Game Programmer with Artistic Desires! Drawing EVERYDAY!!

[ji-li]

@Ven S: You have an awesome uncle then xD man I don't know any programmers in my family, although I know my sister's boyfriend is a programmer so technically if they get married then he'd be my programmer brother haha.
@Ven S and Boizon B: Heh. Yes I want to do more life drawing sessions, believe it or not some of them were life drawing gestures in those updates, I'm just that bad at capturing our model x.x; But nowadays I'm exhaustedly too busy to make it to the sessions, but definitely by graduation I'll be doing more. I'd sketch my friends if I could see them more x.x; man I'm isolated from people. But thanks I understand, I am gonna try to somehow get ahead of things in classes so I can spare time to do life drawing, x.x; got like 3 games I have to program for this term.
@Boizon B: you welcome! thanks for having an awesome sketchbook worth checking out And thanks I'll keep on trying more and more!


And I decided to take photos of my sketchbook gesture and muscle studies and such and I also just did some vilppu studies again, think it looks better than last time I did it, also some drawings from imagination in here, but poses are reffed.

[anonanon]

Hey I just looked through your sketchbook and you are really showing a lot of improvement. I'm excited to see where you will be in 3 more pages. I am by no means good at this either but one recommendation I can make is to watch your line quality. It is looking a little hairy right now, and fixing that one thing will make all of your drawings look stronger. Some of your Hogarth studies (at least I think they are Hogarth) demonstrate the clean line quality that I am talking about. Maybe try to draw your lines in one swoop. Also try doing it slowly and then quickly. If it doesn't turn out how you want the first time try again go slower concentrate more. I am not sure how good this advice is, but it helped me. Keep working hard!

[ji-li]

@anonanon: thanks! Hopefully I will be a lot better by that many pages haha! Feels like it takes forever to fill these pages. Yep definitely Hogarth study, I borrowed from our school library so I been drawing from it a lot. Oh yea I have a habit of just drawing out fast unless it's something I need to turn in to school, but definitely good point, I need to slow down and concentrate more and be cleaner with my works. Thanks! I'll work on that more!

Gesture Studies and drawing my sweet boyfriend when he was sleeping hehe showed him this morning and he called me a stalker lol

[ji-li]

Concepts for flash game
simplified one done in flash and the painterly style in photoshop
I want something simple that can animate easily so I can concentrate on programming more but I'm not sure how I feel about this cartoon style.
Any suggestions on a good approach for designing these characters for a flash rpg? (this is for my portfolio project but I am probably gonna be judged more on code, still wouldn't hurt to look decent)
Idea for this character style based on last picture, drawn a while back for fun cartoon paper dolls like how they do in harvest moon mini game for the wii.

[ji-li]

the classic apple study and me failing at it lol x.x

[ji-li]

cartoon character I made for fun

[elwghee]

Looking good so far, but try to get in some longer studies 3-10 hrs with those shorter ones.

[Rhubix]

Concepts for flash game
simplified one done in flash and the painterly style in photoshop
I want something simple that can animate easily so I can concentrate on programming more but I'm not sure how I feel about this cartoon style.
Any suggestions on a good approach for designing these characters for a flash rpg? (this is for my portfolio project but I am probably gonna be judged more on code, still wouldn't hurt to look decent)
Idea for this character style based on last picture, drawn a while back for fun cartoon paper dolls like how they do in harvest moon mini game for the wii.

I don't think the style is to difficult to pull off. I might suggest simplifying the man's pants a little. Wrinkles are a pain in the neck so fewer is always better and keeping them away from joints is always friendly on animators.
The simplest characters to animate have clean narrow joints- Putting the man in shorts that can cover the knee joint would make him even easier to rig up.
Skirts are always a friend, - hips in 3qF (three quarter front view if you don't know the term) and the near shoulder are the hardest part to get a clean joint on when you do cut-out stuff.

For the game as a whole, it's always nice to have a clear concise theme and have all your styles and colours reflective of that.
For instance if you were doing a steam-punk theme you would want to stick to bronze colours, browns, greens, yellows.

If you have a theme in mind you could even google different things with a similar style, if you find a colour scheme that really appeals to you put the image in photoshop and pixilate the crap out of it- It will give you a beautiful array of swatches to start from.
Obviously you don't want your characters to wear the same colour, but you want the colours to be related to one another, and the world they come from.
Currently you have the lady in soft, mid saturation purples, and the man in stark primary colours, to me that's a little disconnected.

Keep posting your updates! indie games are the coolest

[Syle]

ji-li: thanks for visiting my SB!

Boy, you've got a lot of hard work going on in here. Keep it up. Are you studying from any books in particular right now? From looking through your sketchbook, the one thing I could recommend is getting some foundations under your belt. Devote some time to perspective studies, value studies, etc.

I think if you put some serious time towards those fundamentals, the rest is going to be gravy for you.

Again, keep up the hard work, it'll pay off!!!

[ji-li]

Man, I'm sad I haven't been able to get back into drawing for a long while, but I graduated art school and I landed a position in a game company as a programmer and I've been really busy, I'm going to try my best to pick things up while things are a bit calmer now.
I may be mostly drawing some concepts for an indie game I plan to work on at home. Although I'll only do UI art for it and the rest will be modeled by my boyfriend, whom is also on here if you want to see his work --> his Sketchbook
he works a LOT more than he posts, but if you can help support him so he can be encouraged to post more it'd mean a lot to me He's really talented.
I'll be otherwise mainly the programmer to our game, but I'll try to draw more often when I can because I still hope to have more talent to really do both sides of game development better!
I'm actually Lead Programmer and Lead Tech Artist on my current project at work, but it's a temporary position. So who knows what's next.

Well at work now but next post will have some art in it, I hope I haven't fully lost it.
In meantime, not sure if I ever got around to posting this but here is the walk cycle animations I had done for the two characters above using a reference of walk cycles I found online to guide me.
Both completely done in Photoshop. I did a front and back one but they are probably on my home computer.

[ji-li]

trying to get back in the art flow, working on indie projects and want to be able to pump out art just as much as I pump out code and show the industry more of my abilities and land bigger better jobs!
it's been soooo long since I've sat down and really worked on drawing again, so I may have fell back down the progression hill of my art abilities a bit, but I'll try my best to climb up and go higher!
So here is my art dump from the last week trying to get back in that flow, not in exact order since I can't remember which came when, except that blocky was my last.

[ji-li]

I see that CA has finally been fixed glad to see it back up and running without making the computer scream VIRUS every time I come by or it being unavailable entirely.

Here is some stuff done since then, also have an entire sketchbook I been drawing in but won't be able to show any because I'm currently in a separate state from my scanner. Won't be able to return back home until April, so maybe I'll do a scan of some of it then. But here is the newest digital practices and such.




will definitely be drawing more I'll do some of my gesture practices digitally when I can so I can get critiques on them too since I can't scan for a while.

[thek]

As a game coder trying to improve myself I fully sympathise with and support your attempts to improve!

Good to see you're getting back to posting updates. I'm going to leave a few points here that may help you (a lot of this was given to me too).

- slow down, you don't have to draw so fast. Consider lines before you put them down.
- Construction construction construction. You need to be able to understand the forms before you can draw them. This means you need to practice things like spheres, boxes, cylinders, cones..etc. Your post from October has some really cool attempts at drawing spheres, but when you look back at them I think you'll see that they could be more solid. If you need practice drawing circles, then just draw pages upon pages of circles, then try and turn them into spheres by drawing longitude and latitude lines around them.
- Get the Andrew Loomis books, maybe start with "Fun with a pencil" and "Figure Drawing for All it's worth"
- Find those drawings you like, Sailor Moon, Pokemon, or whatever, bring them into photoshop, and see if you can trace their construction. You may be amazed at how those characters are put together. Once you understand that, try doing it freehand on paper using the same shapes.

Good luck!

[ji-li]

Woo another programmer!
thanks for the critique!!
Yeah I've been working on my foundations every chance I get, think the long periods of stopping now and then due to excess of work or school or such though makes it hard for me to progress cause I keep falling backwards.
Slowing down is definitely one of my weaknesses, but trying hard to overcome it.

[ji-li]

Sorry for poor quality, using tablet camera to take pictures. Sketchbook, every other page or so, because I just filled up a 70 page sketchbook back and front on each page and didn't want to take 70-140 pictures so here's a summary.
This sketchbook I started around December 23rd of last year, estimated guess because I know it was right before Christmas some time that weekend.
Trying to put it in order from that day to yesterday, March 7th.

Just graduated from nail tech school today, something I'm doing to help pay off loans so I was pretty busy, most of the drawings were from the last week, because I have been sick and already finished all my requirements for school a long while back and just doing time. So I started sketching more, been drawing everyday for the last week at least, going to try to stick to it!!
Sorry for Huge art dump, but thought it'd be better to critique me based off my studies then my random digital doodles. Going to try to upload everyday, even if it means this camera quality, figure it's better than nothing while separated from my beloved scanner O:

[ji-li]

Marking the start of my daily postings after that huge art dump with the first two pages in my new sketchbook!
By the way, mainly doing Vilppu Studies~
First one is from vilppu's figure drawing manual with some added extras cause I wanted to have fun so I threw in some extra bits,
And the second is based off a pen study I saw on conceptart.org. I've been trying to use the pen a lot more lately, as you probably can tell!
It's kinda hard but kinda fun too. I actually used up a new pen until the ink completely was gone. First time ever! xD
Hope this is enough of a photo that you all can figure out what my weaknesses are and such. Please give me lots of critiques! I'll very much appreciate it!

[ji-li]

Drawing Practice from a page in the Vilppu Drawing Manual, If I have time going to draw some more today, maybe gestures or more vilppu or such...

[ji-li]

My first drawing that I could find that I ever did, done in 1999 or 2000


By the way found my very first digital sketchbook from 2008, thought I'd share:
http://www.polykarbonbbs.com/showthread.php?t=23473
I think I definitely improved compared to that haha.

So I did end up drawing some more after I cleaned up the house.

Dec 8th 2008 self portrait in pencil:

June 2009 Self Portrait did for School in Pencil:

The one I just did now:


Hand Studies, Figure Studies:

[HederaHiberna]

Loomis and Vilppu are definitely helping you. How about drawing more from still lifes and self portraits? I notice you struggle with symbol drawing.
Apparently going through Betty Edwards' or Bert Dodson's book helps with that. See this guide: http://www.squidoo.com/how-to-draw-learn
The only danger in that is the fine balance between copying and analyzing, something that cause me trouble >

[OpusX]

Hey!
Thanks for posting on my sketchbook, i'll check out the Vilppu's Drawing Manuals!
Cool to see your progression!
I also did programming at first, changing to a game graphics production major now to go for the arts!
Keep posting your stuff! =D

[ji-li]

I did draw, but too sleepy to post right now, going to post today's sketches tomorrow morning.
@Hedera: Thanks for the recommendation I'll definitely look into those books and do more portraits and still lifes and see if that helps.

@opusx: that's cool I wish the best on doing those game graphic productions. Love game programming and also why I want to be a better artist so I can also create my own game graphics for my games. And definitely will be posting my sketches every chance I get.

[ji-li]

Didn't get to draw as much because I had to work all day, then teach my little 5 year old sister how to read and write some of the alphabet.
Good training for teaching my own child in the future some day haha. Wonder if my child is going to be a great artist because the mother is a game programmer that loves to draw 2D and the father would be a man that loves creating 3D artworks, both especially prefer character development.

Anyways here is what little I could sketch that day, today I get off work earlier so hoping for more stuff to show tonight!

[ji-li]

Trying the Keys to Drawing Book today...
Here are my results:




oh man drawing using contours and such instead of guideline shapes and such first is really hard x.x Reminds me of the first half of my first drawing college back in art school. Did so bad until I got to the shading portion, when we used shapes as guides, then I was much better off haha.

[ji-li]

Due to not feeling so well (living in a cold environment after being raised in warmer environment for over 20 years makes it hard not to be sick easy x.x ), I'll be home all day tomorrow, except when I get my eyes examine. Woo time for new glasses, I'm farsighted, so maybe this will help me see details better so I can draw better. But means definitely gonna try to get in some good solid hours for drawing time instead of the here and there sketches I do at work if I get the chance to.

Vilppu, Gestures, and Random lines and circles and such.

[ji-li]

Since I couldn't Post it due to the forums being down here is the sketches from March 12th, 2013.
Want to keep them all separate by day so it's easier for me to see how much changes happen day by day at this point.
Didn't do as much that day because I was sick, but this was drawn from looking at my own hands and feet while drawing.

[ji-li]

Alright today's posts, due to the internet being down for a while and not able to go to work because my father saw my nose being runny and said I was too sick to go to work (more like he felt his customers would freak out if they saw me sniffling a bit and that I'm bad for his business... but oh well... I'll prove that I'm better than he always seems to think of me... )

Anyways here we go! Today was Vilppu's studies day for me

[ji-li]

Since I couldn't login at all yesterday cause it seemed CA was down, here is my sketches from yesterday:

[ji-li]

My sketches from today! Busy day at work today so didn't get to do much, but hoping I'll have more time tomorrow.

[ji-li]

Didn't get to draw on march 16th due to an insane crazy work day, but yesterday I got to draw some before the rush. Didn't post cause exhausted when I got home, but here it is. Taking a day off to study but afterwards gonna draw more today too if I can.

[ji-li]

Been pretty busy,Studied all day for license exam on mon, did my nail license exam part 1 on tuesday (passed by the way woo), and worked all day today.
So not much to show, haven't gotten as much chances to sketch also right hand has been exhausted from writing all those notes and doing all that nail tech stuff.

So in the meantime during my downtime, been experimenting writing and drawing with my left xD Since I figure it'd help me out anyways because I strain my right too much at work and it shows my weakness when I paint their right side horribly cause it's on my left and such :< makes me feel really bad.
Hehe not gonna post any of my experiment for my left hand development right now, but maybe later on if you guys are curious on how it's going or when I feel confident to show I can work with both and maybe do ambidextrous drawings. But mostly, just trying to make it so I can work a little easier as a nail tech or other such activities that needs both to be equally as powerful that I have to do.

Anyways.... that's my sketches between those 3 days. I'll be doing more soon as I can! Flooding of customers at work lately, spring break makes everyone go wild about getting their nails did, even when it snows again suddenly o_O;