Last weekend we held our last live workshop for 2019, Beyond Photoshop. We didn’t realize that this was our 17th event! This workshop was very unique, we taught Photoshop processes and techniques that are used by industry professionals that create concept art, matte paintings and digital illustrations.
We began the workshop chatting about our creative experiences and careers. Then we jumped into developing a quick story and narrative for our image. We came up with a bunch of visual prompts hidden in mysterious little envelopes and were revealed once chosen by the student. This was really fun, and gave us a container to begin our story. Take a look at the prompts and images below.
From there, we developed digital sketches of thumbnails to work out a composition for our image. For this practice to work, you need a solid foundation for your illustration, and this saves a ton of time. We held several reviews to discuss our decisions and art direct our imagery.
Once our thumbnail was decided on, we collected high-resolution stock imagery from https://mattepaint.com, Pixel Squid, Textures.com and even Mr. Cutout. These are all great resources for finding high-quality imagery— this is 50% of the challenge for creating this type of art.
After we had all of our imagery chosen, and our perspective planes planned out, it was time to get to pre-comping. We front load masking each image, and this saves a ton of time too. That way we can just drag in our images, and place our images in and position them without dealing with transparency.
Lastly, we unify the elements using the Match Color tool and adjustment layers. Then do over all color grading and image finishing.
The students did an amazing job! None of the student ever created imagery like this before, or practiced these techniques—the work came out awesome!
As always, we truly appreciate all of our attendees and we do our best to take care of them for the weekend. We understand that weekends are very important, and we love that there are individuals willing to invest in themselves and join us. Thank you all. We will see you in the new year!
