DaCeronNine - Art School Journey

[Gordon003]

Those medieval guard designs looks cool! Are there any difference in their fighting style? Just a medieval history nerd.

[daceronine]

Thanks!

Well, since you asked, the halerd is actually intended to help foot soldiers against cavalry, however in scotland and some european places it was often used by guards as a sign of authority. The other more heavily armored knight uses a short sword, which does allow for short range battle, though such heavy armor is mostly intended for defense. More importantly, he has a heavy shield, which is mostly intended for show more than practical battle utility.
So all in all, they are mostly intended for show of authority more than actual combat.

Granted I just needed a few background soldiers xD.

[daceronine]

Wew, couple of busy days, but managed to get some practice in as well as start the perspective part of term 1.

1) Some more skellies, I decided to reduce the amount of them I do in order to still be able to do them, while trying to increase the complexity of of them. From photos first, then from imagination as usual.

2) Male and female proportions from memory. I think I got it down now, and I'm steadily improving the female proportions and form, and will soon need to move to anatomy. I'll still practice it a few time to really print them into memory though.

3) Gesture practice, 30s, then 60s. Got a few challenging ones. Nothing to highlight really, just daily practice.

4) Bonus practice. Did some progress on a webtoon page, trying to apply the little I've learned about perspective. It took a lot longer than expected and it's still in progress, but I can already see the application of some of the new lessons.

I really need to move forward to the next term. Hopefully I'll finish it soon.

[snakker]

Nice work! That proportions dude has some serious forearms

Cheers

[mitsuki-youko]

ooh that comic page looks really good!!

[daceronine]

Haha, thanks. Now that you mention it, it's true, I did make the forearms a bit too buff. I'm used to chunky characters so I guess it slipped by. I'll have to keep those in mind in the future.

[daceronine]

Thanks! I'm learning as I go, but as long as there is some palpable improvement, I'm happy.

[daceronine]

It's been a very busy week, but I completed the perspective term 1 class and moved on to the exercices for it. I kinda skipped the first 2 since I do have some experience with the basics on horizon, vanishing points and rulers using CSP, even if I do need a lot more pratice on them.

I picked some very good pointers on creating more complex elements on perspetive though.

1) So the exercice I jumped to is the room one. Since I need to revamp my own work space, I figured I would copy my office and use the oportunity to "reorginize" it into what I want the space to be. It's still a work in progress, but I should be done soon:

2) I also wrapped up the manga page I posted a bit ago to practice perspective, figured it was only fair to post the final piece. On retrospective, I could have used some of the new learned tips on perspective to improve a few elements (which I learned after finishing the piece), but overall I think it turned out really well:

Bonus: I haven't stopped practicing every day, most of it was not part of the course, so I feel like I should refrain from posting most of it here. Still, here are a few samples of the work done during the week:

I plan to move on to the next class as I continue practicing on the term 1 daily exercices during the week.

[snakker]

Great job on the exercise and the manga drawings! You are a fan of Akira Toriyama? I can definitely see some of his style distilled, especially woth the old guy’s face, I likes

Cheers!

[daceronine]

Thanks a lot! Yea, I pretty much grew with Dragon Ball, Chono Trigger and Dragon Quest, so it became my favorite style to emulate.

[Lockenheim]

Nice work here! Don't feel pressured to move forward for any reason other than you want to for sure, hitting the early terms over and over will help a lot!

[daceronine]

Totally agreed. I've found it helps to keep looking at the lessons and moving ahead, even if I'm still picking up on the exercices. There are many tips in the classes I had not thought about before, such as how to build complex figures in perspective. I'm eager to see what's next!

[daceronine]

Alright, another week of work, and some more progress on the course. I think I finished term 1, and moving on to term 2.

1) Update on the room perspective exercice. Did my own room, rearranged the way I want it to look (soon I hope). Tried to get fancy and add some shadows like the class demo showed as well as wood texture for the floor, since that's what my room has. When comparing them in the end, I noticed the instructor (Marc? I'm bad with names) makes key use of line thickness for details, which is something I need to keep in mind in the future.

The thing with these pieces is that I could keep adding more and more detail, but at some point you need to stop and move on to the next task.

Still, I'm very happy on how it turned out.

2) 3 buildings using 2 vanishing points. This one felt a bit more straightforward, probably because I've done two point perspective before. Great pratice and I was able to appreciate how the points location and height affect the perspective, the angle and the feeling of the piece.

By the end I also tried to get fancy and added some shadows to accentuate the angles, the sky box just because it was simple to do and made the piece looked better, and a bit of gradiant shadow to also accentuate the horizon. I realize I missed a few white spots for the shadows, but let's just call them happy accidents for now.

Oh, and a medieval lightpost, because why not, gives a bit more depth

I've really enjoyed the journey so far, i'm now moving to term 2, though I will try my best to continue to do some of the term 1 daily exercices.

And some bonus pics unrelated to the course, since these keep me very busy during the week:

Excited to continue on to term 2!

[snakker]

your perspective work is really solid, also loving these anime drawings!

[daceronine]

Thanks a lot! Perspective is actually one of the points i've struggled the most. Before starting this course I kind of brute forced my way throuhg it on trial and error. After these exercices I feel many things finally clicked and I can understand how the different positions of the horizon line and vanishing points affect the perspective.

[daceronine]

Wew, it's been a crazy couple of weeks. Had some deadlines to meet.

Started Term 2 now. Not much to show from the first few hours. Lots of information to soak up. The most significant items I've learned are about the elements of art, and how applying them can really enhance an art piece.

I tried to apply some of these points in mind when doing the following piece.

1) At first, I considered a composition in triangle, but I quickly noted it was not working out. The angle was hard, there was barely any "space" on the bottom. It just felt... "piled up". Too many dots competing with each other. The verticality of it wasn't really helping either.

2) So I switched up and tried to focus on the simple structure first.How lines, shapes and dots of interest could be used better. The girl is clearly the focus, but other dots compete with her. There is just too much competition when I really want to make a more tranquil piece.

3) I started from the ground up trying to space lines, dots and general shapes. Note how dots are now of different sizes, and theres a lot more use of diagonal lines, which I feel give a more relaxed feeling vs fully vertical. There's also more space between dots and there is more intention behind the use of space. One main theme being "Sunny fall" (for the colors)

I like to think it's the same idea as the first one, but improved.

4) I then started to add the sketch, the characters. At least now I know where to focus the detail, where I can get away with some texture stamps. This would eventually also help me decide on colors and such.

5) There is, of course, a lot more than went into it. But you can see how the basic structure now drives the composition of the piece.

6) Skipping a few hours of work, I finally finished the piece. I think it's easy to appreciate how the basic structure affected the final picture:

It was kind of a rushed job as well. But I feel like applying some simple principles at the beginning helped improve the final ressult much more.

That was a lot longer than I expected. I just finished the term 2 for photoshop. I'm excited to try out vector drawing and gradient maps. I want to experiment with them a bit and then do the exercices.

Also, bonus for today, a few more sketches and drawings of stuff in progress

Term 2 for photoshop was packed with a lot of info. It might take a while to finish all exercices. But I'm enjoying all of it so far.

[Barry_]

Nice work! The lighting looks great.

[mitsuki-youko]

noice! loved how you rendered that also ur good at perspective!

[daceronine]

Thanks! Perspective in general is always a challenge. Looking at upcoming term exercices it seems we'll eventually get to apply even more complex angles.

[snakker]

Wow that’s some amazing work!

Cheers!