CGMA

Some pages from week 4 of my Spring term CGMA classes. I'm taking Intro to Perspective with Derek Kosol and Roger Oda, and Dynamic Sketching with Peter Han and Johnson Truong. Pretty great so far, think I'm learning a lot. Didn't want to post the earlier stuff cause they were pretty dry and boring fundamental stuff.

I feel like a lot of new artists, including myself, find the fundamental stuff (primitives, form, shadow) pretty boring and try to steer away from it and fail to understand its importance. The #1 piece of advice I keep hearing professionals say is to focus on mastering the fundamentals. I'm really pushing myself, especially during school, to really nail it down.

Portrait painting/Life drawing stuff

Some digital life drawing/painting pieces ranging from 3 to 40 minute poses. I used the program Mischief with my Microsoft Surface Pro 3 for these. I tried to do something a little different for the last 4 pieces and switched to my left hand since I was having trouble really slowing down and getting the nuances and detail which seemed to help

Comp & Color Final

Some select pages from the final for my Comp and Color class. Not exactly related to what this blogs about, but I thought it'd be interesting to share the other stuff I've been working on this semester. 

Character Design Final - The Sacred Ones

After 4 weeks, I'm finally finished with my character design final! I'm mostly happy with how they turned out. The main criticisms I got on the final day were that, for a game, my shadow areas were going a little too dark and isn't showing enough information to show to a 3D modeler, the background was too low contrast, and Dezba seemed a little too Asian-looking. 

The background I pulled back intentionally because Bobby said it started eeking into the realm of splash art and distracted from the overall design of the character. I feel this one is more of a subjective thing. Personally, I would've upped the contrast in the background but for a project focused on design, I think toning down a bit was a good idea and made the silhouettes read much more distinctly.

Since I was aiming for a game concept with these, the shadow crit is pretty understandable. The larger shadow shapes I'm using is much more illustrative and doesn't work as well in a game environment. Although to be fair, I was taught by another instructor to simplify and blend my shadow shapes together which I really enjoy doing! I'm definitely going to add a lot more color into my shadows in the future though. 

Skinwalkers

Here's the skinwalker. A bit looser than the other pieces but had a lot of fun playing with the shapes and the silhouette. Maybe I should tighten up the face? Not sure what I'm missing with this one, probably just need to be more patient and really render him out. Maybe later, finals week is underway! 

Dezba the War Serpent

Had a lot of fun playing with this guy's proportions. I also put a light coming up from underneath him which gave a cool effect that I kinda dig. Teacher thought the ponytail was a little too Asian looking given that I was going for more of a Native American aesthetic. Will probably change it for the final presentation