601 - Concept And Production Art with Jason Edmiston
Masterpieces don't just happen, they're meticulously planned out and you'd be surprised how much can happen before you make a single mark. Master Illustrator Jason Edmiston has spent years honing his craft with techniques that made the painters of yesteryear the craftsmen they were and bringing them into the modern era through his own work. Mark Brickey sits down with Jason to break apart the wind up before the canvas he takes with each piece to consistently produce jaw dropping work. From troubleshooting your composition to nailing down a color story, every step you need to set yourself up for success is explained and scrutinized for over an hour and a half in this workshop. Sharpen your creative edge and learn how to put in the work that will take your work to the next level of greatness.
Talking Points
Budgeting your time and locking in client expectations.
Setting rules, developing thumbnails, and collecting references.
Home photo shoots to help with lighting, viewpoints, and creating entirely new scenes,
Contact sheets and Voltron versions.
Developing the final sketches and the first pass at color.
Getting it all onto the canvas.
INITIAL TROUBLESHOOTING
Start with a schedule and budget time for potential revisions.
Hash out rough concepts to begin working on your composition.
Talk with your client about what types of artistic liberties you can take.
What is the visual intersection of your client's expectation and your client's budget?
Put rules in place to guide the scope and scale of your designed work.
Compile thumbnails and reference materials to create a strong composition in the final format.
Add elements to indicate mood or character elements.
PREPRODUCTION
How to set up traditional photo shoots.
Finding and organizing your research materials.
Working from your roughs for better reference shots.
Camera angles that add to the narrative.
Fooling the audience into thinking you've created an entirely new piece they've never seen.
Culling your references into a contact sheet.
The ultimate Voltron version at seventy five percent accuracy.
Shedding light on lighting.
FROM THE TABLE TO THE CANVAS
Scanning in your work and stitching it all together.
Establishing a color direction for mood.
Using graphite paper to transfer your final line art over to the canvas.
Full Value Underpainting for a unified color palette and harnessing the alchemy of art.
TEAM ART ALCHEMY
So now you know what Jason does to create a painting. But turning that into a screenprint... that's a different animal entirely. On AID 209 Jason lets us into the process and how his unique dithering techniques work.
Every time Jason gets on the AID airwaves he imparts some incredible wisdom in the politest way possible. On the heels of releasing Visceral we sat down for a one on one interview with Jason to talk about the long span of his career.
A landmark in his work, Jason's piece for The Hateful Eight is an incredible summary of everything you've learned from this workshop and what he shared in AID 209. Never a dull moment with this Canuck on the mic.