Massive Sketch update!

It's been awhile since the last update.  Here's a big sketch update to make up for that.

Hi Again!!!! Some stuff from my sketch book.

Let the art dump begin...

Edit: Thank you blogger for almost messing up my post. Sorry if the feed/paragraph/the post thing on the blogger reader list thing jumbles up this post.  I was not expecting it to do that. Since almost every sketch has a caption under it, blogger shows the captions on the reader list thing as one paragraph. Sorry about that!

Rats

Yakmen sketch

Yakmen again with rat sketches

More rat sketches

Character sketch for Yakmen and his guardian form.

Nakim sketch and...

Nakim art for a class assignment in Computer Art Applications. This is my first time using Adobe Illustrator.  It is very different from using Photoshop.

Cindercost Vulture

Venticardia

Me...I am awesome!

Cute little fox bird.

Fantasy Money Project

One of my most favorite projects from the 2012 spring semester at SCAD was the Money Project from my Design 101 Color Theory class.  In this project we create fictional money based on a real or fantasy country.  A narrative of the country should be provided with the original artwork of the fictional money and its downsized version. My money is based on Penrose Capital, a country from my "The Mult" story. I don't have the complete description of my country but I do have some details about it:

• Name of country:
• Universe Paradoxa: Penrose Capital, home of the World Traveler Academy
• Date in time-future/present
• 2126, founded by the first group of world travelers in 1960s
• Where s the country located?  What is the geography? Mountains, island, etc. How big is the country - land wise and what is the population?
• This is in a rare flat universe, a near infinite world with a sky-like dome and a vast flat plane stretched over a chaos filled void.  Paradoxa is an impossible world and its very existence violates the laws of space and time.  This violation of space and time makes it vulnerable to highly unstable wormholes, sudden acceleration and deceleration in time, strange supernatural anomalies, and unexplained creation of sentient living beings which happens every three thousand years.  These anomalies often occur at the edges of the flat universe, but the center and the area surrounding it remain stable.  This area is the Penrose Capital of Paradoxa, named so because of the triangle-like shape of the protected area and of the giant ancient Penrose triangle symbols carved in the twelve districts surrounding it.
• Type of Government?
• Penrose Capital is ruled not by single leader but by a group made up of the highest officials of the twelve districts.  Two officials from each district of a different species native or alien to Paradoxa.  There is a congress made up of two courts: Upper is the time and universe travelers, magic and science majors; the lower is the guardians, world builders, supernatural advisers, and hinru-darsian powers.  The upper court watches over the law making, academic studies, and multi dimensional communications. The lower court watches over god-commissioned creation of worlds and realities, god/guardian monitoring, life/death monitoring, and universe and life auctions.
• What kind of industry is there? How do people make a living?
• The Penrose capital is a home to the World Traveler Academy, a prestigious school to studying the Multi-verse and its inner workings down to the smallest atom and up to the most powerful gods in existence.  The entire economy, industry, and life of an average world traveler are based on solely on the academic study of the Multi-verse.  The twelve districts of the Penrose Capital contains the majors in which every world traveler can apply and study from:

1. Brimeh District: Time travel
2. Trunkefe District: Dimensional travel
3. Galarchri District: Magic studies and applications
4. Hedjohit District: Advances of sciences and science applications
5. Jevassus District: Guardian magic and identity
6. Saldecota District: Amhphsorsa tunnel and soul analysis
7. Saldosah District: World commissions and creations
8. Bameh District: Paradoxain historical and government studies
9. Hedcasa District: Empire Planet xeno-archeology
10. Rhamtah District: Penrose and Paradoxain technologies
11. Sidoya: District: Penrose and Paradoxain defenses, army, and police force
12. Hinrudarsi District: Hunru-darsiism, magic, dual soul analysis, and Pre-guardian historical studies
• Any religious belief system?
• Even though the Penrose Capital discovered the existence of gods, spirits and demons, souls, and other supernatural entities, the county is not founded on a belief system and the people there are free to explore any religious or non-religious ideas including agnosticism, atheism, theism, and other beliefs. The best description of this type of world is that it is Humanitarian-like or Xenoitarian.  The practice of Xenoitarian is the universal acceptance, love, and kindness of all sentient living, artificial, native and alien, supernatural, and physical individuals.  However, due to recent conflicts between gods and guardians and the rise of a single powerful leader controlled government pushed by rogue world travelers, the peace on Penrose Capital may see a horrific demise during the Golden Age of World Traveling.

Here's the penciled and colored of the Penrose Captial money:

Sketch-a-day #5

Finished yesterday's background sketch:

The perspective in this drawing is kinda messed up.  I found it difficult to draw objects in perspective in the realm of fantasy where I have no reference to follow by.  It's easier with still life and life drawing...maybe if I used a still life and convert that into a fantasy setting...maybe that will be my reference. 

Important things from I have learned from Drawing 100: Introduction

 EDIT: Just a few changes made (citing the sources for the two worksheets), sorry for the delay.

One of the first classes I took at SCAD is Drawing 100, a class that focused on teaching students how to use basic skills and techniques used in creating wonderful pieces of artwork.  These skills and techniques include using contour lines and cross-contours to describe the form of an object in space, and using the theory of chiaroscuro to show how light and shadow on an object, and how to use simple but important tools like the viewfinder and thumbnail to analyze the composition.

From a viewpoint of my animation major, the skills and techniques taught in this class are very important in creating storyboards, designing characters, creating a layout or a setting, and so much more.  Even though I had experience in other art classes before this one, I still need to refresh my artistic skills to become a better artist and to develop into an amazing animator.  I'll say, one of the most important things in developing my skills is drawing what I see, not what I think or know.  In other words, I need to observe the world around me.

Drawing from life helps refine my understanding of how I draw my fantasy creatures and also encouraged me to draw other subject like people, inanimate objects, and animals.  Drawing from life also helps me to recognize shapes, patterns, and proportions in my subjects.  By using sighting and measuring techniques, I can establish an object or two on a page and use parts of that object to help me find the proportions of other objects.  I often draw boxes around some of the objects as long as the boxes have the height and width of the object.

Original thumbnail sketch showing objects drawn in boxes.  The thumbnail is useful in figuring out how a composition looks before drawing the final artwork which is featured in my last post.

This is extremely helpful in sighting and measuring objects in perspective.  Knowing that an objects' edges recede in space, I can measure the height and width of a subject in perspective and draw it according to what perspective I see it in.  I use boxes once again to draw around the subject, but this time in one or two perspective.

1. According Professor Clifford, this worksheet shows different scenarios for objects in two point and one point perspective.

Drawing ellipses, circles in perspective, were difficult at first because they almost appear to be 2-dimensional.  I use the same boxes with the ellipses' height and width.  To get a perfect ellipse I bisect the boxes to find its horizontal and vertical axis and use them to create a smooth ellipse.

2. A worksheet by Zimmer, copyright 5-2-01.  The author show how to draw different ellipses correctly.

Another important thing I learned in class is creating a composition which demonstrates an inventive use of the picture plane (your canvas, paper, etc.) and use a variety of lines, rhythm, and scale.  The composition is the inventive organization and arrangement of design elements: line, shape, texture, color, and space.  In Drawing 100, we draw still life objects we assembled ourselves or a group of objects the teacher installed in the class room. 

Drawing still life art may sound boring but if we create a composition that engages the viewer by a using movement, rhythm, and scale.  We didn't just draw a cup, water bottle, and an apple; we drew a clutter of random objects of different shapes, texture, and sizes.  We use a 3x2^1/2in viewfinder, a scaled downed version of our 18x24in paper, to select a grouping of objects within the still life.  Then we draw the subjects in a 3x2^1/2in thumbnail to analyze the composition.  From the thumbnail I can see which areas are faster or slower, which objects have vertical, diagonal, or horizontal lines, and if I'm doing a value drawing, which local values of each objects are affected by different lighting conditions. 

Happy Halloween...MUH-HA-HA-HA-HAAAA

Ok...Sorry, I missed last week.  I was trying to finish a big project for Drawing-100 at SCAD and I didn't get home until very late in the evening.  It was a linear still life on a 24x36 paper drawn in class and it's similar to the earlier projects during this quarter.  Drawing it was extremely challenging because I was drawing a still life with CDs, cups, papers, ruler, binders, two triangle rulers, and a large old-school calculator.  The calculator and the triangle rulers were difficult to draw, so I had to use multi point linear perspective (combination of one point (parallel to the viewer) and two point (perpendicular to the viewer) or two points where the edges are not parallel to each other).  I'll talk more about this next week when I get my artwork back.

This old ugly thing.

And now art!

Concept of the lion cobra.  I like how strong and powerful this creature looks. It carries the strength of a lion and frightening yet graceful curves of a cobra.  I might draw the midsection longer next time.

Another lion cobra. This one was drawn before the above picture as a quick sketch.

Trying the 25 expressions challenge again.  The way Vistalgia's face is designed gives very interesting and difficult to draw expressions.