Jon Neimeister's (Andantonius) Sketchbook - Updated Often!

[Andantonius]

Yoyo Carlton! Did you mean looking at them in the, "Wow what a waste of both nupastel and my energy and brain power to look at this nupastel with my eyes and shit this guy needs to die in a fire" kinda way, or looking at them in the, "hey that's not bad!" kinda way? In case of the latter, thanks; in case of the former, it's not the nupastel that matters, it's the person who's eye the nupastel dust is in.

And, yes, Konstad has a variety of bras; jelly bras, lacy bras, bras that climb on rocks. He's actually about to start his own fashion line of women's undergarments, called Konstad's Secret. Promotional material will be strictly close-up shots of his face, giggling. It's the dimples.

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Here's some of the better drawings from tonight's figure session; it's been a while since we've done gestures instead of long poses, was quite fun!

On the upper ones, I was trying to do my best to identify and distribute the weight of the figure naturally, which is what all the vertical lines and ellipse ripple things are; I was looking at the model and trying to find both the center of gravity and which parts of the body were bearing most of the weight. I think that's gonna be something I try and keep practicing in gesture drawings, cause as always my ultimate goal is to draw mostly from imagination and I think the posing is one of my weaker areas; just articulating anatomy and muscles is getting pretty easy, ultimately it's just match and figuring out where things are and how best to define them, but putting together a figure that feels solid and alive is another challenge entirely.

funtime figure droaring!

[Metal Fingers]

'undergarments' hehe. And yes Carlton, I am jealous, jon is the most dashing gentleman I have ever laid eyes upon. Good work jon, your last figure paint had good rhythm, and his right forearm was sexy as fak.

[Andantonius]

Lol, well in that case. *Slicks back hair and puts on v-neck vest*
You are too kind good sir, do let me treat you to a refreshing beverage and a casual game of poker.

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Yet again spent all yesterday working on unpostable stuff, so no goodies to show, but here's some funtimes from our figure session today! The whole session was devoted to drapery studies which was a ton of freaking fun, it's probably the first time I've really carefully and observantly drawn drapery, which I should definitely get in to more often cause it's an area I'm lacking for sure.

I also need to check out the clothes section in Drawing People by Barbara Bradley; I randomly bought it a long time before TAD and one of my teachers says it has the best info on drawing clothes that you'll find in any one book, so I'mma investigate that and maybe do a few cloth studies on my own.

It definitely seems like it's something that wouldn't be that complicated to figure out once you understand the basic structure of it; I can already tell where things are pinching and creating force and how they radiate out and roll over form, I just need to learn more specifically when and why it happens and how to tell what kind of folds it would make. Cloth is probably one of my favorite things to look at when it's done really well, even more so if it's in motion which I unfortunately can't do, but it's still freakin cool. Definitely gonna be worth studying.

Have a good'un! Keep droarin!

[TomDeVis]

your improvements are inspiring !
Keep it up, I really like your sketches!

[Andantonius]

TomDeVis- Thanks very much! I appreciate it!

And holy crap 4 days without an update; my most sincere apologies. Silly life has been consuming art time, and the art time it hasn't consumed has been spend on obligatory and unpostable work, herpderp.

Hopefully I'll solve that problem this week though, I want to start doing 30-60 minute warmups every morning before getting in to official work. I think it'd be a great way to prep for the day as well as make it feel like I'm not doing school all the freakin time, so I should be able to throw those up if there's nothing better and keep the daily updates rollin, yeauah!

On the subject of this, it's just the next step in the process. We had to model out our weapons in 3D and for next class we'll be painting on top of all of them for our final images, which should be a blast. I've been having a lot of fun messing about in 3D lately and have learned a lot, now I just need to learn how to do it in 3DSMax and make some legit usable geometry. Funtimes!

[america220]

That's a cool weapon idea! And I used 3DS Max for three years in highschool ( 3D animation was my major) so yeah

[Andantonius]

america220- Thanks very much! And yeah, it seems like a pretty sweet program, just gotta get used to it.

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Here's a figure painting for class, a master copy of a Jeremy Lipking painting. I think I'm starting to get a better handle on soft modeling, got me some synthetic flat brushes and they're much easier to blend with than the bristle filberts I was using before.

My colors are still not as sophisticated as his, I actually made my painting much too neutral than the original which is usually the opposite of my problem, but I think it still turned out good and I learned a lot. Oils are superfun, can't wait till I'm as comfortable with them as I am digital. There's gonna be some sexay canvases going on when that happens. Need moar practice.

[GabrielVerdon]

The anatomy studies are great Andantonius. I can really see the improvement in your recent stuff.

[Velocity Kendall]

i think this ones fucking fantastic

[ryan mcshane]

duuuude dope!!!!!!!!
no more words !

[cloudcan]

Weapon design lacks some design elements, but omg your figure and drapery studies are frikkin gorgeous.

[Andantonius]

GabrielVerdon - Thanks! Glad you think so!

Velocity Kendall - Thanks muchly!

Ryan - Thanks, yo!

cloudcan - Thanks very much! And if you have any suggestions on improving the design let me know, improving on design is pretty much my main goal at this point!

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Aight, here's some more stuff. It is with somewhat sorrowful but also not really and kinda excited feelings that I've decided to relinquish my 'updating daily' title. It's obviously been untrue for a little while now and with half of our classes being mostly unpostable work for now I just dunno if I can keep it up. So I'll probably switch to updating once or twice a week with two or three higher quality images. I think ultimately it'll be a good switch, you'll get higher quality work in larger chunks, I'll get to stop freaking out over not having to update and losing sleep feeling obligated to update before bed.

SO with that out of the way, here's some frikkin art.

The first is an ink drawing I did of a grim reaper type dude, which ended up being pretty interesting. We had an art show at the ATX Pod last Friday with the Vigil studios and students were allowed to put one piece in the show, I was swamped with homework and didn't plan to put anything in but on that Thursday I got some free time, so I started thumbnailing this guy at 11 in the morning, spent an hour and a half buying bristol and a frame at like noon, and then worked on it until like 12 literally while we were tearing down the studio for the show, haha. And rather spiffily it actually sold the next day, first showpiece evar! Aww yeah.

And the second one is just a 3hr figure drawing done during Saturday's session. Just messin with pastels and having fun, not much to it.

Peace out yo!

[Metal Fingers]

dang man, I didn't see that 3 hour pose, thats a good one!

[Andantonius]

Thanks, Konstad! Glad ya dig it!

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And the day after I whine about having nothing to post and renounce my updating daily status, I have 5 things to post. Ah well, such is the way of life. But it's cool, I think I like these less-frequent-with-more-images post... plus I can update during the day instead of at 2 in the morning. But anyways, art!

First up are some sphere exercises we've been doing in entertainment design class, just doing surface studies of different materials and trying to capture their effects accurately. It's ridiculous amounts of fun, and super educational. Really gets you thinking about what you're seeing and why.

Second one is my final weapon for Industrial Design class, I took the model I made in sketchup, took a quick screencap, and just painted over it. Overall I think it turned out pretty cool, I'm pretty happy with the design and rendering, just gotta keep pushing my ideas more so I can make stuff that's actually interesting and doesn't just look cool.

Third thing's a speedpaint exercise we did in Industrial Design yesterday, our instructor gave us a song [Link] and told us to design and paint a vehicle in 1 hour based on how the song made us feel. I thought it gave a pretty epic sort of, "I'm gonna roll around and pummel you all in slow-motion while roaring in a masculine way." so I went for a dune buggy with a big ol' minigun. Was good practice for sure, might make this a regular practice whenever I have a spare hour.

And lastly is a Bill Cone study and re-light I did this morning as a warmup, they're about 15 minutes each, the one on the left is a study of the original, the one on the right is a re-light from imagination. Lots of fun, and great color practice.

[Ninjac]

Gwad Jon! Your pastels are becoming amazing! Like starting to rival Jane's and almost even Mark English's work. I guess that's what happens when you do 9 hours of figure drawing every week for over a year. Keep on rocking man!

[Andantonius]

Wow, thanks a ton Josh! That's quite the hefty compliment, I dunno if I can accept it in good conscience, haha. And I actually have been doing mostly constructive figure drawing at the pod, I've only done about 5 or 10 academy method ones since being here, it's kind of a just-to-chill thing at this point.

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Shenanigans! Here's today's image dump; first up is some crazy fashion design for our pop culture class. I had a lot of fun with these and am gonna do a few more and take them to final illustrations. It's really interesting to apply all the stuff we learned about composition for images and try to apply it to a set of objects, I think overall they're pretty successful. So excited to paint 'em up!

Next is a quick master copy for figure painting class, just an exercise in value and edge control. My drawing is way off, but I think the painting part (which was the important part) came out pretty good, oils and I are finally starting to get along.

Then there's a pastel figure drawing from last Saturday's session, experimenting with design a bit, and I changed the position of 3 of her 4 limbs which was silly but I enjoyed it. And then after doing the pastel drawing I went all crazy and start oil painting on top, it was fun and weird and make some cool marks, might be something I experiment more with. It has potential, by jove!

And lastly is a plein-air study I did last week, about an hour and a half total. It was a lot of fun, I'd never gone plein-air painting before (except that one bridge piece which was digital) and it was a lot of fun. The weather was perfect and everything seemed to just work, definitely something I want to get more in to, and it's a great exercise for observing color and light.

And that's all! I shall go now and rest, for I am weary with toil and much sorrow.

[Vulgar`]

Sexy updates.

[Andantonius]

Vulgar`- Thanks very much!

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Arts!!! Here's some more stuff that I've been working on, not as much as last
post but I spent a lot of this week working on presentation stuff so there were less draws.

But anywho, this first one is the final piece for our honors assignment, which was to do an editorial illustration, the article was about a death row warden. Pretty gnarly stuff, this is my first finished oil illustration and I'm actually quite happy with how it turned out! Finally starting to figure out how to apply my digital color skills to oils, which is what bothered me so much about them before. Funtimes, looking forward to doing more!

Then after that is another couple fashion designs for our pop culture assignment; I'll probably rework the last one a little bit cause it's not much design past what the romans had already done, but I like how the 3rd one came out. The first is probably still my favorite though, looking forward to painting these up.

Then there's another surfacing assignment, we all had to work on our flesh balls (lol). It was a lot of fun though, good study for sure, lots of subtlety to try and capture. Need moar practice!

And the last image is just a sketchbook doodle that turned out pretty fun that I'd like to paint up if I ever get some free time (lol, the second).

Aaaand that's all folks!

[Andantonius]

Holy month-since-last-update batman! Sorry for the mega-delay, but not really cause the reason behind it is that I got hit with a bunch of consulting work for Massive Black Shanghai (Brilliant Colors) through TAD which has been immensely awesome. Doing real work for a major company with a year of school still left to go, awesome. Needless to say since it's for actual projects it's all NDA and I won't be able to post any of it until the product is released (which will hopefully be in a few months, but I'm not sure) but whenever it is I'll have some sweet stuff to drop! In the meantime, here's the few schoolwork shenanigans I've managed to squeeze in between the facemelting deadlines.


First up is some homework for our industrial design class, basically we have to design a vehicle that's made by humans but infused with alien technology. I've pretty much never drawn vehicles before this so I'm pretty lost in the dark, but I've become immensely fascinated with industrial design lately and really want to study up on it and get megabadass. If you want to bleed from your eyes due to awesome, check out this monster: [link]
Mine are just in the rough stages right now, but hopefully will be pretty cool when polished up!

After that is a character design for our sci-fi project, still very WIP and very broken, I'll probably just repaint it from scratch and do a little more planning and preparation. Some of the elements are working, but a lot of it is just wrong and doesn't make any sense so I'm gonna have to do a good bit of re-designing. I like where it's headed though (except the retro laser cannon that I got a lameness scolding for, lolz.)
Hooray for design!!

And lastly is another WIP! And you thought I'd have finished work to show, bha! This is for our figure painting class, essentially just to paint a clothed figure from ref that we shot, so I used a photo of one of the dudes down at the Austin pod in his awesome halloween zombie makeup. I'll probably wrap this one up over the next couple weeks, should be pretty sweet! The face needs some repainting though, it's a little too rendered, needs more big shapes to read well from a distance, I was zooming in too much. Sorry digital art gods! D:


And that's it for now, hopefully it won't be another month before I have stuff to post! But if it is, know that I love you and will always think of you while I dance to various tango arrangements.

[Alrap]

I like your paintings

[Andantonius]

Alrap - Thanks very much!

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At last, allowed to post! Here's the first of many illustrations our team is doing for the game League of Legends, this one's a splash screen to show off Gangplank's shiny new model. Check out the official announcement here: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/g...and-animations

This one, like most of them will be, was a collaborative effort. Myself, Alex Konstad and Kirsten Zirngibl teamed up to crank out Captain Morgan here which was a lot of fun, we all had our specialties that we worked on but we all worked on the entire piece as well to keep it looking unified. Needless to say it was an adventure, transferring high res psds over the net isn't the most delightful of activities. But it was definitely worth it, combining multiple peoples' strengths results in a much more successful image, and working as a team is just a great experience in general.

It probably has a good 150 hours of work put in to it accumulated across all 3 of us, but there was a lot of back and forth and figuring out process and learning to work in the same style going on, so once we get everything more settled these'll probably only take 30-40 hours. Gotta meet dem deadlines!

So yeah, I hope you dig it, there'll be more on the way as they get released!

Have a good one!

© 2011 Riot Games

[Andantonius]

Been a while since a good ol' sketchdump and I just finished up my (rather crappy) second sketchbook! So it seems like an ample opportunity to dump le` sketches. Mostly a shenanigan of studies, cloth, figures, hands, thumbnails, a train, and some other funstuffs.

Secondly is a WIP painting for our figure painting class which I may or may not have time to finish (derp), but I like where it's going at least.

And lastly there's a painted-over 3d render of mah robot for Industrial Design class. Could probably still use some more detail, but I like how it's lookin', again may or may not have time to polish it further.

Been crazy busy with work lately, so updates may be sparse, but I'm gonna try and get more in to studies so those should get tossed up decently often.

Have a good one!

[cerealist]

latest robot!! OMG OMG!!!!

[Andantonius]

cerealist - haha, thanks! Roooboooots!

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Happy new years, everyone! Hope you had an awesome 2011 and are prepping for an even better 2012! It's gonna be an awesome year!

Here's some paintingks to kick the new year off with, first off another illustration for League of Legends for their new character Viktor the Machine Herald. This version is technically a color rough prior to the final character as they ended up changing his design some, which you can see on their website. Again this one was a collaboration, Alex Konstad, David Kegg and myself worked on it, was a lot of fun!

And after that is the final for that fashion design assignment I posted the WIPs of a while back for our pop culture class, I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out, though the figure drawing's a little weird I like how the design turned out.

Cheers!

[Marian Rowling]

Hey Jon I've really enjoyed seeing your progress and learned a few things to try for myself. I thought your cast sculpture done in Sculptris looked brilliant.

I think I shall check out your blog next for more good reading, progress and art. 5 stars from me for all your hard work and passion.

[Mila]

Hey there, great sketchbook!

There's some great work here. So much progress