Mar '24

Sprint Retrospective #6 of 2024 - (26/2/24 - 10/3/24)

First of all, thx for the kind comments regarding about my personal life update. I'll be lying if I said "I'm fully moved on, guys. Now back to work!" as my lifestyle have to adjust by the fact that a part of my life has been taken away; for good or bad purpose. So I feel sluggish as I'm slowly coming back to myself by the minute.

The good news is that I have a cruise ship this weekend. First time ever so I aim to make it just RELAXING - NO ART WORK!!! If i do art in the ship, it's because I saw something interesting - not bc i want to study. :sweat_smile:

TD Commission

The bad new from the cruise ship is one of the commission has a deadline which is St Patrick Day. Luckily, I finished it.

Aside from the head, most of the drawing are by my interpretation, not from actual TD work. This is based on a mix of Total Drama reference and other artists who does TD in their own way - Hence the art study of Carazar.

All in all, I need to adopt a "Fck you. I'm doing my way" altitude when doing art to be not only more myself but also be expressive and efficient too as I'm not relying too much on reference.

Have also started the 2nd comms which is a comic comm. I have livestreamed to them on Discord all of my draft and it has been approved. However, don't think I can do livestream at 1am anymore as it's affecting my sleep schedule and consistency so it has to come to an end unforunately.

Carazar Study

None. Blame my inconsistent sleep schedule.

Cartoon Drapery

Again, nothing. Blame my inconsistent sleep schedule. Perhaps, it's best to stop studying till i need it again.

Others

Decide to do random fashion doodle.

Also had a chat with art friends; both on discord and IRL. As an artist who does cartoon, I always have question on finding my personal study - like I still want to do TD but MY WAY OF DOING TOTAL DRAMA. Some way where somebody see a TD work and can see "Yeah, that's Gordon003 work alright.

Via our discussion, I realised that I do have my own TD style but I sometime stop myself from going further as I don't see it as TD. All in all, I need to:
- Keep trying random stuff (no matter how stupid it is)
- Have a look at other established styles (Simpsons is my 2nd pref)
- JUST FCKING DO IT!!

Overall, it was fun chatting with my art friends to get their own perspective and see for myself how to apply it to my work.

Goals for upcoming sprint

Gonna keep it simple and focus on 2 stuffs
- Art Comm
- Art Study

As always, thx for the positive comments and hope you guys have a great week! :smile:

Mar '24

Thx for the kind comments @daceronine, @mitsuki-youko and @gregorya

I have that altitude because there's nothing you can change from something massive before. What happens happened. Only thing you can control is now and the near future. Never heard that phrase before but I get it now. :smile:

Mar '24

Reply to

Gordon003

Hey, good to hear you are moving ahead. I agree that there's not much to it other than pick up and keep moving ahead as well as we can. Been going through some rough stuff myself, so I can symphatize on how it can be tough, but it's still the best to do.

Good work as usual too, I think I recognize that sequence for the com of the girl getting "slept" from a past post? looks familiar.

As for style, I get what you mean about people recognizing your stuff at a glance, though I don't think it's something to worry about too much. I believe "style" comes naturally as we slowly practice and combine things from different authors we admire. We start off emulating other artists closely, but as we move along in our journey we naturally diverge into what we like to do.

I noticed this with the stuff I do, as I started emulating Toriyama, but been slowly drifting unintentionally as I try other stuff. It Still looks a lot like Toriyama style, what with the banana hair and what not, but I also is starting to become a bit different as well.

Same with what I see with what you do here. I'm not all that familiar with the TD style to be honest (didn't even know it was it's own category), but I can say you have a knack for doing girls in a particular way even within what I've seen from it xD

Mar '24

Glad you're moving on. Good luck with your sleep schedule, and commissions. Nice sketches.

14 days later

Mar '24

Sprint Retrospective #7 of 2024 - (11/3/24 - 24/3/24)

Just when I thought I finished one holiday, I got another one coming up! This time, I'm going back to my parent home country, China, to meet up with other family members and commemorate my grandpa who sadly has passed away when I was young.

Alas, that's mean that I won't do much art study for next sprint- just travel and chat with others in my poor Chinese speaking skill lol (I don't speak Chinese despite my background because my English back in primary school sucks which requires more attention than Chinese).

So we may have an idea of my upcoming schedule.

Anyway, let go thru my past 2 weeks.

TD Commission

Haven't done much as I was pretty busy most of the nights and haven't got the energy to work on this.

I'm planning to chat with my commissioners about my holiday leave and upcoming schedule.

Carazar Study

Continued my artist study. Starting to feel the study effect on my doodle as I feel more flowy and more gestural - especially with my fashion doodle drawing which is coming next. :smile:

Still planning to continue studying this artist till I'm satisfied that I got everything possible from that artist.

Others

Continued with my random fashion/sport doodle. Starting to rely less on being accurate as I just go with the flow of the pose/expression - much like the art study I have done.

Yeah, feeling like I got my style as I started to rely less on reference and just go what I had in my mind/feeling instead. Of course, I still use reference to make sure I got it mostly right but I feel it's my interpretation - not what the defined style demand so.

Goals for upcoming sprint

Given that I'm going back and staying in China for the whole sprint, I'm going to do something special.

DO NOTHING!!!

That's right! Fck all of you guys! :smiley: I'm going to China and just enjoy practicing my awful Chinese skill. Wish me luck!

But nah really, thx for the positive comments and I see you guys when I'm back! :smile:

Mar '24

The Total Drama studies look good. Have fun on your trip.

Mar '24

LMAOO have fun lol

Mar '24

Reply to

Gordon003

Yo, despite having little bandwith this looks good! Indeed, your gestures and expressions are looking nice and spicy!

Bests of luck in China! bring some souvenirs back!

1 month later

May '24

Sprint Retrospective #8 - 10 of 2024 - (25/3/24 - 5/5/24)

Hola! It's been nearly 2 MONTHS!? Damn, I was out for so long that I didn't have the time to actually sit down in my bedroom and use my digital tablet. So this is where I was:

  • China from 27/3 till 11/4
  • Work trip from 19/4 till 23/4
  • Family Trip (due to Anzac Day which is an Australia national public day) from 25/4 till 28/4

Don't need to calculate but I'm pretty sure I have barely enough time to do some digital drawing at all lol (Between China and Work trip, I have to come back and get updated which involves working at some delayed work at nights)

Anyway, lemme provide some update on key works.

TD Commission

Nothing much.. better get going before the commissioner knock on my online door.

Carazar Study

After nearly 2 months of studying, I feel that I have gained a lot but more importantly, enough to integrate my learning material to my artwork. I could go through more study of his work but I feel I have reached a point of diminishing return.

So out goes one artist. The next artist I'm looking toward to is AtomicKingBoo. I have already studied that artist before but feel I need more practice to get more.

Carazar link - https://twitter.com/CarazarZ
AtomicKingBoo link - https://twitter.com/AtomicKingBoo

Overall stuff I learnt from Carazar artwork

  1. His work consist of geometric shape (e.g. rectangle) but push it to the limit (one of Disney principle in squashing and stretching)
  2. His work very clearly defined which object is in front of other object (e.g. hat over glasses)
  3. His work of character costume looks simplistic but has vibrant colour and pattern to keep it interesting
  4. His work of playing around perspective encourages me to also have a go too - as Total Drama is not known for its 3D portrayal or other angles of interest.

Those 4 points are the most insightful points that I want/have incorporate in my art process. :smile:

Others

Simpson

It wasn't like I didn't do art at all during my holiday. In my China holiday, I was often stuck at home (due to heavy flooding) or stuck in the train due to flood. So at those time, I go through Simpson cartoon book PDF and learnt more about their creation.

As I don't have any portable digital stuff with me, I did my practice all on A5 notebook. Here are some sketches

Also, I have decided to do a Simpson art gift for one of my friends who is a huge Simpson fan. This could either go really well or hellfire for me! :sweat_smile:

Current Draft

So wish me well. :wink:

How To Draw Perfect Circle

TD Doodle

Watching NBA Playoff while doing those doodle. Shame my Magics couldn't win the final game against the Cavs.

Goals for upcoming sprint

  • Simpson art gift (due by this weekend)
  • Get to grip with TD commissions
  • Start with art study of atomickingboo

Been some time since I last visit so gonna visit some art blogs at my spare time and see how slow I am compared to you guys! Thanks for reading!

May '24

Seems you've been busy man, but it's good to hear it all seems going well (floods not withstanding).

I never knew TD was that expansive xD. I'm learning more about it through your study points.

Simpson sketchs look great, and the more TD art and sketches you share the more it's growing on me. I do like your take on it even better than the references though, probably because there are several pretty girls in there xD.