Krita Cloud Brushes – Part II

This is Part II of my Cloud Brushes Set for Krita.
It’s not like I use this particular set that much (there are so many instances where you actually need to paint clouds), but I haven’t seen cloud brush sets around often, so I chose to start with these.

You can download part I of the set here. When I’ll have enough stuff shared to justify a new section on the website I’ll put them all together in the same page.

As I already said, there are a few small things to point out:

– I like my popup palette in Krita to have 12 brush icons (it’s just a matter of preference), so my sets will always be made of 12 brushes. When the brushes exceed this number, I’ll split them into multiple sets (like Clouds I, Clouds II, etc).

– for the cloud brushes in particular I had started doing some research in metheorology so that I could name each brush the proper way (cirrocumulus, altostratus, etc). Then I stopped because I’m not mental:)

– I believe there’a a bug in the way bundles are packed in Krita (which I’m about to report), so the safe – albeit a bit less straightforward – way for me to share these brushes is still “the old way”.
Instructions are below.
I would recommend watching the short video below before you download, it will show how the brushes are used and what they look like.

Download

Cloud Brushes part II
 

Installation

The zip contains two folders: “brushes” and “paintoppresets”. You have to move the content of these folders into the similarly named folders, brushes and paintoppresets, in your Krita resources directory, as follows:

• Linux

Unzip downloaded file into $HOME/.local/share/krita/ (merge if prompted)

• Windows

Unzip downloaded file into C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\krita (merge if prompted)

• OSX

Unzip downloaded file ~/Library/Application Support/Krita/ (merge if prompted)

Krita Cloud Brushes I Usage and Previews

The thumbnail on the left is the icon of the brush as you’ll find it in your pop up palette, the strip on the right offers a preview of the brush stroke.
All previews have been painted with a single brush stroke, just varying the pressure.

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Licence:

All brushes are released under Creative Commons 4.0, CC BY-SA to Paolo Puggioni, www.paolopuggioni.com

This license lets you remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as you credit the creator and license your new creations under the identical terms.

by Paolo Puggioni

Undead Guy

Nothing particular, just a random Undead guy.
The relevant thing about this guy though, (relevant for me, at least), is that I sculpted his face in ZBrush first, and coloured it later in Photoshop.

It might seem nothing worth mentioning, but for someone 3D-resistant as I am this is no small achievement.
What’s the word for someone who kills potted plants just by sitting in the same room?
Whatever that is, I am the 3D-model equivalent of those people.
Everything I do on a 3D software seems to come out slightly wrong. After half an hour of work polygons start sticking out from unpredictable places, common commands give unexpected results, things go generally not the way I’d like.
But I’m stubborn, so every now and then I give it another try and slowly but steadily I’m also improving.
Plus, I hadn’t tried ZBrush on my Cintiq yet, hence this Undead Guy.

There are two main goals linked to all these efforts on ZBrush (did I already say the learning curve is STEEP?).
The first one is that the lighting of some complex scenes is difficult to figure out without a model of sorts.
Some people make maquettes, others hire models. People like me, who for some reason can’t do either, just mock things up on a 3D software and take that as a reference.

The second goal comes from a recent freelance misadventure, so to speak.
When I was working on this I sent out a first version to FFG‘s Art Director, confident I had done an amazing job, and she came back to me by saying “that’s nice, however I’ll need WAY more details on the guy’s face!”
Thing is, that was pretty much all the detail I could already thing of. Nonetheless I painted over the first version and submitted a much more refined one.
Long story short, I had to go through four revisions in total before the final was approved.
I’m just not THAT fiddly with details, and it’s a lot easier (at least for me) to come up with a convincing facial anatomy by sculpting it first and taking that as a reference, at least when lacking a live model.

I’m still not sure about it, I’m just considering whether I could use that in my pipeline when it comes to paint more realistic portraits and bodies. For a start, colouring over a greyscale image always give a dull result, at least colour wise. But it’s worth making some more experiments.

So, here’s the big ugly Undead. Kind of a shortcut really, sculpting a ravaged, old skin is easier than a smooth, young one.
And what is he thinking of? Is he looking at the moon after he just discovered his days as a living being are over? Is he romantically longing for some fresh brains to eat? Is he evoking the Dark Powers to fulfil some of his unholy dreams? Who cares.
He’s just some random undead guy.

Here’s the process. Not really interesting maybe, as I barely coloured a greyscale screenshot. Yet here it is.

by Paolo Puggioni

Runescape Concepts – Al Kharid

A few weeks ago we released a Runescape Behind the scenes outlining the imminent update of Al Kharid, one of the oldest areas of the game.

The project is maybe the one I enjoyed the most this year. The challenges we had to face were many, and updating the city without breaking the existing content felt at times like defusing a landmine.
The old Al Kharid looked pretty much like a bunch of scattered houses, and not a city at all.
What we had in mind instead, was a grand place bolstering with activity, a hub for travellers and merchants crossing the desert, with the palace of the Prince at its center.

Given the scale of the project I thought it would have been easier to mock up the entire area in 3D first, to avoid issues down the line. This way I could also have control over the overall shape of the city, how roads and building would lead the players to the points of interest, and most importantly how to convey the feel that the Art Director wanted Al Kharid to have.

It took several days of back and forth to other departments (environment modellers and animators have been heavily involved in the concept phase) before we came up with a layout that could actually work.
Only after everyone was happy with the model (which I forgot to take home, alas)  I could start with the proper drawings.

For the first time in Runescape we built a city with a self consistent logic, with actual city things going on, and a proper city plan.
The houses are now obviously built with materials available in the surrounding area, the crumbly red sandstone the neighbouring hills are made of.
Their walls are bare and scarcely decorated, since the sand and the incessant winds would wear every exposed surface in a matter of days.
The indoors are instead where al Kharidian would spend the most of their time, and are usually rich and full of comforts.
Al Kharid has defensive walls now, to keep away enemies and possibly the harsh weather, and guards patrol the battlements to keep the citizens safe.

Right past the main gate there’s the market, where merchants and travellers sell their wares and exchange news.
The buildings at the outskirts are quite small, while they get taller and taller approaching the palace to emphasise the slope of the hill the city is built on.
This is something that I believe will impress Runescape players quite a bit. There aren’t many high places in the game, and the view from the Prince’s Palace is now quite stunning.

In hindsight, if I were to draw these concepts today I would do a much better job (they’re quite a few months old now). The deadline ended up being quite tight in the end, and I had to take many shortcuts, among which pasting all over the place the facades we had already designed, which gave everything a slightly artificial look.
But hey, I dished out an environment and a half every day so I can’t really complain.

Anyway, I’ll post the rest of the AL Kharid concepts later this week, with the Palace and the rest.

by Paolo Puggioni

Some Runescape Weapons

I was recently allowed to bring home some of the weapons I designed for Runescape, some of which for the Crucible.

The Crucible is one of the latest PvP areas of Runescape.
We released it a few months ago, and as it happened often in the past few months it was a project I was REALLY looking forward to, which I had to abandon after just a couple of concepts to work on something else.

My friend Dave and I worked quite a lot on planning the area so that all the design requirements were met.
The Crucible is a sort of underground arena, set up by rogues on the ruins of a pre-existing ancient dungeon.
We had to convey a certain feeling of danger and uneasiness, make it as cool as possible and at the same time keep the poly count as low as possible because of the massive amount of players playing at the same time.

It took a few days of sketching, planning, and of going back and forth to the various departments of Runescape graphics to double check that our ideas weren’t too crazy.
This is usually one of the parts I like best.
Then, by the time I was ready to start sketching, I had to start working on something else:(

Anyway, I got back to the project just in time to draw a few weapons, so here’s all I’ve got of the Crucible.

The following are instead a couple of weapons (a weapon and a shield actually) I designed for the Runescape MTX shop.

I’ll close with something I remember little about. It’s a Runic Staff, but I’ll be damned if I remember what I did it for:(

Runescape Concepts: Godwars Characters part 2

Here are another couple of Runescape characters I did for the Godwars dungeon.
Now that I think of it, together with Graardor that’s all I did for this project.

Bree and Growler are both Commanders Zyliana’s body guards.

Zylyana has been designed by my good friend Dave, btw.

Commander Zilyana, Keeper of Faith, is the leader of Saradomin’s army in the God Wars Dungeon.
She is an Icyene, an ancient race of winged beings, chosen by Saradomin to guard his hilt.

[Again: source]

Bree, as you might have guessed by the four-legged lower part of his body, is a centaur.
He is one of the only three centaurs of the entire Runescape.
I’m told animators are quite happy of the race being neglected in our game, apparently they’re not the easiest thing to move around.
As far as I’m concerned I’m also quite content to keep their number as low as possible.
Horses are not the easiest thing to draw either, you know.

(Fun fact: artists have been crap at drawing horses in movement until Edweard Muybridge’s first action photos. There was obviously no way to isolate single frames to take reference until then. There’s an article about it on James Gurney’s blog. Oddly enough, being an old time fan of Muybridge’s work, I already knew about these facts. My brain has its own way to decide with information to retain and what not. I can’t remember my own mobile number, for example).

Growler is another one of the three bodyguards.
Apparently he is not much of a threat and Runescape players normally manage to kick all the Life out of him without breaking their stride.

Now, to be fair, at this point I should post the last of Zyliana’s bodyguards, Starlight, but I was so unhappy about the concept that I decided it should remain buried where it is.
As another horse-like creature, this unicorn is not so much to my liking.

The model looks great though.

The Tree of Life

One of this week’s 2D challenges on CGHub was titled “Tree of Life”.
I came upon it by chance and decided I would give it a try.

It is a known fact amongst artists that painting foliage isn’t easy. Most of them, even great masters of the past, avoid green entirely. At this point I should be mentioning a famous quote by a great painter, but my memory sucks so just take my word for it: painting green isn’t easy and few people like it. As it happens, I’m no exception, and I have issues with it. Sometimes.

The thing is, it’s not just Green. In an environment dense with foliage there are lots of things happening to light and colours. Firstly, light is scattered everywhere, and it changes hue depending on what it runs through or bounces off.
In a canopy, leaves facing up tend to reflect the blue of the sky and lose saturation (assuming they’re beneath a clear patch), leaves tilted towards the ground get more yellows and browns. Some of them are more transparent than others and might get as bright as lanterns if, for example, the sun is directly behind them.
BUT. If they’re thick and the light isn’t strong enough they just get rim light, scattering the beams around to complicate your life even more.

All leaves have the bad habit of casting shadows onto each other, shadows that can take on all sort of tints depending on the colour of the light they generate from, and the colour and value of the leaf they’re cast onto.
Most of them are also quite reflective, and have highlights of all sorts. Those closer to the ground are darker and warmer and usually stand out from the dirt, which is more often than not a pretty low value. Higher leaves are (usually) colder, and the light of the surrounding sky tends to bleed over their edges.
Long story short, drawing leaves is a bitch, at least for me.

This is why I decided to take part in the Tree of Life challenge, I need to practice on green.
I didn’t really do any research into the Tree of Life thing. I just meant to draw a vaguely fantasy-looking tree and see what happened.

Eventually I decided I didn’t need to paint lush vegetation, which I guess is a bit of a failure considering the reason why I decided to paint a tree in the first place.
However, leaves in this case would have distracted from the main focal point of the composition (the big ball of branches with the mystical fairy light in the middle), so I’ll have to postpone my practice on leaves to some other time.
Lots of green here, though.

For the time being, here’s what I came up with.

And here’s the process as usual.

If you want to know more about painting foliage, there’s a number of awesome posts about it on James Gurney’s blog (there’s a list of links to other related posts at the end of his entry).

Stannis Baratheon

Another illustration I made for the Game of Thrones RPG.
Stannis is one of the least liked of the series’ characters, poor Stannis.

I’m serious, I feel for him.
He was a second son, which is frowned upon in the Game of Thrones book.
Well, I guess it used to be like that in general a while back.

Anyway. He was skilled in battle, loyal, just and strong. Maybe he wasn’t the soul of the party, but as I always say when people complain about politicians being boring: he’s not there to entertain people, he has to get things done!
And Stannis did.

He kept Storm’s end for months against overwhelming forces, then went on conquering Dragonstone without breaking his stride.
All for his elder brother, and not a pat on his back for it. Instead, he got rewarded with the smaller castle, the one with the crappy weather.
He also married a sickly woman with a big moustache. No wonder he has a frown, who wouldn’t?

People in the Game of Thrones books don’t like Stannis.
He’s not a fun guy, even if he’s not to blame for it. And no one takes him seriously, not even when he wins.

He must have like 3 of out of 10 in Charisma, poor sod.
Which is what I always had when playing role playing games, btw.
Who puts points on Charisma when using Strength is so much more rewarding?
Only bards use Charisma, and no one ever plays with bards, NO ONE.

As predictable as it is, I had to use a cold, grim mood for this drawing.
Stannis is in his grey Dragonstone, frowning as usual, making plans on is table-map, probably being unhappy about something.
Most likely because of the crappy place he had to live in.
I wonder how his image in Game of Thrones might have been different had his castle been decorated with pink curtains and soft fluffy pillows.

by Paolo Puggioni

King Robert

Green Ronin has just released its update to A Song of Ice and Fire Campaign Guide, another Game of Thrones RPG Rulebook I’ve worked on.
This is King Robert Baratheon, after the Battle of the Trident events which led to his ascent to the Iron Throne.

I could have depicted him in many ways.
Robert was as quick to laughter as he was to rage, he was bold and charming, and the most fearsome warrior of his times.
As a character he could have been suited well both holding a horn of ale or bored to death while attending to one of the kingly duties he loathed so much.
He seemed to enjoy just the idea of being a king, but not so much all the responsibilities that came with the position.

For this particular illustration I chose to see him already ahead in his life, aged by the burdens of the Iron Throne, the intrigues of his court and the excesses he was used to.
According to the Game of Thrones books, he couldn’t fit into his old armour any more. However, I figured he would love to wear some battle garments here and there, as a reminder of how he was.

Unfortunately by the time they offered me the assignment I was already working on something else, so I could only accept a limited amount of illustrations.

Which sucks, because the characters for this assignment were all pretty cool, and I enjoyed the job quite a lot.
Also, I had just finished reading the second book of the Game of Thrones series, and I had their faces (or how my mind imagined them) still vivid in my mind.

I’ll post some more characters in the next few days.
And I’ll stay by the door waiting for the postman to deliver my second big shiny book🙂

by Paolo Puggioni

Life Drawing At The British Museum

Yesterday my fellow Concept Artists and I went to the British Museum in London for our third monthly training session.
Before you start scrolling down I have to break it to you: I didn’t even scribble a stick man.
The mass of tourists was aggressive enough to discourage the most motivated artist.

The rooms were people weren’t punching each other on the face to get a place in front of the artefacts weren’t interesting enough to go fetch a chair and take all the gear outside of my bag, so I eventually gave up.
Plus, damn I’m getting old and my feet were killing me.

Nonetheless the trip was fruitful and illuminating.
I mean, I took 428 reference pictures, I can’t wait to find an excuse to smuggle all the props and objects I found even slightly interesting into Runescape.

The rooms I found most worthy of attention were the Aztec and the African.
I knew little to nothing about ancient South American artefacts, and I was impressed by the power of their designs.
My wife would have gone nuts wih all that lapis lazuli blue everywhere.

Apart from that, I made a mental note to look deeper into meso american ancient art, the way they break down complex scenes into simple shapes is rather unique.
Plus, the gruesome nature of their favourite subject matters (like, Queen Something Something performing the ritual of sticking ten feet of barbed wire through her tongue) never fails to entertain.

African art was just as much a surprise. You can easily see some of the faces of their carvings in Picasso’s paintings. He was almost certainly impressed by their natural skill in simplifying, decomposing and reassembling shapes.
Unfortunately when I got there I had already been in the Museum for close to six hours, so I couldn’t be asked to take my sketchbook out.
I promised to myself to go back and spend a day just in those two rooms, which are luckily neglected by the tourist throng.

by Paolo Puggioni

My Shiny New Song Of Ice and Fire Stuff Has Arrived

To my great surprise – I didn’t expect it so soon – Green Ronin sent me two copies of the Game of Thrones Rule Book I’ve worked on, A Song of Ice and Fire.
Being credited in video games is pretty cool, but having your name printed on the pages of a heavy, chunky, glossy RPG manual is a completely different thing.

For a start, when I was a kid and was introduced to the colourful, nerdy world of role playing games, the first thing I thought was “wow, when I grow up I totally want to have my drawings published on a RPG manual. It will never happen though”.
There you go, Past Me, it actually happened!

Second, books are a lot easier to brag about with friends. They sit on shelves, and you can discretely wave at them until someone realises there’s a new thing amongst your collection, and you can go – very casually – “Ah yes, that’s just the new Game of Thrones game, I worked on it”.

Also, books smell awesome, especially glossy ones. I won’t go into the books vs. tablet debate, but that’s precisely the reason why I’ll stick with paper as long as I can. Sorry trees, it’s not my fault you smell so good.

Anyway, these are some of the pages.
I was pleased to notice one of my drawings was used as the back cover art. The excellent Cover Art is Michael Komark’s.
The prints are slightly darker than the originals and they lost some mid-tones, next time I must remember to tweak the brightness before submitting.
As for the rest, it all looks so good I’m almost considering going back to Role-playing. I just need to cut my sleeping hours to three-four a day.

by Paolo Puggioni