Thursday 25 October 2012

Character Histories - 2D Assignment Intro

Now into the 4th week and with the help of the life drawing classes to further boost my drawing confidence, it seems like a good time to begin work on the 2D assignment for this module which is to design 3 characters of our choice. To help with this process I will be creating a character history for each character I design before actually doing any drawing to help come up with ideas for how they will look, where they live/have lived, gender and all sorts of other information which will build up a bio, creating a more believable character in the end.
For ease and to flesh out one main storyline, all 3 characters I will be designing will be from the same universe but with completely different back stories. Doing this I can build up a bigger and more believable world for these characters, each having their own views on situations that they will all experience.

Character 1 - Alien Tribesman - History

Name - Krahh 

Born - 05.02.1953 in the outskirts of his races homeland, Dramen. Aged now 182.

Krahh is from the alien race Seridens which came to earth as a last hope for survival when there planet, Mensa, was being taken over. Where they come from, they don't fight over countries, but entire planets, and as the Seridens are only a small race they knew at some point they would be defeated and there entire race killed. To stop this from happening, they looked for planets there race could survive on and earth seemed to be there only option as unlike with other alien races, the Seridens need water to survive, much like humans. 

Although many of the Seridans complained about moving, it was mandatory and many of them were forced onto the ship that would take them to earth. Using advanced technology, the ship made it to earth in only 4 weeks and hovered over China for a week before opening its doors to the world. The date was 03.02.2063 and it was a monumental day as it was the first time humans had ever come in contact with aliens and as such, we felt obligated to help them in there time of need. Although only the Seridan leaders were able to talk to humans using a language translator, they told them about there problem and within 2 months we had set up small homes for them to live in Russia. 

Krahh is one of the Seridans that didn't want to come to earth and being forced to live in small homes, guarded heavily 24/7 by another race was not his ideal way of living, so instead ran away with other Seridans to create there own tribe in a large Russian forest. 


Character 2 - Mutant Marine - History

Name - Dominic Wells - Mostly referred to as just Dom

Born - 18.11.2045 - Aged now 35

Dom was born in Georgia USA with only a mother for the first 2 years of his life. His dad was away whilst he was born and had already been for 5 months prior to his birth, fighting as a US marine. Coming into his life so late, his farther felt he had to make up for last time and would spend hours with his son each day playing and telling stories of his army experiences. Of course Dom at this age didn't understand much of what he meant, even if it was a watered down telling, but he still found it interesting, and only more so as he grew up.

At age 18 the alien race the Seridans had made their appearance on earth and because of this Doms farther was sent out to Russia as a guard for there living area. His family of course were extremely upset by this, though with such sort notice given by the aliens coming down, he had no choice and had to go as people needed for sorting out a living area for the aliens was huge. Since moving away, Dom and his mother started hating the aliens more and more, for not only taking the farther away but for using our resources when we have humans still starving ourselves.

5 Months into his movement and Doms farther was soon allowed back home to his family. Unfortunatly he was killed only 2 weeks before being able to go home by a group of Seridans that rampaged out of the living area, killing over 12 other guards in the process.
Dom had always been a tough man, but the news of his farthers death broke him down faster and harder than anything before. He became depressed and wouldnt talk to anyone for weeks, staying in his room only leaving when he had to for short periods of time. He couldnt help but blame the aliens for all of what had happened, his farther having to move away and his death, and with them bringing nothing to the world but taking he had nothing but hate for the race.

By the age of 21 Dom decided to join the US Marines as a way of making his farther proud from beyond the grave and by the age of 26 he had made it up to Major General which both him and his mother were extremely proud of. Though as more and more Seridans started braking from there living area, more men were needed to find and them back to where they were allowed. As the years went on the Seridans became much more aggressive and by the year 2080 most had broken away from the living area set up for them and had created there own tribes.

In these desperate times, mutation experiments began testing to create stronger marines to keep the Seridans in line easier. Dom, not having to do the test if he declined because of his rank decided to be the first human subject as the years of oppression about his fathers death due to aliens had began taking it toll, and with his confidence in the mutation he thought with his new strength he could finally have his revenge on the race that took down his farther.

Dom was placed into a mutation chamber and within minutes the size of his upper body began to double in size. His muscles becoming so huge his skin began to tear and bones ripping through this arms. The mutation had worked to a degree, though with it mutating him so fast, his body had no way of keeping up resulting in the damage to his body. As well as this, his legs for some reason were not touched by the mutation and due to all the new found weight on his upper body, could not support him. He was made a set of robotic legs to support his newly acquired body. 


Character 3 - E.T.C Worker - History

Name: Lauren Brown

Born: 04.11.2065 - Aged now 22

Being born only 2 years after the Seridans came to earth, Lauren had only ever lived in a world with aliens and because of this, growing up with them around wasn't strange to her, unlike with the rest of the world, though most notably to her, her parents. Her parents had never liked the Seridans coming to earth, with them taking our supplies at no cost and with the amount of casualties that aliens had a part in, over the coming years.

Because of the Seridans, schools started teaching children more about Seridans and their history, which for Lauren was extremely interesting. She wanted to find out more about the race other than all the hate she heard from her parents. As she grew older, the more information came out about the Seridans, and the more she would research them, finding out the reasons why they came to earth and how harmless the majority of them are.

By the time she was 18 she had began looking into Jobs to do with helping or caring for the aliens and eventually found a job as an E.T.C worker, which stands for Extra Terrestrial Care Worker, that would allow her to provide food, water and medical attention to any Seridans that needed it. Although her parents didn't like the Seridans, they still supported her and appreciated her for being careless, even towards an alien race.


Class 4 and Task 4

The two sheets below are of the 30 second - 1 minute sketches I drew in this lesson of the model. I am pretty happy with the outcome of these this week, I feel as though I'm starting to learning how to draw the model quicker.



From these quick sketches we then went into poses ranging from 10 minutes to half an hour. The drawings below are in order of time taken for each sketch, lowest to highest. 





Like with the quick sketches from this lesson, I am feeling more confident with drawing the body and learning how muscles for areas such as the arms and legs work.

Similar to last weeks task, this week we had to draw 3 studys of main areas on the body, this week focusing on the legs and feet. Below are the three sketches I drew for this task.





Sunday 21 October 2012

Class 3 and Task 3

 This week as ever we began the life drawing class with some quick 30 second sketches and slowly increasing in time to get us warmed up for the rest of the lesson. Below is the sketches I did this week starting from the top page with all 30 second drawings and the bottom page having 1 - 2 minute drawings.



After these quick poses we started to begin the longer poses where we start measuring the model to get more accurate drawings, though this week we as well tried out shading using charcoal to colour the page and then with a rubber taking away parts of the charcoal to start getting the shape of the pose. This backwards way of thinking about the drawing was a good experiment and I was happy with the outcome of my drawings using this method as I hadn't done this before. Below are the drawings from this weeks class, both normal sketches and using charcoal. 





Finally is the task that was given to us this week which was to do 3 studies of the human torso. I did my first of these 3 sketches in photoshop, and although I was able to get the outline of the body down, shading was a problem for me so for this sketch I left this out and instead focused on just getting in muscle information. For the other two though I went back to pencil and paper and was able to get shading into the pose to show how the muscles looked in the pose.






Sunday 7 October 2012

Class 2 & Task 2


Much like our last class we got straight into the life drawing and was this week given a new model to draw. Doing this helps develop knowledge of different body types for both sexes.
Apart from just the usual pose drawing we also did some exercises to help us think differently about the model and how we drew them.
The test on the left was to draw the model without looking at the page once throughout and the test on the right was to draw the model without looking but this time instead of his outline, his mass.



Although these were only a bit of fun it was also nice to try experimenting with different techniques and ways of viewing the model.


I also have some of the normal sketches from this weeks class - 






To end the lesson we did a final task which was to draw the model as he moved around, and in each different pose he stopped in as he moved we would draw him for a longer amount of time, to hopefully show an improvement. This started with a 30 second drawing up to 5 minutes.



As for the task, this week it was based just as much on research as it was sketching by having us look at 3 artists and how they draw anatomy, then using their techniques and style to draw a pose.
After some research I found 3 artists and as expected each one had a different style and it was interesting to see how each others compared.

The first Artist i began looking into was Mike Mattesi who is the author of a popular book on drawing anatomy called FORCED. I found most of his anatomy sketches to have dark lines around main areas and then added details sketched in lightly later. With this in mind I tried to draw a pose in a similar style, focusing on trying to add darker, harder lines on edges. Blog: http://mikemattesi.blogspot.co.uk/ Youtube tutorials: http://www.youtube.com/user/drawingforce/videos?view=0




The second Artist I looked into was Patxi Pelaez who is a Spanish character designer who works in comic books. From looking at his blog which can be found here: http://patxipelaez.blogspot.co.uk/ I have noticed that his characters seem to have exaggerated proportions and this was something I wanted to give a go. To try and draw in his style I wanted to focus on the muscles of the character and by making the characters head smaller it helps exaggerate the look of the character.



And the final Artist I chose to look at is named Simon Loche who is a senior concept artist and a comic book artist. Some of the main points I noticed with his drawing style in the smoothness of the body's he draws, especially his women characters that have very sleek lines where as his male characters had a very edgy outline. I liked the way he drew his women characters so I gave that a go and tried to just focus on the lines I was putting down and how I could make them flow together to create a sleek look to the characters pose. Blog: http://simonloche.blogspot.co.uk/







Saturday 6 October 2012

Introduction & Task 1

Coming back for my second year of the course, I knew what to expect with the life drawing class and was eager to learn more about drawing the human body. I was also practising drawing anatomy through the summer break mostly using posemaniacs to help further my skills ready for coming into the second year. Here are just some sketches I did through summer  - 





It was nice to get straight back into the life drawing classes and being taught tips as the model posed. Here are some of the sketches I did in this first class back that I was more happy with - 





We was also given a task to do by the next class of drawing a further 3 poses using a number of provided websites for poses. I chose to use posemaniacs again as I was familiar with the site and liked the amount of poses it provides. Here are the 3 sketches I did  -