My 1st Mouse Driven Digital Painting!!!

To date, this is my most superb artwork ever, which is also quite unexpected .

Everything here was hand-drawn, and digitally painted, including the background, without any references. The concept art of Mutalisk are of my very own idea.

All works are done solely by mouse.

I had never realized that Photoshop could be complemented with my drawing and painting skills so well that, it pushes me way beyond my normal limit! I had discovered myself many methods of painting in Photoshop, which is quite easy, effective and versatile. Though in the industry Corel paint is more well-known, as a freelancer Photoshop could be simply more than sufficient and user-friendly. You can still do well even without a drawing tablet.




Well, back to my paintings of Mutalisk, I would show you guys step by step how it was done. =)


I have drawn a Starcraft Mutalisk in a piece of paper (long time ago During a boring talk session in PLKN), and decided to colour it using Photoshop recently when I found that 2 years-old drawing. Therefore I have capture it with my K770i SE camera with low resolution, and that brings the drawing to stage 1 as follows:




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STAGE 1 - Sketch

This is the enhanced version of the camera image. I use Photoshop to contrast the background and the lines of drawing, and make it clean. It looks almost original.


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STAGE 2 - Colour



As you can see basic colour is being filled into the a white "background layer". I have the original layer topped to the highest layer as "cover layer", with layer blending mode "multiply"


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STAGE 3 - Toning

Once the base colour is being filled, more or less like the traditional painting, we begin to detail out the toning of the colour, with an imaginary light source. In Photoshop, the tools involved are "Burn" and "Dodge" tool. I start to tone the muscles and carapace to make them more defined.

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STAGE 4 - Texturing

To make this Mutalisk look lively, I start to work on its texture, such as the muscle fibers, grunges and scratches in the carapace, blood vessels in its wings, etc. The textures are very fine and some are only visible when you zoom in. (click on the image to enlarge) The technique invole is also normal painting and toning to create the textures.

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STAGE 5 - Reflections

Minor reflections is added to give the carapace and muscle look even realistic. Notice that the dark are also having thin white reflections as lining.

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STAGE 6 - Finalizing and Cleaning Ups

At this stage it is sufficiently considered as completed. Change a little bit of the hue and saturations of the colour and sharpening all the edges which are initially blurry with pencils grunges.

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STAGE 7 - Backgrounding

Finally I have decided to add a suitable background to this Starcraft creature. The backdrop which I had painted features the 2 moons of Mar Sara (a fictional planet in the Starcraft Universe.), as the Mutalisk roamed veraciously in across its atmosphere in high altitude, which subject the the Confederate's aircrafts in constant fear.

Retire from Events!!!

All the while my semesters had been very hectic. Apart from the "mandatory" academic schedules, my time is fully packed with events which I had joined (as organizing committee, not participant or delegate), such as EDX, SPE, CONVOFIAR, CHILDPRO, OCM, TOASTMASTER, CASFUMAL, ICC, etc. I went to meetings almost everyday, even until 12.00am. My life is full of schedules which had grabbed off most of my free time. Yea I do admit that organizing events are beneficial, but overdoing it is really unwise.

Well after reflecting deeply, I had made my crucial decision - I already had enough experience and moments to be treasured while organizing events and now its time for me to retire for the very next sem!!! Though I had been offered numerous posts in many events incluing HODs, even PD and APD, I had reluctantly rejected all of them. I am just a simple person who yearn for a simple but meaningful life. I want a peacful, slow-paced life with good quality:

Weekdays:

-study and do revision with own sweet time

-study with my EE friends everyday in common room (miss that)

-doing crazy stuffs with crazy peeps like Branson, Feng Jie, Andy, Alex, etc

-swimming is a MUST, jogging, workouts during evening

-cook good food (and they taste heavenly tasty after sport!)

-online and play some PC game before sleep

Weekends

-study whole day until tired and bored

-then go for sport to "unleash the boredom!"

-or play my violin, drawing and producing some artwork which I really enjoy

-and sometimes Sunday evening is a hangkai-movie-swimming-eatouts day in Ipoh!

We live uni life only once, and when we step out of the campus upon graduation to work, we'll again face the hectic life where you once had had before in uni. And this time it is until you retire. So why wanna make my life miserable by organizing too many events? Control yourself, Wei Di. Don't be too naive and blinded by the posts offered; those are just workloads that burden your life if you don't like it.

People might say that by organizing events you can learn to lead people, carried out task efficiently and it helped you when you stepped out there to work. Yea it is true but I am simply different. I am a person that is ignited only by passion and duty. Now I see my passion in joining events is dying rapidly so I can't afford to join anymore as that would results in irresponsibilities in me after joining. I can't anymore give out much commitment as last time as I did. I realized that I had changed. But when come out to work its different, because its my main responsibility and I will do whatever I can to please the one that pay me salary. (I am kinda $$-orientated)

Anyway do not follow what I said, as different people have different way of life. Some people simply enjoy to be an organizing committee, while some don't. I am just sounding out my personal feelings.