Notan Study Group

[Piotr Jasielski]

Hey,

I'd like to start a notan study group. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AS9zvjwmUM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQa3N8KGWfE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE5l7_eZaOY



And a tutorial on notan environment design by some random dude called Amit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbjoXg_oyRI

I'd like to do a weekly livestream sessions on twitch or hangout, so we could talk and study together.

Who is interested? What would be a good time for you? 

Some examples of notans and their further use for illustration below:

[DQ_Nick]

I'm down man, I'm trying to explore a more high-contrast style with character design, inspired by this guy https://www.artstation.com/artist/bmitkov, so a group like this would be really helpful and relevant for me.
Good hours for me would be 8-11 am or 8 -12 pm MDT

I'll stay tuned to see where this goes

[Piotr Jasielski]

Great! Let's see if others are interested.

I'd appreciate if you stated the hours in UTC 0, it will get complicated if everyone use their own timezone.

For timezone reference:
http://www.timeanddate.com/time/map/
http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/

[Lodratio]

This actually seems like a really cool concept. I don't have the time to commit to anything like this atm, but if your study stream times works for me I'll be there.

[Amit Dutta]

I'm down. UTC +25

[neopatogen]

6 am-4 pm UTC is ok for me if we'll be talking in Hangouts.
I might join in later hours, but not for sure, and I'll be using text messages most likely.

As I've already converted @DQ's time, I'll write it here: 2-5 pm, 2-6 am UTC

[Piotr Jasielski]

Hey, great! I see it will be a problem to set a timeframe good for everyone, so we might do 2 sessions with differnet hours.

[DQ_Nick]

6 am-4 pm UTC is ok for me if we'll be talking in Hangouts.
I might join in later hours, but not for sure, and I'll be using text messages most likely.

As I've already converted @DQ's time, I'll write it here:  2-5 pm, 2-6 am UTC

thank you for that Neopatogen

[DQ_Nick]

I caught the very end of your stream today where you were talking about Interstellar, I'll try to come earlier tomorrow

[Piotr Jasielski]

I think I'll do a proper intoduction/tutorial stream at the end of the week and then we can stard the group activities. I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy it guys :)

[Piotr Jasielski]

Hey guys, I'll be doing a small tutorial stream on friday:

http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/?qm=1&lid=...ln=11-11.5

the time might be not convenient for some of you but I wanted to have Amit to share some insight, as he was the one who introduced notans to the community.

As for the time for group studies we will sort it out later.

[neopatogen]

Looking forward to the stream! 
I think the group's going to be super useful for anyone taking part in CC5. So hopefully more people will join now after the announcement!.

Actually, I think a lot of pros use Notans without calling them so. Composition sketches, most likely. Vilppuu said the artists of Renaissanse worked and studied this way (drawing small, using 2 or 3 values), as well as animators do today.

[chubbycat]

Count me in; I would love to join in with this as well! I'm based in the AEST time zone, which seems to be 10 hours ahead of UTC time. I should be able to make most sessions but would you please consider recording the streams so people like me (based in the most inconvenient time zones ever) can watch later?

[Piotr Jasielski]

@neo: you're right on both accounts :)

@chubby: Great! Tomorrow's session will be on my twitch so it'll be recorded for sure. As for the later ones maybe we'll combine hangouts with twitch or yt.

[Eyliana]

I would like to hop in as well. Best time for me would be between 5pm and 8pm UTC. But I see that it doesn't match up with most of the other times, so I might just watch the streams instead then.

[Piotr Jasielski]

If anyone is interested in testing the rendering - below my notan sketch from the stream

Layers reminder:
Multiply for filling the white
Lighter color for filling the black


When you test it let us see the result!

[Lodratio]

Postin results! You're right, some things become much more intuitive when you think about them in notan, or at least it gives you a different perspective on them. It creates lost edges practically all by itself and it makes drawing dynamic shapes much more natural. However, because you're basically just searching for shapes, and don't have a whole lot of control over the result, it's difficult to draw anything architectural or mechanical (though it might be a different story once you get used to thinking this way). 
Since you were wondering about watercolors piotr, I think notan would have a lot of potential for planning out a watercolor painting. You'll have to start with a much lower contrast, but it'll still give you a good idea of where you want your darks and lights to be from the get go.

[Eyliana]

I did a view of a set of MTG cards with a brush pen. Pure for composition and not so much for illustration later on I found it was more useful to have limited shapes. The first set I did was quite chaotic, espeically the lower row. So I redid them and tried to simplify them more, which turned out better.
Could most likely redo them one more time and simplify them even more.

[Piotr Jasielski]

Great stuff! One thing you may try is what I found works for me most of the time - draw anything in shadow in pure black and anything that is hit by light in pure white. Usually it help to make the forms more recognizable and pop out.

[Amit Dutta]

Shouldn't this be moved to an actual group daily forum, not the seeking group now?

I did a thing, between client work. 3 values.