Week 5: 4% Done!

Midterm, Term 1 cake!! any excuse :p

So yea week 5.  I can't believe I'm already half way through term 1 it's been a crazy few weeks and now that we are starting mid-terms soon its just gonna keep getting crazier!

So this week I was mostly focusing on perspective and figure drawing.  I am not enjoying Viscom as much now that we are looking at shading.  It't still a very useful skill and I know it will make my work much better once I have it figured out but I can't really go the extra mile and do something crazy and cool when I am struggling to make the gradients actually look.... well gradual :p

Viscom shapes with shadows :)

Figure drawing was a little tricky this week too.  We moved onto shading and blocking out the head, both of which I am not very good at yet.  Though with the Charles Bargue master copies April recommended for extra credit I got a lot better!  I am still a little surprised at quite how much it all helps.  I have actually got to a strange point in my figure drawing now, I think I have about 70% of the blocking in workflow consistent from drawing to drawing which means I can really see the difference between my work if I am say; hungry, just back from the gym, in a good mood or not etc. I'ts very subtle since I am still so new to all this but I am amazed that I feel like I have gotten to that level.  The teachers here at Gnomon are truly amazing!

Figure drawing is getting there

Mignola doodle 

I also tried out a couple of Mike Mignola copies, mostly because they are just really fun and his shape language is amazing but a little bit to get to grips with shadow shapes.

Perspective was really fun this week.  I finished off my 'Love Machine' project.  The brief was to design a machine that takes in the thing you hate and outputs the thing you love.  So naturally I made a machine that eats tax return forms and turns them into bunnies!!
I am also about half way through my next assignment which is to design a scene showing purgatory with stairs going up to heaven and down to hell.  This one was a little more rigid in requirements but the learning outcome was clear and I think I have it all figured out.

What chu looking at?

Love machine final in graphite

Construction sketch for Purgatory

We had a fun trip to the Getty museum this week too.  Feels crazy the amount of stuff we get done :p but it was a really fun trip and it helped me rethink a few things about my art history final so yay!

Cool stained glass! I think I might try to incorporate this into my final 

Views from the Getty, another beautiful day in paradise!

Some really cool sculpture too!

And of course my fav part of the visit!

This week in Intro to VFX we had a Gnomon graduate Kirk working at A52 as the Head of 3D.  A52 is a commercial house and they have done a bunch of very cool projects including the original Game of Thrones intro, the recent Daredevil intro and 2 league of legends cinematics (the Harrowing and Legionnaire).  It was really cool getting to hear how the inner workings of a commercial house operate, I don't think its right for me though.  I love the idea that you will be working on lots of projects in a much shorter time frame than for games or movies but I think Architecture school and Elena drilled too much perfectionist attitude into my brain and the idea of working on a 5-6 minute cinematic for a year doesn't actually sound like a bad thing to me :p I think I can see a few parallels with the game industry though in the sense that at a higher up level you really need those management and problem solving skills to understand what you are asking of people and to know if there is simple a faster and better way of approaching something.  I think if I did wind up working at a commercial house I would learn a lot of very helpful skills in a very short time! Though for now the end goal is still Riot and Blizzard :D

We had our first Sketchathon meet up today! This was a quick 20 minute sketching event set up by me and a couple of classmates.  We were inspired by Berube from a couple of weeks ago to try to brush up our sketching, and creative thinking skills.  We picked 3 random words, one character, theme and profession and wound up with an Angel, nurse dealing with jealousy.  There were a bunch of very cool ideas floating around but it was clear to some of us (definitely me) that we could do with practicing sketching a bit more. I might try and take photos of everyone's work next week since we are gonna try to make it a weekly thing!

So yea long week and by the end we really needed to blow off some steam.  I have no idea how but we managed to find a few free hours to play ball and go to an amazing Texas BBQ diner.  It's so much fun hanging out as a group and hearing everyone's stories.

A few of our number enjoying the sun at the park just up from Gnomon

great photography courtesy of Ray :)

Great trip to the Texas BBQ place! I slept verrrrrrry soundly after this meal!

Anyway I have to get back to work.  Currently working on my Art History mid term presentation and trying to fit in some perspective and figure drawing homework too :p