It’s been a little while since I’ve written in here, Diary. But I have a lot to say. The biggest thing is that I got 90% again this week! WOO! The assignment was the colour and texture and basically finish the images I’ve been working on the last few weeks.
First the harder image: The 1960s Nasa Lab
There isn’t a lot to tie this to the 1960’s with the exception of a very mid century style lamp and a rotary phone on the counter but the huge vintage satellite in the middle is pretty obvious.
I got good points for imagination. The original brief was “Interior Computer Lab” but naturally, as a concept artist, I can’t just draw a modern computer lab. I could just find a real one and take a picture. So I imagine this computer lab was where America created the first satellite.
Animated process:
Now the weirder (and more fun) picture: The Eel.
The assignment brief was: “Eel with white body, yellow head, black spots, lidless eyes and a fin running from the head to tail on his round body”.
The robot arms and legs were implied in that.
Officially I handed this in after the critique class so I didn’t get a chance to talk to my teacher about it yet. He’ll be discussing it tomorrow though so that’s good. If it’s normal notes then I won’t write about it but if there’s something major then I’ll make sure I let the blog know.
The process:
As you can see this stops before the final orange atmosphere lighting. I added that last minute before uploading it to the school and I had already created this process gif and I can’t be bothered to edit it.
I have another big post coming very soon before this term ends.
I just got my highest assignment grade so far, Diary. 90%! Yesssss. Pretty good considering the creature portion wasn’t complete.
I’m spending way to much time trying to make the picture perfect so I haven’t drawn the details on the mechanics or the bubble over it’s head. But here it is so far.
Yup. That’s the guy. I have to add teeth and colour and all sorts of junk but it’s really coming together I think. And I think I’ll work on it now. Short post! WOO!
As promised here is the completed 1960’s Nasa Lab. By completed though I only mean the black and white values.
I animated the process again.
I spent way to much time on this. Clearly I’m a slow artist. I’ve barely done anything to the Eel image either. I have roughly 23 hours until that needs to be uploaded. Ugh. But I’m proud of what I did here.
It really shows you how effective the school is. I handed the image in as ‘complete’ WAY before it was complete. I thought it was so good but my teacher showed me in just a few minutes how to make it stand out.
Here are the individual steps unanimated for those that want a close look. Before my teacher gave me his advice my image looked like something between steps 3 and 4.
Now I have to finish the eel picture and it’s so far from complete. I have 23 hours to upload before it’s considered late. Wish me luck!
I decided to show off just the line art I created for the computer lab because I’m rather proud of it. I have made an effort to render the values for this drawing as well but I have some big changes I want to do before I post it on here.
There she be. In the rendered piece you’ll see some more adjustments like open drawers and more bits on the floor. It’s those little details that make a place look lived/worked in and I need more. And the lighting will be very dynamic. Well, you’ll see in a day or two.
REALLY short post today but that’s ok. I just posted the comics like… yesterday? I don’t even know. I worked a two day auction and haven’t been to bed before 3am for 4 days. It’s 2:44am right now so maybe today I will!
Anyway, this is just the updated thumbnails I created from the last assignment. I know they don’t look much different but it was hours of experimenting and erasing ideas that didn’t work. Just showing it before I start the next step tomorrow. Just lots more details and a more dynamic perspective.
Anyway, go read the comics I posted previously, why not?
After months of character and creature designs the class has finally shifted towards environments. I will still be doing characters and creatures each week but they won’t be the real focus of the assignments. The assignments are also starting to become more specific as if I was hired to draw something for a client. I was given 4 options for environments and 4 options for creatures/characters.
For the environment I chose to do a Interior Computer Science Building. That’s all the description I was given. But as always I have to make it unique. If I just draw a picture of a regular every day computer lab then why hire me, right? They could just take a photograph of a real one.
So I’m doing a 1960’s computer lab from Americas side of the Space Race. Essentially scientists building a satellite in a room full of computers.
The design board:
I love those big chunky computers. They will really give me an opportunity to play with Smart Objects in photoshop but I’ll get into that in another post.
I’ve also been trying to practice my thumbnails. The shots aren’t nearly dynamic enough but the perspective and scale are getting better. I had the critique on these thumbnails two days ago so I’m going to actually redraw them soon to make them better before moving onto the next step. The satellite needs to be the focal point.
For the creature I had to draw an eel. Just that. An eel. So naturally I decided to give it robot bird legs and arms.
Board:
Paints a picture, doesn’t it? The thumbnails:
You can see how much I struggled with getting a good shape/perspective for the eel. I didn’t want it to have a perfect snake slither. I wanted him all loosy-goosy in an asymmetrical shape. Snakes move in a very wave-like fashion but eels are influenced more by the water movements. I think the legs and arms really give him some personality. Once I have him redrawn bigger I will play with more details and mechanical components.
And that is all. I will write again this weekend to talk about some new comics I’ve been drawing lately.
Is this the longest title I’ve had for a blog post? Gotta be top 3.
Hi Diary,
I’m all caught up with my homeworks! It’s a good feeling. I was caught up last Wednesday actually but I didn’t write about it because I was enjoying not having an upcoming (or passed) deadline.
Wait. Is it a “passed” deadline because I passed it? Or a “past” deadline because it’s in the past? I’ll say it’s a pasted deadline.
First of all though I updated my rabbit from the previous assignment. Fixed some obvious errors and textured the background a bit.
Feel free to send copies of him to Pixar and demand they hire me.
Right. The assignment. I drew a Post Apocalyptic San Francisco house.
It’s rough, I know. The scale on the steps is completely off. The colour is messed up. But I still got 80% on the assignment which is cool. We haven’t actually started the official environment design classes yet. (It starts Wednesday!) It took me around 10 hours to actually make this one little house and my teacher made it SO MUCH COOLER in 20 minutes.
Look at this:
He doesn’t know I have this. I take constant screen shots during my classes to keep as personal notes. I don’t show them on the blog because JOIN THE SCHOOL YOU CHEAPSKATES! But I figure since I drew 90% of this it’s ok if I show it.
The biggest thing (besides all the destruction and fire) is the atmosphere. My original is a very grey building with a red sky. The building is grey, of course. But the atmosphere would bring the colour closer to the sky colour. He says I’m going to learn all about that starting at my next class.
Here is the process for the image I made even though I hate it now.
One awesome thing though was that he thought the second step was a 3D model I found. Why is that awesome? Because I just drew it in photoshop with the magnetic lasso tool. Haha. It was only to tell me which sides faced the sun and which didn’t. Adrian told me to take it as a compliment so I will, by golly. He said the perspective had to be pretty good to make it look like an untextured model.
I’m back to the ol’ blog but this time I actually have a finished assignment. Ok, technically only half of the assignment is finished. I still have a cityscape to draw. Details, details. But the rabbit is done.
Woo! This is probably the most textured character I’ve ever done. I’m sure there are lots of technical bits that I screwed up on but I really really tried to think out what I was doing while I drew this. I hope it shows.
And of course, the obligatory animation:
I want to actually record a drawing from sketch to full render but I start and stop drawing so often I’m not sure how it’ll work. Especially with all the experimenting/screwing up I do I might not want people to see my process. One day though.
Here are all the steps un-animated if you really want a closer look.
I’ll be assigned a new assignment in about 2 hours so expect a lot of posts coming up. I still have to do the cityscape from last week. (Don’t judge me!) But after this week I’ll be all caught up again.
No really. I’m the worst. See the title of this post? That doesn’t even begin to say how late I am. Today is December 20th (at roughly 1am) and my assignment was due on December 13th. A WEEK AGO! And it’s still not close to finished.
We had an auction last weekend. A very successful one at that. It’s been 10+ hour days for the last 10 days to prepare for, run, and finish the auction. Unfortunately we didn’t anticipate how successful it actually would be. We broke all our records for registered bidders both in-house and online. And 34% of the items sold online! That’s three times our normal (we usually dance around 9%). That’s a lot of money to chase down and a lot of items to ship.
I won’t get into all the gritty details of it (maybe I will on the auction blog though). The point is that I’ve been too busy for drawing. And I didn’t pick an easy creature to draw either. The premise: A giant anthropomorphized rabbit made of trees!
Here are the sketches from when I was creating the pose/form for him (before adding the wood details). Originally I had him being a ‘protector’ of sorts. There was going to be a sick girl inside his stomach that he’s keeping safe. But clearly that’s way to much work for me this week. At the last two stages you can see I scrapped it. But I still kept the hollow chest cavity. I thought maybe I’d put a fire or wisp or something. It’s a magic tree guy. Might as well have magic.
Now came the tricky part of adding wood. I specifically wanted a ‘Strangling tree’ effect. These are trees that fight for light in dense forests and will wrap around other trees or itself or buildings just to gain ground.
I seriously picked the hardest tree texture in the world. Why do I hate myself so much?
I started trying to turn that basic rabbit form into a tree but I was very quickly losing the ‘volume’ of the character. Plus you couldn’t tell which parts were his limbs. I decided to go more constructive (Adrian should be proud).
This is a technique the school made us learn in the first term and honestly since that lesson I don’t think I’ve ever used the skill again. But today I used it and it really helped. It demonstrates where the character gets thicker or thinner and what the limbs center lines are. You can even sort of see how the inside is hollow. I’ll definitely be using this technique again.
There he is. Does it look like he’s made of strangling wood? I need to do something with the toes and fingers but I’m not sure what yet.
So why am I showing all this off now if it’s not even close to done? I still need to value, colour and texture this bad boy! The entire image should have been portfolio ready a week ago! But now I don’t know if this is the character I want to do. Adrian did the critique on Wednesday of the version I had finished that day. We explored a lot of neat ideas with him like making him more evil (the eyes suggest he’s bad). He could be a demon even. The cavity in his stomach could be a monster mouth or something. I quickly experimented with giving him mammoth tusks like this is a giant prehistoric rabbit. I just don’t know now.
I think I’ll finish the wood guy (despite not knowing what to put inside him) since I’m this far into it. I still have a whole cityscape to do too and I need SO MUCH PRACTICE WITH CITYSCAPES.
I should get back to work since I just spent 22 minutes typing this out. Finished version coming soon.
Finally got a good chunk of my assignment done. This week I have to do some thumbnails and explorations of different creatures. Isn’t that just the broadest assignment ever? It’s awesome. Adrian taught me a really cool way to go about it too. For my design board instead of just pictures of creatures I should just do pictures of neat stuff. Anything that inspires me.
And then I just grab an image and use it to guide my creature. And it’s not tracing, either.
See? That’s like a flower or something. A creepy awful flower that probably kills you but still just a flower. And I made a doofy slug AND a monster guy. It’s not supposed to be a finished artwork. Just lots of drawings to decide what I want the finished piece to look like.
Arg I love that fox. Did you know that you can own Fennec Foxes in Alberta (my province) legally? And a baby one is only like $700?! And that’s as big as it gets? I would name it Fuzzers.
This is a good example of not just tracing the fox. The fox is already a creature. So I tried making the ears a hat. It was fun for like a second but then I decided big ears are more fun than big hats so I tried again. The goblin shows how I drew one thumbnail and then copied it to change the hands and feet. Never assume your first drawing is as good as it can be because it almost never is.
Here’s all the thumbnails I did for these images:
The eyeball fish I drew a long time ago when the baby wouldn’t sleep but tonight I tried turning the optic nerves into squid tentacles. I only spent a second on it but now I think I might want to do a finished version of it because it’s creepy. Needs longer tentacles.
What’s that? You think I’m done? HA! I decided to do this assignment twice! And this time I’m using Christmas images!
These creatures were WAY TOO MUCH FUN! Seriously. First the Santa Hat. The middle one on the bottom with the wrecking ball tail is my favorite of the hat drawings. But the Christmas tree has been my favorite over all.
Haha oh man. So stupid. So fun to draw. My wife likes the fuzzy guy best out of everything I drew (She HATES the eyeball fish).
Anyway this is the whole page.
My wife has pointed out that the tiny creatures wrapped around the berries make them look like testicles.
…
I agree. And I don’t mind either. Testicle monsters are creatures too.
I have to do cityscape thumbnails too but that page is only half finished. I’ll get it done tomorrow. Night!
