Redid the cast shadow thing and followed the instructions properly this time. Don't think I was far off with whatever janky methodology I misremembered but it definitely works better the right way.

Shapes Shading and Cast Shadow Assignment2.png4334x1926 251 KB

I also did a bunch of Line art for hands, I'm sure they look very familiar to anyone who has the same gesture drawing app as me. Left in the construction layer, know it makes it look like a mess but the construction was the thing that mattered with this one I think.

Finished most of the Term 4 stuff now, just gotta spend some time drawing muscles on skeletons and I'll have covered most of the stuff in the study companion and assignments.
Here's a few of the limb anatomy drawings on reference pictures

Also did one Environment Art Study, I'll do some more of these as they're probably the area I need to work on most (anything not woodland/meadowy and I struggle because perspective becomes more necessary to pay attention too, I can do it but its definitely a weakness). The piece I was working off was from Blue Eyed Samurai, very good show on Netflix, worth a watch if you like anime or revenge stories.
I chose it because its a painted background style, so was an interesting experiment as it was so detailed that line art copying didn't really make sense. I just tried to paint a copy picture in photoshop, I'll have the original 1st and then my attempt to copy it. I just used Mark's brushes rather than trying to create one's similar to what were actually used so there's definitely some major differences, I'm not happy with the foreground on the left and the colour palette is all over the place but it came out closer than I thought it would to be fair. Will be choosing something a bit simpler for the next one though I think.

ORIGINAL:

Study Copy Attempt:

Final bit is the free drawing I did. Mentioned previously that I was reading a book on storyboarding, it talked about how important capturing emotions is in animation, so I wanted to have a go at drawing what it described as the 4 Core emotions, Joy, Sadness, Fear and Rage, that all other feelings are a blend of. I think technically there's supposed to be 7, Surprise, Disgust and Contempt are usually also mentioned in the same breath as those 4 in other things I read but these were what I started with and I'll come back to the other 3 at a later date probably. Piece was more focused on the facial expression of each character so the character designs are just basic

Only a couple of bits for this one.
First, here's some meat people

Fun exercise but I dawdled doing it tbh, took much longer than it should have.

Next is the 1st Character Design exercises stuff. This was really fun to learn, always liked making up characters, very interesting to see how its kind of like sculpting from a shadow, definitely going to do a few more of these for fun. First try I was going for a kind of sci fi monk/druid thing, The hero shape stuff was more challenging to come up with than I expected although I might just need to keep growing my visual library with some better stuff. I ended up shifting from what was a kind of basic shape to something more along the lines of the roots you see on the overgrown temples in Seim Reap. I kept the same small detail but the large shape definitely changed mid drawing.

Silhouettes:

Character with some colour:

Not crazy about how it came out tbh but very happy with it as a first go at attempting this process. Some of the detail in the mask is obscured, mostly because of my colour choices I think tbh, but I've gotten to the point with it that I reckon its only going to be improved by drawing the character from scratch with construction and the like in higher detail. Looking forward to doing more of these though

forgot the step before colouring

Thought I hadn't got much done since I last posted cos I'd gotten distracted by just doing my own projects but when I looked, I realised there was a fair bit. I've done most of term 5 now but I still need to spend a bit more time just drawing animals from reference and coming up with some fantasy ones too. I did watch the Nude Figure Sculpting class but I don't really have the work space for clay and can't really afford to subscribe to Zbrush currently. I could probably wrangle a 2nd free trial with another email address but honestly, 3D sculpting, while very cool, isn't what I'm interested in currently, so I'll leave that one for now and come back to it at a latter date when its more relevant to my goals.

Feet Line Art exercise from term 4

I did another pass on the character design exercise cos I enjoyed it.
Silhouettes

Refining Silhouette with some anatomy

Black and White Character pass one

Decided the above wasn't really what I was going for, wanted less a clothing and armour thing and more a organic look

Finalised version

Then I've got a couple of the animal anatomy exercises I've been working on, gotta do a few more of these still before I move on to the next term but definitely has mad a massive difference to my ability to draw animals, never looked right and now I know why which is good.

Anatomy on reference photo's

Line art from reference photo's

Lastly I've a couple of fantasy creatures. First is like a little kangaroo bear thing, idea was that it would live in snowy areas and hunt in packs, the big wide feet and light weight letting it get across deep snow without sinking into it when pursuing larger prey that would. Don't love how it came out tbh but it was the first try at this so it'll do.

Second one is just a weird goat/elephant thing, kinda imagined them being very territorial so they've big neck and trap muscles for bashing each other with the tusks and horns. Added a very crude man mannequin for scale. Like this one a bit better so I had a quick go at colouring it, tried a couple of different things but not going to spend too long fiddling with it as its just a practicey thing.

Got another random assortment of things to post, I forget where I left off, I feel like am both rushing and taking to long doing the course content which is weird but whatcha gonna do, I can always redo classes and exercises if I don't feel like I've got my head around them properly.

Did a few more animal sketches from reference

Not happy with the pig and the Elephant and the Zebra feel a bit too long in the middle but learning the basic anatomy of animals has definitely improved my ability and confidence in drawing them, wouldn't have known where to start before.

Started Term 6 now, gotten to the mech design video, so I've done a few of the compostion, colour and lighting exercises.

The 3 point light set up exercise

Not had a chance to go apply this to a previous drawing as I haven't done a lot of environment drawings, I tend to just paint them or avoid them entirely, I'll probably go back and do it on the drawings from perspective classes like suggested but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Did the principles of art thumbnails, I did them portrait but save the file landscape accidentally so the order left to right is: Balance, Repetition, Variety in the top row, Emphasis, Proportions, Movement/Rhythm and Harmony in the bottom

wasn't really sure what to do for the harmony one tbh, ended up just being a repeat of the movement one but it is what it is. probably and exercise its worth returning to for me as I don't think the general principles have quite clicked in my brain properly yet.

Biggest brick wall I hit was the cyberpunk character, which was odd to me because I like that genre but I think I've done one piece that could be considered that ever and it was a couple of years ago now:

Really phoned in the background when I did that one.
So I wasn't really sure where to start, I tried doing a similar process to the character design class initially but realised I needed to get more mechanical and engineering reference photo's first because my visual library for those sort of things is very weak. Once I did that I started again, came up with a few silhouettes:

I was going for a street performer or a musician of some sort, I chose the middle one because I thought it might work but I liked the chest piece on the third so I tried to incorporate it. Came out like this:

Might be able to tell I gave up on this one most of the way through because I HATED it, looks like cobbled together nonsense. I was trying to do WAY to much and it was just coming out busy and shit looking. So I binned it off and kinda cheated. I went with something much simpler and used it as an opportunity to try a technique I saw on youtube for doing anime hair that I thought was interesting:

I pretty much just decided I wanted to do someone in an Evangelion style suit (weirdest ending to a show I think I've ever experienced btw, still have no idea what the hell happened) with like a cyberpunk scorpion tail so I did that, figured I was over thinking it before so I just made something. Very simple, and like I said, it kinda felt like cheating cos I didn't really design a character, I just picked a hook and stuck a random, simple character on it but I did want to try out the candy floss hair thing cos it always looks interesting, video on it is by someone called Kraymer Art on youtube if you're interested, not sure how much use I'll make of it in the future though tbf just always been curious as to how its done and was neat to try out.

Finally this is the free drawing I got distracted by, just some fan art for CR, not done a lot of fan art outside of copying artist I like as means of learning to draw but I really liked the imagery of this character so I wanted to have a crack at it. Came out pretty ok but I think I'd change a few things after watching the compostion video.