Spectrum Fantastic Art Live - IAIN MCCAIG

Dwight and Swain, the Podmasters at SideBar Nation are at it again with a presentation and interview starring the energetic creator Iain McCaig.



Another power packed event at Spectrum Art Live 2012.



Listen to it HERE!

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Disney, Brother Bear and the “Bear Necessities”

-Terryl Whitlatch

One of the major divisions of Creature Design is that of depicting real animals, as opposed to imaginary ones. In fact this is altogether much more challenging; on an intrinsic level we are all familiar with living species—we either own them or have ready access to them via farms, riding stables, zoos, museums, or video. We’ve seen, fed, and touched them. This, as opposed to imaginary creatures, where no one is able to stand up and tell you what is wrong.



One of the tasks I’ve had throughout my career as a concept artist is to supply studies of living animals as reference for various film projects. A case in point is Disney’s 2003 animated feature Brother Bear. This was a film whose overriding sensibility and design was one of extreme naturalism—its closest aesthetic comparison was Bambi, a sublime production produced nearly 63 years earlier.



I was hired to provide the Disney Art Department assigned to that production with as many anatomical analyses and breakdowns of actual bears (as well as moose and other animals) in all sorts of poses—in particular showing how the muscles performed under the heavy fur, and then, breakdowns of the fur itself, showing the blocks, directions, and tracts, for ease in stylizing down for animation.



Fur has weight, direction, and heft, and in healthy Kodiak bears this is multiplied beyond that of most mammals, except perhaps for yaks, musk-oxen, and on a much smaller scale, Persian cats. It takes some in-depth study to understand this, and thus it was my task to supply the production artists and animators with this knowledge in a readily digestible form.



I estimate that close to a hundred of these drawings were produced—from bears fighting, sitting, roaring, hunting, you name it. From there, I went on to do many narrative illustrations, lip-syncing studies (making a moose talk) and further stylizing down to the Brand character. I must say, that is was one of the most satisfying gigs that I’ve worked on, and I was privileged to meet some of the most artistically gifted people that I have ever known, and I’m convinced, ever will know.

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The Daisy , Step 2 : Painting

-By Serge Birault

First step here :

http://muddycolors.blogspot.fr/2012/06/daisy-first-step-sketch.html



I'm not a specialist of grayscale. I don't use it very often. I came from traditional painting and this technique is not very « natural » for me. But let's try, I will try to avoid the « washed » effect.

I put the sketch on a « multiply » type layer and I start to work under it. I choose my basic tones and my ambient light, it will be green. Of course, the saturation is not very good.



For the painting-like effect, I don't use airbrush but different Ditlev brushes (once again). You can download the pack here: http://cghub.com/scripts/view/85/

I have to paint over the sketch now. I don't want to change the contrast and the luminosity too much so I create only « overlay », « linear burn », « linear dodge » and « difference » layers.<



The amount of layers is quite ridiculous but I add the tones one by one. I often decrease the opacity of the layers to 0-10%.



The choice of colors is logical … Green and orange. I think you know the complementary tones.

Here's the result. It's not perfect but I'm on the good way.

I merge all the layers.

I add the bag full of daisies. It changes a bit the meaning of the picture but my composition is better now. The « hole » on the bottom-right now longer exists.

I add details and I change the contrast and the saturation a little bit.



I can't if tell I'm totally satisfied by this technique. My palette is very close of the one I used for an old picture, « Sashimi's revenge » but the result is not as good. By the way, I spent 80 hours on that pin up and « The daisy » was done in only 8 hours. I think I can work faster with a bit of training but I'm not sure I will use grayscale again. I go back into the one's old ways now.

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Career Education Choices

-By Donato

I just graduated from high school and I'm wondering about college and such. Is it worth attending an expensive university or should I just go to a smaller school? I'm very serious about my art and I'm very dedicated... I want to be an illustrator.  I want to do everything from magazine covers and book covers to concept art for games or movies.  Is it possible to be in debt and be an illustrator?  

college works, 1988-90

These are very tough questions from a young artist that could take a life time to answer. I'll try to provide some insight as to what has worked for me and look back at my career with 20/20 hindsight. To start with, my Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from Syracuse University (coupled with three previous years at the University of Vermont) was very important in laying the foundation in developing my career, but equally important was the drive to be creative, prolific and open-minded.



Every artist has to seek their individual path to success, no two are the same.  It has taken many long years of practice, patience, and devotion to craft to attain the level of quality now exhibited within my work.  I am sure this advice sounds similar to others before, but it is the truth, practice, and plenty of it, makes for perfection.  Pursuing the arts is an admirable and challenging goal, but you have to be willing to make great sacrifices along the way to achieve those ends.

Creative Impulse,  198

One of the greatest changes I struggled through was learning to detach myself from the hobby work, drawings, and paintings I had loved to create in my youth.  To take art seriously I learned to study and find validation in all art forms.  I am the artist I am today because of my ability to shrug off the old subject matter (comics, realism, science fiction and fantasy) and embrace new aesthetics which teachers and professors were exposing me to: abstraction, post-modern theories, deconstruction, gesture drawing, impressionism, surrealism, cubism, sculpture, print making, digital media, etc...  Without stepping into the unknown, I would have never truly challenged myself nor experienced anything new.  I would have never learned to what it felt like to fly, content to spend my time walking and jumping the distances I knew were 'safe'.  I see many artists who, while technically proficient, are grounded far too much in their youth and the content they find comforting there.



The paths I took to become a successful artist are unique and cannot be duplicated - like losing detailed sight permanently out off one eye two weeks before I was to move to New York City to begin my career as a visual artist, or moving to New York City and finding work at the Society of Illustrators as a coat-check boy (ok., maybe not impossibly unique on that last one!).  All of these events, and much more, contributed to the drive and insights I developed to become a successful creative individual.  Each of these experiences  challenged my assumptions about who I was and what direction I was determined to take as an artist.



I can tell you I am very happy with my career and would not trade it for another.  I make a comfortable living in New York City, being able to support my family and travel and vacation when I wish to do so.  But on the other side, if I had know how few artists actually make a living at this, I might of had second thoughts about pursuing this career.  The burdens of financial debt weigh heavier on this new generation than they did on mine.   I teach at schools in New York,  hold annual seminars and lecture at a dozen others across the country.  Throughout all these presentations I stress how the love of your craft must be the one driving force compelling the artist to create their work, for if they are pursuing this purely for financial gain, it will end in abject failure. The visual arts is a highly competitive field with only the most driven and studious surviving to make a career of it.

Joan of Arc, 2011

My suggestions are, if you wish to pursue this career, you must take it very seriously and be willing to work seven days a week. (I’m not kidding here).  You have to love it down deep.  Really deep.  As in the reason for existence is to express yourself through art.  Next is to pursue interests outside of the requirements of the art major - history, philosophy, sciences, sports, etc.... If you don’t learn about life, what will you have to say in your art?  Many of the greatest minds in art were not ‘educated’ in art classes, the schools were a ‘polishing’ wheel to their minds which focused their ability for artistic expression.  This is not to say you cannot learn great things in an Art college, just realize there is a much greater world to embrace than what is in the class assignment.  Most importantly chose a major which focuses upon content, not just technical skills.  While almost all commercial art programs teach worthy technical skills, you can learn much through a few additional classes/courses with hard labor and practice on your own, through an apprenticeship with another professional, or at a multitude of Atelier studios across the country.



Learning a specific technical skill to become an illustrator now is like learning to use a whip and spurs to get around town; the needs of the industry will be different by the time you graduate and in the decades after, change is constant in the freelance marketplace.  What you want are classes and teachers that open your mind to another way of seeing and interpreting the world, these skills can be used across media and fields, not limited to illustration.  Major Universities have programs and offer classes far outside the traditional arts fields and supply your mind with a well rounded and stimulated education.  The art I create stands out because I attempt to bring a different voice to the genre, a new view on the characters or places involved in the stories, a sample from my life experiences, something not typically found in science fiction nor fantasy.



I love what I do and I wish all of you luck in the pursuit of your dreams.   Finally, my studio door is always open to those who wish to visit and learn if you make it to New York (just call first!).



Sincerely,



Donato Giancola

Studio in Brooklyn, 2012

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Workshop Dragon Head

-By Jesper Ejsing

This spring, when I was teaching with Petar and Justin in Stockholm, I painted a dragon head. The figure was chosen to show the wide range of tricks and tools I use when illustrating.

Sketch:

In the sketching step I went for the clearest image I could: A profile/silhouette against a flat background. No nonsense and nothing to fuss up the reading. That is very graphically speaking because I did not do that completely, but that was the idea. A figure seen directly from the side is really boring and not very dramatic, so I lowered the angle bit so that we see the head from below thus looking up into the mouth. Also I turned the head of the dragon towards us giving the head structure a depth and a foreshortening that makes the image interesting. We are looking into the face rather than at it, if you know what I mean?

All the horns form arrow like lines into the face and the circle shapes in the scales and neck helps to emphasise shape and to further frame the face.



Inking and grey tones:

Next step for me is to draw the sketch more precise on a board and inking it. If I do not ink it I am afraid the pencil will be covered up to fast since I tend to work very opaque right from the beginning. I use the grey tones to add the value and create a guideline for light. I use black acrylics. I try to fill in all the darkest areas with total black, knowing that it will be toned later on.

In this case I was using an old board that had some scratches so I had to repair it with gesso and some other strange medium I found at a friends table right next to me.



Colour rough:

I used a copy of the grey tone step for a colour test. I kind of new I was going to do a red dragon, and I kind of wanted to make a warmish rim light. that almost filled in the rest of the decisions. if the light from the side woul be warm I almost always use a cold colour for the parts in shadow. By choosing this temperature difference you get the most contrast and the best 3dimentionality, I think.

So the main colour would be Magenta and pink. The background should be in the same family as the figure to make the rim light stand out the most, so, once again, I smeared it with purple and some cobalt blue into it at the top. Well...all these colour match very well. For the eye I chose a sickly cold yellow to make it stand out the most. that particular colour has no place in here and acts as a splash and a very uneasy element. kind of what I needed. It could have been turquoise or orange, but I didn't want to add any "new" colour and I already used yellow for the rim light.



Final:

I had only about 3 to 4 hours to paint the figure and I never reached the same level of contrast and kick that the rough has. I think I could have managed that with a couple of hours more.

what I tried to do was show how to make texture by simply letting the brush dance randomly over the face of the dragon and afterwards picking up on elements that could be dents or scales or scratches. also I tried to use many different colours within the red skin to make it seem alive instead of just red. I achieved that by dotting grey and purple and warm red into it.

One more thing I did very deliberate was to use different size of brushes. A flat size 16 for the blocking in colours, a round 12 for most of the rest of the painting, and a round size 2 for details like the eye and the highlights in the gum. the different size of strokes adds to the focus, since I used only the small brush in the most important areas and went more and more rough the further away from the eye and teeth.



This is a very fast image, but all the same thoughts apply to an image of more details and with multiple figures.

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Mediocrity

-By Dan dos Santos

As many of you may have already noticed, my cover for the novel 'My Life as a White Trash Zombie' was just nominated for this year's Chesley Award for Best Paperback Cover of 2011.



This painting also won a Silver Medal in last year's Spectrum, and was also accepted into the Society of Illustrators Annual Competition.



But did you know that this very same cover also made several 'Worst of' lists?

Amongst others, Cover Cafe voted this cover as the #3 Worst Romance Cover of 2011.



Here is what some of their readers had to say:

Rick: “I just had lunch, but this image makes my eyeballs wish they knew how to vomit.”



Lynn: “This cover screams at me – stay far, far away – the blood, the cigarette, the hair. I like SF and fantasy and steampunk, but this, I would never pick up to even try the blurb on the back cover.”



Kat: “The muted colors blend into each other, the text for the title looks childish while the topic is definitely not for children, and the graphics just don’t see to match the title.”



Nina: “So very ugly – could not keep this cover in the same room I am sleeping.”



Cover Cafe’s Lee: “If I saw this at a bookstore, I would pick it up and turn it to the back so people wouldn’t freak out.”



Cynthia: “Even though I do smoke, I believe that may be the most disgusting book cover I have ever seen and would probably not buy the book because of the cover.”



Cover Cafe’s Leanne: “It combines all the worst cliches of white trash one can imagine.”



Ellen: “This cover is so off-putting it changed my vote from the disaster that is 'Es ist ein Mann entsprungen'. Yuck! Even her poor cigarette is broken and soaked in blood. I hate pink eyeshadow, and her tattoo is unrecognizable. I think it says “I Love Perkins” or something. If I were to judge this book by its cover, it would be sliding down the wall at this moment.”



Kaye: “Really!!! The title does not lie. Most of the covers are bad but this one is horrid.”

Over the years, I have taken part in a lot of art competition juries, and one of the biggest flaws I routinely see is too large of a jury. When you have a lot of people trying to agree on something, you will inevitably get a lot of differing opinions. One juror will love a piece, while another absolutely abhors it. In the end, the only pieces that get past the entire jury are the ones that everyone can agree are 'OK'. The result is, mediocrity is rewarded.

So do all the negative reviews bother me?

Not one little bit!

Heck, I'd be worried if someone didn't hate it!

Love it... hate it... it doesn't matter, so long as the art invokes a real response from the viewer.

So remember,

If everyone likes your work, it's probably a good indicator that you're doing something wrong.

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2012 Chesley Nominees

The 2012 Chesley Nominees have been announced! More info at Tor.com

Nominee for Best Gaming Art, 'Glissa the Traitor', by Chris Rahn.

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