Public thread Cca-101

[Robert.B]

welcome to CCA-101
Character Creation and Appeal



Do to the recent changes in my schedual Im going to open this thread up to the community. Anyone can post their studies in realtion to the materials and assignments presented and work at their own pace. I will update this thread from time to with other assignments as the months progress.
Intoductions Before we get into the course overview it would nice for you guys to give a brief intorducion of your backround and interest, and maybe tell us about your long term goals as an artist. If you would like you can post your recent most succesful piece of work or a work of art that has inspired you lately.



Brief over view
This class is created for the intermediate artist whom are interested in advancing there figurative and conceptual approaches toward character design and appeal. We will look at various constructive methods while often referencing some principles from Andrew Loomis, Vilppu, and George. B Bridgman.Id like to note that this class will is a 1 month session of exploration through various aspects of design and illustration. I'm also open to helping with portfolio development and answering any questions that pertain to the subject as the class progresses. The class will end
with each student creating a final character in a orthographic shot (front side and 3 quarters), and a another composition which will be the beauty shot in a some what dynamic pose and narration. This is not a color theory or painting class so I wont restrict anyone from doing primarily Grey scale or pencil work for there studies. The final composition should have some saturation or color wash as we will discuss color application briefly. I must note that since I will be juggling teaching at the university and doing contract work on the side I will expect students to post once a week every week. This class is an intermediate level class which is divided into technical drafting and conceptual character development. 4 weeks is not long at all so Please only serious artist apply I'm looking to learn from what we both can find through our investigations. Things you will need : A digital drawing tablet, access to a digi painting application (PSCS preferably) a scanner, pencils and paper. I will supply you guys with various pdfs and articles from various books when we discuss certain techniques.

Critiques
Well I'm sure everyone in this class is familiar with critiques and have been on both ends of this great social and artistic learning experience. I don't restrict anyone in this course from making critiques of another artist works. I do ask that we hold off on the final group crits until the last assignment when everyone will present there final character in there beauty and orthographic shots. Until that point in the
course I will conduct the majority of the constructive crits and suggestions towards assignments.
Every one is required to present their studies each week with the dead line being that Friday of the week. If you finish your work ahead of schedule please post it for critiques, and if you find that your progressing rather fast then PM me I will adjust your assignments accordingly.

[Robert.B]

Week1:
under drawing. Alright guys I understand that a few of you might have a good understanind of the basics but its always good to get refreshed. We are going to take a breif look at the approaches of Loomis and Vilppu to manikin drawing and structuring the figure as well some notes of my own on contour build up.





andrew loomis approach to the mannikin takes a very practical approach to describing the human skeleten with very simple shapes and massed forms.
The manikin can be used to quickly block in poses as well praportions for character design.

[Robert.B]

Speaking of praportion lets at look vilppus approach to describing and measuring the body through the center Axis while using the head as units of comparison. Here you can see that the center axi can be looked at not only as a measure of the total hieght but it also describes what the spine of your character will be doing in their pose. Using heads as standard for measuring praportion can work very well when you dont have tools at hand for precise accuracy. Infact I use it all time and know many other who do as well.

[Robert.B]

This is simply a constructive techique for visual notation. You use this to lock down all your visual landmarks and then fill in the gaps later on addig volume and shape.

[Robert.B]

Your Assignment
DeadLine 7/4/08

Ok I forgot my tablet at work so I sketched something with the mouse to give you guys an idea of the action pose combined with the orthographic mannikin studies and how they should be submitted. You can add giudes to showcase measurment if you like.

You guys are required to make 8 manikin drawings 4 with pencil and 4 with a digital drawing tablet in PS or Painter. 6 of those drawing should be in orthographic set up and 2 should be in an action pose of your choice. The 2 dynamic action drawings should have a combination of contour edge and manikin under drawing. try and be inventive with the action poses and for the orthographic drawings try and line them up with each other as accuratly as possible.

[Dan!]

Hey all- names Daniel -I've always been interested game art, concept art etc. My long term goals are to be involved in games and interactive entertainment. I have a base in 2d and 3d creation as well as game modding. I am focusing in character creation at the moment to strengthen those skills.

[Etcheberri]

Hello,

My name is Xavier and i am 23 years old.
I am from Belgium (so, my apologizes if my English is weird sometime)
I studied in video games, graduated almost one year ago.
Now i am working in 3D architecture as a 3d lighting/textures/render artist.
I work with vray and photoshop all the time.

The truth is that i have always wanted to be paid for drawing and being imaginative but i was afraid to launch myself in such a big journey of learning.

Guessed some months ago that it was really time to get some nuts,
i must at least try to do it with all my soul, or i gonna have regrets all my life.

Still a lot to learn, but i am willing to do it.

What are my interest in art?
i think all is pretty about mood and lights, i love light AND i love stories.
I know that s pretty a simple way to describe it, but that s how i feel.
nothing is more strong than the feeling you get when you see a good painting.

My favorites genre is SCI FI.

i guess that s it for now ;)

This is a piece i finished last night.
i want to be good in a more speedpainting approach (cos it s more expressive i guess), but it s easier to paint with more control for me.

http://img382.imageshack.us/img382/4425/divineprophecyfinallargnc0.jpg

[JHuntsman]

Hello all - my name is Jamie Huntsman. I am currently working as a Freelance Illustrator. I want to continue in this work, but, take it to the next level. Even though I advertise myself as an illustrator, I use graphic design to pay the bills. I'm pretty sick of that, and want to make my living doing exclusively illustration.

I am 30 years old and have been drawing as long as I can remember, but never though I could make anything of it. Until I got up the nerve to quit my job and try it. That was three years ago, and it's been going pretty good ever since.

As I said before, I want to kick my work up to the next level, try to use my imagination more and get over that fear of failure that all artists seem to struggle with.

I am very interested in eventually working for the film industry as storyboard or concept artist - but, i know I have a lot to learn - that's why I'm here.

Oh, one more thing...I'm a girl. I know that this is primarily a male dominated site, but, I am one of the girls here.

You can check out my portfolio here - PORTFOLIO (http://www.directoryofillustration.com/JamieHuntsman)
and here's one "portrait" that I recently finished that I'm pretty proud of. (sorry to keep posting this one, but, it's new, and it came out good).
http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=128885

Thanks Guys :girl:
Jamie

[Robert.B]

Thanks for the introductions guys as for the assigment for this week what im looking for is accuracy and thoughtful use of the mannikin and gesture. also remember if you finish this assignment ealy do post it in here and we will crit accordingly. As mentioned in the syllabus the first 2 weeks willbe more about fundementals and in the last week we will do exploration of different approaches to character ideation and brainstorming.

[JHuntsman]

Ok, I know I'm asking for it, posting the assignment first...but, I'm going away for the holiday weekend. So, here it goes. The first is pencil, the second is digital (in photoshop/Wacom tablet)

Jamie

[Etcheberri]

here s mine.
that was pretty fun (so i did a bit more), but i don t know if that s accurate though.
http://img60.imageshack.us/img60/293/scan0001lk0.jpg
http://img78.imageshack.us/img78/9824/02zi8.jpg

oh and sorry for the crappy scanner..gonna work on less sketchstuff paper next time.

[Robert.B]

Hey guys I hope you had fun doing this quick exercise and hopefuly realised its importants. Ok J ill start with you since you finshed first. Let first say good job on the fast turn around and it looks like you paid close atention to the design approach that Loomis has described with in the research. I think you also made a good choice with in the pose of your action shot for the pencil version. Some things I noticed not working so well were the praportions of the orthographic mannikins most the heads were rather large and the span of the shoulders were pretty broad. What this does is create a visual argument as to whats the age of this mannikin. At first glance i got the impression of a child or young adult but the span of the shoulders suggested different and thus the argument was created. A few minor crits on the digital action mannikin pose are that the right arm seems a little too long and straight and right shin seem to be curving sharply inward when it should be convex. these are small details but the whole point of using the manniken is so that we make all these correction before we move on to the next level of rendering and designing are characters. Some things to remember when drawing characters specifically non mechanical chracter are that we are depicting organic information so we want to avoid stiff poses and stiff limbs because even the parts of are bodies that seem to be straight truly arent.

[Robert.B]

Xavier good job on the extra effort thats always appreciated althought whats mostly improtant is acuracy and smart desicion making which I see both of you guys did. I think over all you had a good idea of the praportions you were wanting to portray althoug in some of your action shots i see you were making some of the same subtle mistakes I mentioned earlier with the child like praportions with adult limbs. The trunk of the body and size of the head on your action shots in your pencil versions is what creating this argument. This combined with the length of the limbs also reinforces the confusion.Also 1 side note be careful about cropping out the feet for presentation purposes its a no no.
Its really great that were on the subject of praportion becasue id like discuss ideal praportions vs naturalistic praportion as described by loomis.

[Robert.B]

Its very important to know the full range of iconic praportions associated with figurative art and character design becasue these will be your major tools for communication and creating appeal. Rather we are concious of it or not when the general audience veiws your work they make associations and categorise the work into genres or styles or character depiction( visual stereo types). Whats important as an artist is to have a full awareness of these archetypes so that we may make the smartest design choices as to our character creations.

[Etcheberri]

Okay thank you for the notes
, i will take care about the fact to use correct proportions depending of the age of the character,
The second loomis document up here is really usefull.

for the cropped feets, sorry the page was a bit bigger than the scanner is.

Do you want us to redo the excercices?

[Robert.B]

I wont ask you guys to do this excersize over becasue we only have so much time in the month to cover everything but if you would like to take another go at it that would be great. Ill be posting the next assignment on suday or monday.

[Dan!]

Hey all- I'm jumping in a little late- helluva week- great work everyone

my digi
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q81/DECYPL/ManPrac1.jpg

pen+paper
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q81/DECYPL/manprac2002.jpg

[Robert.B]

DECYPL good job on your mannikins i like how consitant your praportion are and I can also get a clear idea of the age. I few small crits and suggestion are to watch your center Axis when making your orthos they seemed to be slightly tilted as well the length of your torsos.

[Robert.B]

Welcome to week 2 everyone I hope you guys had a good holiday weekend.

Week2:
This week will be all about creating silhouettes in PS, and evolving a silhouette into several iterations of a concept. Everyone will also do studies in line weight and atmospheric perspective using line and soft shading. Students will choose one of their several silhouettes and hand draw this with pencil and paper making use of the techniques we have covered thus far( Line weight, soft shading dynamic poses)We will also briefly discuss Visual land marks with examples from Andrew Loomis, and Bridgman.

Id like to open up the discussion by discussing visual landmarks and how they help us in design and creation.
Visual land marks are just as the name describes large general details and anotomical features that allow us to map our designs baised on the relativity of the forms. Knowing where your visual land marks should go will allow you too create the understructure that will eventualy lead into your fine micro details rather it be anotomy or even clothing and faberic deigns. here Loomis has outline some of the common visual land marks associated with human figure.

[Robert.B]

In this example of 2 approaches to head construction you can see how the visual land marks have been mapped out in creation process.

[Robert.B]

Alright now for your assignment as I mentioned you guys will need to turn in studies in line wieght and demonstraight atmospheric perspective using a combination of line hue and texure shift. This techique has a variety uses including adding the illusion of 3 demntionl depth and fog but in the case of character creation we will use it to create focal points for detail as well suggesting depth. I would like you guys to turn in 1 of these studies demonstrating this technique. I would strongly suggest using primative shapes with lines and texture integrated but you are not limited to this approach. By all means be as inventive as you like just so as you demonstraight the described technique. This assignment can be approached
in digital or pencil your choice. 7/12/08

[Robert.B]

Alright guys I cant stress the importants of Character Silhouettes not only does this ideation technique allow you to rapidly evolve a concept into several iterations of a single idea but also allows you also check the solidity of your
Design, pose strength, and praportional balance before commiting to the final draft. Often when your doing client work and they want to see concepts emediatly and your under unique time constraints Silhouettes will save your life given your client is fimillar with thier potentual. Ok so you guys are required to create 8 or more different silhouette variations on a single silhouette. You will then choose one of those silhouettes and then create a pencil drawing of that chosen design which makes use of line wieght soft shading and fair amount of detail that elaborates on your enitial design. Here are 2 examples of some silhouettes I made with the mouse really quick and underneath that is the second assignment example of a drawing I translated from a silhouette I was saticefied with. These and your atmospheric studies are due before 7/12/08

[Etcheberri]

Hi,
I have a question for the 8 silhouettes.
Does it mean i have to work 8 silhouettes with the same background idea?

like,for example,

i want a cybernetic warrior and i will do 8 silhouettes on that theme?

OR it s ok if

i don t have any idea for the direction and try to work out different themes in these 8 silhouettes,
as cowboys,pilots,soldiers,knights pick the look i prefer and refine it with pencils then?

[Robert.B]

Etcheberri Im glad you asked me before doing the excersize. For the silhouettes the idea is to start off with something generic as i did in silhouette 1 and then see how many times you can evolve that idea. You are not limited to a single character idea when evolving the concept id like you too try and push your imagination as far as you can by elaborating on one enitial concept. Once you have created your 8 different character silhouettes I want you too select one of those 8 and then do a pencil drawing of that chosen silhouette.

[Etcheberri]

allright... well i don t know if that s what you meant...
i guess these are too classic/bad, guess i need to free more my mind before doing this...

tell me what you think Mr Robert.?

if that s not what it meant to be, i gonna redo it, got a lot of time for that.
(i don t have a scanner here, i will scan it tomorrow, but anyway i think i am not right, so i will redo all that)
Though i can get some useful comments.

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/256/ass2bnu9.jpg
http://img60.imageshack.us/img60/6297/ass2clu5.jpg
http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/6235/scan0001lowpn5.jpg
http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/3152/ass2avz3.jpg

[Robert.B]

Etcheberri hey I want to thank you for completeing this weeks assignment unforunatly looks like you might be the only one who will have completed the assigment this week. So I want to first say that you did good job translating
the assinment presented for this week. Id like to first talk about the Atmosperic perspective study which at the momment isnt really demonstrating the technique to its full function. Right now the lines and values are all pretty heavy and im not getting the sense of depth and focal shift because of this. If you would like to try it again i would try using large primetive shapes. Now onto your character. The first thing that comes to my attention are his praportions which seem to be very top heavy which drarf his legs. Now there is a kind of stylised character type that makes use of a top heavy praportion but the arms are usualy longer the and head is smaller thus creating an ape like appearence. With this current design we arent getting the balance of a deliberate stylised choice but are instead getting an off blance in the design. The center axi is also creating an odd tilt to the character and the legs are very tube like which takes away from any real sense of mass. Remeber that you want to try and nail all the major visual targets with in your figures and allot of those land marks are organic curves. Thanks again for making effort and taking the enitiative for this assignment.

[Etcheberri]

hey if you take the time to give us assignments
it is more than normal that i do them...

sure i screwed up this one,
i gonna redo the silhouettes i will build the structure then
put the silhouette on it,too hard too get it proportional without that.
it was not an intention to stylized it,
just a big juicy mistake.

[Robert.B]

I think that your on the right track its just small refinements that well really improve your designs. Remeber to alwyas refere to the notes presented above they will only help you ^_^ and dont be afaid to have some life reference handy as well becasue these will be your tools for creating the structure to your designs.

[Dan!]

herro
nice work fellers-
sillhouettes
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q81/DECYPL/sillh.jpg
final drooring
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q81/DECYPL/silFin.jpg
testing atmospheric perspective
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q81/DECYPL/atm.jpg

[Robert.B]

Ok guys sorry about the late respond its been a busy month with me moving into a new appartment and lexturing here and there I couldnt find time to give this class my emediat anttention. Ok so DECYPL I want to fist thank you for completeling the assignment I pointed out most of the things I felt could have been adressed in my image corrections. I like your approach to the character type I think that you could have pushed your silhouettes a bit farther and some of the poses had an off blanaced design like the character would fall forward if he atmepted to walk. The grey scale drawing looks like it was done in PS and should have been drawn with pencil on paper. Your atmospheric study is more ofa forced color perspective and not so much an atmospheric perspective demonstration.

[Robert.B]

examples of atmospheric perspective

[Dan!]

thanks for the notes- I'll make some adjustments soon.

[Robert.B]

Do to the recent changes in my schedual Im going to open this thread up to the community. Anyone can post their studies in realtion to the materials and assignments presented and work at their own pace. I will update this thread from time to with other assignments as the months progress. To my mentees feal free to continue posting you investigations and studies.

[Robert.B]

Week3:
We will discuss object interpretation, body language and hands, composition and the gaze, we will also do a brief study on how to use color for forced perspective. Everyone will turn in 8 thumbnails demonstrating there try at forced color perspective, 4 line or silhouette drawing of a character with different objects or weapons, and 1 full illustration of that character in a beauty shot combing one or more objects, and a pose that communicates a partial narrative. Examples soon to come.....

[kv_ak]

Robert kindly allowed me to join, so here's my take on first exercise-- I will upload digitals as soon as I'll figure out some software-related issues, which should be tomorrow or the day after. I used some stock references for dynamic figure foreshortening, I hope it's okay-- otherwise I'll try doing next one from mind.

[kv_ak]

Ok, here are digitals, with more emphasis on the construction, though doing dynamic figures from mind is not my strong side. I tend to use pelvic block since it makes construction simpler.

[kv_ak]

Here's my take on aerial perspective exercise-- by the way, I see that dark values become lighter with distance, but what happens with light values--should I paint them a bit darker?

[Robert.B]

I like your pencil study I think you had allot of success with it. I also felt the atmospheric study is working fairly well also. One thing I noticed in your digital versions are that your lines a very jerky this could be caused by number of different reasons but what i suggest is practicing making bold deliberate lines. If you have to use ctrl+z allot then do so, but think about your lines a little more :)

[kv_ak]

Hi Robert- thanks! I agree about lines, I'm new to digital stuff, being more familiar with traditional mediums-- I have to paint with mouse at the present time... though you somehow do fine lines even when you draw with mouse-- how do you do it? I also find your correction to be spot on-- I've been stuck with that top part of ribcage on digital figure. Thanks!

Anyway, here are some silhouettes, I tried to work on my outlines... now I need to select one for pencil rendering-- what sort of modelling technique should I use, stumping or hatching? This sort of sketching looks very useful to determine good designs, one thing that I noticed that simple shapes work better, some sort of better readability perhaps... Also what looks like a good figure pose in linework might not be readable as a silhouette due to strong massing into one value.

[kv_ak]

Ok here's pencil figure from one of thumbs, guess face is somewhat small but hopefully I can fix it digitally. I'm still not sure what type of rendering was meant, so i kind of combined it. Maybe I should've used much more reference, I'm working too slow I guess, checking and re-checking things numerous times.

[Nadesican]

Hey there! My name is Scott, but I go by Nadesican here. I've only been seriously drawing for about a year now..if a little less, but the pencil has been going on and off for at least 4. My aspirations are a little hard to pin down..but if I could create characters for video games, or create a cool graphic novel, that would be awesome.

As for my most recent successfull work..I guess that would have to be a study I posted here. In addition, I did the Loomis Ortho mannikans for review. Thanks for opening this up to the public!