Stormtrooper Sketch

[beetroot bertie]

This art forum has been pretty quiet of late so I thought I'd contribute in some way, and post a picture.

I've been meaning to get into digital illustration for a while now but lacked the motivation and self-confidence to actually get cracking so here's my first attempt, a picture of the always cool Stormtrooper, a personal fave from my childhood and the outfit of which I would still love to have now :D.

This is my initial sketch which I'm intending to build up into some sort of digital painting and possibly get printed on a canvas or something. If anyone is interested, I'll continue to post my progress (as long as I don't balls it up that is) and would like to hear any feedback.

Stage 1: Sketch
http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk316/beetroot_bertie/Stormtrooper-400px-Stage1.jpg

[Shrygue]

Wow, now that looks very good, great work and keep it up!

[wraggster]

nice, i love anything star warsy :)

[beetroot bertie]

Even Phantom Menace? :)

Here's my next stage. After choosing a few tones and considering the lighting this is my first colour pass to establish these areas.
For anyone curious, at this stage I'm roughing in the tones with a hard round brush in photoshop. I'm using an aging G4 iMac with a small A6 Graphire 2 tablet by Wacom so I can apply my strokes more freely.

Stage 2: First rough colour tones
http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk316/beetroot_bertie/Stormtrooper-400px-pt2.jpg

[Darksaviour69]

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Media/Pix/pictures/2008/03/31/jazz460.jpg
Nice!

[beetroot bertie]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I hope someone might find these steps useful or at least make them want to have a go themselves. It would be nice to see more of peoples' artwork on these forums.

Here's my 3rd stage. I've worked on the darker areas first as a part of a second pass. No reason why, probably because there was less area to do at the time and I was feeling lazy.

My initial strokes on my first pass were very quick and free so I'm tightening it up a bit now. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing at this stage but I'm gonna carry on and see how it turns out. I don't want it to look too airbrushed (I want some strokes to be visible) which is why I'm solely using hard round brushes.

http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk316/beetroot_bertie/Stormtrooper-400px-pt3.jpg

For those interested here's my initial reference pose I cobbled together, made from photos of a bobble head Stormtrooper figure, a shot of me holding a dreamcast light gun, a body figure from my childhood toys (one of the very few Star Wars figures I kept unfortunately) and a 3D render of the blaster taken from a model I found on the web. Having this made the sketch a lot easier, essentially more of a tracing.

http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk316/beetroot_bertie/Stormtrooper-400px-pt0.jpg

[beetroot bertie]

My next stage, I've just added detail and shading to the blaster at this point.

http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk316/beetroot_bertie/Stormtrooper-400px-pt4.jpg

[Shrygue]

Hmm, that's looking better and better each time, keep the updates coming!

[beetroot bertie]

Thanks Shrygue, here's my 5th stage.

I've tightened up my virtual paint strokes this time and given the whole white armour and helmet a good repaint to neaten it all up. For anyone curious, I'm still using photoshop's standard hard round brushes, nothing fancy. I'm varying the opacity of the strokes depending on if I want a hard edge or a more layed effect by using a brush at say 20% opacity and building strokes up on top of each other. Most strokes have probably been done with either a 20 or 50% opacity with some smoothing out between shades with a 10% setting.

I've also added extra details like dimpled grip marks on the blaster handle and a few extras to the helmet like the blue stripes and grilles for the microphone tip areas. These aren't particularly apparent here due to the size of the image though.

http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk316/beetroot_bertie/Stormtrooper-400px-pt5.jpg

[Triv1um]

No way. . .

:|

[beetroot bertie]

And here's new one with a background I've just done. Not sure if I prefer it without...

What do you reckon?

http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk316/beetroot_bertie/Stormtrooper-400px-pt7.jpg

[Eviltaco64]

And here's new one with a background I've just done. Not sure if I prefer it without...

What do you reckon?

http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk316/beetroot_bertie/Stormtrooper-400px-pt6-1.jpg

http://biopsy.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/thumbs-up.jpg

Looks great!

[beetroot bertie]

Thanks Tony :D

[Darksaviour69]

i'm a but late but
http://blog.scour.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/awesome-dog-photo.jpg

great work

[aleencost]

Now that is really impressive. I love the various stages you've shown there, good stuff!

[beetroot bertie]

Thanks for the kind words folks :)

I'd also like to hear any constructive criticism if anyone wants to offer any as I'd like to get better and improve as much as I can.