Making something look good…Part 1

So…how do I make some­thing look ‘good’ in art?

I have been asked this so many times that if I had 5c for every time that ques­tion was raised I’d…actually, I’d prob­a­bly only have about 35c or some­thing, so I guess that point goes out the win­dow as a valid rea­son for me writ­ing this post.

Dif­fer­ent angle then…I know that as a young artist, it was a ques­tion that per­vaded my devel­op­ing mind every time I tried to illus­trate some­thing vaguely awe­some like Venom totally kick­ing Spiderman’s skinny-gaudy-leotard-laden butt.

So if this was a query that I had as a young lad, I’m cer­tain that it also resides within the fer­tile minds of many junior illus­tra­tors fear­ful of appear­ing unin­tel­li­gi­ble in front of their more savvy colleagues…who would no doubt chor­tle and jest at their expense. So I’ll save you the embar­rass­ment and detail it all here, so that when your small, merry band of arti­sans once again meets over a warm ale to dis­cuss the nuances of tone, per­spec­tive and line weight you will be able to jest and chor­tle with the best of them at some other poor fool who did not read this blog post, hehe.

How this infor­ma­tion orig­i­nally came about, was that my friend Paul Turbett, Over­lord of Black Lab Games and pro­gram­mer Big Daddy (who is also coin­ci­den­tally work­ing on some great games!), decided to ask this mil­lion dol­lar ques­tion. See­ing as I never really had call to reflected on the skill set I use on a daily basis, I decided to answer this query in thought­ful detail. In part to answer the ques­tion and in part to do a stock take of the areas I felt aspir­ing illus­tra­tors and con­cept artists tended to be a lit­tle weak in.

Coin­ci­den­tally, this list is the same frame­work that I now base my teach­ings on at RMIT when instruct­ing the dig­i­tal paint­ing and illus­tra­tion subject.

So with­out fur­ther shenani­gans lets get into it start­ing with Paul’s cat­alytic email… =)

From: Paul Turbett
To: ‘Dar­ren Yeow’
Sub­ject: Art Advice

Hey Daz

How is it all going? I wanted to ask for some advice about art, I’m not sure if I men­tioned it, but I’ve been learn­ing 3D mod­el­ing this year and I’m at a point where I’m pretty con­fi­dent in my abil­ity to model a rea­son­able range of objects and can oper­ate tools regard­ing UV map­ping and what­not. In other words, I’ve got some of the tech­ni­cal art skills under control.

The thing I’m strug­gling with how­ever, is the idea of mak­ing some­thing “look good”. For exam­ple, to bet­ter illus­trate my point, say two peo­ple attempt to draw some­thing, one comes out look­ing awe­some, the other look­ing crap, but both are rec­og­niz­able as the object. Why is that? What makes some­thing look good?

I think what I’m ask­ing about is art the­ory, how­ever I don’t really know where to start research­ing this stuff and I’m not really sure of the ter­mi­nol­ogy, being a pro­gram­mer and all. It’s a case of ‘I don’t know, what I don’t know!’

So, I was won­der­ing if you could give me some point­ers about where to start? Can you rec­om­mend any books, sites or search terms that can help me to under­stand how to make some­thing “look good” in a game art sense?

Thanks!

L8r, Paul

…and now, I am going to pull a “Who Wants to be a Mil­lion­aire!?!” moment and pro­vide my detailed answer tomor­row! Yeah yeah, I can hear all the dis­ap­pointed pooh’s! But that’s how it’s going to be, I promise it will be good though, with links and expla­na­tions and danc­ing polar bears.

And here is the link! http://www.stylus-monkey.com/making-something-look-good-part-2-links-resources/

Rest easy, keep arting! =)

Daz