In this case, there is a lot of gray, but I want it to be a cool gray, not a warm gray. I’m mostly just focused on the material color. I’m not worrying about lighting too much. I use a combination of color layers, multiple layers, and darken/lighten layers to get the colors that I want for my flats. We will colorize our line art and values later. Apply any engineering knowledge that you have, but don’t get caught up in over-explaining everything. Look at the joints and the connecting points. Dig up references of other cool cyborg designs that you like, and notice how they are constructed. If you don’t like it, you can delete that layer, or erase from just that layer.

You can create more layers on top of all of that and just try stuff out. Step 4: Define interesting details and construction Try out all of them until something feels right for you.

With your blob thumbnail in the background, while drawing on the active top layer, pick a nice pencil and start defining those shapes. Pick a thumbnail and set your canvas to about 4800×3500, and drop the opacity on your thumbnail sketch to about 25%. Just doodle some fun cyborg ideas and number them. You can grab any brush out of the box, and just start getting ideas down in blobs. He’s entertaining as all get out, but even better than that he unloads tip after tip as he draws, with lots of great commentary about the games and characters that provide him with inspiration. His YouTube channel is an excellent resource if you want to improve your concept art skills. We also asked Trent to break it down for us as a quick written tutorial for those of you who prefer step-by-step written tutorials. Trent shows you his process for a Cyborg Heavy in this time-lapse video with a voice-over: If you placed the first few brush strokes of one of his concept art characters next to the final product, you’d be hard pressed to see how a few blobs of color can transform into a complete and very detailed character. Trent takes us through his process from idea to sketch to the finishing touches and gives valuable tips along the way. Coming up with character designs is not easy. Concept artist Trent Kaniuga draws monsters for AAA video games from the likes of Blizzard and Riot Games.

Drawing in sketchbook app