Drawing GTA4

[Mogly]

Hiya. Here's an idea for fans of GTA.

The drawings for GTA have always been very stylish and cool and fun to imitate. Their portraits are the sort of thing that I like to doodle characters like. Up to San Andreas, they were all also very simillar. Simple - a little cartoony, not many colours etc. For example this picture of a Vice City girl. It's very simple. Or this one from San Andreas, still very simple but a few more different colours used on the characters.

However with GTA4, pushing the idea of it being 'the next step' the artwork has again become more detailed. There are more shades, colours used etc, and less if none outlines. The artwork is a step up from the last games but keeps the coolness and attitude of the previous.

So, the idea of this thread is to follow Rockstars step up and do a picture in GTA4's style. Do it of what you want, a made up character or whatever. A cool idea would be redoing an old image, for example updating this picture of Diaz.

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Share some tips in this thread on the style of the pics, and hopefully, we'll all be able to improve. I think the pictures for GTA4 are brilliant and the loading bit in Vice City/San An was always wicked because of them. The new images look very much like they're sketched up in Photoshop. I think that the recent Heavy Metal thread gave me this idea, alot of the pictures in there were well done and lifelike.

Here's some pictures from GTA4 =
- Niko wellard
- Cop shootout
- Badass gun guy
- She's a fitty
- Do you know this boy?
- The stone man
More here.

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This is one im doing. What I did is took a page from Poxs book and try tracing over a picture then changing it. So I got a cool picture of Mick Jagger, drew over him and now im starting to colour it in. I put Niko next to it to give me some ideas and make it feel like my picture isnt crap as it goes along.

Enjoy and join in :)

[Luis]

i hate that they changed the style of the artwork but oh well. ill give it a go

[Mogly]

At 4/1/08 08:02 PM, Luis wrote: i hate that they changed the style of the artwork but oh well. ill give it a go

Good good. Get on with it and stop whining.

Here's how mine is coming now. One thing I figured out, is a good way of getting the right colour. I'm not the best with colour and am definetly still learning with PS. One thing I did is draw a splodge, then have splodges of a different colour over the top of it - so literally mixing colours in PS like you would do in a real life painting. I think this has helped alot.

At first I was thinking I wont use any alpha'd brushes, but I think they fit in well. Say just getting a bright yellow and putting it to about 25% opacity then going over his cheek for example worked well. I havent bothered using any dodge/burn but may do.

[narf]

thats beautiful Mogly, keep it up. I can't wait for luis' aswell.

[Luis]

Ehh i got this far. I'll continue tmrw prob. its based on a david bowie

[MindChamber]

Ill give it a go, but no matter what you or Pox say, I ain't fuckin tracing.

you can reference a shot with out drawing the lines directly over a picture.

[Mogly]

At 4/1/08 10:58 PM, MindChamber wrote: Ill give it a go, but no matter what you or Pox say, I ain't fuckin tracing.

you can reference a shot with out drawing the lines directly over a picture.

Yeah I agree. Next one I do i'll not bother tracing one. It did definetly help me learn a few things though.

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I'm just gunna say this is done now because it's my first attempt and that way the first attempt is from one night rather than a few spread out days. Hopefully meaning ten tries down the line i'll be able to look back and see improvement. It's ended up looking more like a shady Plasil than it does Mick Jagger btw.

Cheers Narf109.

:: Bigger ::

[Luis]

At 4/2/08 05:29 AM, ShirtTurtle wrote: lu, show us the ref.
I'm interested to see if the colours are as earthy as yours.

Its a black and white photo. BTW david bowie is awesom

[joe-spink]

At 4/1/08 10:47 PM, Luis wrote: Ehh i got this far. I'll continue tmrw prob. its based on a david bowie

I think the eyes and ear look a bit off, the eyes need to be a little more down and to the left and a bit darker. The ear move it up more and make it smaller a little bit. just a idea is all.

[Luis]

At 4/2/08 09:50 AM, joe-spink wrote:

At 4/1/08 10:47 PM, Luis wrote: Ehh i got this far. I'll continue tmrw prob. its based on a david bowie

I think the eyes and ear look a bit off, the eyes need to be a little more down and to the left and a bit darker. The ear move it up more and make it smaller a little bit. just a idea is all.

thanks for that. I'll address that when i continue it. I want the end product to vaguely resemble bowie but mostly just be its own persona. which is why i made the eyes more baggy and ominous. I agree with you on the ear.

[ElMagico]

damn i had this thing going for the pico day contest. pico, nene, and darnell all gta'ed. wasn't gonna color it in the gta4 style though.

[sirtom93]

Awesome drawings.

[wasb]

At 4/5/08 03:03 PM, ElMagico wrote: damn i had this thing going for the pico day contest. pico, nene, and darnell all gta'ed. wasn't gonna color it in the gta4 style though.

nice! Did you do that in flash?

[Henry-nougat]

Anyone know any sites or have a link to some decent brushes for photoshop?

Most works these days seemingly use custom brushes etc.

I'd like to get the feel for using them.

[Mogly]

At 4/5/08 06:57 PM, Henry-nougat wrote: Anyone know any sites or have a link to some decent brushes for photoshop?

Most works these days seemingly use custom brushes etc.

I'd like to get the feel for using them.

I havent got any myself besides a square one I made, but I think Deviant art is good for that. Obv its people making them themselves and putting them on there so theres a lot of choice from the people in the know.

That's a cool picture ElMagico.

[Mogly]

Having a go at doing my sister. It is coming out ok, it's a little like her but too chubby. I think that's because i've over done the cheeks.

It will get more GTA like soon, I think right now there's way to many brush strokes and it looks too messy. It shall be better.

[UnderARock]

At 4/6/08 11:07 PM, Mogly wrote: Having a go at doing my sister. It is coming out ok, it's a little like her but too chubby. I think that's because i've over done the cheeks.

The left eye looks a little bigger than the right. :)

[enjoyshaun]

I gave this ago because I've always been terrible without the use of solid lines for details and stuff, so I thought this would be good practice. Its still a WIP so there's some obvious things that just don't look right(hair, lips), but so far I'm happy with the how its looking but I'm not sure about how well I'm actually achieving the style.

I've also went along with the musical vibe of the thread so high five to anyone who can name the artist.

[mrwinneranimator]

Not finished jet. but im seriously stuck. NEED SOME IDEAs, PLEASE.

[CapnRyan]

Your drawing of Jagger is not so good in some places, his left hand is just a ball & his head is all completely off-style.

[Henry-nougat]

Using the mouse (Ugh..........)

Worked off a sketch basis, as you can see.

I'm using myself as the character, reference none, I figured I should know how to draw myself by now.

Kinda a wip, I just whipped this up because I was bored but the finished result will surely reflect the style of which the GTA4 artwork is done.

I also have to agree with the others though, growing up with the game and the culture it has behind it, the artwork is really poor in comparison to that of vice city or san andreas.

It doesn't have the class of those games, rockstar have tried something different but they haven't put much consideration into the art this time I believe.

[puredragon222]

Wow, some of these are really cool.

[Mogly]

At 4/8/08 01:39 PM, Saint-Jesus wrote: Your drawing of Jagger is not so good in some places, his left hand is just a ball & his head is all completely off-style.

Oh, thanks friend.
Well I like it atleast.

At 4/9/08 03:18 AM, Henry-nougat wrote: It doesn't have the class of those games, rockstar have tried something different but they haven't put much consideration into the art this time I believe.

Nah I think they definetly have. I think the idea is they've updated the pictures so that they're updated for the 'next generation'. So showing more detail in the pictures in the same way the graphics show more detail.

Enjoy shaun picture

That's really good, is it supposed to be Dave Gilmour - the guy from Pink Floyd? I think for the hair what you could do to make it more like GTA is make it more simple. Instead of having lots of little lines, in the thick bit of his hair where it's mostly white draw over it in a thicker brush so it looks simpler. For example, see how simple the black cops shirt is in this picture compared to his face.

[Henry-nougat]

At 4/9/08 09:34 AM, Mogly wrote: Nah I think they definetly have. I think the idea is they've updated the pictures so that they're updated for the 'next generation'. So showing more detail in the pictures in the same way the graphics show more detail.

Yeh but the point was rockstar had a particular style in their graphics and the world they created, by upgrading to "realistic" graphics the whole style seems lost and they are just trying to push the graphics of the ps3.

Game design should reflect style and game play, there are so many graphically intensive games these days who cares if the art reflects realism, and yeah it does reflect the new game but I still think they could have adapted the idea better than they have.

Anyway back to art making.

[Mogly]

At 4/9/08 08:51 PM, ImpendingRiot wrote: Work in progress.

I didn't trace, but I kept my reference image within the canvas.

I'll be getting around to the body this weekend.

Very cool man good job.

[rolentogrenades]

Used Sean Penn as the subject. Reference: http://i151.photobucket.com/albums/s153/
acenecrosleezer/penn.jpg

No tracing here. Can't quite get the hang of Corel Painter yet, so I did this one in Photoshop.

[Aprime]

At 4/1/08 09:19 PM, Mogly wrote: At first I was thinking I wont use any alpha'd brushes, but I think they fit in well. Say just getting a bright yellow and putting it to about 25% opacity then going over his cheek for example worked well. I havent bothered using any dodge/burn but may do.

Can you put me init :D lool

[SKS]

I will def get a drawing in this. I'll just do a self-portrait. Hopefully get a nice source pic taken with my friends cam after work. DO the line drawing on papa then scan it in and go from there. Idk prolly within the next few days.

[cuestaluis]

yeah! bumping this thread with something that was actually going to be my portrait but ended up looking like someone else hehe...

[LordAdon]

At 4/9/08 08:51 PM, ImpendingRiot wrote: Work in progress.

I didn't trace, but I kept my reference image within the canvas.

I'll be getting around to the body this weekend.

right ear, left ear, besides that, nice.