Neopatogen Sketchbook

[cicakkia]

Love all the studies. All of these are very inspiring.

[neopatogen]

Challenges are an awesome experience. I highly recommend it, even if you so not feel ready.
I'm doing a lot of mistakes during the current Artstation one, but I learned a ton already. With 10 characters to do, theres 10x more experience  :) You nedd to plan and see a lot in advance, keep them connected and look well on one concept sheet, as well as  make it clear which role they play.

I think this challenge is organised in a way similar to real job of a concept artist, so it's really invaluable. And there's so many experienced artists with super cool submissions.

Also some of the studies, not quite in order of completing them
I made a Sketchup model for lighting a sphere based on Scott Robertson's book, if someone would like to have it, pm me :)

[miracoly]

NEO! Nice! The camel-rider linedrawing came out reaaally nice. Really delicate lines. If I want to nitpick I'd suggest maybe adding a little bit more lineweight to suggest some overlap on certain areas. I think that would really help to get the dimensionality across. Anyway, great stuff! :)

[KurtJeremy]

Hi neo , long time no hear!
You've been at work so hard lately , I was wonderin how you organize your day?
and how do you find the time to work on your own pieces? cos I always find it hard to get started into doing my own portfolio piece XD

[neopatogen]

Thanks guys! 
I haven't finished the camel rider because I took part in a team challenge, that is also the reason why I was absent for a while. Here's the blog of our submissions https://mixpixteam1.wordpress.com/2017/04/15/concept-and-exploration/ 
It was different from any other challenge, because a whole team has been waiting for my artwork and there was no way to give up and stop. Did more iterations than ever before  and my first vehicle design :)
@miracoly thank you again for joining us in the contest!
@Kurt I am going to write a post on Daggers on time-management within about a week cause I'm a lot into it and apply stuff from several books, you're free to write me anytime tho to talk about it :) I haven't achieved much yet tbh in terms of art but even that would be impossible for me personally without working on self-discipline.

So, first some studies, most of them are folowed by memory excercices,
 then concepts for the challenge (my humans are still bad but I will practice more)
and I also finished the body of the lizardman (finally!), need to design and sculpt some clothes now and do retopology.

[AlfonsoX]

Good to see you too. 
I thought you had forgotten your fellow daggers but I see that you have been busy working hard, as always.

Your characters are looking good and well thought out but I think you could use some extra graphic shapes.

I mean like shapes within the silhouette of the character, more defined and contrasty in value.

Its hard to explain but this guys that I really like have that kind of shape language inside their characters Ihor Pasternak, Anthony Jones, Brom.

Easier said than done I know. You know I like to give you food for thought. 

[Fedodika]

cool fatty reptile dude Neo!

[Artloader]

Wow your study sheets are a work of art by themselves Neo :).

[meat]

Sounds like great experience working in a team :)

[neopatogen]

Thank you for the support guys! It's not good tho if my studies are more impressive than my artworks lol ) Need to sketch and finish a lot of stuff.

Finally done with MixPix contest, been learning some basic 3D hard surface modeling to help the team. 

I got back to Drawabox recently  and did some more lighting practice, but feel like I need to do some finished stuff or I won't ever see any results and whether I'm improving. Feeling bad again about not having nice pictures with finished personal project to show :) 

I also thought about not posting anything but more or less finished stuff here, but today I scrolled through my SB and it's kinda good to see all the way so I'll keep it up for now.

[Leonard]

really solid stuff neo!

i can recommend verehin's gumroad tutorials
if you want to get into more realistic rendering

and also please don't stop posting the studies and
the sketchy stuff ^^

[Fedodika]

I actually second the Verehin thing, he's fantastic at texturing and painting values. I learned tons about rendering just watching his speedpaintings with that loud annoying Eurodance and industrial stuff he has blasting. One trick he does a lot is makes a multiply layer and erases out certain parts to make the values more related, it's great when something looks kinda digital and you want to add a nice... hmm value, it's hard to describe

[neopatogen]

I keep doing 30 mins of Proko anatomy every morning. Not sure if it's the right thing to do, as usual, I haven't managed to apply what I learned about pecs yet. But if you do smth every day it starts piling up so here it is:)

Found a way to imitate pencil drawing digitally and really happy with my insight, see my female breasts assigmnent, will keep using this technique for quick figure drawings.

Also, challenged myself to make 10 iterations of my lizard fighter character based on my 3D model. Really tretched myself, I wouldn't normally do more than 2. Going to make a finished concept now and then finish the 3D model. Hopefully that's  a good strategy for  a "concept artist with working knowledge of sculpting software"-skillset.

Thank you for yor comments Leonard and Fedodika! I checked out that artist and I don't really enjoy his style which would impair my motivation to learn from him. But still might have a look at his Gumroads later, thanks!

[neopatogen]

More Proko, enviro to help my Mixpix 3D team and pushing my character further.

[Hobitt]

Really liking the environment with the sphere and the lizard dudes. Keep up the good work!

[neopatogen]

Some anatomy, and as soon as I got some crits on my Lizardman, I decided to do one more version and apply crits.

[Fedodika]

buahaha these reptilian guys you draw remind me of my uncles >.<

[neopatogen]

Another lizardman iteration and another uncle for Fedodika! I got very tired of them already, but decided to finish what I planned. Although I learned some more about lighting, applying it to the character proved to be harder than theory and I prefer the previous iteration. So moving on to next projects.

Some 3d here, according to my excavator concept for a group challenge above, the excavator's arm and caterpillars were made by a 3D artist Innor and I only modeled the cockpit.

And I keep doing Proko 20-60 mins daily, trying to apply what I learned with a quickie sketch after almost every assignment.

[Artloader]

Awesome study technique with the Proko stuff Neo.  Building a daily habit like that is a powerful way of making progress.  By the way I read the War Of Art after you recommended it to me - caused another seismic shift in my approach to art!  My responsibility is in applying paintbrush to canvas every day - the result is God's responsibility.  As long as I play my part, I can ask no more of myself.

[Arteriorrhexis]

Whoa, your improvement from first to last is insane. I flipped through this and I gotta say wow!
Your gestures are really beautiful *_*
Nice character design in there too, especially the one with the girl riding the camel I like the creativity in giving the camel a new twist with the environment and character. Definitely gonna keep an eye on this SB :D