Fergus Russell's sketchbook

[Crowbit]

Lovely to see this site is still alive. I forgot about it completely since the conceptart.org days. Looking forward to haveing somewhere I can post all my studies and sketches.

Here are a few of my current portfolio pieces. looking forward to posting in this format again and meet more of you peeps

[Crowbit]

todays sketches 

[Crowbit]

enviroment studies as I'm trying to improve my environment work 

[Jephyr]

Welcome back. Several of us are former CA denizens. : )

Really like what you've posted so far (the images in your second post aren't loading for me) — the characters/scenes in that first post are top shelf — and the last environment looks good.

Looking forward to seeing more

[Dominicque]

I spy me some Leydecker folds. Your paintings. I want to lick them, they are so good!

[darktiste]

todays sketches 

You might want to retry posting those.

Nice and clean content so far. You seem to be between producing a mix of concept art and illustratoration.

[JosephCow]

nice these all look super good!

[Crowbit]

Welcome back.  Several of us are former CA denizens.  : )

Really like what you've posted so far (the images in your second post aren't loading for me) — the characters/scenes in that first post are top shelf — and the last environment looks good.

Looking forward to seeing more

I thought there would still be a bunch of CA descendants here ^^

I think I realized what I did wrong. thanks for the kind words look forward to seeing everyone's progress on here.

[Crowbit]

I spy me some Leydecker folds. Your paintings. I want to lick them, they are so good!

very good observation haha XD ye use my morning sketches for studies & and master studies mainly.

[Crowbit]

[quote="Crowbit" pid="134172" dateline="1652281074"]
todays sketches 



You might want to retry posting those.

Nice and clean content so far. You seem to be between producing a mix of concept art and illustratoration.

ye I see where I went wrong I think if not I'm sure its maybe just related to file size.

but ye its a bit of a mix although concept art is the goal. just starting my first concept artist job next month

[Crowbit]

I might start adding my thoughts of the day just as a dirty for myself to record what I'm thinking. But today I was lazy and only spent an hour of sketchbook drawing. Just got excited to do THU new golden ticket.

THOUGHTS: fell like I'm not fully grasping folds in fabric will work more on them. I'am also unsure of the ratio of studies to imagination sketches for learning. I get the felling that I should split it roughly 50/50 for the time being. Might start to think of a challenge for myself to improve my concept design skills, a bit like Snattie's 1 year challenge where he aimed to get better at story telling.

[Crowbit]

I'm not calling this done i'll leave it to simmer for a while but just a random Character design. it's only clean up I want to do I think but meh and the face looks a little jank

[Kilillan]

Great stuff! I especially like the last character design

[Dominicque]

Dude, I know what you mean getting the head and neck to connect to the neck without looking wonky is a task in itself. Even more hard when its it's at an odd angle. What are you talking about the character design is great! Love the idea of the hair being a character itself.

[Crowbit]

@Kilillan - thanks a bunch ^^

@Dominicque - ah, you saw me asking for feedback on one of the servers. ye I'll maybe experiment with it a bit more and see what happens

too lazy to take pictures of my sketchbook work, I've also decided to pursue a challenge that will help me with prop design. Planning to do something like 100 days of prop design


prop 1/100 

[darktiste]

I would probably follow you in that challenge buy i already go to learn 3d overlay and i am ramping up toward doing a portfolio.So all i can do is some quick crit and encouragement.What kind of props are you aiming for a certain time frame or any kind?

[Crowbit]

I would probably follow you in that challenge buy i already go to learn 3d overlay and i am ramping up toward doing a portfolio.So all i can do is some quick crit and encouragement.What kind of props are you aiming for a certain time frame or any kind?

ah, it's all good. good luck with the portfolio work bud. Aye, feel free to C&C my work, I always appreciate paint overs if anyone's got the time as I'm pretty tarsh as interpreting feedback through words. 

But I'm not gonna go back and change these designs anyway since it's a daily thing.

Props can be anything really from stylized to realistic, simple to complex, sci-fi or fantasy. 
probably just a minimum time of 1 hour but I'm allowing myself to do more than one prop a day. 

I'll definitely get into the functionality at times as well.

[darktiste]

You could try to hit the wood texture a little bit harder to avoid thing looking to similar to clay.But you can get away with what you did pretty easy just with the color suggesting the material most of the time.If you want to challenge yourself try props that aren't the usual color you would expect the material to be and instead work to make the lighting and the stroke suggest the material instead.Example a orange armor, Ask yourself what kind of aging would fit?What the reflectivity of the material? How can you suggest the material using it silhouette(example fur silhouette is very distinct).You can also try to let say do 10 props just in black in white but you try to make what ever texture read with a minimal amount of stroke.(Brush economy)(Useful for concepting) You can also do completely black props focus only on silhouette that can be also good exercise to think more about shape language for example you do a set of 3 props the same object but with each one having a specific shape(triangle,square,circle) as it main basic shape to construct from.You could also try to do set of props and think in term of composition arrrangement,camera angle and etc.

Outside of the challenge aspect you can carve the challenge to serve your purpose it doesn't have to be a random happy accident.

[cgmythology]

Really strong updates here! Loving the props and your recent paintings. Your color choices have a very natural and relaxing feel to them which I really enjoy, keep that up!

[Crowbit]

@darktiste - thanks for the suggestions I'll probably just go down the road that I prefer for learning but that will involve some of the stuff you suggested.

@cgmythology - Cheers man, Just hoping to go ham with the art this year and see where it gets me at the end.

Really weak first and second day of this challenge I think, but it's all good I'll find my footing soon.

prop 2/100