dustycloud/posts/making-of-mediagoblin-rise-of-the-robogoblins.html

title: Making of MediaGoblin "Rise of the RoboGoblins" release artwork
date: 2012-05-02 01:35
tags: mediagoblin, art, release art, robogoblins, robots, contributor drawing, gimp, blender
author: Christine Lemmer-Webber
slug: making-of-mediagoblin-rise-of-the-robogoblins
---
<p class="centered">
  <a href="/etc/images/blog/robot_goblin_assemblage.png">
    <img src="/etc/images/blog/robot_goblin_assemblage-scaled.png" alt="MediaGoblin 0.3.0 release artwork" />
  </a>
</p>

<p>We just made another release of <a href="http://mediagoblin.org">GNU MediaGoblin</a>:
<a href="http://mediagoblin.org/news/mediagoblin-0.3.0-rise-of-the-robogoblins.html">0.3.0,
"Rise of the RoboGoblins"</a>!  We've had "release artwork" for a
while, ever since Jef van Schendel made the banner for
our <a href="http://mediagoblin.org/news/version-003--talking-in-rainbows">0.0.3,
"Talking in Rainbows"</a> release, but recently I've been doing the
artwork.  The last few releases have come out with release artwork
that is both more complex than my usual work, but also with results
that I'm extremely proud of.  In a certain sense, it's silly to spend
so much time on release artwork.  Sure, people seem to like it.  But
on the other hand, I probably could be coding.  But my life has also
been both at work and in hobby space more and more of "hacker
management" work (as in, both doing programming as a hacker and
managing projects that hackers work on) and it's nice to get some time
in to do artwork for fun.</p>

<p>Anyway, several people have commented that they really like the
artwork for this release, I've been meaning to write up a blogpost
showing how I do artwork, and there are a couple of interesting
aspects to the artwork in this release, so now seems like an opportune
time to give a brief overview of the process.</p>

<p>First of all, materials.  Excepting a minor bit of Blender
assistance, I did everything in the GIMP for this release.  I have an
Intuos 2 wacom tablet that I use on my desktop, and I've used that as
my primary art tool for almost a decade(!) now, but earlier this year
I got a Thinkpad X220 laptop/tablet hybrid (with gorilla glass screen
for scratch resistance while drawing; definitely recommended if you do
much artwork on the go) and I do almost all my artwork on there these
days.  In fact, most of the artwork for this release was done from the
car (Morgan was driving, of course).</p>

<p>I knew I wanted to go with the name "Rise of the RoboGoblins" for
this release, both because I thought it fit in a very silly and
abstract way, and because I knew I had some ideas for artwork that
could go with it.  I didn't have extremely specific ideas for the
artwork, just that I wanted a group of robot goblins bravely standing
around.  So first step, figure out what those robots look like.</p>

<p class="centered">
  <img src="/etc/images/blog/mediagoblin_0.3.0_character_sketches.png" alt="MediaGoblin 0.3.0 release artwork, character sketches" />
</p>

<p>This is typically what my canvas looks like when I'm sketching out
ideas.  When I sketch for ideas I usually do a bunch of small drawings
on a moderate/smallish canvas resolution.  Fast and loose sketches,
see what sticks.  In this case, as I came up with robot designed I
liked I moved them over to the side.  I usually don't bother to clean
up files like this very much.  I use the pen tool for this, as I do
for pretty much all my sketching and outlining.</p>

<p>Now that I knew what the characters looked like, I wanted to figure
out where to place them.  I had a pretty good idea of the character
sizes based off of thinking bout the character sketches above, so I
did a quick and rough sketch of things in an 800x600 canvas.</p>

<p class="centered">
  <img src="/etc/images/blog/robot_goblin_assemblage_sketch.png" alt="Robot goblin assemblage sketch" />
</p>

<p>This looked pretty good to me, and I had a pretty decent sense of
the composition and perspective.  Yes, on its own, the above sketch
looks like crap.  But it isn't meant to be evaluated on its own; it's
just a guide for me and me alone.</p>

<p>There's only one problem: I'm terrible at perspective.  Or, that
is, I can do perspective when it's just one object, but the moment I
start to put a bunch of objects in a scene I start overworrying about
the structure of perspective and tend to overcompensate.  Luckily, I
had a trick up my sleeve that I used in our previous
release, <a href="http://mediagoblin.org/news/mediagoblin-0.2.1-gearing-up.html">0.2.1,
"Gearing Up"</a>:
</p>

<p class="centered">
  <img src="/etc/images/blog/suit_goblin_leader_cubescene.png" alt="Gearing Up character, with blender cube scene" />
</p>

<p>Basically, taking a cue from the wonderful
<a href="http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/product_info_n.php?products_id=134">Blend
&amp; Paint</a> training DVD, I made a minimal scene in Blender to figure
out the perspective, then used that as a background layer to guide me
in the shapes and perspective of my artwork.  (Thanks to my good
friend <a href="http://lunpa.org/">Lunpa</a> for suggesting this
technique probably would work with my artwork as well.)  As you can
see, the shapes are super, super basic in the blender scene.  I don't
need anything complex, I just need to know where things are.  So, by
that same principle, all I really needed was to line up some cubes on
a plane with some simple three point lighting.  So I did just that:</p>

<p class="centered">
  <a href="/etc/images/blog/robogoblin_blender_screenshot.png">
    <img src="/etc/images/blog/robogoblin_blender_screenshot-scaled.png" alt="Screenshot of blender with robogoblin perspective sketch loaded" />
  </a>
</p>

<p>Now that we have that, it's just a simple matter of rendering that,
scaling up our canvas on the perspective sketch image to three times
what our end result will be (2400x1800 for an 800x600 scene), and
adding the blender render as a layer for "guidance".  I duplicate the
"perspective sketch" layer, move things into place, and refine the
sketches a bit so when I do the next draw-over it'll be a bit clearer
where things go.</p>

<p class="centered">
  <a href="/etc/images/blog/robogoblin_roughsketch_on_render.png">
    <img src="/etc/images/blog/robogoblin_roughsketch_on_render-scaled.png" alt="Screenshot of blender with robogoblin perspective sketch loaded" />
  </a>
</p>

<p>So now we have that, but the outlines are nowhere near what we want
here; this is just guidance stuff still.  I create a new layer to
create another sketch with more details.  At this point my desktop
looks a bit like this:</p>

<p class="centered">
  <a href="/etc/images/blog/robot_goblin_assemblage-desktop_wip.png">
    <img src="/etc/images/blog/robot_goblin_assemblage-desktop_wip-scaled.png" alt="My desktop as I'm sketching out the 'robogoblin assemblage'" />
  </a>
</p>

<p>At this point the details are shaping up pretty nicely.  However,
the middle-left character still looks a bit rough comparatively.  So I
do three things: make a new layer to draw final outlines over the
sketchy but mostly correctly shaped outline ones, make a layer to
block in color, and make a layer to go under that which I just paint
white so we don't have accidental transparency in spots (I use a
pressure sensitive pen and like a bit of the painterliness that comes
from using an opacity-varying brush).</p>

<p class="centered">
  <a href="/etc/images/blog/robot_goblin_assemblage-desktop_wip-scaled.png">
    <img src="/etc/images/blog/robot_goblin_earlycolors-scaled.png" alt="Early colors for the robogoblin crew" />
  </a>
</p>

<p>Once that's done, it's time to start shading things in (at this
point we have colors, but they're pretty flat).  Only one thing: I'd
like to be able to have reasonably accurate ideas of where the shading
could be.  Luckily we already have a Blender scene set up for this, so
I swap out the cubes for Suzanne (the Blender pseudo-mascot monkey)
heads:</p>

<p class="centered">
  <a href="/etc/images/blog/monkey_lighting.png">
    <img src="/etc/images/blog/monkey_lighting-scaled.png" alt="Monkey lighting!" />
  </a>
</p>

<p>At this point, we're set to shade things in.  Really, my method of
shading is pretty lazy... I use a circle brush with the burn/dodge
tool in the GIMP and "paint in" shadows and highlights with some
cleanups and minor detail with the paintbrush and airbrush.  The rest
of the work is making the background (I used the plane from the
blender scene with a conical gradient to give a bit more shadow moving
toward the focal point) and some slight color adjustments with the
curve tool.  I sketch in the shadows at their feet using the pen tool
and the cube scene for guidance, add the text, and I'm done!</p>

<p class="centered">
  <a href="/etc/images/blog/mediagoblin_0.3.0_finaldrawing_desktop.png">
    <img src="/etc/images/blog/mediagoblin_0.3.0_finaldrawing_desktop-scaled.png" alt="My desktop at the end of the drawing process" />
  </a>
</p>

<p>So that's pretty much it!  If you want to follow around or play
with it, feel free
to <a href="/etc/images/blog/robot_goblin_assemblage.xcf">download the
source XCF file</a>.  (To avoid ambiguity,
it's <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">CC BY-SA
3.0</a>.)  Not all my artwork is as intensive as this one is, but I'm
very pleased with how it came out, anyway.  Not bad for someone who
doesn't have formal training, amirite?</p>

<p>And now, a minor tangent.  One of the biggest joys of MediaGoblin
development is really working with the incredible, incredible
community of contributors and users we have.  I've started a thing
called <a href="http://mediagoblin.org/news/contributor-drawings.html">contributor
drawings</a> to give thanks to people who have done a lot for the
project.  Sadly, I'm pretty slow at getting them done.  But I was
pretty pleased with the way this artwork came out... indeed, I tend to
think it's some of the best artwork I've ever done.  So now I want to
take the opportunity to dedicate this piece to a particular community
member... Jef van Schendel is our lead graphic designer and is
responsible for MediaGoblin's primary look and feel.  I felt it was
appropriate to dedicate the piece I thought was the best of my artwork
to the person responsible for MediaGoblin's design (and also the
person who started the MediaGoblin release art tradition!) and I'm
happy to say that Jef accepted this as his contributor drawing.
Thanks for everything you've done, Jef!  MediaGoblin wouldn't look
nearly as awesome without you.</p>