W E L C O M E !

Congratulations on enrolling in Painting Machines. This is one of my favorite courses and I know you will find it
incredibly fun and valuable! The techniques and shortcuts that I will lead you through will have you creating machine
art at a higher level than you ever thought possible. My sincere thanks to all students for taking the leap and joining our
community and we wish you a very warm welcome. Once you’ve completed the course, I hope you will post some of
your work so that we can all see what a rock star you have become. If you feel stuck at any point in the course, just let me
know! I pride myself on fast and helpful support.

- Course Creator Hardy Fowler

HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF THIS COURSE

Painting Machines teaches real world skills and is designed to have students creating professional level work much
faster than they ever might on their own. Here is the general format we will follow and some tips on how to make sure
you’re getting as much out of this course as possible.

• BRUSH UP ON FUNDAMENTALS - If you haven’t already, I strongly encourage you to check out both
Art Fundamentals in 1 Hour and Photoshop Fundamentals in 1 Hour. These courses are free to all students and are
packed with great information about art and the software we’ll be using. Even if you’re an accomplished artist or feel
relatively comfortable with Photoshop, these courses could really help and will guarantee that you’re not missing
anything in Painting Machines.

• REVIEW OF ‘BEFORE’ WORK - In order to gauge how far you’ve come, it’s a great idea to find a piece of machine
art that you have done already as a baseline. If you’d like, post it for review and I’ll give you my honest thoughts and let
you know which parts of the course you may want to pay special attention to.

• CONCEPTS / THEORIES - Before diving in, we will spend several videos talking about some of the concepts and
best practices to keep in mind when creating machine art. These will include the Course Overview, Shape Language,
Form & Function, Visuals Design and finally several fun rendering exercises.

• COURSE PROJECTS! - After viewing all lectures, it’s time to dive in for our real world creature projects! I will
creature 5 full artworks and every single step will be explained and discussed in detail. These will vary in difficulty and
complexity, so there will be value here for students of all levels. Once you have viewed all 5 projects, it’s time to start
one of your own. Feel free to copy my designs as an exercise, but it is my hope that the design principles that I teach
will have you feeling comfortable coming up with your own awesome machine concepts!

• PRACTICE / CONTINUED SUPPORT - The course does not end once you’ve reached the end of the videos.
I strongly encourage you to keep creating machine art following the steps that we lay out. Practice and repetition is the
best way to see fast improvements, so keep at it! I’ve also created a list of additional machine briefs to give you a good
starting point for additional machine projects. Let’s fill that portfolio up with awesome work! Also, post as many and as
often as you like and I’ll get back to you with my thoughts. No one flies solo in this course!
 M A C H I N E P R O J E C T S
The full projects that we’ll do together are the core of the course. I’ve included a wide variety of machines to give you a
broad base of knowledge. The techniques covered over these 5 projects cover just about every machine type that you
might encounter as a student or a professional. Below is a look at each project that we’ll cover and what design and
rendering techniques they were chosen to highlight.

P U L S E R I F L E
A futuristic science fiction machine gun. Set in the distant future, this type of
weapon would be at home in any number of science fiction settings. This will be
a direct side view (with no perspective) and will be a simple place to start. We’ll
focus on design language, metal rendering and adding texture and personality.

C O R S A I R
A steampunk car. We’ll add the challenge of perspective to make this car seem
three dimensional. We’ll start getting more into design balance (covers & guts)
and how to achieve a desired design style with shapes and details.

A P O G E E
A futuristic science fiction space ship. We’ll begin this process by using
silhouettes as our initial concept exploration. While this is a side view project
(with no perspective to worry about), we’ll get much more detailed in our
rendering so the design and rendering challenges will increase but you’ll
have a great portfolio piece!

S E R V I C E B O T
A humanoid robot that would fit in any number of popular science fiction
settings. We’ll focus on design language that will give him personality and
interest and we’ll treat him more as a character that our audience can relate to.

S U R V E Y D R O N E
Another science fiction robot, but we’ll treat this one as hard
science fiction (something that could plausibly exist in the near
future). We’ll focus on engineering and form & function to make
this robot design seem plausible but still cool and memorable!
 P R O C E S S O V E R V I E W
Let’s take a look at a breakdown of the steps that we’ll follow in the course. This will give you a very easy-to-follow road
map for success that will give you consistently great results.

1 . C O N C E P T / S K E T C H
This is the starting point! We will tackle the blank canvas and start
getting our ideas out there. This part is wide open - be as free
and creative as you want. Don’t worry about nice looking lines or
marks - ideas is all we’re worried about here.

2 . R O U G H C O L O R
Once the concept is ready to go, we’ll block in the line art and
begin a rough color painting. Here we’ll use color to differentiate
guts and covers.

3 .T E X T U R E / D E T A I L
Here, we’ll add photo textures and fine detail to add complexity to
our project. We will fine tune our forms and design elements.

4 . F I N A L P O L I S H
In our final steps, we’ll add local paint color, decals and
final adjustments to give our machine as much pop,
personality and interest as possible!

A P O G E E
FINAL PRODUCT
 K E E P R O C K I N G !
The course doesn’t end here! Keep rocking out machine projects and your progress will continue to skyrocket. I’ve put
together a page of additional project briefs and web image references just to give you some ideas. Consider this a
worksheet of machine painting homework. If you have aspirations to be a professional concept artist, use these briefs to
get some stellar portfolio pieces!

LOGGER BOT
• Large “lumber jack” robot made for cutting
down and hauling timber
• Build and feel of a bulldozer
• It should seem cold and uncaring
• One hand should be a large saw

STEAMPUNK MONOWHEEL
• Single wheel, steampunk vehicle
• Driver sits inside of wheel
• Lots of levers and handles
• Brass metal with ornate metalwork

FIGHTER SPACECRAFT
• Scifi genre spaceship
• Aggressive shapes and designs
• Should look fast, predatory and deadly
• Multiple visible weapons

REVOLVER SHOTGUN
• Victorian era technology
• Shotgun with multiple revolving barrels
• Ornate metalwork
• Hood ornament figurine on tip of barrel

WAR DROID
• Humanoid soldier robot
• Multiple guns mounted on arms
• Single, merciless eye
• Distinctive paint markings to denote rank

ATMOSPHERE COLLECTOR
• High altitude aircraft designed to strip
valuable gases from atmosphere
• Large intakes to suck in air
• Very villainous and evil appearance
• Minimalist design

EUROPA OCEAN EXPLORER

• Hard science fiction (plausible to exist in not too distant future)
• Autonomous submarine exploring ocean on distant moon
• Lots of lights to navigate dark waters
• Drills, graspers and collection arms
• Propeller, jet type propulsion

Images included here are for reference and educational use only and are not the copyrighted property of Digital Painting Studio