Sketches

5/25 SKETCH

Dinosaur Hat

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9/15 SKETCH

Theme - Greatest Invention

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9/08 SKETCH

Theme - A Year in the Life
Here is my contribution to the theme this week for my buddy Louaye's weekly sketch blog. With all the ridiculous things happening in music recently I just couldn't resist.

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8/26 SKETCH

Theme - Words Cannot Describe
My contribution to my friend's weekly sketch blog.

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LIFE DRAWING

 2 minutes
 5 minutes
 5 minutes
 10 minutes
20 minutes

My sketches from our figure drawing workshop at work.

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LESSON 9



Our final assignment! It was to re-design our first character that we drew for our first assignment. The original design that Silver liked was the sketch on the bottom right of this thumbnail. I feel like I've learned a lot and have become more confident in my designs comparing that bottom sketch with the current one. I'll see what he has to say about it soon.

Fun course! Silver has an advanced design class so maybe I'll take that one sometime in the near future. As of now, I will try as best as I can to take Silver's advice and draw everyday. It's definitely a good habit to get into and if it helps with more appealing animation at all I'm all for it.

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LESSON 8



Draw in your sketchbook!  But not just silly little sketches and ideas that you create from your head, but observations from life. Use your sketchbook to study life around you and use the stuff you've learned from life to push your own creative work. Sounds silly but looking through my old sketchbooks there's a lot of characters I created on my own that don't have strong structure in them. I definitely could use my sketchbooks more for studying to help strengthen my original designs. Good tip, Silver!

The class is easing down a bit in our assignments. Next week is the last class and it's about creating a portfolio. I don't intend on sending a portfolio anywhere but I definitely could see the value in this class for other students. Good stuff Silver, I've enjoyed taking this class. Maybe I'll take his advanced design class sometime in the near future.

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LESSON 7



This week we took our designs and created expressions and attitude poses for our character. At this point Steven Silver reiterated the importance of observation for finding the weight and attitude of our poses. He also suggested we take what we see and push the pose to find the extreme pose, which is a must of course when it comes to animation and posing. A lot of the information in this class was stuff I try practicing already but it's definitely good to hear again and continuously apply in your drawing as well as animating. Poses tell a story about what your character is feeling, so push that pose to make sure the idea comes through as clearly as possible.

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LESSON 6


Rough turnarounds for my design on the gravedigger version of Jekyll.

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LESSON 5


This week Stephen Silver showed us how he brought a drawing from the exploration process to cleanup. The assignment for us was to do the same with one of our Jekyll/Hyde characters. Here's what I have for my gravedigger version of Jekyll that I've been exploring the past few weeks.

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LESSON 4


In this week's lesson, Stephen Silver focused in on hands and features of the face. One of the key elements to the lesson was about being definitive about your features and also not to ignore drawing the hands. They are very expressive and should be fleshed out to the same attention you give everything else in the body. It wasn't as an intense week as last week was but still a good week.

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LESSON 3

 Bowler Hat Assignment - draw the man in the photo, then draw 3 variations from memory



 Jekyll & Hyde - fleshing out silhouettes from last week's assignment (rough exploration stage)


 This was a busy week. Silver gave a great lecture about the construction of the head. He went over the general placement of features on the face and the structure of the skull underneath. One tip he gave was how important it is to draw from life even if it's from magazines. It's a great way to understand the construction of a person because all of the information is right there in front of you.

Once you understand construction, then you want to avoid monotony and symmetry in the face/body. One good tip he gives is to avoid the ladder. If you draw a ladder in the face, all of your features (your eyes, nose, mouth...) shouldn't be spaced evenly down the face.  Some should be closer or farther from each other. This was a tough week with all of the information he went over and all of the work he expected from us, but definitely worth it and looking forward to next week.

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LESSON 2

 Hank Jekyll - 50 year old, quiet, polite, hard working GRAVE DIGGER in overalls and boots

Ded Hyde - 50 year old, loud, angry, and obnoxious ZOMBIE with torn and tattered clothes


This past week we had to draw a bunch of silhouettes for a character based on the Jekyll and Hyde story. We were asked to put our own twist to it so I decided to turn Jekyll into a grave digger and Hyde into a Zombie. Some of the things that I tried paying more attention to on this assignment was the negative space around my character, variation in shapes and sizes, and the exploration process in general.

Something Stephen Silver mentioned in his lecture that stuck in my head was about working from the general to the particular.  Working on these silhouettes and not meandering over details so soon in the design process helps strengthen the overall design. Looking forward to next week's assignment where we have to take one of each of these characters to a more fleshed out design.

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LESSON 1


Walter Chipwitther - 60 year old, happy, heavyset, wealthy entreprenuer in a sports jacket from London (with a monocle)


So my friend T and I decided to take Stephen Silver's character design course to get better.  My intention is to continue growing as an artist and not only becoming a stronger draughtsman but also to strengthen my animation in the process.  I believe most of the things you learn in art can apply to most forms of art because it's a visual medium.  So far after going through week 1 of Silver's class I have a good feeling I will be learning a lot from it that can also apply to animation.  There's a lot of valuable information and I look forward to going through the course and sharing my sketches with anyone following my blog.

Always keep learning!

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