"Cybobird" was my entry for Assembly2k pixeled graphics competition. It got the third place.

I have to point out that the picture is completely original artwork, not copied from any image by somebody else. On the demo scene it is quite usual that the "reference" for an image is taken from some well known fantasy art or photograph - making us graphic artists just human scanners. Some people even scan the pictures and retouch them a bit to make them look original art. The rules of Assembly prohibited that, but still the winner picture was clearly copied and pasted together from several photos - maybe even drawn over scanned images. But what can I prove if I can't show the jury the "reference" material that was used...

Of course there's also copyright issue if you use art or photos made by somebody else, but nobody seems to care about that on the scene...

I came up with the idea of a cybernetic bird when I was on vacation at my parents summerhouse and saw some gulls there. The same evening I made the first sketch of the cybobird:

I also saw a nice sunset the same evening, and I had to photograph it.

These were left untouched for a couple of months, until 3rd of August - less than 24 hours before the compo deadline of Assembly2k - I decided to make a compo picture out of my bird.

The maximum resolution for the picture was 800x600, but I started to work with resolution twice as high, 1600x1200, as it is easier to paint the details if the image is bigger and scale it down when it's finished.

I didn't like the pose of the bird in the sketch I had made earlier, but the design was nice, so I decided to start drawing it from the scratch instead of scanning the earlier sketch. So the first step was to make a rough sketch of the pose with Photoshop and a Wacom tablet.

The next step was to paint some rough shading to carve the general shape visible. I didn't care about the colour of the surface or the light and used only black and white scale, as my main concern was the general direction of the light.

Next thing I started to paint was the background. I used the sunset photo as reference material for cloud shapes, but I wanted the background to be brighter and more orange than in the photo. First step was to make a simple gradient from orange to pale blue and then adjust it a bit with a levels layer. Over that I started to paint the clouds on a separate layer.

The first strokes were very rough with the paintbrush tool, and then I smoothened them with the airbrush tool, painted some more details with the paintbrush tool and a smaller brush, and on some places blurred the clouds with the smudge tool.

The point of doing the background first was to make sure that the colour of the bird matches the colour of the background. After I had finished with the background, I toggled the sketch layer and the shade layer visible - but with very low visibility percentage - and started to sketch out the bird with greater detail.

I continued with the more accurate sketch and tried to keep the perspective correct.

For the wings I made some extra arcs to measure that they are correctly positioned. Even then the lower frontal part of the right wing is too short, but I didn't have time to fix it when I later noticed that it's not perfect.

I finished the more accurate sketch...

...and started to give colour to the bird. I proceeded one part at a time and painted each of them completely. As I had sketched the general shading earlier, I didn't have to think about it so much, and I could concentrate on the details. I started to paint from the head.

Then I proceeded to the neck and shoulders. Each of these parts were on separate layers, so I didn't have to care about painting over an existing part.

The arc around the chest was a bit difficult to get right.

After that I painted the left "wing bone", the frontal part of the left wing.

Then I proceeded to the stomach, legs and the tail. Here you can see how the tail is under progress: I have painted the general shade there, but not yet the details.

Here you can see the details of the tail. I would have wanted to work with the tail a bit longer, but the schedule was tight.

Then I started to paint the wings. I had to hurry, as there was only a couple of hours left before the deadline.

Especially the right wing was made in a real hurry. Here you can see the rough colouring of it.

I would have wanted to add a bit more detail to the right wing, but I simply run out of time. The deadline was at 20:00 and I finished the picture at 19:26.

Click on the image above to see the 800x600 version that was delivered to the competition jury.

The layers of the final image are as follows - from top to bottom:

• head
• neck
• left wing bone
• chest arc
• shoulder ball
• legs
• left wing
• right wing bone
• right wing
• stomach
• tail
• accurate sketch
• shade
• sketch
• fog
• clouds
• Levels
• sky gradient
• Background

Of course you can draw with mouse as well, but tablet gives you much better control over your image. Trust me, I have drawn lots of pictures with mouse in the past.