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Description
Check out the Exercise and Download the Step by Step Guide HERE .
And here is the practice worksheet for this exercise HERE .
Artist: Joe Chico
This exercise was extremely useful for understanding light through translucent objects, along with how some materials may wrap or hang around an object. The difficulties I ran into were understanding that it's often times not just one bright white highlight on an object to make it look like goo. Instead it's the accent lights and the soft highlights that help sell a good goop, that and bubbles... lots and lots of bubbles. Eventually I started thinking about how these forms aren't just two dimensional paintings, but instead in reality they have mass to them, and you can clearly see it by what's laying inside of them. When working with goo or slime, it's always important to remember that the center of the mass is more dense and thicker in opacity along with darker. When gravity takes effect of drips of goo that hangs, it's shows that thinning of slime can cause it to pick up the color of the object it sits in-front or lays on-top of. Color/Density of ooze will also factor into how clear you can see under-neath the object such as the dark green, compared to the light blue.
Now while I used my self-made reference pictures for understanding the slime, I came to our friend Otis the ooze, who is the third object on our worksheet. I didn't want him to read exactly like a realistic goo monster, but instead be a bit fantastical along with being extremely adorable. Another thing I would like to point out is the other objects that arent' really the focus of this study, such has the fingers and hands. While I could spend more time rendering them, their usage wasn't so much about rendering them out to be perfect, but instead to understand what's going on under the surface of the slime.
Below is a step by step guide on how I went about this process as well as studying, while most goo isn't represented on these extremes say in animation, it was important for me to try and get as real as possible all while not making an exact copy of the reference. I hope that this guide can help show you guys how to render and think about goo, whether it be hyper-realistic or for something cel-shaded.
Line Art - The line art layer is pretty straight forward, what I can recommend is keeping it simple, don't over detail all the little highlights as you can see with the skull example it just got out of hand and eventually the layer will get taken away, it's great for building upon, but don't get lost with all the highlights going on.
Base Color - The base color will depend on if you enjoying working from dark to light or the reverse. I try and find something darker and not overly saturated. When working with the hands and other objects, don't worry too much about doing fancy over-lay layers just yet, keep it simple and just color over to help you get started.
Block Out Colors and Initial Detail Pass - This is the time to have fun and just throw colors around, I'm keeping in mind basic ideas of light sources, and with goo that it's transparent when it thins out. With the skull I've color picked from the skull and painted it ontop of the blue slime area. Block things out in this phase, and if you need to set highlight place holders to help guide the direction of light go for it!
Refine Pass and Soft Light - Thinking about goo as a form helps here, that there is a center mass and it's density will not be completely covered up, but soft highlights help show that there is mass. I clean up edges at this point and start to take into the account of time spent on painting these. It hit me at this point to be meditative and just feel it out as opposed to driving myself crazy and trying to match things one for one. Keep in mind the ideas of the subject matter with what's going on and play with them at your own leisure.
Remove Outline and Add Bubbles! - This phase was my favorite the lines are removed and the shape and form is starting to come together nicely. I'm pushing highlights subtly still, and focusing on big bubbles! The bubbles were becoming a pain, not only physically taxing on my hands, but mentally driving me crazy. I created a few brushes for myself based on studying the reference pictures I took, I noticed a pattern in the bubbles and that those bubbles in fact created its own shadows and highlights inside the mass. The bubbles sit like air-pockets inside the goo and move in a direction that the slime is going.
Final Detail and Strong Highlights - The Pièce de résistance comes with adding the final stronger highlights through the goo! while the previous version show some highlights, this is often times the last strong light. Goo/Slime seems to have a film-like surface that's wet and highly reflective and you can achieve this look by adding a new layer and changing it to screen layer mode. I also like to erase away at the edges of the strong highlight slightly to not make it a strictly white blaring highlight. Tiny bubbles also get their own little shadows and stronger highlights and adding a shadow base with a hint of the objects color in the shadow help sell it's translucency.
This exercise took a lot of time and patience for myself but I sure did learn a lot. Slime can be one of the more difficult materials to render and understand, but don't give up, take it slow and be patient because in the end it will pay off!

Description
Check out the Exercise and Download the Step by Step Guide HERE .
And here is the practice worksheet for this exercise HERE .
Artist: Joe Chico
This exercise was extremely useful for understanding light through translucent objects, along with how some materials may wrap or hang around an object. The difficulties I ran into were understanding that it's often times not just one bright white highlight on an object to make it look like goo. Instead it's the accent lights and the soft highlights that help sell a good goop, that and bubbles... lots and lots of bubbles. Eventually I started thinking about how these forms aren't just two dimensional paintings, but instead in reality they have mass to them, and you can clearly see it by what's laying inside of them. When working with goo or slime, it's always important to remember that the center of the mass is more dense and thicker in opacity along with darker. When gravity takes effect of drips of goo that hangs, it's shows that thinning of slime can cause it to pick up the color of the object it sits in-front or lays on-top of. Color/Density of ooze will also factor into how clear you can see under-neath the object such as the dark green, compared to the light blue.
Now while I used my self-made reference pictures for understanding the slime, I came to our friend Otis the ooze, who is the third object on our worksheet. I didn't want him to read exactly like a realistic goo monster, but instead be a bit fantastical along with being extremely adorable. Another thing I would like to point out is the other objects that arent' really the focus of this study, such has the fingers and hands. While I could spend more time rendering them, their usage wasn't so much about rendering them out to be perfect, but instead to understand what's going on under the surface of the slime.
Below is a step by step guide on how I went about this process as well as studying, while most goo isn't represented on these extremes say in animation, it was important for me to try and get as real as possible all while not making an exact copy of the reference. I hope that this guide can help show you guys how to render and think about goo, whether it be hyper-realistic or for something cel-shaded.
Line Art - The line art layer is pretty straight forward, what I can recommend is keeping it simple, don't over detail all the little highlights as you can see with the skull example it just got out of hand and eventually the layer will get taken away, it's great for building upon, but don't get lost with all the highlights going on.
Base Color - The base color will depend on if you enjoying working from dark to light or the reverse. I try and find something darker and not overly saturated. When working with the hands and other objects, don't worry too much about doing fancy over-lay layers just yet, keep it simple and just color over to help you get started.
Block Out Colors and Initial Detail Pass - This is the time to have fun and just throw colors around, I'm keeping in mind basic ideas of light sources, and with goo that it's transparent when it thins out. With the skull I've color picked from the skull and painted it ontop of the blue slime area. Block things out in this phase, and if you need to set highlight place holders to help guide the direction of light go for it!
Refine Pass and Soft Light - Thinking about goo as a form helps here, that there is a center mass and it's density will not be completely covered up, but soft highlights help show that there is mass. I clean up edges at this point and start to take into the account of time spent on painting these. It hit me at this point to be meditative and just feel it out as opposed to driving myself crazy and trying to match things one for one. Keep in mind the ideas of the subject matter with what's going on and play with them at your own leisure.
Remove Outline and Add Bubbles! - This phase was my favorite the lines are removed and the shape and form is starting to come together nicely. I'm pushing highlights subtly still, and focusing on big bubbles! The bubbles were becoming a pain, not only physically taxing on my hands, but mentally driving me crazy. I created a few brushes for myself based on studying the reference pictures I took, I noticed a pattern in the bubbles and that those bubbles in fact created its own shadows and highlights inside the mass. The bubbles sit like air-pockets inside the goo and move in a direction that the slime is going.
Final Detail and Strong Highlights - The Pièce de résistance comes with adding the final stronger highlights through the goo! while the previous version show some highlights, this is often times the last strong light. Goo/Slime seems to have a film-like surface that's wet and highly reflective and you can achieve this look by adding a new layer and changing it to screen layer mode. I also like to erase away at the edges of the strong highlight slightly to not make it a strictly white blaring highlight. Tiny bubbles also get their own little shadows and stronger highlights and adding a shadow base with a hint of the objects color in the shadow help sell it's translucency.
This exercise took a lot of time and patience for myself but I sure did learn a lot. Slime can be one of the more difficult materials to render and understand, but don't give up, take it slow and be patient because in the end it will pay off!