Finished

I just uploaded my final assignment, now I will just have to wait for my grade and I will be finished with the first 2D-course and ready to start the second 2D and the game development courses next week.
As it is getting very late I will skip uploading the reflective assignment and just show you the final drawings i handed in.

Final Assignment Update

I have been working on the final assignments all week and they are finally starting to come together. The rendering of the city scene is what has been taking up most of the time, light can, as I have said before, be really difficult and when I thought I was nearly done I realized that I had misjudged a central part which affected the entire surrounding area.

I think I have solved it but it looked better before as long as you did not look long enough to realize that the area should be shadowed due to the angle of the rising sun. This has probably been one of the major obstacles of this assignment as I find it difficult to know exactly where a shadow will fall.

As there was a large area that ended up in shadow I decided to put light in the windows of one building to keep it from being just a dark area but I am not completely happy with the result.

Luckily I still have tomorrow to do some finishing touches, mostly making all edges more defined which is especially necessary as i decided to remove the line art, however i do worry a bit about overworking the drawing as I really want to get a good grade on this assignment. I do feel some pressure as I did not get a very good grade on my previous lighting assignment and it made me doubt myself a bit when it comes to light.

This is what it looks like right now, any thoughts on improvements are welcome.

The second assignment was to take a very rough sketch and make it solid, meaning constructing a character almost to the step of clean line art. I am happy with what I have created so far although there is still room for some improvements in certain areas.

Drawing this with the help of the construction techniques I have learnt during this course as well as the assignments testing them made it go really fast. I have hardly spent any time at all on it compared to the lighting assignment or the previous character drawing a made and it sort of makes me question if I have done enough although I do think it is the same quality as the last character drawing. That must mean I have learnt something, yay!

This is the sketch which we are supposed to refine followed by my rough underlying construction drawing, a fast sketch and the finished one.

I did struggle a bit with the hands, they are still not perfect but it did not have to be super clean line so I will probably hand this one in like this if I do not manage to throw some beautiful hands together tomorrow.

Progress

Today i got back to working on my final assignment for the 2D-course after taking a few days off for personal reasons. It is starting to come together now and I will probably wait until I get some advice in the feedback sessions later this week before doing the final touch up.

This is the first time that I am working on a city scene and it turned out, as expected, that it is tedious work and the understanding of the light can be really tricky. I am happy with what I have created so far and I am looking forwards to getting some feedback so I can make it even better.

It is way to easy to go blind after looking at a drawing too long so I am going to get started with the other part of the assignment and let this one rest until after the feedback sessions.

Today, as well as yesterday, I have been at school working on one of the final assignments that are due next Friday. The one I am currently working on is taking a line drawing of an old, asian city and render it in grey scale. Things to consider are choosing where the light is to be coming from and what kind of lights I want to include. Since I did moonlight last time I thought I would try something different with this drawing. The city looked so still and quiet to me so I decided to set the city in the morning light of the rising sun.

Before starting to work on the drawing I googled for some reference images, this was my favourite one that I decided to reference in my rendering.

This along with the demonstration of one of our teaching assistants helped me get started, then it no longer felt as big of a challenge. I have found more than once that it is the getting started part that is more difficult for me, once I have some basic groundwork down, the rest almost just falls in to place.

Anyways, here is what I started out with yesterday and where I am at now.

Lighting and value

The last week before christmas break we continued working on our characters, after some introduction to lighting and values we were tasked to render our line art in grey scale. Some useful things I learned this week was to start with a grey background instead of the standard white and to use reflective light to show shapes. Another thing that was brought up was to use a secondary light source to create volume, for this drawing I considered what it would look like in colour even though it would be in grey scale for this assignment. As she is a moon goddess I wanted her to be hunting in the moonlight. Therefore I chose to set the arrow on fire to contrast the cold moonlight with the warm, orange firelight.

The final image turned out better than I had hoped and I feel that the process of working with volume that I have gone through has allowed me to change the way I think when drawing. It has opened my eyes to things, many of which I already knew, that I have not been able to use and I do not believe I could have achieved what I did before this course.

There was no reflective assignment for this week so I will just add some thoughts on what we learned. I felt again that the introduction to the subject was very brief and a few of my class mates as well as myself were left wondering how to apply it. It got better a day or two later when we got a more thorough walkthrough on how to approach the task at hand, as well as getting feedback during the process of creation. I do wish we could have gotten more lecture time on the subject as it can be very tricky, you could probably fill an entire course with just lighting and values. It just felt very brief since it is a very large subject and such an important one.

Colour Workshop with Silvy Strand

Today we had a guest lecturer in the 2D-course, freelance illustrator Silvy Strand. She started with a lecture on what it is like to work as a freelancer and gave some good tips on what you need to think of when starting a buisiness. Then she demonstrated two approaches to colouring a drawing and let us have a go at it. One of the techniques was one that I am more familiar with, blocking in the colours and then add shadows and highlights.

The other one was to start building the values in black and white and then putting a colour layer on top of it. This is a technique that I have come across before but never really appreciated as I feel it easily looks dirty and amateurish. The colours do not come to life as they would if they were painted "from scratch". I decided to give this one a go anyways after discussing with Silvy and I think that it turned out better than I thought it would. I still feel that it shows that its been painted on top of another but considering that it is the first time and the short amount of time put into it, it turned out well.

I believe colour is probably not my strongest point yet, I do know the basic theory but I find it very difficult choosing the right colours and getting them to go together as I see it in my head. Silvy was very helpful as I had some difficulties getting started, she told me a good way is to start with colouring the entire image with the general colour of the background and then the light sources. In my case it is a forest in moonlight, meaning a desaturated, dark blue-green. It felt very obvious as she told me this and it got a lot easier to pick up from there.

Here is how it turned out...

and here is a closeup.

Line Art

Last week we continued working on the character design that we created the second week. Week five was all about line art, so after a very short introduction we were asked to do a cleanup of the drawing we created in the beginning of the course. I did find the introduction very brief and several of us were then left wondering how you create clean line art, feeling we were not shown any techniques on how to approach it.

That led to a lot of googling, trying to find good tutorials on how to do line art, which was surprisingly hard to find, mostly I found a wide spectrum of different tips. I then tried several of them and after two days of trial and error I found a way that worked for me, of course I still need a lot of practice but I am happy with the lines I was able to produce, given the short amount of guidance.

Here is the before...


and here is the final image...

As usual i will add the reflective assignment for you aswell.

I did at first experiment a bit with light but it did not feel like the right approach, instead I wanted to stay focused on the volume that I had tried to create when drawing the first one. Therefore I chose to use lines to show volume and depth by emphasizing important curves. I also used line thickness to show different materials in her clothing and accessories and they lead the attention to where the action is in the mouth area. I wanted her to convey strength and femininity and therefore I kept the lines thin and sharp but curvy and flowing avoiding straight lines. In the hair and clothing I have deliberately left some lines broken as it gives life to them instead of them looking stiff. I also emphasized the eyes and face as it is the most important part and her eyes reveal her personality as a hunter.

My biggest problem was getting the lines to being where and how I wanted them to be, also I felt it was not explained clearly to us how to do this task but that we were expected to find a way that works for us. After day or two of trial and error I finally found a way that worked for me, using a small, hard brush and drawing fast semi-long lines and pressing ctrl+z until it was where I wanted. Since all the construction was already made what remained was the tedious and deceptively difficult task of creating clean lines and the challenge of not loosing the feel of the original drawing and expression in the face.

Turnaround

The fifth week was all about turnarounds, since all the groundwork had already been done during the construction it was not very difficult in general. I did have certain issues though but the assignment was rather time consuming than hard.

One of my biggest problems was the face, I found it really difficult to draw the same face multiple times from different angles, the draping in her clothes was the other main concern. Another problem was the proportions of the arms when straight out and of course having to draw her in such an unnatural pose (t-pose).

I am not completely happy with what I created this week, I would have spent more time on it and added details but under the circumstances I am very relieved that I managed to complete the basic drawings as much as I did since I got the stomach flu the day of the deadline. I am glad I managed to send something in at all and was very relieved when I saw that there was no reflective assignment for that week since I could barely think when trying to complete my homework.

Character Design

The third week of the 2D-course was spent on developing a character from one of the thumbnails we created during the first week, we were supposed to hand in the original thumbnail, a construction drawing and one complete drawing that is the last step before clean up. (The close up of the face was one of the VG criterias).

For a real game project I am not sure if the character i chose is the most interesting one to develop, but for this course and the assignments I felt it was the best one. The main reasons why I felt that way is partly that we were working a lot with volumes and this character would let me add things that help to show that and mainly because of the challenge of the pose and draping fabric which is very difficult. I did at times regret setting myself such a high goal but I am glad I did and that I managed to do it well.


Character Background
What´s his/her name? - Artemis
Male/Female? - Female
Physical health/handicaps? Athletic, swift, agile, strong, light (leather) armor
Personality? Calm, nurturing and innocent but temperamental and vengeful, young in the terms of a goddess and therefore a bit childish at times. A hunter – determined, patient
Family? Distant family of other gods
Intelligence? Smart, somewhat unaware of the world outside the forests
History? Ancient goddess, protecting pregnant mothers, children, forests and animals since thousands of years, goddess of virginity and the moon and very much effected by it
Hobbies? Hunting
Friends? Animals, a bit of a loner when it comes to humans but not anti-social
Add more here that is of value: Bow, lyre, deer, hunting dog

An early version of the construction, you can see how I have placed the clothing on top of the underlying construction.

I know it is a lot of text but I will post my reflective assigment for the week as well.

I thought for a long time of which character to develop, finally I chose to continue working on my female archer, Artemis. The reason I chose her was because I felt it would be a challenge with the draping of the fabric and I could add accessories that would help show volume. I made several fast sketches to find a relaxed pose to develop but I decided to take this opportunity to challenge myself even more by choosing to position her aiming her bow at a 45° angle. I felt this character would give good practice working on volume, foreshortening and adding things on top of volume that flows with it. I have been trying to either feel or take the pose, imagining how she would feel and look and looking in the mirror to help with difficult parts as foreshortening and fingers.

I need to work on thinking in 3D and how to place clothing, so I thought this would be a good challenge for me. It turned out to be just that, however I think I managed to achieve what I wanted by implementing what I have learned these past few weeks. As I said last week I do not think I could have pulled this off in the beginning of this course.

Her style has been kept simple, with few details as I wanted to portray her as someone who spends all her days guarding the forests and hunting. Another reason for the pose was that it felt most fitting to show who she is, as her greatest interest is hunting. Her love for nature is shown in the choice of her accessories; it is also the reason why I have given her just a simple wooden bow and little jewelry with very simple design. The bracelets have been placed both to show her status as a goddess and to maintain the feeling of volume in a drawn character.

I wanted to keep her a bit young-looking as she is young compared to other gods and sometimes lets a childish side shine through. At the same time I wanted her to portray the wisdom and power of a thousands of years old goddess; therefore I chose to give her quite a strong nose and the expression in her face.

2D Week 2 Perspective

The second week of the 2D-course we studied perspective, once you know how to do it is rather straight forwards but it is tedious work and I did not find photoshop the best tool for this week's assignment which was to draw an airplane and a car in the same picture. Here is what I did along with the reflective assignment of the week.

After having drawn on paper during this week I have realised how messy it can be so I decided to do this assignment in Photoshop, although it was extremely time consuming I felt it would give a cleaner and more accurate result. I did not realize exactly how much time it would actually take compared to drawing it on paper but I believe it would just have turned into a mess of lines if I had tried to do it on paper. This unfortunately meant I did not have time to put in as much details as I wanted to and I feel the result shows perspective well and accurately but it is not an interesting picture.

I also found it a bit of a challenge when needing to build things vertically instead of horizontally, it felt strange as I looked at it and thought I have to do the exact same thing as I just did, just in the opposite direction. I did solve it but it was a bit difficult changing the way I think between vertical and horizontal.

Considering how much work it actually takes to create something very simple with correct perspective I wish it would show more. It does not look as if someone has put in a lot of time and effort when the picture is so simple, but I guess that compared to a fully rendered picture in which the artist has guessed on perspective the simple one would still look better.

The things I learned this week have been crucial to completing this assignment, I would not have been able to do it last Monday. Especially the use of crosses has been very useful, both for positioning and maintaining proportions. I would not have thought of thinking of for example an airplane as a volume before, I would have drawn outlines of how I think it should look. Now I have a new way to look at it, seeing also what is covered and I think it will be very helpful in my drawing.

2D

For the past few weeks I have been very busy with the first 2D course. We have been working a lot on construction and building characters with boxes and cylinders. I have been working really hard, trying to challenge myself every week and that is probably why I have been doing so well.

Anyways I thought I should post what I have been doing for my home work these past few weeks so I will start with the first one. The assignment was to draw 20 thumbnails based on a concept - Clash of Heavens, a game where an ordinary person is thrown into a war between gods - they were supposed to be very quickly sketched and show a variety of different designs, (it did not have to be the main character). We were also supposed to show our three most dynamic sketches from our sketchbook, so here they are along with my thumbnails, I will also post the reflective assignment for this week at the end.

This week I have worked to focus on movement rather than drawing the model as I am used to. This was a challenge for me as I have always drawn to create a pretty picture and I realize that I must let go of that and do things completely different. That is one thing that caught me in Walt’s book, every drawing needs to have a purpose, I need to learn to try to tell a story when drawing instead of just wanting to create something that looks good. This is a knowledge that I have not been willing or able to accept until now and I am determined to get past it so that I can develop as an artist.

Although I have not been successful every time I have tried to convey personality and mood through posing instead of just having the person standing there doing nothing. I feel that what I have learnt this week, both in class and from reading, has really helped me create believable, expressive poses without having a model. This just by changing the way I think, or as Walt said, switching gears.

Another thing in Walt’s book that really struck me was what he said about lines, think about how and where to put them and not just do them because. Especially the part where he said “There are only four lines per cylinder and if it takes you twenty lines to make one – you need help!” It made me think that perhaps I need help, I feel my drawings at times get a bit messy and I found it a challenge trying to implement this, in particular remembering it while drawing. I really need to work on this and learning to know what line to put where and how it should look. It is very easy to copy a line, but not to create one that shows movement and life, I find that they easily become stiff and emotionless.

I have found it very difficult to keep all the new knowledge in mind when drawing, it is very easy to just fall back into the same old tracks and forget it all. I have to remind myself all the time as I realize from time to time that I am not thinking about what I am doing.