Long time, no post

Sorry for the lack of posting! I seem to be missing the "per diem" part of this blog, but that will change soon hopefully.  I've been trying to fix up a bunch of pieces from this past semester so that they can hopefully be portfolio ready. Anything else are mostly just café type sketches of people or hand studies.

I did this for my mom for mother's day.  I got it printed as a card and had the front flap as the "little boy" version of me—revealing the adult version of be upon opening it.  The idea is based on a photograph taken of my mom and me on my 1st day of grade school.

Tree house

I was have trouble figuring out what was the focal in your first comp.  The tree house and the figures both seemed like you wanted them to be the focal point, but you couldn't decide.  Multiple points of interest are great for leading the eye around, but it seems like for an environment/establishing shot like this, you would want the island/tree for thing to be the focus and use everything else to support that.  Also, everything seemed pretty 50/50 as far as the original composition went.  There was equal amount of ground/foliage, as there was sky, the island and the kids (which both seemed to be focal points) were basically mirrored across the corners. Further, to establish the house as a focal point, i think it might help to give a little more breathing room around it, and use the extra room to us roots to help the composition.

Hope this helps! Good luck on all you work, applications, and schoolwork!

I think more space around the house could help the composition

Trying out Corel Painter

I'd feel weird posting any of my hand studies since i doubt anyone finds them particularly interesting to look at.  I've basically been just copying pages from Michael Hampton's book.

On another note, my texturing class teacher is making us learn Corel Painter a little bit, so this is my first endeavor in the program.  There are definitely some things I really like about the program—something I didn't expect.  I could potentially see it as a useful tool to use back and forth between photoshop. 

Wendy's bedroom

Hey Alex, here are some thoughts on your bedroom piece.  Again, considering you're studying something slightly different to me and there might be different "rules," not everything I say will necessarily be applicable.  In fact, I'm just going to use this disclaimer for all future critiques, rather than typing it out each time. haha. Just keep that in mind for all future critiques.

The thing that really jumps out to me the most is perspective.  There doesn't seem to be any universal vanishing point. Several angles go to different vanishing points, and some don't even seem to rest on the horizon line (particularly chair and the wall closest to peter.  This makes the scene feel fake, like it's s set design for a stage or something, and the window isn't real, but painted on a backdrop.  Along with the perspective issues, the curves on the chair peter's sitting in looks wonky.  It'd be best to grid this off and get the arch exactly right—this is way too close to the focal point to just fudge it.

I like the suggested detail in the foreground, but it bugs me how much clearer it is than the rug wendy's sitting on.  That area on the floor looks really muddy/unclear, when it should have more detail since that's where the focus of the scene is, especially the area on the floor where the light is shining.  I like the attention of detail in the foreground, but remember if you have that much clarity on something that's supposed to be in shadow and out of focus, that raises the bar for the areas that are in focus/near light.

Also, you probably this, but the light doesn't make perfect sense.  Obviously, peter's shadow doesn't count, but the chair's shadow doesn't really make sense.  This may be intentional thought, because the shadow would fall toward Wendy and wouldn't have that nice "spotlight effect" you have going right now.  I think these things you can get away with more in animation, just wanted to make sure you're aware.

Otherwise, great color and composition. It's got a nice painterly feel.  Peter's expression is much better.  I'd say the most important thing to fix the the perspective though.  If you're not trying to go for a realistic perspective, be clear in the style of perspective you're going for.

Justin Corrections

Hey Justin,

Alex told me that you were interested in a red-line so I did a multi-color overlay if you don't mind! As she mentioned earlier, shapes and anatomical structure is just as important as a line drawing would be before rendering. I should probably start with a disclaimer since I'm not quite familiar with your style (not the same case with Alex) so I'm not quite sure where you were originally planning on going with your character design.

I based many of the corrections on my personal animation aesthetic, so please feel free to pick and choose to your liking since I understand game art styles vary a lot depending on the game and direction. I know game art also doesn't focus a lot on gesture and movement like animation does, but at the same time I think it would be a great asset to know it and apply it when necessary to help give your characters more 'life' in the drawing. Using shapes in your design also helps give that unique look you're probably looking for.

Definitely work on playing up your shapes with the hair, the face, the clothing, any kind of character accent (headband, earrings, waist stash, etc?) so that everything comes down to a unified design. Furthermore, I shrunk the head down a bit so that he was proportional with the rest of the body (not sure if the big head was intentional or not?) and keep an eye out for any kind of opposing angles [hips vs shoulders], not to mention angles are a natural thing in the body so include it! Same concept goes for a straight angle - oppose it with a curve!

Hope this helps~

Jen

Just this one girl...

hands start tomorrow...

paintover

Hey Alex I did a paintover of some things that I thought might help.  You can take or leave anything, but these are the things that stuck out to me:

-The values were getting a little lost in some areas.  Particularly the dad's sleave and the sky, your parents' heads and the sky and the beams and the letters (and the sky).  I get he feeling you want the feeling of the sun behind your parents or something, but it was getting just a little lost.  It's help to try to define those edges just a little bit.  I know sometimes blogger distorts values (at least I've noticed it has for me before), so it may look better in your original PSD file, but either way i think it would help to diffrentiate those values just a tad.

-your shape of your mom's dress.  The way you drew her figure is so smooth and fluid, from the hair, to the shoulder's, to the dress—and then there is this weird point right in her lap (which makes me think of the infamous minister from the little mermaid =[ ).  It makes it really confusing in trying to understand the dress, and what causes the folds.  If you're going for a poofy dress, use more lumps and curves, like you did everywhere else in her figure and try to indicate some anatomy so we can understand the folds better.

hope that helps!

A character I'm working on

Hey again. So I'm not sure if you animators (and ex-animators) are aware, but us game art students had the advancement review this weekend and I've been up working on that for the last few days getting my portfolio together (thus my absence from this blog).  But my portfolio has been submitted, so rest assured I will make a valiant effort to keep up now! (and refrain from resorting to excuses).

Haven't had much time for studies or anything lately, so I thought I'd post a character design I'm working on .  This is Rasko who is a young mischievous boy who gets cursed by a dark magic.  He acquires mystical powers, but begins to see demons in ordinary people/things (and consequently hurts others unintentionally).

The setting of the story is based in Nepalese-like location and so the clothing design based loosely off of Nepalese culture and it's geographical location.  Any ideas, suggestions, or critiques are welcome!

And thanks for the feedback from earlier! Any help i can get is greatly appreciated.

[My] First Post

Hi everyone, I'm Justin.  Majoring in Game Art, emphasizing in concept art and visual development. So this is my first post of the blog...not super flattering, but hey—that's why I'm here.  

I'll probably be posting mostly studies and copies as I'm currently trying to focus on my foundation skills when I'm not doing schoolwork.

Two things I learned while doing this:

1) I need to get faster (possibly looser, in the beginning stages at least)

2) It would probably be better to block in everything in flat shapes and color rather quickly, so i don't get caught up in noodling certain parts.

Also, ignore Sully's awkward face. Thank you.