Meat House

[StardustLarva]

I really like that last monster design, I could imagine seeing it in a weird indie animated film. Keep up the great designs, Meat.

[Adam Lina]

GDC huh? Rubbin elbows with the big shots?

[JyonnyNovice]

That nurse is scaring the hell out of me XD great job ^_^

[meat]

 
Brief: Near-future sci-fi biker bandits in polar environment who robs transport vehicles with swift hit-and-run tactics. They don’t cross the line from robbery to murder. They name themselves Hail Hounds.

Struggle with fast and numerous thumbnails:
I struggle a lot to make thumbnails. I keep trying to do more faster – say, 20 in 2 hours – and I can’t. One method I’ve been trying since last year is quick, shape-based thumbnails. Here I’m using marker on paper. I would start, then I would quickly fall back to old, safe, slow habit of line drawing so I can see what I’m putting down.
This collection of 30 thumbnails took me a total of 5 sittings across 5 days.

#1-10 took a day.
#11-14 (I think) took a day.
#15-24 took a day.
#28-29, +25 took ~ 5 hours.
#30 took ~2.5 hours.

I don’t usually do character design. I’ve not done sci-fi either. I would research every time I do a thumbnail, and again every time I revise the aesthetic theme. Confusion while in unfamiliar territories sucks... Each time I make shape-based thumbnails, I had no idea what it is, and all the shapes come out generic humanoid with random lumps here and there, looking like cartoonish clones of Master Chief. Each time I revert back to archaeologically scraping an idea out with pencil lines, I end up with 3 thumbnails after 4 hours that may or may not convey the correct feel for this character. Current problem is, shape-based thumbnailing makes me very insecure when I can’t see what is in those blobs, because I don’t see it in my head to begin with. However, line-based thumbnailing makes me noodle one drawing far too long, and end up with hodge-podge of many little ideas cluttered onto one humanoid armature that rarely convey a clear theme from each drawing. Both together creates a third problem where I feel like I’m not expressing my aesthetic themes clearly, and I’m also not exploring enough variety in my designs. I’m not sure how to break through this choke point that’s been bothering me since last year, and a choke point I believe I need to break through to improve as a concept designer.

Struggle with clear, good design:
At the beginning I had cowboy and western looks mixed in with the outlaw and biker looks, but that was too much of a mix. Currently it’s simplified to just sci-fi biker bandits. Their setting is the dark, frozen regions on D52, where they leech off the clean water (ice) trade some American corporation is monopolizing. A lot of struggle right now is in how to visually convey all that, especially the “polar outlaw who don’t kill” part.

[meat]

After another round at trying to clarify the bandit design, it still wasn’t visually clear what the character is about. I’ll not post those attempts. After that, I think I started to avoid designing the bandit, and instead went on to design the hounds that inhibited the same environment as the bandit, some of which were kept by the bandits for reasons. I even designed the vegetation and the hound’s prey… all to avoid the painful character design, like I would avoid the pumps and fall back to the familiarity of treadmill for days after a painful training session on the pumps. … not that I’ve been back to the gym, just a good metaphor. I’ll have to decide soon on fur shape and color. I don’t know if this is good, running away from something hard to do to something more familiar. Not that this creature design was a walk in a park. It took days, and I had great trouble twisting it from profile to 3/4 view. It’s much easier to design a creature in profile, but I need to learn much more anatomy to confidently design a full 360 creature.

[edit] image 

[meat]

AFK'd to IFCC. This is a batch of time-killer I painted from photos on my phone while waiting in airport and in airplanes. Lots of crying babies, sitting next to the engines, and lower back pain kept me awake all the time so it was good that some art came out of those hours. I did more at home because I have had this pack of watercolor postcard for years, bought with this exact purpose and yet never started. Now that I did, I want to finish them up. I still have 3 packs of bigger, blank cards with envelopes, but that project will have to wait. 

[meat]

[neopatogen]

Great idea about those pocket watercolor sketchboxes! I must try it, too!
Awesome creature designs, and it's really interesting to observe your exploration process.

[meat]

Thanks neo!


Implementing feedback and made changes to make them look more like concept sheets: 













random sketches for other purposes and for relaxation:

[Zipfelzeus]

Holy smokes! Those watercolors are amazing! :D

Also that creatures design is really nice and I say that as someones who loves creatures. I think my favourite part is the flowery mane. Really really great work on the design.

If you keep working and implementing this designy stuff I see in your tradional sketches then I think you're going to get some really orinigal stuff done!

Anyway see ya around!

[Eyliana]

Those watercolours sketches are lovely! I'm slightly jealous.. goes back to stuntling with watercolours...

[Beardyish]

Great work on that newest creature. Love the design and colours you settled on. I can't think of anything to crit so just stoping by ti say "moaaaar" really.

[meat]

Zipfelzeus: Thanks Zips! The traditional stuff are more like random fun stuff I do to help feel better about myself during dark times when I feel like a human-shape trash. :P

Elyiana: If you take a few evenings off to study a how-to-paint-watercolor book, I guarantee you you'll surpass me in less than a month. When I do watercolor, 90% of the time I'm not sure what I'm doing, and there's a lot of blotting out, covering up, etc. Also, I'm painting copies of my travel photos, you're doing stuff out of your head - which is a ton harder and more complicated!

Beardyish: Thanks Beardy! 

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Extremely random sketch dump following this message: eating too much causes drowsiness, lost of concentration, clumsy eye-hand coordination, weight gain, pimple growth, and increase spending to replenish the larder. Eat at your own discretion. 

And now, the feature random dumping!




Done during Imaginative Illustrators of NYC meet up! https://www.facebook.com/groups/Imaginat...tratorsNYC
























Haben eine heiße Schokolade Pause, und wir Rückkehr in einer Minute!

[AngeliquevdMee]

damn you went ham on the human pose XD hahaha good job

[meat]

Angelique :yeah I realized my mistake at the skeleton page, but didn't turn back right away.... 

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gf reaction to musculature diagram, "That tail looks so tasty..." 




Ein Raum ohne Bücher ist wie (like) ein Körper (body/corporal) ohne Seele (soul)

[meat]

Following the previous post, these are the rest of what I did for this class. Since the end of that class it’s been difficult to make myself do the level of admittedly boring, repetitive, and lengthy anatomy studies I’d been able to do during a class. I had been able to, every few days or so, for a month, sketch animals live in Taipei Zoo when I visited. Sketching animals from live observation is easily frustrating, especially at first, but ultimately helpful. Pets would be great resource for this too, but I don’t have any.
 
These projects always starts with a set of rules, a brief. Then a lot of exploring sketches, going for a feeling or a look. It’s important to have a cut off time for this stage, or it could easily drag on with too few thumbnails. Once there is a selection, a couple top choices are picked to take further for clearer sketch. After that it’s time for a blue pencil (so far all traditional) sketch. I have a light box, so I put the blue pencil sketch under new paper, and starts with the surface, “final” drawing, then go on to figure out how the skeleton would look like by consulting lots and lots and lots of reference of any and every kind I can get my hands on. This is so because for this class I needed to label all the bones and muscles, and also because anatomy books only contain so many different basic animals, and our artistic imagination knows no boundaries. Then I move on to muscular page, and finally the rig page. All were required in this class, or I would never thought of putting myself through all this on my own. All proved very educational to go through. 

[meat]

... and then here are a selection of random sketches from recently:

[meat]

Meat attempts sci-fi and robot thing! It was hard, but fun! Last week's theme was picking 1 Chinese zodiac animal and design a sci-fi mech, fighter, or vehicle based on that animal. I made a big messy blue pen drawing just trying to imagine what a dog cyborg looks like. Then I thought, well, here ain't no better opportunity to challenge myself at something I'm really new and honestly scared of drawing. So I took many hours one late night in attempt to clarify that messy, blue drawing with black pen, and as you can see I started to give up at the right (his left) foot and the Taser-spear thingie.

Imaginative Illustrators of NYC meets every Saturday from 4pm to 6pm near Bryant Park. Find our group on Meetup or right here on Facebook!

What do those character say? A loyal dog, lol!

[meat]

A bunch of drawing meetup sketches:




Dino SWAT team - Jaw & Order. Season 1 now on DinoFlix 




Stabby Pig Boss monster...




Dino Elvis... things just sometimes take strange turns during those meetup...




It's a gassy, floating, giant lobster colonized by a tolerant people...

[meat]

Here's an attempt to do dailies 50 times. Since they're dailies, there're bound to be a lot of rushed, unfinished, looks-like-I-spent-10min-lasso-solid-shape-on-top-of-another, or just outright eye-stabbing digital atrocities. 

Who cares. They're dailies. And that's all I want to do with these. 

Expect them to be nicer on the weekends when I feel justified to take too many hours on dailies instead of working. Like just now. 

Commencing mini dump of day 1 and 2: 




Still life study of a gold paper crane, since I don't have real gold.




A very hard, dense, and very expensive type of wood. Meant this to be a tile-able texture.