Seaweed part 2

And the book too. Got them done and handed in today. Would've preferred to fine tune a few things, but time presses, at least our class is caught up now, we missed 2 animation classes due to holidays. They should really plan ahead more with that, I mean it's not like they can't see it coming. Anyways, here's my seaweed/book page turn video:

Paintings that worked!

Today I was working on my Cloud Painting assignment. I still have to do the final painting for that, but half the project is the studies before that, which are now done. Lessons were learned once again this painting session, but nothing as drastic as 'bought wrong paints' went wrong this time. Some of the paintings turned out better than others, but I'll be using them all anyways, since he's not expecting the studies to be masterpieces:

Just an FYI, these are about the same size as you see them here, as in if you click the image to enlarge it what you'd see would be larger-than-life.

Things that would be changed: The one with in the desert, those yellow lines on the road were a late addition I wish I'd left out. Also, I think these have to be analogous, so that yellow sand is too different a hue. The one with the wispy clouds over the ocean (not the billowy-clouds-over-ocean), the clouds need to stand out more. Though that may be difficult to achieve. I did that one by painting a plain blue sky then adding the wisps with white paint, whereas the usual method is to leave the spaces that are to be white unpainted (which I did with every other painting). But with wispy clouds this is quite tricky, I'd basically have to paint the sky in between each wisp. And the night scene with the full moon is a little bland...

The aforementioned billowy-clouds-over-ocean might be my favourite. I feel comfy with the orange sunset but I'd probably rearrange the cloud formation. I like the crescent-moon scene too, though as-is it's pretty much the billowy-clouds-over-ocean, just with purple.

For tomorrow, the room drawing! REALLY hope I can finish it all tomorrow, but I do have Saturday to work on it as well. Wish me luck!

Character

Well got lots done so far this reading week. My Seaweed AND Book Page Turn are both done, but I need to get to the school to put the frames into a video (the pages are larger than the regular scanner) so getting the videos up will have to wait till Monday.

The other thing I've finished this week is my 6 Character Poses, and I can put those up:

Yes, a zombie seems stereotypically thematic for this time of year, but you're just going to have to believe me when I say the thought of Halloween honestly did not cross my mind when I chose to use a zombie for this project. I don't think I've drawn a zombie since, grade 7 maybe?

Anyways, credit has to go to my character design teacher for the idea of the zombie taking off his arm and using it as a back-scratcher. From there I had a series of epiphanies for the other uses for his limbs. And I love that sun. The zombie does not.

Darn, I did spell Bogey wrong... You still get it though right? Right??

Seaweed part 1

Just starting on the seaweed assignment. First thing I did was scan in the 'template' they gave us in the hand out, traced it into individual frames and made it into an animation. So if you follow the template drawing exactly, this is the motion your seaweed will perform:

As you can see, it really isn't very seaweed-like. Obviously this template was given to us so that we could clearly see the details of the motion, but many people end up making their seaweed move in the exact same way anyways. This template is EXAGGERATED, so if you don't want your seaweed to look like a wagging tail or some sort of vicious attack plant (I can just hear the 'thud' at the end of each swing), don't make it sway as far as this. 80% less sway might work.

Feet

Handed these in today, I'm quite eager to find out how I did, but patience we must have grasshopper.

Also reading week has finally arrived and I'm so grateful it has. Lots to do yes, but I finally feel like I have more than enough time to do everything, as I mentioned in the previous post my time management had been thrown off at some point, so now it should get back on track.

So here's those feet drawings:

Handz

Here's my 12 hands, I'll put up my 12 feet once they're done. Just 3 more feet to draw, they're due tomorrow, but since I'm not shading my feet they get done much faster. At some point my time management went kablooie, so it became impossible to draw all 12 feet in time with shading. Oh well, like how they're working out anyways...

For reading week, in order of importance (ie: what's due first):

-Seaweed+Book Flip animation

-6 Character Poses

-1-point perspective Classroom

-Cloud Painting

-Object Drawings (20 by the end of the semester)

So yeah, that's going to be busy. We should REALLY have an extension on the seaweed/book, since we've only had about an hour of in-class time to work on it (during which we were also finishing our previous assignment) but let's not COUNT on that happening.

Well it's time to go Back To The Future.

...

Feet.

Lessons learned: Painting

Tonight I started work on my 2nd assignment for Painting, Rendering a Sphere.

Simple, yes?

Well here are the lessons learned when I started painting tonight:
A) Tape down your paper on something that won't warp when it gets wet, wood works, newsprint on wood doesn't (I was using newsprint to help avoid a mess, turns out it just created a mess on my image).
B) Good Watercolor paper is THICK (takes a lot of swipes with an exacto knife to cut!)
C) ...



USE THE RIGHT PAINTS


D) Water soluble Oil Paints act and look painfully similar to gouache, until you try to mix them, or clean them off your brush (thank goodness that was a dirt cheap brush, the trash can now contains a very orange object).

Lesson D is particularly important to learn, as said water soluble oils are sold at the Sheridan store, by the same company (Windsor & Newton) and with the same selection of colours we were told to buy in GOUACHE. And since they're paints they are naturally right beside the gouache.
And since they're paints they are quite expensive.
Whatever, I'll hang on to them anyways, maybe I'll get to use them for a mixed media thingy, someday.

In other words: I've lost the receipt.

Portfolio

This is what got me into Animation at Sheridan this year. We needed a minimum 2.97/4 score to get in, the score starts at 2.5 and goes up or down depending on the competition. This is because they only let about 100-130 people into the program each year (still not 100% sure on the number of us).
I got in with a 3.12/4 while taking the Visual & Creative Arts program at Sheridan. The previous year I got a 2.43/4 while taking Art Fundamentals...
And the year before that, during highschool I got about 4 out of 100 (the marking scheme was different, but not the standards!).
As should be evident, Art Fundies at Sheridan is an excellent program, and most highschool art programs are next to useless. They don't need to be, there's so much BASIC stuff they could just tell us that would immediately improve our art skills, but nah, we'll just run in abstract circles.
I mean I really enjoyed Grade 12 art and took it seriously, but I was NEVER told anything about line quality throughout my education before post-secondary. I mean it's SO simple. Use thicker lines away from the light source, and lighter lines near it, and don't use 'hairy' lines! There, that's all you need to get started!
Anywho (yes I use that alot), I'll only put up the stuff from my victorious portfolio (w00t) cause the other stuff is redundant or, in the case of my highschool portfolio, sacrilegiously bad.

Life Drawings

Animal Drawings

Hand Actions

Character Rotations

Character Action Poses

Household Objects

Room, and the same room from a different view

Storyboard

(I really hope I don't have to draw this cat again, I drew him 3 years in a row)

Personal Pieces

The following piece is the only thing common to all 3 of my portfolios. Yes, I did it in highschool and could do much better now, but I still think it's a fairly good drawing, after all it did work eventually (I got 3.5/4 on my Personal pieces overall, so the judges certainly didn't hate it).

Quite a story behind this one, I'll spare most of the details and say this was for an anti-abuse poster contest, at the top of the original it says "Should love hurt this much?". In my actual porfolio I used a full size copy I had recieved (original is in a frame in London), the image was too big to fit in my scanner so what you see is cropped.

The drawing is of a friend who gave me several photos to choose from, I felt this angle worked the best.

Main issue is since this is from a photo, the light from the flash 'flattens out' the shadows. If the flash wasn't directly lined up with the lens, or if there was no flash (so you'd probably need a spotlight or sunlight to get sufficient lighting) you'd see more cast shadows and reflected light which would help define the form better.

These selections from my sketchbooks were all put on one page, so they counted as one peice:

My last personal peice was my self-portait painting that I've already put up on this blog.

Bouncing Ball Animation

First project for my Animation Principles class, 1st year of the Bachelor of Applied Arts in Animation program at Sheridan College (that's for those of you who don't know me or what we do here).

Here's my bouncing ball, bowling ball, balloon and pendulum, all in one big happy AVI file:

Self critique: Ball bounces a little fast, bowling ball kinda jitters near the end, I like my balloon, pendulum is off center but whatever. Overall I'm quite happy with how this turned out.

Also, very important discovery, I do not hate drawing the same thing over and over. I'm actually quite content doing this because I always feel like I'm getting somewhere as I complete each frame. May be premature to say this this early, but that's how I feel at the moment.

Starting up

Introduction!


Hello blog world!

So yeah, Jeremy (http://www.jeremymah.blogspot.com/) kept telling me to get a blog, not that I didn't intend to, I've just been busy/distracted.

Anywho, this is where I'll be piling my artwork, whether it be sketches n' doodles, fun projects, school projects, or (eventually) work projects.

I've got a lot of stuff up on Facebook and DeviantArt already. At DA I go by the username OrthancG. If you run into an Orthanc elsewhere on the net, chances are probably good that it's me (not that I get around a whole lot, I just always use Orthanc). I'll still be adding stuff to DA from time to time, and my stuff that's already on Facebook will stay there, but I'm going to try and make this my main art dumping ground.

Also, if you're into Civilization 3 by any chance, I've made animations for a total of 62 new units for use in that game, which can be found at http://www.civfanatics.com/ . I have my original Orthanc account over there. I've been doing that for about, five years, longer than I've known most people I talk to nowadays.

Ok, enough intro! Art already! I'll start with a piece I did last year, a self portrait in acrylic paints, so you guys have a face to these words: