#022 Daily Sketches 28-07-2010

I was absent for a few days, visiting my mother in Granby, but I’m back now with some sketches I’ve done a few days ago. I sadly broke my two day update streak (fail), but time, resources and similar factors rendered it impossible for me to update during my time away from home. On the upside, I’m back and by tomorrow, I’m hoping I can get back in the train of updating daily.

I didn’t draw with David that night since he was away; that didn’t stop me from taking a little half hour to draw a bit. I had been doing quite a bit of research on felines, considering I don’t know how to draw them; in order to change that, I decided to sit down with some reference pictures and sketch away. You should expect frequent drawings of felines from now on; I am truly trying to get the hang of drawing large cats.

In other news, not even art related, I have acquired a large 55 gallon tank which my mother’s boyfriend found in the trash near his house; the thing’s 4 feet long and I’m wondering what I should put in it. I also bought a fire eel today, to accompany my Oscar fish; it’s pretty cool.

This concludes that, I should probably end on an artistic note, and since I’ve been giving out tips of the day these past updates, I’ll go with this one: when you don’t know how to draw something, get the feel for it by drawing from reference. Have a glorious night people.

#021 Daily Sketches 27-07-2010

As I sat down at the dinner table to draw with David last night, I had a pretty good general idea of where I was headed; I had posted yesterday’s blog entry a few hours prior and was going to expand my whole body shape concept and style; as I said in my previous post, I want to push the sizes much further then what I already had, because when I look at a slim or fat guy in a Pixar movie, they don’t look as standard as what I had drawn and I’m aiming for something out of the ordinary. First things first, I dedicated myself to the slim shape yesterday and explored various ways to add style and body to this faceless character’s shape and posture. I found my first body to be a little stiff, but it was a start; the second one I liked because I love drawing low shoulders and long trapezius; in the third body, I tried to go for an in-between of the first two. The fourth figure I exaggerated even more, pushing the shoulders way down and drawing even thinner limbs. In the fifth, I didn’t quite know where to go anymore and just went with a more natural feel to the posture. By the time I got to the sixth figure, an idea sprouted: would a slim hero have the same posture and look as the other ones? I lifted that chest and gave more confidence to the shape; there’s our young paladin. Still in the same line of thought, I drew the final figure thinking of what a shady thief or rogue could look like, where he some skinny guy.

Tonight or some other day, I’m pretty sure I’ll continue expanding on these shapes; our slim figure might even get some more, who knows? My trick for today, in complement to the sketch I’ve posted, is to think outside the box when you think you’ve hit a wall. By the fifth figure, I was running out of ideas, but then I thought: “hey, these shapes are for characters, what would these characters be like?” and I got two more figures out of this; had I had more time to draw, who knows how many more I could have drawn? What would a slim archer look like? Or a slim warlock? Think outside the box.

#020 Daily Sketches 26-07-2010

David and I sat down last night at a late hour in the night to join pencils and create sketches whilst in the presence of another creative mind; our efforts were not useless. I will not recount his creative experience, for I have oriented this blog on my personal artwork, but I assure you he was just as productive if not more then I was.

 

I had been brewing the idea of a character body shape sheet for my God Metropolis project for quite some time now and had already tried my hand at it without prevailing; last night though, I got around to a satisfying result. I was able to get five major body shapes for the male human being, these are: slim, average, muscular, chubby and fat. I think it could be cool that a player could choose what corpulence his character has from the start; look at Guild Wars and World of Warcraft and all those popular MMORPGs’ character creation pages, I’ve rarely seen much diversity in body shape; I suppose that’s because designing custom equipment for X number of races and the additional male/female body shapes is quite a bit of work; various body shapes for all these would be terrible, but then again, I’m in no rush. These shapes are only the beginning; I plan on expanding the concept, since I can feel that my style can be found in these shapes, but I also think that I can deepen the styling to make a more caricatured and exaggerated palette, after all, this is my world I’m creating and I don’t see why I should limit myself at all. This is my tip of the day for you aspiring artists: explore everything; seriously, unless you’re in some kind of hurry, why would you place barriers for yourself? If you’ve got an idea, expand it, give it depth, and explore every door the first idea opens.

Inspiration was needed for the second sketch I tackled; I was browsing through my Magic: The Gathering game cards for general ideas of creatures or characters I hadn’t thought of; their universe is so vast and large, I was pretty sure I could find some stereotypes. I was not disappointed; after looking at a few cards, I stumbled upon a Bog Wraith card and decided to explore what the ghostly figure of a wraith would be in the God Metropolis universe. I went for a common wraith at first, this would be the type you could expect to meet in a haunted graveyard or mansion; the common wraith inspired me a grim reaper-like hooded figure with a large mantle and large skeletal arms with long skeletal fingers; the wraith would hover above the ground and so its garment would be whole and not torn. Then I rolled with the card and designed my very own bog wraith, the kind that would haunt dark swamps and marshlands; I thought its garment could be torn from all the brambles and thorns and low branches you’d expect to find in a bog, the bottom of the draping would be dangling with algae and foul colored water would drip from it, ball and chains would dangle from the figure, because these wraiths would represent haunting ghosts of people having drowned in the swamp, fungus could grow on some parts of the vestment. I started on an ice wraith but it was still too sketchy to be anything tangible.

I would say that concludes today’s blog message. Until next time (hopefully tomorrow, if I stick with the planned schedule), have a glorious night and be creative. Explore everything.