[ook]

Back again with another installment of the bridge from hell... or at least from a destroyed LA... which could arguably be hell but thats another topic.

Ahem. On with the show.

If I learned one useful thing out of this whole experiment it's this.

"Work from your middle tones then add your darks and lights."

I really don't reccomend starting from black and white. Tt's too hard to get good values into your shadow areas.

V1



V2



V3



Close-up



Things I learned doing step 3

1: Don't put too much detail into your base sketch. When you blow it up you will fight with that detail and in the process of fighting with it you will probably mess up some of your values.

2: My first step is working my way across the painting cleaning up blurry edges. Watch your values as you do this it's easy to muddle them

3: Use a big brush. Don't get too detailed too soon. If you find yourself spending too long on an area grab a huge brush and get it done. I kept focusing in too soon.

4: Try and avoid high contrast and detail in the background. This is obvious but it's easy to accidentally create contrast or detail if you're zoomed in and working on a small section of the image. I think i will go over the sky when I'm done fixing edges and smoothe it out a bit.

5: Scale is SO important. There were a number of elements that I drastially changed their scale. The two "boards" across the chasam turned out to be massive. They became a bridge. The antenna on top of the plane was oversized. The monitors on the right are giant screen tv sized so they will be converted into many smaller monitors.

6: My lighting is hosed. Thats all there is to it. I don't think I could fix it without major renovations at this point. Essentially... with all that cloud cover the lighting should all be very diffuse. ie: no hard edges on shadows. Light should be scattered all over the place as is passes through the clouds so there would probably be a lot more light in my big shadow area. My best solution might be to make the sky less overcast but I think that might wreck the mood. Anyway... Make sure your underpainting is solid before you go big cause it's easy to make changes early rather than late.

Comments and crits welcome. Final version in a day or two.

- Jeramy

[MonsterX]

On your lighting being hosed. You could put some darker areas across the desolate waste in the background. You could also define the sun/moon more. Right now it is barely visible but if you bring it out just a bit more it might work. Who knows?

[ook]

What the?

Wow... I dunno when that "sun moon" thing showed up... I think I just accidentally hit the sky with a big brush. That will probably be gone in the next version.

Doh.

Thanks for the feedback tho... I wonder how long it would have taken for me to find it?

heh,

- Jeramy

[MonsterX]

Probably not a bad idea to take it (the moon thing) out. It's not really lined up with your lighting.
I really like the painting though. And you're right about the monitors near the plane being too big. But they don't look odd as illuminated doorways into some sort of post apocalyptic abode (which is what I thought the first time I saw it).


[This message has been edited by MonsterX (edited November 09, 2000).]

[Gecko]

I've been monitoring the progress of the pic, and want to thank you for listing the stuff you've found out on making the pic. Thanks :).

Anyway, the one thing that bothers me and (I think) breaks the feeling of great scale is that the plane has all it's crushed parts lying in so small an area. You'd think they'd have spread dozens or even hundreds of meters (3 feet=1 meter ;) away from the final landing site.
Now it kinda looks like someone dropped his plastic model plane on the ground and broke it to a few pieces. Nothing that Elmer's glue won't fix in a couple of minutes :].

I'd like to see some even sharper edges ie. on the bridge as well.

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Gecko
[email protected]
GeckoArt.Net

[ook]

I have to agree about the plane. perhaps I'll scatter it some more and add some broken pieces laying about.

Thanks,

- Jeramy

[Visigoth]

You need to make some charred bodies and wreckage...Hehe...

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Your car is a fiberglass penis extension.

[shardik]

it looks like the plane is being used as a house or something now, so scattered wreckage wouldnt work
maybe piles of wreckage made by the people who are living/ working there