Everything old is, well....still old

I'm surprised it took me so long to get the connection, but I realized right after I posted last night that what I'm doing now with these head shapes is very much a continuation of what I did last summer with the head tilts. Weird that I'm essentially coming back to what I did a year ago, but I think this is a bit more advanced, and with a firmer foundation behind it than I was working with then. Maybe I'm fooling myself, I dunno, all I want is to get better.

So this is it, we're going to...HAPPY CANADA DAY!

Odd experience to be listening to music for Canada Day, as broadcast by a radio station in Seattle. Why? I dunno, mostly because I love KEXP's podcasts, and wanted to check out the source. It's good stuff though, so check out their site.

Otherwise, it was mostly drawing, although I did remember to have a grilled cheese sandwich. Everyone should have a grilled cheese sandwich on Canada Day. Make it a national holiday dish, maybe serve it to the Queen. I bet she'd have gouda or something, she seems the type. Me, I had a mixture of extra old cheddar and cheddar with horseradish. Not a bad combination. Sort of like Welsh Red Dragon without the mustard seed.

Art-wise, a bit of extra stuff that targets some weaknesses from last term. My last two assignments for Character Design, head design and character duos, turned out abysmally, and almost cost me my year. I can't allow that to happen this fall, so I've started concentrating on head shapes and gesture, using Ian Jeans' method. This will also help me with the Summer Animation Workshop project, so it's win-win for me if I can really push my skill over the next couple of months. To say nothing of improving my chances at success in second year.

Anyhow, here it all is.

A bit of figure work today, although technically I did it yesterday. I can't fit this paper (12x18" newsprint) on my little scanner, so I wanted to wait until I had some daylight for digiphotos. Seems to have come out okay, though.

Haven't been doing as much as I'd like this week, which is odd since I've been doing lots of drawing in the Summer Animation Workshop with Ian Jeans. Ian's gesture technique is a lot different from what I'm used to, which is hardly a surprise since the only real instruction I've had on how to do gestures is reading about it in the Vilppu book, and a short description of the same thing from Paul one week in P&P class. In Life Drawing this year, all I got was "here's some examples of gestures, now do it", which was no help at all, so this is pretty handy.

In any case, here's some attempts to put Ian's method into practice, as well as trying to tie it into the Vilppu stuff I've been doing by way of bendy boxes. I must say, I'm finding it appealing and it seems to bypass some problems I've had with the figure in the past. Who knows, maybe this is how I'll settle on doing it in the future. I could do worse.

A Bit More Mojo

So I didn't get as much done today as I'd like to have, since I spent a lot more time out of the house than planned, but it was a good drawing day anyway. For one thing, I moved on to boxes as planned and managed to get a good solid page of the silly things. I'm shooting for two pages of these a day as well as two pages of spheres as my warmup, then moving on to an indeterminate number of pages of blobs and maybe in three or four days start adding soft, bendy boxes. I don't want to rush things though, so it'll happen when it happens.



What's cool here is that I did end up doing a page of blobs today as well, and they turned out WAY better than expected. I think I'm finally starting to internalize the concepts of volume and depth, which is seriously positive if I want to make characters and environments that really grab a viewer. What I need more than anything is to capitalize on that progress and really push the concept as much as I can, even if things get seriously weird in the process.



As a bonus, I've added a couple of pages from last Friday's life drawing session. The group keeps meeting until the end of the month, but my last week is going to be this Friday, sadly. I'm going to be starting the animation workshop on the 15th, and I can only justify so many nights out of the house to myself. As it is, for those first two weeks it'll be Tuesday/Thursday for classes, plus Wednesday for life drawing at Sandy Hill and I gotta fit groceries in there somewhere. So something's gotta give, and it might as well be the thing that's gonna end soon anyway.

In any case, my gestures have really transformed in the past couple of months, which is really amazing. I had no idea there'd be such a change from just using Vilppu's method, but wow. That stuff's seriously powerful.

From Life

Clearly it's been too long since I posted. But summer is here, and with it a lot of free drawing time, so hopefully I'll be able to provide some worthwhile work to show you all.

So first things first, I managed to pass first year Animation! Whee! Which doesn't let me off the hook or anything, it was way too close for my taste. That means this summer is going to have a lot to do with bringing my skills a lot closer to where I want them to be. To do that, I've been starting to work my way through the Vilppu Drawing Manual, in an attempt to make my basic drawing skills stronger, as well as doing a lot of life drawing.

That out of the way, here are some selections from this week's sessions at Sandy Hill and the life drawing club that's running at the school until mid-June. I'd love for it to keep running all summer, but we weren't able to get enough sign-ups. Totally disappointing, I was hoping to see a lot more familiar faces.

Not that something like that's gonna stop me.

Anatomy

Pretty self-explanatory. I've realized that my anatomy is pretty weak, even though my forms are starting to improve. So what with the rest of the term focusing on walk cycles and similar movements, it's about time I started doing some heavy anatomy studies. All this is from Gottfried Bammes' Der Nackte Mensch, basically a German anatomy for artists book. Can't understand a word of the text, but the illustrations are gold.

Not sitting idle

Well, I'm still sitting idle more than I should, but I'm trying not to entirely. I'm not gonna get better unless I draw a lot, and I've got a lot better to get. I've seen where animation students can get to by third year, and that's what I've got to shoot for.

Not the same

Two pages today, although I really should be doing more than that. Technically I'm still on holiday, but just as technically artists don't get holidays. So I'm allowed to feel like I'm not accomplishing much.

In any case, it's a study in how far along I am. The first page is my work, from photo reference. Certainly not my worst work, and just as certainly a damn sight better than what I was doing a year ago, or even six months. Or even two. The other is a page of "master studies" of famed artist Alphonse Mucha.

You can tell one from the other by the MASSIVE DIFFERENCE IN QUALITY.

What this tells me is, as far as I've come, there's a lot further to go yet. If I think I've gone half of half of halfway, I'm fooling myself, and I've got to work a LOT harder.

Thus endeth the lesson.

And so the old year passes

Not so much with a whimper as a whisper at my place, but that's nothing new. Not a lot to pull me out of the house at the moment, what with most of my life revolving around art and school, which are pretty much the same thing of course, and trying to spend as little money as I can. But it's good, I got to open a lovely bottle of French Merlot that's been aging since July, when we first started going to the bottle-your-own place. Very nice, indeed.

So tonight's the night for resolutions, and usually I don't bother. I perform much better when I don't put specific expectations on myself, but this year I'll make one. Only one, though, I'm not gonna go crazy with this stuff, y'know.

My New Year's Resolution is: draw a hell of a lot more this year than any year in the past.

That's it, really. Just draw a lot. And what with the winter term at school staring me in the face, it's pretty much a given anyway. But hey, I'll take what I can get.

Two pages of sketches today. Hope you like.

Ten years, eh?

This seems like as good a time as any for a decade review. Nothing terribly introspective or anything, just the highlights in point form. Here goes, in no particular order:

• Got out of an abusive relationship
  
• Had other, shorter, but much better other relationships
  
• God in and out of BDSM
  
• Had an increasing and then declining interest in Paganism
  
• Moved to an entirely different province
  
• Went to school and started a career
  
• Left same career due to physical issues
  
• Went to school to start another new career
  
• Got tattooed
  
• Twice
  
• Got into photography
  
• Stopped being a photographer and started drawing
  
• Animated something by hand for the first time ever
  
• Was publicly naked
  
• Performed as a drag king (including first king ever at Ottawa Pride)
  
• Took part in putting on a charity burlesque
  
• Volunteered at the Fringe Festival, Folk Festival and Animation Festival
  
• Saw people on the verge of death
  
• Got involved in a complex polyamorous relationship
  
• Experienced the downside of being involved with a sociopath with ADHD
  
• Got into a long distance relationship with a great guy
  
• Was introduced to the online fur community
  
• Got into European comics
  
• Sang in a choir
  
• Learned to crochet
  
• Fell out of love with anime, generally (Ghibli doesn't count)
  
• Lost contact with a number of people
  
• Regained contact with a number of people
  
• Created a webcomic (now defunct)
  
• Gave a guy his first penis as a gift
  
• Worked as a dispatcher for home care personnel
  
• Bought my first tablet (two of them)
  
• Lived with ferrets for the first time
  
• Started Playing WoW
  
• "Played" Second Life a lot
  
• Helped run an online art critique group
  
• Visited Toronto for the first time
  
• Spent two weeks in an 18-wheeler
  
• Ate Vietnamese food for the first time
  

There's probably more, but that's all I can think of at the moment. All in all, a pretty uneventful decade. Gotta do more this coming ten years, yup!

Two pages today, from photo reference. I think I'm making progress, gotta keep it going.

Holiday Time

So school finished for the term on Friday, leaving me to my own devices for three solid weeks. Which would make for a nice break, if the last animation assignment hadn't taught me that I have to improve my basic drawing and sketching skills a lot. My instructor says I'm where I'm supposed to be for a first year, and that I have strong draftsmanship skills, but that doesn't mean I'm a good artist, at least in my own eyes. So the next three weeks are going to follow a simple, direct plan:

Draw like crazy, and it doesn't matter what. The sketchier the better, so long as it's got structure.

That's pretty much it. No particular goals, other than sheer volume. Just getting used to drawing all the time, sketching and experimenting and just plain learning through experience. Which I should have been doing last year. But to hell with that, I'll do it now and do well at it.

So here's three pages from today, mostly studies from people I think are pretty damn good and want to emulate. Needless to say, none of them are mine, and if you can identify them all, congratulations. Apparently you're me.

Such a nice smile

Well, the craziness that is finals continues, with an exam on Monday morning, an 8-second animation that I've already done more than 200 drawings and re-drawings for due on Tuesday (and I'm not even done yet!!), and a room layout due at the end of the week, and on top of that I get this bit of silliness I have to do. I guess they assumed the rest wasn't enough, they might as well toss in a bit of make-work on top of that. Ironic part is, this would have been loads of fun if it weren't for the timing, I guess they just wanted to mess with us.

In any case, the assignment was to draw a skull, freehand, in 3/4 view and lable to the parts. Then once that's been prettied up a little, do another skull based on the first one, but this time altered to become an alien skull. Surprisingly enough, it was a lot easier than I'd expected.

I've heard a few people in class who were in Pre-animation last year talking about using the skulls they did last year. Obviously they'd be using some of their better skulls. Which they would have had in their portfolios. WHICH THE TEACHERS THIS YEAR HAVE ON FILE!

I dunno. I'm paranoid like that.

Could use a shot of confidence

Got an assignment I have to get done for Monday, and I feel totally out of my depth. It's basically adding a cape to the bouncing box I did a couple of weeks ago (it's in the archives a little ways back), so in theory it should be easy. But never having studied drapery, I feel like it's way beyond my abilities. Although I feel a little better after doing a couple of pages of actual studies and reading a bunch of tutorials. Guess we'll see by the end of the weekend.

In any case, here's today's Bridgeman, and those drapery studies I mentioned. A mixed bag, there's some good stuff and some not-so-good stuff. Overall, I'm reasonably pleased with it.

Back on the horse

Sorry about missing the past few days. I got in a procrastination mode and wasn't doing what I should have. I do have an excuse for yesterday, since I spent it all doing school work, right into the evening. But Sunday and Monday, not so much.

Figures seem to be doing well, but those hands. Oy! I have lost my mojo!

Continuation

And that makes 30 pages. In 10 days. Rather more than I expected, really.