Designing a Monster from the Closet

I've been thinking a lot lately about the final script I'm going to submit a packet for in my Scriptwriting final, and I think I might do the Monsters in the Closet story I came up with during Visual Storytelling I. However, I didn't get to develop the characters as much as I wanted to when I turned it in, including the look of them. So today during my in-class doodling, I played around with it a bit. Here's some of the final ones for this as of yet unnamed character.

 I wanted this guy to be very shy and quiet, so his first design was very cute and closed. He was a little too one dimensional though, so I'm playing with the idea that if he gets pushed too far, he goes into a berserker mode that's more typical of his species. Normally, he slouches a lot and keeps his massive mouth closed, but when angered he stretches up to his full height and brings out his massive claws and teeth.

I'm much more happy with the direction this is going now. This was the easy character to develop, however. Design-wise, he was the most thought out to start with. I'm going to have to spend a little more time with the other ones.

Back from Spring Break!

One nice, relaxing spring break later, I am back. The combination of family and playing Psychonauts and Portal 2 for the first time was amazing for post-quarter stress! Incidentally, if you haven't played either of those games, I can't recommend them enough. Seriously. Especially if you appreciate games that are incredibly creative in concept and level design, and very different than a lot of what's out there these days.

 I played a little bit with these water-soluble graphite pencils, and I loved them immediately. When I started drawing, I mainly did black and white stuff, so naturally I was intrigued by these. It's like painting with pencil, which is actually something that I've wanted to do for a while.

These are just some doodles, since the only pencil I could borrow was a very short 6B and only 30 min to play around. I'm going to look around for a few to get for myself to practice with even more.

The squid-like creature in these was inspired by something my high school art teacher showed me a picture of, a strange thing she found on the ground on her property. I can only guess at what it really is, but it definitely looks like some kind of land squid.

Digital Drawing Apps- Sketchbook Pro

This is the app I'd recommend if you want to do some outdoor painting with your tablet. It has a lot of brushes that come with it, great controls over size and opacity, and a color wheel like the one in Corel Painter. They also have it set up so you can easily access all the tools with finger swipes and such, which makes painting go much faster. It doesn't take very long to get the hang of it. The only thing that might give you some trouble is the lack of pressure sensitivity for brush thickness purposes, but since the iPad doesn't have that at all, it's tough to do anything about it.

Digital Drawing Apps- Penultimate

For the next few days I'll be posting digital sketches from a few different drawing and painting apps on my iPad, and talking a bit about their useful features, at least from my perspective. Today's app is Penultimate. It's advertised as a note-taking app, where you can make a whole library of digital notebooks to write out notes, or sketch out things.

This app is pretty minimal when it comes to artistic features. You have very few color options, and you can't control the size of the eraser, but what makes this app amazing is the ability to upload your own papers to the sketch books. I've got a few different storyboard templates set up with different aspect ratios. Whenever I start a project, I make a new 'sketchbook' for it. I select the template I want to use,  and sketch out some rough drafts if I find myself without a stack of paper templates.

 It even includes a 'wrist protection' feature that is supposed to make sure your wrist doesn't accidentally make marks on the paper while you draw. It's nice, but it doesn't always work, however, so I usually just wear long sleeves to cover my wrists while I draw on this one.

I recommend it if you like the idea of digitally doing storyboards. It can be very convenient if you've got a good stylus for the iPad.

Finals- Part 4

Just a short post today. A frame from one of the last projects for Principles of Screen Design. Today has been full of traveling and recuperating, so I'm afraid I didn't get to do a sketch today. There will be new sketches starting tomorrow.

Finals- Part 3

Here's one of the last frames from a sequence I did for finals! The project was to choose an existing sound clip and storyboard from that, but completely change the visuals. I did Groundhog Day, when Phil stole the groundhog. I may post more from that sequence later on when I've recovered from finals, I think it turned out really well. Definitely portfolio-worthy. 

So, finals are over! For the next week and a half I'll be posting work completely unrelated to classes. Expect watercolors and graphite drawings!

Finals- Part 2

Technically I keep posting these on the day after the sketch was done, so I apologize for that. Finals are  preventing me from posting until after midnight. This should be the last post like that for a while though.

Today (yesterday) I've got a frame from the beginning of a sequence I did for finals. Tomorrow (today) I'll  post a frame from the ending. It's a particularly cute one, too. I really like how this sequence turned out actually. The strange project parameters made me think outside the box, so I got something a little different than usual, and it paid off.

Finals- Part 1

Just posting a quick frame from one of my finals as I finish up the winter quarter here at SCAD. I'll be posting the sequence on my portfolio site when finals are over and I get a chance to breathe!

Sketch-a-day: Sumi-e Ink

Ever since I came back from the Japan trip, I've been learning about sumi-e brush techniques. I'm still getting the hang of it, and getting used to how you're supposed to hold the brush is a little challenging. I also used the ink sticks to make the ink, which was also new and fun. I think next time I'll work on landscapes. I like how much they imply things like trees and rock formations with different types of brush strokes. It's very minimalistic and elegant, and I'd like to be able to do it. There will probably be more experiments with this later on, it's a nice occasional break from school projects.

Sketch a Day Number 1!

Hello Internet!

In between art projects, I like to play around with different mediums and styles, so I thought it would be fun to post some of the sketches I do. I'll even talk a little bit about what I'm trying out, sharing what I learn with them. I've always wanted to have a blog about using different art supplies and my experiments with them, and I'm finally doing it! I'm very excited about this. So, today is Day 1 of my Sketch-a-Day.

Today I've got a little watercolor painting of an owl that was brought into the school building for people to draw last year. I took a lot of pictures of the little guy, and this was painted from one of them. His name is Icarus. He was such a cute little guy, even let us pet him without screeching at us. 

Icarus, the chill screech owl

Lately, I've been working on my color theory and lighting. To practice, I focus on areas of colors rather than looking at outlines, and watercolor sketches are a good way to practice that, at least for me. I didn't sketch outlines first, I just painted from general to specific to get a good likeness. These little exercises really help me to look how a subject interacts with light rather than get stuck on what it actually is and what color they are supposed to be. This one actually turned out pretty well, which is why its a bit more finished than a sketch. The light on the feathers was just too much fun to capture.

As far as materials go, I just used a mixture of Winsor Newton watercolor pans and tubes.  Really the only unique way I use them is that I've got this great bead storage box that I keep my tube water colors in.

It's plastic and has individual cups with screw-on tops that fit snugly inside. I keep unmixed and mixed colors in there. It's nice and easy to store and carry them, and if I'm outside of my studio, the caps and box lids are a good place to mix new colors. It was a really good find at Jo-Ann Fabrics.

Anyway, that's all I've got for today. Come back tomorrow for a sumi ink drawing or two.