More Speedy Life Drawing and 3D

The workshop ended today. Sad face. I wish I could have taken the whole thing, I always feel like it takes me a few sessions to warm up before I can actually get the hang of drawing from life, but I'll take what I can get. Here are some edited highlights from today:

2 - 3 minute quick poses.

5 minute quick poses.

More 5 minute quick poses.

A few detail ones:

I spent an extra 2 minutes shading this one. ^

And another 3D piece that I lined up for my futuristic police station:

Speedy Life Drawing

I've been taking the same workshop I took at the beginning of last summer, with the excellent Michael Buffington Jr. Due to conflicts, I could only take the last 3/6 sessions, but I really love his workshop and I haven't drawn a model in ages, so it was really good. I have one more session on Thursday, I just wish I could do it more often.

Here are some 3 minute poses:

Details on a couple:

And 5 minute poses:

Details:

We need more male models though, I feel like I am better at the ladies than the men. Maybe it's a side-effect of being a lady. Or maybe it is just that ladies are awesome. I was having trouble loosening up, but found if I spent 30 seconds to a minute markering the pose approximately first it made a world of difference. So if you're feeling stiff (...at drawing...) I recommend giving it a try.

Continuation, etc.

I hate titling blog posts. Maybe I should start using a random word generator. For someone who's drawn a 5 strips a week comic for 6 years I have no creativity for applying titles to things. I never know what to call my pieces, either. Ask me the name of a piece three days in a row and I'll give you three different titles. Why? Because I just pick names out of the air and forget them a moment later. I'm sure that says something about the sort of person I am.

First, I toned down the saturation on this and made a few very minor tweaks:

Then I picked the color I like and did some more studies on how the costume would respond based on movement:

I'm not afraid to admit that I used Benjamin Huen's presentation style on this. Hilarious after the last post where I was concerned about ripping him off, but really I just think the way he lays out things looks nice. I love the idea of using reflections instead of shadows. It's so much slicker for sci-fi work. I also like the idea of doing a nicely rendered front and then flat colors on the back and explanatory poses. It seems like a waste of time to perfectly render everything, once is more than enough to explain the material if the back is more or less the same, right?

I'm working on using maya for a layout. I'm doing a series of layout angles for a police station, so here is the beginning of my work on that:

It's still really simple. I'm going to do 3-4 different angles, once I start detailing it out I'm hoping it will be more clear. Some of the people are incredibly off scale, but it's an early rough. I don't normally work this way but I'm trying to explore it since I think in the long run it will really cut down on my work time. Some reference photos I used:

Shot from Black Dahlia^

Vucan Learning Center^

SF Chronicle office from Zodiac^

Environments, Characters

I've been very busy these past few weeks. After not getting into the Spring Show last year I wasn't exactly holding my breath about being accepted this year, so I was blown away to find 6 of my pieces were being shown as well as winning two awards. I've worked really hard over the past year to improve, and it was nice to finally take a moment to enjoy some of the progress I've been making. After I did that for about 30 seconds though I decided to stop being emotional and GET BACK TO DRAWING.

In all fairness, when I think about where I was a year ago versus now I can see that even though I still have so much to improve on I have accomplished a lot. It occurred to me that since I'm trying to find a job I should start taking down the early entries to this blog (seeing as they are horrendous) but I think I'd rather leave them. I think keeping them there serves as an example that you really CAN make a big difference if you work your ass off, and there is no shame in that. No one starts out perfect, and some people have to work harder to achieve results than others, but knowing what sort of person you are and doing what it takes to accomplish your goal is what really matters. This time last year I remember making a spreadsheet of self inflicted homework assignments to complete over the summer - creatures, aliens, vehicles, and an environment every day. I'm grateful that I did that for myself.

Now enough wishy-washy rambles and on with the art!

This is where I got to with the thumbnails from the last post. It's a nice mood piece, but I think that I need to put more effort into creating useful ideas and objects that are good for modeling too. But it was faithful to the thumbnail I chose, and I think it came out reasonably well.

I was playing some Diablo, can you tell?

While my boyfriend was out visiting I decided to do some character work for my thesis. This character is Renee Murong, set in the time period 2150 or so. She is an undercover private investigator posing as an administrative assistant trying to blow the lid off some white collar crime.

I liked this outfit the best.

I like the blue and purple best. I'm worried she came out looking a little too much like Benjamin Huen's excellent character design for Ashley Williams from Mass Effect 3. I'm a Mass Effect fan, and I try to be conscientious of outside ideas contaminating what I'm doing. I just thought that the boots kept her feeling strong, and I didn't want to give her straight heels because it started feeling skanky. I wanted a balance of strong and sexy, because she's assuming a role and has to dress the part. Administrative assistants in any time period need to look professional, but they also tend to be attractive and these were all ideas I tried to hold onto while making the design futuristic.