In this demonstration the Deisign group offer us a great look into their process and workflow for creating digital paintings. It is an absolutely essential watch for anyone interested in understanding the contemporary process of digital painting in Photoshop. The Deisign group create character and creature designs for the entertainment industry.
I stumbled upon this video researching examples of some techniques I wanted to cover in a character design class that I teach, and it sparked a thought on a rather large part of my overall process I had been overlooking in regards to my research.
When I first started working in the animation industry over ten years ago now, I spent a tremendous amount of my free time documenting ideas for animated shorts that I wanted to create, and dreaming of having the time to produce them.
As time rolled on, and crunch time on one project ran into crunch time on another, my idea list grew and grew without any of them being realized. I have generally been alright with this as the work I’ve been doing in the industry has been exciting and really allowed me to focus on technique. I’ve always found my work to be fulfilling as long as I’m learning and growing, and feel lucky to have been in that state for the last 10 years.
In many ways I hope my time working on this masters will serve as a transitional phase between working on the ideas of others and those of my own.
One of the reasons I decided to persue my masters in Illustration, and selected the theme of children’s books is that the vast majority of my ideas were geared towards children, and over time I realized producing them as children’s books was a much more realistic goal than producing them initially as animated shorts or video games which in many cases would entail a tremendous amount of time and resources.
So I feel it’s worth noting that part of my reasoning for developing children’s books, is to examine the integrity of the idea as something that may be worthwhile pursuing as an animation or game.
Something about looking at the great character concepts Deisign have produced on this site made me consider that producing children’s books with the intention of producing animation or games from them, might perhaps be a unique part of process, or at least not the norm.
Post-Apocalyptic Cover Illustration | Timelapse from DEISIGN on Vimeo.