Blog – Page 5 – Mike Ward Draws

Creature Design Planning

Posted on December 6, 2015by MikeLeave a comment

Dear Diary,

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!

Loves Michael

The Artless Week

Posted on December 4, 2015by MikeLeave a comment

Diary. I’m exhausted.

I’ve mentioned on here that I work full time for my families auction company and this past weekend everything went wrong. I won’t write the whole thing on here because really I should be writing it over at Auction House Blues (the company blog).

But basically I’ve had no time off to do any of my homework. In fact, the assignment I’m doing now (or not doing since I’m typing this nonsense) was due yesterday! And I’m barely started! But my teacher, thankfully, has pushed this class back 6 days so I can still get it done before the next critique.

I basically haven’t drawn in a week and it’s awful. I plan very much to do the #21days and master challenges but I’ll write about that later.

Anyway I’ll get back to work. Here’s all I’ve drawn this week:

Avatars for wife and friend. I’m an art-eest.

Love Michael

New Avatar

Posted on November 25, 2015by MikeLeave a comment

(Update: I forgot to say I finally wrote something in the Artist Bio page!)

Hi Diary,

I haven’t had anything super awesome to write in you this week. Last week time got away from me so I wasn’t able to start a new assignment from scratch (like I like to do). I textured up the detective and city from the preceding week. Overall I got 76% on the assignment. Ouch. Tied with my lowest mark this term.

But a new week starts tomorrow. Creature Design! Yesssss. I can’t wait. Obviously I won’t have any works-in-progress for a few days to show off… assuming the assignment actually has a drawing in it (sometimes it’s just design boards and thumbnails).

To tied you over for now though here’s my new winter twitter avatar.

(I drew this while watching this weeks pre-recorded school lecture video tonight).

For fun these are the halloween avatars I drew this year. Mine was the scarecrow and the rest were requested by friends or my wife.

Loves Michael

Space Detective & City Critique

Posted on November 17, 2015by MikeLeave a comment

I got the critique from last weeks assignment. 80% for my Space Detective and a future-ish type city. I actually didn’t post the finished city here because honestly I was embarrassed by how bad it came out. But no. I must acknowledge my failings if I want to get better. This is what I handed in.

*dry heaves*

I have no subtly. Just look at the values in this thing. I go from pure black to pure white. And the colours. It looks like I coloured it in with a box of sniffy markers I stole from the preschool near by.

(I actually did steal them but it’s unrelated to this assignment).

I figured it was a COLOURING assignment. So I should colour the hell out of it! But really the buildings should all be similar in colour and way less saturated. The light should also show a little on the buildings. And the reflections on the glass are completely wrong.

I took some of the teachers advice and quickly put together this:

*dry heaves slightly less than last time*

Really I should have a street light on another corner too. So many issues.

The space detective I did pretty well on.

Nothing too major to fix except for an eye brow and some lighting issues from the hologram. The biggest thing was the feet. She was turned so heavily to the right but her one leg was still stiffly pointing left.

Normally about now I’d be posting the WIP’s of this current weeks assignment. But this week got away from me. I actually took two evenings to play video games. I never play games anymore. Basically my life is work, baby, homework. It was nice to goof off a little. Unfortunately my son is going through some growing pains which is keeping him awake most nights. So I lost my chance to draw the other evenings.

Today I stubbornly assured my wife that I would still get a completely new character and new city done before my next class. That class, I should add, is in 41 hours. And I work full time. I just spent the last two hours racing to create a character and it’s just not working. I’m making a million mistakes because I’m rushing. So instead of starting from scratch I’ll do what the school asked. I will texture the previous assignment.

All day I felt bad about that inevitability but thinking about it now I’m glad I goofed off a couple of nights. I spent some real quality time with my wife too. I missed her face.

I should get to bed since I’m just rambling. But here’s a cool thing I drew using Lazy Nezumi Pro. It’s a plugin for photoshop that I’ll likely write a review on soon.

5 Point Perspective! I drew a fisheye city in just a few minutes. Cool, right?

Character Design Colour – City WIP

Posted on November 7, 2015by MikeLeave a comment

Really short post today Diary,

Remember in my last post I mentioned that I have to colour a cityscape for this weeks assignment as well? I don’t think I’m going to have it done. Truthfully the entire assignment was due last wednesday but that class had to be postponed until this upcoming tuesday. I decided that with the extra few days I would start over and do this assignment right!

But it’s not going right! Nope. Not at all. Well ok it’s not bad. Here’s the Work-In-Progress.

As you can see it’s way more detail than my previous Medieval Suburbs had. It’s kind of a jumble of lines right now but when I add the value it’ll all start to be much more clear. I hope.

The assignment is due in about 23 hours so I’m going to get to bed and start painting in the morning. Wish me luck!

Love Michael

Character Design Colour – Space Detective

Posted on November 1, 2015by Mike9 Comments

9 days since I’ve written in you, Diary. Seems like forever.

So I’m well into week 3 of term 2 now. It’s basically the 3rd step in the character production lessons. Colour. And, once again, I’m making the assignment excessively harder than is required of me because, again, I’m starting from scratch.

Remember how the first week I drew the crazy book guy?
And instead of rendering that character in week 2 (Like I Was Supposed Too!) I drew a new violin guy?
Welp, in keeping with (the stupidest) tradition I’ve started over again! YAY! Ok, here’s my thinking. If I work on the same character every week then I’m not practicing the previous lessons. Right?! So I’m smart to keep starting over…

Smart.

…

Anyway here it is so far.
Futuristic Detective! Aww yeah. And does that gorgeous face look familiar? Probably not if you’ve never seen my wife before but IT’S TOTALLY MY WIFE! Actually don’t look at the face in the last iteration. I screwed it up. The eyes and lips are completely wrong now. And the more I adjust it the worse it’s getting. So I’m going to start them both over right away. Also I haven’t added eyelashes or any of the back-lit ambient lighting so it’s not exactly ready for the next step anyway.

COLOUR! Yup. When I’m done this badass detective will be coloured. You don’t know my wife but she’s got super awesome red hair that would be perfect for a space detective. Actually here’s a picture.

See that? Yowza. And people wonder why I’m so happy all the time.

Ok back to arts.

UPDATE:
I finished the picture! More or less. I’m sure I’ll do some fiddly edits to it before I hand it in but for now: Blammo

Mmm. Now that I’m looking at it on this monitor (not my tablet) I see some of the colours aren’t right. The eyebrows for instance. Oh well. I’ll keep poking at it. I still have a city scape to do for this week as well.

For fun though I animated the process again.

Love Mike-ael

Violin Guy Critique

Posted on October 23, 2015by MikeLeave a comment

Diary,

I got my mark on the assignment. 80%! Arg. Will I never get 110%?? My coach will be so mad.

Once again I’ve screwed up a whole bunch of fundamental stuff. For instance his stupid flat face:
Actually the flat nose was deliberate. You see his girlfriend is a shovel. And before he left for work one day she kissed him on the nose… -NO IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE FLAT! Was I blind when I handed this in? Here’s some grade A polygoning of how it should look.

See how it even covers the far eye? Yeah. And speaking of the eyes. They are flat too. And I don’t mean flat in the ‘Kristen Stewart flat dead expressionless eyes’ way

but the ‘his eyes are literally flat discs covered in face meat’ way. Eyes are balls. Face balls. Balls of the face. Covered in face meat.

And there’s my new Halloween avatar.

Adrian did like my chains though. That’s pretty cool since I didn’t look up a single guide on drawing them. And they didn’t take all that long either. I think I’ll make a quick tutorial for drawing chains, by golly.

He said I did good on the pose though which is awesome since I spent a whole evening just coming up with that. There was other stuff wrong but instead I’ll tell you what was wrong with the other picture. (I’ll never run out of things that are wrong!)

For the most part he seemed to like it. At least the concept of it. I didn’t make it really clear that it’s modern day though which made the AC unit seem unusual. After talking to him I like the Medieval days better. It’s like The Flintstones but…you know… not The Flintstones. But the scale is off. See Smiles over there? He’d fit through that door no problem. But if you walk him over to the garage…

It’s barely bigger. How can he fit a car that can seat two people if he himself could touch both walls of the garage?

Anyway that’s enough stuff to work on for now. I better go draw noses a while.

Loves Michael

Character Design 1 – Part 2

Posted on October 21, 2015by MikeLeave a comment

I’m done this assignment, Diary! I worked way too hard on it. And next week I’ll work way too hard on a new assignment.

…so tired…

Actually I’m super awake because I’ve had 5 coffees today. Thank goodness for spell check because so far I’ve spelled almost every word wrong in this post! YAY!

Oh right. Here’s homework guy.

Are you in awe of the sexy? I can tell that you are. So this week I learned that I’m totally awful at rendering. This guy. This one little guy with his little violin and his puffy pants. I drew him for days. DAYZ! But that’s the point of this nonsense, right? To be slow at first and get faster with mileage? Did I mention how tired I am?

Oh! And I created an animation of the process because I wasn’t already too busy what’s wrong with me. It’s a gif so it should be doing stuff. If it’s not changing then… I don’t know. Fix it.

I think I mentioned in the last post too that I had to do a city scape. I spent WAY less time on this. I’m sorry Adrian. But I’m pretty pleased with the concept. I may develop this further in later assignments.

Get it?! It’s a suburban street if Medieval architecture was still current. Haha. Oh man. What nonsense. What a crazy kooky world that would be.

…so tired.

Ok so class actually starts in about 12 minutes. I literally just uploaded it all. I’m the worst student.

Michael

Character Design 1: Part 1 – I’m An Idiot

Posted on October 18, 2015by MikeLeave a comment

I’m an idiot, Diary.

It’s 2am Sunday morning and I’m still working on my assignment. I worked on it the last 3 days. Here’s why I’m an idiot:

I HAVEN’T STARTED THE ACTUAL ASSIGNMENT YET! Why do I do this???

All I have to do is render a character. Just a black and white image that shows where shadows are and where highlights are. I could easily have done my paranoid book guy from the last assignment but nooooo. I had a new idea for a new character. And I wanted to do it official like, too. Really use what I’m learning.

The premise? A guy cursed to forever play the Violin! Aww yeah. That’s new…ish, right? It’s basically my take on the Faustian myth. Think Robert Johnson but with a violin instead of a guitar.

First the design draft (on super sexy template):

All the real important stuff is there. Clothes. Violin. Look of tortured anguish. Another violin. Truthfully while doing the drawing I used even more reference images but just with google images on my other monitor.

The silhouettes and choosing a pose.

I have a bad habit of erasing stuff that doesn’t work right away. I’m trying to stop that. Anyway here you can see where I tried different poses with stick drawings and different anguished faces. The silhouettes are straight forward. I knew he was dressed like a conductor and he had a violin. I just needed enough drama to look like he’s miserable. I decided on the last one because it’s the most open.

And now the three steps towards a finished drawing:

I actually don’t hate the naked guy! It’s my first ‘anatomical’ drawing that wasn’t garbage. Granted I didn’t draw many of the muscles but you know they are there. Next I dressed him. I’m not sure there are vests with coat tails truly but I thought it looked cool.

The final step, of course, was cursing him up real nice. He’s chained to both the violin and the bow. Clothes are wearing out because he cannot stop playing. He wished to be able to play the violin. Now it’s all he can do. I guess moths or something are eating the clothes off him too. I originally wanted a contract nailed to the violin but it covered up too many details so I scrapped it. Did you see those chains?! They actually didn’t take long to draw. I could have drawn more, even. It’s fun.

SOOOOO I guess I’ll get back to work. Rendering time! Wish me luck. I hope I don’t ruin it.

Lurf Michael

P.S. Did I mention I have to render a cityscape this week too? And my plan for that is just as convoluted? I’m the worst.

Background Image Template

Posted on October 13, 2015by MikeLeave a comment

Hi Diary,

I’m exhausted. My family runs an auction company (www.wardsauctions.com) and we just had our annual Thanksgiving Day auction. I like my job most of the time. Making an auction is good fun. But the actual auction… I could call in sick that day.

ANYHOO! Remember I said I was going to work on a template image to put my assignments on?

Pretty slick, right? I actually used techniques I learned from my teacher last term to make it. Gasp! Did you see that Tom? I learned something from you!

I made a custom brush of a hexagon. To give it a little depth I lowered the flow of my eraser and dragged it across the top left area to imply a highlight. For the border I reversed the value of the interior.

Then I adjusted the brush settings to increase the scatter and spacing and giving it a random size (jitter).

I’d give the exact settings but I’m lazy. After I had it all set up I just randomly changed the brush size from big to small and just draw random squares until I liked it. I used the eraser where some parts got a little bright.

So there you have it. Let’s see it in action:

I photoshopped Starlord into the Jurassic Park franchise. If that background doesn’t make it look official then I don’t know what will. I’ll email it to Universal Studios when I’m done writing this blog post. Maybe now they’ll take me seriously.

Luff Michael