Happy Hallowe'en

Just something I did on my spare time during reading week. I'm thinking of colouring it later on and adding some other stuff to the image, I just didn't have the time to do so.

New Banner

I finally took the time to create a banner for this blog. Created mostly on Illustrator and a tiny bit of Photoshop. I did quite some research about highway typography and finding the right font to download was harder than it should have been. It's a variation of the logo for my comic idea titled "Bread Crumbs".

Mid-Term Madness

Reading week is next week, so that meant a ton of work was due. Thank god I didn't stress out as much considering the ton of work that was due plus an actual mid-term. So I'll attempt to go through what we did  but I may be missing some stuff because I forgot to take a picture of them and such.

Painting

We were supposed to do a watercolour painting "en plein air" (an outdoor painting). I decided to do the park nearby my place and I forgot to scan the final but took a picture instead. Either way, I'm not very proud of it and I see all the faults I made which I pointed out during critique.

I really don't like it. One reason is because it turned out too bright, barely any dark colours. Second, the scene looks boring, but I thought the intersection of the paths was interesting from where I was sitting. I agree with my teacher saying that the paths draw our attention to nothing. And finally, it's not really something I don't like, much more along the lines of "this makes it look weird". I was sitting on a bench that's on a slope, which makes this look like the perspective is somewhere in the air, or "en plein air" harharhar. Sorry, bad pun. But yeah, I just don't like how it looks like I was floating.

Life Drawing

This was actually from 2 weeks ago, but there was turkey break so I had no class then. We had to hand in one geometric drawing, one contour and 2 gestures. The gestures were the two awesome ones I posted not too long ago. 

This one is the geometric. I don't really like it, I had a better one, but unfortunately I framed that one wrong so one leg went off the page. But that one was better, I had to settle for this one to hand in. I like the arm on the leg on this one though, it foreshortens a bit which was pretty cool to do for this kind of drawing.

Contour drawing, I had 2 awful attempts until I got this decent looking one. I just hate his left hand, everything else is really fine. But I got an awesome mark on this project/portfolio#1.

This one's from extra life after eavesdropping on a friend's tutor and had a revelation. I He was taught how to properly hold the conte and it changed how I drew so much. Unfortunately, this was 1/2 good drawings out of a whole pad. I have some good ones in a pad that's not complete yet, once it is I'll post them.

Our current project is pretty fun, and I hope I get a good version for one of the drawings before it's due, and the other kind of drawing is absolutely fun to do. It's a kind of gesture drawing that I'm really enjoying.

2D

We had to create stamps that represented Canada without using cliches. I had a bunch of ideas like Alexander Graham Bell, Tommy Douglas and insulin. But the phones were pretty boring in a composition, (sadly) Tommy Douglas isn't that recognizable so there aren't many photos to choose from (SERIOUSLY?! WTF CANADA. Tommy Douglas is a hero) and insulin as a stamp would have looked like I was promoting drugs. So I settled for coins when she said we needed a different version or a series after making the main design. I thought a coin series would have been awesome with the colourful gradient background a la Glee posters.

ToonieStamp

Stamp Variations and Small

The first is my main design of the toonie, and the second file is of the series and how my stamp would look smaller considering it's a stamp. I did a ton of changes for each coin it was getting annoying. At first I had all the coins similar size as each other in terms of how much of the page it was taking up. But it just didn't feel right. I thought that we're so used to seeing these coins that not only do we differentiate them by colour and design, but size as well. So I had to resize each one (a ton of times) proportionate to the other coins in each stamp. Then it just worked, it's recognizable and easily distinguishable.

We then had to mount it on a 10x15 board for critiquing. I felt like a pro after meticulously placing the prints evenly on the page. It's like I was about to pitch a stamp design to a client. I just noticed now how that is part of VCA (arts and how it can connect to business) and now I understand even more as to why we mounted them...

******

Anyway, that's what I have at the moment. I still have one final project to do for Friday, and I've been drawing a ton from life since we need 10 interior drawings with minimum 5 people for life drawing. We all thought it was due on monday, but it's actually for the week after reading week (we were all freaking out). At least I got 10 drawings, I'll draw some more (maybe 10 more because I actually want to do more) and post my final ones before handing it in. I'm finally getting used to drawing people in public places.

School and Sketchbook

Digital Media

So for our first project for my Digital Media class was to create an image out of anything using photoshop. So you can create a landscape using vegetables as mountains and such. Most people decided to do an animal because the teacher used it as an example. But they most of them were cheap and did it on top of an existing photo. But their work was still amusing.

I decided to nerd out like usual, so I started referencing an image from Half-Life 2 with a strider. That turned out pretty unusual so I restarted by recreating the Big Daddy from Bioshock (since a friend was currently playing it and it's my second favourite game of all time).

Rather than doing it on top of an existing photo, I just referenced a smaller one; I didn't want to "trace". What's awesome was that my teacher recognized what this was but didn't recognize someone's recreation of the Venus De Milo. And yes, I didn't bother doing the little sister because I got tired of working on it and didn't want to possibly ruin the perspective that took very long to work out.

Painting

For painting we were supposed to create a scene from a list of descriptions the teacher gave us, I chose a swampy marsh. I asked him beforehand if I could use marker to outline and he said go ahead. As long as it is primarily watercolour, he doesn't care how you go about creating your artwork. So here's some work in progress pics along with the final.

I was pretty satisfied with it, I got the look I wanted. But it wasn't until I put it up during the critique session that I noticed how flat the ground looked and only vaguely resembled dirty water, with the bottom of the trees implying it. The teacher even pointed it out when it was my turn to talk about the painting. At least I noticed I mistake, which is good. On the plus side, I got compliments for the look of it. One of them said, "it looks like something from animation" and my teacher agreed, after jokingly saying it wasn't a compliment. It also looks pretty as my desktop background, but I prefer my current Skyward Sword background.

Sketchbook

So starting a sketchbook means a new first page. I decided to apply my "make the first page pretty so you don't get discouraged/disgusted every time you open your sketchbook" idea again. I'll probably do it for every sketchbook from now on. So you must have wondered what my most favourite game is after reading about my Bioshock picture. It's Portal, so to commemorate the recently released DLC for Portal 2 I decided to draw GLaDOS as my first page. I've had the idea of this doodle for quite some time, I just didn't bother drawing it. At first I drew it in pencil, and it wasn't until today I went over it with marker. It just didn't look right in pencil. And yes, I did reference images from Portal 1 to get stuff accurate like the number of disks and the placement of the personality spheres.

 This isn't an awesome drawing but I thought I'd like to share the story behind it. There were 3 girls sitting outside on the patio of the cafeteria. I was sitting inside facing them, and they just started their lunch so I thought it was a great opportunity to draw them. All of a sudden a wasp flies by them and the only girl in the drawing freaked out and they moved to another table. I was kind of sad since they all were sitting differently from each other.

 Here's a little blast from the past. This is something I drew last October. Random, I know, but I looked at an old sketchbook (my first one in Fundies to be precise) and laughed while flipping through it. I forgot I drew this awesome picture. Enjoy, it's called "Raw".

Also, Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Canadians. I shall draw a hand turkey now.

Life Drawing

So one of the challenges I gave myself this year was to complete a sketchbook in a month (or less). I had a couple of pages left on friday and had plans to draw in the cafeteria. We ended up going to a friend's house during lunch, but returned to the caf for a bit. So I got about 2 pages from that. I then completed the final pages doing some studies, drawing from memory and completed the final page with a doodle expressing my current feeling.

Here a couple of new stuff from my sketchbook:

This was during a class critique of our watercolour portraits in painting class. I couldn't let the opportunity to draw bored people in class go to waste. Plus, it entertained me during the critique.

I did a couple more like this, this was during an extra life session. During break I would take out my sketchbook instead and draw people. If you haven't noticed yet, I've been taking every opportunity to draw if the chance arises. 

This was the final page in my sketchbook. I find it humorous that my last page greatly contrasts the first page in my sketchbook.

Life Drawing

Now here's a couple of life drawings (sans faces) that are okay:

This one I don't like that much, but the pose is pretty sweet, and although messy, I like the lines - it just flows so nicely.

Some awesome gestures.

I really like this one.

Since extra life is currently catering to Art Fundamental students, there were a ton of 30 second/1 minute poses. I didn't want to waste paper so I stuffed as many gestures as I can in a single page. There's a ton more like this, it's just this page looks the best out of all the other ones. I really like the one in the middle of the person reaching up. Heck, someone even said, "That looks awesome. I would literally pay money for that page." And no, he wasn't a fundies student.

***

Speaking of Art Fundies students, during the first extra life session that happened after the strike, a student sitting beside me complimented my work and asked me for advice. Me. For advice. It was an honour. I'm not saying I'm awesome at it, I know I'm not even that good. Passing by the animation hallway always makes me cry, but it made me realize how much I've improved in less than a year. In my second Extra Life session I attended, someone from my program even complimented my drawings too. It really feels great to be told your work is awesome, even though you know it's a piece of crap. Compliments like theirs make me more confident about my work, and I thank them for that.

For 2D we had to use our name in a creative way to express an idea. So it's pretty much basic typography. It didn't even have to make sense, as long as it conveyed whatever you wrote at the bottom (teacher gave an example of "and I am a deer" by using the letters in her name to create antlers). Here is mine (yes, I found a way to embed my PDFs YAY!) :

My Name is Marco...

We had to use any sans serif typefaces (which I found out last minute, so I rushed to change any serif typefaces I used) and everything else was free to do. We're supposed to put our favourite one on a t-shirt and wear it next week (using a t-shirt design kit from the school), but many people like myself don't have a printer nor were we able to use her printer on a different date due to schedule conflicts.

My favourite one has to be the "and I am clumsy" one. I put a lot of thought into that one, especially the font. I used Futura (I also like futura, hence the header and footer) to convey a sense of structure, only to have the letters fallen. Then it would be the "and I like to run" and "I am adventurous" would be my other two favourites.

Also, my teacher loved my drowning image so much as I was receiving my rubric she kept describing how awesome it was. I got a 97/100 hells yeah.

I will also be posting some sketchbook drawings and life drawings later today.