Week 7: An Animal Adventure

Another fun week, this one wasn't quite so tough though.  We had a cancellation for story boarding, and the character design homework was pretty loose so didn't eat up the whole weekend yay!  Things are starting to gear up for the final few weeks which feels a little crazy to think of since nothing feels really 'final' yet... I guess as well since we have had a cancellation for almost every class week 11 will be a pretty complete week too :p anyway enough rambling on to this weeks work.

For Character design I had to take my favorite character from last weeks assignment and do 90 gesture drawings of what that character would look like animated.  The long tail made it really fun and a lot easier to make gestural compared to my other two characters so I'm glad I chose the snake queen.

For Product design I am working on the development stage having decided to go ahead with the mask idea that controls the sentient cape.  After trying out a  bunch of forms I decided on an articulated mask that can unfold across the face.  The idea is the more unfolded the mask is the more energy it drains from the user to power the central gem that controls the cape.  I think its a pretty common idea in comics or manga kind of like the Kaio-ken the longer you try to use this weapon the more danger you put yourself in.

My detail page is starting to shape up to a final looking piece.  I want to work on a pattern for the fabric and maybe add some more textural detail but I don't think the layout will change much.

I also wanted to play around with Maya and Marvelous designer a little and since I am designing this prop for a game I figured I could rationalize spending a little time putting together a quick game character to show off the helmet prop.  It was a little frustrating though because while I was modeling I kept realizing how much more I wanted to get out of the model but I was not quite sure of how to do it.  I guess what I mean is that the 2D design side of my brain has improved enough that I really need to work on my understanding of the 3D programs now to catch back up! That was a pretty exciting revelation and I now cant wait to get stuck into the second year here at Gnomon.  I don't think I will dedicate much space in my layout to this but it was a lot of fun to quickly dip back into 3D and realize how far I have come with my 2D .

For design history my group designed a poster in the Russian Constructivism style.  Our brief was to tackle one of today's big issues so we decided to go with solving the clean energy crisis with 'cold fusion'.  We also used the Greek mythological story about Prometheus bringing fire to humanity from the heavens to help us with our imagery.

For color theory I had to block in my base colors for my painting.  It looks pretty yucky in this photograph and I guess the real thing still looks kinda rough but for a painting with no lighting or detail yet it is still telling the story I want it to. I still believe the final piece will look cool but at least I have this picture for reference.  I think it'll be pretty fun to put all the pictures together from the initial sketch all the way to finished piece!!

My creature continues to get even weirder... After a quick talk with Andrea I am going to redesign the snout to be less piggy but I think its finally starting to take form :) This will be another project that will be fun to see a lineup of how it changed from the original cute design to this creepy dragony thing that u totally wouldn't want to hug...

Lastly yesterday we all went on a trip to the zoo by the coast.  It was a really fun day out lots of sun and cute fuzzy critters.  They even had a couple of domesticated bunnies!! yay!

For next week we are going to be doing a sculpt based on a creature we picked from the zoo trip.  I went with the super cute otters! They slept through most of the day but I did manage to catch them doing cute things for just enough to get a few pages of gestures and some photos for next week when we get to play with Monster Clay!

Max made a new friend

though I'm not entirely sure if she liked him back...

The closest thing to Pokemon I've ever seen!

Over 100 Posts

Over 100 Posts!! Wow it seems a very long time since I started this blog way back at the end of 2014 when I left the NFTS and started my next journey. Now I've just passed the half way mark for Term 3 at Gnomon!  It's been a pretty crazy term so far but I've been having so much fun with the late nights and crazy workload! Although taking a minute to look back at where I started and where I am now has me totally excited for the next 100 posts, here goes!!!

Character design assignment  - Design 3 characters from a fairy tale (King of the Golden Mountain, by the Brothers Grimm)

I went with the Black Dwarf, Snake Queen and Young King.

For the dwarf I wanted a character who didn't look intimidating, since all the characters that interacted with him seemed very at ease.  Having said that I still wanted to sneak in a little spitefulness into his design to reflect his ultimate goal when bargaining with the merchant character at the beginning of the story.

For the Queen I wanted an older character since she feels like someone who has lived through a lot.  I also wanted to reflect her manipulative side and since she spent 12 years as a snake I figured she would totally have a pet snake now.  The enchanted princess who becomes the snake queen also lives in a far away land so I gave her an oriental feel to contrast with the more western style I picked for the main character to emphasize the distance between the two kingdoms.

Lastly for the prince I felt his naivete and over confidence were characteristics of a much younger hero so even though I gave him the rare items he acquires at the end of the book I still wanted to give him a youthful feel, despite all his trials.

Progressing through Color Theory.  I completed my digital value and color studies, almost ready to put paint to paper.

You may be able to tell but the color pallet for my painting was inspired by a few sequences from Kubo (addressed later)

For Product Design we are progressing to the ideation stage of our final piece!

The brief is to design some piece of gear for your character. I am going with some form of protective item.  The first option is a transforming feathered cape.

The second option is a compass that reflects how in danger you are by opening the iris on the top to reveal a ravens eye.  The more open the aperture the more danger the owner is in.

The last option is a mask, protecting the character from harm but also enhancing the users sight.

I think for next weeks development I will be combining the mask and cape design.

For Storyboarding we were given the task of boarding out a scene between two characters on a rooftop.  One of whom is planning to jump.  I went for a story told using the 'unreliable narrator' mechanic.  This means we see the action in a distorted way but this is later revealed and we the audience are shown the true reality.  I will be adding more boards into this story to flesh out the parts I had to skip over and adding some tone to make them more readable later.

A few of us decided to go to an early showing of Kubo and the Two Strings! It is an amazing animated feature and I totally recommend it to anyone.  The music, visuals and story are enchanting and beautiful.  I was on the edge of my seat through the action, gasped at the dangerous parts and laughed along at all the cute jokes.  A couple of us were so inspired by the film that we took a half day the following day to check out an exhibit of some the models and sets at a local museum in Little Tokyo!

Also for Zoology class some of the Gnomies brought in their pet snakes and a bearded dragon for us to 'study'... well for us to pet!  The snakes were super cute and really affectionate.

Week5_Half Way there

 Another crazy week with character and product design work loads being pretty off the charts but I survived :) now on to the next week which looks like it might be the same :p

Second trip to see Noxy.  This time we were sketching him doing different gaits so the drawings had to be pretty loose.  I decided to use my brush pen instead which worked pretty well for the faster more gestural work. 

Preliminary sketches for my creature concept.  A large but still super cute creature used by tree folk to move around their giant forest environment.

The above 3 pics are for my product design mid term.  It was quite a push but I managed to get all the pages finished.  Over the next 5 weeks I will be designing a new prop for the same character.

For design history I designed an art nouveau comb.  Made from Jade and Enamel this comb depicts the story of Chang'e the Chinese goddess of the moon.

Lastly are my 4 characters each designed to fit into a unique time period (from left to right) Tang Dynasty China, Ottoman Empire, Victorian England, Viking.

Phew this term is shaping up to be another tough one but I am learning so much! :)

Week 4 - Horses, Pandas and Bunnies

Quite a fun week this time from animals being brought into class to draw, to fun character and prop design homework and a trip to see a bunch of horses.  I didn't manage to get a whole lot of sleep though there was plenty of work to get done!

Character homework: We started looking into character motivation by researching the 12 character archetypes.  Archetypes like the Outlaw, Innocent, Adventurer etc.  Our homework was to do 4 of each archetype 2 normal and 2 shadow.  Shadow archetypes are characters who have been driven into danger because of their motivations.  For example a shadow adventurer is a character who can never settle down and has to constantly move from place to place, kind of like Dr Who.

These are my shadow characters! I had a lot of fun with this project. I am really enjoying character design this term

This is one of the horses from our Zoology field trip she was giant and totally wanted everyone's attention while we were drawing .

I found a few extra minutes to make some fun snacks this week too! Avocado filled rice balls shaped like pandas! Yum!

Color theory homework, mixing colors.

More Color theory homework, my sketch is now on my board and its all been OK'd and ready for painting when we start! 

I have been taking a couple of extra figure drawing classes just to stop from getting rusty :) don't know how but I think I have actually improved by taking some time off from the usual amount I have been drawing in the past. Just a little though.

The model didn't show up this week though so Van decided to model for us while we did our head studies.

Our story boarding assignment was to design a single frame in which a character is using a performance as a distraction while they steal from the audience.

This was really quite useful since we all had plenty of time to think about composition and story telling through a single frame.

For product design we had to develop one of our three ideas from last week and get it ready to finalize for next week.  I went with the message in a bottle crossbow but I developed it to be a little more robust than the original idea.  I also looked into how each of the parts could collapse and feel a little more uniformed. Next week I will be drawing the beauty usage and detail shots for this prop! yay!

To get to the final design for this week I had to do a bunch of development, experiment pages.  You can see from these pages exactly where the final design came from. I like to iterate this way, not having to worry about rendering or perspective since I can think in 3D quite well I can just use these 2D orthographic views to experiment with form and function.

Lastly this was the only picture I could get of the super cute blonde bunny Danny from the last post.  We weren't allowed to take photo in class but I managed to get a pic while he was being packed away. bye!