Perspective Backgrounds

In this week's assignment I had to draw some three-point perspective drawings. Coming from a Foundation course and Art A-level background I had previous experience drawing perspective. The bridge drawing below looks ok, maybe the far pillar is slightly out of line and the buildings below give the illusion of distance and depth.

Life Drawing

 2 minute poses

 

5 minute poses: Right: Depicting depression, left: Happiness/joy 

The distribution of weight in the left drawing isn't quite right as her foot that's forward is too high up.

 

 

Right: Laziness- The shoulders need to look more floppy.

Left: Anger

 

 

Hand sketches

 

 

 

Wine Glass model

Practiced using the revolve tool in Maya to model a wine glass. I then went that step further and played around with the lighting, shadows and texture to make the glass look a bit more realistic.

Shot ideas

For the Sea Project, a section of the animation is potentially going to involve the metaphorical white horse waves and for that I envisioned a cavalry charge. The cavalry charge was a foot-soldier's nightmare as not only were they having to go up against another soldier armed with a sword but they also have to contend with a charging horse which has the capabilitiy of killing a soldier just with its weight and momentum alone.

So to see a dozen or so horses in the form of a wave charging towards the two people in the water is a good way of increasing the fear because naturally when we see a horse running towards us, our reaction is to run away.

Portraying this idea is all in shot design so below I've picked out shots from two films that contain a lot of cavalry charges, Lord of the Rings and War Horse.

Close up: The horse's flared nostrils, mouth frothing and eyes bulging depict the speed we naturally look at the face for emotion.  

Medium shot: Head and chest of horses are all that are seen. Powerful muscles, flared nostrils, heads held high. It's a good shot to suggest a wave.

 

Another close up

 

Legs: Depicting speed, in this case emphasising the fact they are galloping. Could be hard to animate a line of legs though and when we are frightened of something we naturally look at the face. In addition to this with it being a wave, the legs are more likely to be hidden under the wave anyway.

 

 

Long shot to establish the power and danger. A good shot to consider to depict an incoming wave.

 

'They're dangerous at both ends......crafty in the middle'   

 Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows

 

 

The Second test on the first clip was un-finished, this is the completed version.

Sea project test

Our group has opted to do a 2D, almost metaphorical interpretation of the sea, and quite often people relate the waves to white horses galloping into shore. So I started doing some tests of galloping horses from different angles. I used the rotoscope technique but simplified the form down into just line-art.

Character Emotion

Since doing the Performance workshop on Monday I began to study a character's body language a lot more closely and in doing so I was drawn to Wall-e. I recognised this film in particular as a good way of studying body language because Wall-e doesn't have any dialogue (apart from the occasional Eeevva). All of his emotion is portrayed through his eyes and his body.

Below are the sketches I did whilst watching the film of the various emotions he was depicting.

 

 

Backgrounds

 I'm now beginning to learn more about backgrounds and as a starter I was tasked to copy five backgrounds from animations using just pencil lines. Below are my results:

Brother Bear background

Journey to Agartha (Children who chase lost voices)

Prince of Egypt

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

Sword in the Stone

Life Drawing- Balance and Weight

Image above: Model continuously moving around the platform, hence the tangled mess of lines.

Train Background

I forgot to add the steps I took to get the train background so here they are:


Step 1: Pen on paper outline

 

Step 2: Began using Copic pens but soon realised I didn't have all the colours required to colour it so from here on I switched to Photoshop

 

 

 

Step 3: Basic colours added, started with very faint colours to get an idea of colour palette.

 

Step 4: I worked around in the outer edges of the image then gradually worked inwards. So here I darkened up the platforms and added detail to the roof.

 

 

Step 5: Added the remaining detail to the platform on the left, which for this was the shadows.

 

 

Step 6: Railway line and middle of the track detail added

 

Step 7: Right Platform detail added and bridge detailed up.

 

Step 8: Train detail and finishes touches.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

Sketchbook Pro/Designer

Started using Autodesk Sketchbook designer/pro today. Here are some of my drawings.

 

It's better than using Photoshop, which I've used for my previous drawings and Sketchbook Designer is more WACOM friendly as it has a larger workspace and better tools. 

Drawing when I'm bored...

Drawn with felt tip, digitally re-mastered in Photoshop.

                                   Before                                                                                                           After

Before

 

 

 

 

After

 

And some artwork from drawing tablet to photoshop...