Weekly Visual Library Building - 1: Mesoamerican Architecture

[Jaik]

Hello Daggers,

To finally motivate me to get off my ass and build up a visual library, which I have been doing for the last few weeks (sporadically and largely unsuccessfully) I decided to make sort of a weekly topic that anyone can join which I think will help others to do the same, and also keep me on track.

I wrote a bit about the importance (or at least what I think the importance is) of buildign your visual library in my sketchbook:

This week I am going to focus on the importance of Visual Library building, which I think I have mentioned before, but because I have just started a group on Crimson Daggers for weekly Visual Library exercises I thought it would be a good topic to talk about.

As designers, all of the ideas we come up with are just amalgamations of memories. We combine a fish with a rock, or a bulldozer with a rock, or a rock with another rock to come up with a design. And the only way to replace the rock with something more interesting is to have a larger library of shapes, objects, animals.... rocks... So to do this, we do studies, except instead of the point of the study to be getting it to look realistic, the point of the study is to absorb as many visual cues from the thing we are studying, so the study can be done purely in lines, tones, it can even just be a list of notes. So long as you are actively thinking about what makes a dog look like a dog and not a cat, or a rock...

As an example here is a link to my quick and dodgy attempt at Canines (Will be revisiting this)

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All right so this is how I'm thinking it's going to go down:
- Each week I will come up with a topic, it can be anything from boots to machinery.
- Find some images to study, but don't just copy them, maybe do some technical drawings, take written notes (I'm not asking you to write an essay, just things worth noting), some specific detail and generally just get a better idea about a topic.
- I think I'm going to put a new one up each Monday (This week being the exception, it can go for the ~10 odd days)
- It's not a competition, its really just about sharing knowledge, one person may pick up an interesting detail or a keen observation than another person may have missed. Just building the number of visual cues that can be extrapolated to design something interesting and new when necessary.
- One last thing, the drawings do NOT have to be pretty finished renderings. A quick sketch of a building façade with details marked and notes will have just as much use as a beautifully rendered copy of a photograph. The point is the content and thought behind it, not how well you can render.

This week I've decided on Meso-American Architecture

To get you started heres a link to the wikipedia page

And a fantastic link to Wolkenfels list of great tumblr pages

Hope people join in, regardless I'll be posting my stuff I do here so I don't look like a jackass.

[::Melinda::]

Interesting..I'll find time to join this

[YOLOLEX]

ill definetly give this a go :)

[Lyraina]

I'll try to join as well! Lovely idea Jaik :)

[Lyraina]

I gave it a try - might add more later

[Jaik]

Good stuff Lyraina :D Same for me, may do some more this week, but this as all I managed to do this weekend.

[YOLOLEX]

looking great! gonna try contribute

[YOLOLEX]

meso architecture :) took a while :)

[Lyraina]

Looks amazing, Yololex!

[Jaik]

D: well that looks awesome! Really nice details on the middle one :)