Workshops

Leong Wan Kok

COUNTRY: Malaysia Leong Wan Kok is a full-time illustrator, specialising in character design and illustration. His work can be seen in various media: art print, illustration, posters and comics. At the moment, Kok is working as an art director in an animation house. He has worked for clients including King Comics and Spicy Horse. www.1000tentacles.com

PAINTING NEW WORLDS

Leong Wan Kok shows you how to use great texturising techniques whilst painting a far away land
n this workshop Im going to share some of the image techniques Ive picked up in 12 years working as a professional artist, focusing on texture and colour. This workshop is divided into five main sections: brainstorming; preparing your canvas for colouring; colouring, from inside out; texturing; and the final touch up. As always, it is vital to know what your artistic direction is prior to

Photoshop

DVD Assets
The files you need are on your DVD in the Leong Wan Kok folder in the Workshops section. SOFTWARE: Photoshop CS3 (demo)

starting work on your painting. What kind of style, design element, the canvas size, final output file format, and so on. These are essential. If you have not received any brief from your art director, make sure you ask! If this is a personal project, I strongly advise you to work out a fictional brief. You can also see my painting processes in the videos on your free DVD.

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In depth Painting new worlds

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Workshops

Make full use of Photoshops layers. This is most advisable as you can always return to that layer and make changes if you need to. Bear in mind that the more layers you have, the heavier the file will be. You need to balance it out, and sometimes merge selected layers (Ctrl/Cmd+E). Change the brushs size by exploring the brush list and change the diameter with ] increasing and [ decreasing. Remember to save your files constantly.

More layers

Read the design brief carefully. Design your character and roughly work out some thumbnails, rough and fast. They dont need to be neat at this point. Get the overall feel for it. If time permits, develop your characters. Think of the environment they dwell in, what kind of climate is it, what clothing do they wear? What are their characteristics? Consider these questions and slowly you will start to feel for your painting. I believe this will make the painting more interesting.

Brainstorming

The Navigator
Always have the Navigator shown beside your work in Photoshop. (Window>Navigator if its not already showing when you launch the program. When you work on your painting, you will constantly want to know how the whole image looks, so you can judge such things as colour combination and proportions. The Navigator makes it easier for you to do this without constantly having to zoom in and out.

Colouring, from inside out

Once the layout is done, scan it in . Usually I go with 300dpi, greyscale. I opt for this because it gives certain touch to the pencil outline. Open the scanned file in Photoshop, and make sure the pencil layer is set to Normal.

Scan your image

I convert the file to CMYK, due to the brief for this project. Do not flatten the layer when prompted. On top of the layer, create a new one. Choose Paint Bucket [G] and fill the whole canvas with a suitable dark colour. Here I go with warm brown for the base coat. Set the layer to Multiply so that the pencil layer is still visible underneath, making it easy for you to use for reference. My personal preference is to start colouring the characters first, then background, which I like to think of as an inside out method. This enables me to judge the relation of the colours more precisely. Constantly change your brushs Opacity: I like to work somewhere around 20 to 50 per cent, with Flow set to 68 per cent. This builds up the colour nicely.

This is one of the fun parts and challenging process. To give the painting a unique rusted look, I choose a rusted metal texture as my base. Open a new layer, paste the texture in and set the layer mode to Multiply. Decide where you want to map the texture. Move and scale the texture to the right size. Make sure the texture size is relative to the painting, or else it will look out of place. Delete the areas you do not need from the texture. Once nicely mapped, change the textures Opacity. Adjust the Brightness/Contrast of the texture. Erase the hard edges of the texture by using the Eraser tool. But, overall, make sure it looks subtle and merges well with the painting.

Texture mapping

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Using full screen mode
As you come towards the end of your painting process, its a good idea to close all your windows except your painting and turn it to full screen mode (by hitting F). By getting rid of any other distractions on your desktop, its easy to spot any mistakes in you painting, such as poor colour choice. This is a good idea if you feel your painting has a problem, but you cant identify what it is exactly.

The painting seems close to complete, but is actually far from it. Maintain your patience. I know when the painting is nearing completion, its sometimes tempting to rush it a bit. But refrain from that! Youve come a long way with your painting and it would be a shame to spoil it by rushing at this late stage. So keep your patience and stay focused. Its good to always have the Navigator open in your scenes at this stage (see the Pro Secret on page 80).

Keep focused

I usually keep on painting one character until its done. I feel comfortable seeing the characters take shapes one by one. This is my preference. Now Im moving on to the second character. I create a new layer to paint on. Toggle between Normal and Multiply layer modes. For the shadows, I go for Multiply; for detail and new colouring, I go for Normal. Try these out and you will get the feel of it.

Colour expansion

touch up 10 Final Step back and take a look at your

painting from afar. Half close your eyes to view the colour combination again. Look for areas where the colour is popping out. Fix any problems you see. Detail is the key factor here. Adjust the colour for the last time. Hit Tab to close all the palettes. Take a good look at your image. If it makes you smile, you know you have yourself a nice artwork that you can be proud of.

Decoration and accessories

Texture mapping, again

For a new texture, follow the same process you did in step 5. Its important to remember that subtlety is the keyword. The texture is here to enhance, not to overpower the whole painting. Dont make it look too strong or introduce too many texture maps. It will make the painting looks congested and stifling. Balance is the art here. If you need to, make colour adjustments to the texture map, using Curves, Colour Balance, Hue/Saturation and Brightness/Contrast. Make the original texture look flat by erasing the lighting and shadow on it before mapping.

A nice painting consists not only of catchy character design, focal point and a good composition, but also introduces small elements and details. These will definitely spice up the work. Add some supporting characters here and there. Make it fun!

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