I mentioned
last time, that it has been an increasing request this year to deliver artwork in layers. Until now, I've seen clients suggest that if you do art digitally, submit the layered Photoshop file, if you work traditionally, that's fine too. But I foresee an increase in the request to receive layers, and so am glad to have done some work on that this year. "Elven Warlock" (working title) was my first piece done for
Chains of Durandal, and so here is my earliest attempt at trying to figure out how to deliver a layered piece of art
and have a finished painting at the end.
For this, I think it's necessary to show the final art first, and we can deconstruct it after. So here is the final painting:
(L:) Elven Warlock, 11x14" oils on masonite
The Art Director would have naturally been pleased to receive every discrete element on its own layer. Digitally, this is possible. But after talking a little with him and figuring what he really needed, I understood that he basically wanted the figure, the mid-ground and the background separable. That still seemed doable within the realms of traditional painting, at least in this instance.
Looking at the final, that meant the sky, the "stage" and the figure. My initial thought was that I would paint the sky, including some of the area "behind" the ruined wall, scan it, then the ruins including the area behind the figure, scan, then the figure, then varnish and scan the final. I'd then reassemble the layers digitally. Along the way I learned that there would necessarily be some digital work done, too.
Step 1: I painted the sky over a drab underpainting. You'll see that I left some of the basic silhouette of the figure in place. I wasn't too thrilled with the idea of painting a figure over essentially black.
I'd done it before, and wasn't awful, but it's easier to have a more mid-value tone.
What was immediately apparent was that I would need to do more digital work on each layer. What you see is a scan that is lacking varnish. There is all sorts of unevenness in the sky, which is really supposed to be quite black at its core. I'd already established that I'd just fill in the black digitally anyway, but now I knew I'd have to smooth over some of that scan artifacting, too. Hmm, this was going to be a little harder than I first thought.
Step 2: I actually did all the digital stuff after finishing the painting, but it makes more sense to show it this way. Here, I finished out the sky digitally, retaining as much of the painted part as possible, and taking the sky out to a rectangle that could be used independently of the other elements. You'll note that I re-shaped the lightning at left. I wasn't happy with what I painted. I then went back and repainted the actual painting to match. Changing the painting was a wholly unnecessary move, but was done simply to improve the painting itself as its own artifact.
Mind you, by this time the piece had already taken about 3 times the time it would have taken to just do the sky digitally from the get-go.
Step 3: Having re-painted the lightning at left, I then proceeeded to paint the ruins. A good chunk of the character's robes would obscure what's behind, but I needed to paint it anyway. Normally, all that stuff behind a figure is never painted. No need to. So you can see how time adds up, even had I done this digitally I would have had to detail out areas that I normally would not have needed to.
At this point, had the Art Director requested the ivy be its own layer, I probably would have ditched trying to paint this at all and gone all digital. Because I knew that a chunk of the background was to be covered by the figure, I designed the ivy so it didn't run as much behind him--it would've been too time-consuming and painful to paint lots of ivy in that area and then to just paint it over and have it not matter in the final illustration.
Because this layer was not as dark as the sky, it suffered less from scanning issues, but nevertheless still did. Prior to each scan, I would slap a thin isolation coat of Gamblin Neo-Megilp over it to even out the color as much as possible. But it wasn't enough to really kill the brush strokes.
Step 4: Back in the computer, I now had a scan that looked like Step 3. But I already had the sky as its own layer. Now I needed to isolate the mid-ground. That meant taking the scan of the mid-ground, and then digitally erasing the sky again. You'll note I didn't add a lot of branches of ivy breaking the border of the ruins. Just a couple, for effect. But now you see why--the more I would have done, the more I would have had to erase around all the leaves. I could have gone in after and drawn in more digitally, but didn't want to deal with trying to match digital application of "paint" to the rest. Digital just looks a little different. So, here's the mid-ground layer.
The actual painted sky, as I painted it, is never seen in the final illustration the client received. The stage has really no digital enhancements, but the sky does, as I showed. The layer the client received for the sky was the digital one.
Step 5: The figure was then traced down again, and I painted it right on top of the stuff you see above, completely covering up the ruins I'd just painted. Having finished the painting, I varnished it this time, scanned the whole thing, made a copy of the scan, and went about cutting out all the background once again, leaving the figure isolated as its own layer.
You see this sort of thing all the time, don't you? On advertisements, packaging, game manuals or websites--the figures that appear in other configurations elsewhere cut out and floated onto white or into another mix of characters. This is how it's done--by having the figure on its own layer so it can be pulled apart and re-used. Digitally, of course, you'd just open a new layer, "paint" the figure, and it would be separated by default. You could turn it on or off. As you can see, I had to sort of retroactively create each layer.
Yes, it was a bit of a headache. Yes, the whole piece probably took twice the time it might have taken had it been all digital. Yes, that means I made half the income I might have made otherwise. So why do it at all?
1.) The look of the piece, digitally, would have been just enough different, and I prefer the look of my painted work. I could continue to work at emulating my painted look, and over time have done so increasingly, but:
2.) Digital is fun, and I use it more or less at various times, but I'm a painter. I've made this point before. If I had to ditch paint entirely to survive as an illustrator, I might just ditch illustration and find another venue to paint. It would be a difficult decision, though.
3.) On might think there is the economic benefit of being able to sell the painting. And there is, but it's not guaranteed. If I sell the painting, I will make up the extra time spent on the piece. Or, I could have not painted it, finished it in half the time, and taken another commission from the developer which was a possibility in this case, at least. And a new commission would have been certain income versus having the reasonable chance that the painting never sells, and so I never recoup.
4.) I do believe this request is going to come increasingly--in some years, this will be standard. So, it's better that I wrestle with the issues as much as possible now, and learn how to go with the flow. It's no good to complain to a client about it, they rightfully will have no patience for it and can just as easily hire a digital guy for whom this is all a moot point, mostly. Neither will it do to demand a higher fee for my extra work, since my extra work is due to my medium, and again this is something where a digital artist would be at an economic advantage. Really, this is a matter of compete, adapt, or die.
I dealt with this layer-thing differently on different pieces, including doing a couple that were all or mostly digital, depending on the request. With
Stalking Specter, the last piece done for this game a few months later, I composed a piece that was much simpler, so that each layer had less wasted time of painting details that would get covered up. It also went well with the assignment--one doesn't want to compromise unnecessarily for the sake of expediency. When a piece got too complicated for the painted route, I just went digital rather than compromise.
You can see a larger scan of the painting, and its sketch,
here.
(L:) Figure study, 12x9" charcoal
Here, then, is a final illustration that doesn't physically exist. And I was correct in my assumptions: upon submitting the final, I was indeed asked to make tweaks to the transparency and glowy aspects. Had I painted it all, I would have had to do that rework digitally anyway. Since the charcoal drawing was its own layer from the beginning, the requested changes were much, much faster to do. The foremost rock is its own layer, too.
