Who, What, Where, When and Why? I do not know.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

CGHUB! Artists sharing knowledge from everywhere!

CGHUB, is The social network for professionals in entertainment - Animation,  Movies, Visual Effects, Games, Illustration, Concept Artists, and more. If you make cool stuff, join us!

I have fallen in love with this site! The amount of talent there is unbelievable. Their landing page is enough to make you want to pick up your art supplies and create. When you hit the front page, you'll see dozens of tiny thumbnails. Just pick one, any one, it doesn't matter. I guarantee, you will be taken to an artist who's work you will enjoy and quite possibly have even seen in your favorite video game or blockbuster movie!

If you want, you can make your profile with your own personal gallery of art work, your work experience and projects you've worked on. Right away, I jumped in! There's usually a challenge going on where everyone is encouraged to join. Right now, there's a 2D Drawing Jam featuring CTHULHU. Artists are invited to share their interpretation of this classic baddy. It's all very friendly, and every artist is more than willing to share and offer kudos, crits and advice.

The scariest forum is also the most helpful. It's so fantastic, it has it's own huge banner on the front page. It's called The Paintover Thread and it was started by CGHUB Moderator Juto, Justin Oaksford. Here, if you have an illustration you're working on and you've got tired eyes and you're looking for a different direction, or something just isn't quite right, or you have a finished painting and you're looking for some advice, Juto and other artists will do a paintover. If you're unfamiliar with that, another artist (or sometimes several) will take the image you posted and literally, paint over it, and will repost suggestions and changes they have made. 

Being the adventuresome sort and having a piece that's been on my hard drive for a couple of months where I was just deadlocked and didn't like where it was going, I posted it up in the paintover thread.

I was really unhappy with it the way it was, and I hoped I could get some feedback on it and boy, did I ever!

Justin's first paintover was an immediate improvement and, there was a bitter pill I had to swallow that went along with it.


I mean, look at that!!!! That's gorgeous! 

I have always struggled with color. Just because I was so comfortable with black and white and had really rested upon that skill set to get me started in the field, I never really had to do much color work. Even so, I did manage to provide quite a bit of color pieces, a lot of advertising illustrations, some covers, dozens and dozens of collectible card pieces,and the like, but I always knew it was my Achille's Heel. It really showed in this piece.

I took the suggestions and revamped it. Already, I was feeling much better about it, but still, it lacks the spontaneity and solid confidence of his first paint over. Since I thought the piece was coming along pretty ok, I decided to submit it again. Hopefully, some definite improvements could be seen and darn, if he didn't do it to me again!

Not only did he flip it, he made it better again! 
There is some serious talent at CGHUB and I really love the way every one is active, friendly and more than willing to share their expertise and have a bit of fun along the way! CHECK IT OUT!



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