[Sumaleth]

This weekends personal painting exercise; to paint a copy of Picard from the First Contact poster.

I tried to copy this image about 8 months ago and failed miserably, but after recent self portrait practice I thought it was time to give slappy another crack. It worked out pretty well (I say that now, but by tomorrow morning I might think otherwise).

The first image is the size I was painting to (quite small);



-and the second is included because I know people like to see larger detail;



Didn't go too ambicious with the coloring, just stuck pretty closely to the poster image. But I was really concentrating more on trying to make it look like the person it's supposed to look like (something I've found hard in the past).

Looking at it now, it's dying for a hard, blue fill light coming from the right. I might play around with that at some point.

Row.

[EviLToYLeT]

Hehe I like it Just a few crits... dont wanna be too harsh but his face is a little lopsieded/crooked... better send him bacdk to sickbay for repair But I like the light on his shiny bald head.....mmmmmmm...... never noticed how girlish his eyes were

[Jezebel]

That looks pretty dang awesome, my only crit is the mouth... something seems a little off on the mouth. When I place my hand on the screen and cover the bottom of his face, I know EXACTLY who it's supposed to be. Yet when I reverse the action and cover the top of his face, I'm not quite sure anymore... But it's only the right side of his mouth that's throwing it off I think.

I think it has to do with the fact that A) the right side of the lip is curling upwards and B) you start to lose the upper lip on the right side, the lower lip almost seems to be on top of the upper...

Great work on the skin tone and eyes.

-Beth

------------------
Take off your clothes. It's OK - I'm an artist.

[url=http://div.dyndns.org/FOO!]http://div.dyndns.org/FOO![/url]

[Frost]

Hey Suma.

Nice image, but I think that the lighter part on his right side of head is too planar, and lacks volume, maybe making that edge between head-side to forehead softer would help a lot. Adding some curves to the cheeks and some eye-bags I think seems to look more like Picard, although I'm doing this from memory, and although I'm no huge fan of Star Trek.

I hope you don't mind dear friend, but I've taken the liberty of demonstrating by visuals. That's just my oppinion on it.



Cheers ol' mate!

[Matt Elder]

The skin tones and colours are fantastic. Nice work. I'm glad you posted the original cause even though I knew who it was, I was struggling to be able to identify them. I think that you just generally have the proportions out slightly but overall when these slight little 'errors' come together, it makes it more difficult to identify who it is.

Have a look at the ear on the left. To mine it just seems to be too far in and too close to the eye. It is only by a little though. Look at the shadow above this ear. You've got it very 'full' whereas in the poster it isn't as big and comes to a nice point.

Also look at his lower right hand side jaw. In the poster it is a bit more well defined and cheiselled than the way you have it represented. The mouth is also a bit wider and I think you have the head a little bit too narrow. Compare the eyes between the two images. In the poster it seems the eyes seem to be a little longer and not as round as you have them.

Pay particular attention to the nose. In general I don't think that yours is wide enough and the overall structure at the bottom is different from that in the poster. As a consequence, the lines that form the cheek stretching from the bottom of the nose should be more vertical than what you have them.

His right hand side eyebrow as it comes into the nose should thin out a little more than how you've done it. Note the shadow on his blad head on his left hand side. In the poster it doesn't come across as much as what you've done and I think this is changing the overall look and structure.

I think the wrinkles in the upper forehead on your image are a little to pronounced. Also look at the shadow on his left hand cheek. It just seems a little too dark and not 100% correct.

I don't mean to pick the image apart but I think there are just a lot of little minor things that when they all come together, the picture doesn't look as piccardy as what it could. I'm not sure that you can fix some of these problems easily. It is a good image however.


------------------
See ya on da flip side
Matt
http://www.mattelder.com

[yoshi]

The planes could be more rounded. Frost alrrady said that.

i started painting one too.

[Rinaldo]

the neck and shoulders seem too small, making his head look gigantic. but seeing as it's from ref Idunno?

looks good anyways

[EviLToYLeT]

Its the eyebrows and his left cheek....his left cheek isnt that smooth..also get rid of those lashes.

[Brain]

I've made some changes...


Changes I made were:
* Side of face more curvy. It's not just straight down and around, he's got lumps in between @:-) Maybe not as prominent as I've made it tho...
* Added highlights to the left side of his face (camera right). His face, to me, seems more flat than rounded.
* Nose made fatter and flatter. This was done by removing some shading and adding some highlights.
* Chin more prominent. Larger slightly with more highlights on and around it.
* Compressed eyelids a bit. Does Picard have some Asian origins? May of heard this. Not fully into Trek, so unsure.
* Lips compressed. They're more 'rectangluar' than what you have.
* Brought in the... uhh... nose to mouth creases. @:-)
* Brought eyebrows slightly lower and a bit thicker.

Looking at it more, I'd compress the forehead wrinkles down a bit more, remove a few pixels off the side of his head, and made the top of his head more egglike.
Keep at it! This'll be a kewl portrait! @:-)

------------------
Brain
http://brain.gamekey.com/

[This message has been edited by Brain (edited November 26, 2000).]

[jcterminal]

Sumaleth, here's a quick tip.

take the reference image you're working on, and the piece you're doing, and flip them 180.

that's right. paint them upside down. that might be just the thing you need. try it and let me know what happens.

------------------
j.c.terminal
mind
body
soul

[Sumaleth]

Here's a repaint/touchup - with everyones comments in mind - and also a play with the colorspace to make it more like the image on amazon (which looks a lot nicer than the one on the cover of the Making Of book).



Ack, that looks tons better now! The freaky thing is how little is really changed - load the before and after images into subsequent pages of a browser and then go Back and Forward to flip between them; just little nips and tucks here and there can make a world of difference (as Matt said).

I look back at yesterdays version now and can't believe I posted it, but it looked totally right last night.. honest.

(and I know I'm going to look at this version tomorrow morning and it'll look all wrong again..)

--

jc; flipping images is something I cannot do. I find that -all- images look freaky when flipped, even the ones that are right, and all it tends to do is totally confuse me.

Row.

[Brain]

W00t! Much much better!! Keep it up!!

My hero! @;-)

[Jezebel]

785% better!!

------------------
Take off your clothes. It's OK - I'm an artist.

[url=http://div.dyndns.org/FOO!]http://div.dyndns.org/FOO![/url]

[sacrelicious]

Looking a lot better. His neck is bugging me though, if it were thicker it'd be better... or rather, the edge of his neck on OUR right side should be a little further to the right, know what I mean? Anyway, really good job, that coming from a Trek geek like me. Later.

------------------
mmm... sacrelicious

[Sumaleth]

Hmm, it's only been 3 hours or so and it already looks totally wrong.

I found the poster image on amazon.com;
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6305127638.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Copying a likeness is -so- difficult, even when you've got a picture right in front of you. I think I might spend some more time on this afterall.

(Frost: but yours doesn't look like Picard )

Row.

[Cos]

Hey suma, I did an alteration to your older one but by the time I was gonna post it you've
already done the new one which is a super improvement man! I tried out what I noticed was a
bit dodgy on your previous version on this one too, its not much difference but I think it
looks a lil more like him.. It is debatable tho, I'm not using any reference, just from
memory so maybe I'm totally wrong. I thought I would post it anyway, incase any of the points
do help out.
http://www.3dpalette.org/~coskoniotis/sumapicard03alt.jpg

what i changed
made the eyes more squintier,
brought in the sides of the head more,
dipped the nose slightly,
made the mouth slightly wider and lower.

------------------
-Cos Koniotis-
http://www.3dpalette.org/~coskoniotis

[This message has been edited by Cos (edited November 27, 2000).]

[Matt Elder]

Excellent! That really does look ALOT better and it doesn't look like the alien version of Piccard that you first posted. I'm impressed.

------------------
See ya on da flip side
Matt
http://www.mattelder.com

[kig]

Great job Suma, it's starting to look like Patrick Stewart already. Here's my little list of suggestions: make him look older, coarser skin, more defined wrinkles, now it looks like he's be overrun by some smoothing make-up gel or something. Also maybe tweaking the eyebrows and eye shape would help nailing the likeness? Hmm.. maybe move the eyes a tiny bit closer to each other and up.

Oh well, enough bitching for now, great job.

[Rag]

Noticed one thing Sumaleth, take a look at the crease on his right, near the mouth. Now look at the amazon poster. Seperate that crease into 2 different creases.One near the mouth, the other more on the jaw. Those little changes go along way into capturing a likeness.
Oh and by the way, very nice coloring I believe and I'm not sure if I would add a blueish fill on his left side. Is there a blue light near his left? Anyway, nice work indeed, can't wait to see the finished stuff.

------------------
I don't believe in born talent, only born desire. The rest is all work.

[Sumaleth]

sacrelicious; Whoops, I meant to fix that damn colar last time.

cos; Agree on all tweaks.

kig; Maybe if I had more time to spend on it.

--

So, fixed colar and the Cos suggestions incorperated;



Looking pretty good. No more problems I hope, maybe it's time to add the Borg implants?

Thanks to everyone.

Row.

[Jaymo]

Yeah, MUCH better. Though one thing I wanted to state earlier, that has almost been fixed, still seems to be there: his head is too round IMHO. Picards head is actually very edgy at the top, almost unnatural. And its very long, the first version was way to blocky, now it's better, but still...
But hey, you already captured him very well; couldn't do it that good, I guess!

[PaK-RaT]

-lighting is beautiful
-egghead...thats JUST the way it looks to me, i brought the facial proportion rules to it and it ALL measures up, but i gotta say...egghead still
-overall, i think the color cast and the rendering speak to me the most, you are a very talented painter i must say

[Binke]

Ah that's great suma. Although I did prefer the old warm colors you had.

------------------
Art Dimensional

[Frost]

Much much better Suma!

[ShyGuy]

Well you know what say better late than never,
here is some quick alterations I did to your
very nice Picard, I would say that the main thing I did on this is the right eye his eyelid acording to me anyway does not go down quite that fast it, please correct me if I'm wrong, and I allso did som thing to his nose made it more blocky or, cubic?
Oh and I just could not help my self playing with the colour and and adding a little noise to make him look a bit more old.
Oh well... This thread is probebly dead by now anyway
Wll here goes..
Shy.

[Sumaleth]

Shyguy;

Some interesting tweaks there.

I think the eyelid one works really well (scary how a 1 degree rotation of a 1cm long edge can do so much). However the new nose doesn't look right to me.

The coloring and contrast, along with the added noise, all works -very- nicely. But, for me, it works as an -alternative- version; I still also like the soft, illustrative qualities of the original. They both work.

Row.

[Isric]

Yay! It's almost like old times again. I really like this picture a lot. I'm sure since this descussion topic is long, everything has been mentioned, so I'll just add my Bravo.

[Loki]

Hey Sum - looks great!
My girlfriend met him in the elevator at her workplace a few weeks ago ...

[Joachim]

looks nice suma ! Great colors, etc after the tweaks. I feel that the right head part, maybe just the eye, don't look totally like picard. Maybe you could do a more bold neck and shoulders too, now his proportions look a bit too feminin. Otherwise, great work. You are really improving after you've started to draw more.

loki, wow. . . she's lucky. Not often he beems himself down to earth. I don't think I've seen that ever.

------------------
Joachim's Place