drawing for concept artists

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Termite brief work

Decided

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

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

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. 

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.

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