Cars

So here's what I got together from the Auto Show. I started with just pencil work, then by the time I got to drawing this wonderful Ferrari 458 Italia I decided to use markers. I was happy enough with the result that I went ahead and marker-ed the other drawings I liked, and this is the result.

Pixar much? At the end of Cars they had a cameo with Michael Schumacher as himself, as a Ferrari. Of course, he was a Ferrari F430, which doesn't have quite the same visual effect (for me) as the 458 Italia. So what I'm saying is they better put the 458 Italia in Cars 2. And a Delorean while they're at it.

No, the Stig (read: Top Gear!) was not there, but I wanted to have at least 1 'human' in my assignment, so I dropped him in. Here he contemplates how he's going to get in to this decidedly too-small Audi kart. The size was on purpose, in real-life this thing looked like it was designed for a kid.

And to be cyclical, there was an episode of Top Gear where Michael Schumacher claimed to be the Stig, so have I drawn the same "person" twice here?

Here's the photo reference!

Animals and News

Well the group film is on it's way, we have the rough storyboards and will have more finalized boards by next week. We've got a great and funny story and everyone is on-board for it, so that's going swell. I've been placed as 'layout manager', which means it's my job to make sure the layouts are getting proper attention, and help everyone produce them. Of course everyone helps with every part of the process, but we each have a specific focus as well.

Layout and Storyboard class are both completely focused on the film right now. For animation class, I've got some key poses and backgrounds that I'll put up very soon. Meanwhile we went to the Royal Winter Fair, again, today so I've got studies from that. As well we're doing a small anatomy study project, and I'll have that up once I take a picture of it.

Meanwhile, here's my animal work from the fair. I started off with some pen gestures, went back to pencil for some structure practice but then I moved to markers. I had a lot of fun blocking in the basic shade and color with marker, then finished each drawing with pen contours on top of the block in. Definately gonna keep trying this, it's much better than doing a line drawing and then colouring in Photoshop afterwards:

I'll note the colours aren't quite right due to the scan, but since it's not an attempt to get exact color it's not a huge deal.

Zoo punk

So we had excellent weather last week, 15+ Celsius in mid-March. And then we had our Zoo trip this week, and it was about 0 Celsius. Blargggggh.

Anyways, we only need one page from this trip, which is a relief. That said, the only drawings that were of any use was the very last one I did and one I drew today from a photo I took. Everything else was rather rough gestures, and since it's only one page I felt I'd do better if I just submitted one or two studies.

So here's what I've put together, not sure whether to use one, the other or both, but I'll figure it out tomorrow:

Also, I put together something in Maya for Joel Beaudet's 4rth year film, it's a control panel that one of the characters interact with. I've already made a few minor props and I'm planning to make a bunch more, which I better get a move on if they're to be of any use to him. I don't know what deadlines he has but I bet they're coming up quick. Anwyays, here's some views of the control panel:

The main concern I have is that I didn't texture this, he didn't say I had too and I haven't had a lesson on texturing in Maya yet anyways. The colors on that Mario Kart I made is a very basic default texture applied directly to the polygons, no UV mapping was involved. You could use the same technique for most of the bits on this, but there are a few display meters that need an image stickered on to them. Might do it myself some day for fun, but for now I'll keep focusing on just making the geometry, which I am happy with on this.

Zombie plan?

This week we took a quick trip down to the University of Toronto, correction, a quick COLD trip to U of T.
Temperature aside, purpose of the trip was for life drawing, though in this case it was decidedly dead drawing. We went down to the basement of the medical science building where they had a large collection of preserved human parts for us to draw. The smell of preservatives was quite strong, could have been worse I guess. As for the experience of drawing real body parts, not as strange as one might expect. I think it helps that there wasn't much skin on them, diminished the 'human recognition' factor (look up 'uncanny valley' on wikipedia). Though some of my classmates elected to draw some of the fetus specimens available, I opted out of this since that did hit too close to the uncanny valley for me.
Anyways, I spent the 3-ish hours we had mostly drawing this arm specimen, on good ol' pencil and paper. I took the drawing and spiced it up in Photoshop, and here's the result:

Sometimes I really do feel like I'm becoming a doctor behind my back. Funny cause as a kid that was my initial career plan, until I realized that I didn't want to study anatomy THAT closely, and remembered that I had much more fun drawing stuff.
Meantime, working on a group storyboard with a plethora of cats involved, and I'll get my latest animation (lip sync assignment) up once I get the sound file from the school.

Royal Winter 2009

It's that time of year again! We had our Royal Winter Fair trip last Friday, though this year we only needed two pages, one for gestures and one for some longer studies/better drawings, which was a relief compared to last years 6 pages. Also we spent a bit more time there, and because we got there later in the day it wasn't crazy packed like last year.

Anyways, here's what I've put together for Monday:

Last week was pretty crazy, lots of stuff that needed lots of work got done, namely a painting, rough work for storyboarding and a presentation for history class. For history we had to take a modern object and 're-invent' it in some previous era. Along with research on the era chosen we had to come up with some drawings of our new object. I choose to make a video game system in the gothic era, and well, this is how it turned out:

It's the 'Praystation 1300AD'! The giant disc at the back is the game disc, spun by a water wheel. Screen works by opening and closing shutters on millions of red, blue and green stained glass panels. The bishop seems to be playing Assassins Creed...

Yeah, that was a fun idea and my only regret is that I had to start drawing it at about 1am, but it got done and everything went fine so now I am getting my sleep back and everything is peachy. Yay.

For tomorrow I intend to get some animating done on the new walk-run project, maybe I'll finally upload the finished lift-and-toss too (cross fingers). See you then folks!

Caricatures

Today's in-class activity was Caricatures! No model, well we were the models, most people went up to be drawn twice, and since multiple people drew them each time there are now a LOT of portraits floating around.

I handed one in and gave one away, but in return I received two drawings of me (equivalent exchange!), one from our prof. with his signature (bet it'll fetch a pretty penny one day but totally won't sell it) and one by fellow classmate Eva, (can't seem to find her blog, not sure if she has one), both are quite excellent so thank you!

Anyways, for most of them I felt I made a good likeness, but that's just it, these ended up too much like regular portraits, exaggerate! Grrr!

^Ashley from Lame Art

^Danielle from Danie's Stuff

^Eva will never live this joke down.

^Katrina

^Kyle from KVMOWAT

^Sam from Images and Ideas

^Shaela

^Sonia

^Vincent (Decepticons attack!)

And here's me by Eva:

And finally, me drawn by the Thurmanator (our prof Mark Thurman):

Yes, my lower half appears to have become a mannequin/pinocchio, obviously Mark was just having a little fun with this.

Zoo zoo zoo

We went to the Zoo 2 weeks ago, actually could've put these up anytime but it slipped me mind (sorreez!), we needed a minimum of 3 pages with 6 gestures each, and 3 pages with 2 studies (ie: longer drawings) each. It was very cold at the Zoo, which was quite detrimental to the drawing initiative, but we managed. At least I had a chair for this trip, and they had buses! So why didn't they have a bus to the Royal Winter Fair again?

......

Anyways, here's me drawings, I ended up with just one extra gesture page:

Royal Winter Fair didn't have Chairs.

Oh the wit! But seriously, when it was lunch time we only saw about four tables, and of course there was that bar section with a whole bunch more empty tables but you weren't allowed in unless you bought a drink at the bar. Was there like another food court outside or something? Whatever, the indoor situation pertaining to seating was re-donk-u-lus.

ANYWHO, I was hoping I would make more drawings than I did while there, but I certainly have enough for the 6 pages we're supposed to hand in from the fair. Or is it 4 pages? The handout at the beginning of the year says 4, but I keep thinking I heard 6 somewhere. Meh. So here's my 6 pages, as always the drawings were scanned in and arranged in Photoshop (cleaned up a bit too), so if I have to reduce to 4 I can always re-arrange stuff:

The originals were all done with a mechanical pencil. I brought markers, conte pencils, pens and regular pencils with me, but a combination of not wanting to waste time switching between tools (in a VERY crowded building no less), and just being more comfy with my mechanical pencil resulted in doing everything in one medium. At least I had the options there.

Dyslexic Cow

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.