How to Design and Draw Alien Spaceship Concept Art
How to design sci-fi weapons
When I play shooters, there'south cypher like the feeling of acquiring the perfect weapon to take down your enemy. Everyone has their own personal favourites. It could be the sniper rifle that can hit a target with pinpoint accuracy, or it could be the shotgun that rips an enemy to shreds. Its accuracy, how it sounds, the reload time... everything plays into the overall experience. Players want to feel bad-ass when using the gun, so naturally the gun should look bad-donkey, also.
Cool-looking weapons can come in all shapes and sizes, but some themes remain consistent. Over the by few years I've had the opportunity to blueprint some of the weapons for the Mass Outcome franchise. I've come to realise that some basic design principles are universal and utilise to weapon pattern as much equally they do for graphic symbol design and environment art.
The Rule of Thirds, composition and creating unique silhouettes are but some principles to proceed in mind when trying to create a successful design. In this workshop, I'll depict some of these principles a little further, too as offering some of my own tricks that I've picked upward over the years.
01. Spec and requirements
Before starting the blueprint it's of import to gather all necessary information about the gun from the game's designers, such as the blazon of weapon it is (assault burglarize, shotgun, compact pistol and and then on), where the easily demand to be, or the maximum allowable size of the gun.
Are there moving parts when the gun fires? Does the gun crave an ammo slot? Is there a specific alien race that this gun is designed for? What'southward the backstory of this gun? All these points are important to keep in mind, and serve as the boundaries to work within when concepting the weapon.
02. Research, research, research
Gather as much reference cloth as possible, both to serve as inspiration and also to see what'due south already been done earlier, so that you don't blueprint something too similar to an existing weapon.
Studying real-globe weapons gives you a amend understanding of how guns should role. Research for made-upwardly weapons gives y'all an idea of how far others have pushed their designs. In full general, the goal is to exist as original every bit possible.
03. Design from all angles
Think in iii-dimensional space, and design from all angles. Although I've only shown the contour view in the majority of my weapon concepts, a lot of work has been washed to pattern the weapons from every aspect.
It's important to design from all perspectives, especially from the player's view, considering this is what you lot would see the nearly in-game. Focus on creating an interesting silhouette from a range of views.
04. Kickoff with thumbnails
I commencement off by doing simple thumbnails in greyscale with just a simple Circular brush at 100 per cent Opacity. No shading or colour – just a lite, medium and night tone.
At this stage I'one thousand concerned purely with the shape of the pattern and the human relationship betwixt the different tones. The focus is on silhouettes and the big broader shapes. By producing these thumbnails, I'm trying to capture the main essence of the design at this early point in the pattern process.
05. Find a theme
Sometime you'll find opportunities to proceed an existing theme for a design. Here, the repeating chrome parts from the Quarian architecture served every bit a strong theme to implement in the shotgun. Each alien race has their own specific styles and it was important that nosotros showed that in the weapons.
06. Composition is fundamental
Unless the weapon's design requires a series of repeating shapes, I endeavour not to space out details evenly beyond the weapon, which tends to create a boring design.
Instead, I apply the rule of thirds by placing detail elements a third of the distance from a specific part of the weapon. This works vertically, horizontally and diagonally. Leaving areas empty helps balance out all the detailed parts of the weapon.
07. Consider menstruation in your design
Because the Mass Effect style has more of a make clean and sleek design nigh it, it'due south of import to pay attention to the flow of the design elements. I try to continue lines and seams to maintain the clean, streamlined feel.
08. Flip the canvas
To practice this in Photoshop choose File and then select Image>Prototype Rotation>Flip Canvas Horizontal. Considering assigning a hotkey for this.
09. Colour and limerick
At this betoken it'due south skillful to start calculation colour to the design and meet how it affects the limerick. It's interesting how a slight colour shift from a dark tone to a light tone can totally modify the weapon's design and flow.
I normally like to use one ascendant colour along with one or two accent colours. Adding as well many colours tends to stop up with them competing with each other, while adding a neutral tone complements the master color nicely.
10. Add together detail
This is the fun stuff. Now that the principal pattern is fleshed out, it's time to start calculation the actress bevels, seams, nuts and bolts. This is where the weapon starts to come to life. I'll paint with an airbrush when I want to indicate soft, curved surfaces.
For sharp corners and edges I'll use a thin, unproblematic Round brush to paint in those white highlights. I'll also use an airbrush set to Color Dodge when I want to give the surface a metallic shine. This process requires the most time and focus, but all the hard work painting those small bolts and thin seams pays off in the end.
11. Add textures
Textures give the weapon an added level of detail and help differentiate parts that may have appeared the same before. For example, the black condom handle at present looks unlike from the grey metal body of the gun. Add highlights to give it that shiny quality.
You can sell what blazon of material information technology is by playing around with the level of lengthened and specularity. The more than shiny the fabric, the more than concentrated the highlight should be, and the more spread out the highlight, the more matt the finish will expect. I like to add a scratch texture to give information technology a banged-up feel. I'll also apply a mask on the texture and paint in where the scratches should be.
12. Use a lens flare texture
I like to utilise a lens flare texture gear up to the Colour Dodge alloy manner to add highlights to shiny surfaces, or the glowing lights common in the Mass Effect weapons. This adds a level of vibrancy to the weapon. The glowing stripes also make a weapon feel sci-fi.
13. Add together futuristic logos and decals
The Mass Effect way commonly involves adding logos, numbers and stripes throughout the weapon. This gives it an added visual flair, and as well gives the impression that these weapons were made by different manufacturers.
14. Shading for volume
I'll usually have a Hue/ Saturation adjustment layer and a Brightness/Contrast layer placed on top of all my other layers. This is where I would paint in my shading and shadows on a layer mask with a elementary airbrush. Playing around with the sliders enables me to control how dark or light I want the shading to be.
15. Blueprint for the 3D artist
Give whoever will exist modelling this as much item as possible, so that in that location isn't any misunderstanding or confusion. Indicate materials, different views, pieces to exist animated and any areas need more clarification.
Words: Brian Sum
Brian Sum is a concept artist based in Montreal, Quebec. His previous projects include Mass Issue 2 and 3, Dragon Historic period Origins, Sonic Chronicles and Shadowrun. This article originally appeared in ImagineFX issue 103.
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Source: https://www.creativebloq.com/digital-art/how-design-sci-fi-weapons-111413361
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