Evaluation 6 - Quick Character Design

This sketch was done while chatting with a friend about a comic book idea he was playing around with about a character called Captain Venezuela. The comic was to be a more gritty and humorous version of Captain America.

I felt that this would be a good piece to add in as my final evaluation as it goes back to Live Drawing. Using the process I have learned doing those exercises has made me plan sketches with more attention to the subject's character. 

Juan wanted a strong, no nonsense character based on a luchadore and Captain America with a gun. The character was to look like a retired athlete who has let himself go a bit. 

The small sketch was an idea for a tattoo initially for Captain Venezuela but started to evolve into an idea for a villain.

I feel the final image represents what we were aiming for so in that light it was a success. There are issues though like his foot. Through doing more fast exercises I am finding that I am able to notice my mistakes more and am able to correct them. Issues with anatomy crop up and I think that though I don't catch them all now I am noticing them a lot are worked out while working on images. 

Cartoon Style Art

The first thing I am going to do is conduct a series of case studies of artists who are particularly adept in areas which I am not. After this I Intend to produce either a short preview comic based on an old project from college that I wanted to take further which centres around a team of intergalactic bounty hunters...... Sounds really cheesey when I put it like that.
The first case study I will conduct is on Grant Gould who has been responsible for the majority of the promotional art, "How to Draw" and illustrative work for "Star Wars: Clone Wars," "Star Wars: Galaxy", "Blade Raiders" The fantasy role playing card game as well as his self produced web comic "Wolves of Odin".

The reason I have chose his work to look at is because his line work is particularly good when produced digitally. One of the things I struggle with is doing clean line work digitally. Thought I am trying to aim for a more realistic, painterly style nowadays, I feel that to be more flexible in styles in both traditional and digital media would improve my employment prospects in the future.

Evaluation 5 - Live Drawing 2

Another round of Live Drawing in town. I found this round more comfortable that previously. This time rather than using a pencil then inking over it I went straight into the drawing in ink. This sped up roughing in the poses.
Overall compared to my previous Live Drawing exercise I feel that these show more of the character of the subject.
Due to doing a few of Live Drawing sessions I am more confident in my mark making while sketching as well as becoming more accurate.

Evaluation 4 - Perspective 2

After doing the initial Perspective exercise it occured to me that I have never tried to draft up perspective digitally. In the past I have relied on blocking images in traditionally then scanning in the rough image.
Where I am fairly comfortable with the principles of 1, 2 and 3 point perspective and am happy to do this traditionally I hadn't worked out a process to do this.
I will have to revisit this sort of image in the future as I need to explore further how Photoshop's functions such as the transform and warp tools could be used to apply rendering and texture to the objects.
This was useful to start a work flow for plotting out perspective digitally as it is more streamlined but I found this took a lot longer to lay out than it would traditionally.
Another way to lay out perspective is to block out an image in 3D, then composite a render into a digital painting.

Evaluation 3 - Live Drawing

This weeks task was to go into town and do Live Drawing. The idea is to quickly capture the essence of a person quickly, not focusing on producing a realistic likeness of them.

I found this task could be very useful as reference for later projects as well as help to loosen up when drawing.

I found this task difficult, trying to capture people quickly while not getting too bogged in detail early. I found myself penciling in the people as i would in Life Drawing, starting with the skeleton. I will try this exercise again and try to focus more on the motion and manner of the people.

Feedback

Presentation was given and though it went fairly well I have been advised to narrow down my subject matter. To be fair there were A LOT of things to cover and probably too much to really get to grips with one area or to make really meaningful improvements. I have given it a bit of a rethink and have figured out what way to go for this semester.
I plan to look at workflows when creating artwork digitally in different styles; Cartoon/Vector art versus Realistic/Painterly style artwork. This will make me work differently and hopefully aid me in refining my own workflow when working digitally as well as improve my knowledge and skills working digitally.

Evaluation 2 - Tonal Study



For Week 2's exercise we were asked to produce a still life image focusing on tone. 

I feel this drawing went well. Using directional cross hatching helped to give more of a sense that the objects are 3D on the folded paper but rendering the curve of the vase was difficult to make believable. 

My lecturer instructed me to darken the background and the image came together. This task made me realise how important the background tone is to making an image look more complete.

Overall I am happy with this image. I mentioned in a previous post that I spend too much time cleaning up sketches and line work. With this I tried to get past this and though it looks harsh on the cross hatching this image feels more about tone and less about the line.

Evaluation 1 - Perspective

First week back at uni for Computer Arts Practice we were tasked with sitting somewhere on campus and doing a perspective study.

The thing I found most challenging was framing the image and creating a sense of depth using the pillar on the left. I found that getting the dimensions of the back wall was the key and figuring out my horizon line.

One of my biggest issues is that I spend too long on initial sketches. I find that I will draw something for a long time and spend too little time on the rendering so this looks harsh.

Presentation 1

Throughout this module there are many areas in which i want and need to improve on. For my first presentation I am giving an overview of my previous work and looking at what needs improved in general.

2nd year Digital visualisation was my first project that was produced completely digitally, The goal was to produce a character and an environment. I chose to produce designs for a pilot and the air base where she was based. 3D Production was tied into this and the result was a matt painting of an enhanced F15 fighter jet.

This project was another first as I hadn't attempted a matt painting before. Though these both had their issues they made me far more aware of different techniques and work flows. Plus I got to paint a fighter jet...... this makes me happy.

2 artists who inspire me are Stjepan Sejic (left) and Baron Tieri (bottom right). Both are experts in their fields and all 3 combine 3D and 2D to create their work.
Sejic is an illustrator whose best known work is on Top Cow's comic book series Witchblade and now writes and illustrates his self created comic Ravine. Sejic combines 3D and 2D in his comic book work which aids in maintaining consistancy when dealing with portraying characters.
Baron Tieri is a concept artist, Tieri use 3D to produce their work but both use varying methods. Tieri uses simple blocked out models in order to compose scenes then paints over them to create vistas which are comparable to old masters oil paintings.

3D and matt painting has proven incredibly powerful and versatile tools to either speed up pipelines, maintain consistancy and enhance 2D art.

Some of the areas which I need to improve in order to fully utilise 3D compsiting and matt painting are perspective and colour theory. In general with digital painting I need to refine my work flow and work out a process to follow. I feel that in my traditional work I am far faster and accurate in producing work and want to get to the same level with my digital work.