Got interested recently in a FB group called Spitpaint. Similar to lunchcrunch it gives a rough topic to choose from then you have 30 minutes to create an image from scratch (no photos/phototextures allowed).
Thought I'd brave it, it is incredibly challenging, particularly as I don't put too much time in to painting. I think it's very important though as it helps immensely with colour blending and image composition. For saying my most knowledgeable area is photography I tend to find colour tone and composition my weakest area in painting/sculpting.
Here are my first few goes at it anyway;
Above: No particular theme for this one. I was just trying out new brushes in PS. Kind of imagined a rocky canyon/shipwreck. This one took about an hour after getting new brushes recommended by a friend (they are Peleng's brushes, made available on his blog).
Below: This was the first entry I put in to the spitpaint group. Taking about 27 minutes. The theme was 'tunnel entrance' although ended up making it more like the exit!
Above: just some very rough landscape thumbnails. 1hr in total for all 4 trying to work with brushes and composition
Right: very rough portrait, topic 'Apache' 25 mins. Very tricky to do portraits (for me anyway) in 30 minutes.
By doing this it also improves my sculpting workflow for concepting. Here is a quick sculpt knocked together and then a rough colour/texture test taking roughly 1 hr;
I'm making progress on my clothing modelling, slowly chipping away at the model side. I've also started re-learning some vfx, this time for use in realtime engines. The tutorials are from the great ImbueFX. Bill Kladis is an excellent teacher for UDK/Unreal engine particle effects and has worked on titles like Mortal Kombat and Injustice: Gods Among Us. I'll try and get some stills up in my next post as my current rig probably isn't great for capturing realtime effects!
