Kindle Fire is perfect for comics and art book.  Finally, something that will be a great fit for comic book, Manga, and art book on digital format.  I have ipad and I love it but it doesn't fit for reading comics.  Somehow it is heavy and not so comfortable to just laid back and read something for hours.  Unlike my kindle, I can spend hours reading without feeling I am holding some heavy hardware device.  After reading many reviews, and as I suspected that sooner or later Amazon will come up with lighter e-reader in color (too bad, it is not e ink), the $199 tablet runs a heavily modified version of Android, hooks neatly into Amazon’s gigantic book collections, and is designed for multimedia consumption (movies, videos) and, more than anything, perfect for reading. And it is by far the lightest of all the tablet at 14.6 hours with 7 inches screen.  Though the Kindle Fire has just 8GB, but most likely you will be connected with Amazon cloud for storage. ...

Re design character from the old version.  As you see it before on my previous post on a tutorial, how to paint feathers .  This one is a character design that I re-design from the old version I quickly designed on May 2007.  And surprisingly it is one of the images on my very first post on this blog.  You can see the first blog post of idrawgirls.com here drawing and sketch collection from May to June 2007 .  But I think I actually did the raven girl character in 2005.  That was way more than four years ago. My first intention when I start this website was to just doodle and possibly start a graphic novel online.  But it turned out to be a huge collection of "How to draw", "How to paint" and "art tutorial".  I had no idea that how it would turned out when I started my first post. Then when people start asking me how do I do a particular image, I then start to do little step by step how to.  Then more visitors are asking me how to draw an...

How to paint simple background with your character design.  In step by step how to create a background for your character tutorial, I will show you how to paint and create a very basic simple background along with your character without having to spend much time on the painting.  Backdrop of the scene often very important when you are designing a character.  It can express to the viewers where is the location, what is happening, and when is this event occurs.  Little hint of background can add so much more into your concept art.  It can even enhance the emotional impact of the character and evoke feeling from the audiences. So if it is just a piece of concept art, you can just convey the backdrop by using simple value and palette that is already in the scene.  In figure 1, if you look that the area with red circle A, you will see soft blue cloud.  From that area, you can use your color picker to pick two different value (tone) to establish the ha...

How to paint feathers quick step by step method for concept art.  This tutorial is not a refine or finish illustration of painting crisp and realistic feather by any mean.  I am trying to show you a quick way of convey a specific material, feathers.  It is very similar to how I paint fur from the previous tutorial, how to paint fur on a Mongol warrior armor.  But fur is a bit more refine and has a lot more soft edge. I basically start off with just a silhouette of random spikes in size and shape.  I was just trying to paint over one of my rough concept from 2007, the Raven girl.  Then her armor or costume has a lot of feathers so I thought it would be good to do a quick video tutorial on how to paint feathers, again concept art way.  Then I just pick the color and value from the back ground then using 20% opacity and gently paint more shapes to separate each layer of feather.  Once I get the mix value of the base of the feathers, then I use 8...

Wow, I just saw this video from this guy, Brusspup on Youtube.  It's the same guy that made the video about illusion of value, light and shadow create illusion of value .  His videos are really impressive.  Now he made another video about Animated Optical Illusion. Static images on aa piece of paper and ipad (on second video) are brought to life by passing a transparent sheet with black lines over the screen.  I always love these when I was a kid and until now, I still love it.  It always amazed me how our brain works and visually we are being fool by simple things. I also wonder why is it that way.  And most of all who or how do we come up with such optical illusion tricks. Watch the video, it is very awesome. Oh and by the way, he print his piece of paper from Photoshop.  If anyone know how to make this kind of trick, let me know. No tutorial today, but in the mean time. Art tutorials from idrawgirls: -  Master Chief Halo digital...

Photoshop painting tutorial smudge tool  for digital painters and artists.  This post I am going to show you guys some trick and tip on smudge tool.  A lot of artists love it, but I only use it from time to time.  Mostly if I want to soften the edge or blend value, I reply on soft brush (default round in Photoshop).  It can create effective enough result for me and it is fast.  Since I don't have much patience, I often lack of attention to detail in most of my painting.  As you see in most of my videos, I love painting fast and just get the point across as conceptual piece.  Once in a while I will spend days doing finish painting.  For some professional illustrators, they are all about attention to detail and a lot of precision.  And smudge tool is one of their best friend because of the control and precision it can offer.  It can though take quite a long time to get exactly what you want, but it will you get the result. 1) ...

This post is all about environmental artist, especially for those of you who are interested in getting a job in video game industry.  This article should be very informative and I try my best to actually explain what the environmental artist is. Environmental is basically all the elements, except characters and creatures, you see in a video game is what we create. So we come up with the sky, and the all the elements that are captured in the scene. Environment is very important to any video game, 90% of the screen is visually environmental art.  It is a big part of the visual representation of the game itself.  In most game studios, environmental artists work closely with level designers and designers.  And their functions can be and often overlap. Basically how it works is in the initial stage, concept artist or environmental concept artist will design the look of the environmental, props, building, anything that you would consider what you can called backdrop o...

How to paint  different ethnicity  woman  portrait for character design .  Paint portrait character design technique for concept artist.  In this article, I will show you a tutorial, tips and technique of how do we paint face or portrait of multi ethnicity for any video game.  Many who have never involve in game or movie production often wonder why do we use digital tool instead of traditional media. Photoshop is a wonderful tool to paint and that cannot be without a Wacom tablet.  For one of many reasons that I will show you in this tutorial, Photoshop of any professional computer painting program will save you a lot of time, sometimes it can save you days worth of work. In this tutorial, what I am doing is I am creating a facial feature template for one character's face from scratch. Like many of the tutorial in this blog I start sketching from just line work (quick drawing or sketch) then scan it into the PC.  *Note* Most of the ti...

Mass Effect 2 lead Concept Artist interview, Matt Rhodes.  BioWare, Mass Effect 2, lead concept artist Matt Rhodes unveils his process of concept art for the game and tons of sketches created during the development of the game.  Watch the process of  how the original Mass Effect evolves into Mass Effect 2 and very informative artistic process from idea to paper then eventually translated into a living 3D universe. From characters, aliens, props, environment, equipment, the inner workings of the creative process for the epic sci-fi masterpiece and how critical the role of concept art actually is in video game development.  This will be very educational for you guys. Mass Effect concept art Concept artist is basically one or a group of people generates a visual design for an item, character, or environment, scene base on original idea from the story or design.  Most of the time these things don't exist.  But most concept art bases on adaptation ...

How to draw Asura from Guild Wars 2 with Concept Artist Matthew Barrett. I just received some goodies from ArenaNet.  This is a video drawing tutorial demo of how a concept artist draw and paint a creature design from behind the scene making of Guild Wars 2 Concept art is basically a pre production stage in game development.  Characters and creatures need to have a clear concept, design, visual before going into production of 3d modeling.  Most of concept artists I've know and work with use mostly Wacom tablet, big Cintiq and medium and large Intuo series.  As for software the program that I see the most are Photoshop CS5 and Painter X.  In this particular video, Matthew use Photoshop CS5 and Wacom tablet. Though in the video game production environment they do digital art using Wacom and Photoshop, all of them has superb traditional art skill with pencil and paper or many are really good traditional oil painters. Matthew is a good friend of mine and form...

Zombies survival MMO game sneak peek from Undead Labs.  These are part the core people who started Guild Wars.  Undead Labs is a newly formed game studio, headed by my old boss Jeff Strain.  Jeff is the best boss ever, FYI!  He came from Blizzard before forming ArenaNet, and it was his idea that has a lot to do with the most successful MMORPG up to date World of Warcraft. Anyway, Doug Williams, my former office mate, is the art director of the new project and knowing Doug, I am sure this game is going to look badass! You can see some Doug's concept art here:  http://undeadlabs.com/2011/08/news/cry-baby/ But here is what I am most excited about, the in game environment and lighting is beyond amazing! Using CryENGINE 3, the state-of-the-art engine has a well-deserved reputation for providing the graphics horsepower to create gorgeous games, and we’re squeezing it for all it’s worth to bring Doug’s “Faded Americana” vision for Class3 to life. With the cutting-...

How to paint master chief Halo digital painting tutorial .  Here is another how to draw and paint character from video games. A lot of people ask me if Wacom tablet Intuo series with Photoshop is good for drawing on a computer.  To me, naturally drawing is still better with pencil and paper.  Wacom tablet and Photoshop or Painter is a great tool but still lack of the precision compare to sharp pointy pencil (If you are looking for a drawing).  You can draw with your Wacom as a starting point, but the best thing about Wacom tablet is not in drawing but in rendering (shading) and painting (apply color and value), in short, finish up your illustration.  So there is my two cents for Wacom.  I still love drawing with pencil whenever I get a chance. Here in this tutorial post we have Master chief from Halo video and step by step.  It is long over due.  I meant to speed painting the character long time ago, but I didn't feel like it until now. ...

Wacom pen Inkling draw on paper.  I actually just saw this product from Wacom, I know I am a little behind.  It came out a while ago. When it comes to tools for integrating freehand art into the digital workflow, Wacom remains the leader.It is certainly aren't cheap, but it's hard to find any brand that can match the quality of Wacom professional standard hardware. The Inkling is a "digital sketch pen" that allows you to draw or sketch on any standard piece of paper (a big advantage over Livescribe, which requires special notebooks) and automatically have a digital version created. The pen looks like a regular ballpoint pen, but is much more powerful than that. As you draw, sketches, mind-maps, or brainstorms all get captured, pen stroke by pen stroke. You can even create layers as you sketch, and edit drawings even easier when you get back to the computer. Files can be accessed in applications like Photoshop and Illustrator, or just viewed on the computer. If ...