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Tired of only drawing animals...
PeterAndCompany
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I got the urge lately to start doing independent studies on various subjects to refine my skills outside of mere cartooning. The first step came from my last class this past quarter, Animal Anatomy for Creature Design. I brought in my Grobian beetles to work on, but since the class was focused entirely on vertebrate creatures, I was on my own to learn about insects. Cue the 10 weeks' worth of intense research, stress, and contemplation of dropping the class because of it all. I stuck through it to the end, and here's the result.
An Encyclopedic Study of the Grobian Beetle - it's a hefty read, but it gives you an idea of how in-depth this class took us through the creative process.
Long story short, I won't be sculpting anything for a looooong time after taking that class. Jolly King Clay is a bitch to work with.
Riding on the creative high that inevitably came from this class, I jumped head-first around midterms into a series of graphite illustrations of trees from around the world. I always knew my skills in tree anatomy were lacking, and I was in the mood to practice. I had picked up a book around late summer from Barnes & Noble that had nothing but tree photos (beautiful reference, I highly recommend you guys pick up a copy if you have $15 to spare) and decided to use it for inspiration.
So, here are the first three.
And a WIP of the fourth one that I just recently started:
I plan on doing about 6 or so of these, and then I plan on doing another series of graphite illustrations on a study of the female form. I actually have a friend who will be modeling for me, so that should be fun. 8)
Oh, and a bit of cartooniness (for those who expect it from me), here's my final project for Astronomy this quarter. We just had to do something astronomy-related and incorporate our major. A fun bullshit project.
So yes, expect to see a lot from me over time. I'll be here on-and-off since my plate is still overflowing with projects. The most exciting tidbit (for me) is my involvement in the creation of Hodgepodge Comics, an independent comic label consisting of work from a dozen or so Sequential and Animation students from SCAD. Three of the people involved have already been published (via self-publishing), and most of us already have established comics of our own, so we'll be using the label to spread our work around cons and various other sources. I'll be bringing Peter & Company and the Chronicles of Ademar into it (which means I'm turning away from syndication for P&C, and instead going for an issue-based strip digest akin to Liberty Meadows), as well as working on a freakin' huge collaborative project with the others (which I can't really give any details on right now). Crazy fun times indeed!
Oh, and the Wii freaking rocks. That is all.
An Encyclopedic Study of the Grobian Beetle - it's a hefty read, but it gives you an idea of how in-depth this class took us through the creative process.
Long story short, I won't be sculpting anything for a looooong time after taking that class. Jolly King Clay is a bitch to work with.
Riding on the creative high that inevitably came from this class, I jumped head-first around midterms into a series of graphite illustrations of trees from around the world. I always knew my skills in tree anatomy were lacking, and I was in the mood to practice. I had picked up a book around late summer from Barnes & Noble that had nothing but tree photos (beautiful reference, I highly recommend you guys pick up a copy if you have $15 to spare) and decided to use it for inspiration.
So, here are the first three.
And a WIP of the fourth one that I just recently started:
I plan on doing about 6 or so of these, and then I plan on doing another series of graphite illustrations on a study of the female form. I actually have a friend who will be modeling for me, so that should be fun. 8)
Oh, and a bit of cartooniness (for those who expect it from me), here's my final project for Astronomy this quarter. We just had to do something astronomy-related and incorporate our major. A fun bullshit project.
So yes, expect to see a lot from me over time. I'll be here on-and-off since my plate is still overflowing with projects. The most exciting tidbit (for me) is my involvement in the creation of Hodgepodge Comics, an independent comic label consisting of work from a dozen or so Sequential and Animation students from SCAD. Three of the people involved have already been published (via self-publishing), and most of us already have established comics of our own, so we'll be using the label to spread our work around cons and various other sources. I'll be bringing Peter & Company and the Chronicles of Ademar into it (which means I'm turning away from syndication for P&C, and instead going for an issue-based strip digest akin to Liberty Meadows), as well as working on a freakin' huge collaborative project with the others (which I can't really give any details on right now). Crazy fun times indeed!
Oh, and the Wii freaking rocks. That is all.
PeterAndCompany on
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Though I'd already seen them on your sketch blog, those renders are pretty sweet!
And yeah I'll probably be posting on that blog far more often than on here, so definitely keep it in your bookmarks.
Dear satan I wish for this or maybe some of this....oh and I'm a medium or a large.
So after burning myself out from the last quarter of classes (and having the following three weeks produce nothing but crap sketches), I decided to push myself to improve in other areas.
My friend Kay asked me to draw a portrait of her. Originally she wanted it to be cartoony, but I offered to make it a little more realistic. Unfortunately, I've always sucked at drawing human faces (which is one reason why I always stuck with animal characters), and this inadequacy once again reared its ugly head when I took on the request. After listening to me vent for a bit, my friend Amy bought me a couple books that focused on portrait work and techniques for visualizing the human face. Very "Right Side of the Brain" type stuff.
So it's about damn time I stopped limiting myself to one genre of characters, one style of art... I'm going to learn how to properly draw a human face if it kills me.
Here's the original crap cartoon sketch, before I got the books:
And here's the WIP I've got going right now, after reading the books and absorbing all the techniques and lessons. I had to take a pic using my camera phone since I don't have access to a scanner at my parents' house in Winchester VA, so sorry about the low quality.
This is after about 2 hours or so of rendering work. I still need to push some of the darks on the face a bit more and finish the hair. Kay's going to be taking an entire series of photos for me to use as reference, so this should be a lot of fun.
Athlete: Thanks! The color one was drawn in late November, right before my winter break kicked in. The new one is only a couple days old. I've been practicing the techniques in these books and I'm really loving the progress.
The hair in the lower left... yeah. Bane of my existence on this one. I managed to move the nose slightly over to the right, but I think it's still off a bit. I might have to do more alterations in Photoshop.
http://mcgibs.iseenothing.com/junk/eye-tut.png
In general, its loosing alot of form in the face (doesnt look shaped right, or looks too flat, etc etc)
I'd reccomend actually practicing with male heads first, as you can really hammer in the light planes and forms and still have it look good. Females are all about subtlety, which can be really hard if you dont have a good understanding on the non-subtle basics.
Loomis has a really good book on heads. There should be a link kicking around somewhere here.
*steals for the purposes of forcing upon others*
STOLEN'D ;O
I'll do some more alterations to the values on the face and make the eyes more rounded, then scan in a better copy once I get down to Savannah (I'm still having to take photos of it with my camera phone since my dad's scanner is busted).