Character Design - Session 3

For the morning task Justin gave us a building/monument and a style for us to remake the structure in.
I was given the Roman Colosseum and subterranean.

I started by trying to draw the Colosseum as it is. Honestly I've never actually seen what the Colosseum looks like, I had only ever seen restorations in media.

Then I had to try and make it subterranean. My first idea was to set it in a cave and have all the openings in the Colosseum be holes. However this idea lost the Roman architecture.

Attempt #2: This time trying to keep the ancient style, but still setting it underground.

Justin asked us to think about what the structure is for and what kind of story would happen here. So I thought of 2 different ideas.
1. It's a Roman Arena. This is the most logical idea as this is what the Colosseum was anyway, this fact however does make the idea kinda bland and unoriginal.
2. A quarry. So when thinking about the word "subterranean" the first thing that came to my mind was fantasy dwarves. Dwarves in fantasy are mostly known for their massive underground cities and mines, so I thought an underground quarry would be cool. Also considering it would possibly work well considering the Colosseum has multiple layers, much like an actual quarry.

After Justin came round, we discussed the idea of it being an ancient marble arena that is being excavated for rare stone. It's a shame I never had time to finish this concept.

In the afternoon we went back to working on our projects. This time working on the world/environment.

Since my subject is medieval England, I decided my setting should be a castle. So I looked up a load of references for old British castles and drew them.

Justin quite liked where I was going with the castle, but wanted me to focus more on the story and layout of the environment. So with this drawing you can see where the two characters will be.

Life Drawing - Session 3

This session consisted of five 5 minute drawings, two 30 minute drawings and ending with one more 5 minute drawing.

For this drawing we were challenged to only draw 10 lines, I actually quite enjoyed this limitation.

For this drawing we had to draw with one continuous line for all 5 minutes.

Same limitation as the last drawing, however we were given the extra challenge of only being allowed to draw in straight lines up and down, kind of like an Etch-a-Sketch.

With this 30 minute drawing, Simon allocated the first 15 minutes to having us pay close attention to the shapes in the anatomy. After the first 15 minutes, Simon turned down the lights and we were tasked with focusing on shadows.

Introducing... NAMINA

For collaboration this year I'm working with Chelsea (http://chelsea-a-butler.blogspot.com/) and Divine (http://divinecomputeranimation.blogspot.com/).

We made are own little studio thing and we decided to name it Namina.

No, the name doesn't actually mean anything... I think.

We've created a group blog where most of the working is going.

https://naminastudios.blogspot.com/

Currently there's a few mindmaps and our first OGR just went up (I worked on the actual PowerPoint)

Please check it out =D
More work to come.

Character Design - Session 2

This week in Character Design, we had two tasks in the morning with us just continuing our project in the afternoon.

Task 1

For task 1 we were assigned a film with a distinct style and then we had to create an original character for that world. I was given Blue Sky's Robots (2005). I haven't seen this film since it came out and I'm not the biggest fan of its style, so I found this quite difficult.

Anyway, this is my first attempt. I designed it based on a general idea of the main characters, but Justin said it looks too much like the main character, which to be honest, it does. It the corner you may notice a small new design which I started to flesh out.

Unfortunately, I never actually finished it.

Task 2

For task 2 we had to draw a character from the film in the style from our project. So I chose the character "Bigweld" in stained glass style.

Honestly, stained glass is kinda annoying for me as most stained glass art is kinda realistic in details, whereas I have quite a cartoony-ish default style.

Project

I need to resign the archer a little bit still, but I think I'm slowly getting there.

Life Drawing - Session 2

Life Drawing again, this time with more actual life model!

Simon finally allowed us to use our sketchbooks again this time, so I've returned to it and now the pictures are actually decent quality scans instead of pictures taken from an old iPhone.

Simon told us to use a new media to draw with, so I picked up some crayons. The black smudging at the top is from him showing me how to use them properly.

Toolkit 2 - Dramatic Poses

This time we had to make dramatic poses with Moom.
Less memes and, hopefully, less injuries.

Image 1: Excited

Image 2: Scared 1

Image 3: Bored

Image 4: Tired

Image 5: Scared 2

Character Design - Session 1

Unlike last year, where we only started character design in the last term, this year we're starting immediately.

Exercise 1

In this first set of drawings Justin gave us a random item to research and we had to study the item and then draw it. After drawing the item, we then had to draw a character based on the item.
I was told to look up a judges wig.

Exercise 2

Just before we began our next task, Justin talked about caricatures and how they are exaggerated portraits. After his explanation, he asked us to draw the person next to us. So I drew Katerin. Sorry mate.

Exercise 3

Before our lesson with Justin, during our briefing with Alan, we were given a subject that our main character design project would be about. I got:
Character: An Archer or a Knight
Conceit / Trait: Stained Glass / Nervous
World: Medieval England
Scene: Last Minute Escape
Action: Using their weapon

For this session we were just focusing on our characters. So I started researching medieval knights and archers.

Life Drawing - Session 1

To start this new set of life drawing lessons Simon had assembled a structure made out of random materials he had found in the middle of the art space.

Honestly, I really like still life, so I was quite happy to start (until Simon told us that we couldn't use our sketch books.)

The main lesson from this session was learning to draw with your entire arm, rather than just your wrist, so we had to you the big pieces of paper.

Drawing 1

For this drawing we had to move around. The task was simple, start a drawing, after a short amount of time, move over to the canvas next to you and continue their drawing. This repeated for a while.

This is the drawing that I started, but in my opinion it came out a bit of a shambles. This is a very messy page.

Drawing 2

For drawing 2, we had to draw the negative space, effectively meaning that we were just drawing a silhouette.

Drawing 3

For this drawing, Simon asked us to use charcoal and focus on lighting. 

Drawing 4

For our final drawing of the day, we had to focus closely on a small section of the cloth draped over the thing in the middle.

Toolkit 2 - Action Posing

Our fist toolkit lesson of the new year and we're starting with posing.

Alan gave us a pre-made character rig called "Moom". With this character we were tasked with recreating 5 action poses from references we found online. The references we used had to be of real people and couldn't be already animated images.
Alan also asked us to rate each pose with an emoji, indicating how injured the Moom is. A happy face indicates that Moom is uninjured, an unwell face indicates that Moom has been injured, and a deceased face indicates that the posing has killed poor Moom.

Pose 1: Deep Dab

So, I, in my infinite wisdom, decided to start this project off with memes.
The first pose I started on was Jackfilms' Deep Dab.

As soon as I uploaded this I noticed some issues, like the foot hovering above the floor and the pose not being as extreme as the reference. Honesty, for a first attempt, I could have done worse.
I gave a happy face rating as it doesn't look like Moom is seriously injured, maybe a bit uncomfortable if anything.

Pose 2: Jumping

Still being quite immature with my poses, the next one I decided to do would be a jumping pose from a 90's Sitcom freeze frame, however much to my disappointment, I couldn't find any cheesy freeze frames, so I just used a normal jumping stock photo as reference.

Looking at this pose now, I didn't do a very good job at it. The back could be more curved, the arms and legs should be bent a bit further, I could have do something with the facial expression.
I still gave a happy rating as Moom doesn't look injured at all.

Pose 3: Naruto Running

Continuing with memes, I decided the next pose should be of Moom "Naruto Running", in honour of the Area 51 Raid a few weeks back.

Honestly, I should've bent the back a bit more, but generally I think I did a decent job with this one. I still gave a happy face, but you could make the argument that their neck looks a bit stretched and strained.

Pose 4: Archery

This time I decided to do an actual, non jokey pose.

I tried to be a bit more thorough with the posing this time and I've only just seen where I've gone wrong with this one. The pose should have been pushed a bit further, the back knee should be touching the ground and the arms should have been moved a bit. I also tried moving the face a little bit, but I believe that we'll be working on facial expressions more later, so that wasn't a priority. Moom is still very much alive, despite have a bit of a wonky leg here.

Pose 5: Spider-Man

For my last pose I wanted to create the classic Spider-Man crouch pose. Luckily I managed to find a stock photo that wasn't a screenshot from any of the films (Where Spidey is usually animated to more super human positions).

Firstly, I'm reasonably proud that this one isn't completely wrong. Secondly, I can certainly see where I could have changed some things, such as slightly changing the position of their right hand and leaning the body forward more. I indicated that Moom is injured here as their pelvis has been somewhat crushed by me bending the back a bit. Whoops.


For my first attempt at proper posing, I'm quite pleased that I can at least get basic positions down, but I need to push them a bit further, I feel like I've held back on these when the pose calls for much more.