A (98)

FLESH OUT A FULLY RENDERED CONCEPT CHARACTER

USING CUSTOM BRUSHES AND ADJUSTMENT LAYERS

PRODUCE GAME ART

W

hether it’s for games or for movies,

there are no rules when it comes to

creating character concept art. You can

use any tool within your grasp in order

to augment your painting process and to flesh out

your character as your imagination tells you. When

doing work of this kind, Photoshop comes in handy.

Here, you will be taking advantage of its power in

order to create a fully rendered character concept

that isn’t simply a snapshot.

This tutorial will cover the complete painting

process. You will use different tools and techniques

START WITH STUDIES

CREATE SKETCHES THAT WILL GUIDE YOU THROUGH THE ENTIRE PROCESS

to paint a female character who could be the

protagonist in an action game – a femme fatale

inspired by the likes of Chun-Li. You will learn to

develop the picture from a rough thumbnail sketch

and discover how this task can be done with the

use of custom brushes and blending modes. Some

of the brushes you’ll use here mimic traditional

media to a certain extent and will be very useful in

adding textures to the piece. You’ll also make use

of adjustment layers and filters that can influence

the overall mood and atmospheric perspective of

the picture.

01

TONAL THUMBNAILS

Regardless of how detailed you plan

your artwork to be, always begin by creating tonal

thumbnails. The purpose of this step is to make

quick compositions that will help determine

which pose and what kind of lighting will work

best. It doesn’t have to be polished. You just have

to make sure there is ample distinction between

the figure and the background.

02

COLOUR THUMBNAIL

Once you’re happy with your tonal

thumbnail, start adding colours. There are several

ways to do this. You can either set your tonal

thumbnail as a Multiply layer then paint underneath,

or just paint on a layer with the blending mode set to

Color, or simply paint over it. You can also do a

combination of all those methods.

03

TIGHT LINE SKETCH

The thumbnails will serve as guides when rendering the piece.

After making them, the next task is to finalise the form of the figure by

creating a tight sketch. Use any hard-edged brush to draw the figure as

you would using pen on paper. Make use of the Line tool to create

straight lines.

BUILD UP FROM A ROUGH

SKETCH

WORK IN

PROGRESS

Progress 1: Create quick

thumbnail sketches

Progress 2: Add colours

Progress 3: Finishing touches

JOHN BRIAN S. CASACOP

http://www.jbcasacop.deviantart.com

OUR EXPERT

JB Casacop is a mobile games

designer by day and a fantasy

illustrator by night. He has made

dozens of artworks for games like Star

Wars LCG and Warhammer: Invasion.

SOURCE FILES

Provided online at FileSilo.co.uk/

bks-609 are Jan Ditlev Christensen’s

fine art brushes that behave like

traditional brushes. Other brushes

used in this tutorial can be

downloaded from http://danluvisiart.

deviantart.com/art/My-Brush-

Pack-118954791

and http://www.ramonmiranda.

com/2010/04/photoshop-artistic-

oils-brushkit.html.

PRODUCE GAME ART