples), so this kind of selection becomes possible without having to surgically hand-select everything. It's definitely not going to always give you perfect results, and this is where you might have to spend time selecting brush strokes.
But that's besides the point. Like you've said, this potentially takes a lot of time and effort, so of course at this point you can just paint over your pass and still maintain all the benefits of passes. Remember, the color pass and the lighting pass can be separated(which is what the OP pic is doing). You can even paint and erase on multiple layers simultaneously.

>>4247371
Nobody is stopping you from overpainting your work with all the textures and color variation later.

>>4247407
Sent ;)

The mere fact that no good painter that can actually paint more than a figure in the void does those "passes" means that its a bunch of faggot bullshit. Just learn values, then transition into color and do everything on one layer like a real man

>>4247715
Artgerm and many pro illustrators do it.
You are just an ignorant retard.

This approach allows one to draw something very intricate and detailed.

>>4247715
>like a real man
Opinion instantly discarded.

>>4247715
>do everything on one layer like a real man
I could but that would be a waste of my time. No rules only tools buddy. Sowwy :'(

>>4247724
He’s right tho

>>4247462
The idea of hand coloring individual brush strokes is enormously retarded and literally no one does it. Just stop with this nonsense. If you are going to use a b&w to color workflow you'll just have to accept you won't arrive at the same result.

>>4247638
It stops you from having the same end result.

>>4247750
Did you even read anything on that post?

You know who doesn't glaze and paints colors directly?
Ruan Jia :^)

You know who physically inspected real anatomy for his work?
Leonardo Da Vinci :^)

>>4247750
The same as what?
It enables a potentially superior result.

Doing just the values first allows you to have greater control over the values and lighting of the entire scene.
The coloring process itself is a bitch too, you gotta know your tools to do it right but if you can do that you can do anything.
The process is generally more labor intensive requiring more time and work but it breaks down the hard job of pight and color into two different easier jobs, first light then color.

And did i mention that you're a fucking retard? I'm not talking to you, im just showing how dumb you are to the other people reading.

>>4247762
Oh and Kin Jung Gi doesn't sketch or construct he starts drawing straight from the details.

Does it mean that sketching and constructing is wrong and tge noobs should be learning how to draw a face starting from the goggles on the hat?

He does it because he's a genius and he can, but you clearly aren't a genius.

>>4247773
Ruan Jia is the best digital painter alive today, and he doesn't glaze.
Enabling a potentially superior result would imply that there's someone out there who glazes and makes better art than him :^)

desu the retards in this thread sound like they just shelled out for some "professional" illustrator hack's photoshop video course and got baptized into the religion of glazing. And they're coping hard because people are questioning the technique that allows them to be lazy, not study color theory fundamentals, and take the easy way out into mediocrity.

>>4247779
>comparing construction and fundies to using blend modes in photoshop
Look at this ngmi retard.
Ruan Jia isn't the only painter in the world who works alla prima, retard.

Notice how there's plenty of examples of amazing alla prima paintings in the thread, but glazecels aren't posting any examples of their supposedly superior workflow, because we all know it looks like shit, and its only benefit is pumping out cheap concept art for entertainment media, so you can drag the hue/saturation slider because the retarded boomer art director with aphantasia doesn't know which color a character's hat should be :^)

>>4247784
Ruan Jia does what he wants because he can.

The question is what can you do?
How good are your one layer paintings and what could they be if you glazed?

I often do both and I chose to glaze when its something very difficult and highly detailed, it's more work but the resilt ends up better for me.

>Muh Photoshop
Glazing and underpainting comes from trad oil painting you retarded troglodyte.

And yes nailing you values is 100% fundamental to your work. There's nothing sinful in breaking a complicated scene down into values and color separately.

>>4247797
Have one, faggot

>>4247797
And this one comes with a video
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/VdBL6N

>>4247807
>>4247818
>washed out, muddy, monochromatic blobs of color with almost no shift in hue or temperature
>literally figures in a void
LOL!

These paintings aren't even complicated enough to warrant a glaze workflow

Based Alke does directly to color, because he keeps a black and white window open on the so he can check his values in real time, usually people who does value and then color are super detailist faggots like Lojaya ( he draws and paints really cool though) but that process comes with a lot of correcting after you glaze the color, so yeah, they use that process because it renders perfectly not because is the best or more efficient, anyways unless you are a brainlet or beg there shouldn't be any difference.

>>4247824
https://youtu.be/h1gQBSl4SyE

Alke approach

The method for painting in greyscale values and then coloring over it is called grisaille, not glazing. Glazing is just a technique that is used for grisaille.

>>4247914
Ok nerd

>>4247721
>Artgerm
He doesn't do anything more complex than one character on a simple background, so point discarded

I won't bother with asking who are those are artists you speak of, because they are probably deviant art tier anyway. Actual good artists don't do this shit and it's a fact.

>>4247724
Dilate tranny

>>4247923
>Actual good artists
Why don't you post some examples? Everyone has their favorite artists. What's so earth-shatteringly special about yours?

>>4247923
>le dilate epic may may
>if I don't know the artist then they don't exist

LMAO

>>4247923
>being so insecure that you feel the need to do what a man is "supposed" to do in your retarded culture
Pathetic, sheep.

>>4247927
>>4247928
>>4247930

Wangjie Li, Even Amundsen, Mike Azevedo, Krenz Cushart, Craig Mullins, Dave Rapoza and I could list many more less known and infinitely more talented artists that don't go through shitty steps and can achieve even better results because their workflow is more natural.

>>4247934
>Wangjie Li, Even Amundsen, Mike Azevedo, Krenz Cushart, Craig Mullins
trash

>>4247936
Don't dare insult Krenz Sama you tawt.

>>4247930
A man is supposed to have a penis, it's a shame you lost yours, at least you are not a sheep am I right

This thread went full /pol/, rip.

>>4247938
doesn't matter if it's trash
>>4247939
no, I'm not a headcanoning retard like you, sheep.

>>4247943
You don't matter because you are trash

>>4247936
>Craig mullins
>trash

I'm out.

>>4247948
>he wasn't out all along

>>4247934
>Wangjie Li
Just an inferior derivative of Yizheng Ke, to be honest. But not bad.

>Even Amundsen
Super boring. I don't know why people love this guy so much.

>Mike Azevedo
Proof that you don't need anything beyond generic, mediocre skills to succeed.

>Krenz
Decent, but hugely overrated. I don't know why painterly anime art is such a psychological pandemic these days.

>Craig Mullins
Yeah, Craig Mullins is legit.

>Dave Rapoza
Also legit. But a bad example, since Dave has always had a pretty modulated workflow.

So basically, the artists you like don't use the workflow you don't like. That's not proof that only good artists use the workflow you like. Do you see the difference?

>>4247961
Even is boring but technically very good, he is kinda spergy and understands very well how you must infuse story in a character, you can find his work boring though, I myself find it very very boring, but he is totally worth studyng imo, I think thats why pros like him, beg likes him because pros do it, you have to understand why people who know better like certain things, is not always because is cool, cool is subjective as fuck, history nerds and dnd nerds surely drolls over Evens works. That dame Phenomenon happens to people who think drawing like Glen Keane or Milt Kahl is boring ir easy.

>>4247961
The point is that all of those artists can paint well, it's not about liking them, it's about being able to recognize that you can paint complex stuff without resorting to stuff mentioned in OP. And so far every artist itt that does this stuff is a one trick pony drawing single characters in a void.

>>4248006
The point is that you can paint with a modulated workflow, or you can paint directly in one pass.

Nurzhan paints light far better than Even Amundsen does. Better values, better form, better perspective. As for painting characters in a void, Even does that a lot as well. And Nurzhan has examples of painted characters in an environment on his artstation, so this is a non-argument. Nurzhan might paint boring stuff, and he might stay in his comfort zone a little too much. But he paints better than Amundsen on a technical level.

Do you know how artists learn to paint complex things? By breaking them down into simpler steps. I highly doubt Nurzhan works in so many passes when doing his own personal work. It's a teaching method to help beginners break things down into simple steps.

>>4247934
>>4247961
>Wangjie Li
>Yizheng Ke
thanks for intoducing them to me anons

>>4247762
I’ve seen processes where he starts in greyscale

Igor Sid uses greyscale to color method

>>4246211
Bro I can’t even do stage one. My brush always seems too precise

I've yet to see a single example of a painting with modular workflow that doesn't have muddy, uninspired colors and extremely basic compositions ITT. It seems like a bunch of extra steps to arrive at an inferior results for people who don't want to study the relationships between value, shapes and colors.

In fact, even Nurzhan's works that were done with minimal use of color overlays (mostly for bloom and glowy effects) are infinitely more interesting, intricate and have better color harmony.

And his ambient occlusion studies look a lot better without color. Such cases.

>>4247824
>black and white window open
How do you do this in photoshop?

Just spent the whole day downloading statue models off of sketchfab and rendering them in 3D Max instead of drawing.
Hope this is worth it lmao.

>>4246293
uhhh anon if an object has enough detail light is always occluded especially under harsh light.
Do you know what occlusion means?

>>4246291
god I wish I was in cgpeers

>>4250160
The point is to not let in people who dont even try.

>>4248462
is there a process vid for this on their gumroad?

>>4250391
What?

>>4250403
it's just painting lol

I'm surprised gradient maps haven't been talked about here.

So this is the power of boomers...

Robert Beverly Hale’s human anatomy lectures - all on YouTube, though they’re recordings from the fifties so the quality is janky, but trust me, follow along and take ample notes and that stuff will open your third eye.