Pax's Progress

[lurch]

good amount of studies going on, if you're after crits/advice, i'd say some of them look a little rushed though - like you might benefit from taking a little longer perhaps observing, then laying down a more confident line.

I'd also focus some time on observational stuff from life to help train your eye a bit, this will improve everything.

You need to be careful with this approach though because it's easy to fall into just drawing 'what you see' and forget about thinking in terms of forms and depth, but...

And I hope this doesn't sound patronising!

it's worth trying some simple blind drawings of stuff, grab a mirror and don't look at your paper, at all, not at all! - just let the pen follow your eyes around your face, follow each line you see, the shape of shadows, eye brows, hair, lines wherever you see them - really concentrate on looking and getting down every scrap of visual information you can.

The drawing will look like shit, but you'll see little gems of accuracy there after a while.

You can do the same with hands, feet, anything.

These are great for warming up and getting out of drawing things the way you think they look, rather than how they look.

You can move to glancing at the paper every say, 15 seconds and taking that opportunity to move the pen to the correct place, so you get a more ledgible drawing.

As I say, this is not a substitute for constructive drawing, and a good understanding of anatomy etc, but it's a good exercise to do.

As you say in some of your posts, perspective is worth starting on too, everything is in perspective, and then you can start combining that with your other knowledge, like the eyes line up, head is turned, farthest eye will be smaller along lines to vanishing point, that sort of stuff.

Anyway, those are my thoughts, and I can see improvements here already so you're on the right track.

[Pax]

good amount of studies going on, if you're after crits/advice, i'd say some of them look a little rushed though - like you might benefit from taking a little longer perhaps observing, then laying down a more confident line.

I'd also focus some time on observational stuff from life to help train your eye a bit, this will improve everything.

You need to be careful with this approach though because it's easy to fall into just drawing 'what you see' and forget about thinking in terms of forms and depth, but...

And I hope this doesn't sound patronising!

it's worth trying some simple blind drawings of stuff, grab a mirror and don't look at your paper, at all, not at all! - just let the pen follow your eyes around your face, follow each line you see, the shape of shadows, eye brows, hair, lines wherever you see them - really concentrate on looking and getting down every scrap of visual information you can.

The drawing will look like shit, but you'll see little gems of accuracy there after a while.

You can do the same with hands, feet, anything.

These are great for warming up and getting out of drawing things the way you think they look, rather than how they look.

You can move to glancing at the paper every say, 15 seconds and taking that opportunity to move the pen to the correct place, so you get a more ledgible drawing.

As I say, this is not a substitute for constructive drawing, and a good understanding of anatomy etc, but it's a good exercise to do.

As you say in some of your posts, perspective is worth starting on too, everything is in perspective, and then you can start combining that with your other knowledge, like the eyes line up, head is turned, farthest eye will be smaller along lines to vanishing point, that sort of stuff.

Anyway, those are my thoughts, and I can see improvements here already so you're on the right track.

It does not sound patronizing at all. In fact, stuff like this is exactly what I desire. Recently I've moved away entirely from life drawing until I'm actually drawing from life (hopefully going to a biweekly class soon) and I've been focusing more on still life and hand studies, trying to understand more about form and what you've mentioned. I'll definitely start doing more blind contours. Thanks a ton for the advice.

[JyonnyNovice]

Hey man, thanks for your comments from before! I can see loads of improvement from your first post! Figures looking more and more 3D.

I read that you want to get into animation, have you heard of Preston Blair's book: Cartoon Animation? It's really like gold for getting to understand form, gesture, perspective for drawing cartoons and animated stuff (and applies to all drawing really). It's really old so you can get it for free online: https://vk.com/doc99719297_220000468?has...7881908938 or buy it in print for pretty cheap on amazon. Just copy out each page in the book and try to apply the techniques to your own stuff.

Other advice I can give is to get a good single, solid line of action on your figures / gestures. Not that you don't have lines of action going on in your gestures, but being really specific about it will help tons. Do a bunch of 30 second - 1 minute figure gestures but only draw one line. Ask yourself what is happening in the pose, the main idea of the pose, and how can it be represented with a single line. I put some quick notes together here: http://i.imgur.com/gbIIIKL.jpg hope it's useful!

[Pax]

Finally got the majority of my portfolio to Sheridan College's animation program, looking for some last minute crit and critique. I still have to do the animal life drawing and storyboards, and lightbox everything but the observational human life drawings. Any crit and critique to push my portfolio up is strongly encouraged:

Observational Human Life Drawings:





Personally this is the category that I am most worried about, and that I feel is my weakest due to lack of experience. 
Life Drawings (Hands):




Have to fix the line quality and the performance so it's both functional and easily legible (the ball placed was a placeholder until I thought of a proficient idea). I'm thinking of placing a fly into the scene and having the hand portray itself as a swatting motion.




Animation Turnaround:




All are plotted in perspective relatively correctly so it should be fine. When lightboxing I plan to fix the tracks on the profile to the simpler design, and clean up the linework considerably.

Expressions:



Pretty satisfied with how this turned out, main thing I'm worried about is the extent that the emotion is easily read.
Construction and proportion wise they seem fine.

Action Poses:




Upon lightboxing I plan to fix the room proportions so they match by multiplying the space that my character sits in to the door in the second pose and then matching that with the first pose. As always line quality and general cleaning up will have to be done. 

Layout:




I'll probably end up redoing or greatly dramatizing the second piece when lightboxing and cleaning it up. The black is spilled ink, and I will have to place the ink running more carefully the second time through.

Room Line Drawings:



Gotta clean up the line quality the next run through. 

Not sure what I'm going to do for personal works. Since it's weighted so little I think I'll end up using some pieces that did not make it into my portfolio as additional personal works. 

Overall I'm pretty satisfied with the way that everything turned out and I hope that I have a decent shot at getting in. Again, any crit and critique is greatly appreciated.

[Pax]

Notan designs for week one of EDRocks!

[BlackDelphin]

Great construction work in perspective! I really like how you made that robot.

As for anatomy studies, try doing some quick poses to help you with flow and then study some from books, after which try to apply from memory, to some imagination poses and then study from books some more. That helped me get better.

Good luck with the portfolio entry!

[Pax]

Some of the stuff I've been working on recently. I find illustration enjoyable but I often I find it extremely frustrating. On a good day I can practice for hours without any trouble and it feels like minutes, but on rough days I find it hard to sit down for even 15 minutes to practice the most mundane things. Been super busy with school but I honestly am growing a kind of hunger for improvement. It's part demoralizing and part encouraging looking at your finished work, knowing there's a lot of growth ahead and looming. Honestly it's hard choosing what to improve at first considering that you're lacking in everything. I finally kicked the video game habit though.

[ZombieChinchilla]

Nice environment sketches! Have you posted them in the Environment Design Rocks thread yet? Amit's a really cool dude and he's sure to give you a quick crit on them. Keep working hard, though, I definitely know where you're coming from with struggling to really focus and work. And I still have occasional video game relapses, haha.

[Pax]

WIP.

[JyonnyNovice]

Nice and graphic, just the spider gets a little lost amongst the distant trees, but looking good ^^ how did your application go?

[Pax]

I didn't get in to Sheridan.



WIP.

[JyonnyNovice]

Ah too bad man, keep pushing though and your path will open up for you :)

[Pax]

Pieces 4-6/7 for my IB art portfolio. Can't wait to finish these and actually get to studying, so I stop churning out garbage. Albeit, these pieces have been seriously eye opening on how much my composition in tandem with values and my usage of values needs work. Looking forward to seeing some serious improvements in those areas with some serious study of value in a macro and micro sense.

Seriously considering redoing the values top down for the first two with a softer pencil and greater attention to the value range; I feel as if my values are way too muddy and concentrated in the center to be effective at moving the eye or effectively illustrating the element of the scene that I am trying to.

Also, I have no materials for painting aside from watercolor and printer paper (which I believe is a disaster waiting to happen). Is it time to make the leap to digital, or should I keep working in traditional and get those fundamentals in check? Keep in mind that all I have for traditional is conte and a few 2B pencils; should I invest in some oil/acrylic paints and focus on values that way or attempt digital with an emphasis on learning how to deal with value properly?

[Pax]

WIP, still in the process of figuring out how to assign and develop the values within the environment in order to support my focal point.

[Pax]

Figure it's better to start back up later than never. I've accepted that art will probably be a hobby for me for the rest of my life, but I'd still like to practice it to fill my time on something other than video games. If I manage to end up spending a long amount of time on art again I'll try for Sheridan again next year. 




[url=http://imgur.com/4kd1c81][/url]
If I do figure studies sometime in the near future, it'll 100% have to be with the reference beside it and checked via the transparency tool and overlaying. At this point in my development there's no reason why I shouldn't be shooting for accuracy and a strong sense of proportion and I think I have a way better chance of getting a strong sense of it by actively checking and redoing the basic skeleton I have outlined. In a way these were an absolute waste of time for me to do this way, but at least I know now. Same thing for the animal studies, except I should also be looking for the purpose and function of the forms of the animal once I establish a sense of proportion and the basic forms of the animal, probably followed by a dissection sketch or some anatomical study where appropriate. Better something than nothing though, I guess.

[alexdanila]

Great progress since your 1st post. Don't stop! your taking giant leaps!

[JyonnyNovice]

I agree, you're really doing great! Don't think of those drawings as a waste of time - drawing without reference is a way to test yourself and see how much you know, plus it's also practice for visualising stuff and experimenting without constrains of reference which is super important. If you stick with some consistent practice in a couple months you won't believe how far you've come! Keep going really ^^ video games are fun but when you turn the console off you haven't gained many new skills that will benefit your life. Keep drawing too ^^

[Pax]

2 more weeks of exams and then the fun can begin! I want to try for Sheridan again, so my plan is to attempt the portfolio pieces required and fix the biggest errors in what I'm doing overall until I get the kickass portfolio I want. Just gotta grow that discipline.

[Pax]

Aims right now are growing my visual library, improving form (via rendering and perspective) and getting a good handle of one character archetype (probably cute, as it seems the least intimidating) to do the character design portion of the portfolio for Sheridan properly. 
Daily, my goal is to do at least one study for 2d accuracy solely, essentially pushing accuracy until I get sick of it. My goal is to kill two birds with one stone with this by incorporating nature into what I'm copying for the sake of accuracy. 
Right now my focus for character design is to copy for understanding of the big forms of how animators break down characters using the material I have at hand (How to Train Your Dragon 1/2 and Wall-E art books are what I have at hand). I am trying to get fundamentals for this from Preston Blair's Cartoon Animation. 
My goal is to create a character a day after exams, which finish on June 27th. My focus is on quantity over quality for these characters until quantity stops bringing higher quality through brute force experimentation.

[Pax]

Super lazy day. Felt good, though. Character design is way harder than I thought it would be, especially for creating something that looked good. I wish I kept all of my attempts instead of erasing them; I guess it's just another thing you have to soldier through for the first hundred hours or so before you start seeing something that works.





I was thinking about maybe learning poses through mostly application in the form of comics and beat boards to really understand and maybe even design a character, once I get a stronger hold of how to create the torso that tells an action. Borrowed the Vilppu DVD's on gesture and circular forms, I might try using some of those methods (especially the storytelling with the bean) as daily practice and ways of understanding reference so that it might be applied easier. Really happy about my second character design ever so far, though. Just need to work some more and stop wasting so much time just loitering. Just gotta start doing it without worrying about result.