Thursday, October 7, 2010

Cell Shading 1

Hey Gang,

I know it has been a long time since I've made a post but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy. So, in the spirit of learning and growth, I've been working on my photo shop skills. Recently, I purchased " Master Art Works Metal Gear Solid 4" which basically is an awesome collection of production art and "making of" concept art for the video Game Metal Gear Solid 4. I'm sure all of you know that I am a Metal Gear fan right? Anyways, contained within this book are several examples of cell shading which I decided, I would emulate. The following image is the result of my efforts.



I spent most of my time simply playing around with camouflage patterns and I admit, I got a little carried away and created several " Variations" of this shooter character which you will find below.








I spent a lot of time digging around for various military camouflage patterns and I'd be a happy to share my resource files to anyone who is interested.
The following camo patterns you will find are. British DPM, British Desert DPM, German Flecktarn, US Woodland, CADPAT, Desert Tiger Stripe, Tiger Stripe, Urban, US 3 Color Desert and a couple of civilian pattens Mossy Oak and Real Tree. One that I am quite proud of is the Denison Smock pattern that was used by British Para Troopers during the 2nd World War. I've got quite a few more that I have not used as well.

Maybe in a follow up post, I'll include them all.

Thanks for stopping by.

4 comments:

  1. I really dig this, I like to use different camo patterns in my art and I was really curious as to your process. Did you paint these or sample them? I usually scan my own uniforms or look for images I can sample from on the internet. You really made these work with the line art and look less like sampled patterns if they are. How did you do that?

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  2. Hey AlphaKnurd, Thanks for stopping by and commenting! I made this image over 2 years ago so my memory is a little fuzzy about how exactly I achieved the effect. All of the patterns were found on the internet except for the British Dennison Smock. That one I made based on the real on that I own. I was going for a technique I saw used in the concept art for Metal Gear Solid 3. Basically, you have your drawing and paint it as if you were cell shading for animation. Then you make a pattern tile in photoshop ( define Pattern, select the area that you want to have the pattern and select Fill-Pattern. Voila! There is more to it than that but this is the coles notes version, you have to spend some time tinkering with the pattern to make it tile seamlessly ( this is not so much of a problem with the newer digital patterns like CADPAT). For this image I painted in the shadows by making a multiply layer above the color flats, using black and setting the layer opacity to 50%. I hope that this helps, I know it's not the best tutorial but feel free to let me know if you have any more questions.
    Cheers!

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  3. Thanks for the reply, I am going to have to look into trying that way. I have been taking samples and then using the past into otion in Photoshop to add them. The only thing that I run into is sometimes it tend to add "ghosting" to the line art and looks fake. But I am going to monkey around with the way you described. Thanks!

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  4. Your welcome,

    Good Luck with your endeavors!

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