Featured Artists-Craig Burt Collection

Painting by Numbers

"Dooku Dance"

This one is, I'm pretty sure, the first time I tried to do a digital style rendition of a scene. Because of the method I decided to use - basically a digital colouring-in of a drawing - that meant the drawing was going to be cartoon style.

1. Are the sketches for the picture. They are very rudimentary because they didn't need to be anything more. Mostly the pose and style was all that needed to be decided. The picture would be basically a line drawing, so the details could be added as you draw - and because it would be finished on the PC any mistakes could be fixed there too.

2. Is the scan of the drawing. You can see here that it is a clean-line drawing. When doing this is helpful to have in your mind what colours various elements will be. If you do this you can have the various elements 'lined off' or not as needed. By that I mean, if you have two joining parts of different colours you make sure clear lines are drawn as a barrier between the two. That makes it quicker to use something like the 'magic mask' tool to easily colour that part in - instead of having to draw that line in on the PC. 

3. You can see the start of the colouring process. The way I decided to do this type of picture ended up being similar to the way I use paint and brush - by layering colours. On the PC that means after masking off the area to be coloured, the fill is done with a level of transparency of colour, not solid colour. This means that the colours usually start off lighter and get darker as you re-fill to find the colour you want. The transparency of colour is also necessary to retain the original lines of the drawing.

4. You can see that various elements are getting darker in colour using the method described above. In the top right-hand corner there are rectangles of colour (solid fill), they are the colours used in the in the layering. As said, similar to painting by brush.

5. Is the final painting. You'll notice that the image has been cropped on the top and left-hand side. There was too much empty space in those areas that had no purpose so I decided to cut them out. The scene was set on General Grievous' ship in Episode III and I didn't have much info on the look of it, so decided to leave it simple. That's why the space was so empty. The cropping of the image also brings you closer to the action and makes it feel more urgent.

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