The Velvet Revolvers

[Lordminkx]

@Jeso Hey Jeso! It's cool to hear thing are going on well. Keep rocking man ;)
@Richie Rich!  Cool heads man, you got the structure pretty decent and likeness is okay too. Did u follow reilly method, right?
@Bookend Book, as Jeso said, you answered yourself. I think you are doing things quite well, I'd use more refs to do your imagination stuff, I know it's from imagination but you can't draw something you have never drew before. Hope to see more stuff from you :D 

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Weekly Review

Sorry for inactivity...Alright, I've struggled with heads, first I tried doing it different ways and I realised no one fits with me so I just studied the skull and then applied those studies... so yeah, a total mess xDD I'll go deeper with heads...    Amit mentorship assignment went well, not as good as I thought. I think I'll do another one keeping in mind what he said in the crit about my assignment. 

My attempts... 

Skull studies 

From immagination 

And then I did an excellent exercise by mathias zamecki 

And some faces... Watch out, shitty images in coming... 
  

Aw yeah almost forgot, my assignment...

[Richie]

Hey Lordminkx,
Yep used some reilly method on the heads, I think it's pretty good and was a whole lot easier to pick up than the Loomis heads. I think for your heads it's better to draw using loomis/reilly method too, since it gives you good proportions and working method. Try drawing like sight size for a while, dropping imaginary or real straight/diagonal lines for your drawing after a few it becomes more automatic. Good going on the skulls from imagination too, I gotta get some of that done too, but do remember to draw over with the corrections a lot of learning and memorisation comes from that step too!

[Jeso]

Hey Jose, The first heads are a lot of structural issues. Start your heads from a more structural stand point, first a circle for the skull, then figure out the center line, then draw the eye sockets, so on and so forth, if you just wing it there is a high change you gonna screw up.

Yo is thumbnail no 4 from The Martian?

[Lordminkx]

@Richie I've to try reilly, seems easy to follow and very structured. In the skulls I did first some from references and then I tried to do them from imagination and I drew over the correction but I think I had had to do them with a different color.. xD 

@Jeso Yeah They look like shit haha gonna do some with reilly method.. Talking about the thumnail.. It was supposed to be as a failure landing in the moon sort of.. I say sort of because while amit was doing his critique he thought it was an underwater scene lol I think it can work better as it hahaha. I think I was kindda inspired by the martian because I'm reading it. Gooood book btw

[Amit Dutta]

@Jeso, great work man, on the freelance and the oil stuff. keep that shit up!!!

@Book:  Ok, so here's the point where you take your low ebb, the critique that might have smacked you on your ass by showing you something, and use that as fuel to push you on!  I have seen the work you are capable of doing, esp. "just copying" those master value studies. You have a great eye for observation and putting that observation down. We all get downhearted when it comes to doing it "from imagination" and we are nowhere near the same level of proficiency.

I am starting to loathe this trope that is spewed by almost every artist that we MUST be able to do everything out of our own head or it is worth nothing  Well sure, if you practice and practice that will happen as a byproduct but as a goal...it's pretty much pointless. Nobody but other artists even care if you produced a piece of work using reference or straight out of one's head. Like who really gives a shit at the end of the day? Your work is your work, the process is important to us as artists and we must care about it, but it fades away once a work is complete.

So, don't worry about wasting my or anybody else's time with our crits.  If you feel like hiding that's cool, sometimes it is necessary, but also, remember that we are here to help and are doing it because well shit, why bother being alive if you don't think helping others is a useful thing to do just because? The other thing is, you ARE improving with everything you do, you just don't see it. The improvements aren't always directly visible, they are like single grains of sand, that only really become easily visible once you have piled enough on top of each other to create your own little art sandcastle.

and now some words. Only watch till 5.30, it starts getting annoyingly materialistic afterwards :)

[Triggerpigking]

Lordminx:I'd focus on getting the skulls right first tbh, doing self portraits if possible would help alot as well.

theres some great skull references to draw from here if you decide too http://www.cgbrush.org/p/downloads.html
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Took your advice on the figures Jeso, few of these I did in about 30 mins, no reason, just ended up getting them done fast without relizing lol.
Trying to get these lookin perfect is really hard though might try and flip my sketchbook more on the next ones to look for mistakes more, also trying to work constructional while still being accurate has also been challenging with these, normally if i'm try to get it perfect i'd just measure out the lines and contours the traditional way but here i'm trying to build up the form with shapes as well.

[Jeso]

Hey Ammit! thanks for passing by and knocking some sense into my boys ! :p
Yea I have a youtube playlist of over a 100 motivation videos and stuff. Its pretty good to listen to when you feeling hopeless.

Hey Trigger, Yea man! that looks good ! See you should take that like game day you know, all the quick figures and little practices, are just training for game day, you need to use it somewhere. You gotta add this high spots in your training regime, where to test yourself, I've been realizing this more and more as time goes on, A lot of study isn't equal to improvement, its all about balance, It needs to be at least 50/50 study/personal work, regardless of skill level. Just study study study, is going to drop you into a pit of slow progress, believe, me.

[Lordminkx]

@Trigger Hey Trigger, cool stuff, I agree with Jeso, it's good to do studies, but you have to use what you have learnt and test yourself. I'm gonna do the same.

Stuff from today. This week muscles from torso (some of them). I'm feeling comfortable so I'll do 50% from reference and then I'll try to push myself doing 50% imagination.  

[Jeso]

hey Jose, Your rib cages are too far apart from the pelvises. Look out for that bro.

[Bookend]

Jeso:  Thanks man, I know.    I'll keep working at it.  I'm doing a lot better right now, haha.

LordMinkx:  You rock man!  Thank you.  Your studies are looking great, but really work at getting those shapes and values down accurately.    Keep going!  Loving those Hampton studies-- Well done!

Amit: Wow, man, how can I ever thank you for taking the time?  You rock, dude.  Even when you're so busy, you still take some minutes out of your day to inspire and help push us along.  Thank you, so much.

But, yeah, you're absolutely right.  I mean, I know there's no shame in using ref.  It's just about how I'm using it, and I'm afraid that I might be relying on it too much, not actually creating my own thing out of it.  That's the issue with me-- Not using the reference itself, but trying to copy it perfectly and not letting myself explore beyond that ref.  But, no sense in worrying if I don't try. So, I better try, so I can worry and kick my own butt a bit.  

And thanks for the vid!  Inspiring.  You keep working hard too, man.    


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So, I'm feeling better, because of all this frickin' support, and getting enough sleep and enough food and some time off... And just..  I'm at a good place.  And 'cause I'm getting more into my comfort zone with the project with my sister.  We decided to switch.  She'll do the environments, and I'll do the character sprites and portraits.  It was her idea, and she said, "I don't know why we didn't do this in the first place!" XD..  So there ya go.

Means we both enjoy it more, too.

So, maybe I'm not the 'environment guy'. Maybe I'm just 'the character' guy.  I dunno.  I've certainly done too many people studies to count, and not near enough environment studies.

Still, environment will lend itself to people, just the same.

Working on my environment mentorship assignment for Amit.  I really like how it's coming out of the reference, but I'm a bit worried about teasing it too much and making it too much like the image.  I went to the place where I took the picture today twice to see it in different lighting, and get a good 'feel' for it...  Not sure if I succeeded.  Might need to take another picture tomorrow, because I'm not sure if the one ref I have is good enough, really.  Got plenty of refs online for mood, though.  Going to go with twilight, dawn, and night lighting.  Hopefully.

Also, wondering if it's not boring, if I need a better focal point?  I had this odd story creeping up when I was drawing it though.  That dark tree in the middle is the focal point, in my mind, and she's being bitchy, and she's taking up all the space and asking for all the attention, and complaining about everything that's impeding her from view, haha.     I dunno, odd thoughts when drawing.  She was giving me trouble with her curves.  Her curves are amazing in the reference, and I can't seem to get it.  But I WILL.

Also finished the sprite.  Sis is cleaning it up for pixellization now.    I put a Gabriel sprite next to it for comparison.  Jean, the hotel clerk, is supposed to be shorter than him and kind of haughty.

[Triggerpigking]

Jeso:Cheers man, yeah that makes alot of sense i'll try and mix in more of these longer studies in with the shorter ones, thanks for the reminder on the personal work stuff as well, was'nt doing that because I figured it might be best to focus on getting the basic forms right first but I should defineitly start trying to do that daily again.

Lordminx:Nice man, yeah I agree with Jeso about the pelvis and ribcage lookin to far apart, are these from imagination or ref though or both?, Maybe try doing some quick studies of just the torso and pelvis and ignoring the legs and arms could help.
Also alot of people frown on the tracing thing but if you draw through the form(like first draw over the ribcage and then add the shapes largest to smaller 3 dimensionally), then I think it could help figure out some of these forms better before you go into applying it to copies and imagination stuff, I actually found it harder sometimes because you can really tell when you're messing it up lol.
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not much new, gonna try and start varying it up slightly, gonna do a few days of fast studies then longer ones, also gonna start trying to work on imagination stuff daily for an hour or two.
Think i'm getting the hang of these alot better, it atleast looks more 3d, it's really hard to get the basic shapes like ribcage and arm cylinders down on muscular people though since...well it's mostly muscle on top XD.


More shapes, started messing around with these spheres into different shapes, don't really think I need to practice understanding them as much as it's just a technique issue I think, it's fairly easy to understand how draw through the form with them but actually getting the circles down how you want them is the hard part.


More Cylinders, trying to rotate them in space, think i'm getting a better grasp of it but once again actually trying to draw the right ovals is difficult. also messing around with foreshortening in Sycra's coil technique.


Cubes! I love cubes CUBEEEEES!!!
Feel i've gotten a better grasp of these, i'm gonna try and do a whole page of them rotating as they go down and across to test myself, the issue i'm mainly having is more trying to keep the proportions of them to be as perfect to square like as I can as I tilt them.

[Bookend]

Jeso:Cheers man, yeah that makes alot of sense i'll try and mix in more of these longer studies in with the shorter ones, thanks for the reminder on the personal work stuff as well, was'nt doing that because I figured it might be best to focus on getting the basic forms right first but I should defineitly start trying to do that daily again.

Lordminx:Nice man, yeah I agree with Jeso about the pelvis and ribcage lookin to far apart, are these from imagination or ref though or both?, Maybe try doing some quick studies of just the torso and pelvis and ignoring the legs and arms could help.
Also alot of people frown on the tracing thing but if you draw through the form(like first draw over the ribcage and then add the shapes largest to smaller 3 dimensionally), then I think it could help figure out some of these forms better before you go into applying it to copies and imagination stuff, I actually found it harder sometimes because you can really tell when you're messing it up lol.
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not much new, gonna try and start varying it up slightly, gonna do a few days of fast studies then longer ones, also gonna start trying to work on imagination stuff daily for an hour or two.
Think i'm getting the hang of these alot better, it atleast looks more 3d, it's really hard to get the basic shapes like ribcage and arm cylinders down on muscular people though since...well it's mostly muscle on top XD.

More shapes, started messing around with these spheres into different shapes, don't really think I need to practice understanding them as much as it's just a technique issue I think, it's fairly easy to understand how draw through the form with them but actually getting the circles down how you want them is the hard part.

More Cylinders, trying to rotate them in space, think i'm getting a better grasp of it but once again actually trying to draw the right ovals is difficult. also messing around with foreshortening in Sycra's coil technique.

Cubes! I love cubes CUBEEEEES!!!
Feel i've gotten a better grasp of these, i'm gonna try and do a whole page of them rotating as they go down and across to test myself, the issue i'm mainly having is more trying to keep the proportions of them to be as perfect to square like as I can as I tilt them.

You're getting really good with these shapes, man!  I think your work is probably improved a LOT and much better for it!  Keep it up!

[Bookend]

I made another sprite.  Uhm.. It's tiny, so you may not be able to see, but.. Yeah.  That's what I'm up to, haha.  

[Bookend]

Starting on the walk cycle.  It's messy for now, meant to be fairly simple.  I can't believe how challenging this actually is--  I'm thinking it's helping me too, so that's good.  I've got lots more other characters to do.

[Jeso]

Yo book! Whats the walking cycle for? that project you keep talking about with your sis? are you animating in PS?

I just finished the first commission I got from the client, many more to come, but for now, im F glad to be free of work. Gonna start streaming again tomorrow, back to study, and painting in oils!

[Bookend]

Yo book! Whats the walking cycle for? that project you keep talking about with your sis?  are you animating in PS?

I just finished the first commission I got from the client, many more to come, but for now, im F glad to be free of work. Gonna start streaming again tomorrow, back to study, and painting in oils!

Me an' my sis are remaking the old game Gabriel Knight 3 to go from awkward 3d-stage, to illustrated, better-looking 2d stage.  It's also going to have a change in general structure and puzzles.

I'm animating through the program AGS (Adventure game software or something?)..  Sis is doing the coding and scripting, so she's taking my rough stuff and cleaning it up and putting it through the animation thing.

[Jeso]

YO, So i'm back to studies! here is some miscellaneous and boat madness




Study


And then our dear friend Mr Book, Wanted the heroes in the boat to go save the world, so I said... why not? Some world saving mofos sailing right there.

[Bookend]

YO,  So i'm back to studies! here is some miscellaneous and boat madness




Study


And then our dear friend Mr Book, Wanted the heroes in the boat to go save the world, so I said... why not?  Some world saving mofos sailing right there.  

Haha, too cool man, too cool.  I love how you made it reflect the new lighting too-- You are so going pro!  Wheeee!

[LaleAnn]

Hey guys! I saw some light and I thought I'd come in.. ^^ Really liking the dedication of everyone so far!

@Bookend: That Gabriel Knight 3 project of yours with your sis sounds like fun and a great challenge! Can't wait to see more!

So next week from Tuesday on, I'll try to post as often as possible and be around and active, as I'll have more free time to art (yes, that's a verb if I want to!) ^^

I was also wondering if you guys do hangouts sometimes? I'm always on the PN's one, it's quite and serious I really like it if you ever want to join!

Here's a first post, latest armor study (took me about 3hours?), haven't done studies in a while, getting back to it now!

[Jeso]

Welcome LaleAnn!!!!!! To the Velvet Revolvers *fireworks appear suddenly out of nowhere in your face*

Glad to have you here, Hope I see you posting everyday! I may or may not be able to join the hangouts, just for productivity issues, I'm slow enough as is. But I've been growing more interested in trying it out though. I think Book would like to join the hangouts though.

Again, thanks for joining!
That's a nice study you did there, 3 hours though, I think you might've spent too much time on the background, I would say choose a focus for the study, say, metal material rendering, then dont worry about anything else, you can just paint blobs of green and blue to represent ground and sky, then go all out on the metal, which is what you are in for. Cool stuff!

Btw I just saw your Portfolio, and it looks fucking sweeet! What kind of freelance work do you get?