DaCeronNine - Art School Journey

[daceronine]

4 - SelectionsLiquifyHealStamp
Interesting editing excercices!

1) The apples one was straightforward enough. I took to hearth the tip of "backing up" pieces of the original to overlay and "push" the new apples to the back, instead of cropping the new apples. I think I hadn't considered this for illustration.

2) Figured I would try the aging excercice on myself. Yep, that's me. Business profile picture. Mid excercice I realized that with CSP, it was easier to copy bigger elements, then use a soft eraser to "blend" the elements with the orignal picture. As well as using some actual blending to remove some rough edges.

3) The alien was quite the challenge. with all the lines in the face it was hard to do fine adjustments. I think I could do better, but more importantly I can already see how I can use liquify and wrap to do some quick proportions adjustments to my own illustrations.

[Gordon003]

Compared to you, I'm so young but hearing your perspective, I hope I don't regret too much of not making art my primary career as technology has both my skill AND my passion which is why I intend to keep it as a hobby.

Anyway, I'm glad that you mentioned SCRUM as it's a process I worked under in my software company and I'm currently using to set up my art progress. I initially thought my art and software journey will be completely different but as time goes, it has more and more similarities; in particular how to improve which is via iteration like you said. But yeah, thx for specifying more on SCRUM and good luck with your art journey!

[daceronine]

Some of today's Term 1 practices.
I kinda skipped the warm up lines and cylinders excercice mostly because I have done similar exercises before and I've had limited time lately. Still, I tried to fit as much as possible into my schedule to keep building up the mental and hand dexterity.

First some skeletons from photo references. I do wish I had time to do more, but it's still great practice.

Then some skeletons from imagination, which seems to be a bigger challenge. I hope to get better with these in time.

Some body proportions practice, granted I had some experience going in, but I'm still not able to do it completly from memory, so I'll keep practicing until I can. I also noticed I might need to adjust the legs a bit more next time.

Finally some 30 second and 60 second gesture practice.

I'll keep repeating these exercices daily, as instructed, while I continue with the next class.

[Gordon003]

Deconstruction from photo references look nice. I do suggest that you should use different colour for cylinder to indicate if the cylinder is pointing toward us or away from us. (e.g. green if cylinder toward us; orange if else).

Gesture-wise, your work looks pretty expressive with simple definitive lines. I do suggest to avoid adding dress for the time being as it's may convoluted the gesture drawing. But all's good.

Keep it up!

[daceronine]

Thanks a lot for the feedback! Yes, that's pretty sound advice, I'll keep this in mind with today's practice.

[daceronine]

Term 1 - Daily exercices

1) More skeleton wireframes from photos and from imagination. These have been taking some time, so I'll probably simplify the exercice in order to keep doing it. Used a few different colors and layers as recommended to try to make depth more clear on the limbs.

2) Male / female proportions. I'm now doing this one from memory. The male one turned alright, but the female one turned out more... "male" than it should. I noticed it's mainly because I made the neck a bit thicker, and the overall torso/hips also need to me slimmer. I'll probably retry the exercice again until I get the "look" right for the female.

3) Finally did some gesture exercices, 30 seconds first, then 60 seconds. I tried to keep it without clothes this time, which does help to make the overall figure clearer. I noticed strokes are also more defined now. It's definetly helping build a pose library in my mind and should make drafting poses easier in the future. This is one exercice I can see myself continue for a long time. It REALLY helps

4) Finally, a few quick medieval guards designs I had to do for the webtoon. The only item worth noting is that I tried to apply the skeletons and proportions lessons learned so far. I believe it did allow me to make the overall draft for them a lot easier and faster (speed in general is really important for me since I usually face tight schedules)

[snakker]

Great job on these studies!

[Gordon003]

Those medieval guard designs looks cool! Are there any difference in their fighting style? Just a medieval history nerd.

[daceronine]

Thanks!

Well, since you asked, the halerd is actually intended to help foot soldiers against cavalry, however in scotland and some european places it was often used by guards as a sign of authority. The other more heavily armored knight uses a short sword, which does allow for short range battle, though such heavy armor is mostly intended for defense. More importantly, he has a heavy shield, which is mostly intended for show more than practical battle utility.
So all in all, they are mostly intended for show of authority more than actual combat.

Granted I just needed a few background soldiers xD.

[daceronine]

Wew, couple of busy days, but managed to get some practice in as well as start the perspective part of term 1.

1) Some more skellies, I decided to reduce the amount of them I do in order to still be able to do them, while trying to increase the complexity of of them. From photos first, then from imagination as usual.

2) Male and female proportions from memory. I think I got it down now, and I'm steadily improving the female proportions and form, and will soon need to move to anatomy. I'll still practice it a few time to really print them into memory though.

3) Gesture practice, 30s, then 60s. Got a few challenging ones. Nothing to highlight really, just daily practice.

4) Bonus practice. Did some progress on a webtoon page, trying to apply the little I've learned about perspective. It took a lot longer than expected and it's still in progress, but I can already see the application of some of the new lessons.

I really need to move forward to the next term. Hopefully I'll finish it soon.

[snakker]

Nice work! That proportions dude has some serious forearms

Cheers

[mitsuki-youko]

ooh that comic page looks really good!!

[daceronine]

Haha, thanks. Now that you mention it, it's true, I did make the forearms a bit too buff. I'm used to chunky characters so I guess it slipped by. I'll have to keep those in mind in the future.

[daceronine]

Thanks! I'm learning as I go, but as long as there is some palpable improvement, I'm happy.

[daceronine]

It's been a very busy week, but I completed the perspective term 1 class and moved on to the exercices for it. I kinda skipped the first 2 since I do have some experience with the basics on horizon, vanishing points and rulers using CSP, even if I do need a lot more pratice on them.

I picked some very good pointers on creating more complex elements on perspetive though.

1) So the exercice I jumped to is the room one. Since I need to revamp my own work space, I figured I would copy my office and use the oportunity to "reorginize" it into what I want the space to be. It's still a work in progress, but I should be done soon:

2) I also wrapped up the manga page I posted a bit ago to practice perspective, figured it was only fair to post the final piece. On retrospective, I could have used some of the new learned tips on perspective to improve a few elements (which I learned after finishing the piece), but overall I think it turned out really well:

Bonus: I haven't stopped practicing every day, most of it was not part of the course, so I feel like I should refrain from posting most of it here. Still, here are a few samples of the work done during the week:

I plan to move on to the next class as I continue practicing on the term 1 daily exercices during the week.

[snakker]

Great job on the exercise and the manga drawings! You are a fan of Akira Toriyama? I can definitely see some of his style distilled, especially woth the old guy’s face, I likes

Cheers!

[daceronine]

Thanks a lot! Yea, I pretty much grew with Dragon Ball, Chono Trigger and Dragon Quest, so it became my favorite style to emulate.

[Lockenheim]

Nice work here! Don't feel pressured to move forward for any reason other than you want to for sure, hitting the early terms over and over will help a lot!

[daceronine]

Totally agreed. I've found it helps to keep looking at the lessons and moving ahead, even if I'm still picking up on the exercices. There are many tips in the classes I had not thought about before, such as how to build complex figures in perspective. I'm eager to see what's next!

[daceronine]

Alright, another week of work, and some more progress on the course. I think I finished term 1, and moving on to term 2.

1) Update on the room perspective exercice. Did my own room, rearranged the way I want it to look (soon I hope). Tried to get fancy and add some shadows like the class demo showed as well as wood texture for the floor, since that's what my room has. When comparing them in the end, I noticed the instructor (Marc? I'm bad with names) makes key use of line thickness for details, which is something I need to keep in mind in the future.

The thing with these pieces is that I could keep adding more and more detail, but at some point you need to stop and move on to the next task.

Still, I'm very happy on how it turned out.

2) 3 buildings using 2 vanishing points. This one felt a bit more straightforward, probably because I've done two point perspective before. Great pratice and I was able to appreciate how the points location and height affect the perspective, the angle and the feeling of the piece.

By the end I also tried to get fancy and added some shadows to accentuate the angles, the sky box just because it was simple to do and made the piece looked better, and a bit of gradiant shadow to also accentuate the horizon. I realize I missed a few white spots for the shadows, but let's just call them happy accidents for now.

Oh, and a medieval lightpost, because why not, gives a bit more depth

I've really enjoyed the journey so far, i'm now moving to term 2, though I will try my best to continue to do some of the term 1 daily exercices.

And some bonus pics unrelated to the course, since these keep me very busy during the week:

Excited to continue on to term 2!