Frazetta maiden

[Jaycephus]

This is inspired by Frazetta's inks...

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200305/user_image-1052973979pko.jpg

I used the two-layer sketch method. This was a lot of fun.

EDIT
Updated picture with minor improvements.
/EDIT

[Frenchy Pilou]

Hi Jay
Great ink drawing :cool:
Have you used perspective lines ? :)
Why have you cutting the red silk and the sword ? (it' a close up ?)
I don't know what is your link
but here you find all images of Frazetta in
Level of grey :) (http://www.google.fr/images?as_q=frazetta&svnum=10&hl=fr&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&btnG=Recherche+Google&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&imgsz=&as_filetype=&imgc=gray&as_sitesearch=)
Have funny surfing :cool:
Pilou
Ps If you want to see the all (545) go to the last page and press the "Ignored Pages" :)

[gummie]

Great work! :tu:
Super sharp and clean, nice job Jaycephus :)

[WingedOne]

Cool! :tu: Nice pose and line work. I also like the flow of the red cloth.

The title got my attention too, since the Frazettas live right nearby my home town and his kids have a costume store/novelty shop in town. :)

[Jaycephus]

Thanks guys,

Frenchy, I have a few Frazetta art books. The silk is part of her 'attire'. It happens to end at the sword hilt. I thought about stopping before or going past, but I put it off. There are several other issues as well that I would like to improve, so maybe I will 'fix' that tonight. It's meant to be a sketch for a possible ZBrush scene. I did a rough sketch on the first layer, and then I did this one on the second. I also created a third for the red color. Before exporting I hid the first layer, so you only see the final sketch.

Also, the document was 1024 wide by 1536 tall. I sketched the first draft in AA Half mode, so I sketched at the same view as I exported. When I did the final sketch, I sketched (and painted) at multiple levels of zoom from several hundred percent to full to AA Half. I really like the controls in ZB for zooming and panning, and AA Half is great, of course. I just need a bigger monitor!

My only complaint against ZBrush during this sketch is that there is an unbearable pause between the point in time when I set my pen to the tablet, and when ZBrush actually begins drawing pixols on the screen. This appears to be due to the ReplayLast feature, which must purge the previous stroke and start saving the current stroke right at the beginning of each stroke. I wish there was a way to turn ReplayLast off if I don't want it. It is bad enough that it seriously affects the quality of my sketching (or the time it takes, if I take the time to redo each stroke until it is exactly what I want).

[Jaycephus]

By the way, Frenchy,

in the last few days, I think you have accounted for about 50% of all posts on ZBrush Central. It's been dead around here.

[Frenchy Pilou]

Hi Jay
You Probably right, and my Net connection was broken one day and half :D
Another question : What is an AA Format ?
I know A0 A1....A6 but AA ?
I don't search on Google for this time, an human answer is also great :)
Pilou
Ps During the summer and the end of spring the access to the Forum in general is slow down a little !
Pss I have no time paused react with my pen tablet and Zbrush : maybe you have a bad regulating somewhere !

[Jaycephus]

AAHalf is the setting in ZBrush that automatically reduces your Zoom level to 50% and performs an Anti-Aliasing routine on your whole drawing. So that means that since I was working in a 1024 wide x 1536 tall document, in AAHalf mode the document is only 512 wide by 768 tall. This is also the size at which I exported, so that the export received the most effective Anti-Aliasing. I'm sure you knew this, but had just forgotten what it was called, right?


BTW, I like Frazetta's women, but prefer to draw mine a little more lithe, a little less rounded than he does.

[Grub]

Great, Jay. :cool: How long have you been sketching- your 2D skills seem very well-honed. :tu:

[Frenchy Pilou]

Hi Jay
I have known the half effect (for jaggies) of Zbrush but not the name :)
For me AA could be a paper format :D
All is clear now !
A little problem : it's not too hard to draw at double ? Monitor is not extensible !
Pilou

[Jaycephus]

Off and on for all my life. I know I go through phases, but I am also a mix of technical and artist. I think I would love to do concept art/design, which requires great creativity and a diverse background or ability in architecture, life drawing, and mechanical design, but that wasn't as big and accessible when I was in school as it is today with advanced games and movies. I remember seeing the first computer art ever, before I went to college, and wanting to do that, but at that time, computer art was done with custom programs on mainframes or custom workstations with extremely primitive results by today's standards.

So anyway, I've practiced sketching things from before I was a teenager. However, I haven't consistently kept at it, and I've never done any sort of art for a living, though I have sold some, and my relatives/wife love some of the things I've done.

Right now, I think I would love doing concept art for LucasArts or someone like that, but I don't know if they really pay that much. I would have to make about $56-58K to replace my salary and benefits at my current job, and I work in Texas, which is a very cheap place to live in compared to LA or NY. My salary goes a LOT farther here than it would in California. AND I don't really have the total skills to work at that level anyway.

I might try to do some freelance work, though. Some major cover illustrators use Lightwave, Z-Form, and Electric Image, among others, but I think ZBrush, once mastered, would be a far better choice on both time and quality. Even though I have not yet 'mastered' ZBrush, I believe this to be true more than ever, especially in view of the works by artists like Marcel and Boozie. Of course, ZBrush is a 'tool', and to produce at that level still requires talent and knowledge of many facets of art outside of ZBrush.

BTW, I'm picturing the above sketch as part of a larger composition of an 'arena fight' between the woman and a beast or gladiator. I read most all of Edgar Rice Burroughs books at a time when the covers were done by Michael Whelan and others, but Frazetta also grew up reading Burroughs, and ended up doing many of the covers himself. So anyway, the original inspiration for the scene comes from the John Carter of Mars series by Burroughs, not a particular picture by Frazetta or Whelan.

[Jaycephus]

Frenchy, what do you mean "double"?

200% zoom? or double the standard image size?

Either way, even when the image is only partially visible, there is still enough visible to draw what I need to draw. The greatness of sketching like this is that a rough sketch can be done while zoomed out in AAHalf, and on a 21" monitor everything is visible. Then if necessary, detail work can be done on the 'final' layer at 100% zoom or higher. Of course it is still up to me to get the proportions right in the first sketch, or fix it in the second one, and I didn't quite succeed in the picture above. :rolleyes:

[Frenchy Pilou]

Hi Jay
"Double" of the standard size of course :)
If you have a 21' I conceive that's is almost confortable :) but for a great landscape or a big "scene" ?
Pilou

[Jaycephus]

Well, it's comfortable enough that I almost never minimize the left or right tool palettes. Even though I have over 750MB RAM, the memory is really the bottleneck. I 'can' work with large documents, but the RAM becomes an issue long before monitor size does. Of course, I work in AAHalf mostly, so I believe I'm using four times as much RAM for the same size output. (Doubling both height and width of a bitmap or pixol document results in four times the data.)

On the other hand, it would be nice to be able to see a reference photo while sketching. Just last night I had ZBrush on half the screen and IE with a reference photo on the other half of the screen.

[Frenchy Pilou]

Hi Jay
We are not on the same world :)
750 Megas !!! :eek: I have just 32 :)
A very confortable solution for you is to use 2 monitors but I don't believe that Zbrush can support this system ! Maybe I am wrong but I have seen a post on this subject :(
Alas ! (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=006186)
Last info ! (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=010228)Maybe something :)
Pilou

[Grub]

The extra image developments for the arena fight you mentioned sounds a good idea, Jay. Keep us updated. :)

[PusGhetty]

This is fantastic work Jay... It has a great flow and movement... not to mention that your skill is very evident in this!
Cool sources of inspiration as well!
Take care,
Michael

[Jaycephus]

Thanks Grub and Michael...

I've just done some pen sketches on a steno pad during my last two lunch hours that I need to scan and post. They are another view of the Princess of Mars, and the antagonist, a Brain Man, which is a dis-embodied, tentacled brain-creature and a (genetically engineered?) headless host body. (It's amazing that Burroughs thought up all this stuff back then.) I like the steno pad because I can rough sketch with any pen on a page, and then flip over another page and do a more refined sketch on top of the first one. NO erasing required.

Related to my last response to Frenchy, with the two-layer sketch technique that Pixolator has shown us, a better way to work with a reference photo or scanned sketch is to bring it in as a texture, select a 3D Plane and the texture, and set RGB on. With the double layer sketch setup, it is possible to apply the reference photo or scanned sketch to your 'background' layer and then either be able to sketch over the top of it, or refer to it as you sketch. And since it is the Colorizer material, you can fade it out as much as you want. I use a 3DPlane because the only other way to get it in the scene is to do a fill, and unless I pre-process the picture in PS to give it the same dimensions as my ZB doc, it will be stretched/compressed to fit the doc and wil probably be distorted. With the 3DPlane, I can position and scale as I wish. Not only will I be able to use my lunchtime sketches as the base for the final refined sketch in ZBrush, but I can use photos off the web as well without alt-tabbing or setting up ZBrush and IE side-by-side. (I've tested this technique, but I haven't used it yet in any of my ZB sketches.)

Speaking of textures on a 3DPlane, I have a FEATURE REQUEST: A button that when pressed, constrains the scaling of the 3DPlane to the height/width ratio of the currently selected texture. Since placing textures in backgrounds is probably done with 3DPlane more often than Fill, I think this would be pretty useful. For now I have to eyeball the scaling of the 3DPlane to get it close to the original ratio of the texture. Which is OK anyway, since it's usually just a rough sketch that I'm using as a base for a subsequent sketch. (I guess I could do some quick math on the texture size and obtain the number required to plug into the X or Y scale slider on the 3DPlane Initialize palette. I could even add a button that does this for you in the Sketching Script I'm currently thinking about.)

[Jaycephus]

Still working on some concepts. This is not based on anything of Frazetta's that I know of. All mine. Well, the female's hair is very Frazetta...

And no, she is not purposefully based on Nicole Kiddman, though she is very fine... ;)

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200305/user_image-1053079212cyi.jpg

I do believe I see a little Steve McQueen in the man. It just kinda turned out that way. :)

[filament9]

This is so good! Nice action throughout. I'm anticipating the final "inked" version. :)

[rhom]

beautiful work Jay.Impressive figure sketches.

[Pixolator]

Jaycephus: Here is a ZScript which will Fit or Fill the canvas with proportionally scaled texture.

Click here to download the TexureFit ZScript (http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200305/user_file-1053090605gkv.zip)

Hope this helps :)
-Pixolator

[Grub]

Fast delivery on the update, Jay! :cool:
Great sense of action between the combatants. :tu: :tu:

[Jaycephus]

Thanks Pixolator! :)

I probably won't get to try it out until tonight. Last night I figured out how easy it is to place a proportionalized texture. I don't know what you're doing in the ZScript yet, or even if you are using 3DPlane in it.

Here's what I've figured out for placing undistorted textures:

If you have some non-square picture you want to place in the scene without distortion, divide the smallest dimension of the texture by the other dimension. Then multiply the result by 100 to get the number to plug into the 3DPlane Initialize settings. If the texture Height was smaller, set the 3DPlane Vertical Radius to the number obtained above. If the texture Width was smaller, set the 3DPlane Horizontal Radius to the number obtained above. Then when you draw the 3DPlane in the document, it will be proportional to the texture (i.e., the particular texture will have no distortion due to stretching horizontally or vertically).


EDIT: OK, I just checked out the script. It's compiled so I can't swear to it, but it looks like it is doing a calculation similar to the above description. Then it places the 3DPlane in the document, modifying the Transform:Scale:X and Y Components to scale the 3DPlane to be proportional to the texture. It automatically places the 3DPlane in the scene to either fit the shortest dimension of the texture to the document (parts of the texture will extend out of view), or fit the longest dimension of the texture to the document (whole texture will be displayed, but parts of the document background will be visible), depending on which of two buttons you press. In either case the texture is undistorted. You can then go into Transform:Edit mode on the 3DPlane and Move, Scale, or Rotate the texture however you want it.

This is perfect, and I recommend everyone download it and add it to your list of 'utilities'.

[marcel]

:) Hello Jay! fine drawings! and in my opinion, a very good trail:i think really that zbrush is the second software in 3d, first being paper and pencil...frazetta is always inspiring, not especially for the subjects, even if they are very "attractive", but mainly i think by the" obvious joy of draw" if you understand what i mean with approximative words...one teacher maybe you know, at the "root" of Krunkel and Frazetta, is Bridgman; anatomy as a mechanism; i think he is very useful in 3d approach; maybe Frenchy Pilou, who seems to have all the possible links, find him ;) i remember that he was published in dover books... Friendly M.

[marcel]

:confused:i've forgotten, dont'know why frenchy pilou talk about two monotors, but i work thazt way and it works without problem with zbrush...

[Jaycephus]

Marcel, Thank you, and I know exactly what you are saying about drawing or sketching. I actually don't even own a book on anatomy. A quick search shows that one of Bridgman's most highly acclaimed books is Constructive Anatomy, and it is only 5$, used. I'm going to order it today.

[Frenchy Pilou]

Hello Marcel
Great to know that dual Monitors works fine !
On my advice the best in anatomy drawing is the american Burne Hogarth (http://images.google.fr/images?hl=fr&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=burne+hogarth&btnG=Recherche+Google)
Are you sure of the Krunken and Bridgman orthographe ? :)
pilou

[marcel]

yes, that's that: constructive anatomy is a very good book, you see , the body being drawed as "boxs", it's very useful; if you draw like that without any anatomy book, go on, jay, you're on the good side! frenchy, ther is a link (not web, general meaning) between zdenek burian, thcheque, illustrator of the trex and so on at the beginning of the century, roy krenkel as a friend and "rubing shouldeers" of frazetta, and fraz...krenkel loved burian, all that goes in frazetta, with it's own talent o course... friendly M.

[marcel]

oh and in my opinion, hogarth is too much linked to trarzan, it's own work, and tried to much to be in "fine art", leaving the ground of popular art... to be an efficient teacher; i've his books, but bridgman is far more useful!

[Frenchy Pilou]

Georges B bridgman (http://www.fineart.sk/books.htm) on the most crazzy site of Anatomy drawing !
Zdenek Burian (http://www.j-verne.de/verne_burian.html) illustrating Jules Vernes !
Burian Illustrated Biography (http://www.bpib.com/illustrat/burian.htm)
Burian THE GALLERY !!!Absolutly Fabulous !Many hundred images !!!! (http://petr-hejna.cz/burian1.htm)
Thx Marcel for talk of all these artist :cool:

Roy G Krenkel Illustrated Biography (http://www.bpib.com/illustra2/krenkel.htm)
krenkel again (http://www.intercom.publinet.it/Krenkel.htm)
have good surfing !
Pilou

[Jaycephus]

Swordsman:

mostly a rough sketch...

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200305/user_image-1053223555ijq.jpg

[adamac]

how are you inking in zbrush? do you adjust the depth? i cant even figure out how to erase nicely. i haven't really messed around with the painting part for a while except for the single layer every once in a while to get a " thick and lumpy " sketch where the paint balls up if you go over a line twice or more :) good clean inking job :tu:thats rough with your computer, the main headache i get with my computer is because im supposed to be wearing thick glasses and i dont so i'll be dead in a year from brain radiation probably... i'm going to check up on that :)

[Jaycephus]

Adam,

check out this thread (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=010952&p=).

I use the 'white sketch document' from that thread. You can do a rough sketch on the first layer, and then refine it or paint it on the second layer. It is also possible to continue adding layers for different versions or for iterative refinement.

[adamac]

thanks jay, that was a cool thread :)

[Jaycephus]

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200305/user_image-1053413171esy.jpg