Class Recap

Unfortunately, this post will lack pictures since my computer has been blue screening quite heavily and I cannot retrieve my old sketches. Once I get the computer to behave, I will update the post with the sketches!

This week we examined our own abilities in organic drawing and understanding of (not just) the human body by bringing drawings to class and have other classmates examine the drawings and then give feedback on what could be improved.

Just as I have not modeled anything organic before, I have barely drawn anything organic, a part from assignments from the 2D courses and when practicing for said assignments. For some reason character drawing/modeling have not quite drawn me in as hard surface objects has. Even though I know that being able to draw and model organic things will unlock so much for me in all aspects of drawing and modeling. This meant that I only had a few simple sketches to show my team and nothing that I had spent a considerable amount of time on refining.

What I knew from the get-go was that I basically needed to do more sketches, simple as that. I think I have the potential of being decent at it, but I just need to put down the hours to get there. The feedback I got was that even though I was inexperienced, nothing was horrible. I just, as stated above, need more training in that field. What I also thought of my own sketches was that proportions is something I need to study. I find that to get oversized proportions to look good on cartoon characters is not that hard. But to get realistic proportions right is a lot harder. The complexity of the human back is something I also should study further. To improve my knowledge of anatomy, I cannot just sit down and sketch without and material to base it on.

If I had to put up a plan of how to improve in this field over the next 6 months, I would probably schedule it like this;

The first two months I would draw topology on top of images of sculptures and different types of bodies to get an understanding of the flow of poses and how the muscles are formed and placed around different types of bodies.

The next two months I would use what I have learned previously and try to to some freehand drawing of characters in different poses (I would probably also be doing some of this during the first two months). This would act as a test to see what stuck during the first two months. Even if I notice that I clearly still can’t get that leg right, I can just use more reference images to help me, without being completely stuck due to my progress with the rest of the body.

The final two months, I could take my new found abilities and knowledge and transfer it to a sculpting software like Mudbox or Zbrush and see how much I have learned.

Ehta – A WIP 

So the model of Ehta is coming along nicely as I am starting with a very low poly and basic body and then added Edge Loops to increase the resolution to fit the concept. 

What I like about the front so far is the edge flow and definition of the chest and stomach as Ehta looks somewhat athletic but he still has that round belly since he is still young. 

The back cannot be seen in any of the image planes or concepts, so my plan for the back so far is just to get it somewhat in order and then ask Oscar what he thinks should be back there (a part from the tail obviously).

The model so far is not optimized in any way and I realize that I have some unnecessary loops on the model that I need to remove later. But I like to get somewhat of a higher resolution when working and then, if I need to, go in and decided which loop to sacrifice. The edge flow is pretty horrible here as well.

I ran in to some problems with the body since the turn arounds do not exactly match up. This meant that I had to choose which view to base the model of. Which is easier said than done. This resulted in me having a lot of trouble getting the legs to not look like monstrosities! The either became way to thick or short and stubby. Eventually I started to “ignore” the concepts and shape the leg as I saw fit, which I think ended up being the best result!