Character and Object Design for Animation: Head Rotations and Hands

Hello again everyone! Man, today was a whirlwind day! Had quite a doozy for an assignment today; not only did I have to take 2 of the heads I'd drawn previously and draw them from 3 different angles (straight on, 3/4, and profile view), I also had to draw 10 realistic hands in different poses, each with a cartoon hand mimicking the pose. For those doing the math, that's 26 drawings that I had to do. Luckily, I got it all done, and I feel pretty good about it! Let's take a look at them.

Lateral head rotations - Here is my submission for lateral head rotations. I particularly like the cartoon-y version, because I think it works well and is pretty consistent. The realistic one needs work (though I really enjoy the profile; I think it's the strongest of the three).

Hands - Here are my hand drawings! I'm not sure what it is, but when I'm drawing hands by themselves I have no problem whatsoever. Try to draw them on a person, though, and look out! My particular favorites here are C, D, H, and I.

So there you go. That's the fruit of my labors today. I hope you enjoy looking at them! I certainly had fun drawing them (well, most of them, anyway).

Until next time.

Character and Object Design for Animation: Head Studies

Hello again everyone! I'm back, and posting some of the new schoolwork I've done! It's starting to get tougher, and I'm having a bit more trouble with my confidence, but hopefully I'll be able to persevere and improve on my character design abilities!

Head studies, realistic versus cartoonish - For this assignment, we were required to  draw 6 human heads, 3 of which needed to be realistic and 3 of which were supposed to be more "cartoony," all with different expressions. While I was initially pleased with my submission, the instructor said that I needed to redraw the realistic faces so that they were more...well, realistic.

Realistic redo - Here is my second attempt at drawing realistic human faces. These turned out much better, though I think the middle one needs more work.

That's all for today! Stick around, though...tomorrow's assignment is a doozy!

Until next time.

Back To School! Character and Object Design for Animation: Self-portraits

Hellooooo everyone! So good to be back! I started my new class today, and MAN does it feel good to be drawing again! Let's get right to it, shall we?

My new class is Character and Object Design for Animation, which is going to teach how to draw unique characters and objects for animation consistently. This is going to prove very useful if I ever want to pitch a story, so I can't wait to learn more.

A Dog and His Boy - This drawing is part of my first assignment for  my class. In this assignment, we were asked to draw a realistically-proportioned image of ourselves with a pet, real or imagined. The dog pictured is my Jack Russell, Max.

Self-Caricature - This drawing is the second half of our first assignment. Where the first drawing was meant to be realistic, this drawing was to be done in a cartoon-y style. To accomplish this, I played around with the proportions of my face, stomach, and arms/hands.

I'll freely admit, I am stoked about how these turned out. Not only do they look good (considering I haven't been drawing consistently for the past 3 months), but I felt comfortable, even happy drawing these. That's something I haven't felt before now, so let's hope it continues! I'll post more drawings for this class as they happen, so stay tuned!

Until next time.

Off for the summer, part 2: Character Creation

Hey everyone! Long time, no post. Things have been rather busy at my end, and not taking classes this summer has dropped my art output to practically nonexistent. Luckily, school will be starting up again in about a month, so I thought it would be a good idea to start practicing again and getting back into the habit of drawing and creating regularly.

I recently became addicted to the phenomenon that is My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The show is addicting to me because it's well-written, consistently drawn, and never feels overly childish. It's the kind of rare show nowadays that hearkens back to the glory days of Disney and Warner Brothers television shows. If you don't believe me, check out the episodes on Youtube.

Anyway, after finishing all the episodes in a marathon streaming, I felt my creative juices flowing. I sat down and sketched out a caricature of myself in MLP form. I used several references, including other fan art and still images from the show. This is the result:

Satisfied with my character, I scanned the drawing and imported the drawing into Adobe Illustrator, where I used Vector graphics to create the outline of the character and then used the Live Paint tool to color it in. Here's what I came up with:

Overall, I'm immensely satisfied by how this turned out. It was a blast to do, as well. Hopefully this feeling continues! (It probably won't.)

Until next time.

Off for the summer, part 1: Character Design

Hey everyone! Been a couple weeks since I've posted, but I've been pretty busy since then. Luckily, though, I have another artwork to show you! This drawing was created after I introduced a friend to a graphic novel series known as Dreamkeepers. After she finished reading it, we began talking about what we thought our dreamkeepers would be like, so we decided to draw them. Now, as you probably know from my character animation and life drawing classes, I don't have much experience with drawing characters. Luckily, my friend was able to help me out (a lot) with the process, so the final result was one I could be really proud of. It's not completely finished yet, and there are still things I want to fix, but here's how it looks at the moment.

Not bad for a relative beginner. :-) The pants didn't come out quite right, and I'm thinking about scrapping the hair on his head for a more "wolfish" 'do, but overall I'm really excited about the drawing. It's giving me a bit more confidence in my ability to draw the humanoid figure. I'll probably post more as I continue to refine the drawing, so stay tuned!

Until next time.

Computer 3D Modelling and Animation I: Textures, Lighting, Cameras, and Final Project

Hey all! Sorry for the radio silence. Had some unexpected things come up in my personal life that took up most of my free time, so haven't been able to take the time to update as normal. Now that it's settled down, it's time to unveil more of the work I did in my 3D Modelling class, including working with textures, lights, cameras, and my work on the final project. Hope you're ready! Off we go.


The first thing we played with was texturing. Up until this point, the only thing the class knew was how to change the base color of the object they were working with. The next step was to create more complex materials and textures to put on an object.

Door- Pretty straightforward. Modelling a door and using the Extrude features to create the moldings in the door.

Door with texture - Adding texture to the door. As you can tell, it's not the best, but the point of the assignment was to get a basic understanding for how texture mapping worked.

Building model - Creating the basic shape of a building and learning to use the Create tool to make steps.

Building with textures - Applying textures to the walls, floors and ceilings.

Complex shape with textures - Creating a complex shape from scratch and adding textures to the final product. I wasn't really using a reference for this, but it came out pretty well regardless.

After playing with textures and shape building, it was time to start experimenting with lights and camera movements. This project makes use of the four items from the first week, and includes a light and shadows.

After I submitted this assignment, I decided to play around with the settings and see if I could create a more dreary look. Here's what I came up with:

Next on our list was to change the lighting to evoke a different mood, as well as changing the camera movement.

It was about this point that we began working on our final projects. I had wanted to model the dining area of a restaurant that my family frequently visits, so it was quite enjoyable. The following sequence of pictures documents the steps from initial creation to near completion.

Basic layout - Creating the tables, chairs, and booths

Adding on - Textured the objects, added walls, and tweaked the shapes

And more - Created a ceiling, added lamps hanging from said ceiling

Almost done - Adding textures to the lamps and creating glowing light bulbs for a well-lit space

The following five pictures are various views from the finished scene.

While I'm pleased with how the final scene turned out, there is a lot more that still needs to be done. I plan on continuing to work on it over the summer to see how close to the real thing I can come! Hope you enjoyed the work I've done!

Until next time.

Computer 3D Modelling and Animation I: Complex Objects

Hello again, everyone! We're back, and this week we're experimenting with creating complex objects from scratch. I had a lot of fun experimenting with the program, and I think that the final products came out really well!

Couch - The first of the projects that I did, I think the couch, while good, is the weakest part of the assignments. I had several difficulties getting the shape right. After some experimentation, I finally settled on creating the basic shape of a box, then extruding the back and arms.

Laptop - One of my two favorite creations. This object took  a bit of finagling, but because I had the laptop in front of me I was able to play around with the proportions and make it look nearly identical to the real thing.

DVD Case - This was a fun one. Not much to say here. I think it came out well.

Nail Clippers - This was the last project I did, and it was rather involved (obviously). However, the final product came out well and, apart from a scare when the program stopped working for a minute, I didn't have much in the way of difficulties. This is the other one of my favorite two projects.

That's all for now! Next week we start on adding textures, which is sure to be fun!

Until next time.