Workshops

Photoshop

CHARACTER
SPEED PAINTING

Mathias
Verhasselt
COUNTRY: France
CLIENTS: Sega, Sony
Ericsson, Microsoft,
Warner Music Japan
Mathias has
been drawing
for almost 24
years. He was
introduced to
digital art at a young age
by drawing pixels with
a mouse on early PCs,
before he later
discovered the tablet.
mv.cgcommunity.com

Photo by m4de.com

DVD Assets

82

FILES:
DVD1-5.psd
FOLDERS:
Full screenshots
SOFTWARE:
Photoshop CS2 (Demo)

Create a speed painting, focusing on the mood, atmosphere,

and depiction of a dynamic character with Mathias Verhasselt
he speed painting is a colour
rough. Its very useful for
creating moods, storyboards,
or for proposing different
ways to explore an illustration to a
client. To achieve a sound workflow, its
essential to be able to try and compare a
lot of different moods and compositions
before starting to paint a picture in detail
and spending hours on it. Thus, the focus
in this exercise is not on detailing or
concept accuracy, but more on
composition, light and atmosphere.

December 2006

In this tutorial Ill show you my own

process for creating a colour rough from a
couple of hours work. Here, as you can
see in my picture above, Im designing a
dark fantasy character. Its essential for
this kind of work to pay attention to the
light. If your light sources are correctly
placed and you have a good idea of the
volumes and planes of your subject,
youll be able to make it solid with only a
good silhouette and a few values, and a
few details here and there to add some
interest to the piece.

Speed painting is not an easy task. It

requires a large visual library in your
mind and a good understanding of
lighting. I recommend that beginners
make a lot of studies from life and photos,
and try to understand how things work,
before trying the exercise themselves. In
this tutorial, Ill try to explain some of
the concepts that you need to keep in
mind while speed painting.
The software used in this tutorial is
Photoshop CS2, but the overall process
can easily be used for other software.

Quick technique Speed painting

should never make a subject brighter
than its light source) and because
compositionally it stands out from the
background and looks menacing.

Add more definition

PRO
SECRETS
Check values
To easily check the
values/brightness of
your image without the
interference of colour
(for checking that your
atmospheric perspective
is right, or that your
shadow values are never
brighter than your light
values, for instance),
create a Hue/Saturation
Adjustment Layer
(Layers>New
Adjustment Layer>Hue/
Saturation) with -100
saturation on top of your
layer stack, so that you
can activate and
deactivate it at will.

I add a bit more form, refining the

silhouette of the character. You should be
able to read everything in the silhouette
by this step, such as tension, weight,
movement, and so on. I also put some
of the ambient light source on the
top-facing planes of the character a cold
tone coming from the patches of blue sky.
This adds a bit of volume.
Concerning the background, I define
the clouds quickly with some soft
brushes and add some elements
reminiscent of a war setting: a banner,
torches, and the like.

Get the light right

I start my speed paintings with a

gradient between a dark (ground) and
bright (sky) colour that will give me an
idea of the lighting of the scene. You need
to think about your light sources from
the start. I had an idea of a dark piece
with clouds and no sun. The only light
would come from the patches of blue sky
and some clouds diffusing the light from
the unseen sun above them. I work with
large round brushes, and refine that
gradient with clouds and background
forms. I also start working on a silhouette
wielding two swords, which I keep dark
because it shouldnt get a lot of light (you

Copy me
rg

ed
Shift+Ctr
l+C (PC)
Shift+Cm
nd+C (M
Use this sh
ac)
ortcut to
copy exac
what you
tly
see on yo
ur canvas
not just w
,
hat you ha
ve
in your ac
tive layer.

Now for highlights

By this step, all the key elements

should already be there. Its all about
silhouette, colour mood (the patch of sky,
lit clouds, and torches), and a few details.
I added some details on the character,
such as defining the sliding-plate armour,
mainly by giving the whole silhouette a
jagged, hard-edged style, and defining
the volume inside the silhouette with a
few metallic highlights.
For those highlights, I used a yellowish
colour, imagining that in the sky above,
there would be one very bright cloud. I
also added some cold reflections on the
upper facing planes, to remind of those
blue patches of sky, and some orange
highlights on the sides, to remind the
viewer of the torches. Dont add
highlights randomly though a few wellplaced, under-detailed highlights will
look much better than a lot of detailed,
wrongly placed highlights. You need to
keep in mind the volume of your subject,
and put those highlights where they
should be reflected, keeping in mind the
relative position of your light source to
your subject.

Designs and details

Use smaller brushes

This stage mainly involves

detailing the piece and adding more
design into things. For a colour mood
speed painting, working up to Step 3 can
be enough. By this point, the picture has
all the elements necessary to maintain
a good grasp on the mood and
composition of the piece. I mainly
sculpted the character, using quick
smaller brush strokes to add detail. Its
all about refining the light and thinking
how it affects each particular zone. If
there are many armour plates in a zone, I
just break the light I add on it, thinking
of how the armour plates are organised.
That way, you can quickly define a design
without having to render everything.
I also refine the background. Dont
forget about atmospheric perspective
when doing this, to keep the elements
distinct. All the values in the background
are lighter than the average values on my
character, but they become darker as they
get nearer to the foreground, in order to
add depth.

Here I do the same as Step 4, just

using smaller brushes. When you
compare this step to Step 3, or even Step
2, you can see that the image doesnt
change much in terms of mood and
composition. This shows how important
the first steps are, and how you can
define a piece with just a few elements.

December 2006

83