Really need to start drawing from imagination, probably a good task for the remain of this summer. Along with the other million things I said I’d do. Hmm, busy.

A few below from the Dr. Sketchy’s Opening Night.

…and ‘traditional’ life drawing from last term below…

And below, a very special watercolour piece by Jake. He is actually my hero.

These were supposed to come out thick and fast, but I blame my pace on the all  the other projects for slowing me down. Interestingly, the amount of time spent painting a single piece, doesn’t correlate to the quality of it. Therefore, I’ll just say that the time limits ranged from 10 minutes to 1 hour, per painting. All from reference, except the final two.

Definitely good practice though.

Test brushes were unfortunately only used briefly, seen further down.

These two are from the pitch project, but I treated them the same way as before. Started on 10 minutes, then worked in. I didn’t get to finish them up, but I liked where they were going.

Can’t say that went so well, but I’m relieved the whole pitch brief is over. This term has been really busy, with lots of different projects going on. There always seems to be one project, which really doesn’t get enough of my time spent on it, and that was this one. In fact, the element which was most important (the ‘idea’ which was being pitched) was almost completely absent.

Backgrounds

The backgrounds were definitely more successful than the almost-last-minute characters. In fact, my backgrounds have generally been more successful to date than my characters. I had hoped to do 3 finished backgrounds for this pitch, but I only managed 1 and 1/2.

Didn’t get to finish the one below unfortunately. Although I didn’t finish with the one above ^^ either, I can pretend that one is finished…

Characters

The final characters I created for this were dire. My intention for the characters did not show through. Like the previous pre-production brief, I really struggled with creating characters, although forced sketching was easier this time. Still, definitely not enough sketching.

It is rendering the final characters though, which really comes out weak. My painting approach is very different on characters, than it is to my backgrounds. Definitely think I should practice character-related stuff over summer. In fact, drawing and painting characters from imagination is pretty urgent for me.

Lol, at the neglected guy in green (he was supposed to be the main character).

The Pitch

Pitching something that you produced and hate, is hard. I refused to even describe it, when asked by other course mates. It just tasted so wrong. Which is probably why I failed to prepare the pitch. I had already expected it to be a slow burn from start to finish, so having to be one of the last people of the day to pitch my crap, was tedious as hell.

The feedback from our industry visitors was pretty much as expected. Story sucks. No preparation. No motivation. That seems like a pretty reasonable evaluation.

Tips for next time:

1. When the brief requires you to do anything that you don’t want to do (like writing a story…), work with a partner. Or a even a team. Just don’t go solo. It crippled me, big time.
2. Starting with rigid characters and wrapping an idea around them is a bad move. Don’t do it.
3. You might have other work, but don’t neglect the project that you actually have to pitch to someone. Otherwise, be prepared to go down in flames.

This crew project was a strange brief, and I think everyone from our second year had very unique experiences with it. Some people were stacked up with work, having no time spare for their own projects. I definitely wish I’d got more involved with what I was given, particularly since I couldn’t of asked for a better project.

Below are a few stills and a clip of test animation I did for Jacob’s Lightning Mike character. I actually like this rig a lot, I found it really easy to work with. I think I will ask Jacob if I’m allowed use it in the future (just for animation practice).

I noticed Jacob’s been setting up his web portfolio, which is looking awesome at the minute (even though it’s not finished yet, at the time of writing). Make sure you check out his illustrations.

I had really hoped to render out with textures, but my computer almost exploded. I might replace the play blast video with a rendered version when I get a chance, because he is missing his essential  moustache. Play blast version is below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You can check out Jacob Golding’s sites below:

Jacob Golding – 3D Character Artist and Illustrator
Jacob’s Blog

Best of luck dude! I’ll be keeping an eye on your blog .

For the negotiated brief, I made sure to collect up plenty of reference material for study and inspiration. Most annoyingly, I managed to lose all of what I had initially collected (probably the equivalent of what is below), due to me forgetting that some studio computers may occasionally not save anything after logging off.

Desert

Plenty of rocks, sand, tents, barrels and maybe even a few temples. Perhaps a few vehicles for show, since deserts can be pretty, umm, deserted. I think as far as video games go, this sort of environment possibly requires a little more thought to stay interesting and varied.

Jungle

Potentially the most difficult to reproduce, it will be interesting to see what kind of jungle concepts come out of this project. I reckon plenty of custom brushes will need to be made for these. I’ve haven’t really made any before, so I will test a few out.

Snow

I’d of liked to think this would be the easiest to reproduce, except once I tried, I realised that light bouncing off and through the snow is quite difficult to accomplish. Hopefully a few studies will help me get a better understanding of what is going on.

I will possibly need to do some prop research as well, but it will depend on what type of locations I decide to go for. Until then I will do some short practice studies, to get into the flow of things and help me understand the environments a little better.

If you happen to be down and around the Cornwall area and want a bit more spice added to your life drawing sessions (and perhaps even a little alcohol),  you may be interested in checking out the upcoming Dr Sketchy’s Falmouth, which will be taking place at Mango Tango’s, Church Street, Falmouth between 19:00 – 22:00, on Tuesday, 29 June 2010. It will be the opening night of what is being set to be a monthly event. Tickets are going to be £5 each, sold at the door (you must be 18+). Big thanks to Leah for the heads up.

In case you haven’t heard, Dr. Sketchy’s Anti Art School takes away the silence of regular life drawing classes, replaces the model with burlesque performers and lets you hold a drink in your hand. They hold crazy art contests within each session, with prizes for the winners.

“Dr. Sketchy’s will cure you of every boring art class you’ve ever been to.”
- The Sunday Age, Melbourne

If you are planning to attend the opening night, or are perhaps intrigued enough to attend future nights, be sure to hit these guys up on Facebook. Links are below.

June 29th Opening Night Event

Dr. Sketchy’s Falmouth Page

[UPDATE] – Dr. Sketchy’s Falmouth now has an official website.

To find out more, check out the regularly updated  Dr. Sketchy Blog, or click on the images below to check out a selection of previous NY sessions.

Cherry Shakewell is one of the performers lined up for the opening night session.

http://www.myspace.com/cherrishakewell

So remember guys and girls, Tuesday June 29th.

The summer term has commenced and we have quite a selection of projects under way. A couple of things have carried across from last term, such as dissertation prep. and life drawing. I am feeling a good vibe about this term, so hopefully that will last over the next 6 or 7 weeks.

The Research and Methods unit has carried on from last term (we were asked to complete two essays over Easter), with just the proposal left now, before we tackle the dissertation itself. To be honest, I’m really interested in my subject material for it, so getting on with the written work has been reasonably enjoyable. Life drawing sessions will be slightly different this term, with control shifting between Kathy and Derek each week. Everything else is new, new, new…

[ P.S. - if you have not yet heard about it, you need to know about Dr. Sketchy's Falmouth ]

Outlines of new projects to be completed in the 6 weeks of this term:

Negotiated Brief / Pitch Project

We were asked to think about the Negotiated Brief over the Easter break. After being really disappointed with what I managed to achieve last term, I thought for this one I would hopefully be able redeem myself. I plan to produce concept design work for an action / adventure / fantasy (yeah, something like that) video game, but without any production pieces. This will give me a chance to concentrate on my digital painting skills, without worrying too much about the results.

I want to treat it in a similar way to the Conversation Sketchbook project which I did in the Winter. Basically to churn out as much as possible. Although what I planned for this term was originally intended for just the Negotiated Brief, I’ve decided to essentially merge it with the Pitch Project, using the video game as my pitch. I will create my environments for one project, and the characters / supporting concepts for the other.

Since these are supposed to be independent projects, I had to chat to the lecturers to make sure that this plan was OK with them. It should work out quite nicely, since the lecturers are specialists in the areas appropriate to what I have proposed to each of their briefs. The pitch will be to someone from industry (last year they got somebody from the BBC to come down).

Post Production Skills

I expect this will be a series of weekly exercises, involving basic sound, editing, etc. Pretty much all post production work has been optional up until now (with me opting out generally), so this will be the first bit of compulsory post-production techniques learning. Rumour has it that we will be editing together a short trailer of some sort towards the end.

Animation Technologies

Magic G has already taught us a few of these lessons, which so far have covered some great stuff. We’ve learnt about the history / possible future of computers, ripped one apart to look at all the pieces, found out how they process commands, etc. We will be writing an essay related to this stuff later on, but we haven’t been told much about that…

3rd Year Project

Embarrassingly I haven’t really done a great deal, and there was only a small amount asked of me. Jacob had given me a rigged model to test out before Easter, to see if there was any bugs or problems. I can’t find any issues aside from the peg leg being occasionally dodgy (and I’m not sure it is necessarily the rig, it may of be a fault of my own), which I haven’t found a work around (with animation)  for. I think it may be to do with the knee, there is a rotation I can’t remove when the peg leg is brought forward in the walk cycle, which you can spot in the playblast.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A sequence of stills from my peg leg difficulty below.

The term should be quite intensive, so this blog could be fairly active over the next 6 weeks.

My original plan for Easter was to get up and do some speed painting before work each day, then after 3 days of trying and failing to get up at 6am, I shunned it. I managed to do a couple of 1-hour long digital paintings after work instead. I’ll upload them here when I have a few more – I was supposed to have 10 by now. The main bulk of my time has been t shirt printing down at Advertees and tweaking their new website ready for it’s re-launch.

Life Drawing and Sketches from before the Easter Break

I haven’t really had the energy to do any drawing over Easter, but I still have a whole load of life drawing and bits from early March to upload and show you. Enjoy.

A few moving gestures (the model continuously moved as we drew).

Go to Sketchbook.

I think management is particularly important for someone like me, whose confidence issues don’t allow them to catch-up well. The only pace I can manage at the minute is a comfortable one, barely. If I need to rush or cobble something together, I panic. The result is just doing nothing.

I also feel genuinely bad about not getting to work with Jacob Golding, on his Third Year Project, until now. I’d love to of started on it straight away, but I’ve already learnt from previous projects that you should never bite off more than you can chew. Now that the pre-production project has done and buried (hopefully), I can concentrate on what Jacob has for me. He has two great projects to work on, so it could be good fun!

What I managed.

I found this project really difficult to get started with, mostly because it had things I had not really tried before, like character design and turnarounds. This is where I fell behind, since we were supposed to of developed characters within a week, but mine dragged over until about a week before hand-in. Basically all colour work was done within the 8am to 8am slot that I worked before deadline, along with preparing the bible, finishing turnarounds, etc.

It was a real shame it took me so long to get into it, because I started to enjoy it, aside from the rushing.

Here are a couple of extracts from the design bible I handed in. You can find all the supporting sketchwork in my Sketchbook.

Below are some colour examples of the characters, though the Doctor was supposed to have some previously collected objects within his jacket. I enjoyed looking for colour schemes, it was the first time I’ve really had a chance to find inspiration on the ColourLovers* website.

Regarding what was actually handed-in, backgrounds were where I fell short. The Fortune Teller character above, was supposed to be featured within a production background. Also, the concept piece below isn’t really finished. This is probably what concerns me most about my hand-in.

Only one week until Easter break now, with a fresh project to be proposed this Friday and a literature review for hand-in on the same day. After that I can spend a few weeks getting everything back together. Let’s go!

*Thank you to these lovely people, for the providing palettes:

Faerenach
Olyzel
twilighter
[ relocating fourth]

Used under the Creative Commons.

Anatomy has been on the mind a lot recently, learning about it is almost addictive. I watched the Anatomy for Artists 4-hour streaming class over at Conceptart.org, which I really do recommend if you have the cash to spend on it. If not (or as well as), Marshall Vandruff, who teaches the class, has a list of anatomy books which he recommends.

Some bits from over the last few weeks, most of which you can see larger in my sketchbook over at CA. I tend to update my sketchbook there twice a week. You should get on there too.

By the way, Simon Acty is also on CA. Go there and make him update it.