Tuesday 19 November 2013

drawing for concept artists


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Termite brief work

Decided



Sam Cuddy Artist

Alumni of Aberystwyth and Teesside Univeristies, now fulltime member of the Belfast Printworkshop. One day hopes to travel around Japan!

Thursday 14 November 2013

Drawing for Concept Artists


Further developed the city scape, though I've started loosing readability within the design. Added a character based on one of the lifedrawings from a previous class



Sam Cuddy Artist

Alumni of Aberystwyth and Teesside Univeristies, now fulltime member of the Belfast Printworkshop. One day hopes to travel around Japan!

Thursday 7 November 2013

5/11/13 life drawing & Digital processes






This week I brought a watercolours set with me to evening lifeclass. Mostly because it's been a long time since I've worked brush in hand, but also because I'd never used that particular medium for quick, loose drawings. Certainly got some nice marks, but I need to invest in a wider brush, and less absorbent paper- I was looking for a messier more of a wash kind of effect, but the brush was too small and the card too quick to soak up the water. At the start, I tried to get the gesture down in conte first, then paint the volume/weight in with the w/colours, but this didn't really work out in the time we had, so I restricted my palette (cobalt and crimson) and left the conte out of the process. One step, no longer evident was drawing everything pretty quickly with water before putting down paint, then adding pigment to diffuse in the wet card.

This morning we had a workshop class on refining digital practice- starting with a quick thumbnail and speedily working it up to a firm idea, but not getting chained into details- 20 minutes spent, tops. 
I went to an old idea I had during the summer for the practice thumb, the key principles being a clear sense of depth/perspective, solid composition, and quickly using gradients to try out different colour palettes for the potential painting. 

-Sam

Sam Cuddy Artist

Alumni of Aberystwyth and Teesside Univeristies, now fulltime member of the Belfast Printworkshop. One day hopes to travel around Japan!

Tuesday 5 November 2013

Drawing for Concept Artists Week 4- Identify resources and demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of techniques required for a range of drawing tasks


a quick painting over of the gryphon in the style of the american bald eagle, a lioness and the secretary bird. 
Feedback:
  • Chunkier feet!
  • Give him more of a feathery ruff/mane looking effect to reinforce the join between fur and feather
  • Look into albino lions/fur patterns
  • Will the tail be fur or feathers?




Next we were to draw the cityscape using our previous drawing and our imaginations as the only reference

Instead of a life model this week, we did conceptual work based on a still life set up in front of us, and had to imagine it as a cityscape using the various media provided. And then we were left to combine the three into one with photoshop, as a potentially new way to arrive at a finished product.
Since the overlay and multiply blending layer modes result in quite loud colours, I collapsed the layers and ran a gradient map layer, collapsed it and painted quite loosely over the top to try and bring it all together without getting tied down in small details. 


Sam Cuddy Artist

Alumni of Aberystwyth and Teesside Univeristies, now fulltime member of the Belfast Printworkshop. One day hopes to travel around Japan!

Character & Environment design Brief: Excelsior and Blue BeetleCurrent progress


"Scenario:A science fiction or fantasy world. This world may be futuristic or may have a feel of an ancient culture.
In this society the population is divided into the rich and the poor.
The city is built on a platform and is supported on some kind of series of pillars. The rich live on top of the platform and the poor live below.
Among the poor exist the gangs and there are lots of these all radically different from one another.
In the upper city there is a monastery where the religious rulers of the city live. The monastery is not built on the platform but hovers above it.
The Hero:Joeb is a young monk from the monetary. He belongs to a part of the order highly-trained in martial arts.
His mission is to go into the dangerous under city and meet with a mysterious individual who has a box for him to collect and take back to the monastery."

I started out in my sketchbook with a few ideas for how I wanted my city to play out, next I built a  (too complicated) model in sketchup




After messing around with the camera, I got a few good angles and plenty of ideas, so I blocked in the basic forms and added some stone cliff texture




(Sunset variation? I was experimenting with how dark I wanted it beneath the platform; the sky and lighting on the furthest pillar were happy accidents.)

As of today, this study is finished, I think that next time my workflow will be (hopefully) faster
But since I'd gotten across the feel from the undercity that I was hoping for, I moved on to some of the designs of the gangs. First off, the shadowy group "The Dusk";

I had a pretty strong image of them in my head, robed- with capes, hoods and concealment. Kind of like a ninja gang but without the implicit honor. 
These are the initial designs for the Religious group that live above the platform city in their floating shrine/monastery. I picked up the idea of the masks from japanese festival masks. The monks all wear them, I tried to make them seem somewhat unnerving/uncanny. Since I want the lead monks to be either spirits/demons/whatever but not human, just humanoid. For the main character, I'm thinking he'll be a young acolyte at the shrine, wearing a mask too, but only because it's traditional. 


And now a brief update on the Blue Beetle Brief from the first week- its been put on the back burner while I get into the swing of things with all this time management.


Sam Cuddy Artist

Alumni of Aberystwyth and Teesside Univeristies, now fulltime member of the Belfast Printworkshop. One day hopes to travel around Japan!

Life Drawing for concept artists week 3


For Dave this week, musculature maps of our creatures. 
  • Lost some of its sleekness from the side view to the front view
  • widen the hips and make the feet chunkier










Life drawing with Maggie in afternoon






Sam Cuddy Artist

Alumni of Aberystwyth and Teesside Univeristies, now fulltime member of the Belfast Printworkshop. One day hopes to travel around Japan!

Wednesday 16 October 2013

Life drawing for concept artists; week 2



First off, I received some great feedback from Dave on the Gryphon skeletons and also to further the assignment for next week by creating a muscle map on top of the skeleton (front and side views); paying attention to where the bone pushes through the muscle and can be seen through the skin, eg pelvis.
  •  Size of the skull with regards to how intelligent I want it to seem
  • Wingspan to bulk of gryphon
  • define wing bones/scapulae/clavicle -sternum from a front facing view
  • begin to think of possible plumages and how the feathers join with the fur
  • Tail variations, though a long tail presumably for balance.
  • Movement; How would it walk/fly?
Next, Maggie took us for two hours of life drawing, similar to last week's class, with an hour of short fast poses and a final 50 minute costumed pose, with a focus on details and intricacies. 

 (click to enlarge)




Since we had much more time for the "long" pose, (50 mins), I decided to thumbnail it out and get the general angles and placement of the figure sorted before I dove in on the actual page.
Its scribbly and messy but it definitely helped me register the whole figure, not to mention solve a few problems early on, rather than having to fight it out at the larger scale. 
(50 minute costumed pose)


As a change of pace, we then visited the Maggi Cullen exhibition Constantine gallery in Middlesbrough Tower for an hour, with the instruction to pick some of the exhibits and draw from them.
"Morris Men" - Maggi Cullen

-Sam


Sam Cuddy Artist

Alumni of Aberystwyth and Teesside Univeristies, now fulltime member of the Belfast Printworkshop. One day hopes to travel around Japan!

Tuesday 15 October 2013

Gryphon skeleton assignment



(click images for larger version)


For drawing for concept artists last week, I received the assignment "draw the skeleton for a fantasy creature, but make it believable".
I'm not quite sure I've managed the last part, but I chose the Gryphon/Griffin; head, wings and front legs of an eagle/bird of prey, with the hindquarters and tail of a lion. It wasn't until i started gathering avian skeletons like an estranged beachcomber, did I realise how weird this creature is. First off, its got two sets of back legs- how am I to make that work? Also following some research into pegasi and the wingspan required to lift an average sized horse, I decided that my gryphon would be about the size of a dog. (and then started pulling some personality from dogs as well in the poses.)

Sam Cuddy Artist

Alumni of Aberystwyth and Teesside Univeristies, now fulltime member of the Belfast Printworkshop. One day hopes to travel around Japan!

Thursday 10 October 2013

Blue Beetle assignment: Update


Next thing I did with the Blue Beetle brief was to scour google images and my own hard drive of reference images for anything that might be remotely useful in early concepts. At this point, I'm not exactly focused on one idea or time period or even reality. I then sketched out a basic male silhouette and used it as the base to spread my ideas over.
(click for a larger version)
The text might be a little hard to read, but I'll explain as I go. From left to right then, first is the Winged Scarab idea, this version is the most similar to Ted Kord's outfit- in that its figure hugging. Instead of the black beetle emblem spread over the shoulders, I've lifted the egyptian motif of a winged scarab as his iconic. The rest of the pattern comes from the resting position of a beetle's legs. The original trace gave me the silhouette for the weapons on his back.

Next one over is a more gunslinger styled Beetle, my thought for this guy was that he is the BB of the postapocalyptic future- his raggedy trenchcoat, his goggles/hood based on a hazmat suit, he'd be more the inventor/macgyver styled hero, his gun would be a rifle of some description.
Third across is (my favorite) Hercules Beetl- I mean High Fantasy Beetle. This was originally just a visual pun- a medieval/fantasy Blue Beetle with armor that was based off the Hercules beetle. A vehicle/gun would be problematic for this version, though. The Egyptian twist comes through in the shape of his breastplate, the scarab again, this time the overlapping plates of the armor show the detail. 

Second from the right now, is ancient egyptian scarab priest. This idea came from the over-shoulder armor with the two capes, taken almost directly off the back of a beetle. This version would play up the original mystic backstory for the beetle, and his opulent robes are a nice contrast to previous designs. 

And finally, we have time displaced/far future Blue Beetle. I didn't think this guy through as much as the others- except that his outfit would be more technologically advanced- or perhaps mechanically enhanced, to give him powers, rather than mystic power or physical training.


I've never actually done any vehicle design before (or drawn a bug for that matter) new frontiers all round! My idea for the Blue Beetle's "Bug" his flying blue beetle-y sky thing,  isn't too different from the original comic version- though mine has the same carapace/wing structure as biological beetles. The feet curl up and in while in motion, but straighten out to land on, or for it to be used terrestrially- the wings are shielded by the carapace so it can't be more tank-like
Also at the bottom a variant on the silhouette and a stag beetle snow mobile. 


-Sam
Sam Cuddy Artist

Alumni of Aberystwyth and Teesside Univeristies, now fulltime member of the Belfast Printworkshop. One day hopes to travel around Japan!