ANGER

A quick one for tonight.

I actually did this last night after I sifted through the Story Boredom blog and saved a bunch of Walleye's posts. I really enjoy his drawing style and his sense of humor that he's able to get across with it.

Check out the Story Boredom blog for some of Walleye's work, along with art from a collection of great story artists! I only wish that Walleye had a site with some more work. Alas, his personal page hasn't been available for ages :(


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So, about the above image:

It was done from one of the small comic strips that Walleye does about himself and his feelings Doubt, Confidence, Anger etc. portrayed as actual characters. They're hilarious strips, and I wish there were more. Anyways, this was done really quickly from a particular strip that my girlfriend really likes. I kinda did it for her on the spot, but also for me 'cause it was fun! I like how it turned out, but if you dig through the Story Boredom blog and find the strip, mine isn't spot on.

I love how Walleye has managed to nail the physicality of the various feelings through his use of shape and weight. Confidence is all round and bouncy; Doubt is big and heavy; and Anger is sharp and quick. Perfect! And to top it all off each of the characters are simple to draw!


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Okay, that's all for me for now. I'll see if I can scan something in tomorrow and post it before I go to sleep. I'd like to do the image quality post I mentioned in the last post this weekend, so keep your eyes peeled!


Until next time!

Especially for...

...my blog!

I did these guys after spending some time surfing through some wicked artist blogs. Eventually I'll get around to creating links to them all (I gots lots) but for now here's a bit of my stuff!

The second image (taken from the one above it) was a bit of a test to see if I could improve the quality of my drawings for web posting with Photoshop. A new scanner would probably help too. I think I'm going to address this issue in a future post with examples from other blogs...hold on to your panties, it'll be wild!



Anywho, a large part of the reason for these guys was too see if I could up the quality of quick sketches. I'm not very good at inking/taking work to higher levels, but that's the other reason for this little excercise! I also wanted to show some love to the people that have visited! Please come again!

I'm really only happy with the guy on the top left (guy in the second picture). I like the size/shape relationship that I found with his features. I was looking to keep the shape of his head fairly simple, while focusing more on how the facial features would fit within his head. I usually end up running out of space within a head shape, and that's something that I want to improve.

The rest of the guys are okay, but for the most part there are little things that bug me with each of them. The guy on the top right is twisted where I wasn't planning on him being twisted (his features, hair, and shoulder position are all over the place compared to each other). The guy below him feels amaturish; lacking in form and interesting variation in shape. His features and hairline seem to perhaps flow too much into one another, making for an overall muddled face. The last guy on the bottom left is totally lacking in attention to detail. I didn't really go into the fat on his neck, and it appears more like he's got some medical condition rather than just being overweight. Oh, and his mouth isn't in the right position compared to the angle that he's facing.

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I hope that you readers can take something away from this post, and if you did, please post a comment and let me know! The gates are wide open for criticism too, so don't hold back!

Thanks for taking the time to visit! Let me know what you think of the blog so far! Also, if there's something in particular that you'd like to see here, be it themed drawings, addressing a particular aspect of drawing, or anything else, leave a comment! Comments also help me to know who's been visiting, which helps with...uh...it helps with knowing...shucks, it helps my self-esteem!



Lates!

TMNT vs. MH

So here's the deal:

For the past two weeks I've been working full-time at a new job that's going to last until the end of the summer. So with that said, I won't be able to post art as frequently as I would like, but I'll still be posting links to cool artists and stuff when I get a chance.






That's right lads and ladies; the image above is for the new ANIMATED Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie! Click on the image to watch the trailer! It looks to be all hand animated too! Unlike Monster House (which I saw yesterday)...

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So Monster House. Beautiful visuals + crappy animation/lip sync = 3 1/2 or 4 out of 5. It's a shame that a film that caricatures life in such a cool, Tim Burtonesque style has to rely so heavily on motion capture. If Monster House had been hand animated, it would EASILY have been a 5 out of 5. The story is greatl, the voice acting (kids no less!) was really good, and it's just a beautiful film. Ridiculus rendering, texturing and a lighting.

Alas, time = money.

Oh oh! This should have been released for Halloween!




Lastly, check out Chris Appelhans' site Froghatstudios! Click on the spooky house above to see some BITCHIN' concept work for MH!

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P.S. The links to The Amazing Screw on Head and TMNT came courtesy of Derrick of Animation House in Peterborough! Check out the blog @ http://alphanuiota.blogspot.com/ for hilarious pictures (of which I'm in a couple!)

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Adab adab adab ah dats all folks!

Amazing Screw On Head!

Hey folks,

Go here: http://video.scifi.com/player.html?dlid=24379

...to watch the pilot episode of The Amazing Screw On Head animated series!!

Then:

Go here: www.scifi.com/amazingscrewonhead

...and take the survey (9 questions, don't have to submit an email address or anything)


BOOYAH!!

Hugh Jass and a skull

Back with a couple more elephants.

I like these for the most part, except that I was oversimplifying or not paying enough attention to the legs. After this trip to the zoo, I've found that I enjoy drawing elephant heads. They're so large that it makes it easy to catch a lot of the details from far away.

The third page was done during a life drawing class last semester (I think). Our teacher was showing us slides of skull illustrations from a book that I can't recall, and explaining the importance of really understanding the proportions, as well as structure, of the skull. I believe we had a skull test that day, and he didn't feel that most of the class was up to snuff for it, so he basically SHOVED the information in through our eyes and ears.



If I'm lucky enough, I'll be able to keep in contact with and continue to learn from Werner Zimmerman for a long time to come. He's really one of the best teachers that I've ever had, and I can usually hear him repeating lessons in my head when I try to pass knowledge on to other people. He's a great guy, and does great work! I'll try and find some examples of his stuff and link to it here.

Boo.

Ya.

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I don't know what I'll be posting next, so we'll all just have to wait and see. Although at the moment I'm pretty sure that I'm the only person reading this :D

Rhi-know what you're thinking, and yes, that is a bad joke

Attack of the Rhinos!

Back again with a few more drawings from the same zoo visit as the last two posts. These are all from the MASSIVE sketchbook that I mentioned before. I use it for the zoo because it not only allows me to draw larger and from the shoulder, but it also acts like a portable table that I can set up on my knees! Great for eating on :D


The first page shows how I was trying to see through the beast and visualize how it would fit over a basic shape. I went a step further by trying to give form to said shape, as you can see in the drawing at the centre of the page, but I wasn't entirely successful. Dead on rear and side views were the norm for most of the time with the Rhino, hence the same poses over and over.

The second page was the last drawing of the Rhino that I did that day. It had given up and lay down, so we moved on the the Elephant after one final drawing. With these, I was keeping in mind what I had learned so far and was trying to understand their proportions. The problem I have with these two drawings is their simplicity and the lack of any form of rendering.

The third page goes more into my attempts to figure out the skeletal structure and how it effects what we actually see on the outside. It's a bit of a task with all "armour" seeming to cover the fleshy, telling parts.

The last page has an observational note that I thought would help me with remembering their proportions, as well as a major esthetic of the Rhino that I hadn't noticed before. I also had a flash of insight that you can see with the drawing in the lower left corner. I had been simplifying the legs into a cylinder, and with this drawing I noticed that there is a nice curve in the higher portion of the visible area of their "arms".

Whichever city or country you may live in, try and find a zoo that has Rhinos in it. They're loads of fun to draw, and they don't tend to move around nearly as quickly as other large animals you'll find at the zoo. Plus, they're great for exciting the imagintion when you need to come up with an exotic, prehistoric character!


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I'd like to mention that I reduced the size of these images to a more reasonable one as opposed to the massive images of the first two posts. Sorry about the mega images! I'll probably go back and scale them down later on.

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More Elephants and couple of skull drawings on the way tomorrow!

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I've started adding links to friend's blogs, but it's going to take more than one sitting. So if I don't have you listed yet, you will be very soon!

Dear, Elephants...Er, I mean "deer"

These two were from the same zoo visit that I mentioned in my last post.

In these, I was trying to explain a method for seeing and drawing animal necks as simple shapes first, to my girlfriend. She had mentioned having trouble drawing Gazelle necks, since they're so flexible and often twist in odd directions, so I offered my thoughts.

In answering most questions she had that day, as well as my own, I kept trying to think of the similarities between human and animal anatomy, to give a sense of familiarity to these odd creatures. I was explaining how human and animal necks are basically the same; that they originate from a spot on the body that doesn't change and that they have a basic form to them, and that the actual shape of the neck can be varied as needed through caricature. You can see what I mean in the first drawing above with the big tough guy and skinnier guy below him.

On the second page, there's a bit more neck explaination as well as a few Gazelle studies I did once they had run off out of sight. Using my observations of elephants and rhinos earlier in the day, I was trying to figure out what the differences were between the leg joints of various 4-legged animals. As a side note, I should mention that we were both flipping through The Art of Animal Drawing by Ken Hultgren during the day. It's a pretty good book to have and it managed to help answer most of our questions.

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The drawings I've posted so far have been from a 9X6, vertically opening sketchbook that I keep with me all the time. I have a few other pages from a MASSIVE sketchbook that I was using at the zoo too, but I'll have to take pictures of those pages since they're too big to scan. For now, here's two more elephant drawings:

The first post

Hey folks!

I hope to make this blog as informative as I possibly can by posting drawings and other works and commenting on how well I feel they were executed, or what could be done to improve them. I welcome every and all comments about any of the work that I post!

I've been heavily influenced by the way other blogs have done things over the past year, and it's going to show in my own blog. If you have a blog of your own, let me know! I might not have seen it ;)

So with all that said, here's a couple of elephant studies/sketches from a recent Zoo Trip that I took with my girlfriend (I'll try to scan and post some of her work if I can sneak it away from her!). I'll post more in another post with comments on each! Here ya go!