Georgetown atelier

A couple days ago I started a part-time Illustration Atelier at Georgetown Atelier in Seattle, WA. Upon recommendation of my good friend James, I’m going to do my best to keep a blog about my time there. You can learn more about the school here: http://georgetownatelier.com/

The school has actually -just- signed a deal with Gage Academy of Art to help with bookkeeping and the like.

About the class/ teacher:

This class is only one day a week, three hours per session and broken up into trimesters throughout the year. I’m not sure how many trimesters the program will be… my guess is that it’s going to be dependent upon how many students return. Our instructor is Brian Snoddy (Pronounce Snoe-dee), a professional of 28 years. He got his start just 2 months after I was born, so he can actually get away with saying he’s been doing this shit as long as I’ve been alive. He gained popularity doing work for Magic the Gathering in its early days. More recently he’s done stuff for Privateer Press (warmachines) and is currently a full-time designer/illustrator with Flying Frog.

The class is kind of unknown right now. We know it’s going to be broken into phases. Working with pencil for a few weeks, then pen and ink and finally Gouache (probably just sticking to black and white for this first trimester). Beyond that we don’t know what we’ll be doing. Being an atelier, the class will probably be almost entirely drawing. Learning by doing rather than just a bunch of lecture. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to get out of my own head-funk and work in a positive and encouraging environment.

Day one:

After all the introduction (most of the first session, actually) to Brian and his work we settled down to do some drawing. We were given printed pictures of random surface textures and asked to choose one (or a few) and start working on recreating that texture with pencil. Being a littleoverly ambitious I decided that I was going to try my hand at designing a character that I could apply my chosen texture to. Which lasted maybe ten minutes. Brian didn’t actually say anything to stop me but I realized that I was being cocky so I put that out of my head.

THAT WAS A GOOD THING FOR ME TO DO.

Sorry for yelling. Part of this class is me teaching myself more positive habits with art, both internally and externally. Once I started actually attempting to render the texture itself (cedar bark, I think it was) I found myself fumbling about more than anticipated. Come on, I did my hard time at DigiPen, I’ve been drawing my whole life. How hard could it be to draw some bark. WELL I forgot that I hate everything I draw and it takes most of my effort to just keep drawing, let alone worry about how I’m drawing.

Man oh man is that the thing I need to work on the most. Really. Like, I nearly frustrate myself to tears. And for no good-god-damned reason. That’s the benefit of having that time sectioned off each week, away from home and with other people who are all there to learn. I can just grit my teeth and keep drawing. With some guidance from Brian and just continuing to slam my head against my self-erected wall I got some good work in by the end.

Day two:

We were all asked to bring in a photo of an object we wanted to draw. I love armor and weapons and junk so I grabbed a photo of some ancient chinese stone-tile armor. There was no dilly-dallying, we got in and started drawing right away with Brian working on his own stuff right along with us (“If I can’t do it in front of you all then I’m a hack and shouldn’t be teaching this class”). He would get up every 20 minutes or so and make the rounds, offering pointers and showing each of us a bit of technique to help tackle whatever challenges we were facing.

In retrospect it was a good class. At the time, though, I found myself getting so upset that I had a really hard time keeping myself there in class. Feigning illness (shit, not even going that far… just saying, “ I don’t feel good….”) to leave early seemed more comforting than continuing on that train of self-loathing and dersion. BUT I DIDN’T. God damn it. I stayed up in that fucker and kept on drawing. And it was a good thing I did, too. Not that anything brilliant came out of the class but it was a triumph. A triumph over whatever it is in my head that gets all screwed up when I do art.

So it seems like the class is going to be a lot about rendering. Which is perfect, I think. That’s what I get hung up on the most. I can thumbnail and sketch and do some pretty nice drawings, but when it comes to really finishing a piece I get lost and flustered and give up.

Summer Sketching!

Cover of the new Sketcthbook. I love this paper, second one of these sketchbooks I've had and I am going to make better use of this one than I did the last.

Having fun experimenting with media and technique. The text says "Chill," trying to tell myself to relax and get into the drawing. Keeping it free-form and open-ended helped.
Water color, pentel brush pen and white gel pen

I seriously haven't had this much fun drawing since highschool. At least 10 years ago. I learned that I need more patience with my drawings. Impatience and anxiety have manifested as a result of the work environment at school. When more time is taken with my art, the more I get absorbed, the more I enjoy it, the better it becomes because I am willing to invest more time in it.
Watercolor, prismacolor marker, white gel pen, pentel brush pen.

Pictures!

PHORE MOTOGRAPHY

More photography. Some astute viewers might notice that I haven't uploaded any drawings recently, it's not for not having been drawing. Mostly, the drawings I've been doing haven't been that great and I don't want them to see the light of [internet]. So instead have a bunch of amateurish photography. No guilt from me with taking pictures that aren't that great. I've only been doing it for a couple months, so... I can still suck and not feel bad.

I do have some animation work that I'll upload soon.

Not drawings, but still art junk

This is one of my two Australian Shepherds, Princess Leia

This is the other, Han Solo.

This was taken at Seward Park in Seattle. That place is awesome. If you are ever around, go there.

Taking a photography class this semester. I'd started taking more pictures with my little point-n-shoot a few months ago. Figured it's the fastest practical exercise for composition and lighting. Now I have a Nikon d200 courtesy of my camera-junkie father. Having a lot of fun with this class and look forward to adding photography to my regular art doings.

Calling it DONE

And I am pretty pleased with the results. Did some minor tweaks to the animation, did some major tweaks to lighting and had a shot at rendering with Motion Blur.  ANIMATING IS FUN. Did a walk and a run cycle with Lars (that's this guy) as well that I will get posted here soon.

enviromenting

The assignment was to take a photo (one that taken by yourself) and turn it into a medieval/fantasy scene.

Kent Station from the roof of the parking garage.

Original underdrawing

Mostly 'finished'. I wanted to keep this piece as simple as possible, looking  more at designing the shapes, value and composition rather than worrying about rendering.

"Done" ..... I really need to figure out how to do color correction on my monitors. Each one of the three is slightly different than the other. The textures as I am looking at them now are way harsher than if I look at this image on my main screen. Weird. Time to figure out  a good way to fix that.

Mind the gap Final

This is the final version. Crappy lighting and everything.... I need to play around with mental ray in Maya some more. I did quite a few test renders and thought I had everything working well. Oh well, live and learn.

All in all I am pretty pleased with how this turned out. My second [real] animation in 3d. Certainly not perfect, but quite a leap from the first. Next thing to tackle in my animation is to get the character to loosen up a bit. Mechanically I am feeling confident. Technique-wise I am much more confident (building poses in 3d is not like drawing out a pose-test in 2d. It requires a more deft touch at times). Acting still needs great improvement, but that's part of the process. SO! Get some more life into the character!

Also, I am thinking I need to gussy up this blog. It's pretty bland. If I am going to continue updating like I have it needs to be more "me."

Further refining "the gap"

I am going to get one final round of crit's then it's ready to render.

figures

Mind the gap Process

Here's a step by step

Blocking

Now with the sword

Same, with auto tangents (letting the computer automatically inerpolate between frames)

Refining, cleaning up the curves 

Nearly "done" 

That's all for now folks.

Mind the Gap planning

Some process work.

 Character Analysis

 Animation Ideas

More idea exploring

 First pass at planning the animation

 Really didn't know where to go with this, so after some class input and help from my instuctor I did a 2d animation pass in flash with the new, more concrete idea

First (real) 3d animation and then some other stuff

This is some of the process gone through for the animation. Bits of Idea, staging, character and video reference analysis. The real meat of the planning was a quick walk I animated (pose test) traditionally. I have to find those pages and scan them....Also not shown is the actual video reference.

This is the first stage of the animation. Basically a pose test blocking out only the major keys of the walk (contact, down, passing position and up). Felt like I had a good sense of weight, arcs, timing, overlap/ follow-through and all that in this phase....

This is after some changes have been made. Refining some poses, adding breakdowns I was still working mostly in step tangents here... Then I went to auto- tangents to start diving into the curve editor. What a mess

Guh. What the fuck!? It was hard for me to work past this point. Really, I hated this thing. So much broken, I had a hard time to know where to start in fixing it. Beyond just getting it technically to work it was decided that the bit of acting (with the hand) was unnecessary/ distracting/ poorly executed and it would be best to eliminate it. Among a small handful of other fixes. The mechanics were there. That is really nice. In all the struggling with the animation, at least I wasn't fumbling with the animating itself, just the acting.

and here is the final(ish) version. At least, the final one for class. This can probably be taken to a real finish, polished up and put in my portfolio... perhaps. What I was really struggling with in this whole process was some seriously screwed up poses. Working in step tangents I felt like I was able to just work from pose to pose with relative ease. Turns out there is some posing etiquette that needs to be adhered to to keep the computer interpolation from going bonkers.

What do I want to fix? Those arms are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too stiff. I need to get them thangs more dangly. The timing/ spacing overall needs to be cleaned up. The general feel is there, but there's not much texture (on top of some popping going on). That trip needs to be refined, as well as make the object he is tripping on more obvious.

All in all I learned a ton. Next animation is Mind the Gap. Fun fun fun.


Here's some drawings from other stuff:

 Open figure drawing. Need to do this more.

 Cafe sketching. Starting to feel this a bit more.

I am teaching a thing!

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151234163271388&set=a.10151053009656388.485475.21787386387&type=1&ref=nf



And boy do I feel incredibly outclassed by some of the other presenters (Andreas Deja, Ryan Woodward. Not to mention some of my freaking teachers!). It's an incredible opportunity, great exposure.... Now I just wish I had a damned portfolio and some business cards. Shit.

Ryan Woodward's art: http://ryanwoodwardart.com/

Andreas Deja: http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/
I am stoked to go to this guys talk, it's going to be awesome.

Instructors;
Alecia Rossano: http://aleciarossanosculptress.blogspot.com/
Peter Moerhle: http://happybrush.blogspot.com/
Suzanne Kaufman: http://www.suzannekaufman.com/

SKETCH DUMP (school edition)

Junior year go! 

 Some thumbnail focusing on balance. These were for my intro to 3d animation class

 Observational sketching

 More observation!

 For my Backgrounds and layouts class: One point interior

 2-point exterior. These are really just for the teacher to see

how bad we are at perspective.

 Tree! For the BG class

 Trees! Same class

 Tree again! Still BG's

 Environmental sketches for Storyboards

Same as above.

I am taking a reduced class-load this year, switching over to the ever-despicable "5-year" plan. There are a couple of motivating factors behind this. Mainly I want to be able to maintain my workout program, and having finally gotten back into Taekwondo this is very important to me.  Furthermore: I have some serious confidence issues that I am trying to work on. This does not prevent me from being outrageously busy.

It's close. The feeling that I get when I am doing TKD, I can almost reach that with drawing. It's a feeling of hyper-focus, almost zen-like. Everything in the world and life but that very moment ceases to be, leaving no anxiety, fear, apprehension... Nothing to really hold me back. Of course I get frustrated when I screw up, especially right now during this period of getting back in shape. But that feeling is fleeting, It flashes by and is gone in an instant. That is what I have been striving to achieve in these past two years at DigiPen, and it is close. 

Fear... That is what has been my biggest enemy. Fear of what? Failing? I know I am just a student (will I ever be anything but?), all of this is practice. Every mark on every page is just another step up on this never-ending climb. Once a drawing starts that fear resides, not entirely, but with every new drawing it does a little more. It's the start that kills me. Sitting down and staring at blank paper or computer screen, ideas buzzing about with all the other noise in my head... Even when drawing from observation, especially when drawing environments. All that visual information becomes noise, it's difficult for me to pare it down to it's most essential shapes and forms. That's what practice is for, right? Learning how to to filter through that clutter and grab a hold of the essential?

Is it an unfamiliarity with the process? I do get bogged down by each step. Too reluctant to move forward with confidence, too impatient to not skip steps along the way. How frustrating that is.

It's not all so bad, though. Some switches are being flipped on, others off, in my head. The Way is being more and more well lit for every walk I take through it.