May Q&A + Brush Share

Hey! Maybe not a Q&A question per se but could you imagine making a video like the perspective videos on the process of setting lighting situations? How to close in on the topic from searching for the right references to applying what you see to your own images? Your step by steps of your images do help a lot, but as a beginner, I struggle on what info to take from references and how to apply that to my own pieces with my super small visual library compared to yours. How you started learning to set light yourself, from the ground up? For example, your perspective vids helped a lot with conveying what to look out for in references and how these things can be used to inspire personal work.

Fortunately, I have not experienced any kind of injury thus far, although there have been a few times where I felt a need to adjust my schedule/setup. One thing that I can definitely recommend is to pace yourself; in the short term there may be moments where you may need to do a lot of work in X period of time, but be sure to compensate with proportionate rest as well. Earlier on I used to do a lot of hours per day, but over time I have toned back as well to play the "long game". I.e. staying healthy to reap the rewards of long term improvement/accumulation of skill. Another thing I noticed is that drawing on screen tablets felt very straining on my neck, hence my preference for regular pen tablets where I can just sit up and look forward at my monitor.

GUWEIZ

Hey Guweiz! I have a short question. As someone who draws a lot digitally, do you ever struggle / struggled with any wrist problems / injury, and do you have any tips on that?

Fibox

Hi I've been wondering how do you go about when painting hair? Whenever I paint hair after blocking it out, it just becomes a nightmare and I get lost in it. I think part of it is bad reference and lack of knowledge on it. Any tip or advice would be greatly appreciated

Taelo Machai

Thank you so much for your advices, they are really precious! 🙏 My question would be: do you have any advice for shading the characters, and especially the face? When I apply quickly the shadows it seems okay, but when I blend I always lose the features and everything looks muddy, and then it takes me forever to correct it...

Fanny Richard

Thank you for the question! I'll get to more detail in video form, but in short, a huge part of creating the set is deeply rooted in reality. A good place to start is to clearly identify the environment/mood/effect you are seeking and begin your search for reference there. Once you've found your reference, figure out what are the most iconic and identifying aspects of the reference image and make a mental note as you apply them to your work. For example, if you are drawing a scene in a restaurant, what identifies it as such at a glance? Perhaps tables, chairs and showing the room itself or even the kitchen isn't enough, but a well placed menu in the scene with a piece of cutlery or two immediately conveys the message. As you expand your visual archives, it becomes easier to make such identifications as you practice it!

GUWEIZ

Thank you for writing up this very good rundown of the lighting principles! It's interesting that fundamentals are named as such because they really are commonly shared and core between almost all realistic visual disciplines.

GUWEIZ

Hi Gu! I’ve grown up being inspired by your works and I’m so glad I found your patreon! My question is, do you have any tips on set dressing an environment? I always have trouble knowing what exactly to put in a background and how to make it seem believable. Thank you so much!

I also have a reccommendation for the last point, wich is how light reacts with different materials. Basically with my background as a 3d modeler and 3d lighting artist I had to learn how light is simplified in modern 3d rendering tomake materials look realistic. And at about 2015 everyone started to adapt physically based rendering, wich breaks down all the lighting properties of a material into the following parameters: -diffuse colour (if from every angle the same neutral white light would hit a material, this would be the colour you would see if you subtracted ALL reflections) -roughness (if the surface is smooth like a polished marble floor or rough like sand paper, or something in between) -bumps (if the surface has height differences, like a relief, or a brick wall, with crevices between the bricks) -ambient occlusion (small diffuse shadows, that appear between the "bumps" if no direct light is shining at them, like under a cloudy sky) -metalness (basically if it is a metal or not, and what metal it is, metals are treated completely different than all other materials) -translucency and subsurface information (basically materials like glas or raw hide or skin let light through, but the glas lets the light right through, and raw hide or skin or candle wax scatter the light beneath their surface, and it has a certain effect, milk is another example) This is how light interacts with surfaces: basically what happens when light hits a non metallic surface, it is divided in 3 parts: part 1 penetrates the surface of the material, is being absorbed and turned into heat, more absorption equals darker colours part 2 penetrates the surface of the material, bounces around inside the material on a microscopic level and then exits the material, but with a different colour than when it entered, wich gives a material surface its colour. (because inside the material, some colour frequencies are absorbed stronger than others, wich means for example when a white light enters, but a red light comes out, all the other colours were absorbed) part 3 directly bounces off without penetrating the surface of the material, you see it with the same colour with wich it hit the surface, that is our reflection. all 3 parts together make up 100% of the light hitting the surface. (energy conservation rule) a metal is different, light can not penetrate the surface of the material, so it will either be absorbed or reflected, wich also means that metal does not have colour, the colour that you percieve when looking at metal is actually just a tinted reflection, and the colour of the tint depends on the type of metal. but metal can be covored by rust, paint, and so on, wich again reacts to matal like any other non metallic material. another importent phenomena is fresnel, wich is most easily observed when looking at a calm lake, basically, the light hitting the material at the flattest angle possible is being 100% reflected, and of the light hitting the surface with the steepest angle possible between 2% and 5% of light are reflected on non metallic materials, and between 60% and 90% are reflected on metallic materials, depending on the type of metal. also important to know is that as roughness increases, fresnel decreases, a 100% rough surface has 0% fresnel, while a 0% rough surface has 100% fresnel (but fresnel is present on all materials in existence, even if hardly visible) Also dont forget that the reflection on a rough surface will look like a blurred version of the incoming light, versus a reflection on a smooth surface will look more like a mirror. another rule is that materials that are pure white, or pure black dont exist, and materials that are 100 or 0 % reflective dont exist either, there are rare cases wich get pretty close to those values but normal every day materials cover just a partial range of these values. This is how our eye percieves light: but we still percieve absolute white and black, because our eye can only see a section of the entire brightness spectrum, and our eyes adjust to the average brightness in the environment just like a camera, and the brightest colours in this range will be percieved as pure white and the darkest as pure black, also colours that are significantly brighter than that range will often create a halo effect around them, wich is a lens/retina artifact, if you look into a super bright light source like the sun you know what i mean, but even the sky or any overly bright light source or object can create this effect, when a dark room has a small window, behind wich the sky can be seen, the window will have a small halo around it. A halo like this can be slightly tinted, wich will tell someone looking at an image, what colour an overly bright light actually has, even though it is pure white on the image. If you understand all this you can observe materials in real life, and break down what you see into these parameters, phenomena, and your perception. It will help you in recreating how different materials look under a variety of different lighting conditions with realistic results while illustrating. This is the non technical explanation of the principles behind Physically Based Rendering, wich attempts to simplify real life light interaction without compromising subjective realism. If you want to know more about it you will have to dig deeper into how 3d rendering and PBR texture maps work.

Djulina

Thank you for the question! I'll answer it in detail in the next video, but in the meantime, I would recommend adding a new layer on top, add any grayscale color using paint bucket tool, and then set layer type to color. This removes color from the entire piece so you can tune how the characters' values silhouette over their surroundings.

GUWEIZ

Thank you for the suggestion!

GUWEIZ

Great question! It will require a bit of a longer response in the next Q&A, but in short I find it important to pick your battles and not over-commit to client work for the fear of losing potential work opportunities.

GUWEIZ

Glad to be of help!

GUWEIZ

Thanks for the video, awesome as always! Would you explain next how can we better differentiate the background from the character? I suffer trying to make the characters stand out from the environment. Thanks again!

Love your work, would you do a video on how you do eyes, every character you draw, always has absolutely incredible eyes!

Johnny Tsunami

Hello! Been a fan of your works years ago and even got your book from kickstarter :D, but recently only subscribed to your patreon! I wanna know if you have any advice on staying motivated even though you are burnt out? I've heard others suggested to take a break, but what if you don't have time to do that because you have a tight dateline to meet?

Eisa Seraph

Thank you so much for answering my question! Really helped a lot!

Cristina