Chrysophylax's Sketchbook: Efforts in Creativity

[Chrysophylax]

Well... here it is... I finally started a sketchbook. I was actually trying to hold off on doing this until I went back to Cincinnati at the end of December so I could use my tablet again and do some color... alas.

This will probably be far from daily, knowing me, but I hope to keep up on it somewhat regularly.

As you may have notice, my User Name, Chrysophylax, is the name of a dragon from one of J.R.R.Tolkien's short stories, "Farmer Giles of Ham." On top of that, my computer's hard drive is named Caudimordax, after the enchanted dragon slaying sword of old in the same tale. So, as you can imagine, it is one of my favorite short stories. Thus I decided it was time to make an avatar for myself and what better subject than Farmer Giles, himself.

The drawing took me a couple of hours and in the end I think I was not quite creative enough... so I find him rather plain and plan on doing a redesign in the future... but for now this will do.

Farmer Giles of Ham


P.S. I'm not quite satisfied with the sword angles and how the hand is "holding" it... eh... i'll have to work on that for the next one.

[Chrysophylax]

All righty... so... I was scanning my sketches on my dad's scanner and for some reason my pics kept coming out WAAAY too dark... I was losing lots of detail in the scans. Finally I found that my dad had the "auto adjust" box checked.

here is the difference:

Bad Scan


Good Scan (well... better, at least)


The character's name is "Tiger," due to the scars on his body from a tiger attack. He wears a necklace made from the claws of the tiger which he killed in the fight. (inspired by "the Ghost and the Darkness" )

I'm actually thinking of changing him a little by combining him with another character that i'll put up in a couple of posts and i'll talk about the changes then.

[Chrysophylax]

For years no I have done all my sketching with pen only. Preferably the cheapest kind. All those fancy and expensive pens brag about even ink flow and all that jazz... which reeks havoc on shading.

here are some recent sketches:

Martial Arts doodles (no refs)


Mouths (no refs) and Hand (my hand )


Angel (no ref... and NOT inspired by "Dogma")
Another character i'm working on... beyond that... can't tell you much about him because i don't know.

[Chrysophylax]

Like I said... i've used nothing but pens for the last several years... but after cruising around on CA for the last few days, being both blown away and inspired, I ran to the local office supply store, bought myself a couple of mechanical pencils (0.5mm), some erasers (plastic), and some refill led (red and standard graphite, HB). I went for the mechanicals because I am just lazy and didn't want to have to keep worrying about sharpening my pencil. I decided to try something new (for me anyways). I started by laying down the basic structure of the sketch in red. Then I went over the parts I wanted in graphite. When I scanned it into the computer I did my best to eliminate the red without destroying the rest of the pic. In the end it has made a huge difference in the cleanness of my lines... in just a couple of days. Here are the first attempts (before and after clean-up):

Gearing Up (inspired somewhat by the Metal Gear series)
I actually don't like how large I made his feet... I have the tendancy to do that a lot.


Holiday Cheer? Depressed Santa


Jesse (worked on making the feet more realistic this time)


Jesse is a character that I made up a few years ago. My idea was that I wanted to write my own manga... heh... like that'll ever happen He is a 16-17 yr old kid who transferred to a new school. He is considered shy, but is really just quiet, and doesn't really engage in idle chit-chat (strong silent type but really kind). He is somewhat of a prodigy when it comes to Kinesthetic Awareness (awareness of body ... spatial awarness) so he excels in Martial Arts especially and other sports, though he has little interest in any organized sport. However, he has always struggled with the more "marketable skills" like english, math, etc. ... i.e. skills that will get him a job. Because of this he has always struggled in school to maintain good grades, and manages to squeak by on Cs. I am considering merging him with "Tiger" (see above), making "Tiger" and older version of Jesse, perhaps later in the story.

Coming Soon -- Character: Alexis
brief: Alexis is an enigma to her parents and her teachers. She runs with the wrong crowd and seems rebelious, but her teachers are at a loss as to what to do with her because she is one of their best students. She manages to find her way into detension almost every week, yet at the same time she pulls nearly straight As. When Jesse saves her life she befriends him and begins helping him with his studies. Their friendship develops... and I haven't figured out the rest yet.... anywho... i'll get a sketch of her up soon and then I'll post pics of both of them in more dynamic poses.

P.S. No refs on any of these... come to think of it... i rarely use refs... unless i'm drawing knees and elbows... but it's kind of hard to look at your own elbows when there's no mirror around... hurts my neck and people start staring...

[NightVision]

I prefer the red sketches with the red still in, after fiddling with it, you lose some of the subtle lines. Nice work so far ! As a minor crit, the characters in the first pic and the first of the 'red' batch, don't feel like they're really standing on the floor.

[vigostar]

hey, man these are looking good.. You have some really nice lines going on here.... I would like to see you pay a bit more attention to your shading and where your shadows are casted.... I know I for one get really lazy and just start to add shadows but, if you really sit and think about it you'll place them better... Keep it up and keep on posting

[Chrysophylax]

NightVision- thanks for the crits. I think the problem with the ground issue lies in the feet... somewhere... I always have trouble gettting the perspective right on the feet... and then they end up too big... who knows, maybe all I need is to actually draw a bit of floor so they aren't floating.

vigostar- After looking at the adjustments I had made I came to a few conclusions. 1) I agree with you... too many subtleties are lost and so the red lines look better 2) it looks exactly like what i did... desaturated it and messed w/ the levels... that makes it look choppy/crappy 3) it's too much trouble pulling out the red

[Jokisalo]

not bad at all man. keep em coming
lets share our thoughts of our works

[Chrysophylax]

OK... as promised, here is a sketch of Alexis
This is a very tame profile shot of her though and doesn't quite convey the rebelious attitude... when I do the more dynamic pics of her and Jesse I may make her a little more Goth-ish... but w/o the pasty skin.

Alexis

[Chrysophylax]

here they are together for size comparison:

Alexis and Jesse

[Chrysophylax]

so... just yesterday i found out about eatpoo's cover art contest and decided to give it a go... don't worry... i'm all CA at heart... the comp was just too good to pass up though.

but at eatpoo i couldn't find anything like the sketchbooks here at CA... and that is why i'm posting my conceps for eatpoo here.

the theme is "against all odds"

here is the first of 3... I guy lost at see in stormy weather:

[Chrysophylax]

i've been trying to come up with a halfway decent logo for my initials (EPL)

here's what i've got... this is just the vector version... i want to mess w/ it in Pshop to make it look more like it was written on paper.

Clean initials (epl)


and in case you are having trouble seeing it


I found it interesting that together the sort of form an M.

[behemot5]

i like typographie a lot and this one is good ...(for me )....

[auden100]

Hey, nice thread going here. I dig Tiger and the other two characters. I'm looking forward to seeing where that goes.

You're from Cinci? Me too. S'good to see someone else from here posting. Where are you a student at?

Keep em coming.

[Chrysophylax]

auden100 -

I'm a student at the University of Cincinnati, College of Design... my major is Digital Design but we just don't get to draw enough in DD though... it stinks... I wish I was doing Industrial Design because they do a LOT more drawing... but i'm in my 4th yr (out of 5) in my major and in my 8th yr of college altogether, so i'm just going to stick it out and stay w/ Digital Design.

I checked out your sketchbook and you've got some nice stuff... I really like your pen technique. I gathered from your posts there that you are also a student of UC. Are you also in DAAP? Either way, we should see if we can meet sometime soon... I'll be back in town on the 30th (i'm in Seattle right now).

As for the characters... yeh... they are probably a few of my best characters... i have some older sketches of them that i'll scan when i'm back in Cincy. But yes, i do need to keep going with them... it's one of those things were I just need a kick in the butt to get going on them... heh...

[Chrysophylax]

all right... so here are my other 2 concepts for the EatPoo Cover Art contest (making 3 total... see above)

again... the theme is still "Against All Odds"

here a lone wounded soldier makes what appears to be his last stand against a horde of thieves, thugs and brigands. cliche... but i like


alien invaders demolish cities and a small band of survivors makes a stand

[IanE]

Good sketches so far, man. I lke how you draw in red then ink and then do the finished product, good routine.

[Chrysophylax]

well the verdict was is in on The Ultimate Cover Contest over at EatPoo and I will be working on this image for my cover, due Jan 23rd.

[Chrysophylax]

having been inspired the "Mouth of Sauron" bit in "The Return of the King" i wanted to go for something... disturbing.



about 2 hours... give or take

[Chrysophylax]

c'mon people... crits and comments are always welcome.

[auden100]

Hey, dood. That last freaky guy is pretty slick. As for that Eatpoo cover idea, I keep wondering what the guy looks like. Maybe you should show his face so that we can see the diehard determination. Also, you've squared off the anatomy a little too much. By that I mean that most of his limbs are either parallel to the picture frame or rather hidden. Makes it look a little too easy. Perhaps throw some more foreshortening in there to give the body a more natural position, and to show those bastards you ain't afraid. One last thing, I would suggest running through a couple of compositional thumbnails to work out some of the kinks in this one. Case in point: Those two heads on the left and right line right up to the hero in the center, producing static. That heavy vertical bar just enhances the stationary feeling. Throw those characters and enviromental elements around the page to find something that really makes the hero seem determined against all odds, and ready for action. Right now I'm not sure if he's just dropped his sword and is picking it up, or if he's simply building up his chi.

That's just the basics. From there you could try to develop the costumes, equipment, and features of all these guys and the setting for something really out of this world, which might be necessary if you think its such a cliche subject matter to begin with.

Perhaps that's more than you wanted, but I just thought I throw it in.

Keep it up.

[SirRon]

Yeah, that Mouth of Sauron looks great. Not pretty boy great, you get the idea Though he might be more disturbing if his eyes were ripped out.

I don't think I can give the amount of crit that auden100 gave. But here's my 2 cents. One thing I noticed was the distance between the sword and the guy's head.

That's rather tense, so I'd either have the head overlap the sword or put some more distance. I'm guessing you're going through a few more thumbnails so this probably won't apply. Something to keep in mind I suppose.

I saw your website, I really like the faces you did in 3D. What program did you use?

Keep up the good work.

[Chrysophylax]

dang... i haven't posted here in 3.5 years??? let's resurrect this shipwreck.

did this in about 45 min.

It's been way too long since i did any real drawing. my work (3D VFX animator) takes so much of my creativity that i rarely make myself do anything more than doodle these days.

[Senira]

It seems like you have a decent understanding of proportion. I noticed that your style is more cartoony, which is fine, but I think some anatomy studies would help make your characters more fluid and convincing. Your faces aren't bad; I actually quite like the guy in the most recent post.

Keep it up!