Living Dead Art Post - Zombies & Ghosts

Feeling that is was other due for another artwork post featuring my artwork. For this post I have grabbed a couple of pieces of work of my illustrated undead. Sketching, painting and rending all of the grisly details these wanders is always a pleasure for me as I can really go to town on the details and drive home a certain level of earthy realism, whether that be open muscle tissue, spots, bones, organs or bodily fluids. Read on!

The Undead, hungry and the lost for all eternity, they roam the earth until the end of days seeking retribution and flesh. 

Hollow Zombie

This is a slightly older image capturing a partially decomposed zombie ambling around in it’s tattered clothes, torn flesh and its stomach bloated with decay. The image captures 2 states of the zombie, with its stomach and without. This image was painted in drawn by hand and then rendered in Photoshop.

Ghoul – Swamp Zombie

And so, our undying friend has awoken from his long slumber by the dawn chorus of walking corpses... or a grave digger.

This illustration captures the moment the Ghoul clambers out from a peat bog to meet his brothers in death. Although undead or partially living, I wanted to capture a hulking mass of muscle that that could serve any necromancer, witch or warlord as long as it is paid in meat. The creature is also closer to life that death and so wanted to capture and expression of “Where am I!? - I was alive a moment ago”

Lady of the Lane

As with many folktales and local legends, I wanted to illustrate my rendition of the Lady of the Lane for exhibition I held in Looe in Cornwall. The Lady of the lane or the White lady is said to haunt a narrow lane leading to Talland Bay.

Holiday makers and revelers be wary when walking back to the camp site, should you see a white figure coming towards in the dead of night turn on your heel and run for the pub… ghost’s have little taste for beer.

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I can also produce print on an Print on Demand basis which can take up to a Month to Print produce and ship.

Quick Techniques For Reducing Banding / Posterization in Photoshop - BRUSH STROKES

Posterization – Rough Techniques For Reducing Banding!

Notice the subtle rings around the soft brush?

What is it?

If like me you work as illustrator/designer, I’m sure you will have run into the dreaded banding aka Posterization If so, I will go into detail shortly. Please note; this is told from an illustration and design bias.

Illustration in Photoshop has been a blessing for me. Edit, undo, save as, copy, paste, re-colour artwork the list goes on. This issue comes when working with radial and linear gradients and tones of black and grey. Working with a lot of black and orange as part of the colour palette, I have had to figure out ways for dealing with or working around banding. For example, when I’m rendering characters like Rufus the rat, he has grey body with even darker creases in the body, getting the shading and highlights to blend hasn't always been easy - banding has been a big issue. As it stands, I’m still uncertain as to how to get a completely smooth finish when rendering by work with a grey and black tones. I can offer some methods for reducing this so called ‘banding’ effect and the bane of drawing Rufus. 

For additional information this has been written based on the specs of the my iMac - OSX, but this issue has proven to effective on a TFT Screen using windows 7 and older versions of PS.

My Setup 1 : New Document ‘I like RGB’

From the off I have tested this on Photoshop CS5 and CC with similar results from version to version. 64 bit – 32 bit RGB to CMYK I’m not entirely sure if this has an influence aside from whether you are working with 8 bit, 16 bit and 32 bit; the later offering marginally tighter rings and hues. For this example I have worked with A 300 DPI document, in RGB using 8 bit (this can be changed later) also with the colour profile listed below on an iMac. This is by no means a significant contribution to the final out come but maybe worth noting. 

‘tangent alert’
 Using RGB in the early stages is my preferred method, not everybody’s. Isn’t this madness? You won’t see genuine colours of your artwork! Well unless, your screen is calibrated exactly and your using pantones, guaranteeing what you see on the screen to print can be tricky anyway. Besides, I work across both mediums of screen and print. 

Method 2 :  Ultimate Trick - Brush & Noise

I’m assuming that you are running into this issue whilst using a soft edged brush tool in Photoshop, based on that, I would advise turning the 'noise' on under the brush panel (as shown - press F5 bring this window up) this helps in the blending of steps with greys as shown below. As far as I can tell, based on my work, this improved the overall smoothness and graduation of the tones from light to dark regardless of bit mode or any other. You can also dabble with the filters if you are using large radials (That would be a different article). 
As you can see below, the black brush at the top has rings (banding) and the one below has far fewer the brush used on the lowest part of the blob has noise switched on. The speckled effect will be less obvious once you take your artwork to print.

See how the rings blend together of the lower part of the blob?

Method 3 : Big to small, playing with scale

Another trick for tightening this banding is by shrinking/scaling down your completed artwork. When you have applied the 'noise' and finished the process you can physically shrink the image to hide some of the messier details - an illusion essentially. 


This is a method that I have used not only to disguise banding when digitally painting but also to give the appearance of tighter line work and detail.



Step 1 piece of art = 100%
Step 2 scale art to = 75%

So when you print the document some so the details and blemishes are hidden away from the naked eye. This approach can also hide some of the rings in banding with added element of noise!

Conclusion
You will see the benefits for this when you come to printing your work, especially if you are working with shades of grey.

To summarise - Add noise to your brush mode.

Hope this helps!

This method was used when illustrating/digitally painting Rufus the Rat for Satzuma LTD

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