Week 3 - Personal T-Shirt Design

 Well amid some delays on this end, I finally got my assignment for Week 3 at what I view as a decent stopping point. 

Since this week's assignment focused on something "I" would wear, that made it sort of a fun and unique challenge.  I had a few initial ideas which I narrowed down to a final four set of ideas (seen on the left), but I kept coming back to the hawk idea since it felt like it made for a better composition.

Due to time constraints, I opted not to go the Illustrator/vector route, but I had a lot of fun applying color in a sort of Kymba-y, color-happy way. :)  I went with a lighter sort of sea-foam background than I originally intended.  I'd thought at first about making it sort of a combination between the moon and the sun and to pull in both daytime and nighttime in a composition, but it just started looking way too complex and convoluted.

 Here is my larger redrawing of the design I wanted to go with followed by my "final" pass of what I was considering for the colors of it.  I'd also consider muting the hawk to be more "blue," but I'm decently pleased with how it turned out. :)

Week 4 Art Challenge: Weapon of Choice

Week 4 Art Challenge: Weapon of Choice

It seems a few of us got a bit swamped for a bit there (myself included), but I want to make sure to keep the prompts coming. :)  I'll be posting my Week 3 assignment later today (and my Week 2 soon-after...  I wasn't happy with my first pass).   

This week's (Thursday to Wednesday to Wednesday) challenge/assignment begins with hand-prop silhouettes for study, and moves onward from there!

The warm-up exercises will be to draw a variety of hand-prop silhouettes (black on a white background) from various pre-existing media, including anything ranging from comic books, movies, games, or else-wise.  The emphasis here should be on media where the prop itself comes from a strong cultural background that is apparent in the style of the prop.  No bland traditional scimitars, for example, but fantasy swords? Perfect! Complex hand-cannon? Awesome! If you like, take notes on your observations.

The challenge is to create one original weapon for the fantasy/sci-fi world/culture of your choosing.  Try to take it beyond a sketch and leave some time to either model it, render it, sculpt it, whatever it takes to really "sell" the cultural tie-in. 

Due: Wednesday, September 7th. (So a little under two weeks so stuff doesn't start piling up.)

Week 3 .. der!

Not going to happen for me again tonight. Bit off more than I could chew with the design in my head, and have had another busy week besides. I do at least have a little more idea of what I am doing now, and hopefully I will get it posted sooner than next Wednesday. ;)

Week 03: EXTENDED

Since this past week seems to have been busy for all of us, and we want to get the most out of these challenges instead of stressing ourselves out just to hit the deadlines, last weeks t-shirt prompt has been extended until next Wednesday. So make good use of the extra time!

Week 03 Art Challenge

Annnnd now for something completely different!

I couldn't really think of much of a good idea, and then one sorta popped in my head. It's pretty broad, but that gives more room for fun and creative freedom! So here it is:

Design a t-shirt, something you'd like to wear. That's really all there is to it. You can make it as simple or as complex as you want to. You want to use already established characters, or your own spin on them? That's totally cool. Want some ninja porcupines fighting off hordes of pink polka dotted giraffe zombies? I'm down with it. If you want to put it on a template that's fine, or you could just have the design by itself, just be sure to specify if you do a shirt with a design that incorporates more than one side.

Appealing design is important, and while this is really loose and open, it's important to learn what makes for good design, not just for characters. So think of this as composition and design practice, I suppose.

Let's see some cool t-shirts!

Week 2

So this week I was wishy washy and doodled around without making much progress, either. I didn't even get started with the thumbnails until Sunday, and by then I was already feeling like I was running out of time. I had picked Suchomimus (reptile), lantern bug (insect/fish), 7 (1-10 pressure) and dishwashing, as that is not a chore I enjoy and I would NOOOOT want to have to do it for a living. Especially silverware. I hate washing silverware by hand. >.> Pots I can deal with.

Ahem. I also wished I had worded the challenge a little differently. While its true that someone might come to you and say "I need a character based on this and this and this," chances are they are not going to be as specific as that if it's concept work. The categories that you chose in the beginning of this challenge were not really meant to be hard and fast, but a jumping off point, which one's muse might take in which ever direction one wanted. But! Oh well. I stuck to the letter, and at least I got some discipline out of it? ;)

So I doodled several designs, and I thought the guy in the lower left was interesting and different; he started out with a suchomimus face, too, but then I didn't really have any bug influence (and it's the face on lantern bugs that is so ZOMG), so I gave him the bug face instead and named him Bob, because I imagined that he bobbed when he walked. I also wanted to color him, because lantern bugs are also brightly colored and I wanted to integrate that -- that's hard to draw in black and white! But ... as I was inking him, I grew less happy with him. The coloring went "meh..." and eventually I just got tired of looking at him and the way he was going. I had doodled another body type on that thumbnail page that I was more drawn to ....

He reminded me then (and still does) far too much of the WoW tauren, but he was much more satisfying to draw. I named him Bernie. Just because. I <3 him.

Really, though, I think my dissatisfaction with the more unusual design of Bob was that he was less easy to identify with; it didn't help him that I gave him a buggy mouth, so his expressions would have been difficult to make evident. I still like the idea, but I think he is more suited for random-alien-in-the-background than character with whom I could possibly do more (which, again, was not the point of this challenge, but I like to get to know my critters and draw them more than once. And who knows.... maybe they WILL show up again, mwahaha!). I found myself wondering about the rest of the race, while I was drawing him, and wondering why he was a dishwasher, and restraining myself from writing a big block of text detailing more things about them. Didn't do any of those things with Bob.

Sorry, Bob.

Week 02

So... I'm just very frustrated this week, seeing as nothing I do seems to come out right. I'm way behind on school for this week, so I didn't have a lot of time to devote to art challenge, but hey I got it done at least!

The animals I picked was a blue-tailed skink and a damselfly. I'm not really sure how much either of those came out in my designs... My concept sketches I didn't bother really focusing on his job, just more looks, getting decent proportions, and an appealing design.

The job I picked was a call center, either doing collections calls or telemarketing. I rather liked the idea of him having more than 4 arms (plus legs) so that he could hold multiple phones at once, so I ended up going with my first design on the top. Even went with roughly the same pose. However, my guy actually enjoys his job!

Like I said, I'm not really happy with it. The scanner ate it and spit out something not very good looking, so I tried to add a little bit of VERY simple shading just to show the limbs in the back and what was behind stuff, but I don't think that came out very well either. Oh well, here it is:

Week 1

I did two pages of these but I can't seem to find the first one, so here's the second!  I think one of my biggest take-aways was that the "Strength" characters were usually very top-heavy and bulky. 

I'll admit I wasn't necessarily focusing on proportions as much as shapes and poses. 

I was actually somewhat surprised how easily most characters seemed to fit into one of the three categories (or at least dominantly into one).

For Part 2 of the prompt I toyed around with a few ideas and ended up going "I wonder how anthropomorphic ferrets might look in those roles...." and much as I tried to go back and work on more humanoid characters, these guys kept calling me back.

Things I tried to focus on were that the "Intellect"-based one had a lot of random dangles and an overall complicated set of garb, but a very simple actual body-shape.

For the "Agility" critter I tried for more curves and a very "poised" pose as well as an elongated set of gestures.  I also liked the idea of him having an accessory belt. ;)

For the "Strength" one I went for a very broad upper-body as well as a lot more pronounced fur and claws.  I also shortened the tail, neck, and ears.

The "Strength" one also reminds me of a were-ferret. ;)

Week 1

Ooookay, so I had a really hard time with this one, and I imagine I will continue to do so through the rest of this. That's why they're a "challenge", right? My warm up silhouettes I was pretty pleased with, it's just when I had to get down and design my own that I had the trouble. I still can't draw things like I see them in my head quite right, but I guess I just need more practice. Warm ups are to the left.



And to the right here are mine. I couldn't decide what theme I wanted to go with for them, but eventually wound up with a sci fi type. I'm not particularly happy with them like I said. These are all supposed to be humans, I didn't feel like tackling aliens ;)

Week 2 Art Challenge: Character Design

This week's challenge is about character design. I can't wax quite as eloquently about it as Kymba did about the concept of silhouettes, but I can tell you that it's going to be an important thing for all of us to be able to pull off. Sometimes they are easy, coming to you and demanding to be drawn or written and not leaving you alone until you commit them to paper or pixel, but other times they are more shy or stubborn, or we just plain can't get the creative juices flowing when someone else asks us for a certain type or character.

This week, I want us to drift a little away from our normal character types. Pick your favorite reptile. Pick a fish or an insect. And think of a number between one and ten -- you got it? Write it down, no changing your mind! Now think of your least favorite job, something you hate doing, or something you would hate to have to do.

The number is the relative atmospheric pressure at which your character lives, with "normal" in this case being five -- if you picked less than five, your character lives in a low pressure environment; if greater than five, s/he lives somewhere with greater pressure. Draw some characteristics from the animals you chose. The job you hate? That's his/her job!

Draw at least three quick concepts, then take your favorite and develop it into a fuller drawing with turnarounds and some facial (or whatever!) expressions.

Sorry, no sample from me. That's your job!

This challenge is due on Wednesday, August 10.

Week 1: Silhouettes

You guys saw the pre-existing characters sketches in the email so I will not upload them here, but here's the meat of the week! (EDIT: I was poked that I should post them anyway, so there they are!) It was specified that the silhouettes should be from the same world -- I made mine the same species, even. While there are some things that are commonly associated with brainy, agile or strong characters, these qualities are not always (or even often) mutually exclusive: how would you catagorize Beast? Peter Parker is pretty smart, too. Megamind is clearly brainy, but he also moves like a dancer.

So I took my ogre people and put them in each role. They would stereotypically be portrayed as the strongman type, and not very agile or smart, but I know better. They may not be Monkey or Thing or Prof X, but neither are they limited by body type.

That said ... it was actually the strong guy that gave me trouble. >.> I would rather have portrayed him in a more frontal position, but that would have been difficult to read as a silhouette. I was trying to stay away from the poses from the preexisting characters, as well, but if I did it over I might have used something like Thing's pose, just to have a different set of proportions acting the same way.

Week 1 Art Challenge: Silhouette of a Hero

Week 1 Art Challenge: Silhouette of a Hero

Thursday, July 28, 2011 at 12:28pm

Some highly motivated friends and I have opted to start up a sort of weekly challenge amongst ourselves in order to prompt us to be further productive and improve our art and I thought I'd share it here as well. :)

This week's (Wednesday to Wednesday) challenge/assignment is all about silhouettes! How we "read" various figures and interpret how they fit into their individual worlds is often highly related to their silhouettes.

The warm-up exercises will be to draw a variety of loose character silhouettes (black on a white background) from various pre-existing media, including anything ranging from comic books, movies, or games.

The challenge for the week is to create three original "Hero" silhouette figures who appear to inhabit the same world. One should be an intelligence based hero, one should be a strength based hero, and one should be a dexterity/agility based hero.

Due: Wednesday, August 3rd.

It begins!

!