Backgrounds

Did some backgrounds. I enjoy this more because it's more like the things I did waayyy back (well, 1 and a bit years) in 6th form at school. I was a bit gutted when Cath gave us the brief because she's limited us to a certain size. Apart from that this is going to be an amazing project because I love drawing/painting landscapes. Not so much the interiors but theres only one of them so I don't mind. Apart from the size restrictions the brief is pretty liberal. In a seminar the other day she described and explained the rules, or guidlines, of composition. I have written them all down so I don't forget to ignore and disobey them.

I loathe academic composition because it's what everybody does and its predictable and yes it might be pleasing to the eye but I find nothing more boring than 3 evenly spaced trees with a horizon in the middle of the picture. Unless its something interesting and mathmatical like....and now I can't for the life of me remember the painting, but It was buy an italian in the 14th or 15th centuary, Francisco something? It had Jesus in the centre, and doves and a river, but everything made a geometical shape. So if you lined Jesus's foot with the doves eye and the branch of a tree it made a trianlge, or something like that. Anyway, so i'm doing my very best to make things in twos, fours or fives or more, have it unbalanced, and generally a bit unorthadox. I have a feeling that I might have conformed to the rules in some because it's kind of natural to do something pleasing.

Here's what I did so far. The snow one is taken from a picture and I guess in nature you have to look quite hard to find something that isn' done in threes or that isn't balanced. Or I could've just used artistic licence I suppose. Anyway.

If anyone is actually interested, my favourite artists, and the ones I try to...uh...copy (steal from) the most are; Paul Cezanne, Monet, Van Gough, Egon Schielle, Turner, Jean-Francois Millet, Paul Gauguin (good calvin and hobbes comic on him by the way), Kurt Jackson, Andrew Giddens and Robert Jones. (the last 3 are all contemporary cornish artists if anyone's interested - and before you make any assumptions of poverty Kurt Jackson is actually a multi millionaire.)

Yes its lego....but the light is what I was looking at. (Interior nicked...I mean influenced from Avatar and Halo)

Mostly drawn with a rubber. I gave up a bit on the snow because we can't use colour on this one. Might be a good one to do using a monochromatic palate, of blue.

Editing Stuff

Some Drawings

Final Walk

More walking.

Ok so I did my new walk. It's not great but its better and it will do. I've also just had a little play with some more walks that I've taken more time with. Including a run. I've also incorporated the Sketchbook project to try and get some character into them because I'm going to guess that my actual walks aren't going to be amazingly accurate. I've also cut them out because I'm already getting bored with just standard drawing on paper so I'm going to try something different. (well, different for me)

Although I was just mucking about for 20 minutes It actually looks quite fun. I like my rough cutting out. This is actually because I am very bad at cutting. As my mum will testify. It was not a conscious aesthetic decision. It was a if-I-go-too-close-to-his-arm-I'm-going-to-cut-it-off-and-have-to-draw-it-all-over-again...decision.

Feedback

Just a quick one this.
To say that 2D walk was afwul. It looked ok last night but that's probably because I was tired. I saw it again today, and Andy was being very polite but It was appaling so I am re-doing it ontop of everything else. I've spent most of my spare time today drawing out 12 frames on scrap paper of a stick figure. Trying to get it to be ok.

Crucial things are, leaning forward. Almost ever single one of the poses are leaning quite a bit forward. I'm going to exaggerate this a lot because I actually drew the orginal leaning forward but it's so slight it doesnt show up on the video. So I think exageration is the key when drawing it, make it look over the top. I've also planned it a bit better so the arms don't confuse me, the head bobs are more extreme, and i've added 'floppy-feet'.

Hopefully this will be an improvement. But of course what I shall end up with is an over-exaggerated mental stick man but maybe that's a good thing...

More flamboyent anyway.

Walking

Ok so, walking. Might have missed a blog or two. Apologies.
Walking is bloody difficult. Not actually doing it. Animating it. I found it easier on the 3D one because you could reset things, play it back constantly, view it from different angles and fine-tune the movements easily. Whereas with 2D and drawing it, it is a pain in the neck because if you make a mistake that's fairly catastrophic you have to redraw the whole thing. And even with different coloured legs (so I knew which was left and right) I still confused myself and at one point had him moving just his right leg and the left leg going nowhere.

I also found it more difficult to get some hip movement on the 2D walk cycle. I have also given up on the arm movement for the time being because it has just proven too much to handle and I'd like to concentrate on the legs, hips and shoulder movements. So I may add them in later.

Burt was good fun (the 3D model). Because you could add a lot of character. I've played around with a few more, like a sneek walk, and it's amazing how much a walk changes depending on how to animate the feet. Whether they are pointing down or up, and by how much, completely changes the walk.

Really good fun though, will have to see tomorrow if I actually got any of it right though.
Will upload me walking later.