fanart process post

[ratcreature]

Because I'm procrastinating on my SGA Reverse Bang piece, I've decided to do a process post about my last fanart, the one for the Trek Reverse Bang. That painting took me a long time, and quite a lot of work spread out of over three months, and maybe some are interested how I get from the first idea to a finished painting.

Comments

[anonymous]

I didn't realize it could be so much work to produce a single painting. I'm in awe of your patience and dedication!

[ratcreature]

Thanks! Actually many artists do even more preliminary work. It's much like with fanfic writing when a story takes research, drafts and revisions.

[sholio]

Wow, the amount of work that went into this is really incredible! Perspective -- oh wow, do I ever feel your pain. I don't know why it's so incredibly difficult, but I often have to do physical mock-ups (with cardboard and boxes and such) to get even the basic stuff right. You wouldn't think it would be so difficult considering that it's based on simple mathematic principles, but I've even sometimes caught myself doing it backwards -- that is, having things taper towards the viewer instead of away from them -- and then staring at the drawing going, "Why does that look wrong?" Anyway, thanks for sharing; I'm really impressed by all the work and the detail.

(This also reminds me that I need to stop procrastinating on my sgareversebang art, which seems to have stalled out at the preliminary sketch stage...)

[ratcreature]

I'm glad to hear you found this interesting.

I think with perspective it's that the devil is in the details. At first glance it seems simple enough pick an eyelevel and the vanishing points are on that, but then you realize that you have no clue where exactly to put them, if you have more than one thing. I mean, as soon as you rotate something the vanishing point slides.

I have often wished for a simple 3D program (with the ones I tried I realized why people who operate them need to spend a few years in some digital art college to learn...), something where you could put just simple help frames in a floor plan, click there where you want to stand and tell the program that your eyelevel is at height such and such, and it would give you a wireframe in perspective.

[sholio]

Regarding 3D programs -- yeah, I agree so much. I've tried to use them, and I know some artists get a lot of use out of them, but I think it would take longer for me to learn how to use the program than to just do it the old-fashioned way. Someone needs to write a really simple 3D program for artists, because we don't need all the fancy details, we just need basic shapes in perspective.