Ascot

Well, what can I say.

I remember reading in the newspaper early this morning. What a lot of strange women, dressed in formal dress and spouting the most bizzare hats and garments.
No way will you catch me in such formal wear.

It was thus, on my way home from a day's work at the hospital that the wife calls and says.
"Hon, we've been invited to the Royal Enclosure, have our own personal box to the Royal Ascort tommorow...."

I go, what?
Hmm, isnt there some sort of formal wear and attire?

Indeed, it was 5pm and the shops closed in 1 1/2 hours and for anyone to get a suit for the ascot races, last minute.
They must be insane. Retrospectively, I heard from our hostess that she had a last minute dress crisis at Harrods, and all i nall, everyone pulled off the suits and dress last minute to good effect, although the chappies at mossBros were non too keen to be serving up last minute shoppers keen to get fitted at half six in the evening. My wife, had a the stroppiest most ungrateful shop assistant who apparently had a really bad day of womefolk besieging the shop for last minute suits for their significant other

At the Races

The travel into Ascot, was via the M4, turning off through Windsor Castle. Lucikily we had missed the day before where 80 000 souls descended upon Ascot. The roads, although reasonably crawling at snail pace were moderately
By some stroke of fortune,.

http://www.medievalfx.com/photos/royalascot/crowd.jpg

What is a speedpaint?



Myself, I ask myself that constantly.

When first introduced to digital paintings,
I was fascinated by the beautiful imagery produced by seasoned pros at Sijun and conceptart forums.

Inevitably, I joined in the fray feeling it would help me improve my process. The more I painted, the more I felt at some point of not reaching the desired level and frustration grew.

That can be due to me not basically understanding ANY of the basics of painting. I did not know the terms composition, perspective, colour, light , form which I seem to brandish about now. A friend suggested that a speedpaint might be something else than just a loose drawing.

Indeed, these days when one looks at a speedpaint thread,
there is a dilution of artistry and range of skill. You have the seasoned pro, the middle grade and the beginner.

Now, I'm not quite hinting that a speedpaint should not be for all to enjoy, and yet, what is a speedpaint?

Spurning the challenge of speedpaint

Turning my back on speedpaint,
I started to work on basics for a year.

Perspective - helped me understand how to draw transports better.
Composition - helped to unravel the importance of what makes a good cutscene/image

Colour and light ....colour and painting with lightness eluded me

I had not participated in speed paints for over a year, as I felt I had not reached a sufficient level of proficiency to truly paint what I understand as a speedpaint.

Speedpaint as I understand it

In one sense, a speedpaint is a rapid painting of values, colours and composition all rolled into one.
In that sense, a speedpaint is the embodiment of all the full skills of a digital painter, the economy of stroke and technique (which may imply the usage of layers, filters, methods as long as they get to the end result in the most economical step) within a relatively short duration of time.

It is akin to reaching a kensai status (sword saint) in the way of the sword. The minimalist economy and grace of form and poise, to strike and strike only when absolutely necessary, and when done so, it will have the ultimate desired outcome. The vanquishing of your opponent.

So, therein lies the challenge of a speedpaint.

Once mastered,
you can harness the rapidity of composition, design, and looseness of the painting to visualise a statement. And ultimately, incorporated into your workflow.

But make no mistake, a speedpaint can sometimes go horribly horribly wrong if you seek to finalise it into a finished illustration for a client. This is only so, when the underlying form, the underlying basics and clean lines that may be required are not fundamentally understood

Enjoy speedpainting!!

For it means to paint with light, and lightness in your paintbrush

The above image, is part of teh random gas nebulae generated in game by the I-Novae engine


Here is a link towards our latest fan interview,
with an update on our recent developments

http://www.gamesinaction.com/ibb/posts.aspx?postID=28491

To infinity and beyond!
Kosh

http://fl-tw.com/InfinityForums/viewtopic.php?t=4108

New ASEToBin version (0.6)

Over the past two weeks, the Infinity lead: F Brebion has been quite busy on various topics: experimenting the player-custom colors in shaders, and releasing a new ASEToBin version.

This viewer shares the same engine technology as the in game I-novae, which now features ambient occlusion, allowing us for

1/ custom dirt maps
2/ primary and secondary colour shaders on models
3/ High dynamic range colours included

Over the weekend,

We managed to set together a whole bunch of tutorials, tips and tricks to start off the tutorials and workshop sessions I have been teaching on variosu forums onto the website Artsdojo.com

Having started as a totaly self taught artist, it has taken me over 7 years to finally get to grips with various percepts, basic fundamentals of painting digitally which is still quite hard to obtain in book format but mroe readily available as workshops or tutorials online.

I have taken that small step to share what I have come to know, and have invted a few fellow artists to contribute their tips and tricks onto how to paint better and more effectively at Artsdojo.com.

I hope it would be of help to other young and aspiring artists seeking to better further their foray into digital arts.