Digital Doodles Part 3

So, after a long postponement, here's another set of random doodles.

Didn't really post these chronologically, the above doodle was done earlier on than some of the others I posted. Regardless, it was significant to me in my quest to become comfortable with going straight in with color/value and being more aggressive. Also, it was clearly done very fast, which I like
Anyway, this was my first life drawing I did with my tablet over the summer. At some point i finally felt brave enough that it may be ok to pull it out in the life drawing class and try to do a live figure.

I'm leaving this here as a note to add a few more of the digital figures I did later on, since I don't have access to them at this particular moment. Also should put up a gouache sketch or two. Next will be some life drawings from the last semester(though most of them are back home in San Diego, I do have a few photos) followed by an animatic, with my animations after that. Then once I've posted my few paintings from the winter break, maybe I can finally get this damn thing to be a contemporary account of what I'm up to.

Digital Doodles Part 2

So here are a few other bits. I played around a bit with different brushes, but a lot of the time I just constrained myself to the simple round brush and a chisel brush. I've tried to do a few digital drawings before, but it was always difficult. Especially dealing with brushes that I didn't really understand the function of, not to mention lacking a very good idea on how to apply them.

Here I used a bit of texture to play with some of the brushes I saw in the Gnomon video Barontieri did. I watched it several times during the semester, but had a hard time applying all of the brushes.
I felt like I could understand what I wanted to depict and how, but something wasn't working. At some point I figured it was that I simply didn't have enough experience with the basic idea of "painting" within Photoshop. I decided I needed to temporarily ditch the efforts to have tons of detail pop up really fast on its own. Because the truth is that the detail will never come up on its own because the brush is suddenly doing work for me. Experienced artists wield the brushes and settings in photoshop using their understanding of the fundamental ideas that are involved in art(light, form, color). I needed to focus on getting the big shit down right before I worried about the details in it. If I wanted details, there's no reason I can't do that with the basic brush. Then I also used the a chisel brush, to start getting myself accustomed to the various things that can be mapped to the pen tilt and stroke direction.
Occasionally I played with other little things here and there. But for the most part I made myself stick with the two simple brushes and just worry about trying to get used to some sort of work flow.

Work flow has been a big thing for me to figure out. It seems like everyone has dramatically varying methods. I decided at some point that drawing over an existing drawing doesn't seem to work as well for me. I usually did better if I only had a simple, relatively loose, sketch. Additionally, it seemed to help more as a reference to LOOK at, as opposed to photographing/scanning it and trying to color/paint over it. When I had a drawing already there, especially one I had worked into a bit, it seemed to get harder for me to get myself to just draw over it freely. I started to slow down and become overly meticulous.

The canyon bit above I did over a little doodle that I captured with my mac camera. I did a similar thing for the tibetan tower for perspective last year. The thing is, I feel like it's so quick to do so much digitally, doing things on paper is only really efficient(in terms of time/effort) for thumbnails and such. The time I spent on the tower, markering in value and such was not really very helpful. I ended up covering it anyway, and I could have done the value layout faster in PS.

I feel like it can definitely be helpful to have a drawing underneath(and all forms of reference make life so much better), but it's ultimately more beneficial to force myself to acquire a sufficient comfort with drawing straight into PS.

Just some thoughts.

Digital Doodles Part 1

I was super stoked with how productive I stayed over the summer, but never showed anything for it. I posted a few gestures from the first day at life drawing only to realize I hadn't actually photographed most of it. But I figure at this point I should just try to get current and not worry about being comprehensive.

Blah, blah, blah, anyway.... I made myself do some regular digital doodles. Started off with my back yard, then I spent an hour or so painting a cup on my desk. So I'll do a few posts to dump out some of the stuff I did over the summer, then start updating with more recent stuff once I feel I've at least sampled what I did over the summer.

Summer Life Drawings

Ok, so these are a few gestures from when I was doing some life drawing over the summer. I would rotate them properly, but honestly, I'd rather just try to get on with the postings and maybe, just MAYBE, make a regular habit of this. Then I'll work on the prettiness of the posts.

Anyway, I did a bunch of digital doodles over the summer, as well. I was hoping to get myself well acquainted with drawing on a tablet, since I'm going to be using one so much now. I'll try throw some of the summer digital doodles up next, with a sketch or two, perhaps.

After all of this, then I'm hoping to get myself to post things from the semester, though we're only really working on storyboards, so there's not much in the way of nice, finished work. Nor can I claim to know much about storyboarding(hence being in a class that teaches it), so I'm not really inclined to post much of the storyboarding. Perhaps later on in the semester I'll post a start/middle/end comp of how my storyboarding changed for the better. Things are already making more sense and I feel like I've improved a lot, even in the short time I've been back.

So, here are the gestures, stay tuned for more! :D

Semester Animations

Right.... so, here are some animations from this semester

First there's the animal jump where we design an animal character, then animate them in a ~10 second story where they jump(with a PURPOSE!).

Untitled from Anguel Bogoev on Vimeo.

This is a walk cycle where we designed a biped character of some kind, then animate it walking. I decided to do a pirate with a peg leg.

Pirate walking with peg leg from Anguel Bogoev on Vimeo.

I'll try and find my ball bounce with interactions assignment, next.

Lost and Found!

So, I found my sketchbook and I've been so absent-minded about my blog that I didn't think for three weeks to post that I'd found it.

Well, i've been doing some animating, some painting, drawing, all that great art school stuff! I intend to upload some stuff tomorrow, including a pointillist painting of a fish, which I really enjoyed.

My walk cycle final feels like it's coming along, hopefully I can get everything worked out properly by tuesday. I'll likely make one post of all my animations from this semester at the end of next week.

Free Sutff!

Me on the left, with Paulo(fellow CA) on the right.

So, I went to a little demo by Prismacolor at my campus book store today. At the end of it they had a drawing, and a bunch of my friends got cool free stuff(such as Paulo and his Warm Gray set in the picture). I didn't win anything, unfortunately :(

Luckily, I was in the convenient position of having brought my laptop along, and was showing a friend a marker render that I did, so that he could see what color the French Grays come out to. When Diana(the woman giving the demo) saw it, she decided to give me two marker holders full of markers, and asked me to e-mail her the pictures!

BOOYAH!! :D

Here are the pictures I had onhand.

More Norse

So, the day before we had a little sketch thing here. The assignment was to spend the hour drawing a design of a "space viking". I was stoked, since I was looking to do an actual Norseman as part of the previous character design bit. Unfortunately, I showed up for the last 10 minutes of the little event, because I got caught up animating in the lab. So I madly scribbled away whatever came to mind in light blue pencil, so that it would be easy to edit it if there was anything interesting to salvage from the rushed doodling.

Anyway, afterward I did a short little doodle of a more cartoony image of a space viking(below). Then did some scribbles, making a random robot shape or two.

Tonight I took a few minutes with the Space-Viking and quickly markered/inked it in. I really want to learn how to ink well enough that my fantastic inking can overpower the shortcomings of a drawing. This would make me most happy. I think I'm going to start inking up more of my drawings so that I can start moving toward this goal.

Still Life

I hate traditional still lifes. You know, the fruits/bowls and shit? I just don't understand the motivation to spend so much time regularly drawing mundane objects. I understand studying them to understand the structure, but this never seems to go under the "still life" designation. Those always appear to be called "studies", instead. It also seems that teachers never want to assign to go break down how chairs are built or something, instead I get an assignment to see if I can render value, with my subject being a bunch of mundane objects. I think that the issue is that I want to draw a specific thing. For example, don't tell me to draw a house, or some pears, tell me to draw THAT house. I suppose the core of my negative attitude is that they're non-descript subjects(which means they're very uninteresting and lacking personality), I have to do a strict render(which means I can't stylize and ADD personality), and that I feel like I've done enough of these to finally merit the opportunity to try rendering exercises with imaginary forms. Instead of all of these mundane subjects, how about letting me practice imaginary forms?

I know that the extent of my aversion to still lifes is uncalled for. But for whatever reason they just bother the hell out of me. I'm fine with the idea of doing a study to understand how to execute some object's look in a larger project.... but spending several hours doing a composition with such objects is somehow devastating to my work ethic. Granted, I still do it, though I somehow can't help but bitch and grumble :/

Basically, if I'm going to be drawing lifeless objects, don't make me do just 4 shots and spend hours on each, let me do quick breakdowns. If I'm going to be doing an intensive render, let me do it of a more interesting object, or let me add life and a piece of myself to it. Strict renders of simple objects don't let me do that.

Ragnarok Is Nigh!!

So, I sit here at almost 6 in the morning, working on designs for characters present at the Ragnarok.... posting up some in progress images, partly to keep myself in this habit, and partly to show others working on the same thing where I'm at.


First is a Frost Giant. I was originally thinking of Modi, but my understanding is that he was on the side of the gods(Thor being his father). Also, I have another little sketch that I feel is more in keeping with what I've read of Modi's character, this one's intended to be scary and menacing(part of my sketch for his face is in the upper right, where his big grin is visible).

Granted, Modi could be friendly to the gods and still be menacing. Reading into Norse mythos, it's pretty aparent why the Giants hated the gods. The gods were dicks. Still, the character in my mind is a little less visually frightening, so I'll see if I can get something done for him.


This is the above Giant's axe. I was thinking of naming it 'God Slayer', or something along the lines of killing the divine, or bringing about a terrible death. I'll ask my Icelandic friend if he knows of something fitting that I could use, along with appropriate symbols in the design. Currently there's a symbol that, according to some chart, can mean man or death. The triangle thing is a valknut. My thinking being that it bestows men with the valknut(knot of the fallen).
Jormungandm, The Serpent.
Still working on this marker rendering, bringing out the form. I'm implementing my nice new French Gray markers I got for christmas and my new large, chisel-tip Copic markers :D
The thing on the right of him is a possible tail, still haven't decided whether or not I want to put it on(hence my not having gone around that area yet). I was thinking of something slug-like when I began with this. I know the descriptions are of him as a serpent, but I was hoping to make it scarier by disconnecting it a bit from more conventional creatures. Having the teeth run all the way up the jaws would probably help make it look more menacing.... though i've markered in too far for that now. But I suppose when I start making digital variations, I'll try that out.This is another version of Jormungand that I did. I sort of think this looks cooler, but it's also more conventional. Personally, I think I could make this look good more easily. However, I'm going to stick it out with the other, in order to facilitate greater opportunity for exploration.

Enough chatter, back to work!

Perspective

So, here are two of my perspective drawings from the semester. I am still trying to build that accursedly difficult habit of uploading things regularly. I had to scan all of my life drawings for my final, but neglected to sift through for the ones I feel like posting. Also, I've sort of fallen a bit further out of the blogging habit. We'll see if I manage to stay more on top of it this semester.

So this first one was my final assignment. It wasn't really our "final", per se, since we only had a little bit of time left in the semester to do it. I think I went further than most people did with there's, taking the time to do some basic lighting with a ball point pen. Still, the structure of the building is all just whatever geometry I had the time to figure out properly and draw before I ran out of time. The giant dice falling toward it were sort of a random addition, because we had to have an object falling toward our 3pt construct. So I decided to have two dice throwing snake eyes at the building.

This one was our second 2pt project, which I neglected and just sort of rolled with this idea I got in my head. The building and any perspective I had to figure out is sort of dwarfed by the relative size of everything else. I got all into the idea of doing some sort of tibetan building up in the mountains, the result being this tower over a waterfall. Hopefully in the future I'll feel more confident with my digital drawing abilities that I'll be able to design a more interesting building, without worrying that I can't actually execute it.