Lady in waiting 3D print prototype

Here are some slightly delayed shots of the Lady in waiting prototype 3D print from my recent historical reenactment project of the Norwich Castle Museum.

Also showing the render composite from the Castle project and sculpt file bpr render.

Final piece of Paint out 15''

My final piece from this years local Plein Air event, I chose this handsome building from the 1800's for an architectural study of the entrance elevation.

THE ART OF COLOR AND LIGHT WEEK 1_life studies

Quick life studies of my man Lothar's profile and a close up of my desktop:

Paint Out 15" 2nd Sitting

For the 2nd day of Paint out 15'' I sat in the beautiful, Nouveau,  Royal Arcade for the morning sessions study.

It was a wet, cold and windy October morning with a chilly breeze funnelling through the arcade, after an hour or so my hands were fairly numb - this is my excuse for some questionable perspective.

Paint Out 15" 1st Sitting

For the morning session of this years Paint Out plein air competition (http://www.paintoutnorwich.org/) I decided to tackle the Norwich Cathedral, incorporating old and new by hinting at the swooping curve of the recent bridge over the river.

Special thanks to Lothar for the amazing Photography, as always! http://www.lotharzhouart.co.uk/

THE ART OF COLOR AND LIGHT WEEK 1_master studies

The second set of week one's task, studies of Moebius, Norman Rockwell and Andrew Loomis.

On to 2No studies from life and 2No from imagination to finish this weeks task.

THE ART OF COLOR AND LIGHT A WEEK 1

Kicking off the Fall term of this CGMA course, Here are the first 3 of the weeks value studies for assignment 1.

Given my Star Wars inspired personal project I have chosen scenes from Star Wars Episodes IV & V as well as an environment scene from the recent Rebels animation series, for the 3 film / animation references.

I will follow on with 3 master studies, 2 still life studies and 2 concepts from imagination to meet the 1st weeks tasks.

The emphasis from the 1st assignment is to develop value recognition skills, defining high, low mid and full keys. This will in turn teach us how value keys are used in production to emulate emotion and create immersiveness.

We are limited to the use of a flat Oval brush at 100% opacity and encouraged to use a limited range of 5 values with no  rendering / shading. Although I couldn't resist adding a little hatching to try and describe some of the subtle changes in value.

Character Wip 01

For my latest project / ASU unit I am creating an imagined scene to emulate and pay homage to the Star Wars franchise.  I have decided to take a lesser known species, the 'Twi'Lek' recently appearing in the Star Wars Rebels Series as a character named Hera, also seen for the 1st time in 'The Return of the Jedi' as Jabba's Palace dancer.

I have shown my initial reference Board with both the known characters and will create my own variation in the form of a star pilot as per the Hera ref, although in my own variation. The 1st WIP is shown too.

1 All Saints Green, Norwich

In anticipation of 'Paint Out 15' Norwich, I am trying to get a in a few studies in an effort to get back up to speed on the traditional front.

This is a 90 minute study using markers and fine liners on a mid tone pad with watercolour wash and chalk hi light.

Life Class_8thOct

Snuck into one of the BA life class sessions at NUA today, captured several 2 minute gesture studies with a slightly longer 10 min portrait / profile sketch / felt great to dust off the traditional skills again

Space suit perfection

Great article on The space suit for Ridley Scotts 'The Martian'

http://clothesonfilm.com/the-martian-the-perfect-10-spacesuit/35789/

Words from the master 'Moebius'

As one of my main inspirations I wanted to share Moebius's 18 observations for artists, thanks to the below blog post for reminding me! 

http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/moebius-gives-18-wisdom-filled-tips-to-aspiring-artists-1996.html 

1) When you draw, you must first cleanse yourself of deep feelings, like hate, happiness, ambition, etc.

2) It’s very important to educate your hand. Make it achieve a level of high obedience so that it will be able to properly and fully express your ideas. But be very careful of trying to obtain too much perfection, as well as too much speed as an artist. Perfection and speed are dangerous — as are their opposites. When you produce drawings that are too quick or too loose, besides making mistakes, you run the risk of creating an entity without soul or spirit.

3) Knowledge of perspective is of supreme importance. Its laws provide a good, positive way to manipulate or hypnotize your readers.

4) Another thing to embrace with affection is the study of [the] human body — it’s anatomy, positions, body types, expressions, construction, and the differences between people.

Drawing a man is very different from drawing a woman. With males, you can be looser and less precise in their depiction; small imperfections can often add character. Your drawing of a woman, however, must be perfect; a single ill-placed line can dramatically age her or make her seem annoying or ugly. Then, no one buys your comic!

For the reader to believe your story, your characters must feel as if they have a life and personality of their own.

Their physical gestures should seem to emanate from their character’s strengths, weaknesses and infirmities. The body becomes transformed when it is brought to life; there is a message in its structure, in the distribution of its fat, in each muscle and in every wrinkle, crease or fold of the face and body. It becomes a study of life.

5) When you create a story, you can begin it without knowing everything, but you should make notes as you go along regarding the particulars of the world depicted in your story. Such detail will provide your readers with recognizable characteristics that will pique their interest.

When a character dies in a story, unless the character has had his personal story expressed some way in the drawing of his face, body and attire, the reader will not care; your reader won’t have any emotional connection.

Your publisher might say, “Your story has no value; there’s only one dead guy — I need twenty or thirty dead guys for this to work.” But that is not true; if the reader feels the dead guy or wounded guys or hurt guys or whomever you have in trouble have a real personality resulting from your own deep studies of human nature — with an artist’s capacity for such observation — emotions will surge.

By such studies you will develop and gain attention from others, as well as a compassion and a love for humanity.

This is very important for the development of an artist. If he wants to function as a mirror of society and humanity, this mirror of his must contain the consciousness of the entire world; it must be a mirror that sees everything.

6) Alejandro Jodorowsky says I don’t like drawing dead horses. Well, it is very difficult.

It’s also very difficult to draw a sleeping body or someone who has been abandoned, because in most comics it’s always action that is being studied. It’s much easier to draw people fighting — that’s why Americans nearly always draw superheroes. It’s much more difficult to draw people that are talking, because that’s a series of very small movements — small, yet with real significance.

His counts for more because of our human need for love or the attention of others. It’s these little things that speak of personality, of life. Most superheroes don’t have any personality; they all use the same gestures and movements.

7) Equally important is the clothing of your characters and the state of the material from which it was made.

These textures create a vision of your characters’ experiences, their lives, and their role in your adventure in a way where much can be said without words. In a dress there are a thousand folds; you need to choose just two or three — don’t draw them all. Just make sure you choose the two or three good ones.

8) The style, stylistic continuity of an artist and its public presentation are full of symbols; they can be read just like a Tarot deck. I chose my name “Moebius” as a joke when I was twenty-two years old — but, in truth, the name came to resonate with meaning. If you arrive wearing a T-shirt of Don Quixote, that tells me who you are. In my case, making a drawing of relative simplicity and subtle indications is important to me.

9) When an artist, a real working artist, goes out on the street, he does not see things the same way as “normal” people. His unique vision is crucial to documenting a way of life and the people who live it.

10) Another important element is composition. The compositions in our stories should be studied because a page or a painting or a panel is a face that looks at the reader and speaks to him. A page is not just a succession of insignificant panels. There are panels that are full. Some that are empty. Others are vertical. Some horizontal. All are indications of the artist’s intentions. Vertical panels excite the reader. Horizontals calm him. For us in the Western world, motion in a panel that goes from left to right represents action heading toward the future. Moving from right to left directs action toward the past. The directions we indicate represent a dispersion of energy. An object or character placed in the center of a panel focuses and concentrates energy and attention. These are basic reading symbols and forms that evoke in the reader a fascination, a kind of hypnosis. You must be conscious of rhythm and set traps for the reader to fall into so that, when he falls, he gets lost, allowing you to manipulate and move him inside your world with greater ease and pleasure. That’s because what you have created is a sense of life. You must study the great painters, especially those who speak with their paintings. Their individual painting schools or genres or time periods should not matter. Their preoccupation with physical as well as emotional composition must be studied so that you learn how their combination of lines works to touch us directly within our hearts.

11) The narration must harmonize with the drawings. There must be a visual rhythm created by the placement of your text. The rhythm of your plot should be reflected in your visual cadence and the way you compress or expand time. Like a filmmaker, you must be very careful in how you cast your characters and in how you direct them. Use your characters or “actors” like a director, studying and then selecting from all of your characters’ different takes.

12) Beware of the devastating influence of North American comic books. The artists in Mexico seem to only study their surface effects: a little bit of anatomy mixed with dynamic compositions, monsters, fights, screaming and teeth. I like some of that stuff too, but there are many other possibilities and expressions that are also worthy of exploration.

13) There is a connection between music and drawing. The size of that connection depends upon your personality and what’s going on at that moment. For the last ten years I’ve been working in silence; for me, there is music in the rhythm of my lines. Drawing at times is a search for discoveries. A precise, beautifully executed line is like an orgasm!

14) Color is a language that the graphic artist uses to manipulate his reader’s attention as well as to create beauty. There is objective and subjective color. The emotional states of the characters can change or influence the color from one panel to the next, as can place and time of day. Special study and attention must be paid to the language of color.

15) At the beginning of an artist’s career, he should principally involve himself in the creation of very high quality short stories. He has a better chance (than with long format stories) of successfully completing them, while maintaining a high standard of quality. It will also be easier to place them in a book or sell them to a publisher.

16) There are times when we knowingly head down a path of failure, choosing the wrong theme or subject for our capabilities, or choosing a project that is too large, or an unsuitable technique. If this happens, you must not complain later.

17) When new work has been sent to an editor and it receives a rejection, you should always ask for and try to discover the reasons for the rejection. By studying the reasons for our failure, only then can we begin to learn. It is not about struggle with our limitations, with the public or with the publishers. One should treat it with more of an aikido approach. It is the very strength and power of our adversary that is used as the key to his defeat.

18) Now it is possible to expose our works to readers in every part of the planet. We must always keep aware of this. To begin with, drawing is a form of personal communication — but this does not mean that the artist should close himself off inside a bubble. His communication should be for those aesthetically, philosophically and geographically close to him, as well as for himself — but also for complete strangers. Drawing is a medium of communication for the great family we have not met, for the public and for the world.

Norwich Castle Keep_Pre Vis project 2015

Possibly my biggest project to date, been working on this in the background over the last few months thanks to David R Allan for providing the models for the King, Bishop, Earl and table assets, also thanks to Sarah Steed and Catherine Hill at NUA, not forgetting John, Angela, Paris, Daniel and The Norfolk Museum Services Team.

The following key frames show the CG shots that are integrated in the Norwich Castle Museums 2015 bid for regeneration, link to final film to follow.

The first shot is broken down beneath to show the compositing of the 3D renders mixed with matte painting techniques to achieve the final look, ongoing techniques that I am developing as part of my evolving studio pipeline.

Something Different

Here are some composition sketch studies for a pitch, the characters were provided in a manga style and I was asked to create some mock up visuals to show how they could go together in dynamic poses for cover art options.

It was a nice break from my recent technical compositing work and get back to some sketching:

MA Final Year, Award Specific Unit_Initial Notes

For the 1st unit of my final MA year, I have the opportunity to set up and plan my final Masters project for 2016. I have taken the opportunity to sign up for a CGMA course in 'Colour and Light for production' (http://2d.cgmasteracademy.com/tyler-carter.html) taken by Tyler Carter, visual development artist at Blue Sky Studios. This will give me a head start on the structure for the ASU as I can tailor my production of studio work around the course outline.

For my Master project I am planning on producing an animatic showing the developed work from this ASU project, as I would love to work on science fiction franchises such as Star Wars and Alien I will create content that will aim to match the look and feel of those productions.

The choice of content to create at this stage ranges from Character, environment and prop (vehicle).  I will initially pursue concept ideation for all 3 directions and fine tune my direction as I work through thumb nailing to concept development.

After a group critique discussing the potential direction for our project it was emphasised that I should aim to produce a short animatic conveying a scene from the imagined world, setting up an immersive scene by looking to capture accurate and compelling lighting and atmospherics, this was reassuring as it re emphasised my intended direction, also confirming a good match up with the Colour and Light course I will be taking alongside.