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The [chat] Who Circumnavigated Fairyland

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Posts

  • ProspicienceProspicience The Raven King DenvemoloradoRegistered User regular
    edited May 2017
    Double King just made my day, thanks for sharing!

    Can't wait to check out those first 30 @m3nace like the little blips you've shown here and there so far. Congrats on being finished with it.

    Oh hey, TotP. Here's Aesop Rock's new video with artwork by Coro!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwoyo0Rt4Bw&feature=youtu.be

    Prospicience on
  • JuggernutJuggernut Registered User regular
    This animation popped up on Twitter today and holy shit it's some technically astounding work for 1943, let alone being produced in Nazi Germany.

    https://youtu.be/P_Rb3WF3SIQ

    It's by Hans Fischerkoesen. "Weather-beaten Melody"

  • IrukaIruka Registered User, Moderator mod
    That animation is soooo siiiick. The expressions and gestures are wonderful.

    I assume that record player is rotoscoped, its crazy seeing it used so effectively so early on.

  • JuggernutJuggernut Registered User regular
    From what I can tell it uses multiplane and stereo-optical stuff ala the Fleischers. Reading up on it the Nazis ramped up animation production to make up for the loss of Disney and the other big animation names when they took power. This was Fisherkoesen's first production under the Nazi endowment I guess and Goebbels specifically wanted the animation to focus on 3D movements. Fascinating stuff.

  • IrukaIruka Registered User, Moderator mod
    That aesop video is kinda interesting too, the drawings are great. Weird to see a fairly passive sketch session just going on in the background. I think of watching time lapses of art as being kinda inside baseball.

    I also enjoy seeing what you guys run into on the internet.

    anyways,
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz9wPQCLvyY

    God, I wish I understood french.

  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited May 2017
    Sooo I'm thinking about making a big life leap -- which is to quit my job and start studying at a local atelier in Seattle. Specifically the Georgetown Atelier. I had no idea it existed, I actually just found out about it after meeting some current students at life drawing last week. They showed me some of the work they've been doing, and the progress they've made in a couple years of study, and I was very impressed. The owner and primary instructor is a former Watts student which is a big plus, and I do like his work. The students I met told me that a main focus of the curriculum is to build toward painting imaginative realism, which is of course exactly what I'm looking for.

    It's kind of crazy to think about quitting my job, but I have a good amount of savings and a very supportive partner whose job can provide me with health insurance, so it is very doable. I submitted my formal application just now (today was the deadline!), so we'll see how that goes. And I have a tour of the studio space set up for tomorrow, so I can check it out and meet the instructors. If all goes well, my tentative plan is to enroll for one year and see how I feel after that. I can definitely see myself doing two years. That is of course assuming I get accepted into the program, which seems likely I think? The term starts in September, so I'll have some time to mull it over before fully committing! The idea of going full time and being part of a little community of students is so exciting, though!

    Lamp on
  • DoodmannDoodmann Registered User regular
    edited May 2017
    I am going kind of the opposite direction as Lamp, and am one step closer to opening a little garage studio:

    https://losangeles.craigslist.org/lgb/hvo/6152955992.html

    The guy is basically selling a whole setup in other posts, a bunch of inks and screens and a drying rack.

    Doodmann on
    Whippy wrote: »
    nope nope nope nope abort abort talk about anime
    Sometimes I sell my stuff on Ebay
  • ProspicienceProspicience The Raven King DenvemoloradoRegistered User regular
    Iruka wrote: »
    That aesop video is kinda interesting too, the drawings are great. Weird to see a fairly passive sketch session just going on in the background. I think of watching time lapses of art as being kinda inside baseball.
    Yeah, I agree. While all the sketches are relevant to the lyrics/story, process is definitely "inside baseball." It's yet another reason I've always loved the guy. Since his degree was in visual arts, he's become friends with some of my favorite visual artists over the years and tends to integrate their art into his album artwork and videos.
    anyways,
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz9wPQCLvyY

    God, I wish I understood french.

    Maaan I've pondered integrating painting into my photos for years and just never made the leap. Absolutely love this, thanks for sharing.

  • tapeslingertapeslinger Space Unicorn Slush Ranger Social Justice Rebel ScumRegistered User regular
    woo Lamp! I think that if you have the option to do it, you should, when it comes to professional development, so long as you are excited about it! This seems like a great opportunity!! I am really excited for you.

  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    Thanks TS! I really am so excited woooooooo. The more years I trudge on trying to do this all on my own, in a few spare hours in the evening, the more I think that I really need some help, not to mention a lot more time and mileage. And I think this program could be just the thing!

  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    Just did the tour. Loved it! The atelier space is a cool studio, good vibe. The instructors I met were really nice and do good work. And the students were very welcoming and friendly. The owner said he thinks I'm a good fit and that I'll hear back from him in a couple of days about official acceptance. I'm pumped!

  • gavindelgavindel The reason all your software is brokenRegistered User regular
    Everyone's goal in life should be to enjoy life as much as a small mammal eating a piece of fruit.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMWi7CLoZ2Q

    Book - Royal road - Free! Seraphim === TTRPG - Wuxia - Free! Seln Alora
  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    edited June 2017
    So the process I've developed over the last few years has been, crank out some sloppy half-developed line art and then drop in colors until things are looking solid and I can get rid of the line layer altogether. But a couple of days ago I was looking back through @ChicoBlue 's old sketchbook (Chico where did you goooo) and I was noticing how most of his illustrations (which I adore) still have the line art in, with plenty of painting over the lines to incorporate everything. It's a lot more subtle than comic book ink lines or something like that, but he still lets the lines do some of the heavy lifting of defining forms and adding detail and interest. And it looks super appealing to me. Then I started noticing that a bunch of other artists I like have a similar process. Now I'm feeling interested in trying to do better, tighter, cleaner line work in general and incorporating that into my images. I think that, if nothing else, it would help me make sure that I've actually developed my ideas before I jump into paint and color, where everything becomes 10x more complicated and laborious to work out.

    Lamp on
  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    But the thing that sucks is that no matter how good I think my lines look, as soon as I try to start painting them I think it all looks like shit. Which means my lines need to be a lot better!

  • IrukaIruka Registered User, Moderator mod
    Trying to achieve some sort of cleaner line process is a goal of mine as well, mostly because I just think improved draftmanship could not be a bad asset. Clearer sketches usually mean I spent more time working out the forms before saying fuck it and starting to paint, for sure.

    If you work super small, you might find that upsizeing your sketchbook helpful. I have some little sketchbooks but my main goto is 11X17. Its a pain to lug around, but the real estate is nice.

  • lyriumlyrium Registered User regular
    Lamp wrote: »
    But the thing that sucks is that no matter how good I think my lines look, as soon as I try to start painting them I think it all looks like shit. Which means my lines need to be a lot better!

    There is definitely a frustrating stage of an oil painting that I always pass through when first starting to block in colors, where it seems out of control and like a lot of the work is lost, but then moving into the next phase it recovers. Depending on your process it might just be something you go through each time. Always worth experimenting to find out though!

  • FlayFlay Registered User regular
    Greg Manches's oil painted storybook is out you guys

  • Angel_of_BaconAngel_of_Bacon Moderator mod
    edited June 2017
    Flay wrote: »
    Greg Manches's oil painted storybook is out you guys

    ?
    I have it preordered on Amazon, and it says it comes out in October. <scratches head>

    Angel_of_Bacon on
  • BroloBrolo Broseidon Lord of the BroceanRegistered User regular
    @ChicoBlue it looks like blueberrytouches has been replaced with... CookieClicker Cheats?
    https://blueberrytouches.tumblr.com/

  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    only the best of the age of empires cookie clicker cheats dontchaknow

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • ChicoBlueChicoBlue Registered User regular
    Brolo wrote: »
    ChicoBlue it looks like blueberrytouches has been replaced with... CookieClicker Cheats?
    https://blueberrytouches.tumblr.com/

    THAT'S HOW YOU MAKE THE BIG BUXX, ROLO.

    I switched the name/url to http://codyajsimpson.tumblr.com/ a little while ago, and I guess a bot scooped it right up.

  • DoodmannDoodmann Registered User regular
    I messed around with my portfolio, anyone here want to give me some suggestions?
    I figured this was a better place to throw it out there than my personal thread?

    www.blakesmisko.com

    Whippy wrote: »
    nope nope nope nope abort abort talk about anime
    Sometimes I sell my stuff on Ebay
  • BlindPsychicBlindPsychic Registered User regular
    I personally wouldn't recommend leading off with logos you didn't do as far as the NPS thing goes. I've seen other people's portfolios have that and it bothers me. You should use a sample of the design you did instead. And I think you should use a new icon for the tees because I think the designs on the shirts are pretty strong, while the obscuratees logo is not (mostly because of my anti-myriad bias)

  • LampLamp Registered User regular
    ChicoBlue wrote: »
    Brolo wrote: »
    ChicoBlue it looks like blueberrytouches has been replaced with... CookieClicker Cheats?
    https://blueberrytouches.tumblr.com/

    THAT'S HOW YOU MAKE THE BIG BUXX, ROLO.

    I switched the name/url to http://codyajsimpson.tumblr.com/ a little while ago, and I guess a bot scooped it right up.

    Ahhh so much lovely new Chico art *cries*

  • DoodmannDoodmann Registered User regular
    I personally wouldn't recommend leading off with logos you didn't do as far as the NPS thing goes. I've seen other people's portfolios have that and it bothers me. You should use a sample of the design you did instead. And I think you should use a new icon for the tees because I think the designs on the shirts are pretty strong, while the obscuratees logo is not (mostly because of my anti-myriad bias)

    Good point, I did or edited/revamped all the logos except for NPS, I was worried it would look weird if that was the only one that wasn't a logo. I guess if I change the obscurtees to an example also that might be ok.

    Whippy wrote: »
    nope nope nope nope abort abort talk about anime
    Sometimes I sell my stuff on Ebay
  • BlindPsychicBlindPsychic Registered User regular
    You could just try making it be a snippet masked out of another shape so it still has that icon look rather than filling the entire thumbail

  • MightyhogMightyhog Registered User regular
    I feel myself running up against my comfort zone in a current personal project... basically, how do you begin to design something, a character type, you've never designed before? Just find and study other effective designs? Or not "just study" them, but analyze their... shape language? Focal mass? Contrasts? I don't really know how character design works, is the thing. Any good resources to develop my design sense?

  • Angel_of_BaconAngel_of_Bacon Moderator mod
    edited June 2017
    @Mightyhog
    Mightyhog wrote: »
    I feel myself running up against my comfort zone in a current personal project... basically, how do you begin to design something, a character type, you've never designed before? Just find and study other effective designs? Or not "just study" them, but analyze their... shape language? Focal mass? Contrasts? I don't really know how character design works, is the thing. Any good resources to develop my design sense?

    Reposting this again for ideation/design philosophy: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/35867836/#Comment_35867836

    My step-by-step process of doing character designs at work basically goes like this:

    -Define all the "knowns"- the things you know for sure have to be true for the design to be effective. Typically this means for me going to the art director or feature producer or whoever the relevant parties are, and grilling them for info. If I know 'yes it has to look like a thief, has to also look like a pirate, has to be female, has to have a hand that's a plasma cannon, etc.', this starts to define for me what space I have to play in. The worst thing is to be given an assignment with nothing defined or for certain, because how can you know if your design is successful if you have no objective to gauge it against?
    A story I once heard was a young director was nervous of directing this great, big name movie star, and told the actor to just do whatever they felt best- and the actor came back at him and said, "No- you build me a corral, and I'll ride around in it." Step one is building that corral for yourself.

    -Research and ref gathering. I make a big ol' 6000 pixel wide doc in photoshop, hit google image search and start dragging things that I think will be useful in there. This may be very literal, photos of that real thing, it may be other artwork that tried to tackle the same problem, to may be something that just evokes a mood or an abstract idea. I might be drawing a man, but if I think it would be a strong pitch to describe this character as 'moving like a tiger', I'll chuck a picture of a tiger stalking through the grass up there, maybe I'll get something out of it. I'll also put in any existing project artwork I need to match/differentiate from (eg: "I shouldn't draw this character as a red spiky man because I can see there's already 3 red spiky men in the game and we've established those guys as ninja class and this guy's an acrobat class").

    -Thumbnails- typically I spend on average a day working on thumbnails, quick sketches to play around with a couple of ideas. Typically I start off with the most obvious kind of solutions to get it out of the way- oftentimes the obvious first thing you think of winds up being what was desired- but I will also pursue ideas that I just think would be an interesting take, versions where I 'cast against type', things that I think might be silly but could work; I'll blind scribble and see if the resulting mess comes up with any ideas, another artist I know will pull in photos and just layer them on top of each other in random ways to make an abstract mush that he might see something in, I'll use a random word generator and pick out some words that might be interesting to try to apply. Thumbnailing is where you try to figure out all the ways you can skin this cat. During this process I'll still be adding to my ref sheet as I pursue different ideas.

    -Discuss with art directors/stakeholders- could be one of those thumbnails is exactly what they're looking for, could be they hate all of them and you need to spend another day, or two, or three, figuring these things out.
    A book about film editing that I read gives a good analogy; the author described the relationship between an editor and a director like that of a patient and a dream therapist. What happens in dream therapy is that a patient will wake up, and they will only be able to recall small bits of a dream, like, "I was in an airplane", and the therapist will expound on this with a specific version: "ok, so you were in a biplane in WW1 going over France...", and the patient will then object with a more specific recounting of their dream, "No no no, I was in a cargo plane full of chicken cages...", etc.
    By presenting specific visions in terms of thumbnails, you may have satisfied the initial requirements, but not hit something that the art director didn't know they needed to get out of it when they were first thinking of it- so nothing is wasted, because while those thumbnails might not get developed into finished drawings, they are a necessary part of honing in on what the design ultimately needs to be. (One thing I hear all the time is, "This is really cool, we should find a way to use it somewhere down the line", which I know will never happen. Part of my job is knowing that a majority of ideas I come up with are going to be necessary casualties in the battle to find the idea that actually works. But ideas are cheap, so don't get too married to any one idea too soon- push on to find the one that works.)

    -Once you arrive at a thumbnail everyone can agree on, set to executing a more finished version. Obviously the thumbnail isn't going to be a complete solution, but I should have enough info that I generally know where I'm heading.

    Now, you mentioned you're doing this for a personal project, and this means you need to wear a lot of the hats in this process on your own, and that makes things a lot more difficult, or at least that's been my experience; when anything and everything is a possibility, it's hard to commit to doing any one thing with confidence. If someone tells me to figure out what a "shark car" looks like, that's easy. If I tell myself that maybe I should draw a shark car, I wind up going in circles wondering if a angler fish or barracuda or an alligator car or maybe a tank or a plane would be cooler, and that final shark car image never ends up materializing, I just am left with a page of disconnected doodles. So it's up to you to be able to strongly and confidently define your "knowns" and make a point to stick to your guns when "director-you" is making decisions, so you don't leave "designer-you" to flounder about aimlessly.

    EDIT: Note this is just my personal kind of process- and while it's a fairly typical way of working, it's not the only one, so you may want to check out other people's ways of working to find what works best for you. This blog has a bunch of interviews with various character designers (mostly in the animation field), and reading up on their various working/thought processes may be helpful: http://characterdesign.blogspot.com/

    Angel_of_Bacon on
  • MightyhogMightyhog Registered User regular
    @Angel_of_Bacon This is great and will help and thank you

    Thanks so much for breaking it down into steps, and warning me of the pitfalls. I'll do my best to define a solid brief, and get out of my own way when it comes to seeing the thing through! Guess I've got some thumbnails in my future...

    Thanks again!

  • DoodmannDoodmann Registered User regular
    I'm looking for daily challenge, anyone know of one going on in July?

    Whippy wrote: »
    nope nope nope nope abort abort talk about anime
    Sometimes I sell my stuff on Ebay
  • IrukaIruka Registered User, Moderator mod
    Pinterest can offer you a bunch of generic ones, if you just want some inspiration. I'm sure theres a tumblr post out there somewhere listing all the active ones, but I dont pay a ton of attention to the monthly activities.

  • DoodmannDoodmann Registered User regular
    Yeah, I probably should have hailed @dmac since he seems to have a mainline on all the popular ones.

    Whippy wrote: »
    nope nope nope nope abort abort talk about anime
    Sometimes I sell my stuff on Ebay
  • DMACDMAC Come at me, bro! Moderator mod
    Doodmann wrote: »
    Yeah, I probably should have hailed @dmac since he seems to have a mainline on all the popular ones.

    I've seen a few artists drawing giant monsters for "Kaijune". :) Not sure about July.

  • FlayFlay Registered User regular
    Julycathropy?
    Julyrebird?
    Julychee?

    Also McGibs is on the front page of Gamasutra:
    http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/300214/Game_Design_Deep_Dive_Visualizing_Cryptarks_2D_scifi_world.php

  • SeveredHeadSeveredHead Registered User regular
    mcgibs is such a art bad ass, makin games and gettin paid son

  • DoodmannDoodmann Registered User regular
    Would anyone be interested in a thread for Monthly prompts/challenges? I have an idea for July but I would need help making a list.

    Whippy wrote: »
    nope nope nope nope abort abort talk about anime
    Sometimes I sell my stuff on Ebay
  • IrukaIruka Registered User, Moderator mod
    We used to do challenges and enrichments but participation was low enough that I stopped maintaining them. I'd be down with dedicating threads to monthly things, if we got a list going. I think keeping it in line with ones that people already do is a good way to go.

  • DoodmannDoodmann Registered User regular
    edited June 2017
    Ok I'll put together an OP tonight.
    My thought for july was summer reading list, we put together 30 books and do stuff based on the book.

    Doodmann on
    Whippy wrote: »
    nope nope nope nope abort abort talk about anime
    Sometimes I sell my stuff on Ebay
  • DiamondGFXDiamondGFX Registered User regular
    Hey all! I recently started getting back into art (mostly drawing/painting) in a pretty big way after having essentially taken about 10 years off (at least from serious work, I've been doodling and sketching here and there but nothing significant). I was considering starting a blog about my exploits and using it as a way to keep track of my progress and potentially even making that all public...

    Is this a terrible idea fraught with peril? Obviously there's a lot of vulnerability in showcasing what is...honestly, probably some pretty awful art. I majored in art in High School but then switched to Computer Science when I went off to college so I don't really have any formal training outside of books/tutorials/Udemy courses/etc. I'm hoping that maybe doing something a little more public will encourage me to actually stick to it and also provide a little bit of motivation with a record of where I "started" vs where I am now. I'd love to know everyone's thoughts on the topic :)

    ain't got one
  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
    I wouldn't worry about it being public, the internet is a big place and I doubt you'll get any negative attention. Honestly it sounds like a really good way to stay motivated, which can be really tough in those early stages when you're trying to get back into drawing.

    Tumblr is probably the easiest platform/format for maintaining and updating an art blog, but obviously there's lots of options out there.

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