cg chosen | characters magazine no.3

CG CHOSEN | characters

MAKING of’sWrestler by Eduardo Martin JulveThree Lines by Henning LudvigsenNight Rider by Hyun-hee LeeRevised Holy Warrior by Glen Angus

Chosen ArtistsOlivier Ponsonnet

Marta DahligGlen Angus

Henning Ludvigsen Soa Lee

issues 3 | June 2007

GALLERY of most impressive artworksEduardo Martin Julve, Florian Delarque, Piotr Fox Wysocki, Suresh kumar, Jack Zhang, Hyun Hee Lee, Marcin Klicki, Silvia Fusetti, Nikolay Yeliseyev, David Munoz, Velazquez,

FEATURED IN THIS ISSUE

CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

INTERVIEWSwith digital artists

Soa LeeMarta Dahlig

Please note that the magazine completely free and can not be sold All content belong to their

respective authors and owners.

� page CG Chosen magazine | June �007

CONTENTMAKING of’sWrestler by Eduardo Martin JulveThree Lines by Henning LudvigsenNight Rider by Hyun-hee LeeRevised Holy Warrior by Glen Angus

Chosen ArtistsOlivier PonsonnetMarta DahligHenning LudvigsenSoa LeeGlen Angus

GALLERY of most impressive artworksEduardo Martin Julve, Florian Delarque, Piotr Fox Wysocki, Suresh kumar, Jack Zhang, Hyun Hee Lee, Marcin Klicki, Silvia Fusetti, Nikolay Yeliseyev, David Munoz, Velazquez, Marcos Aurelio, Dean Holden

INTERVIEWS with digital artistsSoa LeeMarta Dahlig

issues 3 | June 2007

page 53page 57

page 47 page 42

page 35page 32

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3DExport is professional online shop on sale ready to use 3D models. You can buy high quality model or start to sell own models and to earn money!

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www.reiv.fr [email protected]

Chosen Character Artist


Olivier Ponsonnet“I don’t study CG or even arts. I’m totally self-taught. I’ve learned everything in books and on the net. I always work freely, without methods or deadlines. I try several methods until I get something interesting. It’s not uncommon to stumble on something completely different from my initial idea. I try to create pictures with personality and style. I attempt to produce pictures that make people feel something, like a mood or a feeling. I also search for aes-theticism and beauty through all the female portraits that I create. Beauty is really fascinat-ing, because it’s really fragile: a little something can make your character beautiful. That’s what I try to inject into my images. I work with 3ds Max for modeling, shading, lighting and rendering. For post-production and painting maps, I use Photoshop with a graphic tablet.”

Artists


charactersCG CHOSEN Olivier Ponsonnet

Fey

Artists



Moon Key

Fear Artists

7 page CG Chosen magazine | June �007


Artists



Red Opium

Artists



Necromanser


charactersCG CHOSEN Marta Dahlig Artists

Chosen Character ArtistMartaDahlig

Art has been the biggest passion of my life since the very beginning. My parents told me, I was drawing before even learning how to walk.For many years painting has been something I did off-time; my studies have never been art related - I am purely self-taught. Nowadays, I find myself being sucked into the art world more and more and I am now sure that that is what I want to be doing in the future... I simply cannot imagine my life without it.

www.marta-dahlig.com [email protected]

His Only Friend



Pandora

1� page CG Chosen magazine | June �007


Angel’s Egg

commissioned by ImagineFX magazine13 page CG Chosen magazine | June �007


Locked

commissioned by ImagineFX magazine1� page CG Chosen magazine | June �007


Doves



www.henningludvigsen.com | [email protected]



Henning Ludvigsen

The Last Incarnation ArtistsHenning Ludvigsen


Raised By Bats ArtistsHenning Ludvigsen


Three Lines ArtistsHenning Ludvigsen


Wall ArtistsHenning Ludvigsen

�0 page CG Chosen magazine | June �007



Soa Leewww.soanala.com [email protected]

Grace Of Snow Artists

�� page CG Chosen magazine | June �007

Soa Lee

Rebith of Elene Artists


Soa Lee

Taurus Artists


Soa Lee

Virgo Story Artists


Soa Lee

Chosen Character ArtistGlen Anguswww.gangus.net | [email protected]


Artists


Glen AngusRoman Charge

Artists


Glen AngusVictory Gal

Artists


Glen AngusVictorry Gal “Split Fire“

Artists


Glen AngusRevised Holy Warrior

2Textured - High Resolution Textures for digital artists | Huge collection of textures blueprints, photo refer-ences, human anatomy. All for 3D Artist Wants. Updated weekly!

Check it: http://www.2textured.com

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www.theposmaker.com [email protected]

Making Of


charactersCG CHOSEN

Wrestling Fighterby Eduardo Martin Julve

Eduardo Martin has been working in the Cg in-dustry for more than 10 years. During this time he has been involved in all kind of CG projects, from tv animated series or videogames to VFX for tv commercials.

In 2000 he co-founded the animation studio Pixel in motion which he leaded for almost 5 years. He currently works as freelance 3D artist for tv com-mercials.

Making OfWrestling Fighterby Eduardo Martin Julvecharacters

CG CHOSEN


ConceptI have always been fascinated by those amazing mexican figthers so I decided to create a 3D charicature of one of them. The image represents a photographic sesion of one of the fighters, may be to get some pic-tures for a magazine interview.

I gathered some images from internet to get some ideas about the costumes of the real fighters and I used that information to dress up the character. (Image to the right)

I started with a quick and simple rough sketch. Unfortunatelly Iґm not very skilled with the 2D stuff so I was deciding the look of the character as I was working on it in 3D.

Modeling & TexturingI modeled and textured the character in the standard “Da Vinci” position. Working that way it was easier the modeling, mirror-ing of the geometry and the creation of the UV maps. Once finished I did a quick rigg that allowed me to put him in the current pose. I wasnґt extremely worried about a perfect skinning because I was going to fix the bad deformation issues by hand once in the pose.

I used mental ray fast subsurface materials for the skin and standard maya shaders with specular maps for the costume.

Lightning SetupThe lighting setup was also quite simple. There was an area light as key light from the top with a very narrow cone and with a lin-ear decay to focus the center of interest on his face.

I added a front fill light for the face with a small value and a back light to add a little rim to the left side of the body to separate the character from the dark background. I also created a plane with a white surface shader that will add some reflexions and some diffuse lighting once I switched on the final gather.

Finally I modeled a simple background, rep-resenting the empty gym where the char-acter usually trains.

BackgroundI added in photoshop the frame represent-ing a picture taken by a high format camera and tweaked a little the image levels.

As you can see you donґt need very fancy tools/rendering engines/super pro tricks for creating an appealing image so I hope this small making of will encourage other people to create nice renderings ;)

Thank you very much for reading!

Final Retouch

Making OfWrestling Fighterby Eduardo Martin Julve


charactersCG CHOSEN

[email protected]

charactersMaking OfCG CHOSEN


Three Lines by Henning LudvigsenHenning Ludvigsen is a Norwegian digital artist with basic traditional art education and with over 13 years of experience in digital art, design, and illustration. He is currently working as the Art Director at a computer game development company in Greece, and is work-ing on personal and external projects during his spare time.

He is an awarded artist, with features in several books from Ballistic Publishing, is featured on dozens of websites, and to be found as columnist in the sci-fi and fantasy Magazine, Imag-ineFX from Future Publishing. He is also running Pixelbrush, a small digital art-commu-nity.

Line ArtI’ve always been fascinated by realism, and because of this it is really important to me that the base line-art sketch has got proper proportions. I usually use the old trick by put-ting a grid on top of a reference photo I’ve shot, and then I copy the same grid onto a blank canvas and start drawing grid by grid from what I see on the reference photo. I make sure to keep the grid on a separate layer so that I easily can remove the grid at a later stage, and also keep the drawing on a separate layer underneath the grid. Still, if you are focusing on mastering human anat-omy, this is not the way to go as this is simply more of a way to save some time and mak-ing sure you get a result that is pretty close to your reference photography.

Making Ofcharacters

CG CHOSEN Three Linesby Henning Ludvigsen


Brush UsagePersonally I really like using hard edged brushes as they resemble the traditional brushes in both the way of working and when it comes to the result. On this exam-ple, the sample to the left is a basic soft brush, the one in the middle is a hard edged brush, and the one to the right is a textured pencil brush.

For this painting, I exclusively used a hard edged brush (the sample in the middle).To make a simple hard edged brush in Pho-toshop, simply follow these settings:

1: Make sure you have the brush tool se-lected, and choose a hard edge brush (the ones that looks like a hard circle.

2: Now open the “brushes tab” (Windows/brushes). Click the “Brush tip shape” button and drag the “spacing” slider to 10%. If this is set too high, the stroke looks like a row of balls instead of one single stroke, so keeping the spacing narrow makes the strokes look nice and smooth.

Blocking In, GrayScale ShadingOnce I have the line art version ready, I de-lete the layer with the grid, and then I make another layer behind the line art drawing which I fill with a grey value using a hard brush. Once this is done, I collapse those two layers so that I have the character out-line with a solid base on a separate layer.

Now I start adding shape to the charac-ter by shading with grey scale tones only by looking closely at the reference photo. I make sure to have the “lock transparent pixels” option on the layers palette enabled, as this makes sure I don’t paint outside the character.

The reason why I start off in grey scale tones is because I prefer getting the shape up and running before having to even think about colours. Some like it the other way around and start out with colours. However, you should do what comes natural to you, and if you don’t know yet, why not give both techniques a try?

As I go along using the new hard edged brush, I simply go over the entire character keeping the flow of the brush low (2-15%). I colour pick (get the eyedropper tool tem-

porarily by pressing “Alt” while using the paint brush) directly where I’m painting for mixing new values directly to get smooth transitions. For example, if I have a dark grey-scale tone, and then a brighter one next to this, I will colour pick one of these tones and mix it with the other, and then colour pick the new tone and paint with this one and continue like this until I have a smooth transi-tion. This makes the painting look a lot more interesting and dynamic than using the smooth air-brush looking brushes.

Making Ofcharacters



Rough ColoursHaving the grey-scale version of the char-acter in a decent state, I spend some time to find a colour-palette suitable for the skin tones I would like this piece to have. Some times I base this on previous paintings I’ve done, other times I create completely new ones. This time I wanted to use cold colours, close to porcelain values, so I made a pal-ette with skin tones with quite a bit of blue and purple in it.

Now I turn on the “Lock transparent pixels” button on the “layers” menu so that I don’t paint outside the edges of the character, and set the brush to “color” mode and start adding rough colours to the character. This is just to get a base, and will be changed completely once I start shading for real.

Making Ofcharacters



Rendering ColoursOnce the rough colourized version is ready, I change the brush mode back to “normal” and start shading the entire piece all over again, using the same hard edged brush with low flow. When doing this, it’s really im-portant to colour-pick where I am painting as I go along.

Instead of mixing colours on the side, I like mixing directly as I paint, and I also intro-duce vague values of all kinds of colours all over where I’m working. I think this makes the result appear more dynamic and more interesting as you get all kinds of colour-variations. It also creates some imperfec-tion which is good in my opinion, especially when working digitally.

Making Ofcharacters



More Details,Background

After spending quite some time shading skin tones, fabrics folds, texture work and hair, the time has come to add a background and extra elements.

Finishing ThePieceOnce almost done, I go over the entire piece checking details and that ambient colours are right.

After trying a couple of more crazy alterna-tives, going for a simple approach is usu-ally what is best, so I figured that I wanted to keep the background simple. The dark shadow in the top left is aiding the impres-sion that she is partially standing in the shadow, and by breaking up the shadow with the three extruded lines in the wall, this added a little bit of depth to something is a basic, flat wall.

Making Ofcharacters



More Details,BackgroundThe last thing I do is to add a noise grain on top of everything. This to make the piece look less computer painted, and to add some imperfection to the values. If you look closely at a digital photo, you will see that there are not real clean values, each sur-face usually has got some grain to it.

4: Now add a noise to this layer (Filter/Noise/Add noise), and set it to 400%, Gaussian.

5: Run filter: “Filter/Brush strokes/Spatter” a couple of times to break up the noise pat-terns.

6: Run filter: “Filter/Blur/Blur”.

7: Set the layer “Opacity” to 5-10%, depend-ing on what looks best.

I follow these steps when making a noise grain:

1: Make a new layer on top of everything.

2: Fill this layer with this value of grey: R=128, G=128, B=128

3: Set the layer blending option from “Nor-mal” to “Overlay”. This will make the layer with the grey scale fill appear 100% trans-parent.

Making Ofcharacters



www.digieyes3d.com [email protected]



Night Riderby Hyun-hee Lee

Making Ofcharacters

CG CHOSEN Night Riderby Hyun-hee Lee


ConceptI worked on design concept little by little for a long time.

2D concept could have been little boring but it was a good challenging.

The suit Woman to wear was a big question for me. Even Material was a hard task. Original white suits was on a Website. But I was thinking of a new-material look.

I didn’t put other designs on the back-ground to make the character stand out. I guess it is design process. I think this kind of riders can be easily found, thus it troubled me a lot.

This image is an extension of Rider series that I worked before. At the time I worked on it I was only a modeler so it hadn’t been easy to come up with a good idea. I studied vari-ous pictures of live models to make up face shape and the hair style.

ModelingI was thinking of using ZBRUSH for face mod-eling. But I used MUD BOX instead.

It is good to have a Camera View like MAYA. Getting shape of a face is easy in MAYA. MAYA also has soft modifi-cation tool, but MUD BOX helped me to add more of expressions, like play-ing with clay.

Other parts, I modeled with MAYA. I wasn’t so familiar with other tools yet.

Making Ofcharacters



Face Material

1 Bump test 2 Specular test 3 Skin test

Hair

1 Mask 2 Full test

As for hair, I was thinking of Shave and Haircut, but it seemed they won’t match to the hair style and my con-cept.

That brought me back to the starting point.

Costume Tests

Making Ofcharacters



MappingI used BODY PAINTER for mapping tasks. It has lots of functions which are similar to that PHOTOSHOP has. Especially using PSD file is very convenient.

But PC spec should be good enough. I had some crash downs with my PC during the process.

1 Painting Directly on the body

2 Material Structure

Material Rollout 3

Making Ofcharacters



DOF

COmpositing

I present here Dof PRO setings I used to add depth to my picture (to the right). It may be useful for you.

Lastly, compositing. I separated layers and rendered, and composited in PHOTOSHOP. To out-focus Luminance Depth image, I used a PHOTOSHOP filter called DOF PRO.

I am satisfied with the result. It has a feeling

Rendering

I used MENTAL RAY to render the char-acter and environment. I think MAYA 8.5’s MENTAL RAY had been improved a lot with rendering. It felt so much fast-er than before, which helped me to do lots of tests.

similar to Camera. Once again, I realized that, in 3D Illustration, Program Test is as im-portant as concept or idea sketch.

The End

www.gangus.net gangus76@hotmail



Revised Holy WarriorCurrently I am a Senior Artist at Raven Software (since 2002) working on Prev Gen and Next Gen console games focusing on character and level textur-ing, promotional and load screen paintings, as well as concept art. I have shipped all of the X men Legends fran-chise action RPG’s, and have just finished Marvel Ultimate Al-liance this Nov., I am currently underway with the team at Raven working on a new title, which has yet to be announced. I now spend my free time undertaking personal proj-ects such as ‘Filling Valhalla” and ‘Victory Gals’ to expand my technique and stay current and competitive in the digital art community.

by Glen Angus

This is a commissioned piece made for a client who wanted to portray a holy war-rior in the ancient armor to face the evils of today.

My main goal was to produce something that have elements of the past and the present and tie them together to give the entire painting an ancient and an archaic mood. I mainly used Photoshop because I’ve founded that I have more control with this software. I followed my classic style that starts with a brown sepia toned tight pen-cil. Then I scanned finished paper work and slowly applied lighting and tonal values and then began glazing colors in “Overlay” and “Color” layers.

The character anatomy was started as a quick gestural sketch. I made sev-eral of these staying extremely loose in line value. I was blocking in basic shapes keeping the armor and the weapon in mind and trying to strike a good balance of the character in his pose and a sense of equally distribut-ed weight. This way the character got looking stronger and more grounded - less awkward or off-balance.

From there I started to tighten up the drawing – working with a darker sepia toned pencil and putting in the details and working out the mechanics of the armor. I don’t take my quick sketch-es farther than that if the anatomy doesn’t “feel” right. This stage usu-ally ends up with the proper anatomy. This might not be an exact process, but is something that I have found a decent amount of success with.

Introduction

Line Art



Revisid Holy Warriorby Glen Angus

I had chosen this almost papyrus back-drop to work from because it suited best of all to the client’s archival sub-ject matter. The natural brownish tone was perfect as I usually like to start working from a neutral brown to begin adding my glazing of colors after.

Lights and Shadows




I like to block in my backdrops keeping in mind the basic sense of character lighting that I have worked out previously. From there I played on metallic reflections to help immersing my subject into the scene.

Colors AndReflections




LightningI made some minor changes to the lighting, because ultimately I wanted the picture to be “readable” easily from a distance. I wanted it to have a strong silhouette value because it was planned as the cover of a book which I want to have some shelf presence feeling. Sometimes you have to bend the rules a bit to make everything come out right.




P.s. The angels in the sky are just there because they are cool. Always inspired by those brief but amazing shots of angels silhouetted behind the clouds from that old low budget thriller “Prophecy”

Because of subject matter requests I want-ed to break the backdrop up with a horizon. And what could be better than a vague city panorama? As the warrior had to be a holy fighter I decided to add some light beams coming through the clouds to add to his presence, as well as to lead the viewer’s eye to the main character in the painting. The superimposed ancient text is there to add a visual balance to the composition.Overall I hope it has come together to be a moving piece of art that has a slightly differ-ent feeling then all the other fantasy paint-ings in style and execution.

FinalComposition




charactersInterviewCG CHOSEN


I am a CG illustrator residing in Korea. I have held an art director position for game designs and animation 3D Illustration projects retained by companies such as ELSA, LG, Actoz. Currently, I am working as a freelancer who are willing to retain projects that shares interests and vi-sions with mine.

Soa LeeInterview with

www.soanala.com [email protected]



Soa Leewith

What education do you have?

Ever since I was a kid, I always loved danc-ing and music. Even without a formal train-ing, I had dreams of becoming a ballerina or a music composer. Although I had dem-onstrated talents in art drawings, I preferred dancing and music.

As more school works required me to be-come tied up at a desk, I started developed interest in drawing. I started to do sketches of the images of the favourite entertainers and my friends started to love my drawings. Ever since then, I started to become an aspiring artist notwithstanding a limited art classes to prepare for art college entrance process. I started to receive more in-depth training after I got into the Hongik Art Col-lege as a Western Art major. Even though I started to regret why I chose western art over design major, the required courses surely enabled me to acquire broad range of skills sets and understanding to become a well rounded artist. As time passed by, I re-alized what I learned during the art college days definitely come in handy.

Where did you learn CG?

I was first exposed to CG when I enrolled a for a CG classes to learn about computers. However, I studied on my own to develop professional knowledge and skill sets.

Did you try painting in 2D? Why do you prefer 3D?

I was not in love with 3D as a tool be-cause of its artificial looking nature. How-ever, I couldn’t give up on 3D because of its versatility to be used in animation productions. I always remind myself the benefits of 3D to create moving models. I feel that 3D characters are alive. Like a doll, characters await me to brush their hair and make them move. They are al-ways ready to pose differently, make dif-ferent facial expressions or change their hair style. In 3D, the more jobs you do, the more data you have, which broad-ens the possibilities. That’s the biggest at-traction to me. Of course being able to easily copy is a very useful too.

Do you have any favorite art-ists whose creative level you tried to attain while starting in CG?

I developed an interest in CG when I saw an animation named Akira by Det-suka Osamu. I was impressed by the de-tailed expressions and the movements even though they were created long time ago. Thereafter, I fell in love with the genre of animation as I was exposed to more animations. I started to develop interest in CG around this time because I heard that I could created my own ani-mation by myself using CG techniques. Thus, I would venture to say my CG ca-reer was inspired by Japanimations such as Akira or Gong Gak Raiders.



Soa Leewith

The first 3D program I learned was 3DS Max. I learned Maya when I was working at an animation company and similar interface and usage of 3DS Max appealed to me. Recent advent of great renderers such as V-ray, Mental Ray and Brasil and the heavy reliance of Korean CG industry over Max make me reluctant to give up on them.

What are your main techniques of modeling characters? What do you think is the most compli-cated in modeling characters?

Most of my characters are focused on “beauty.” Traditional techniques using Nurbs methods allowed me to create female character with beau-tiful face and great skins. However, wider range of projects require me to resort to sculpting programs. Ability to use brush with tools such as Mud-box or Zbrush enables me to be more technical and versatile. Thus, I try to apply sculpting modeling techniques to wider range of projects.

Where do you get ideas for your amazing 3D artworks?

My ideas begin with what I want to see or do. Staying with this allows me to retain the passion and concentra-tion required to complete arduous projects. Ideal project environment become available when my expec-tations are shared by the clients. I try to do some sketches of the first impres-sions from the theme presented by the clients. Thereafter, I build database and idea from the compiled ideas or web searches. Sometimes, I get ideas from unexpected sources. Some great ideas and images pop up while I am watching TV, reading books and listening to music and I compile the sketches and notes. These become a great treasure when I am searching for ideas.

Are you spending much time creating new artworks in your free time?

I consider all my time as free time be-

Now the advancement of 3D tools and my technical expertise allowed me to 3D im-ages that I find myself satisfied with.

2D painting techniques are more versatile and intuitive when you are performing ini-tial concept stage. I must accompany 2D sketch work as the advanced 3D skills re-quire more creativity. 2D is also very useful when you are presenting the concepts and ideas of the projects to the clients.

What software are you using and why?

Now the advancement of 3D tools and my technical expertise allowed me to 3D images that I find myself satisfied with.

2D painting techniques are more versa-tile and intuitive when you are perform-ing initial concept stage. I must accom-pany 2D sketch work as the advanced 3D skills require more creativity. 2D is also very useful when you are present-ing the concepts and ideas of the proj-ects to the clients.


The first 3D program I learned was 3DS Max. I learned Maya when I was work-ing at an animation company and simi-lar interface and usage of 3DS Max ap-pealed to me. Recent advent of great renderers such as V-ray, Mental Ray and Brasil and the heavy reliance of Korean CG industry over Max make me reluc-tant to give up on them.

What are your main techniques of modeling characters? What do you think is the most complicated in modeling characters?

Most of my characters are focused on “beauty.” Traditional techniques using Nurbs methods allowed me to create female character with beautiful face and great skins. However, wider range of projects require me to resort to sculpt-ing programs. Ability to use brush with tools such as.



Soa Leewith

cause I plan and direct all my projects on my own. Fortunately, I have been working on the projects that I loved so far. Projects

I want the character to display how I understand her emotion and thoughts as well as her body. Female is my main subject not because I feel more com-fortable with it over the male subject. It is because the female subject interests me the most, more than any other sub-jects. For now, that is.

Your female characters are quite attractive. Are you base your char-acters on real people?

My characters are proportionally scaled to the real images, thus, I refer the pictures of actual people as well. However, aspects of CG that enhance the features of the character allow me to develop my own characters.

Basically you have only two pub-lished male character – Ramses and Aquarius. Why they?

Two lads of the Gemini were also male, haha. Those two male charactered created for the following reasons: Ramses was created for Egyptian ex-hibit in Korea Aquarius was created to continue on the 12 constellation proj-ects. They were both difficult for me to create because they are male char-acters, however, they were interest-ing because they both were beautiful

continued and sometimes coincided with one another to make my schedules rather tight. However, I always strive to reserve time for my family. This allows me to gratifi-cation from completing the projects.

Why do you prefer creating female characters?

I guess the way I look at woman can be a little different from how male artists do. When an artist draws a woman, it’s usu-ally ‘a woman you want to see’. I do too, but the difference is that I add ‘a woman who represents me’. It gives me catharsis. The female character has my Utopia. Also,

male characters. If I lose interest in beau-tiful objects, my images will change. I just don’t know when that will be.

Tell us about your recent Grace of the snow artwork.

At the end of the winter, Grace-Queen of snowdrop tries to sow gold color seeds.Its spring goddess inspires life to these seeds and creates new sprouts andshe will fall in deep sleep until the winter comes again...

Since early times I’d like to make image that have feelings of faerie and gorgeous like the ad of Christian Dior; The Face get inspiration from Milla Jovovich. During

www.marta-dahlig.com | [email protected]

charactersCG CHOSEN


Interview with Marta Dahlig

Marta Dahligwithcharacters

InterviewCG CHOSEN


chances I get, I am greatly stressing the ne-cessity of focusing on this aspect.


I am working in Procreate Painter 7, Corel Painter X and Adobe Photoshop simultane-ously.

While I use Painter 7 out of sentiment (it was my first more “professional” digital painting program) and love it for its simplicity, I use Painter X every time I want to render natural brush textures.

Photoshop is my favorite, however, thanks to its custom brush creation quality, double window view and stability of use.

Do you have some special paint-ing techniques?

Well, every artist has their own way of paint-ing, I suppose. What works for me, howev-er, might not work for anyone else on this planet. :)

During my adventure with digital art, I have of course learned some tricks on the way. Those are mainly concerning the function-ality of programs I work in, layer and brush modes, easier/faster ways of achieving cer-tain effects and so on.

I have been sharing some of these for a while now, in my tutorials done for Future Publishing’s ImagineFX.

balancing tools and so on.

To me, one of the biggest advantages of digital art is the possibility of creating one’s own brushes in programs like Adobe Pho-toshop. Such custom brushes can greatly speed up the workflow and dramatically improve any painting.

Where did you learn CG?

I am fully self-taught. Aside from an art his-tory theoretical class in high school, I never intended any art courses nor really followed any tutorials. In my early CG days I basically spent a lot of time analyzing the paintings I admired and experimenting until I was able to achieve similar results.

What was the hardest stage on our learning way?

Definitely the very beginning, when I learned how to choose original skin tones for my

characters. I spent a few years learning to actually be able to paint skin with colours other than the beige, “fleshy” ones. It took a lot of studying, experimenting (and failing) to finally be able to render a normal looking skin with blue or green shades. The truth is that, for realistic paint-ing, the knowledge of anatomy isn’t even nearly enough itself – it definitely needs to be strength-ened by a thorough knowledge of colouring. That is why, on all

Tell us about yourself please?

I was born in Poland on a cold, winter night of December 23rd, 1985 :) It was clear from the very beginning, that art was the big-gest passion of my life, as I started using crayons before I even learned how to walk. Actually, I was the ultimate weapon of de-struction – I painted on everything I could, including walls and carpets. I am currently studying Marketing at the University of War-saw in hopes of combining the knowledge gathered with my passions in the role of an Art Director.

Why do you prefer Computer painting instead of regular?

Despite its various advantages, traditional art, in my opinion, doesn’t offer as many possibilities as the digital media. Aside from the all-powerful ctrl+z option, artists are en-couraged to experiment thanks to the pos-sibility of saving files, various filters, colour

commissioned by ImagineFX magazine

Marta Dahligwith




Satin fabric is perfect on all your artworks? What is the key to suc-cessful painting cloth made of such material?

Thank you! Well, let me tell you something that concerns painting any type of textile:

If you want the textiles in your paintings be told apart, the most crucial

thing to understand is the structure of

a painted fab-ric. It affects not only the way the drap-ing and folds

look, but also the way it reacts

to light!

Try to gather

up versity work with freelance assignments, most of my free time, aside from spending it with family and my boyfriend, is devoted to painting. I love my free evenings, when I can just sit down at the computer with some chocolate and a cup of steaming vanilla tea, open up a program and paint till the morning comes.

Tell us also about your recent Locked artwork. What is this woman thinking of?

Locked was a piece done for a Classical Stylization Workshop for ImagineFX. Howev-er, it was also a try at merging the classical style of W. Bouguereau with a more surreal twist.The whole meaning of the painting, to me, is searching for happiness in life, here repre-sented by opening a locked heart: Do you

some fabric samples (silk, taffeta, satin, lace, velvet, linen, chiffon etc) and try to analyze the differences.Check, how taffeta bounces off dozens of colours, how under the same light source silk’s highlights are much more “condensed” and lighter, the transitions between shadows and highlights sharp-er than in velvet, which’s highlights seem to seemingly merge with midtones and shadows. Drape the materials around chairs to get some reference on how the folds look - are they thick and stiff? Or are they barely formed?

Painting textiles is not extremely hard to do, once you gather a good reference base, do some careful analysis and pa-tiently recreate the effects over and over again.

Where do you get ideas for your outstanding characters?

I cannot even name all of the sources I draw my inspiration from. :) It can be music, moods, advertisements, movies and so on. Most often, however, I am simply inspired by a single colour – most of the time my ideas are born and formed around a shade I love.

Where do you work now? What is your position there?

I am a freelance illustrator, currently being a regular contributor to Future Publishing’s ImagineFX magazine. If you check the latest issues, you can find many tutorials of my authorship, includ-ing some anatomy, colouring and styl-ization tips. I truly could never ask for a better, more fulfilling job - it combines all of things I love doing: painting, writing and teaching.

Are you spending much time creating new artworks in your

free time?

Even though it’s some-times quite hard to

coordinate my Uni-


Marta Dahligwith

image commissioned by ImagineFX magazine




see the keyhole under her breast? There are keys lying all around her, being obvi-ously thrown away, as they did not fit. She is however, holding the last of the keys in her hand. Has she tried to put it in the key-hole yet? If so, is she happy because it fit, or is her smile a sad one, as she finally lost all hope for finding happiness? Or maybe she is yet to try opening the lock, anxious of the result?I leave the final interpretation up to you. :)

What was the hardest case dur-ing your creative career? What was the most inspiring case?

The first years with CG were definitely the hardest. I was stressed over all things I had to learn and improve (well, I still am...), con-stantly battling with colouring, texturing and anatomy, but most of all I was just con-cerned with finding my own recognizable style.

The breakthrough came in late December 2004, when I started my Seven Deadly Sins series. It was then, when I finally found some-thing that I could call “my style”, when I fi-nally found the right inspiration and ideas to combine pure aesthetics with art nouveau designs and deeper symbolism. It was also a huge career milestone and the beginning of my more professional journey in the digi-tal art world – I have been surprised a totally overwhelming feedback on the series (and still do), both from my friends and business contacts. It was then, when I started receiv-ing my first more professional work proposi-tions.

Your advertise herecontact: [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

image “Red Rider“ by Hyun-hee Lee | [email protected]�� page CG Chosen magazine | June �007

GALLERY Chosen 3D Character Artworks

Eduardo Martin JulveValle Paraiso Kids

http://www.theposmaker.com | [email protected]

Gallery



Eduardo Martin JulveHada

http://www.theposmaker.com | [email protected]

Gallery

http://chokmah.cgsociety.org | [email protected]


Florian DelarqueBinah Gallery

http://www.digieyes3d.com | [email protected]


Hyun-hee LeeNight Rider Gallery

http://www.digieyes3d.com | [email protected]


Hyun-hee LeeRed Rider 2nd Generation Gallery

http://jackzhang.cgsociety.org | [email protected]


Jack ZhangFlower Messanger Gallery

http://jackzhang.cgsociety.org | [email protected]


Jack ZhangLittle Runaway Princess Gallery

www.klicek3d.com | [email protected]


Marcin KlickiJimmi Hendrix - Guitar Legend Gallery

http://fox.cgsociety.org | [email protected]


Piotr Fox WysockiArtist Himself Gallery

[email protected]


Suresh KumarAnger Management Gallery

[email protected]


Suresh KumarJailer Gallery

image “Poporu” by Dean Holden | [email protected]� page CG Chosen magazine | June �007

Chosen 2D Chter Artworks

GALLERY

www.aivlis-home.com | [email protected]


Silvia FusettiGod’s Mastiffs Gallery

www.aivlis-home.com | [email protected]


Silvia FusettiBarbarian Warrior Gallery

http://www.munozvelazquez.com | [email protected]


David Munoz VelazquezPly-Spell Gallery



Dean HoldenThe spirit of blessing Gallery



Dean HoldenUramax Gallery

www.estudiomanga.com.br | [email protected]


Marcos AurelioEd, Eddie, Edward Gallery

www.estudiomanga.com.br | [email protected]


Marcos AurelioEinstein Gallery

[email protected] | www.tascha.ch


Natascha RoeoesliSummer Gallery

[email protected] | www.tascha.ch


GalleryNatascha RoeoesliCan’t Stand the Light

www.yeliseyev.ru | [email protected]


Nikolay YeliseyevInvisible Gallery

For supporting our magazine by Your outstanding artworks:

David Munoz Velazquezmunozvelazquez.com

[email protected]

Dean Holdenholdeen.com

[email protected]

Florian Delarquechokmah.cgsociety.org

[email protected]

Jack Zhangjackzhang.cgsociety.org

[email protected]

Marcin [email protected]

Marcos Aurelioestudiomanga.com.br

[email protected]

Natascha Roeoesli tascha.ch

[email protected]

Nikolay Yeliseyevyeliseyev.ru

[email protected]

Olivier Ponsonnet reiv.fr

[email protected]

Piotr Fox Wysockifox.cgsociety.org

[email protected]

Silvia Fusettiaivlis-home.com

[email protected] Suresh kumar

[email protected]

For providing exclusive materials and patience during our collaboration. This issue exsists because of your kind support:

Eduardo Martin Julvetheposmaker.com

[email protected]

Glen Angusgangus.net

[email protected]

Henning Ludvigsenhenningludvigsen.com

[email protected]

Hyun Hee Leedigieyes3d.com

[email protected]

Marta Dahligmarta-dahlig.com

[email protected]

Soa Leesoanala.com

[email protected]

Sincerely yours,Gleb Kobzar (SpWaR)Sergey Guziy (Stryker)

Thank You Special Thanks!

charactersCG CHOSEN


http://www.munozvelazquez.com

http://www.munozvelazquez.com

http://jackzhang.cgsociety.org



http://www.estudiomanga.com.br

mailto:estudiomanga.com.br

mailto:estudiomanga.com.br

http://www.tascha.ch


http://www.yeliseyev.ru


http://www.reiv.fr


http://www.fox.cgsociety.org


http://aivlis-home.com



http://www.theposmaker.com


http://www.gangus.net


http://www.henningludvigsen.com


http://www.digieyes3d.com


http://www.marta-dahlig.com


http://www.soanala.com


Monsters & Creatures

CG CHOSENNext Issue

Artwork “Blind Invader“ by David Munoz Velazquez

Want your artwork to be a part of the next issue? Have an exclusive materials related to Monsters&Creatures?

Send all materials and proposals as to possible participation to us and reveal your original art and ideas:

Spwar (General editor) [email protected]


WWW.spycg.comSpyCG.com provides search for Computer Graphics (CG) related information. The best and fastest way to find CG related information is to search it on the largest 3D and 2D resources, forums and blogs, graphic and design studios, artists profiles and CG portals. Currently, our database consists of more than 400 CG sites.

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cg chosen | characters magazine no.3

Documents

issuecg chosen magazine

hyun hee lee

henning ludvigsennight

florian delarque

piotr fox wysocki

silvia fusetti

suresh kumar

marcin klicki