From Extracurricular Activities, Mike Yamada and Victoria Ying

A R T C LUB
a digital publication

VOLUME ONE
SPRING 2013
 VOLUME ONE
SPRING 2013

AR T C LU B
From Extracurricular Activities, Mike Yamada and Victoria Ying

CONTENTS
Dear Readers and Kickstarter backers,

Welcome to our first digital publication, an issue about the

creative process.

As artists we are always exploring new and interesting ways

to exercise our craft. It is safe to say that there is no one right CONCEPT
answer when creating, but we would like to share with you Style Guide
our specific approach.
Color Theory
In this Digi-Mook (mook= book/magazine), we explore our Local Color and Light
Creative Process in two parts - Concept and Technique. Lighting Theory

I hope this issue becomes something that you will find

inspiring and encourage you to explore new techniques in
your own unique creative journey.
TECHNIQUE
Integrating Natural Media
Experimenting with Texture

Mike and Victoria

April 2013
1. CONCEPT
You may of heard the famous axiom: Story is King. If story is
king, then his queen is Concept. Together they work, crafting
compelling media and shaping ideas that stick with you. It is
a difficult thing to find the right conceptual hook and nothing
more rewarding than when you do.
A SENSE OF STYLE
Creating consistency in a Collaborative Project
Building a Strong
Style Guide -
- Have a point of view.
Make sure you have something to
say and an opinion on whatever it is.
It gives your work and your project
flavor. Dare to be bold.

- Work backwards.
Deconstruct a finished painting. Find
You know that old saying : never judge a book by its a painting that best encapsulates
the style of your project. Then work
cover? I’m pretty sure we’re all guilty of not following backwards and figure out all your
it. Every piece of visual information is an encoded choices - color, composition, design,
message and every designer is searching for the cypher. shape, etc.
Sometimes it’s not about cracking the code, but the
enjoyment of tackling the puzzle. - Keep notes.
Once you figured it out, record your
thoughts both visually and in words.
Being an artist/illustrator has always balance of notes and drawn examples You can include examples of what not
been a solitary profession. But as of the designer’s intentions - a peek to do.
media grew in the 20th century, inside what makes them tick.
projects outgrew the reach of a - Be consistent.
solitary artist. Hence the rise of the While our project did not have nearly Follow your rules once you set them or
studio system - teams of artists, all the number of people a feature break them for a specific purpose. Test
working together towards a common film would have, it still had two them consistently to see if they work.
goal. And with these collaborative of us. We both have very different If they unintentionally break, find a fix
projects, there rose a new challenge - ways of approaching art and our for that problem.
to collaborate with a singular voice. own individual styles. We looked
to our heritage from animation and
In the old 2d animation world, one decided to do our own style guide for What to cover in your
stylist or designer would set the tone “Curiosities” Style Guide
for the whole project and be emulated
by the rest of the crew. We see this Shape
in classics like Alice in Wonderland
(Mary Blair) and Sleeping Beauty Rhythm
(Eyvind Earle). It’s a difficult task to
TOP
get into the mind of another artist Our first piece from Proportion
and even more so with a large team of Curiosities that we used to
creatives. create our style guide. Division of shape

This problem was solved by sets of How to draw/represent certain objects

notes - style guides - that explained
RIGHT
the thinking behind the art - shapes, The original sketch. Color
colors, technique, etc. Often you see
style guides in the pages of art books Lighting
for animated features and collected
across the internet. They present a
OUR THEORY
(what we did) -

On Rule Building -

We always find that it is easier to find your style as There is always the assumption that
you muddle through a painting and that is where we rules are innate and predesignated,
but that is not true. You can re-assign
started. We began our first painting, completed it and
rules however you want. Remember
deconstructed the choices we made along the way. This though, repetition establishes those
is what we came up with. new rules.

Why rules?
The General Concept -
Our story takes place in a handmade/wacky world. Nothing is symmetrical.
Rules let you build tension by creating
Everything is Imperfect.
an expectation and withholding the
payoff.
Rhythm -
Horizontal “zigzagging” gesture.
There are some rules that we hear all
the time: Round shapes are friendly;
Silhouettes -
Pointy shapes are dangerous. But
Normally symmetrical objects have an active side (more interesting) and
as we mentioned before, you’re not
inactive side (more simple).
stuck with those ideas. Break the
rules and make all of your good guys
Proportion -
out of pointy shapes and make all of
We setup a hierarchy of shapes - large shapes contrast with very small shapes.
your villains out of blobby shapes.
Sometimes the best rules are the ones
Color -
that break with tradition.
We kept it limited to basic harmonies - mostly complementary. All the
complexity was added through lighting.
Rules are meant to be broken.
Lighting -
A rule on rules. It is one thing to set
We wanted stylized light, almost like old movies and plays. We created big
your idea on paper and it’s another
graphic shadows/light shapes.
thing to make it stick. Rules only
work through repetition. Make sure
Staging -
to show your idea multiple times.
We designed flat compositions. Everything was limited to 1-2 planes. To add
Probably at least three and more than
charm and aid in the spacial read, we tilted up the ground plane.
that if you can.

Resources - Rules are only rules when everyone

gets them.
Paul Felix’s notes for Lilo and Stitch
http://unofficialpaulfelix.blogspot.com/ Like Calvinball from the great comic
Calvin and Hobbes, if you don’t
The Art of Open Season communicate the rules, then there
http://goo.gl/SQ40I isn’t a game. Make sure the audience
gets it and you’re golden.
The Visual Story by Bruce Block
http://goo.gl/HtxlY
COLOR THEORY
The Framework of Painting

Color Theory is a lot like cooking. Certain

ingredients play nice together; the ratio of
parts is important; and every so often there
is something that blatantly breaks all the
rules and in spite of it succeed wildly.

There are a lot of books and theories

and ideas about color but they are
just recipes or a framework, if you
will. They are meant to be followed or
adjusted at your whim (perhaps a bit
more salt). That said, when deadlines
are involved, I’m sure your boss
(and mine) would like to know that
you’re going to make something that
has been proved to work rather than
reinventing the wheel. It is easier to
work faster when you know you have
something that works. Don’t feel the
need to blaze new trails.

In fact, almost every successful

painting you will find will fall into
one of the basic color harmonies.
The main reason that they don’t
feel contrite are subtle drifts away
from the academic harmony.
Improvisation. Each time a little
surprise - a dash of cyan where you’d
normally use blue. The same recipe,
but with a twist.

The easiest three harmonies to use -

- monochromatic
- analogous
- complementary

Don’t reinvent the wheel when all

you need to do is build a better car.
EZ COLOR & LIGHT
Quick Tricks to get consistent light and shadow
THE APPROACH
Stepping up to the plate and hitting it out of the park

A B

Start simple. I’ve heard that mantra from every art

teacher I’ve had and its taken me a good 10 years to
start practicing what I was taught. During that time I
was always too pressed for time, too spontaneous, or
too sure I could fix my painting later. It takes time to
gather perspective and after 10 years of doing things the
hard way, I’m back to following the collective knowledge
of my former teachers - starting simple.

1. Paint your Flats and your texture.
2. Copy Merge (edit>copy merge or
CMD-SHIFT-C) your whole painting.
3. Paste and duplicate that layer (you
should have 2 flat versions and 1
multi-layer version).
4. Adjust the top flat version to
be darker via levels (CMD-L or
Image>Adjustments>Levels). Drag
the bottom white triangle roughly
halfway to black.
5. Use Color Balance (CMD-B or
Image>Adjustments>Color Balance)
to tint your shadows. It is additive, so
all the color you pick will be added to
your shadow color. I used a mixture
of blue/cyan and magenta.
C afterwards. Don’t be tied to literal
6. Use a layer mask to roughly block
in your light and shadow shapes
7 Repeat color balance step for the
light layer if needed. I didn’t use that
step in this example.
D
IMAGES
A Final Painting/Step 6 - Layer Mask
B Step 1 - Flats and Textures
C Step 4 - Darkened Shadow Layer
D Step 5 - Color Balance
Start with one of the basic harmonies
and then adjust for chromatic variety
color ideas. Sometimes atypical color
choices work better.
Ninty percent of the time I use one
of the 3 listed on the prior page. If I
don’t, I put the colors I intend to use
next to each other and fine tune the
proportions and exact color through
photoshop trickery.
Use your harmony to help guide
your choice in local colors. Try to
stay as true to your harmony and
use saturation/chromatic grays to
add more color variation. You can
comp in cast shadows with a multiply
layer and do it for real towards once
you have your local colors working
together.
Colored light is a great way to add
complexity and harmonize your
images. It ties things together, adds
focus and adds a twist to your basic
harmony. Unfortunately it can’t save
a poor thought out color scheme each
time.
Rememeber that you set the rules, but
it is easier to work fast using someone
else’s framework and hard thinking.
Traditional color theory is an
established methodology with proven
results.
We did simple 2 part harmonies.
usually complementary. We Kept it
simple and added complexity later.
We were always thinking about
color(harmony) first, light second.
You can always cheat the light to
make it work if you keep the harmony
simple.
Your own Lighting Theory
Questions to ask yourself
Intensity -
Where does your light come from and
how strong is it?
Shape -
We used graphic shadows to cut
across the image to separate the
foreground from the background. It
helped to flatten and stylize the space.
Color -
We tended towards strong warm/cool
contrast with light/color grads. Also
had strong falloff in light intensity.
2. TECHNIQUE
It’s pretty amazing realizing that digital painting has only
existed for the past 15-20 years. There have been lots of new
ideas of how to use the tools and ways to work. My current
favorite way of working combines the use of natural media
with my computer workflow. It brings warmth and a hand
done quality to a cold digital world.

We take two approaches to using natural media. The first is

to use it as a way to replicate the look and feel of doing it by
hand. The second is uses the clever application of texture/
shape to replicate materials and objects.
 A. FAR LEFT Painted Texture

STAMPING
Introducing Natural Media to a Digital World
B. CENTER Scanning

C. RIGHT Adjusting levels in

Photoshop

D. BOTTOM A gathering of
A B C materials for texture making

I remember being in preschool and happily stamping

a carved potato into ink and onto the table. I’m pretty 5
sure, where ever they are, my teacher does as well. 3
This time they’ll be pleased to know I’m using paper.

1. Gather your materials. Here I have

7. Apply it like a stamp. The best way
a few brushes (the older the better),
I’ve heard it described - “show off
sponges, a paper towel, and a piece
strokes.” Do 80% of your painting
of plastic wrap. Also I have some
black paint. I’m using black gesso
with flats and some grads and use 4
textured brushes to stamp in texture
(I like it because it doesn’t have
in areas that make it look like you
any sheen and it is cheap), but use
painted it by hand (emulates how
whatever is on hand. 2
some tv backgrounds were painted
for samurai jack, etc). This is useful
2. Make a series of marks per page
because flat shapes, while appealing
using each tool. Think of making
and beautiful may seem to lack luster,
“families” of each variation. This
but with these fun strokes it creates 6
way you have larger, smaller, wider,
smaller shapes that make the painting
skinner, etc, versions of each.
feel more finished
3. Scan the pages that yield the best
results. You’re looking for clean
crisp edges/defined ends of strokes.
Not going off the edge of the page. MATERIALS

4. Adjust the contrast to get a clear 1 Paper Towels 1

result when you turn them into
brushes. I use Levels. Drag the left 2 Black Paint(gesso in our case)
most and right most points under
the tallest spikes on the graph. 3 Salt 7 8

5. Use the marqee tool to select 4 Water

one of the strokes. then edit>define
brush 5 A plate for the paint

6. Make a new document and test 6 Sponges

it out! Make sure its not so big that
your computer slows down while 7 Sponge Brush
you’re using it, but it is big enough
to scale and not lose info! 8 Assorted Paint Brushes
TEXTURE
Experimenting with randomness
OVERALL TEXTURE
1. Using the same materials you
gathered for stamping.
2. Paint large broad textures. Try to
fill the page per texture.
3. Scan the textures in.
4. Adjust the value/contrast. We use
levels for this.
5. Click on the Channels window.
Click the select whites. It is the first
icon at the bottom of the window.
6. Hit shift-command-I (select
inverse) then hit Command-J
(duplicate selected on a new layer).
Now the darks should be on their
own layer.
6. Save the file for future arting.
APPLYING THE TEXTURE
1. Apply texture overall to your image
2. Command-Click the texture layer.
This should make a selection in the
shape of the texture.
3. Turn off the visibility of the layer
the texture sits on.
4. Copy-Merge (CMD-SHIFT-C) the
canvas and paste this to a new layer.
5. Use levels/color balance or any
other tools to add slight variation to
your image. Experiment!
NATURAL TEXTURE
1. Find a photo with an interesting
natural texture. I use shadow shapes,
photos of abstract patterns or
anything that I find interesting.
2. I use the cutout filter to abstract
the shape and to simplify the colors.
3. Then I use the magic wand tool
(with Contiguous turned off ) to
select one or more colors in the
filtered image.
4. I duplicate the selection and fill
it with a new color and paint into it.
In this case, I used it to create a new
painting.
Options
1. You can make the texture into a
brush. I don’t really recommend this.
These sorts of brushes tend to be
large and unwieldy.
2. You can make the texture into a
shape. I tend to go into this direction.
If you’d like to learn more about this
process, search for “Sparth shape
tool” on google.