Jim St. - Art School Journey

[mitsuki-youko]

noice!! congrats on finishing term 1!

[Gordon003]

Like the way you are studying. Learning but more focused on areas you loved/intrigued about.

Your environment work looks so damn good.

[JimSt]

@daceronine Thank you for the kind words and I'm looking forward to the further progress, even if it is "all uphill from here"!
The sketchiness of all these pieces is because I'm just stopped working on them. I really wanted to go over them with a more refined and controlled lineart layer, but the needed time to do that just wasn't possible with other plans an time commitments.
I think that where I am and the likely learning goals with these exercises, "perfection" is just not reasonable. There is no doubt a need to be capable of delivering a refined image (for me), but I just don't think it's needed for "studies" - though over time I'm hoping that the refinement happens within the process, instead of being a separate "finishing" step for me.

Comics: I also decided that I'm not really a writer and my comics are just going to be a series of excuses to draw what I want and the story will be completely secondary.

@mitsuki-youko Thank you! And thanks for the tip about logging into the commerce site, it worked!

@Gordon003 Thanks! I'm definitely picking some things that I know are beyond my skills and grinding towards those things. Cityscapes have overwhelmed me for a long time, so I'm happy to spend time doing these - even if they are extremely time consuming. It is time well spent, though.

[mitsuki-youko]

Comics: I also decided that I'm not really a writer and my comics are just going to be a series of excuses to draw what I want and the story will be completely secondary.

haha nothing wrong with that! its also fun to draw ad hoc comics just for the fun of it.

[JimSt]

Hey all!
It's been a super busy summer so far and I haven't been at the drawing table as much as I thought I would have been, but... I'm supposed to be on break...

I did manage to get the first page of "earth #13" done. There's not much going on here, just the standard establishing shot for each book in the series. And speaking of the series, I'm contemplating "remastering" them and re-releasing them. The past issues were mostly some dumb comics I made with stick figures starting in middle school and the actual story doesn't really matter - mostly because I'm a bad writer anyway! LOL

Welp, back to summer break!
Cheers!
-Jim

[daceronine]

Hope you continue to enjoy your break! I'll probably take a breather soon myself.

Comic page looks great! I really love to see people's take on comic stories. I'd love to see more.

[mitsuki-youko]

noice!! that comic looks pretty cool!

[patrycja.lerch]

Looks great!

[JimSt]

@daceronine @mitsuki-youko @patrycja.lerch Thank you!

[snakker]

Looking good man!

[JimSt]

@snakker Thank you! Your stuff is always inspiring to see!

[JimSt]

Break is over!
Vacation, camping in the mountains for a week, failed air conditioners, lots of cleaning, lots of cooking, tons of reading/watching/consuming comics, books, movies, series, and video games. It has ben a gluttonous break from making art. Local schools are back in session as of yesterday and so am I! My attitude has been reset and I'm ready to get back to the art grind! Huzzah!

Term 2 Week 1:

Visual Communication 2 - Elements of Design
Pretty good review of these concepts and it got me thinking about how these elements don't exist as axioms but interrelated, interlocking co-existing collaborating building blocks of all imagery - and perhaps providing some structure for how human perceive to begin with. I don't want to get bogged down too much on that though, but I'm working on deconstructing things I see into these elements and poking my nose into other people's works here on the forum to analyze things in these terms (or trying to...).

PS for Digital Production 2
I picked up the Affinity Bundle over break to add another option to my tool set and I'm working on sorting out how to accomplish all the normal stuff I know how to do in Clip Studio, Krita, and Painter. Nothing too difficult yet, but I am looking at how to make Smart Object-equivalents in any of those and I have a lead, but I'm not sure about it. So if anyone knows, please HELP!!!

PS for Digital Digital Production Exercise 1 - Game or Portfolio Title:
I decided to have some fun with the word "logopathology." I think humans are obsessed and overly focused on ideas, concepts, and words. So much so, that we tend to ignore reality and prefer to swim in the opinions and filters that we have honed over the course of survival. This is the essence of identity formation. Those filters and opinions often are maladaptive and should be purged frequently. Failure to do so creates a cesspool in which we suffer from the disease of words (how I translate logopathology). So not really a game title, but I can see it as a portfolio name for a series of iconoclastic works designed to knock identity on its ass.
Fonts used: Fundead and Mark of the Beast by Blambot

Next up I'll start working on my self-portrait and the vector alien/robot thingy...

Cheers and thanks for stopping by!
-Jim

[mitsuki-youko]

eyy welcome back!

your logo looks great! love the glow!

[daceronine]

Hey welcome back! Good to know you had a nice reset, sounds like a fun time!

Not familiar with Smart Objects in PS, but I did find this video:

I think File Objects would be the closest equivalent. Basically create a file separatly and import it as a file object. Work the object separatly, and it will constantly update in the file you imported it into keeping the original properties.

Logo looks great!

Looking forward for those next items in the queue!

[JimSt]

Thanks @mitsuki-youko and @daceronine and everyone who stopped by!
This week has been challenging to log more art hours, as I'm still making adjustments to my other obligations to let me get back into this.
After some time has passed, I really don't like that logo. If I was making this for real, I wouldn't leave it where it is. I would break the text into curves and then tweak everything a bit further. Then I'd rasterize the layer effects and paint over those too. But that's ok, I think the exercise was just to make sure someone is familiar with those tools in PS (or equivalent), so I'll let it go.

@daceronine Thanks for the link on Clip Studio! Affinity has Linked Files and they behave the same too.

Vector Gradient Exercise
And likewise, I'm going to stop working on the vector-based/gradient alien/robot/critters because I could just sit around and make little dumb thingies for days...

See... dumb.

And dumber...

And the most dumberer! lol

Self-Portrait
I spent about an hour on this and that should be obvious by the sketchiness of it. I'm going to try to do another one tonight, either traditional or another digital.

Cheers y'all!
-Jim

[mitsuki-youko]

self portrait looks great!

ha your little creatures r so interesting XD one becomes the eye for the other xD

[daceronine]

Ha, nice silly creatures. I never got far into that particular excercice, I'm not very good coming up with little critters xD.

Self potrait looks good. Despite the sketchiness there's some clear intention for shadow and weight. That beard loooks epic xD.

[JimSt]

Thanks @mitsuki-youko @daceronine and other passersby! The critters thank you for the positive attention!
I was pretty happy with the self-portrait - but it looks pretty stern and kind looks more like my dad than me. I wanted to do a traditional one this weekend, but things got out of hand AND I spent WAYYY tooo much time on...

Digital Production 2 Exercise #3
I decided that I would make mock-up for a graphic novel: "Tales of Logopathology." I had a lot of fun doing this. The only issue is that when it came time to warp the images, Affinity Designer couldn't do it and Photo required the Linked Image to be rasterized and localized. I guess I'm calling it done because I go the effect that I wanted. There are some elements that I'm not really happy with. I would have liked to have added texture to the cereal, but I'm not that familiar with Affinity Designer or Photo to know if it could be done. The timesink was already higher than I wanted it to be, but I'm sold - this totally needs to be a philosophy comic.

So that'll put me into position to start Week 2 tomorrow and add the traditional self-portrait to the "make up" work list. Onward to more Anatomy!

Cheers!
-Jim

[daceronine]

Good work man! I think the main point of these exercices was to get us familiar with most options we have for editing. After struggle with those options I think you at least now have pretty good understanding of most of the digitial tools available, which I think meets the goal really well!
Bests of luck with the following topics, looking forward to more of logopathology xD

[JimSt]

@daceronine Thanks!
I agree. A lot of these exercises are aimed at highlighting commonly used features that some might not know about. Earlier in my professional life, I taught computer applications at a training center and got my Adobe certifications. I really wish Adobe didn't have a subscription structure (or had bad AI content practices), because their software has features that I'm missing when I really dive into using the vector tools.

I also meant to say in response to your statement...

I'm not very good coming up with little critters

A trick that I use for character and creature concepting (not that I'm all that good at either) is to draw something that I haven't recently seen without reference. The results are often bad enough that it clearly is not that thing, but might be related to it in some way. LOL

I created a bunch of robots this way by trying to draw various droids from Star Wars. It really showed how little I knew about those designs.