Zoo Trip and Character Design
Featured Showcase
My favourite animals from the zoo where the seals - when drawing them I was picturing them as weird sausages with dog faces. I also quite liked the extravagance and flamboyancy of some of the birds that were about - the Von Der Decker's Hornbill is where the arching beak of the final character comes from.
After I had pictured a seal with one of those beaks, I decided to add the long neck of a Giraffe, and the legs of an Elephant.
Then to give it a bit more personality I added some Peacock feathers on his head.
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Reflective Statement
+ SHOWCASE OF BEST STUFF
REFLECTIVE STATEMENT
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One of the immediate improvements I feel that I made this term would be learning to be consistent with my work, and has definitely gave me a better eye when it comes to story boarding. Compared to last term where we were designing our own characters, this term was more about how to place them and develop them within a scene.
For example our work with having to draw a scene and a story of a woman dropping her hat on a windy bridge. It got me more used to thinking about other aspects such as camera angles, and the importance of an animatic in the greater scheme of the process. I also feel that I have developed more of an eye towards anatomy and how to develop a human form on a page. I have definitely started drawing more now than I have in the past couple of academic years.
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WEEK 6
QUESTIONAIRE
At the end of the class, we were shown a video. It was a short cartoon by American animator Lorelei Pepi. In 2003 she released Happy and Gay, a short done in the style of the traditional "rubber hose" animation of early disney. I liked the animation, it brought to light some things which we may see as common place in society today but when released in 2003 would have been more controversial.
After class we were given two articles to read and a short questionare to fill out.
[1]
After reading both articles thoroughly, use the scale below to rate them as pieces of well researched information?
A1. (3) Not Equal.
2]
While reading the articles did you think about how they might compare to your own researched writing? If you were to write an article like these, which one would pick to emulate and why?
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A2. I would think that the first article would be the better of the two. It has a lot more depth and thought put into it, and the writer is good at making connections to the content of the work they are writing about and historical evidence and reports to what was going on at the time in regards to homosexuality in hollywood. However, when compared to the second article, the writers initial point can be proved to be very flawed within 5 or 10 minutes of reading on the internet.
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[3]
Each article answered or informed an idea or enquiry about gender issues.
One of them expanded the idea as a film and made you the audience.
Would the other article make a good animated film? What is your understanding after our discussion?
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A3
I do not think the other article would make a good animated film at all. It is questionable and unclear in the point that it is getting its point across with the writers own ideas and opinions often flooding over with what has been presented as fact. However, they do make a valid point whenever it comes to female character design in movies such as frozen and Brave. The First has a lot more meaning after reading the post and hearing about the types of regulations placed on the industry which meant that characters such as the protagonists in the film would not have been aloud to be even shown. This makes the decision to make it in the style they chose a lot more effective.
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[4]
Did reading the articles and watching the film help you think about how you might approach subject matter like, story context and character design with theory and well-researched ideas in future projects?
Use your life Drawing character design project in an example of how the articles would change your approach to research.
WEEK 5
WEEK 4
This week, the class was focused on the aspect of story boarding. I don't think there is a coincidence with this and where we are in our current group projects. In the near future we are going to be coming up with a short film, and at the moment are designing a short video of a floating city, we are going to need to story board that out at some point as well.
In the class, we needed to draw the model losing their hat, turning around and picking it up. We had to show the concept of wind. It was pretty interesting, however, I didn't pick up on certain details like if the model was walking in the wind their hair would be blowing around.
No homework set for next week, but I'm going to continue with the Burne Hogarth book.
I found an artist on Instagram, George Cwirko Godycki, who has some great life drawing demonstrations. His website also has some decent posts on it.
https://www.georgedrawing.com/
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WEEK 3
This week due to various distruptions, class was more reflective. We werent in the drawing room, instead we had a one on one with the tutor. As I was struggling with the head rotation, I was shown how it works on paper. When shown how things work from a top perspective, things began to make more sense. I think it would also be better to use pencil and paper for a task like this, then piece it together in photoshop, not the other way around.
TIM THE SPACEMAN
FIRST ROTATION
As a prep for the head rotation homework that we have for this week, I made up a little thumbnail rotation on photoshop.
There are only heads on it, so I'm going to need to go back and fill in some ones in between, but I think that it is a good place to start for this task.
Burne Hogarth - Drawing the Human Head
Doing some reading
As a nice break up from the Maya crap that we are all going through, I decide to get back into reading, which I need to make more time to do for myself.
I have a PDF of Hogarth's Drawing the Human Head. Burne Hogarth was an American Illustrator and comic book artist famous for the development of the original Tarzan comics. From what I've already read, I already understand a little bit more about facial construction and the different planes needed to be taken into account to successfully draw a human head. So far, its been an interesting read.
WEEK 2
DRAWING FROM DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES
This week in class we tired something again a bit different. After doing the initial warm-ups we were told that we were going to be working on a portrait of the model, but after 30 seconds we had to move to the person next to us's board and continue on adding to their drawing. It was pretty interesting, at first it was really a lot of pressure to put down a basis for the portrait but whenever we moved onto the next persons place it became kinda fun adding details.Â
The homework we were tasked with seems very challenging. We were told to design a character, then, like we did in class, do a full 3D rotation of it - with at least 18 drawings.
WEEK 1
WORKING WITH INKS
This week in class we were told to bring in some indian ink, and a fine brush to do some experimental drawings. I had worked doing some calligraphy before however I would not describe it as any way successful. We were told it would kind of be like that.
We started some warmups with conté, 5 minute poses. Then we did a couple of 10 minute ones with the ink. I found it hard. At first I tried applying the approach I was taking with conte, blocking out basic shapes then building on that. However, with pen this just looked like a black mass, not a human figure. I then tried a more stylistic approach, and building up a form with line instead of tone. I enjoyed the exercise.
For homework we were told to imagine we were back in the life drawing room. Then, pick two spots, and draw a cube from two different perspectives.
A member of the class passed me over a copy of How to Draw: Drawing and Sketching Objects and Environments From Your Imagination by Scott Robertson, a concept artist famous for his work in science fiction in such movies such as Alien: Covenant and The Martian to list a few. The book has some great insights on perspective.
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