Ognjen Sporin

Kobold Painting Process and Coming up with Concepts

Here's some process on a character illustration, it took around 10 hours total. I'm planning to do a series of these kobold characters.

I wanted the culture of the kobolds to be tribal and underdeveloped - they're sort of like cave monsters, living and mining underground. While mining or exploring caves, they stumble upon relics of an ancient civilization and start dressing in their armor and using their tools. I want this other civilization to be sort of medieval European (particularly...

Self Portrait Process

The main thing that I was going for (even while taking reference) is getting a good strong cast shadow from the brow and having overall strong, dramatic light from the top. I wanted the main spotlighted area and the ear to really pop forward, so most of the silhouette edges are soft or lost. I thought it would be really interesting to have the actual edges of the profile barely readable, since that would generically be the first read when getting a likeness.

 The only real brushwor...

More Daily Studies

I did these because I wanted the creatures for my next series of concepts to have this sort of white, underground-living skin 

The biggest takeaways here are:

-the base color is a quite desaturated light blue

-have a lot of hue variation and use grays as yellows 

More Gold Studies

More gold stuff. I mentioned in my last post how gold can have many unexpected hues and adding them definitely enriches the palette, but the predominant and most usual hues are obviously the yellows, and they often tend to be more yellow than orange/red, contrary to what I might expect.

Also a note on the highlights:

Gold Statue Study

Here's a  material study in preparation for a series of characters that are gonna have golden armor. I'll be posting the process for coming up with ideas, thumbnailing, concepting and finishing up those characters as well. 

Here are some notes on the study:

The big takeaways are:

1. Gold has all kindz of hues you wouldn't expect, particularly some blues (which are more lik...

More Study Process

I focused more on lighting and lost a bit of construction, the arms came out a bit wonky so here's the painting with a bit of liquifying:

There's a lot of little things that can be done to make this better, but with these daily studies I try to focus on limiting time, getting the big ideas in and actually doing a study every day, which means I can't fuss too much over them 

Some Quick Study Process

Each little painting took about 40 mins

Svarog Painting Process

Here's another process for a commissioned piece, I went a little bit outside my usual rendering style for this one. The entire thing took around 6 and a half hours in total, and here's the finished painting:

Full Commissioned Painting Process

Here's a painting process of a commissioned piece. The original recording is around 6 and a half hours, and it's sped up 4000% here. The drawing that I started off with is traditional and done in graphite on an a4 format.

Hopefully this gives a bit more insight into my process than the usual painting study videos :D

Here are the final painting, a process shot, the sketches, the drawing and the color options as well:

2021-04-12 15:49:56 +0000 UTC View Post

More Portrait Studyingg

Another Portrait Study

My portraits are still wonky but I'm sticking to it 

Graphite Drawing Process

Should have taken more shots, will do for the next one

There's also some preliminary sketches for this drawing in one of the earlier posts if you want a more comprehensive view of the planning 

Portrait Study Process

Process of a daily study which took around and hour. It went pretty well considering I haven't done portraits in a while, and I hope to keep doing them semi-daily in the upcoming period. Here's the final result:

Something to note is how crappy the likeness is in the beginning. I've noticed that, with my portraits in general, the likeness tends to be very weak until near the very end, and I've l...

Armor Study

A 2hr 15min painting study, I experimented a bit with a more watercolor/gouache-like underpainting. 

Traditional Studies

Some traditional graphite sketch studies on A3 paper 

I'm working more with smudging and I find the gradation and the grainy softness very pleasing, there's almost an enjoyment in the physical act of creating strokes 

Doggie Study Process

The whole painting took around an hour and a half, and this is the final result, after a bit of liquifying to get a better likeness

Preliminary sketches for a graphite piece

Figured I'd share a bit of process concerning character design, sketching and thumbnailing in preparation for a bigger, finished graphite piece. Trusting the process, relaxing and being okay with scribbly, crappy stuff at the start is pretty important. I've found that taking the pressure off at the start of a bigger piece generally causes the piece to be more successful - otherwise you just get paralyzed and bogged down. 

Quick Metal Study

This one was about 35 minutes in total. It doesn't really matter whether the study is 30 mins or 2 hours, you just need to adjust your goals according to your time limit and focus on extracting practical info that you can use later on. With these really short studies the info is going to come in little nuggets, but they compound onto one another to create competence and a rich visual library.

The thing that I cemented into my visual library in this study was mainly the way th...

Quick Material Study Process

This one was about 45 mins (it's sped up 3000%). I focused primarily on the leather reflections, particularly on the warm/cool relationships, and I tried to make the process similar to traditional oils.

Sketches for a Graphite Drawing

Some Studies

Some sketch studies done in graphite on A3 paper. I generally do these on A4, but I think the larger format suits me better and I'll probably keep working on it.

Sketches and Thumbnails

Figured I'd share what my thumbnails and sketches for a graphite drawing look like - I try to be loose and uncommitted when thumbnailing. Once I get something that looks good to me, I sometimes make a few different versions, quickly lay in the big values, and create a bigger sketch (which is still much smaller than the final A4 drawing). 

Quick Study Process

Here's a bit of video process, this one's an hour long study sped up 3000%

Carpet Mage Process

Another process video yay

Cartographer

A full process of the digital painting stage of a recent character piece. 

The finished drawing along with all the sketching might have been around 2hrs and was done traditionally, after which I edited it a bit. The whole vid is nearly 6 hours, and sped up 50 times :D 

I have another video recorded and coming up soon, along with some drawing studies!

More Character Process

Mostly just trying to get faster and more streamlined 

Some Character Rendering Process

Character Painting Process

I'm finally happy with a painting after being in a bit of a slump for a while! 

Diorama Painting Process

Here's some process shots for a painting for a little personal project. I've also included the sketches there at the end. 

The biggest problem with this scene in general was the lack of big-medium-small scale relationship (so the genie, the rocks, and the sand portion are all roughly the same size), so at the very end I enlarged the genie and made him a clear dominant element. 

Painting environments is generally my weak point so I want to do some fairly simple paintings ...

Some Studies

Here are some sketchy studies, and since I'm trying to get better at posing and inventing characters, they're mostly of Marko Djurdjevic's and Even Amundsen's characters, and also some photo ref stuff for costumes.