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Computer graphics as an art. What is CG

Computer graphics as an art. What is CG

02.04.2019

Creativity & Hobbies

Become a Professional CG Artist

I love the world of CG since childhood, and more recently, drawing has become my life.

I am already 24 years old, I have a higher non-art education and several years of work as an office hamster behind me. At one fine moment, I decided that such a life does not suit me and something needs to be changed. Gathered all her will into a fist and went to college as an animator. Now a year has passed. While the training was going on, I began to study what professions there are in the world of artists. I realized that the profession of an animator does not really attract me, just like the cartoons themselves. I like to draw and look at static pictures more. I prefer sci-fi, military, I like the cartoon style in the drawing.

I want to develop, engage in self-education and gain skills. I would like to come up with concepts and different objects for games.

Goal Accomplishment Criteria

Draw in such a way that you will not be ashamed of the drawings. Receive orders for drawings.

personal resources

Two years left, a great desire, a personal computer, video tutorials, books, an initial level of drawing and support from her husband.

Goal ecological compatibility

I want to make money by drawing, because this is the only thing that really gives me pleasure. In addition, I want to see how the gaming industry is developing in the country, I want to see this process from the inside.

Anatomy

The study of human anatomy in theory and practice.

Make 300 sketches: figure, head, hands, feet.

And 100 sketches each: a person in clothes and shoes, complex poses.
2. complex poses
Composition and perspective

The study of theory and practice. Reading books on composition and perspective. Doing exercises.
Drawing in tone and color.
Exploring the styles of different artists
Develop your imagination, come up with your own.

I will say right away that this article is not for beginners.

Despite the fact that now is the best time to make money even in our visual effects industry, many Internet users continue to complain about small salaries.

And it's not even about novice students, but rather strong specialists.

And so, I'll start with the facts: the average salary in the offices of most IT companies in the millionaire cities of the CIS = $1300-$2000. This also applies to our CG industry (post-production, game development, animation).

It can be counted on by hired employees with work experience of at least 2 years with an average workload and responsibility. From 2k to 3.5k$/month can be received by employees with higher responsibility, for example, supervisors, leads, generalists. The highest salary of a CG specialist that I have heard and can confirm is $4,000 (Kyiv).

But the problem is that quite a lot of excellent professionals do not earn as much as they would like. A few reasons why this is so that I have noticed in my 12 year career:

1. Low social activity

Or in other words, the lack of networking. In other words, you should be known. And preferably influential market participants.

It's no secret that the best jobs in good companies come from acquaintances. Note that there is little work on thematic sites where salaries exceed $3,000/month. They just don't advertise. The fact is that in the circles of communication of intelligent specialists there are always 2-3 of the same or even better specialists (such as prof. friendship). Most directors address their employees first. find me the same as you. And often they find.

2. Rare job change

“There is no better company anywhere. Stress. Difficult." These are all typical excuses, because of which we spend half our lives where we accidentally ended up after college.

More than once in the articles we mentioned that in domestic cgi companies there is practically no career growth, no matter what you are told at interviews. Yes, there are a few exceptions, but all the same, the growth of your salary within the same company will rarely exceed 15-20% in dollar terms (usually it does not change in any way for 5-7 years).

The easiest way is to resell yourself as a good specialist (if you are) to other companies for higher salaries and positions. So without much difficulty, you can get an increase in salary from 25 to 50%.

I recommend in the early stages of a career to change jobs once a year and a half. At a more mature stage - once every 2-3 years. Moreover, you yourself will understand this and reach such a schedule, if continuous development is important for you, just as it is for me.

3. No skill in selling yourself

Move on. Tell me, how many times in your life have you been interviewed in the last 2-3 years? Well, if more than two times. And this must be done. Post your resume on all job search sites and wait for calls / emails to come to you. Next, answer the calls and tell the new boss what a cool special you are and why you should be paid above the market. And look for jobs. On the Internet, with friends. And go to interviews! Learn, in general, to sell yourself.

5. Stagnation with prof. growth. Lack of ongoing continuing education

Think back to your last job change. How many tutorials did you review the month before and when you moved to a new company? How many questions were asked to new hires? How many new techniques and tricks did you learn? This is what happens 2-3 months before and in the first year of being in a new company. So…

A rare change of job often leads to the fact that a person stops developing. To be more precise, it begins to degrade. After the second or third year of being in the company, the employee slowly begins to be covered with a “film of God”, primarily in his own eyes.

Of course, professional growth and development of you as a person stops. Professional growth is one of your core values. If we discard everything else, you are paid a lot of money just because you are a good professional = you know how to quickly solve the tasks and problems of the company.

4. No need for money

Everything is simple here. Most of us earn just what we need to successfully stay awake in our comfort zone. Everything else is whining and discharge “It would be nice to buy a yacht next week, but a bad boss will not raise my salary.”

What to treat? Just expand your needs, the level of the norm. Fly to the sea to the Dominican Republic, walk around the showrooms of new cars. If you do this regularly, you will need money.

6. It's not yours

For all of the above to work, for you to grow as a CG and VFX pro, make sure you have a heart for it. Now on the Internet you can meet many beginner igrodelov, buzzers. They were inspired by some project and with burning eyes they are supposedly ready to play day and night. But this fuse passes in a week or two. Some in a month or half a year.

Creating visual effects and 3D graphics is actually not a simple, tedious, routine task. Here are not the easiest customers who need to be “understood and forgiven”. Therefore, make sure that the visual effects industry is what you really have a soul for. Only under this condition will it be easier for you to grow and develop, improve your skill level every year, learn new tools and techniques and, as a result, increase your income at least one and a half times every year.

Write your thoughts on this in the comments!

The main stages of creation

Often, novice artists wonder how to draw a neat lineart. Most experienced artists who use it in their work create it iteratively. I use 3 main stages: choosing an angle, searching for a design, and carefully working out.

Trying to do everything at once without sufficient experience leads to a lot of effort and time, because. usually one of the three points is not fulfilled at an adequate level, and has to be redone.

Dividing into iterations allows you to concentrate on a small amount of work. By choosing your angle in advance, you can start looking for a design without overburdening yourself with too much control over perspective. And, since in the process of searching for a design, one way or another, excess “dirt” will form in the drawing, you can not waste effort on excessively neat lines. At the final stage, we no longer need to look for a design and angle, so we can circle everything quickly and accurately.

Next, we add occluded. Occlusion is a shadow from diffused light. Our surrounding world is arranged in such a way that scattered light is always present when there is at least one light source. We see it around us all our lives, and we can read it, regardless of whether we know about its existence or not, and whether we understand the principles by which it works. Adding okluzhen to the drawing helps to achieve a better transfer of volume.

The next step is color. When choosing colors for individual parts of an object, you need to make sure that they look good together. There are no bad or good colors, it all depends on the chosen combinations.

In a separate layer, draw all own and falling shadows of the details and the entire object as a whole.

We adjust the intensity of the occluded so that it does not black out our oscilloscope.

We show the influence of sunlight and add reflections from the surrounding space.

At this stage, our task is to show the difference in the properties of materials. Some of them reflect light well, some, on the contrary, absorb. Some parts have smooth surfaces, while others have rough ones. All this should be reflected in their appearance.

Add markup to the screen and trace from the beam.

In post-processing, we add sharpening and slightly adjust the colors.

You can find the full lecture here:

Using 3D packages

As you can see, only a 2D editor was used to create this picture. This is more than enough to depict such a simple object. However, when it comes to complex scenes, the illustrator faces a number of difficult tasks, one of which is building the right perspective and lighting. In such a situation, the best solution is to use a bunch of 2D and 3D editors. As a 2D editor, I use the "industry standard" - Photoshop. And for three-dimensional modeling, I chose Zbrush and Maya for myself. The first one is the most popular sculpting package, and the second one is quite easy to learn, but at the same time has some serious functionality.

Below are the illustrations I created with this combination of tools:

This technique for creating illustrations is quite easy to learn. Here are examples of my students' work:

Visual effects and computer graphics have firmly entered our lives. Today, anyone is able to explore the mysterious and magical world of post-production and become an expert in this field. The tips below will help raise your VFX and CGI knowledge.

This is fairly obvious advice, but it is often ignored by beginners. The habit of looking and analyzing should become part of the work process or training. After watching a film with cool visual effects, review it again, but not as a spectator, but as a specialist. Try to find mistakes and partners, there are actually a lot of them. Analyze how the shot was created, how it was lit, and why it was done the way it was.

Copy

Try repeating frames from your favorite movies or videos. Of course, a cool team of artists was sitting on the creation of one cool shot. But I am sure that most of the frames can be realistically recreated with a minimal budget. The task is to create something similar with a minimum budget and maximum quality. Remember, you are doing this in the interest of your professional development. As a result, these works will fit perfectly into the portfolio, and they can be published on behance.

Who am I?

When you watch a Hollywood CGI blockbuster, remember that a team of professionals worked on every frame. Each team member did one highly specialized job. One group modeled while the other lighting these models, someone drew the environment, someone animated the characters, and someone composited it all, blurring the line between reality and the CG world. If everyone did everything, the result would be disastrous.

Therefore, it is important to decide what the soul lies to. What are you ready to do for 10-12 hours a day, not regretting a single second spent on work? You can choose several directions for yourself, but it is important to highlight the primary ones, and pull up the rest, if possible.

Learn the Basics

Being a highly specialized expert is important, but you need to understand the whole process of creating a visual work. If your job is to rig characters, then you need to understand and know how those characters were modeled, how best to light them, and how they will fit into the footage. Basic knowledge in each of these areas will give you a huge boost to development.

Chat and meet experts

Go to CG and film related events. Of course, there are very few of them in the CIS, but when they pass, real sharks of visual effects gather there.

It's never too late to learn or how to save a few years

A few years ago, it was believed that only a select few could become a VFX artist. In fact, that's how it was. Only the most diligent and persistent could find the necessary valuable information and spend hours studying programs through trial and error. Now everything is exactly the opposite. There is so much information that you can watch only tutorials all your life. But you won't get that far.

The only right way is to learn from professionals. Only under the control of the master will the student conquer the heights of the CGI industry.

The only question is where to go to study?

There is only one answer - to the best masters of their craft. For example, take studio courses TerminalFX just look at them portfolio to understand how cool teachers work there.
The money spent on training will pay off dozens, if not thousands of times. The field of computer graphics is only gaining momentum and specialists are always needed here.

Well, for inspiration, a selection of cool showreels and breakdowns. I really hope one day to see your work in the showreels of these cool studios:

Computer (CG) an artist who creates his works exclusively on a computer is a comprehensively developed person, because to create digital images you need to have a lot of technical knowledge. This distinguishes him from ordinary painters who do not need unnecessary tools other than canvas, brushes and paints.

1. It is believed that for any artist it is necessary to have talent. However, all famous graphic artists and painters claim that success consists of only one percent of talent, the remaining 99% are diligence and work. So, taking one percent as the original value, one can understand that it takes a lot of effort for an artist to be able to create, overcoming all the difficulties that arise, laziness and many other distractions.

Only constant training makes it possible to realize your talent.

2. A computer artist, like any other painter, must have the basics of academic drawing and painting. He must have a firm, full hand, a well-developed sense of composition and eye, as well as correct color perception. Only through diligent training does it become possible to achieve professional mastery in drawing.

3. For the competent execution of digital images, in addition to the classical basics of drawing and painting, additional knowledge is also required, such as a foreign language and mastery of special graphic programs. Without these skills, drawing will not bring pleasure, but will only become "heavy load".

4. Naturally, to create computer graphics, especially for three-dimensional and animated images, you need a fairly powerful computer.

5. A perfectly calibrated monitor with excellent color reproduction and high resolution is a prerequisite.

6. To realize your creative potential as a CG artist, you will need additional devices such as a computer mouse, graphics tablets, a scanner and a digital camera.

When working in vector programs, it is enough optical mouse.

For more accurate and complex drawings, you will need tablet, or it is also called . Graphic tablets have the same formats as paper - from A6 to A3. For professional computer graphics, the largest format is used.

To work with a digitizer, a special pen is required, shaped like a regular pen. This cursor is also called a stylus. A graphics tablet allows you to create a drawing as close as possible to the drawn image on plain paper; a masterfully executed work can be impossible to distinguish from a hand-made creation.

The principle of operation using a digitizer is the same as on a plain sheet of paper, however, "" in this case serves as a graphic device, and the created picture appears in the file and is displayed on the monitor.

The digitizer itself is often more valuable to the artist than the computer itself.

Auxiliary input devices are scanner and camera. It is often easier and more appropriate to draw a sketch on paper, then transfer it to an electronic format. To create the necessary pictures from nature (references), an indispensable assistant comes to the rescue - a camera.

There are already more advanced and expensive devices, such as, on which the image is created on the screen, and the pen has ink. For professional digital painting, such a device is much more convenient than a regular tablet.

7. Also, a computer artist in his work sometimes needs Printer. For printing large formats, you will need plotter. These devices have a fairly high cost and large dimensions. Few artists can afford them to work at home.

8. An important condition is an excellent command of graphic programs, which are indispensable in digital painting. There are many graphic editors, each of which has its own characteristics and advantages.

Any program has its purpose.

Adobe Photoshop is the most common editor, allows you to create both raster and vector images. This program allows you to work in the technique of photo art, create animated images.

Photoshop provides a wide range of different effects. In addition, this graphic editor has many convenient ways to save and edit files. The possibilities of the program are so great that there are very few people who have studied all of them.

Corel Painter also refers to no less popular programs among CG artists. This graphics editor has more than four hundred varieties of brushes. Corel is designed primarily for creating vector images, so a huge variety of effects and functions are not required in it.

Adobe Illustrator- similar in purpose and function to Corel Draw vector program.

3D Max, Maya, ZBrush- editors for 3D modeling, which require a powerful, at least 4-core, computer to work with. There are many more graphic editors, each of which has its own purpose.

Licensed programs cost a lot, but for computer artists for professional work, it is still recommended to purchase this version in order to avoid trouble with the verification authorities. Firms that produce these graphic programs are increasingly paying attention to copyright compliance.

There are alternative free programs, the most common of which is GIMP. A CG artist most often prefers one of his favorite editors, but the use of other programs is often necessary.

9. For an artist who specializes in digital painting, having the necessary skills, equipment, tools and knowledge of graphic editors will allow him to fruitfully create. But he, like any creative person, needs the approval of contemplators. Moreover, the more recognition, the better for the development of his creative potential.