Happy little clouds

Gobusata shimashita! Hello again friends! I've been away for a little while on some ninja business, but I'm back and ready to paint. I've noticed a lot of beginner Photoshop tutorials out there dealing with painting clouds. What is this obsession with clouds? I don't know, but the painting masters are telling me that this is what I need to paint, so that's what I'm doing:

Hmm. It's still looking a little cartoony to me, but for the most part I'm happy with how it turned out. Here is a link to the helpful tutorial I followed for this painting:

http://www.androidblues.com/cloudtut.html

Happy Thursday everyone. Saraba!!

-Shiro Ninja-

Homework Assignment #1 complete!

Shiro Ninja here! I finally finished my "Full Metal Alchemist-Brotherhood" background painting. This final portion with the water and fountain is not exactly how I wanted it, but I'm going to call this assignment done. (Hey, I'm still learning and it's not going to be perfect right off the bat!) There's still a lot to learn about painting and using Photoshop. One tool that I discovered and now want to use all the time is called, "Gaussian Blur." That's what gives the water that soft, sexy glow. Now I just want to give everything that Martha Stewart glow!

Thank you Don for offering great painting advice and expertise! More assignments to come soon.

Saraba!!

(To see the process behind this painting click here)

The joy of painting happy little trees

Ossu! Shiro Ninja desu! (^o^)/

Lately I've been trying to learn how to paint backgrounds in Photoshop. I was kind of intimidated at first because, a) I've never painted that much before (what can I say... I'm an animator... I like drawing people!) and, b) computers freak me out! But I figured if we're going to make animations with a skeleton crew, then I'd better start figuring out how to paint trees and clouds and stuff.

When I tried to paint things from my own imagination, the colors didn't seem to work, and the paintings just looked weird. I decided to try something out. My homework assignment to myself is to take a bunch of screen captures from anime and try my best to replicate the backgrounds. So here's homework assignment #1: a scene from "Full Metal Alchemist-Brotherhood."

This is the original shot:

I started by painting the sky:

Next, I painted the trees:
Then, I added the hedges.
The base of the fountain came next:

I'm about to start on the final step, which is the water. I'll post the final painting when it's done. It's been an interesting and surprisingly fun process trying to get familiar with painting and with Photoshop. I discovered that there are a bunch of different types of brushes you can use in the program, and all are customizable... for me, it's still a matter of figuring out the right kind of brush to achieve the look I'm going for.
There are lots of Photoshop tutorials for painting, but I find that a lot of them assume that you've already mastered Photoshop and its millions of tools. So for a total beginner like me, these online tutorials were really helpful:
http://www.melissaevans.com/tutorials

And of course, I watched some good old Bob Ross videos! Because "there are no such things as mistakes... just happy accidents."

Nin, nin!

-Shiro Ninja-

Update:  for the completed version of this painting click here

WATCH OUT!!!

Shiro Ninja here! Things have been a little slow on the blog lately, but I can assure you that a lot of work has been going into our CG and 2D projects. "Cowboys and Dinosaurs" is finally entering its animation phase. I thought I'd share a frame from the storyboards so you could get an idea of the world and the kind of action to expect. Here is a rough colored thumbnail sketch of our two heroes in an aerial assault:

We're still working out color schemes and other designs elements, so expect more concept art in the days to come!

Nin, nin!