Thankyou Stwert. Im quite excited about it! I want to keep my fingers crossed that I can keep it on a good path. I have some quite clear ideas about what how and where to add work. Just, yeah, really hoping I can make good of this.

It is nearly all Maya. Ive only done an hour or so painting. When I made the three skyscrapers that are in the back of the picture (what you could see in the pictures at the start of this thread) I took them into z, made myself some alphas of squares, to put in the windows. I didnt want to be too precise, just more to lay down some markers as I knew theyd end up being seen from a fair distance. But I wasnt too happy with the composition, so Ive spent some time over the last few days, expanding the city, building the geometry down below, and playing around with renders. I wanted to make a huge image, I had 16 (!!) perspective cameras set up, all covering a different patch, and made a montage of the renders in Photoshop. But it really was so much hassle. If i added a bit of geometry Id have to re render four of five times, then cut and paste, position, sort the hue and saturation and stuff. So...yeah. 80% Maya, 18% Photoshop and 2 % Z. But its all Photoshop from here. I have had a lucky accident with the way the lighting has caught the zbrush work though, to give me a headstart on all the windows...only half intentional..

Any chance we can see the wireframes from Maya? I know everyone asks that... I'm curious cause it has such a nice painted feel to it (same with your dragon market pic).

yeah...no worries

ps stwert. I have tried to loosen up the feel, working on that dragon pic felt so tight, I was really rigid the whole time, I wanted to let loose abit on this. Will tighten up again later on.

Hi all. A little update on this, need to get some frustration off my chest!... Im finding it hard to loosen up. Its been along time since of painted, painterly like, and at the moment its taking me about an hour to do just a little bit of work. I would like to get my speed up. Its silly I guess, as one of the main benefits of digital art is the ability to undo, so the fear should all but be gone from making marks, but, am finding it slow going. Im going to try and post less with this picture than I did with the dragon picture, I think sometimes I get caught up with the posting my focus actually gets drawn away from the image, and I dont want to suffer overkill as much as I did with the dino_chick thread.

Im feeling quite constricted by the scale and composition of this piece, its making me feel a little trapped/claustrophobic. I bought The digital painting Bible by Gary Tonge a few weeks ago, and ive really been admiring some of his work, digital paintings, but very spacious, with a real nice sense of atmosphere and light....but thats inspiration for the future.

Hopefully the more I can grow in confidence, the quicker I can work. Im getting so many ideas and want to try so many things at the moment Im actually having trouble going to sleep, its making me think of those kids on the advert who cant sleep cause theyre so excited about going to Eurodisney!

Here is an update I feel I want to post, will try and make more genuine progress between posts from now on as I say. Hope its coming on ok...

...

looks quite pretty!

Pretty!!? Thats like when your'e a bloke and a girl tells you that you're... 'cute'...:headbang:


;)

Hi Ben
Yes I think it looks Pretty LOL, first rule is do not let any one know what switches your buttons.............looking stylized dave

Looks delightfully gorgeous, dahling.

Sorry... I mean visually appealing.

Cute can mean "omg you're such an adorable cuddlesmushykinz" or it could mean "I can totally see myself doing things to you". It's not bad either way lol.

But anyways onto the piece, it kinda looks like Shinra is opening a new branch. Are you going to give it a more saturated look?

It scares me that you would think these things concerning a piece of Cg art...

( Said after my recent posts in the Piracy thread Hah! )

The Work is looking nice.
Will look forward to its completion.

G-man

ben you say it like i said something bad :p
i'll say things a little more manlier like stwert over there next time ;)

i always read or hear cute to be the first... not 'i need to rape you now' although that's more extreme than the second interpretation

i kinda thought that too... or more that this belongs in Xenosaga

chirone: i am sorry. im not sure how to say what i mean. im glad you got my point about the cute. but it was not a bad thing for you to say. i guess at the time, whatever mood i was in, i took it slightly the wrong way. i meant no offence in my reply, and first and foremost i hope you know that. i am greatful of all responses on this forum. i have been pretty stressed out of late, and progress seems to come so slowly while time is going by so quickly. once i get going on a piece, i seem to get so immersed in it, but in the wrong way, i lose sight of the enjoyment factor. i think i put so much pressure on myself it takes alot of the fun out of what i am doing. and having started visiting cg society alot recently, and being so impressed by so much of the work, i come back to my own with that feeling, again, of how much id like to learn and improve but how to make that happen...

.... the name xenosaga rings a bell, but only slightly...im guessing it has a kind of washed out colour scheme following genny's post, and so yes, i didnt fully realise how bleached out it had become. theres a way in photoshop of creating one layer from all your others without actually merging them all. ive seen a four button hot key for it but forgot what it was. it was in a book i have so have to flick through and find it, and, when i do, ill try playing with the saturation levels. i also think maybe playing with the contrast might help?

and genny: this is why a little while ago i was interested in that gamma correction. ive seen your blog on it, i want to go into that further at some point.

jay: got an a2 print out of the picture so far, the 300 dpi worked fine. cheers. its interesting seeing it on a new scale, helped me to see bits for improvement. though some of the blue tones didnt come out at all. perhaps an rgb/cmyk issue?

dave...im learning....slowly....
g-man: thankyou.
oh and genny: if i ever get called cute again, i will be keeping option 2 in mind !

:beer:

an update on this. Im still working on it, slow as ever...

start my course monday so I dont know how much I'll be able to do for a while.