Common Art - Value Practice

 For this project, I wanted to try and emulate the feel of the titans found in Hyper Light Drifter:

I like the feel of the creatures being embedded into their environment but still retaining these vivid colors.

I chose a color palette based off the top right image and applied it to the ambient occlusion with a multiply layer. I also went ahead and added a bit of a gradient for a bit of a background:

At this point, I ended up having to submit the assignment a bit incomplete, but I still wanted to work on it past the time it was due and test out what I didn't have time for.

I applied a linear burn to the gradient so that it would pick up on the shadows from the AO layer and ground the vehicle a bit more in this roughly made sky/grass gradient.

Then I added in two gradient layers: one for a light source, and the other to vignette the other side. The light was given a hard light filter, and the vignette was set to subtract. Lowered the opacity a good bit on both of them so that the effect would be more subtle.

Adjusted the blending options on the normalized layer and pulled out just the green so that the highlights would be coming from the same direction as the light source gradient. The result of all that ended me up with this:

The second pass definitely makes the vehicle more believable, even if it still isn't quite in an environment. Messing with the layers and adjusting things exposed me to a bit of what Photoshop can do, even if I ended up going a bit basic with the actual effects. If I went a bit further with it, I would have also liked to see what could be done to the layers to give it a rougher, more aged feel without having to go in and texture it too much by hand.

(After in-class critique)

Added in the linework and did a clipping mask to give it a touch of a dark purple color. Adjusted background colors and tried to draw in stronger towards the top with the gradient layers. Fussed with some minor things. Changed the light coming in from the left to be radial from the center and ultimately ended up with this: