Photoshop INK CONCEPT ART WITH COMIC STYLE

Art director Matt Sanz walks through his process for speedily rendering video game concepts with a classic comic look

- Matt Sanz LOCATION: Wales

I like to use a comic inking and rendering style when creating quick concepts, often done for video game or animation projects.

This particular style has a host of benefits, one of which is almost immediately creating high contrast in key areas. This forces you into good habits such as breaking down the image into value groups, creating strong key lighting and crafting well-defined forms, which can be difficult for a lot of beginner artists.

I'll be discussing how I lay down the foundations for this kind of rendering and how each early step you take sets the foundation for the later ones to be completed more efficiently. Of course, there are many alternative routes to the same outcome, but I've found following this process particularly effective for getting a final rendered image completed quickly.

The biggest difference might come from understanding that the black ink work can do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to rendering. But while that's true, there are simple tricks we can use to push and pull that ink shadowing around that will benefit the final image. You'll find this particularly in the latter stages when we get to masking, overlays and additional polishing layers.

Hopefully you'll find yourself adopting some of these techniques into your own workflow!

Create an initial sketch and thumbnail

Ideas can come from anywhere and it's wise to draw several thumbnails to conceptualise an initial idea or brief. Getting the first five or so ideas down on paper is beneficial, although in this case I already had a good idea of what I wanted to go for. I used my Main Boi brush to get a sketch of a botanist robot collecting flowers that grow around a mischievous ancient tree.