War Machine

A quick image for the Avalanche blog. I would like to spend more time on this, maybe later.

Choo-choo-chrain

A collaboration with my five-year-old son, Abraham.

Friday drawing session

This one was turning out pretty good, I just ran out of time. This was about 90 minutes, all digital.

Drawing session and Ace in Action concept

I was experimenting with color in this morning's drawing session, but I could never get the skin tones to work quite right. I feel okay about the picture anyway, but just in case it's not enough I'll include some conceptual development from Chicken Little: Ace in Action. This was the original design for Abby's fighter, before they changed it to a hovercraft. I wanted her ship to mix the trendy feminine Volkswagon Beetle-esque look with the military purpose of her fighter.

Friday drawing session doodlery

Some drawing session paintings just work, and others I decide aren't worth posting by themselves. The smart part of my brain says that means I shouldn't be posting them now either, but the stupid part of my brain hopes that nobody will notice even though I'm drawing attention to their deficiencies. I do like lots of things about these though, despite their various problems.

Cinderella's father

For those who were guessing, the version I'm noodling around with is Prokofiev's Cinderella. My wife and I went to see the ballet here a while back, and I've been obsessed with the idea of fleshing out a storybook or animated version ever since. What I find most interesting about Prokofiev's version is not only its unique variation on the story, but the sort of wistful tension that exists throughout the music, even in the playful and happy parts. I haven't found an appropriate style to match the mood of the music, but I'm working on it.

In Prokofiev's Cinderella, her father is still alive, but he's too old and broken in spirit to prevent the abuse she suffers. I like to picture that his weakness comes only partly because of age---so my idea is that he never quite recovered from the grief of his first wife's death, and the oppressive nature of his second marriage has worn him down completely. I wanted him to look like a lord or duke of some sort, someone whose family would be invited to the Prince's ball, and whose moderate wealth would attract the attention of an ambitious lady with spoiled daughters. I tried to reflect all these ideas in the design of his face.

Sorry the colors are so muddy, but I did it quickly (and figured it worked for someone who had lost the will to live anyway).

Character design doodles

I wanted to give people a peek at how I develop my character designs---lots of drawings, writing ideas in the margins, thinking about how to tie the look of the character to his/her personality and purpose, developing the costume designs, etc.

This is for a personal project I'm working on (mostly for fun). 5 points for anyone who guesses the project, 100 points for guessing which version I'm doing.

Avalanche drawing session

I went to the drawing session this morning and tried to apply some of the things I've been learning lately from the tutorial sessions by Adam Ford and Dave McClellan. I painted this almost entirely with Painter's "Loaded Palette Knife," because I wanted a different effect than in my usual paintings.

Lunch study

Some guys at work have been doing these studies during lunch, and I was happy about the way this one turned out, so I'm going to post this. Done from photo reference, no color picker, about 45 minutes.

I'd post the photo, but I don't know if it's copyrighted, so you'll just have to imagine.

Gangster progress shot 2

I want to spend a lot more time adjusting how the values work on this thing, but I need to post something.

Another gangster

Another one for the Avalanche blog. I'll post a progress shot for the other guy soon.

Gangster progress

I'm working on this for the Avalanche blog. I've been really busy at work and haven't had much time to do things for this blog, so I'm going to post progress shots of this piece, and hopefully someone will find it useful.

This is inspired by a tutorial/training Ryan Wood has been doing at work, so I'm trying something a little different. I did this drawing while standing on the aisle of the bus in heavy traffic last night, but that's not why it's messy. That's just how I draw.

Cute Baby

I did this picture of our newborn son for his birth announcement. I'm not usually good at drawing babies or kids, but I like how this one turned out.

RANT of the Week: The Power of Shape

Shape is my favorite design principle for good reasons. Two of the most essential laws of design are unification and contrast (and no, I can’t substantiate using the term "laws," but I’m going to anyway, because I’m right, darn it). Unification deals with the visual continuity of a design, and contrast deals with the differentiation of qualities across that design.


First, let's assume that the goal of character design is appeal. And from what I’ve seen, the character designs people find most appealing are 1. Easily read and understood, and yet 2. Have some unique or unpredictable qualities. People like to feel some familiarity with a character, but they expect to see something that feels new. The law of unification can make designs readable, tying even complex designs together in interesting ways. The law of contrast also improves readability by placing emphasis on what’s important and diminishing what isn’t, but also, the right contrasts can generate that sense of uniqueness and unpredictability. Balancing unification and contrast is hard, but they’re important in creating appealing characters.


Fortunately, while balancing the two laws is tough, the principle of shape can be a powerful tool for working unification _and_ contrast into a design. You can unify a design using echoing shapes, complimentary shapes, interlocking shapes, or shapes that share contour lines. You can then add interest to the design using shapes of contrasting size, type, rotation, proportion, and spacing.











These examples are from a side project I volunteered for. I wanted them to draw upon stereotypes—so I didn’t add a lot of unpredictability to the content of the characters. Instead I tried to put interest into their shapes and other elements. With the Igor character, I used like shapes to unify the character and reinforce his heavy, dejected persona. I used a variety of shape sizes, however, to add that little bit of visual interest. I also spaced the shapes unevenly to add some unpredictability. The mad scientist, on the other hand, uses a larger variety of shape types, but they are unified by fitting them within his squarish frame. I also used connecting contour lines to pull the shapes together. The woman uses both like and varied shapes, and contour lines connect them together. I'm not sure the other designs are worth talking about, and that baby is just disturbing.

Well, sorry if that was long. Hope someone finds it helpful. Or even if it sparks discussion, good. Either way, it's always fun writing these.

Rant of the Week: Education

Concept art I did early in my schooling:
I just graduated from BYU (Animation Major), and it’s a relief to be done. I'm going to miss a lot about school, though. Originally I wasn’t planning to go to college: at the time I had a six-year career in the game industry, and I didn’t see any clear advantage between myself and other graduated artists. However, after I married, my wife convinced me that I’d need to set the example for our kids about the importance of college. Almost six painful (but rewarding) years later, I see four ways that my attitude was wrong about the benefits of education for an artist:

First, I assumed that college didn’t really help artists because I saw that some graduates were still weak artists. Now I realize that artists at varying talent levels go to school, and they almost universally improve a lot—and what I thought were so-so artists were often vastly improved. And the best artists I knew would outdo themselves every semester. I’ve known some very good artists that skipped college because of their talent or success, and now I wish I could show them how school could make them even better. The talented artists I know who also embraced learning were once good artists, but now they’re superstars---and they’ll improve as long as they have that humble attitude.

Second, BECAUSE I was uneducated, I often couldn’t distinguish between a good and a bad artist. Many artists that I once thought were “sub-par,” I realize now were actually quite good, but my narrow, teenage-comic-book mentality couldn’t move past any lack of chiseled biceps in their art. My school experience helped me appreciate that the appeal of great art requires much more than superhero anatomy and dynamic poses.

Third, I didn’t realize an important principle of education: you get out what you put in. The students I know who gained very little from school were either too lazy to do the work that would teach them, or too arrogant to learn from the work they were doing. I treated some classes like that and I’ve forgotten those subjects. But for the most part I worked really hard in school and I can see the rewards.

Fourth (and finally), I once thought that most college classes would be a waste of time for an artist. I never wanted to take a math, English, or history course again after high school, and I had only mild interest in the sciences and other subjects. What I’ve realized now is that what I learned in physics, history, geology, etc., has been more useful to me in my job as a concept artist than almost any art class I’ve taken. Even my math and English classes, which I don’t use much in art, have become useful in the managerial positions I’ve held. (I even used calculus once, believe it or not). The variety of subjects is the part of school that I’m going to miss the most.


All that said, I know that college isn’t an option for some artists, but that doesn’t necessarily have to hold anyone back. If circumstances keep you from a formal education, there’s no reason why you can’t work on developing yourself anyway. The nicest (and most painful) thing about college is that it forces you to take classes and do assignments that you wouldn’t have chosen on your own. However, anyone will discipline themselves to do hard things if they want the outcome badly enough. I know that I’ll do my best to keep learning.


Same character revisited now:

This was a fun exercise, and sometime soon I'll render out the newer guy more so it's a better comparison.

Snow Queen

This is for the Avalanche Blog. I was going for that construction paper cut-out style of design I see so many artists do, but this one was all painted.

Church drawings

For some reason, sometimes I have an easier time paying attention in church if I'm drawing. Maybe it keeps me from being fidgety, and I think I'm usually studying people's faces anyway and this gives me a way to channel that split focus so I can listen better.

These are done with ballpoint pen, and usually pretty hasty before the person moves, so that's why I never get down to their bodies.

More digital life painting

This started out as a caricature, then I reined it back in as I was painted---that's why there's so much proportional weirdness. I am happy with the colors, though. I think this was about 90 minutes






















Also, I finished my last class at school, I'll be officially graduated in April. I feel like I should hand out cigars or something. Or was that for the baby?

Farms of the future

This is a tribute to Mattias Adolfsson's wonderfully entertaining creations.

Brownies

This was for the Avalanche blog again. I've always been bothered by the so-called species of "Brownies," because I like real brownies so much better. But if Brownies are all about eating brownies, maybe I can be okay with that.

The designs of Baz Reynolds have been a great inspiration to me, so I picked his style to do my final character for the design workshop. I think it looks like it's in his style when you haven't looked at his stuff for about a month or two.

Character design workshop

We've been doing a character design workshop at Avalanche, and it's been fun. Unfortunately, I've been in charge of organizing the workshop presentations and critiques, so I haven't had as much time to work on my own drawings for it. We've got one more assignment to finish up, but here's what I've got so far: (My first design in the upper left)

RANT of the Week: STYLE

After many conversations with artists about the merits of style in art, I believe that a misconception exists among many artists: the idea that “realism” is outside the realm of style. Most designers I've known tend to categorize designs as either realistic or stylized.

The truth of the matter is that any type of art, no matter how realistic, is only approximating what we see in reality. As artists, we’re interpreting two-dimensionally the response that our eyes and brains have to what we see in life. Images that approximate three-dimensional distance, perceived color, lighting exposure, and visual organization, are really using stylistic modes of representation (like perspective) to approximate a complex visual experience.

This is why I believe there's no such category as "realism" in art. Everything is stylized. Even photos or movies contain only a fraction of the information our eyes and brains unconsciously calculate and organize when we see something. Even the most "realistic" drawings and paintings are still stylized representations of what we see.

Just to be clear, I don't think this means that attempting to give the audience a “realistic” experience is futile, but that we should approach it with this attitude: rather than believing wrongly that we are reaching the impossible goal of realism, we should design with the knowledge that no matter what, stylization of some sort will be the final result. Once an artist understands this, he may use his knowledge of design to manipulate what the audience sees and thereby control how the audience reacts.

Anyway, I'd like to hear what other people think about this idea. I'm still developing my art theories, so feel free to post comments in rebuttal if you see flaws in my arguments.

Water Nymph

Also for Don's class. This was a brushes assignment: I was supposed to create some new brushes and paint a picture using them. I wanted to do something that was part Gustav Klimt, part Krista Huot. If you ever feel tempted to do the same, don't. It was a lot harder than I expected. I wanted to take it a lot farther, but I'm so tired of working on it now, I'm declaring it done.

Old Witch

Originally this was an assignment for Don's class, but I was having so much fun with it that I thought it would make a good topic for the Avalanche blog. I feel like the colors and values could still use a bit of work, but I'm very happy with her owl-old lady design and the gnarly hands.