Probando Huion Kamvas Pro 16 2.5K

General / 04 July 2022

Hace unas semanas la gente de Huion me pidió que probara y compartiera mi opinión sincera sobre la tableta Huion Kamvas Pro 16 2.5K. He estado tres semanas trabajando con ella en distintos encargos de Concept art e ilustración para distintos clientes así que os comento mis sensaciones. Los encargos tienen contrato de confidencialidad así que he utilizado para las fotos algunos trabajos personales en proceso ;) 

No voy a entrar en detalles muy técnicos porque una cosa son los niveles de presión o pixeles y otra ponerse a trabajar con ella, a mi lo que me interesa es lo segundo, que seguro es el resultado de muchos detalles técnicos, pero nada como comprobar  por uno mismo como fluye la cosa. 

Bueno, vamos al turrón:


Lo primero que me ha encantado es lo fina que es, tanto la tableta como su soporte plegado, son incluso más finos que mi portátil con lo que es una opción perfecta para aquellos que tienen que desplazarse a menudo. Yo trabajo normalmente en Madrid con un portátil y una Cintiq antigua de 21' , pero paso varios meses al año en Las Palmas de G. C. y antes de la pandemia iba con frecuencia a talleres en Sevilla donde teníamos que hacer tareas que nos mandaba el artista invitado, así que tengo también una tableta más pequeña de las que no son pantalla para esos meses y desplazamientos. 

No sé si se aprecia bien en la foto, pero es más fina que el lápiz óptico y un pelín más gruesa que el portaminas

La tableta que utilizaba antes en esos viajes me creaba cierta incomodidad al tener solo la pantalla del portátil y en pequeñas cosas como trazar líneas con precisión por encima de otras, que me parece mucho más fácil con una tableta pantalla, o esa sensación de no estar tan "cerca" del dibujo, más similar al papel para mi gusto. Con la Huion no he tenido esos problemas, de hecho el cambio se me ha hecho muy sencillo desde el principio. Además, la instalación es facilísima, la sensibilidad es muy buena y la pantalla no refleja nada. El formato, que al verlo me pareció demasiado apaisado, en realidad encaja perfectamente con mi forma de trabajar ya que siempre tengo unas paletas desplegadas a la derecha y un "volquete" de referencias a los lados que voy apagando y encendiendo, así que me queda la imagen en unas proporciones muy buenas para trabajar. La resolución por defecto (1920x1080) me encaja perfectamente, si te alejas se ve todo pequeñito pero cuando estás pintando encima es el tamaño ideal para que las cosas se vean y ocupen lo justo.

El menú de ajustes de la pantalla (se abre dejando presionado el botón de encender/apagar) también me ha parecido sencillo y cómodo, tiene una opción de poner directamente el perfil de color sRGB y AdobeRGB lo cual facilita mucho la historia. Supongo que habrá algunos dudando entre 2.5k, 4k, etc. Yo tengo varias pantallas y tabletas, el portátil es 4k y la Kamvas es 2.5k, es cierto que el 4k se ve mejor, pero en mi opinión, para lo que yo hago no es necesario irse a 4k, si haces un trabajo ultra detallista igual viene bien pero como he dicho antes la tableta en la que trabajo normalmente es vieja, tiene más de diez años y ni siquiera existía lo de las Ks pero yo he hecho de todo ahí y lo sigo haciendo. A partir de ahí que cada uno elija según sus preferencias y su bolsillo, en cualquier caso esta misma Kamvas también está disponible en 4k.

Los botones integrados, los he probado y funcionan bien, son fáciles de configurar, pero yo siempre trabajo con teclado así que preferiría que no los tuviera y fuera aún más compacta, o fuera una pieza que se pudiera quitar y poner como los teclados de algunas tablets (por pedir que no quede).

En resumen, me parece una muy buena tableta, muy a valorar su portabilidad en esta profesión de nómadas, sin duda se ha convertido en mi nueva tableta de viaje donde he comprobado que puedo continuar mis encargos cómodamente. La pega personal, aunque no sé si es solucionable por parte de Huion porque ya me había pasado con otra marca, es que los drivers se "pegan" con los de Wacom, para volver a trabajar con la otra tableta tengo que desinstalar la Huion y reinstalar la otra, pero es una pequeña molestia en comparación con todas las ventajas que le veo.

Podéis conseguir la Huion Kamvas 16 2.5k en los siguientes enlaces:

TIENDA HUION 

HUION KAMVAS 16 2.5K

HUION KAMVAS 16 4K

Un saludo y hasta pronto :)

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Cover Art for Magissa, RPG for kids

General / 11 March 2016

Roleplaying game for kids Magissa, written by Edanna Patsaki and Fernando R. Reyes and published by Nosolorol Ediciones was released last week in Spain.

It has been a lot of time since I did something with a clear kids target so I find it refreshing to change for sometime and think like a child (I mean, more than usual xD). Well, we looked for a simple landscape cover that brings your mind into adventure, the adventurers, the castle, a dragon (of course!!) and a frozen peak behind (even a puppy ;D)

From that premises there was a clear line from start to finish. I took part of the character designs from the character art inside done by Virginia Berrocal and I remind myself singing old D&D tv series spanish song (you don't want to hear me) while painted it so, I guess it´s something from it too.

That's all, have fun and enjoy your quests!

Charro.

PROCESS:





final art

Book photo


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Cover art for Reflejo RPG

General / 26 February 2016
Light cover final art
Roleplaying game Reflejo (Reflection), written by Jordi Martín and published by Nosolorol Ediciones has been released this week so I bring the two covers I did for the book.

The interior art, nicely done by Jorge Carrero was previously done with inks and reds so one of our first decissions was to keep our cover grayscale and red. This was one of those covers where we spend more time thinking in the right concept than painting the final so I did several sketches with slight modifications looking for it. The main idea was a girl between world of light and world of darkness.

Finally we decided to go on with she going through a mirror which work as a portal between the two worlds. With that concept I took my references and even did a 3d model to work the body cut.

After the cover was finished, Nosolorol's chief publisher Manuel J. Sueiro thought it will be great having an alternative cover showing the same scene from the world of darkness. So I did another cover as a reflection of the first one.

At the end we have two covers for this roleplaying game, I'm not sure of which is my favourite so I'm happy with both xD I hope you too ;)

Charro.
SKETCHES & PROCESS:
















Darkness cover final art

 REFERENCES:

Some of my references: sculptures by Pugliese Barriera and photos by Iain Crawford (golden) and the69th (water)


Poser 3d model
PHOTOS:





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Nameless Cults GM Screen (Cultos Innombrables, pantalla del DJ)

General / 11 February 2016


Here I bring the process of my first game master screen to be printed, it belongs to the game Nameless Cults (Cultos Innombrables) published by Nosolorol Ediciones. Nameless Cults is a contemporary game based on lovecraft mythos as I told you in the cover post. Again, I worked together with Manuel J. Sueiro, creator, one of the authors of the game and chief publisher at Nosolorol. He wanted a group of cultists who work for hire as a professional team specialized in missions related with occultism and mythos.



In the image, our team will be stealing something from a tomb portal and they meet those Chtonian style creatures waiting for them in some kind of tension before a possible fight to leave the place. In the middle of the process I took some time to design characters and creatures.


This is a huge pic (screen is 835 x 218 mm) so it took me quite a lot of time to paint all the landscape scene. I hope you like it and embrace the cosmic horror ;)





Charro.


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The Dresden Files: Your Story RPG Artwork

General / 09 February 2016
The Dresden Files: Your Story. Cover + Backcover
Last Augost was finaly released the Spanish edition of The Dresden Files: Your Story based on the famous novel series writen by Jim Butcher. The spanish edition is published by Nosolorol, where I am currently working, and translated from the game developed in the US by Evil Hat. This is the first roleplaying game fully illustrated by me and my first big project working with Nosolorol so means a special step in my career.

The book contains about 80 pics that were done during summer 2014 and took me about 600 hours of work. There is another book called The Dresden Files: Our World, focused on Chicago and the characters from the novels writen by Jim Butcher in which I am working now. Your Story has the rules to play and create your characters and cities to play so we planned the artwork from pics based on the novels and new characters and scenes that invite players to create and imagine their own worlds.

We decided to work as much as we can in double-spreads invading the book were the pics appear so there are plained areas of color where the texts were placed.

Well, those were the basics more or less, I hope you enjoy the illustrations as much as I enjoyed reading and painting Dresden Files scenes ;)

Charro.

 CHAPTER BREAKS
- Chapter One -
Harry’s World
- Chapter Two -
The Basics
- Chapter Three -
City Creation
- Chapter Four -
Character Creation
- Chapter Five -
Types & Templates
- Chapter Six -
Advancement
- Chapter Seven -
Aspects
- Chapter Eight -
Skills
- Chapter Nin e -
Mortal Stunts
- Chapter Ten -
Supernatural Powers
- Chapter Eleven -
Playing The Game - Chapter Twelve -
Living With Magic
- Chapter Thirteen -
Spellcasting
- Chapter Fourteen -
Running The Game
- Chapter Fifteen -
Building Scenarios
- Chapter Sixteen -
Nevermore Baltimore
 SCENES
(some)

Chicago Bridge
Meeting Sue
Lea
Lasciel
Masquerade party
Mavra
Victor Sells' house
Welcome to the Jungle
Here are vampires
Chicago-over-Chicago Bob

CHARACTERS
(Types & Templates)


Focused Practitioner
Knight of a Faerie Court
Were-Form
Champion of God
Changeling
True Believer

Emissary of Power
Sorcerer
Red Court Infected
Lycanthrope
Wizard
Pure Mortal
Minor Talent
White Court Vampire
White Court Virgin Harry & Mister say goodbye











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Art for "HITOS" Generic Roleplaying System

General / 29 March 2015

Final Cover Layout
Last Thursday the generic guide "HITOS" developed by Nosolorol was released so here I come with the cover art that I did for the book.

The first idea for the cover was a collage of the art that illustrate the interior. However, we were not convinced at all so I suggested doing a new pic with three different characters, like happens in some other generic systems. After the first sketches everyone agree to do it and keep the collage subtly at the background.

We chose a low POV with some tilt. The two characters behind were called to show two of the setting suggestions included in the book. The redhead girl belongs to "La Caída de Los Mundos Libres" (The Fall of the Free Worlds) a kind of epic fantasy in other planet with sci-fi touches, something like He-man or John Carter, and the red space soldier belongs to "El Sol en Guerra" (Sun at War) a sci-fi setting where humans have colonized other planets. For the girl on the foreground we discard to choose one of the settings to show another possibility that took shape in contemporary girl with a gun and a fire superpower. From these premises I go on painting to get a good team composition. Finally the characters were also used in the 3 book breaks, so I had a few extra work painting the areas behind the fire-hair girl ;)



Cover Sketches Painting Process Cover + Backcover layout

Promo image from Nosolorol website
Book Breaks - Promo image from Nosolorol website

As its name says, the generic guide is not a common roleplaying game, but a system guide that intends to fulfill most of the choices you can create in any setting. From that point of view, the illustrations inside had to show different ambiences such as epic fantasy, sci-fi, super-powers, historical, mystery, etc.  I had quite a lot available artwork done before that could illustrate most of the possible settings so, publishers decided to keep the graphic coherence with only one artist and license some of my artworks for the book interior. As a result, you can find about fifty illustrations done in the last few years credited to the original clients in the first pages of the book. (Sorry for my blurry photos XP)






















So, I want to say thank you to my colleagues of Nosolorol but also a big thank you to all the clients, writers or publishers whose ordered artworks are included in the book.

I hope you enjoy a lot of RPG worlds with this HITOS Generic guide ^_^

Charro

Hardcover happiness ;D
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Cover Art for Steam States RPG

General / 02 March 2015
Cover + back cover final art
And here it is the cover + backcover art I did for the roleplaying game Steam States. We started the sketches from a different concept than the final one: A group of adventurers shooting from their ship to a crowd of orcs that go after them. We were not happy enough with the result because the ship was so big in the back cover and we tried another idea. The second idea was focused in the adventurers with a city behind them, over the cannon walls. We liked how the profile silhouette of the main character worked, so we go on with that one.

After that, I go on painting and adding details, such us working in the city design to get a singular piece that can show that western-fantasy-steam mix which makes this product different.


Sketches
Painting Process Painting Process (close up)
  Cover art

And that's all I did for Steam States. I forgot to include my greetings to the authors Angel L. Marín and Marc Santanach who were also involved in all the design process.

And thank you all for your visit to my Cave :)
Best,
Charro

Previous posts:
Character art for Steam States
Races art for Steam States

Links:
Edge Entertainment website
Steam States page
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Races artwork for Steam States

General / 17 February 2015

Human Human sketches
 As I told you in my previous post, here you have the 9 races with some of the sketches that I did for the roleplaying game Steam States published by Edge Entertainment. As happened with some of the characters, some of them were clear in their descriptions and with some others we tried different designs to find the good one. Also some of the scenarios required different tests and designs.


Elf

Elf sketches


Garlak
Garlak sketches
Ghobb
Ghobb sketches
Gnome
Gnome sketches Gorn

Gorn sketches
Orc
Orc sketches


Warga
Warga sketches
Yurita
Yurita sketches  That's all for now, next day I'll show you the cover art process.
As always, thanks for coming ;)

Links:
Edge Entertainment website
Steam States page


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Character Art for Steam States

General / 11 February 2015
 
About a year ago I was requested by Edge Entertainment to work in the roleplaying game Steam States. I did 15 characters, 9 races and the cover+backcover artwork for this western-fantasy-steam roleplaying game. 


  
I worked with David Ardila (Edge's Art Director) and the game's author developing the designs. For some of them we worked over previous designs by another artist but also we changed some designs to fit other issues different than the previous ones.   
As you will see in the process pics, I started with some mini sketches before starting the color phase. Sometimes we were more interested in the pose and general shapes and some others required some detail tests to look for the right one. Five of the characters fits the idea of "badass cowboy", so I used the same sketches group to find their pose and attitude.
 














That's all for now, next day I'll show you more. Thanks to David Ardila and Edge Entertainment for having me on board in this project.

And I hope you enjoy this visit to my Cave :)

Links:
Edge Entertainment website
Steam States page




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Cover Art for "La Biblia de los Caídos, Tomo I del Testamento de Jon"

General / 08 February 2015
Final Cover Art  By the end of 2014 I was commissioned to do the cover art for the new appendix of The Bible of the Fallen (La Biblia de los Caídos). The Bible of the Fallen is a book's saga created by Fernando Trujillo Sanz and this book has been written by Juan G. Mesa.

Juan G. Mesa provided a good briefing with some ideas and references focused in the hooded main character in a field with the choice of having an old building surrounded by flames. From that briefing I did some sketches changing the point of view and the zooming. The chosen one was the first one from the series below but we decided to enlarge the moon like happened in other sketches.

From that sketch I go on painting with colors. The general blue has something to do with the first cover of the saga that I did a couple of years before and we used a red sweatshirt to stand out the character's silhouette.

Thanks to Fernando Trujillo and Cesar García for trusting me again and thanks to Juan González Mesa for his collaboration in the artwork process.
And, thank you all for visiting my Cave

Best,
Charro

Links:
Book at Amazon 
Fernando Trujillo Sanz author's profile at Amazon
Fernando Trujillo's website
Juan González Mesa author's profile at Amazon


Cover Sketches
Painting Process
Final Cover Layout
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