Breakthrough?

I feel like I managed a breakthrough after the Warcraft piece. I learned how to separate light and shadow into shapes the past year but one thing I neglected to think about was where the light source was in 3D space. I would arbitrarily add light sources coming from seemingly nowhere to create my shadow shapes.

Now I think about where the source is in 3D space and which planes are facing it and how it should interact with the light. Before, I was able to separate different forms by "faking" light and adding a backlight but now with the light source, I don't have to make stuff up. Also the realistic lighting makes stuff look so much better! Definitely going to focus a lot more on lighting and materials.

Huge thanks to Justin Oaksford for helping me understand this!

New illustrations

I rarely do illustrations but these are my attempts at it. I ended up rendering that fox spirit sketch for the spitpaint group. I'm not too happy about it looking at it now after finishing the Warcraft piece. I learned a lot about lighting and color with that one and feel like I could've applied those principles better.

The Slyvanas one took me around 3 days to finish. Got some nice feedback from Justin Oaksford over at 343 industries who mainly criticized my lighting. I entered this into the Blizzcon art contest. Wish me luck!

Fox Spirit

A sketch for the Daily Spitpaint group. I might take this one to a polished finish later

English robot butler

Did a Google hangout with some friends and doodled this robot butler. After taking CGMA's dynamic sketching, I feel like I always need at least some line work now or everything gets too unorganized and messy!

Minibosses monstrified

Took my sweet time with this one and tried to really clean up the line work. Director told me to beef up the monster factor on the minibosses so went with this. 

WideAwake minibosses

More WideAwake concept sketches. I'm focusing a little more on the drawing side of things. Used to do fairly loose and simple sketches before. Could probably spend a little more time cleaning up the lines.

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.