Exercises in Values

Realized I have difficulty seeing values, so I made a visit to Pixel Lovely to try and depict it through form and gesture.  My exercises in drawing basic shapes are becoming more and more mundane, so I think this is a sign that it's time to apply them in more synthesized and gestural ways.

Midnight Skype: Fall Guy/Girl

Did some midnight drawing again and got further than I did with the last sessions.  He's a very innocent type of character, so I wish I implemented more rounded features throughout his silhouette like in the hat and suitcase... maybe chubbier legs too.

And I didn't think of it until after the challenge, but I gave him a carrot-shaped tie... I'm kind of cheating but... couldn't... RESIST.

Check out everyone else's Character Design Game stuff here!

Nathan Drake: 2nd Pass

It's been a while since I posted anything that was drawn with more detail - I also wanted to synthesize my recent practices in shapes, values, and rendering in photoshop.  Progress has been going a hell of a lot smoother than the first pass thanks to those studies.

I'm ready to start blending my values together but stopped here because I'm having difficulty blocking out the values in the hair; it's looking too flat for my liking.  I'm probably going to put this to a temporary halt like I did last time so I can do some hair studies and get a better grasp of its fundamentals.

Story Game 7

I should've done these for Valentine's Day.  Better late than never I s'pose

Photo we used

In the Air

Thought I'd share an animatic I did a few years ago in celebration of Valentine's Day.  I try not to look back since I feel I get so infixed in the past and find it hard to focus on the future and the present that leads to it... but it is always nice to take a glance and appreciate how much farther you've come since then...

Building around a thesis

Last night I hosted our second online, 1-hour character design game.  We chose "The Victim" archetype, where afterwards I learned more about how to approach a character design from Vicky's drawing and her initial approach.

The whole time I was very frustrated and felt like my idea of a victim didn't have any direction and didn't know why, so I kept turning to the details of the character.  I picked out a few too many traits and mashed them together, leaving me very aimless in where to take my drawing.  When I boiled all my ideas down, the only direction I had was the word, "sadness."

Vicky was able to take hers a step much further while still keeping things basic - She chose a trait of the archetype that stuck out to her and then structured everything else around that (like a thesis statement for an essay).  She focused on the fact that victims take pride in their sacrifices, and the result communicates that clearly below.

Victim character archetype by Vicky Kao.  I love the eerie-ness of how it communicates a sense of loneliness within pride

My Victim archetype posted for comparison.  By getting lost in details, all I was able to think of was "a character that is sad," resulting in a drawing that communicates not a percent more specific than that

Moral of the story is for me to develop a character like I would for an essay.  The archetype should serve as a character genre, not a character in of itself.  In order to make them more rounded and 3-dimensional, I must ask myself, "what is that 'thesis statement' within that archetype?"  Once I have that set as a foundation, then I will have something solid to build upon.

Interview

Still finishing up my story game from last week, but gotta go to beds early.  Interview tomorrow.

PS - I would've uploaded this as a gif, but Photobucket is being complete ass right now

Daft Doodles

Been practicing basic shapes (spheres, cylinders, cubes), arcs/proportion, perspective, and values this whole week and it's been working wonders.  I feel like I'm able to express myself tenfold....  I spent the majority of the afternoon doodling random combinations based off these principles.  I haven't drawn anything in detail, but heres a very storyboard-ish sketch I did while listening to the ol Tron Legacy soundtrack.

I'm so excited to continue exploring these methods.  I feel like such a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders - I'm not sure if it looks like it, but I'm doing a whole lot less guessing with my line work and it's been incredibly liberating so I can just focus more on loosening up and just having fun with it. And this is still just the beginning (dun dun dunn).