Love coming back to your SB whenever I need a kick to get working again. Awesome stuff man. There's some real life in these sketches, keep them coming :)
Sketchity sketch sketch. For the longest time I couldn't decide what I wanted the orb inside of its mouth to be, but I'm leaning to either gobstopper or a skull...
wow.. really neat.. I tried creating my own pencil brush the other day.. Turned into just a slightly textured ellipse brush >.>
But damn these sketches are awesome. Your sketchbook really is looking like a sketchbook lol.
I like the sketches but be careful you aren't falling into a comfort zone. For purely shelfish reasons, I want you to keep doing these sketches (because I like looking at them) but for improvements sake, just be careful of the comfort zone.. the worst kind of zone.. except for the friend zone, that place sucks as well.
ramalooke - Thanks for the comments and suggestions, man
Rindoukan - It's probably a sketch that I'll leave alone. I think the design's a little lazy and, like Jaik has suggested, is too much in a comfort zone and just bores me now that I look back on it. Usually it takes me a day to get some time away from something, and if I don't like it after that time, it's a sign to move onto something else and let it go.
crackedskull - Thanks, man.
Jaik - Totally agree. I don't want to make drawing monster designs a comfort zone, because there's a lot of growth possibility there, but I always want to be trying to push my anatomy/design library and creating more and more interesting things with good personality. This last sketch was definitely not the right direction, but at least I see that. :)
Soooooooo...
Watched Carlos Huante's drawing dvd again (500th time) and came up with a brush to simulate the alcohol rub technique he uses to blend pencil tones. Combining that with a dry brush for gestures, the pencil brush I've been using and a serrated edged eraser to pull out tones for a decent drawing/rendering process. These are a few hand/arm design sketches and a fuller sketch based on one, focusing on different proportion and anatomical choices to come up with variety. It's interesting how intuitive design becomes once you get a working knowledge of how joints/bones/muscles come together and function. It also makes me realize just how much more I need to fill my visual library to be able to pull elements from different animals in a pure, organic way. If anyone's played the game Spore, you'll know that part of it was designing your own creature to play with. I actually gave up playing the full game itself and just messed around with that after a while. Pulling from a library of limbs/mouths/eyes/etc and trying to make those come together to make a lifeform that feels like it could exist was a lot of fun, and I think that kinda points towards my interest in design with drawing. Don't know where I'm going with this, but it was an interesting observation I've made.
Lovely sketchbook, I can't believe I only sneaked in here and out again without leaving a comment. Anyway, you have a nice variation of sketches/studies and imaginative work going on here.
Then again, I have to agree with Jaik - beware of the comfort zone. What about some nice environment studies for a change? Even if that's not your main focus, it can improve your overall skill level and also helps with illustrations/technique in general. Or maybe some animal studies, to make your creature work even more imaginative?
Anyway - lovely work in here. I need to stop by more often.
Nice, you're digging for the perspective. I don't think I'll ever fully figure that stuff out. I mean in theory everything is easy- but when you start placing stuff there's always something awry. I just wish one day I could wake up like Neo and say to myself 'I know perspective' -.-
Those gooey creatures are really your thing, love it, totally disturbing.
you've improved a lot since I was on conceptart.org's SB!
I also agree with Lyrania about forcing yourself to leave your comfort zone to improve your foundational skillz. On the other hand it is obviously important to draw what you love, and depending on how much time you have to spend each , you might want to just make art because it is fucking fun and awesome to do so!!!
Holy crap, those perspective studies are great. Where are you getting your info from? Cone of vision is something that always gets me and makes my wide angle stuff look heaps distorted. This definitely doesnt look like comfort zone, looks like a headache :P Great to see :) Keep pushing it.
Jarrad - long time no see! thanks for the comments.
Jaik - ironically enough, perspective's fun for me so doing exercises is a bit of a comfort zone for me. I need to get better at sketching scenes at various perspective views and designing with scale in mind, so that's what I'm currently studying.
For Jaik, I came up with a small explanation of how the Cone of Vision works and is set up. I'd be happy to go into anything else further if anyone wants more.
Oh shit it's one of those perspective kinds of days huh..Can't really help u much with that.Just poke it with the pitchfork see if it'll work.But Im sure you'll figure it out.Keep pushin.
Great updates lately man, I really like that point you made about joints and limbs, and experimenting with different designs. Really cool stuff. There was this documentary I used to watch, I think it only got released in the uk but it was called 'inside natures giants' (defiantly recommend watching it if you can get hold of it)where they basically dissected different dead animals and gave detailed explanations on their anatomy. When you break it down all creatures are basically machines really, and it's amazing how these organic machines function in such unique and perfect ways. Can't beat nature!
Loved the effect you've gained from these custom brushes too dude, can't wait to see more stuff from you soon.
This is great. Well, not great that it's in your comfort zone, get out of that =_=
However, this gave me just enough information for me to have a hundred new questions.
Does the cone of vision effect the vanishing points.. I feel like it should but I can't make the connection, I studied perspective earlier this year and I must have missed this entire topic because lens and cone of vision stuff is completely new to me.
Good work though man, really impressed with the amount of work you put in. Finish the year up strong so that we can hit the ground running in 2014. You give very good advice so I am really thankful of that. Keep up the good work :)
Jaik, sorry it took so long to respond. I've been away for the holidays, as I'm sure a lot of you guys have. The cone does affect the vanishing points and the vanishing points affect the cone. Kinda confusing to describe without a diagram, so I've posted a simple one to help. In 1pt, the station point and our center of vision is directly in line with our vanishing point, as you can see here. This is true for every time you're in 1pt perspective to a scene/object/etc. In 2pt, our vanishing points form a right triangle with the station point at the 90 degree corner. It makes sense if you think of everything as how your vision is orientated to a rotating box. In 1pt, you're seeing the front face and nothing else. Think of standing straight and staring directly at a wall without turning your head at all. Now if you were to look slightly to the right or left, you're effectively "turning" your orientation to the wall, or, in the case of the box, if you were to stand still and it were to rotate instead this puts you into 2pt perspective. 3pt is when you add another dimension to it and look slightly up or down. Knowing this, we can find the accurate placement for our vanishing points if we know where our station point lies. In the diagram, I randomly chose the right vanishing point. I then followed that back to the station point and created a 90 degree right triangle back to my horizon line. This gave me my left vanishing point. This is how you can reverse engineer perspective from a painting or photo as well. If you follow your vanishing points to your horizon and establish your center of vision (which in a photo is always in the center unless it's been cropped) you can use a right triangle to find exactly where your station point lies. From there you can correctly establish scale, measurements, etc. If you really want to delve into it deeper, I suggest checking out newmastersacademy.org. The 80+ hours or so that Erik Olson has posted on perspective is alone worth the $19 a month. Hope it helps. Let me know if I can help further.
As I said, I'm back from christmas holidays, so I'm getting to work again. I've set a goal to have 12 solid portfolio pieces by summer so I can start looking for freelance work seriously.
That being said, here are some studies and sketches to start of the year, as well as the previously mentioned diagram.
And working hard. I've been really busy with school (back in to finish my BSE in computer-engineering) but have been sketching out ideas for a game I've had in my head for a while now, which is an isometric ARPG dungeon-crawler with all hand-drawn art assets, including animations. This obviously means a lot of work. Also, I'm creating my own game engine to do this as well instead of using any available commercial engines, such as Unity or Unreal, which will add some more complexity to it all. But damn it if I'm not pumped up for it. I'll try and post as regular of updates as my school schedule will allow for as I work on this for anyone interested, and if anyone has any critiques of anything, by all means send them my way as usual.
For the first bit, here are a few animation tests. The thing about this game idea is that, like any isometric game, each animation will have 8 orientations for all the cardinal directions, which are obviously not all shown in these small few.
Awesome to see you back dude. (I'm monkeybread) Love those anims :) Writing your own game platform sounds like a major effort, good luck with it all, keep the momentum UP!!!
