ArtCtrl

Drawings from Vincents. I went in with a a3 visual diary and pencil. And, colored pencils. Stuck with primary - yellow, red, and two blues. The yellow and red was used mostly on the model - yellow for light, red for darks. Blue for the negative space.

I hadn’t been since some point last term. It was great to see people - Phillip was there who I hadnt seen since some point last year. Freeman White also made it.

I had drawn the model before - can’t remember her name. She has a similar look to Helena Bonham Carter. Always enjoy drawing her.

These are five two minute poses. Kept with HB pencil and strong straight lines. Black colored pencil would of worked well and stood out better.

I feel I had a stronger knowledge of the 3d form after the time spent working with Blender.

The 5 min poses. Color added to the figure - yellow and red. Blue is used for negative areas. This allows for clear contrast. I started with drawing a nipple and working out from there. Helps with getting everything looking right. I guess that’s why I find drawing females easier - boobs are great reference for measuring, guys - the information isn’t there. Though guys do have some advantages - like facial hair!

All these were similar standing poses. Standing is one of my favourite as it gives me a great view of the overall model.

Onto 10 mins…

I switched colors. Gave Phillip several of my colored pencils to experiment with. He normally works just with pencil. I can’t do that - color is important for me. Especially in longer poses. Grey was used in several of these works.

In the middle pose the model posed by lying back on the chair. This causes an interesting shape - partially with creating a flat look in the breasts. Basically looking from beneath.

Final 20 mins. I’m especially happy with these and feel I’ve managed to capture the model well.

Has my life drawing improved during the break? I’d like to think so. I’ll likely make it to Vincents again tomorrow. Unlikely to attend next weeks as TLC has life drawing on Monday and Friday.

YAY life drawing.

Ok. So I went Vincents life drawing. It had been awhile. Successful night, This post isn’t about life drawing though, blender update.

I’ve been a bit less motivated these past days to produce much. Tired and feeling generally down doesn’t help. The life drawing at Vincents was a boost. I plan to transfer this energy to Mondays class next week.

I made a car thing in Maya. It isnt much but better then what I did with my time at UCOL. There are also several angles of a walk cycle.

I’d like to do more cell animation. A weekly walk cycle could be a good challenge. Planning and ideas is needed for future Blender projects.

Still no drawing or painting to upload despite making a return today to TLC. In the morning we watched slideshows and talked about life drawing. It was much the same as normal for  the class. Good to catch up with old faces and met new ones though! Gonna crash Marcy Marcs on Thursday.

In the afternoon Dan modeled for the class (clothed). I felt horrible so went to the common room and played Half Life 2 and did a bit in Blender for the rest of the afternoon. Just wasn’t the time. I’m hoping next week I can get into the flow - it was quite a depressing afternoon thinking - geeze, why don’t I have the motivation to draw. Setups also the other. I didn’t plan out to draw today.

Here’s a drawing I did in bed the other day.

This was all done in colored pencil. No reference, just sketching down ideas. I think this is really important. Too often I get trapped into using a reference and it’s just nice and free to work out of my head. Especially using it as and exercise to get to sleep!

The Robot inspired head I animated. I’d like to create a talking model in Blender - especially a robot like this one. I might take this idea into Blender tomorrow and explore.

That’s all for tonight. Goodnight.

Spent most of today working with Blender. I mucked around with the scene but decided to start something fresh. I needed new inspration. I started a new project and here’s what I’ve done:

Some screen shots:

Walk cycle is in there- even if it’s rough. I know how to create actions and dublicate them - now I need to learn how to create multiply actions and ‘link’ them together. When I have something like that happening I’ll feel great.

I need to explore modeling further. I’m going to keep it simple with low poly modeling. Textures - create legit UV maps for my models, using my own artwork.

Learn more about Rigging.

More.

Didn’t end up going into TLC this week. Spent the day working with Blender and looking into game engines. Over the last few weeks I’ve downloaded several game engines - steam (which I used years ago with Count Strike 1.5), Unreal, Unity3d, and the Cry Engine. I’d like to get some good models/textures and animation done in Blender then look into importing these models into a Engine. But that’s jumping ahead too far. For now I want to focus on learning Blender further. Everyday I’m learning something new from it.

I’ve drawn a little - mostly just sketches with no reference. Done when in bed. I’ll upload them in a future post.

Long passageway. Used to make a long walk cycle and move various objects on the side. Need to improve textures and modeling on the overall scene.

This was a better camera angle then the one I ended up Rendering. I’m work in Blender with two windows systems.

Color sceme ideas. I’m going to keep with my color pencil insprations here - blue for negative areas. Figures and objects will be in reds and yellows. Having a color set will help the scenes flow together.

Finally, here’s the video:

Back in Wellington. Nice to be back I guess. I’ve been enjoying colored pencil, yesterday I didn’t work with Blender - instead sketched in my visual diary. I’ve got a strong mindset to take these ideas into Blender. Something is brewing.

Back in 2010 I got really into the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and I frequently drew the band.

This was one of the reference photos I completed a drawing of. In order to compare my drawing and check development I redrew this photo. Here’s what I came up with:

Strong straight lines, color used for tone. I love this color scene - red, yellow, brown for the characters and blues for negative space. Several sketches of wire frames to help understand walk cycles further.

Less character based and more animation feel. I’m not sure what I’m doing with this but I’m going to take these into blender today and experiment.

I brought myself a 6 pack of  colored pencil today. I’ve felt an urge to get back into drawing. It started when I was hanging out in Andrews office and sketching in his a6 visual diary. I was using a .5mm mechanical pencil. I use to own one and use it regularly, during my time at the Palmerston North School of Design. I also used his colored pens - black, red and blue.

I just remembered I have the originals of the pen works. Here you go:

Robot design I guess. For the background I held 3 pens - creating marks with all 3.

The second page. More robot drawings. Pens been fun to use after such a log time with dry media.

Envelope drawing. Exploring poses. With life drawing this term I’ll focus on capturing a full character.

I like these colors. Makes me happy.

My toe. From life. Started with a pencil then colored with colored pencils - matching the color as best as I can. Quite happy with this - really looking forward to the life drawing next week!

Animation tests in the A6. I will take these ideas and apply them to blender. The first cycle is a basic walk cycle - a large lift of the leg as its brought forward and the front is brought backwards.

The second animation is a simple movement of rectangles out then a flick of the end - followed by quickly bringing it back in and back at the start.

Maybe it could be a looping animation of something being dropped.

A second walk cycle. Andrew mentioned this was working better.

I’ve been up north so n access to the internet. Fun trip away, I did have my laptop with me and worked on a little Blender.I haven’t drawn. Next week I’m spose to be back in Wellington and I’ll have a model on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Looking forward to it. I’ll like to keep the Blender learning happen this term. I had a good talk with Andrew yesterday with ideas of what I could do.

Here’s an render of recent blender animations:

The first 5 secs is the model recent work I’ve been doing. These models can be seen in another recent test. This time it’s less animated (just the camera), but UV textures have been applied. I’m still trying to understand how UV textures work. I found this video that was a great help:

Changing the mapping coordinates from Generated to UV was what I was missing. The texture was being rendered - but not correctly.

Screenshots of the animation currently:

Overall shot of my workspace. It’s a bit messy but gives me lots to work with.

This shows how I traced my drawings - lining a cube in front - then extrude, rotate, and scale. Working in a 2d plain.

These are not correctly UV mapped yet but I plan to fix them. I’m not sure where this is going but I’ll keep experimenting and learning.