AD Soldier - Help streamlining work?

[Xenol]

Hi,

I recently completed this design for a friend of mine, and am overall very pleased with the results. I have learnt a lot about how to use AD, but I cannot help feeling that I am still being very inefficient. Big ask, but if someone could have a look at the AD file and offer any suggestions I'd be very grateful.

Solider.afdesign

[retrograde]

Hi Xenol, I had a look, and it's not that bad. You may want to in future as you create things name them a bit more, there are a lot of unnamed groups... for quicker at a glance layer panel navigating...

 

You might want to try having all of the black linework on one layer over top of everything else. In my experience it's easier to edit and the stuff underneath can be a little looser as the linework will cover it up to some degree making it quicker to create, as you're not as concerned about the edges so much... I hope that makes sense.

 

With this level of complexity you're going to just have a lot of stuff and organization is key. Especially if you are handing off the files to someone else.

 

If you could get away with a pixel based camouflage texture that would alleviate some of the many paths you have to deal with but overall it's not that bad.

 

Stylistically, I would probably bump up some of the linework weight a bit, but that's a personal comment not an efficiency comment. :-)

 

Nice job btw!

[Xenol]

Thanks for the feedback, proper naming practices are something I should start exercising. How do you go about separating the lines and the colour? do you draw out the outlines first then colour in behind it? 

[retrograde]

Thanks for the feedback, proper naming practices are something I should start exercising. How do you go about separating the lines and the colour? do you draw out the outlines first then colour in behind it? 

Thanks Xenol, I was hoping it came across as constructive. :-)

 

Yes, exactly. I usually work from a placed sketch, then I create a layer called line or something similar and build the line on a layer underneath the scan. The scan layer is set to multiply at around 50% opacity so as I build the piece I can still see the sketch. If I need to hide it I just hide the sketch layer.

 

I build up the tonal/textural layers beneath the line layer.

 

Of course sometimes you'll have some line work that can't be on top but for the most part it's a line above, tone below workflow.

 

It's one way to do it, there are many ways to get the same results, but it works for me.

[gdenby]

Hi, Xenol,

 

Nice work. 1 of your techniques, using layers w. different layers of opacity to give shading bands was quite nicely done.

 

I spent quite some time yesterday working thru the various layers and groups.  As above, it would probably make things easier if there were more names. I find that when I'm using lots of blend modes, or doing boolean operations, it helps to have references like bottom, middle, top, and so forth.

 

I thought the vector camo texture was crazy awesome. How did you come up w. that? But it seemed to me it might become problematic if the character was presented in different back grounds. That is, what if instead of a white back ground, the character was surrounded by a different color, like tan? Would the camo actually make the character less obvious. That is, fail to be a visual focus.  How would you tweak the camo colors? I spent some time w. one camo vector group, and started combining areas of the same color. It was fairly difficult, and I didn't get very far. But It did allow easy color changes.