Character design, finally!

I should try to update this blog way more. Anyways, the time I have been wating for all this year during school has come. Character design! The theme is Chicago in the 30's, the time of Al Capone and the other notorious mobsters. I started a little bit before we were even handed our task cause I was way excited about this. I referenced alot of old photos in some of these drawings, so some of them might be recognizeable. 

For the task, we are supposed to draw 6 characters for a story, and design 2 of them completely for 3D modeling in 2 weeks.

Sculptris practice and school update

I have been using Sculptris very much lately. I often do a few sculpts for fun, or when I need to draw a character from a tricky angle. I've been getting used to painting in Sculptris too even though it isn't quite as stable as Zbrush. It has a habit of crashing, + you can't paint in layers..and custom brushes makes it crash as well. But as far as a 40-60 min model jam goes, I'm very happy.

I VERY rarely model humans. Not because I am afraid to do so, but because animals just has so much more material to work with than people (yet) So I tried drawing a guy and then converting him into a sculpture. Apart from the mistake I made on the eyes, I'd say this is a fair third attempt at 3D humans. 

School is also keeping me extremely busy, but in the good productive way. I can actually stay focused when working, and it feels like I have a goal for once. Just today, I drew 100 tiny images for a test storyboard, which is due on monday. I got enough time to draw them all again before monday, hopefully....

Another day of productivity.

Today has been possibly the warmest day in Norwegian history. My chocolate plate melted entirely, and I couldn't even fall asleep in the forest, not a single breeze to be found.

However, I managed to settle down and draw more humans. I have been drawing humans only now for two weeks, and I have managed to improve alot. Since I'm having my summer vacation at home, I don't have a scanner nearby, so there will be phone-quality. 

I recently watched How to train your dragon 2 as well, which also inspired me to draw.  Also the movie really exceeded my expectations. Dreamworks have been doing really good with their sequels.

Anyways, here are a few images from today:

(They were all very inspired by Nico Marlet's techniques)

100 caricatures in 2 days

Well, 2 and a half days. 

You can see the entire process over here http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1404566

I have improved alot during those days, and it feels like I can draw humans from memory with more freedom and shapes. It's only been 5 days of the two weeks of human drawing, so I still have a long way to go before I can go back to animals. But I think I will draw humans more frequently by then, and after!

Caricature challenge

Only 2 days ago, I opened a thread over at Facepunch, asking to draw everyone who posted. I have already reached 80 caricatures, and I decided to stop at 100. That's a major achievement in progress for me who has ADHD and lack of concentration. I managed to find my own loophole bu focusing on the major shapes of a face and spending less than 10 inutes on each face.

I might reach 100 already tomorrow. Here are some examples!

Finally found my long lost inspiration

A few days ago, I had a talk with Stephen Silver over skype, which was pretty life changing. 

For many years I have struggled with drawing humans, maybe because we all know what a human is supposed to look like. And if we can't recreate that from memory, we get discouraged. I always drew animals cause I enjoyed the shape and form, and I sort of connected with them easier than people. 

Stephen told me that I easily could do the same with humans. What suprised me the most was when he said he didn't really know anatomy. I said "what?" really confused. I thought you HAD to know all the muscles and bones in order to be a successful character designer. But that wasn't the case. Only the shape and form would do, as long as you at least knew the basics of the human body.

 I got so relieved hearing that.

Then a thought stuck me; I don't know animal anatomy either! I don't know the names of the muscles or bones or what even drives the animals. I only observed their shape and had some fun with them. Then Stephen gave me the difficult task of drawing humans only, for 2 weeks. And I took that very seriously. 

So that's exactly what I am going to do!

Portefolio 2014

This week we are going to create a portefolio as our assignment at school, and upload it online. 

This features some of the recent work I have done at Noroff.

The player on here is very small...just click the youtube button to watch it directly on YT for bigger size.

Multiple goal syndrome...?

I noticed that I have issues with overcoming too many ideas. I want to do everything, and I feel a constant pressure about knowing everything because of my age. For some reason I get nervous about people going further than me at a younger age. When I see someone who's younger than me doing way better in drawing I usually curl up and whimper about it. Some days I want to become the master of light and colors , other days it's about pespective or semi-realism. I have to learn everything otherwise I won't be happy with myself.

That's what I think at least, but I notice that I am way better off with making characters on a white background than a semi realistic looking scenery with loads of details. I see artists like Nico Marlet and wondering if he did very detailed work like the ones I ahve in mind before he started making characters. 

His work have been inspiring me alot lately and I want to focus more on characters than everything else. 

But as a freelance illustrator I have to know more than how to draw characters, I need backgrounds for the pictures I'm drawing. I am not creative enough to find my own method, because I don't like experimenting unless I know it's taking me somewhere.

I don't know whether it's because of my state of health (some ADD issues that stops me from having a workflow) and other things. I am going to take online courses during 2015-2016 after school is finished, hoping I can evolve my knowledge of art, light, color and perspective so I'll feel more satisfied and confident with my own art.

I'm going to "fight" these thoughts untill then, just doodling and studying various things from real life and taking inspiration from my surroundings hoping it will broaden my mind a little. I am very unpatient without guidance so still life painting is quite difficult for me. I guess it's back to drawing animals and pokemon again to keep myself going!

A nodlecart from Pandaria! Time to draw something new...

Pursuing my productivity #1

On the hunt for improved productivity and creativity, I did some self-studies for a few hours. I got my medium sized mirror and started drawing my feet and arms. For some reason I never thought of doing this before! I have been waiting for an oppertunity to learn anatomy and do gesture/observational drawings of humans and I forgot that I am a human being myself. 

An hour or two probbaly flew away doing these while watching The Animators Survival Kit DvD's in the background...while also listening to music. 

Later on I started listening to Mists of Pandaria soundtracks on youtube which filled me in this chinese Kung Fu Panda art mood again. Then this came out as a result and now my entire body is aching and I have a burn wound on my finger from the tablet screen...

Ready to study!

These finally came in the mail. Accidentaly bought two of the R.W one....no harm done except to my wallet! I have been longing for some animation studying for some time, but I just can't study everything at the moment. Where do I even begin, and which book first? Sometimes I buy books I'm never going to read right away. I need to change that.

One thing I did mange to do, was to get up and out to the light rail. And draw people. I figured I needed to stop being laxy and try to pursue my thoughts and ideas more. I guess the 3 hours at the aquarium started it all. I might also get my own art class in 2015 or early 2016, and I don't feel good enough to teach even though the standards in my town is pretty low when it comes to teaching art.... 

I wore some dark Ozzy Osbourne glasses so people wouldn't see me staring at them while drawing. I managed to do a few pages during the short hour on the ligh rail. It was amazing to see how my style changed drastically from capturing a face for a few seconds. Everyone had a personality, everyone had their own features...everyone was different. It was fun to see how individual each detail was. Everything from eyelids to the nose ridge.

I'm definately going to do way more life studies when the weather gets better. 

Improving a image from the day before

Sometimes when I finish something, it looks incredibly off the day after. So last week I drew this Kung Fu Panda inspired cat/tiger girl with promarkers. I noticed the day after that absolutely everything was off. It had no sense of anatomy, movement or perspective. It was very lopsided, and I felt even embarassed to have put it out everywhere on my websites.

So I decided to redo the whole thing digitally. 

The image I did with promarkers...I'm just cringing by now. 

I did some heavy fix-ups with the new version. Included some actual perspective so nothing would float awkwardly. I proceeded to add flat color and shades untill I decided to try draw it linelessly, which is basicly my weak spot. I have a hard time with light and colors, so working these two together to shape something is difficult, so this was a simplistic image.

So this is the final image just 2 hours later. It really pays off looking at something twice. 

You are your own worst critic!

Animal study at the aquarium of Bergen. I have been forcing myself to actually get out from ym apartment and study something for weeks, and this sunday I finally did it. I walked up to the aquarium, sat down by a green iguana, and started drawing. I had never been outside much, drawing things in the streets because of my anxiety. But there was a zen-moment between me and the pencil as I sketched down the animals in front of me. I somehow managed to shut out the screaming kids and sizzling water from the tanks, and 3 hours went as I just kepr on moving trough the tanks drawing all the species I could.

My hand started to hurt alot 2 hours in... I kept going however, cause I was short on time. The aquarium closed at 16. I was never a fan of drawing fish, cause I found them boring. And I knew I was wrong, cause once I got one fish down, another one shortly came after and each of them cacked me up. There were so many shapes, species, faces, expressions on each one of them, it was hard to keep a straight face while drawing. The one that really made me smile was the Pacu. They had this chubby smile on their face with wide set eyes. And then there were the angry looking piranha, and a giant one who had a scar on his/her (??) face. I named her Olgara or something. She seemed old...

I didn't get to draw every specie I wanted cause the aquarium was officially closed when Imade it to the biggest tanks. So I had to rush a few species and run out. The most magical moment of this study was how connected I felt to the animals. The seals, iguana, crocodiles, fish... some of them swam up to my moving hand and stood still in the tank so I could draw them. I was listening to the soundtrack from Finding Nemo and I swear it almost made me cry. 

I'm totally going to do more studies like these again, it taught me alot!