Stampede

Here are a bunch from the past few weeks at the zoo categorized by species. Enjoy!

Not the most flattering drawing of a giraffe, I underestimated the length of the neck (also giraffes are the bane of my existence). It ended up becoming a study of its patterns instead along with some olive baboon gestures.

Character Silhouette

More playing around with silhouettes as a warm up. I actually want to refine this character design, I really like the head.

MY SPIDER SENSES ARE TINGLING!

Some future classmates and I have been participating in these art jams every thursday this month on Google Hangouts to get to know each other as well as playing some drawing games as exercises. This past thursday we just ended up doing our own things and mostly talking instead of drawing games. I doodled Spiderman out of boredom and liked it, so I wanted to add a little pizzazz! 

And here's the doodle:

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There seems to be something in the sidebar...

???

Because my number Juan fan asked for a teaser. Fine here you go:

Circuit World

I know what you're thinking...

BUT

I didn't think of it once as I worked on these. It was only after did I realize the resemblance...but seriously, how can you not make anything with circuit imagery not resemble Tron?! I was actually thinking about the game Transistor by Supergiant Games, art deco (as usual), and of course computers. 

I thought: what if chipsets were structures? A high-tech temple? What about a city?! And then these happened:

I started with this one first of a basic structure, somewhat temple like, trying to see if the imagery I wanted worked out. I chose the green, grey, and white colour scheme to resemble a basic motherboard with some highlights of colour to give it a glow. Then I started working on the city piece below, then I returned to this piece after painstakingly tweaking the city to make these two work together. 

I thought about how a more "modern" civilization would look with the same visual style of the temple one above. So in a sense, the previous one is of something from the past in that world, and this is an entire society built from that. I also decided that a gradual change in height would look far more interesting than an entire composition of similar buildings. It also gives it a sense of scale far better than what I originally planned.

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For the lack of a post last week since I told myself I would update weekly this month, I'll be posting more than once (or even twice) this week. So stay tuned dudes and dudettes!* 

*Don't mind me...it's late and I kept tweaking the bottom piece all day.

Simplified

Tried out a different style and I ended up enjoying it so much I made two pieces in one day. 

I took some inspiration from My Life as a Teenage Robot, Olly Moss' recent poster designs, and Mary Blair's work. Only after creating my first one did I notice a similarity in style to Samurai Jack...maybe it's because I watched an episode last week. So I also looked at some Samurai Jack backgrounds.

I wanted to play around with very basic shapes, line, and colour and create a setting with a fitting atmosphere.

What started out as a landscape study of mountains quickly evolved into a sci-fi setting with futuristic pyramid structures. I couldn't contain my imagination, it went wild creating these. I even concocted stories behind them as I worked on it.

After finishing the first one I wanted to create another and work in a vertical format and take a more colourful route. This is when I looked at some scenes in Samurai Jack and I noticed several backgrounds had patterns of basic shapes in them (arcs, circles, semi-circles, rounded rectangles, etc.) that either served as texture, something for the viewer's imagination to make sense of, or sometimes for the sake of creating an interesting design and composition. I wanted to incorporate those techniques in creating this piece.

I was thinking of a miniature society with organic-like buildings on the very edge of a pillar. I moved away from a pillar and decided on a cliff instead, it also made much more sense.

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I am really enjoying this style since it's so heavily design focused. It's also just so much fun to do!

I am itching to create more! I'll definitely expand to slightly more complex shapes as I go along.

Doodle

Playing around with profile silhouettes. Just a little appetizer for a bigger post this week on something a little different than usual...

Hear Me Roar

So I jumped onto the Game of Thrones bandwagon and liked every minute of it. I really love the characters, character development, the awesome acting (especially from the younger actors! Carl from The Walking Dead please take notes), the costume design, and especially the story lines and the risks it takes. 

There are still stuff I don't like, mostly not knowing what the limits to the magical elements are in the fiction since it is very minimal. So GRRM could at any time pull off a deus ex machina and the audience is just supposed to accept it. There's a certain shadow-y thing at one part that does this and I disliked that. 

Anyway, I drew Tywin Lannister a few days ago and decided to scan and colour him as well. I was sad that I drew it on a separate piece of paper instead of in my sketchbook. Here is the final:

That lion in the background was difficult to place causing too many tangents but I finally found a sweet spot after moving it around for more than 5 minutes.

Here's the drawing I did, there were also a bunch of other doodles on the page. I drew him because I found the facial features of the actor, Charles Dance, rather interesting and I wanted to try to create a caricature. Also, Tywin is one of my favourite characters since he treats Joffrey with some disdain. I will be sad if he happens to die later on.

I want to read the books now...