20 Minute Pose

This week's exercise was interesting. We did four five minute drawings of the same pose. Each time we drew the pose we had to keep pushing the shapes further. It's a bit at odds with the way I'm used to drawing but I enjoy the challenge. At the end of the class we did one twenty minute pose. I'm definitely still trying to get used to thinking differently about life drawing, but I'm having fun with the challenge which is cool. Again it's too large to scan, just a photo from my phone.

Life Drawing Time

Time to post to my poor neglected blog. I'm taking a class again. A character design/caricature life drawing class with Stephen Silver. It's a fun class and it's making me think differently about drawing the figure.

Last night we had a nude model and did an hour long pose at the end of the night. I decided to have fun with it and experimented with some soft pastels that I've never really used before.

Here's the drawing at the end of class with some blending started by Stephen as he went over the drawing. Since I was having fun I completely screwed up the scale of the hands. It's 18X24 so I'm just relying on my phone to take photos of it.

I spent a little extra time today to work on it. Tried to fix the scale of the hands and finished it up. I had fun with this one. :)

Gesture Drawing Class

So, I'm taking Mark McDonnell's Gesture Drawing class at the American Animation Institute. We're already half way through the class and I thought I should post some samples since it's been some time since I posted anything. :)

It's a good class. I feel like I'm learning a good deal and hope to take it again depending on my work schedule and such. These samples are from three different class meetings. The first ones are from the beginning of class and the last four are from yesterday's class.

Homework 02

Here's the second week's homework assignment. We had to further develop the character and do some sketches showing the character's personality. I switched characters in order to work on the monster from my thesis film. Just in case the assignments continue to work with the one character I'd rather further develop this guy and maybe find a good story I'd want to animate.

He's a monster that lives alone and isolated in an empty crypt at the local cemetery. He doesn't venture beyond the cemetery gates and relies on mail order TV and the internet for all his needs. He has all items shipped to the crypt next door addressed to it's deceased occupant in order to not risk interaction with the delivery driver. Like most monsters he's a night owl. He spends his nights either knitting sweaters and other items for himself or watching infomercials. It's during one infomercials that he discovers a great book, The Dummies Guide to Making Sock Puppets. He sees that as a perfect solution to create some friends for himself.

What does he want: To create some friends without leaving his safety zone of the crypt.
What does he need: To gain the courage to leave his safety zone and rejoin the world.
How can we relate to him: I think most people have at some point felt alone and isolated from the world.

Taking a new class

So I'm taking the Story Development for Animation class at Concept Design Academy. It just started last week. We talked a lot about character the first class and our homework was to come up with a character, do a drawing and post it to the class blog with a description of the character and what they want. Since I haven't posted to this blog in awhile I figured my homework was a good excuse to post again. So here's what I did.

Patrick. A finch that has it all. Money, power, a smashing bow tie plus he's a crooner. The ladies swoon with his singing. However, he has grown tired of his life. Bored with the ease of it all. He wants something new. Something fun. Something unlike anything he has experienced.

He decides to embrace his love of Star Trek and not hide his fascination with Spock.

I was thinking of a different character but I was at home and my finches were meeping at me, and inspiration struck. I went with it. I'm looking forward to class tomorrow. Depending on the homework I might post again next week.

How to Make a Sock Puppet

Well I have an idea for my thesis film. I just have to find the time to create it. So in honor of having an idea here's some samples of designs for the sock monster and some zombie/monster socks.

I leave it up to you to figure out a story just based on that. :)

Exploring Character

So I was experimenting with the cavegirl design from earlier and thought hey, why not try to make her more of a neanderthal in terms of the skull shape. And see if it's possible to do so without turning the design ugly. Not sure about it yet.

I worked on the old tourist some more and came up with this guy.



















I'm liking him so far.

Let the explorations continue.

Tourist

Two posts in one day. Go me!

Just wanted to post my first shot at the old perverted tourist. He's not perverted yet, unless he's just pretending to read the paper and is staring at the bikini clad college girls on the beach. But he's old. I still need to explore the character but I just drew this and was actually kind of happy with it. That doesn't happen often so I thought I'd share.

Yes I left the hands very gestural on purpose. I need more hand studies. :)

Cavegirl

So hello blog. Long time since I've been here. I forgot to post most of my gesture drawing class drawings. Oops.

Well I was wanting to take some of my sketches from that class and delve into some character design. So here's a post.

This was the original gesture from class.

This was a first attempt to work on the face and then I added some of the body however, I'm having proportion or anatomical issues with the body. But my concentration was on the face. With the hair she reminds me of a pissed off Ariel.

Then I started to explore and added a cartoon tiny caveman to be her companion.

I think I like this face better.

She reminds me of a teenager.

And just to get away from the typical tiny waist woman character.

So there's some rough characters. Next up old perverted tourist man. :)

Gesture Class

So I'm taking a Gesture Drawing Class at the Union with Steve Brown. It's a pretty awesome class. It's not so much about making an anatomically correct drawing in 3 minutes as it's about drawing a story in 3 minutes. I find it a very challenging and fun class. You really have to work on thinking quickly and being willing to use the model as reference only really.

These drawings were done in class and I would need to rework them for any other purpose. I just wanted to share them in their really messy glory.

From the first class.



From the second class, the model was dressed as Aladdin.



From the third class. The model was dressed as a medieval court jester.





For this pose the model had his hands tied behind his back but this scenario popped into my head.



I'm also taking an animation class with Alex Topete at the union. I'm enjoying that class as well. We were supposed to do some caricatures last week. I forgot and then spent some time at work drawing these two. Not really caricatures to me because they can be pushed so much farther. But it was silly fun drawing some iconic poses.

Giraffes

First post of the year!

I went to the zoo today during lunch with a friend. We drew the giraffes and they were in a playful mood. They came over to us a few times and sometimes seemed to pose just for us.

Back at work, when I had some down time I tried to take a couple of the rough gestures I had and do a memory sketch of them trying to capture the mood I saw at the zoo. So here's a few samples of the day.

The first two are straight sketches done at the zoo.



I liked how this guy was stretching for the food on the tree.



This one was just acting so regal, going look at me. Draw me. Although I noticed that a lot of my drawings were of profiles. I have to remember to not do so many profiles.

This was a gesture I didn't capture well of the baby giraffe leaning against what I assume is the mother, but could be the father.



So back at work on a trusty post-it I worked out this memory sketch, switching the position of the baby for composition reasons.



And this was the last gesture at the zoo. This guy was so haughty in the way he/she strutted across the grounds.



So back at work on another trusty post-it I tried to work out a better way to get that haughtiness across.



I unfortunately couldn't remember the walking gait of a giraffe. Later I checked and yep the leg positions are wrong. The back legs should be switched.

I wish I could get a sketch like this started at the zoo and then have the animal in front of me to study and get the drawing right. But for some reason I always get flustered by the moving animal and try to capture exactly what they are doing instead of just looking. Finding a pose I like. Work it out as a gesture and then use the live animal in front of me to complete it. Maybe one day I can stop being flustered by the motion.

Assignment #7

Yes I skipped assignment #6. It was a character turn. I did it, but since I still don't like the character clean I did, I didn't want to post the turn of that clean character.

In assignment #7 we had to do six facial expressions of the character and then two attitude poses.

I'm kind of rushing through these assignments because I got behind in the class and I have to have the next two assignments done before next weekend. Yeah, so things are a little rushed, but here's my expressions and attitudes.

Assignment #4 and #5

So back to the character design class. For the fourth assignment we had to do a page of different features. Some real, some more cartoony. So below are my noses, mouths, hands, ears and eyes.











And the fifth assigment we had to do a clean-up of one of our character designs. I went with the pirate Hyde I was working on. Not really happy with it and I suck at ink lines. I'm better with a pencil but tried something different this time and the lines are too shakey and just overall the design sucks. But I'm running out of time in the class and had to turn something in. Next I have to do a four point turn of the character.