Hello Everyone and Welcome to the Drawing a Science Fiction Character Series.

In this first part, Tim Von Rueden takes you through his initial process of drawing out the silhouettes for a sci-fi character.

While doing my research for reference and inspiration I noticed the stark difference between an “old school” style of design for a sci-fi character and a newer, sleek design for a more modern style. I am taking my main influences from Dead Space, Moon, District 9, Alien, 2001: Space Odyssesy and even Bioshock to create a mix of ideas for a concept all it’s own.

Check below for the Silhouettes result and let me know which three I should continue on with!

This subject matter is one I have not delved into enough. This series will be a great way for you guys to see how to tackle a less comfortable subject matter and how to work through those initial struggles and see how much can be learned from stepping outside of your comfort zone. You may surprise yourself with how well at drawing a subject matter that your not use to. When I drew the creature concept art, I never drew a creature/monster style concept before, and now it is one of, if not my favorite piece I’ve ever done to date.

Below are some video stills from the different stages of this tutorial!

1. Starting off most of these silhouettes I fill in a solid black character outline and then use the eraser tool to create the inner detail

2. Continuing on with more of them, starting to include more dynamic poses

3. Added a touch of color to liven them up

So here are the final sci-fi character silhouettes, I numbered them and ask which three I should continue on with in the next tutorial!

Thanks for watching and if you have questions or comments feel free to leave them in the section below!

Hello and Welcome to another Cookie Concept Art original series featuring Unit-E 3D with Tim Von Rueden.

In this Cookie Concept Art post, we go through the creation of our Unity Cookie‘s mascot, Unit-E 3D.

This character is also a complete citizen tutorial series featured here: Unit-E 3D Step by Step tutorial series.

When presented with the new Unity Cookie site, a new mascot was brought up for discussion. This character was to be similar in proportions to our Blender Cookie mascot, Baker, except in a robotic form. So when I was given this task I immediately had a few ideas I wanted to run with. The first decision was either to make the robot in a sleek clean style or more of a beat up rusting style. We decided a cleaner type version would work better. The two references that came to mind were Clank, from the Ratchet and Clank games and Eve, from Disney/Pixar’s Wall-E.

1. Initial Sketching

Below are the first sketches I drew down for the proportions and feeling of the character.

2. Detailing

After deciding to continue with the second sketch I went ahead and starting rendering the sketch out by first laying down the base colors and adding some simple value. Since the outside material of the robot is a cleaner metal polish, the lighting was easier to lay in because of how condensed the light source would look on specific points on the robot. The eyes were fun to create and with the addition of the orange, it gave a focus on the color play going on with the overall blue base of the robot.

3. Polishing and Add on’s

The next step was adding in additional colors throughout to help break up the monotony and to feel the light source that was being emitted from the different sections of the body. Once the robot’s initial concept was finalized, we got to have some fun designing additional parts for the robot and the different attachments that could be added. To differentiate the robots we had the idea of identifying them by the bold strips of color that were layer right on top.

4. Background

The final steps were the background, and how much wear and tear to put on the robot. At first I went with a brown and orange background to contrast the overall color of the robot but it was too plain and after trying a few other colors it was blue that stood out the most. It was bright and bold and added the high contrast between the orange glows that flowed throughout the concept. The robot also felt too clean and cartoonish looking, to fix that I added in a bunch of different scratch marks and dirty patches to add in that sense of realism. This was a tough decision to make. Both versions I thought worked so well but in the end, we went with the worn down one.

5. The Final Concept Piece: Unit-E 3D

After a few months of leaving the Robot concept in the folder and ready to post, I went ahead and opened it and added a few more detail working throughout. I added the worn down orange stripes that were taken off and some more wear and tear but with using color.

If you wanna run around with him in Unity or check out the 3D model, check them out below!

Citizen Resource: Complete Robot Character – Vonn-901 V1 By Jonathan Williamson

Robot Series – Part 01 – Movement by Patrick Boelens

Thanks for checking out this series with our very own Unity mascot, Unit-E 3D. Any questions or comments? Leave them in the section below!

Hello and welcome to this quick tip on how to apply materials in your concept piece.

In this tip Tim Von Rueden takes you through his process on taking a photo of a material and incorporating that into his concept work.

I am currently working on a concept cookie original piece in which I will update periodically seeking tips, ideas, and critique from the community to help create a great concept art piece. For this one, I am focusing on using a lot of material and fabric on top of a dynamic pose to not only push me out of a few of my comfort zones but to create a mood and flow to the piece.

While I was working on the upper torso and into the arms, I realized I could take this opportunity to show how I could take my own photo reference and integrate it into this concept piece. It can be easy to rely on using custom brushes, textures, and materials in your piece but I urge you to use them sparingly and especially if you normally don’t work with fabric or material, to study it and practice drawing them.

* Do not use others work into your own. This means that you should not take a material image off of google and use it in your piece, to save you from possibly getting into trouble, take your own pictures! You learn more that way as well.

For her arms I imagined a satiny type material that would give off a sheen down the center, so I went and found this gold satin material and wrapped it around my leg to give the same cylindrical shape as her arms. I also placed the lighting  directly in front to create a shine that would follow down the center. I included the photo in the source files as well for your using if you so desire.

After placing the photo into Photoshop I changed the layer’s blend mode to Luminosity. If you would like to learn more about the different blend modes, Adobe has a great little description for each on their site HERE.

Included with the source materials are the HD video version, the photo reference, the jpeg of the concept image, and the banner.

Below are some of the still frames from this tip!

Thanks for checking out this tip on how to apply materials, if you have any comments or questions, leave them in the section below!

Hello and Welcome to the third and final installment of the drawing guns series with Titus Simirica.

In this tutorial Titus takes you through polishing the refined silhouette from part 2 and the steps taken to finish off the concept.

Below are some screen stills from the tutorial.

- Creating a logo with a simple shape, eraser tool, and text

 - Adding highlights to round out shapes

 - Adding that touch of color to ensure it’s not a grayscale image

- The Final Concept Piece by Titus Simirica

Thanks for watching and if you have any comments or questions, leave them in the section below!

Hello and welcome to the Review section of last week’s exercise, Drawing the Eyes.

Here was my thought process for My Eye Exercise and Timelapse.

In this exercise review I focused on drawing my eyes with color being my main tools. I laid down an initial sketch of the eyes highlighting the main features of the eyes and the area around them. While I was color picking I noticed how many different shades of the skin I was color selecting and adding to the image and not only that but how many different hues were going into it as well.

Using my custom skin brush I  blended the colors i laid down to appear more natural and skin like. I also tried avoiding zooming in at all to try and focus less on the smaller details and more on the overall composition. Another tip I learned was that shadows on the face can vary in hue depending on their location. The shadow from the nose was a scarlet red while the shadow under the eye was a neutral gray.

After I have the larger sections filled in, I then add the details on top such as the eyebrows, eyelashes, skin pores, and freckles using 2 more of the custom brushes and rather than using the standard circle brush which has a very refined edge, I used the skin brush on a much smaller scale to give a softer look to it and not stand out too much.

After that it was all finishing touches and minor details to flesh out with a slight overlay pass where the light was hitting the skin the strongest.

Included with the source files are the brushes I used along with the .PSD of the final piece. 

Below are some of the still frames from the timelapse that showcase different steps during the process.

1. The basic outline laid out as the foundation for the colors. 

2. Laying the colors down, notice how many hues go into the skin, just just one solid skin color coating

3. Blending and smoothing out the colors together

4. Adding the details: The eyelashes, eyebrows, skin pores etc.

5. The Final Result

Now here are some of the eye submissions from this past week:

This one was done by sviolanis. Great use of light in the eyes, I would focus on the placement of the different shadows in the areas around the eye. My biggest tip for you is to watch how you draw your eyelashes. They feel stiff and too straight. They have a natural curve to them and the positioning of them is important to. Make sure you follow the angle of the eye and curve it off of that. Lastly the two circles I drew in that are connected is an example of where one side doesn’t match the other in terms of the eyelash placement. Great start!

2. This piece was done by mymatt11. So the placement seems to be relatively right but it seems you worked a little too hastily on the actual rendering and shading of the eye. If you just go in and spend some time cleaning up with blending then you will see your shapes really come forward and give that sense of realism. And the placement of the highlight should be coming from the same direction, where as one eye the highlight is on the left and the other is on the right. Good start and keep going!

3. And lastly, aduahawen‘s eyes exercise. These are excellent sketch drawings and challenging because of the different angles. I can tell you understand the different shapes and forms of the eye so my only critique will be on the color selection. Very simple clean shading and while the form is great I would recommend adding some more color to flesh it out. Even subtle hints of red in areas where the skin thins out around the eye and you would be able to see it come alive a bit more. Other than that, great job and great eye exercises.

Thanks for checking out this review post! Excited to push more of these exercises out and keep challenging the community to improve and progress!

Hello and welcome to the Concept Cookie update for the month of May!

This month has a lot lined up on it’s plate and I am ready to dive in and get started!

Whats new at the Studio?

We are staying busy and along with managing the sites we’ve been getting some fun outside project work to focus on as well. I have recently received a few art books that I have been studying and will try out some new ideas and tips for some upcoming concept pieces.

Eat Sheep is ever steadily being finished. I have been handling a lot of user interface screens and final polished concepts that have been a blast to work on. The wooly was one of the most fun I’ve had while drawing and has become one of my favorite characters I’ve ever made.

What’s going on with the site?

• The site will be under going some minor changes such as some re-organizing the main tabs and their respective pages.

• There will be a readily accessible resource section for you when you need some reference, brushes, palettes, anything that qualifies as a resource

• And as for those banners, they couldn’t decide between purple and maroon so they went with both.

What’s going on with the tutorials?

I have a lot of tutorials in the “to do” list and will focus on getting those out to you guys before asking for new ones. So instead of just tutorials I want to know what you guys would like to see on this concept art site. Would you prefer to see more drawing exercises, contests, complete concept art progress posts (like the creature one HERE) or anything else you can think of. The site is meant to be a learning tool and resource for concept artists, so any suggestions would be most appreciated.

With the Natalia series done, these big series posts seem to be quite useful and I will focus my time on creating more of these for the community!

Lastly some new posts coming out this month will focus on having your guys involvement on working with me to finish a polished, solid looking concept piece that we can show off on our studio site. I will post the steps along the way asking for suggestions and point out what I see happening with the piece. This will be a great way for you guys to see the complete process of a portfolio piece and the different ideas that go into it along with helping me by receiving some critique and suggestions that will help push the piece further than I might have originally taken it.

Tutorials you can expect to see this month:

- Drawing Guns part 3 by Titus Simirica

- The Getting Started in Gimp and Photoshop series

- The spring contest! But I won’t reveal the topic quite yet

- More resources, specially a human head resource .PSD for you to practice on.

Put your comments or questions in the section below ↓

Also check out our Facebook page and click “like” for notifications on when a new tutorial is up or something fun happened at the office!

Again, thanks for continuing to make the site such a fun one to manage and I’m glad to see all the feedback and helpful tips the community is offering.

Lastly, I now share my desk with the new guy. He doesn’t talk much though.

Hello everyone and we’re bringing back the drawing exercises on Concept Cookie, and to start off eye think we should focus on a specific facial structure.

I believe these drawing exercises are great ways for beginners to find some good tips and critiques to better themselves as well as for those who are more advance to practice their skills and better themselves as an artist or if you just are fresh out of ideas on what to draw and would like to get some practice in.

SO LETS DRAW SOME EYES!

The Objective:

Taking a picture of your own eyes and drawing them in any style you choose, from lineart, grayscale, or color.

Due Date :

Review Post on next Thursday, May 3rd, I will be choosing some of the communities results to give some insight and helpful tips, so get them in before that Thursday!

The Exercise:

Now for this eye exercise, we are focusing not on drawing the face or the other facial features but rather the shape of the eyes and observing the different features just on the eye.

I believe that you are your own best free resource. It may seem uncomfortable at first but when you study yourself and create self-portraits, you are learning so much about the human anatomy and if you ever need a certain angle or view point than you can recreate that. So for this exercise I choose to take a picture of my own eyes to draw and study. For yourself, I highly recommend taking your own picture and really examine your eyes to draw them.

Below is the observational step I am taking to drawing my eyes. I located and noted out the prominent eye features and focused on outlining those first. This is important in understanding how the different shapes work together and how from different angles they need to adjust as well. I do not recommend drawing right over the picture. It is good to test yourself and see where the placements would go free handed. Next Thurday when I do a Exercise review post I will include a time-lapse of the final drawing that I create along with some helpful tips on a selected few of the communities submissions. Can’t wait to see what you guys create!

So next week Thursday I will create a time-lapse showing how I drew my eyes from the picture along with some tips for those who added their own images. Check back next week for the results!

Also included in the source files is the Eye Reference sheet from the Natalia Series. 

If your looking for some tutorials on getting some help drawing the eyes here are two previous ones on concept cookie that focus on the eye.

Drawing the Eye - The latest eye tutorial focuses on explaining the foundations of the eye and gets into understanding the different shapes and forms.

Drawing the Eye in Gimp - A step by step on drawing a simple image of the eye in gimp.

Thanks for checking out this drawing exercise and if you have any questions or comments, leave them in the section below! And to add you image click on the submit image button below!

Hello Everyone and Welcome to an in depth look at drawing the eye.

In this tutorial, Tim Von Rueden takes you through his process of understanding and drawing the eye. We go through and explain how you would draw the eye from any angle and feel confident in creating them on your own characters and pieces.  Also included is the eye reference sheet that came bundled with the Natalia series and a .abr of the brushes used in this tutorial.

Below are some stills of the process and tutorial

1. The eyeball itself is a sphere and should be treated as so remembering that the iris is concaved.

2. The skin encases the eyeball and the upper and lower lids are created from the skin folding back into the eye

3. Shading the eye and adding the eyelashes

4. The shadow/lights steps that the eye forms create.

The result.

Thanks for watching and if you have questions or comments feel free to leave them in the section below!

Hello and Welcome to this time-lapse segment by the talented Pui Che

Rather than focus on the traditional steps taken for concept art, Pui takes a more interesting approach finding form and shape in chaos.

Pui Che’s Tips:

The Painting process in the video it self involves channeling what may seem like a uncontrolled chaos, into something that is recognizable and useable in any sort of artsy industry.

- It invokes shapes, form, and recognition. – A good way to generate random textures; control and uncontroled.

- While the central idea is to let loose and cast away till your hearts content; Remember to enjoy, and mix in your own little tweaks and quirk to shape it into your own unique style and flares.

- Having multiple styles to switch about is always good, use the ones that best fit the situation.

- Be sure to combine shapes and forms recognizable to you into the blobs, so you have something tangible to hold on to while gushing the piece right out from your mind.

- Have fun!

Some of the Photoshop keys involve in the videos are::

(general photoshop shortcut keys)

B- Brush

(Shift +B)- Toggle through various available tool type under the selected Tool Set( Shift can also be use along with many other tool sets, give it a try!)

CTRL/Command + J – duplicate selected/lasso area into a new layer.

CTRL/Command + T – Transform.

CTRL/Command + B – Opens the Color balance option, a very nice color adjustment tool.

Color Dynamic settings:: You can have you brush release a mix of foreground and background color just by the pressure sensitive of your pen by doing the follow setting:

By going to the Brush setting, toggle on [Color Dynamics] and setting the Foreground/background Jittle Control to Fade and set it to 90(or any high number).

Pui’s Gallery: http://cgcookie.com/portfolio/puiart/

↓ Below are some still frames of the different stages the piece went throughout the process. ↓

Song

Ultra Violet by team9

http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/268196/ultra-violet

Thanks for taking a look at this time-lapse segment, if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them in the section below!

Hello and welcome to this Online Training Course for Character Concept Art – Natalia

Character concept art is the starting process for today’s standard in gathering and defining an idea for games, movies, and television. In this series, we go through and concept the character Natalia, the Russian rebel and take each step through an in-depth look at it’s creation. Through this course, Tim Von Rueden will give you a complete run-through on how to create and concept a character out in Photoshop CS5 using a Wacom Intuos4 tablet.

To gain access to this course you can signup as a Citizen member of the CG Cookie network for just $10 USD per month. This is an incredible deal, the course contains over seven hours of training; covering silhouette, anatomy, lighting, color, drawing the head, each of the facial features, hair, cloth, leather, metal, and posting it off. You can sign up for a Citizen account from our membership page HERE.

As a Citizen member you get access to the complete streaming course, including all project files and the ability to download each individual video. To make this series more accessible you now choose to either stream or download any of the videos. To stream the videos, simply click on the thumbnail for that portion and it will automatically load at the top of the page.

What you’ll learn in this course

In the duration of this course you will be taken through the entirety of a character creation process. This includes all the pre-production work that often goes overlooked such as gathering references, setting your layout, and a look at picking out your colors to compliment each other and lighting your scene. When it comes to drawing this series covers the human aspects such as the silhouette process, refining the anatomy, rendering skin using the pre-packed brushes, shaping out the head from any angle, taking an in-depth look and focus on the facial features from the eyes, the nose, the mouth, and the hair. Then we go through the materials included with a leather jacket, jeans, boots, metal, jewelry, tattoos, gloves. Then to polish it off I add a rim light and bring it all together with a background. I hope you enjoy and learn how to use this to create your own character concept art!

Note: the first three videos, and the introduction and freely available for anyone to view to help give you a better preview of the course Enjoy!