CGChosen No03 Characters June2007 PDF

CG CHOSEN | issues 3 | June 2007
characters
FEATURED Please note that
IN THIS ISSUE
the magazine completely free and can
not be sold All content belong to their
respective authors and owners.
MAKING of’s Chosen Artists

Wrestler by Eduardo Martin Julve Olivier Ponsonnet
Three Lines by Henning Ludvigsen Marta Dahlig
Night Rider by Hyun-hee Lee Glen Angus
Revised Holy Warrior by Glen Angus Henning Ludvigsen
Soa Lee
GALLERY of most impressive artworks INTERVIEWS

Eduardo Martin Julve, Florian Delarque, with digital artists
Piotr Fox Wysocki, Suresh kumar, Jack Zhang, Soa Lee
Hyun Hee Lee, Marcin Klicki, Silvia Fusetti, Marta Dahlig
Nikolay Yeliseyev, David Munoz, Velazquez,
CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

issues 3 | June 2007 CONTENT
INTERVIEWS with digital artists
Soa Lee
Marta Dahlig
MAKING of’s
Wrestler by Eduardo Martin Julve
Three Lines by Henning Ludvigsen
Night Rider by Hyun-hee Lee
Revised Holy Warrior by Glen Angus
Chosen Artists
Olivier Ponsonnet
Marta Dahlig
Henning Ludvigsen
Soa Lee page 57 page 53
Glen Angus
GALLERY of most impressive artworks

Eduardo Martin Julve, Florian Delarque, Piotr Fox Wysocki, Suresh kumar,
Jack Zhang, Hyun Hee Lee, Marcin Klicki, Silvia Fusetti, Nikolay Yeliseyev,
David Munoz, Velazquez, Marcos Aurelio, Dean Holden
page 47 page 42
page 32 page 35
page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007
http://www.3dexport.com
3DExport is professional online shop on sale ready to use 3D models. You can
buy high quality model or start to sell own models and to earn money!
Chosen Character Artist
Olivier Ponsonnet
“I don’t study CG or even arts. I’m totally self-taught. I’ve learned everything in books and
on the net. I always work freely, without methods or deadlines. I try several methods until I
get something interesting. It’s not uncommon to stumble on something completely different
from my initial idea. I try to create pictures with personality and style. I attempt to produce
pictures that make people feel something, like a mood or a feeling. I also search for aes-
theticism and beauty through all the female portraits that I create. Beauty is really fascinat-
ing, because it’s really fragile: a little something can make your character beautiful. That’s
what I try to inject into my images. I work with 3ds Max for modeling, shading, lighting and
rendering. For post-production and painting maps, I use Photoshop with a graphic tablet.”
www.reiv.fr re1v@free.fr

CG CHOSEN Olivier Ponsonnet
Fey Artists
characters

Moon Key Artists
characters

Fear Artists
characters

Red Opium Artists
characters

Necromanser Artists
characters

CG CHOSEN Marta Dahlig
Artists
characters

MartaDahlig Art has been the biggest passion of my life since the very
beginning. My parents told me, I was drawing before
even learning how to walk.
For many years painting has been something I did off-
time; my studies have never been art related - I am purely
self-taught. Nowadays, I find myself being sucked into the
art world more and more and I am now sure that that is
what I want to be doing in the future... I simply cannot
imagine my life without it.
www.marta-dahlig.com marta@marta-dahlig.com
10 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

His Only Friend Artists
characters

Pandora Artists
characters

Angel’s Egg Artists
characters
commissioned by ImagineFX magazine

Locked Artists
characters
commissioned by ImagineFX magazine

Doves Artists
characters

Henning Ludvigsen
www.henningludvigsen.com | henlu@online.no

Henning Ludvigsen
The Last Incarnation Artists

Henning Ludvigsen
Raised By Bats Artists

Henning Ludvigsen
Three Lines Artists

Henning Ludvigsen
Wall Artists

Soa Lee
www.soanala.com soanala@naver.com

Soa Lee
Grace Of Snow Artists

Soa Lee
Rebith of Elene Artists

Soa Lee
Taurus Artists

Soa Lee
Virgo Story Artists

Glen Angus
www.gangus.net | gangus76@hotmail.com

Glen Angus
Roman Charge Artists

Glen Angus
Victory Gal Artists

Glen Angus
Victorry Gal “Split Fire“ Artists

Glen Angus
Revised Holy Warrior Artists

2Textured - High Resolution Textures for digital artists | Huge collection of textures blueprints, photo refer-
ences, human anatomy. All for 3D Artist Wants. Updated weekly!
Check it: http://www.2textured.com

CG CHOSEN Making Of
characters
Eduardo Martin has been working in the Cg in-

dustry for more than 10 years. During this time he
has been involved in all kind of CG projects, from
tv animated series or videogames to VFX for tv
commercials.
In 2000 he co-founded the animation studio Pixel

in motion which he leaded for almost 5 years. He
currently works as freelance 3D artist for tv com-
mercials.
www.theposmaker.com edu@theposmaker.com
Wrestling Fighter
by Eduardo Martin Julve
CG CHOSEN Wrestling Fighter
Making Of
characters
Concept
I have always been fascinated by those
amazing mexican figthers so I decided to
create a 3D charicature of one of them. The
image represents a photographic sesion of
one of the fighters, may be to get some pic-
tures for a magazine interview.
I gathered some images from internet to get

some ideas about the costumes of the real
fighters and I used that information to dress
up the character. (Image to the right)
I started with a quick and simple rough

sketch. Unfortunatelly Iґm not very skilled
with the 2D stuff so I was deciding the look
of the character as I was working on it in
3D.
Modeling & Texturing

I modeled and textured the character in
the standard “Da Vinci” position. Working
that way it was easier the modeling, mirror-
ing of the geometry and the creation of the
UV maps. Once finished I did a quick rigg
that allowed me to put him in the current
pose. I wasnґt extremely worried about a
perfect skinning because I was going to fix
the bad deformation issues by hand once
in the pose.
I used mental ray fast subsurface materials

for the skin and standard maya shaders with
specular maps for the costume.

CG CHOSEN Wrestling Fighter
Making Of
characters
Background Final Retouch

Finally I modeled a simple background, rep- I added in photoshop the frame represent-
resenting the empty gym where the char- ing a picture taken by a high format camera
acter usually trains. and tweaked a little the image levels.
As you can see you donґt need very fancy

tools/rendering engines/super pro tricks for
creating an appealing image so I hope this
small making of will encourage other people
to create nice renderings ;)
Thank you very much for reading!

Lightning Setup
The lighting setup was also quite simple.
There was an area light as key light from the
top with a very narrow cone and with a lin-
ear decay to focus the center of interest on
his face.
I added a front fill light for the face with a

small value and a back light to add a little
rim to the left side of the body to separate
the character from the dark background. I
also created a plane with a white surface
shader that will add some reflexions and
some diffuse lighting once I switched on the
final gather.

CG CHOSEN Making Of
characters
Three Lines
by Henning Ludvigsen
Henning Ludvigsen is a Norwegian digital artist with
basic traditional art education and with over 13 years
of experience in digital art, design, and illustration. He
is currently working as the Art Director at a computer
game development company in Greece, and is work-
ing on personal and external projects during his
spare time.
He is an awarded artist, with features in

several books from Ballistic Publishing, is
featured on dozens of websites, and
to be found as columnist in the sci-
fi and fantasy Magazine, Imag-
ineFX from Future Publishing.
He is also running Pixelbrush,
a small digital art-commu-
nity.
www.henningludvigsen.com
henlu@online.no

CG CHOSEN Three Lines
Making Of
characters
Line Art
I’ve always been fascinated by realism, and
because of this it is really important to me
that the base line-art sketch has got proper
proportions. I usually use the old trick by put-
ting a grid on top of a reference photo I’ve
shot, and then I copy the same grid onto a
blank canvas and start drawing grid by grid
from what I see on the reference photo. I
make sure to keep the grid on a separate
layer so that I easily can remove the grid at
a later stage, and also keep the drawing on
a separate layer underneath the grid. Still, if
you are focusing on mastering human anat-
omy, this is not the way to go as this is simply
more of a way to save some time and mak-
ing sure you get a result that is pretty close
to your reference photography.

Making Of
characters
Brush Usage The reason why I start off in grey scale tones
is because I prefer getting the shape up
porarily by pressing “Alt” while using the
paint brush) directly where I’m painting for
and running before having to even think mixing new values directly to get smooth
Personally I really like using hard edged about colours. Some like it the other way transitions. For example, if I have a dark grey-
brushes as they resemble the traditional around and start out with colours. However, scale tone, and then a brighter one next to
brushes in both the way of working and you should do what comes natural to you, this, I will colour pick one of these tones and
when it comes to the result. On this exam- and if you don’t know yet, why not give mix it with the other, and then colour pick
ple, the sample to the left is a basic soft both techniques a try? the new tone and paint with this one and
brush, the one in the middle is a hard edged continue like this until I have a smooth transi-
brush, and the one to the right is a textured As I go along using the new hard edged tion. This makes the painting look a lot more
pencil brush. brush, I simply go over the entire character interesting and dynamic than using the
keeping the flow of the brush low (2-15%). I smooth air-brush looking brushes.
For this painting, I exclusively used a hard colour pick (get the eyedropper tool tem-
edged brush (the sample in the middle).
To make a simple hard edged brush in Pho-
toshop, simply follow these settings:
1: Make sure you have the brush tool se-

lected, and choose a hard edge brush (the
ones that looks like a hard circle.
2: Now open the “brushes tab” (Windows/

brushes). Click the “Brush tip shape” button
and drag the “spacing” slider to 10%. If this
is set too high, the stroke looks like a row of
balls instead of one single stroke, so keeping
the spacing narrow makes the strokes look
nice and smooth.
Blocking In, Gray

Scale Shading
Once I have the line art version ready, I de-
lete the layer with the grid, and then I make
another layer behind the line art drawing
which I fill with a grey value using a hard
brush. Once this is done, I collapse those
two layers so that I have the character out-
line with a solid base on a separate layer.
Now I start adding shape to the charac-

ter by shading with grey scale tones only
by looking closely at the reference photo.
I make sure to have the “lock transparent
pixels” option on the layers palette enabled,
as this makes sure I don’t paint outside the
character.

Making Of
characters
Rough Colours
Having the grey-scale version of the char-
acter in a decent state, I spend some time
to find a colour-palette suitable for the skin
tones I would like this piece to have. Some
times I base this on previous paintings I’ve
done, other times I create completely new
ones. This time I wanted to use cold colours,
close to porcelain values, so I made a pal-
ette with skin tones with quite a bit of blue
and purple in it.
Now I turn on the “Lock transparent pixels”

button on the “layers” menu so that I don’t
paint outside the edges of the character,
and set the brush to “color” mode and start
adding rough colours to the character. This
is just to get a base, and will be changed
completely once I start shading for real.

Making Of
characters
Rendering Colours
Once the rough colourized version is ready,
I change the brush mode back to “normal”
and start shading the entire piece all over
again, using the same hard edged brush
with low flow. When doing this, it’s really im-
portant to colour-pick where I am painting
as I go along.
Instead of mixing colours on the side, I like

mixing directly as I paint, and I also intro-
duce vague values of all kinds of colours all
over where I’m working. I think this makes
the result appear more dynamic and more
interesting as you get all kinds of colour-
variations. It also creates some imperfec-
tion which is good in my opinion, especially
when working digitally.

Making Of
characters
More Details, After trying a couple of more crazy alterna-

tives, going for a simple approach is usu- Finishing The
Background ally what is best, so I figured that I wanted
to keep the background simple. The dark Piece
shadow in the top left is aiding the impres-
sion that she is partially standing in the Once almost done, I go over the entire
After spending quite some time shading skin shadow, and by breaking up the shadow piece checking details and that ambient
tones, fabrics folds, texture work and hair, with the three extruded lines in the wall, this colours are right.
the time has come to add a background added a little bit of depth to something is a
and extra elements. basic, flat wall.

Making Of
characters
More Details, I follow these steps when making a noise

grain:
4: Now add a noise to this layer (Filter/Noise/
Add noise), and set it to 400%, Gaussian.
Background 1: Make a new layer on top of everything. 5: Run filter: “Filter/Brush strokes/Spatter” a
couple of times to break up the noise pat-
The last thing I do is to add a noise grain on 2: Fill this layer with this value of grey: R=128, terns.
top of everything. This to make the piece G=128, B=128
look less computer painted, and to add 6: Run filter: “Filter/Blur/Blur”.
some imperfection to the values. If you look 3: Set the layer blending option from “Nor-
closely at a digital photo, you will see that mal” to “Overlay”. This will make the layer 7: Set the layer “Opacity” to 5-10%, depend-
there are not real clean values, each sur- with the grey scale fill appear 100% trans- ing on what looks best.
face usually has got some grain to it. parent.

CG CHOSEN Making Of
characters
Night Rider
by Hyun-hee Lee
www.digieyes3d.com digieyes@msn.com

CG CHOSEN Night Rider
Making Of
characters
by Hyun-hee Lee
This image is an extension of Rider series that

Concept I worked before. At the time I worked on it I
was only a modeler so it hadn’t been easy
I worked on design concept little by little for
to come up with a good idea. I studied vari-
a long time.
ous pictures of live models to make up face
shape and the hair style.
2D concept could have been little boring
but it was a good challenging.
The suit Woman to wear was a big

question for me. Even Material was a
hard task. Original white suits was on
a Website. But I was thinking of a new-
material look.
I didn’t put other designs on the back-

ground to make the character stand
out. I guess it is design process. I think
this kind of riders can be easily found,
thus it troubled me a lot.
Modeling
I was thinking of using ZBRUSH for face mod-
eling. But I used MUD BOX instead.
It is good to have a Camera View like

MAYA. Getting shape of a face is easy
in MAYA. MAYA also has soft modifi-
cation tool, but MUD BOX helped me
to add more of expressions, like play-
ing with clay.
Other parts, I modeled with MAYA. I

wasn’t so familiar with other tools yet.

Making Of
characters
by Hyun-hee Lee
Face Material
1 Bump test 2 Specular test 3 Skin test
Hair Costume Tests
As for hair, I was thinking of Shave and

Haircut, but it seemed they won’t
match to the hair style and my con-
cept.
That brought me back to the starting

point.
1 Mask 2 Full test

Making Of
characters
by Hyun-hee Lee
Mapping
I used BODY PAINTER for mapping tasks. It
has lots of functions which are similar to that
PHOTOSHOP has. Especially using PSD file is
very convenient.
But PC spec should be good enough. I had

some crash downs with my PC during the
process.
1 Painting Directly on the body Material Rollout 3
2 Material Structure

Making Of
characters
by Hyun-hee Lee
DOF
I present here Dof PRO setings I used to add
depth to my picture (to the right). It may be
useful for you.
Rendering COmpositing
I used MENTAL RAY to render the char- Lastly, compositing. I separated layers and similar to Camera. Once again, I realized
acter and environment. I think MAYA rendered, and composited in PHOTOSHOP. that, in 3D Illustration, Program Test is as im-
8.5’s MENTAL RAY had been improved To out-focus Luminance Depth image, I portant as concept or idea sketch.
a lot with rendering. It felt so much fast- used a PHOTOSHOP filter called DOF PRO.
er than before, which helped me to do The End
lots of tests. I am satisfied with the result. It has a feeling

CG CHOSEN Making Of
characters
Revised Holy Warrior

by Glen Angus
Currently I am a Senior
Artist at Raven Software
(since 2002) working on
Prev Gen and Next Gen
console games focusing on
character and level textur-
ing, promotional and load
screen paintings, as well as
concept art. I have shipped
all of the X men Legends fran-
chise action RPG’s, and have
just finished Marvel Ultimate Al-
liance this Nov., I am currently
underway with the team at Raven
working on a new title, which has
yet to be announced. I now spend
my free time undertaking personal proj-
ects such as ‘Filling Valhalla” and ‘Victory
Gals’ to expand my technique and stay
current and competitive in the digital art
community.
www.gangus.net gangus76@hotmail

CG CHOSEN Revisid Holy Warrior
Making Of
characters
by Glen Angus
Introduction
This is a commissioned piece made for a
client who wanted to portray a holy war-
rior in the ancient armor to face the evils of
today.
My main goal was to produce something

that have elements of the past and the
present and tie them together to give the
entire painting an ancient and an archaic
mood. I mainly used Photoshop because
I’ve founded that I have more control with
this software. I followed my classic style that
starts with a brown sepia toned tight pen-
cil. Then I scanned finished paper work and
slowly applied lighting and tonal values and
then began glazing colors in “Overlay” and
“Color” layers.
Line Art
The character anatomy was started as
a quick gestural sketch. I made sev-
eral of these staying extremely loose
in line value. I was blocking in basic
shapes keeping the armor and the
weapon in mind and trying to strike a
good balance of the character in his
pose and a sense of equally distribut-
ed weight. This way the character got
looking stronger and more grounded
- less awkward or off-balance.
From there I started to tighten up the

drawing – working with a darker sepia
toned pencil and putting in the details
and working out the mechanics of the
armor. I don’t take my quick sketch-
es farther than that if the anatomy
doesn’t “feel” right. This stage usu-
ally ends up with the proper anatomy.
This might not be an exact process,
but is something that I have found a
decent amount of success with.

Making Of
characters
by Glen Angus
Lights and
Shadows
I had chosen this almost papyrus back-
drop to work from because it suited
best of all to the client’s archival sub-
ject matter. The natural brownish tone
was perfect as I usually like to
start working from a neutral
brown to begin adding my
glazing of colors after.

Making Of
characters
by Glen Angus
Colors And
Reflections
I like to block in my backdrops keeping in
mind the basic sense of character lighting
that I have worked out previously. From
there I played on metallic reflections to help
immersing my subject into the scene.

Making Of
characters
by Glen Angus
Lightning
I made some minor changes to the
lighting, because ultimately I wanted
the picture to be “readable” easily
from a distance. I wanted it to have
a strong silhouette value because it
was planned as the cover of a book
which I want to have some shelf
presence feeling. Sometimes you
have to bend the rules a bit to make
everything come out right.

Making Of
characters
by Glen Angus
Final
Composition
Because of subject matter requests I want-
ed to break the backdrop up with a horizon.
And what could be better than a vague city
panorama? As the warrior had to be a holy
fighter I decided to add some light beams
coming through the clouds to add to his
presence, as well as to lead the viewer’s
eye to the main character in the painting.
The superimposed ancient text is there to
add a visual balance to the composition.
Overall I hope it has come together to be a
moving piece of art that has a slightly differ-
ent feeling then all the other fantasy paint-
ings in style and execution.
P.s. The angels in the sky are just

there because they are cool. Always
inspired by those brief but amazing
shots of angels silhouetted behind
the clouds from that old low budget
thriller “Prophecy”

CG CHOSEN Interview
characters
Soa Lee
Interview with
I am a CG illustrator residing
in Korea. I have held an art
director position for game
designs and animation 3D
Illustration projects retained
by companies such as ELSA,
LG, Actoz. Currently, I am
working as a freelancer who
are willing to retain projects
that shares interests and vi-
sions with mine.
www.soanala.com soanala@naver.com

CG CHOSEN Soa Lee
Interview
characters
with
What education do you have?

Ever since I was a kid, I always loved danc-
ing and music. Even without a formal train-
ing, I had dreams of becoming a ballerina
or a music composer. Although I had dem-
onstrated talents in art drawings, I preferred
dancing and music.
As more school works required me to be-

come tied up at a desk, I started developed
interest in drawing. I started to do sketches
of the images of the favourite entertainers
and my friends started to love my drawings.
Ever since then, I started to become an
aspiring artist notwithstanding a limited art
classes to prepare for art college entrance
process. I started to receive more in-depth
training after I got into the Hongik Art Col-
lege as a Western Art major. Even though
I started to regret why I chose western art
over design major, the required courses
surely enabled me to acquire broad range
of skills sets and understanding to become a
well rounded artist. As time passed by, I re-
alized what I learned during the art college
days definitely come in handy.
Where did you learn CG?

I was first exposed to CG when I enrolled a
for a CG classes to learn about computers.
However, I studied on my own to develop
professional knowledge and skill sets.
Do you have any favorite art- Did you try painting in 2D? Why
ists whose creative level you do you prefer 3D?
tried to attain while starting in
I was not in love with 3D as a tool be-
CG?
cause of its artificial looking nature. How-
ever, I couldn’t give up on 3D because
I developed an interest in CG when I
of its versatility to be used in animation
saw an animation named Akira by Det-
productions. I always remind myself the
suka Osamu. I was impressed by the de-
benefits of 3D to create moving models.
tailed expressions and the movements
I feel that 3D characters are alive. Like a
even though they were created long
doll, characters await me to brush their
time ago. Thereafter, I fell in love with
hair and make them move. They are al-
the genre of animation as I was exposed
ways ready to pose differently, make dif-
to more animations. I started to develop
ferent facial expressions or change their
interest in CG around this time because I
hair style. In 3D, the more jobs you do,
heard that I could created my own ani-
the more data you have, which broad-
mation by myself using CG techniques.
ens the possibilities. That’s the biggest at-
Thus, I would venture to say my CG ca-
traction to me. Of course being able to
reer was inspired by Japanimations such
easily copy is a very useful too.
as Akira or Gong Gak Raiders.

CG CHOSEN Soa Lee
Interview
characters
with
Now the advancement of 3D tools and

The first 3D program I learned was
my technical expertise allowed me to
3DS Max. I learned Maya when I was
3D images that I find myself satisfied
working at an animation company
with.
and similar interface and usage of
3DS Max appealed to me. Recent
2D painting techniques are more versa-
advent of great renderers such as
tile and intuitive when you are perform-
V-ray, Mental Ray and Brasil and the
ing initial concept stage. I must accom-
heavy reliance of Korean CG industry
pany 2D sketch work as the advanced
over Max make me reluctant to give
3D skills require more creativity. 2D is
up on them.
also very useful when you are present-
ing the concepts and ideas of the proj-
ects to the clients. What are your main techniques
of modeling characters? What
What software are you using and do you think is the most compli-
why? cated in modeling characters?
The first 3D program I learned was 3DS Most of my characters are focused
Max. I learned Maya when I was work- on “beauty.” Traditional techniques
ing at an animation company and simi- using Nurbs methods allowed me to
lar interface and usage of 3DS Max ap- create female character with beau-
pealed to me. Recent advent of great Now the advancement of 3D tools and my tiful face and great skins. However,
renderers such as V-ray, Mental Ray and technical expertise allowed me to 3D im- wider range of projects require me to
Brasil and the heavy reliance of Korean ages that I find myself satisfied with. resort to sculpting programs. Ability
CG industry over Max make me reluc- to use brush with tools such as Mud-
tant to give up on them. 2D painting techniques are more versatile box or Zbrush enables me to be more
and intuitive when you are performing ini- technical and versatile. Thus, I try to
What are your main techniques of tial concept stage. I must accompany 2D apply sculpting modeling techniques
modeling characters? What do you sketch work as the advanced 3D skills re- to wider range of projects.
think is the most complicated in quire more creativity. 2D is also very useful
when you are presenting the concepts and Where do you get ideas for your
modeling characters? ideas of the projects to the clients. amazing 3D artworks?
Most of my characters are focused on What software are you using and
“beauty.” Traditional techniques using My ideas begin with what I want to
Nurbs methods allowed me to create why? see or do. Staying with this allows me
female character with beautiful face to retain the passion and concentra-
and great skins. However, wider range tion required to complete arduous
of projects require me to resort to sculpt- projects. Ideal project environment
ing programs. Ability to use brush with become available when my expec-
tools such as. tations are shared by the clients. I try
to do some sketches of the first impres-
sions from the theme presented by the
clients. Thereafter, I build database
and idea from the compiled ideas or
web searches. Sometimes, I get ideas
from unexpected sources. Some
great ideas and images pop up while
I am watching TV, reading books and
listening to music and I compile the
sketches and notes. These become
a great treasure when I am searching
for ideas.
Are you spending much time

creating new artworks in your
free time?
I consider all my time as free time be-

CG CHOSEN Soa Lee
Interview
characters
with
cause I plan and direct all my projects on

my own. Fortunately, I have been working
on the projects that I loved so far. Projects
continued and sometimes coincided with

one another to make my schedules rather
tight. However, I always strive to reserve
time for my family. This allows me to gratifi-
cation from completing the projects.
Why do you prefer creating female I want the character to display how I male characters. If I lose interest in beau-
characters? understand her emotion and thoughts tiful objects, my images will change. I just
as well as her body. Female is my main don’t know when that will be.
subject not because I feel more com-
I guess the way I look at woman can be
fortable with it over the male subject. It Tell us about your recent Grace of
a little different from how male artists do.
is because the female subject interests the snow artwork.
When an artist draws a woman, it’s usu-
me the most, more than any other sub-
ally ‘a woman you want to see’. I do too,
jects. For now, that is.
but the difference is that I add ‘a woman
who represents me’. It gives me catharsis.
The female character has my Utopia. Also, Your female characters are quite
attractive. Are you base your char-
acters on real people?
My characters are proportionally

scaled to the real images, thus, I refer
the pictures of actual people as well.
However, aspects of CG that enhance
the features of the character allow me
to develop my own characters.
Basically you have only two pub-

lished male character – Ramses
and Aquarius. Why they?
At the end of the winter, Grace-Queen of
Two lads of the Gemini were also male, snowdrop tries to sow gold color seeds.
haha. Those two male charactered Its spring goddess inspires life to these
created for the following reasons: seeds and creates new sprouts and
Ramses was created for Egyptian ex- she will fall in deep sleep until the winter
hibit in Korea Aquarius was created to comes again...
continue on the 12 constellation proj-
ects. They were both difficult for me to Since early times I’d like to make image
create because they are male char- that have feelings of faerie and gorgeous
acters, however, they were interest- like the ad of Christian Dior; The Face get
ing because they both were beautiful inspiration from Milla Jovovich. During

CG CHOSEN
characters
Interview with
Marta Dahlig
www.marta-dahlig.com | marta@marta-dahlig.com

Interview
characters
with
chances I get, I am greatly stressing the ne-

cessity of focusing on this aspect.
What software are you using and

why?
I am working in Procreate Painter 7, Corel
Painter X and Adobe Photoshop simultane-
ously.
While I use Painter 7 out of sentiment (it was

my first more “professional” digital painting
program) and love it for its simplicity, I use
Painter X every time I want to render natural
brush textures.
Photoshop is my favorite, however, thanks

to its custom brush creation quality, double
window view and stability of use.
Do you have some special paint-

ing techniques?
Tell us about yourself please? balancing tools and so on. Well, every artist has their own way of paint-
ing, I suppose. What works for me, howev-
I was born in Poland on a cold, winter night To me, one of the biggest advantages of er, might not work for anyone else on this
of December 23rd, 1985 :) It was clear from digital art is the possibility of creating one’s planet. :)
the very beginning, that art was the big- own brushes in programs like Adobe Pho-
gest passion of my life, as I started using toshop. Such custom brushes can greatly During my adventure with digital art, I have
crayons before I even learned how to walk. speed up the workflow and dramatically of course learned some tricks on the way.
Actually, I was the ultimate weapon of de- improve any painting. Those are mainly concerning the function-
struction – I painted on everything I could, ality of programs I work in, layer and brush
including walls and carpets. I am currently Where did you learn CG? modes, easier/faster ways of achieving cer-
studying Marketing at the University of War- tain effects and so on.
saw in hopes of combining the knowledge I am fully self-taught. Aside from an art his-
gathered with my passions in the role of an tory theoretical class in high school, I never I have been sharing some of these for a
Art Director. intended any art courses nor really followed while now, in my tutorials done for Future
any tutorials. In my early CG days I basically Publishing’s ImagineFX.
Why do you prefer Computer spent a lot of time analyzing the paintings I
painting instead of regular? admired and experimenting until I was able
to achieve similar results.
Despite its various advantages, traditional
art, in my opinion, doesn’t offer as many What was the hardest stage on our
possibilities as the digital media. Aside from learning way?
the all-powerful ctrl+z option, artists are en-
couraged to experiment thanks to the pos- Definitely the very beginning, when I learned
sibility of saving files, various filters, colour how to choose original skin tones for my
characters. I spent a few years
learning to actually be able to
paint skin with colours other than
the beige, “fleshy” ones. It took
a lot of studying, experimenting
(and failing) to finally be able to
render a normal looking skin with
blue or green shades.
The truth is that, for realistic paint-

ing, the knowledge of anatomy
isn’t even nearly enough itself – it
definitely needs to be strength-
ened by a thorough knowledge
of colouring. That is why, on all commissioned by ImagineFX magazine

Interview
characters
with
some fabric samples (silk, taffeta, satin,

lace, velvet, linen, chiffon etc) and try
to analyze the differences.
Check, how taffeta bounces off dozens
of colours, how under the same light
source silk’s highlights are much more
“condensed” and lighter, the transitions
between shadows and highlights sharp-
er than in velvet, which’s highlights seem
to seemingly merge with midtones and
shadows. Drape the materials around
chairs to get some reference on how
the folds look - are they thick and stiff?
Or are they barely formed?
Painting textiles is not extremely hard to

do, once you gather a good reference
base, do some careful analysis and pa-
Satin fabric is perfect on all your tiently recreate the effects over and
artworks? What is the key to suc- over again.
cessful painting cloth made of such
material? Where do you get ideas for
your outstanding characters?
Thank you! Well, let me tell you something
that concerns painting any type of textile: I cannot even name all of the sources
I draw my inspiration from. :) It can be
If you want the textiles in your paintings be music, moods, advertisements, movies
told apart, the most crucial and so on. Most often, however, I am
thing to understand simply inspired by a single colour – most
is the structure of of the time my ideas are born and
a painted fab- formed around a shade I love.
ric. It affects
not only the Where do you work now? What
way the drap-
ing and folds
is your position there?
look, but also
I am a freelance illustrator, currently
the way it reacts
being a regular contributor to Future
to light!
Publishing’s ImagineFX magazine. If you
check the latest issues, you can find
Try to commissioned by ImagineFX magazine
many tutorials of my authorship, includ-
gather
ing some anatomy, colouring and styl-
up versity work with freelance assignments,
ization tips. I truly could never ask for a
most of my free time, aside from spending
better, more fulfilling job - it combines all
it with family and my boyfriend, is devoted
of things I love doing: painting, writing
to painting. I love my free evenings, when
and teaching.
I can just sit down at the computer with
some chocolate and a cup of steaming
Are you spending much time vanilla tea, open up a program and paint
creating new artworks in your till the morning comes.
free time?
Tell us also about your recent
Even though it’s some- Locked artwork. What is this
times quite hard to
woman thinking of?
coordinate my Uni-
Locked was a piece done for a Classical
Stylization Workshop for ImagineFX. Howev-
er, it was also a try at merging the classical
style of W. Bouguereau with a more surreal
twist.
The whole meaning of the painting, to me,
is searching for happiness in life, here repre-
commissioned by ImagineFX magazine sented by opening a locked heart: Do you

Interview
characters
with
see the keyhole under her breast? There image commissioned by ImagineFX magazine
are keys lying all around her, being obvi-
ously thrown away, as they did not fit. She
is however, holding the last of the keys in
her hand. Has she tried to put it in the key-
hole yet? If so, is she happy because it fit,
or is her smile a sad one, as she finally lost
all hope for finding happiness? Or maybe
she is yet to try opening the lock, anxious
of the result?
I leave the final interpretation up to you. :)
What was the hardest case dur-

ing your creative career? What
was the most inspiring case?
The first years with CG were definitely the
hardest. I was stressed over all things I had
to learn and improve (well, I still am...), con-
stantly battling with colouring, texturing
and anatomy, but most of all I was just con-
cerned with finding my own recognizable
style.
The breakthrough came in late December

2004, when I started my Seven Deadly Sins
series. It was then, when I finally found some-
thing that I could call “my style”, when I fi-
nally found the right inspiration and ideas to
combine pure aesthetics with art nouveau
designs and deeper symbolism. It was also
a huge career milestone and the beginning
of my more professional journey in the digi-
tal art world – I have been surprised a totally
overwhelming feedback on the series (and
still do), both from my friends and business
contacts. It was then, when I started receiv-
ing my first more professional work proposi-
tions. commissioned by ImagineFX magazine

Your advertise here
contact: sales@3dm3.com
GALLERY
Chosen 3D Character Artworks
62 page image “Red Rider“ by Hyun-hee Lee | digieyes@msn.com CG Chosen magazine | June 2007
Eduardo Martin Julve
Valle Paraiso Kids Gallery
http://www.theposmaker.com | du@theposmaker.com

Hada Gallery
http://www.theposmaker.com | edu@theposmaker.com

Florian Delarque
Binah Gallery
http://chokmah.cgsociety.org | floriandelarque@hotmail.fr

Hyun-hee Lee
Night Rider Gallery
http://www.digieyes3d.com | digieyes@msn.com

Hyun-hee Lee
Red Rider 2nd Generation Gallery
http://www.digieyes3d.com | digieyes@msn.com

Jack Zhang
Flower Messanger Gallery
http://jackzhang.cgsociety.org | zhangziwen1101@hotmail.com

Jack Zhang
Little Runaway Princess Gallery
http://jackzhang.cgsociety.org | zhangziwen1101@hotmail.com

Marcin Klicki
Jimmi Hendrix - Guitar Legend Gallery
www.klicek3d.com | klicek@o2.pl

Piotr Fox Wysocki
Artist Himself Gallery
http://fox.cgsociety.org | piterfox@poczta.onet.pl

Suresh Kumar
Anger Management Gallery
suresh3dartist@gmail.com

Suresh Kumar
Jailer Gallery

Chosen 2D Chter Artworks
GALLERY
74 page image “Poporu” by Dean Holden | holdeen@naver.com CG Chosen magazine | June 2007
Silvia Fusetti
God’s Mastiffs Gallery
www.aivlis-home.com | silvia@aivlis-home.com

Silvia Fusetti
Barbarian Warrior Gallery
www.aivlis-home.com | silvia@aivlis-home.com

David Munoz Velazquez
Ply-Spell Gallery
http://www.munozvelazquez.com | munozvelazquez@gmail.com

Dean Holden
The spirit of blessing Gallery

Dean Holden
Uramax Gallery

Marcos Aurelio
Ed, Eddie, Edward Gallery
www.estudiomanga.com.br | contato@estudiomanga.com.br

Marcos Aurelio
Einstein Gallery
www.estudiomanga.com.br | contato@estudiomanga.com.br

Natascha Roeoesli
Summer Gallery
projects@tascha.ch | www.tascha.ch

Natascha Roeoesli
Can’t Stand the Light Gallery
projects@tascha.ch | www.tascha.ch

Nikolay Yeliseyev
Invisible Gallery
www.yeliseyev.ru | nik@yeliseyev.ru

Nikolay Yeliseyev
Invisible Gallery
www.yeliseyev.ru | nik@yeliseyev.ru

CG CHOSEN
characters
Thank You Special Thanks!

For supporting our magazine by For providing exclusive materials and
Your outstanding artworks: patience during our collaboration.
This issue exsists because of your kind
David Munoz Velazquez support:
munozvelazquez.com
munozvelazquez@gmail.com
theposmaker.com
Dean Holden edu@theposmaker.com
holdeen.com
holdeen@naver.com
Glen Angus
gangus.net
Florian Delarque gangus76@hotmail.com
chokmah.cgsociety.org
floriandelarque@hotmail.fr
Henning Ludvigsen
henningludvigsen.com
Jack Zhang henlu@online.no
jackzhang.cgsociety.org
zhangziwen1101@hotmail.com
Hyun Hee Lee
digieyes3d.com
Marcin Klicki digieyes@msn.com
klicek3d.com
klicek@o2.pl
Marta Dahlig
marta-dahlig.com
Marcos Aurelio marta@marta-dahlig.com
estudiomanga.com.br
contato@estudiomanga.com.br
Soa Lee
soanala.com
Natascha Roeoesli soanala@naver.com
tascha.ch
projects@tascha.ch
Nikolay Yeliseyev
yeliseyev.ru
nik@yeliseyev.ru
Olivier Ponsonnet
reiv.fr
re1v@free.fr
Piotr Fox Wysocki

fox.cgsociety.org
piterfox@poczta.onet.pl
Silvia Fusetti
aivlis-home.com
silvia@aivlis-home.com Sincerely yours,
Gleb Kobzar (SpWaR)
Suresh kumar Sergey Guziy (Stryker)

CG CHOSEN
Next Issue
Want your artwork to be a part of the
next issue? Have an exclusive materials
related to Monsters&Creatures?
Send all materials and proposals as to

possible participation to us and reveal
your original art and ideas:
Spwar (General editor)
spwar.3dm@gmail.com
Monsters & Creatures

Artwork “Blind Invader“ by David Munoz Velazquez
WWW.spycg.com
SpyCG.com provides search for Computer Graphics (CG) related information. The best and fastest
way to find CG related information is to search it on the largest 3D and 2D resources, forums and
blogs, graphic and design studios, artists profiles and CG portals. Currently, our database consists
of more than 400 CG sites.
Thus, you shouldn’t worry that unrelated information would appear as a search result (unrelated
sites are excluded from the search).

CGChosen No03 Characters June2007 PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

CGChosen No03 Characters June2007 PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

CGChosen No03 Characters June2007 PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

CG CHOSEN | issues 3 | June 2007

FEATURED Please note that

MAKING of’s Chosen Artists

GALLERY of most impressive artworks INTERVIEWS

CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

GALLERY of most impressive artworks

 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

Chosen Character Artist

10 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

11 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

12 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

commissioned by ImagineFX magazine

commissioned by ImagineFX magazine

15 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

16 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

17 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

18 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

19 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

20 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

21 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

22 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

23 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

24 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

25 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

26 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

27 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

28 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

29 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

30 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

Check it: http://www.2textured.com

Eduardo Martin has been working in the Cg in-

In 2000 he co-founded the animation studio Pixel

I gathered some images from internet to get

I started with a quick and simple rough

Modeling & Texturing

I used mental ray fast subsurface materials

33 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

Background Final Retouch

As you can see you donґt need very fancy

Thank you very much for reading!

I added a front fill light for the face with a

34 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

He is an awarded artist, with features in

35 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

36 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

1: Make sure you have the brush tool se-

2: Now open the “brushes tab” (Windows/

Blocking In, Gray

Now I start adding shape to the charac-

37 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

Now I turn on the “Lock transparent pixels”

38 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

Instead of mixing colours on the side, I like

39 page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007

page CG Chosen magazine | June 2007