Personal Work: King Frog

This year I want to use my time not only to do project work but to do more personal work too, obviously when the work load piles on I wont do as many but I want to try and keep it up to improve my painting and drawing. This is the first of many hopefully that I produce throughout the year, any comments are gladly welcome :) 

Toolkit Animation: Showreel

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Toolkit: Character Animation

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CG Artist Toolkit: Sack Animation

During this morning's animation class with Meg we had to complete our sack animation, although I forgot to draw the box on another layer so I will correct this at a later date. He's kind of a fat sack who is a bit clumsy who falls off at the end but I feel the sack could have more personality looking back at the animation.

Life Drawing: 22.01.2014

CG Arts and Animation Toolkit: Gesture Drawing 01

Single Line Drawings without looking at the person

This was my first time doing gesture drawing apart from the times in life drawing, I was not sure how to approach it at first but by the end of the lesson I felt a lot more confident approaching gesture drawing and I feel this shows through the development of my drawings.

CG Arts Toolkit: Sandbag Animation 01

Life Drawing: 15.01.2014

Today was mainly getting back into the groove of life drawing again, starting with four five minute poses followed by two 25-30 minute studies of the body. I had focused on the feet and hands because I tend to struggle with these parts of the body when drawing the body I also struggle with the face but I will focus on the face in future life drawings classes. It feels good to get back into drawing again :)

Cg Artist Toolkit: Final Zoetrope Animation

Life Drawing: 27.11.2013

 

This week we were using colours and we focused on the light and dark contrasts within the figure. I feel like I need to force myself to not outline everything when drawing as this tends to flatten the image. I also believe that learning edge control and form building will defiantly help me improve on my draftsmanship and my confidence. I look forward to doing more next term, in the meantime I am still waiting upon Scott Robertson's book...... 

Zoetrope animation



Zoetrope animation, a quick morph of objects associated with christmas :). I am happy with the outcome, I was going to do a fourth morph but I feel it wouldn't work too well on the zoetrope so I decided to my make my morphs slower so the transitions are smoother.

Life Drawing: 20.11.13

Today we were working in colour using paints and soft pastels. I love traditional painting I just need to practice more on it as I haven't painted traditionally for a long time now and it shows! It also makes me appreciate just how easy it is to get good colours when working digitally in comparison to using real paint. Still need to practice on my anatomy skills, but I feel more confident in drawing the figure now :)

Secret Lairs: Colour comps

Some colour comps experimenting with colour and helping my scene stand out, the original seemed a bit muddy and grey, therefore I wanted to bring in a complementary colour such as blue and a bit of purple in shadows, as blue is a colour of power, this will help the audience to understand that this room is for a queen.

Secret Lairs: Concept art

This is my Lair for the Neolithic Queen, its almost finished I will do a few more colour comps to help in terms of colour. The hero prop is a holy font where she goes to bless each child of birth within the tribe, this is one of many secret rooms inside the mountain where the Chahcapoya people live. I designed the font's surrounding in the shape of a thrown and using peacock feathers to reinforce the royalty of the queen. I wanted to incorporate some hanging cloth's into the scene but unsure whether to or not.

Composition Thumbnails: Secret Lair

Thinking of different compositions that can work with my lair with the hero prop being the main focus. I want my hero prop to be a holy water font that is formed on a stone structure (the one you see in the thumbnails). The font will be apart of the stone structure itself. I was thinking to having the stone font structure having a mirror up the top where the sun shines down into the scene leaving an encryption on the floor - a message from the gods. Or perhaps having the encryption light up on the font rather than a projection. I want the lair to be a place of solitude, restoration, holiness, calmness and royalty. I don't want the scene to feel busy, therefore having the encryption on the font light up on would be a better approach.

Secret Lairs: Influence Maps

After speaking with Jordon today I realised I need to start thinking more logically about my work when designing my lair, thinking about its function and why everything is the way it is. Therefore I have started to look at cathedral architecture, church architecture, holy places of worship, religious rituals and symbolism of it being a holy place whilst still thinking about it being set in the neolithic times and still being able to see that it belongs to a queen.

Therefore this requires me to change my hero prop completely, getting rid of the statue and replacing it with a holy font, where she goes to wash her sins away. I want this place to have a calmness to it, with a sense of paradise and solitude, where she can go by herself and be with the gods. 

When thinking about the design of the font and the surrounding area, I have researched into peacocks being a symbol of immortality and is often associated with royalty and queens. I am still setting this inside of the mountain where her father died, therefore mixing these elements with a mountain environment should lead to some interesting outcomes. I will further experiment with composition as suggested by Jordon so I can frame the shot where the hero prop is in a higher position as though you are looking up at it to give a sense of power, once again reinforcing the power of the queen. Although I feel like I've had to re think everything and start again, I feel this is the right way forward.

Secret Lairs: Thumbnails (28-31)

After watching Feng Zhu's most recent video it had inspire me to go back to the line drawing approach when designing my lair. Therefore I started these series of thumbnails with a line drawing then onto value range in black and white using four values and then applying colour on top of them. I worked on three simultaneously so I wasn't too precious with my paintings and approached them as designs rather than finished paintings.

After completing the three designs I turned off the line work to see if they are working as a painting and as to a surprise they were starting to take shape, I especially like the portrait painting and the blue landscape. Following from these I will do an environment prop sheet, and a hero prop sheet so I can finalize the design on the shrine/grave tomb of the king and the surrounding area.

I felt as though I had more control over the whole scene when designing with the perspective grids and drawing lines as compared to blocking out environments, it's an approach which I shall use in  the future, although I need to work on my draftsmanship and line quality for it to really benefit me later on.

Life Drawing: 13.11.2013

5 Minute Poses

Single Line Drawing. Places a figure in an environment. 25min.

Pencil sketch, figure with environment. 20 min.

1 minute poses figure drawing

 

In today's life drawing we were given a task of drawing a male figure instead of our usual female model and to place them within an environment that was given, the main exercise was to draw the figure in proportion with the environment. He had some props to use for the poses being a staff,  ball and some other objects. Altogether I feel I am improving in my anatomy skills with proportion and my legs are starting to look like legs now :).