More blobs

So this week was eventful in a way, in that I failed to get what I thought would be an absolutely perfect job for me, leaving me still jobless. And with 1/4 of my summer holidays already passed, you can imagine I'm rather nervous about the whole state of affairs. Last year I didn't get a job at all, despite having good qualifications for temp work, which I chalk up to a very dry clerical market last year.

However, the outlook is not totally bleak. I have a shift Saturday evening temping at a downtown hotel to work the front desk, which doesn't sound too bad. Especially if there's a chance it could lead to a lot more work at the same location, very easily accessible from my place. Problem is, most of the shifts they offer are 11pm to 7am, which isn't exactly the most preferable in the world. But what can I say, I can't be picky this late in the game. All I want to do is get through the summer to start classes again in September, and maybe build some skill and make a couple of bucks on the way. Not too much to ask, eh?

So blobs, that's what you're really here for. Much better to look at STILL NOT PENISES, I'M NOT LISTENING LA LA LA than to listen to me whine about employment.

Fun fact: This same exercise is what inspired my late, lamented (and it was lamentable, looking back at it now) webcomic, Xeno's Paradise. I think I'm understanding it better this time around, but it's nice to know something good came out of my earlier effort.

Totally not naughty bits

So a month into summer holidays, I've come to a decision about my short-term goals. They're pretty simple, really. I plan to work my way through The Vilppu Drawing Manual, and complete at least two animation projects. Nothing big, but enough to build on the skills I gained this past year. Even if those two things is all I accomplish in the next three months, I'll still be a far better artist than I am now, so it's something to look forward to.

So here's where I am right now, round forms. Pretty simple, really. First of all, I'm doing two pages of this daily:

Looks simple, right? That's 'cuz it is. Nothing but spheres, or rather circles and crossed ellipses. Couldn't be easier. But as simple as it is, the benefits are huge, helping me build confidence, become more efficient at mark-making, build my spacial sense and get way better at drawing and conceiving rounded forms. That's a lot of stuff just for two pages of circles a day.

The other exercise, which I really started to get serious with yesterday, is taking those round shapes and combining them. So making blobby forms, stretching them, twisting them, piling them one on top of another, making critters out of them, giving them personality. It's tonnes of fun, seriously, and I don't think I could really get into it to this degree without two years of art training under my belt. Here's what I managed to produce today:

Cool beans, huh? And lemme tell ya, it's HARD to put a big blob and a smaller blob together and not have it come out as someone's naughty bits. Dunno if I succeeded 100%, but there's still a lot of cool, funky stuff in there. I'll post more as I get them done, so stay tuned.

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.

Off to the races

So I introduced Wendy to you already. Looks like she's gonna be a part of my life for some time, which is hardly a surprise. She'll be the standard model for the rest of first year, and probably the bulk of second year as well, so you'd better get used to seeing her here a lot. That's a good thing really, since she's such a nice, simple model that I can actually comprehend the mechanics of, which I really need at this point. Working with Wendy will seriously improve my figure drawing, and there's nothing bad about that.



So on the topic of projects, the latest is to animate the character from sitting on a box to standing upright. So to figure out the best way to do that, we've done thumbnails to work out each part of the action. I'm kinda new to thumbnailing characters, so it's really valuable information for me. And I see right away the use of it, it's great stuff. The ones with the stars are the images I picked for my progression from sit to stand.

The order to read them is 1, 3, 2, 5, 4, 7, 8, 9, 6.

In with the new

Not much to say, since it's late. But here's the first page of sketches of "Wendy", the character we've been given for the sit-to-stand project that we got assigned today, and I suspect we'll be using through the rest of second term. She's fun so far, although I've still got a ways to go to really familiarize myself with her.

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.