The PHATandy Tome of Daily Updates.

[PHATandy]

Oren and Tom - cheers guys! I'm trying!

More anatomy stuff - started a second page but i didn't finish it, will post it up with tomorrow stuff. Late night so its real short tonight. Huzzahh for sleep!

Sorry for the weak update! Watched some French Documentary about a primary school in the countryside, in my drawing time . At least French kids are so adorable! It made up for it.

[PHATandy]

This is the kind of studying i like. Especially for anatomy i seem to be getting a lot more out this kind of work - i mean I'm still working from ref, but its building good foundations for me. This is almost the way i work normally when i draw figures - but it was a lot less coherent, this is giving me a more correct and direct approach. So everything i put down is useful, I'm not just fumbling about.

This work is good though - i was working from ref for half of it, photo ref - so it wasn't just copying down what you see. Its about understanding it, transferring it and reconstructing it on the paper, all the meanwhile you come across little problems and have to really work them out by figuring out whats going on in terms of 3d space and objects.

Its all a bit crappy looking, but i think its helping me understand more about the figure at a basic level. I know muscles and anatomy kind of well, but this is reinforcing my basics of constructing a solid base for the figure, with good proportions, perspective, weight and balance.

Read some article in IFX about Donata Giancola, then got sucked into his website. Such amazing work, his figures are awesome.

Uni starts again tomorrow so maybe you'll have something crazy like a drawing from my head!!!

[teapo]

woot~ great anatomy updates PHATandy :3 seems like your most comfortable way to approach the figure. good sense of volume and everything. keep studying

[ThomasM]

liking that last update - love the way that the figure can be broken down into such simple shapes, rather than having to account for hundreds of planes on each limb. And also the ones youve drawn really have nice motion to them rather than the quite static poses you often see in sbs. nice.

[PHATandy]

Teapo and Tom - cheers guys, i appreciate the compliments

Basically. My new uni project im doing is gonna be a cover for Akira, volume 1. So to start with while i was thinking about what i wanna do was doing just some quick little studies of nice things from Akira. Looking at technology and buildings and stuff. Thats what i want the cover to be about, not the characters or anything. Something that shows the atmosphere of Neotokyo.

Found these 4 sort of 1 off pictures by Otomo, im guessing might have been covers or something for specific issues. Never seen them before, surprise surprise. Theyre amazing.

1111 2222 3333 4444

[oren90]

cool project, good luck with it

[Jasper_]

Thanks for commenting my book man! You're right it is great seeing other illustration students, I love seeing what other students are learning and what sort of assignments they have. Your doing some great studies and I really appreciate your hatching technique, keep going man!

[PHATandy]

Thanks very much Jasper and Oren ty.

Bringing some colour to this sketchbook page!

Today was what our uni called 'Visual Studies' - but for me its become my little study day. So i did an self portrait for about an hour, a painting for about an hour and then another quicker painting for about 30 mins. Plus all the fannying around that goes in between (man i waste toooo much time )

Im not too keen on the 3rd one. It seems when i rush i start sort of painting between the lines and not forming proper 3d shapes and forms with the paint. I did the same with some places on the 2nd piece. I need to figure out a way of painting where im not letting the lines come though or make use of lines better, make it part of the style(although the self portrait has no lines by the end...)

Sorry i didnt look at much art today so nothing to post, lots of work then lots of Smash Brothers But Akira project is tomorrow so go look at some more amazing Katshuhiro Otomo work! I got a copy of Domu in the post, a graphic novel of his before Akira, im super pumped to read it. Even the cover is amazing.

[oren90]

great studies man, I liked the portrait most

[PHATandy]

Thanks oren i do too. Was kinda happy with it, its unusual for me to catch myself well. Its better than most of my SPs, but theres always a point when i stop knowing how much it looks like me.

My first page of thumbs for my Akira project, not a lot i know but i spent about 4 hours playing football this afternoon in the sun, beautiful. Im gonna go to bed early tonight and have a full day of work tomorrow. Got loads of sheets of squares ready for my Thumbnail-off! Im really pumped to try and do some serious work on this, if theres anything i can get absorbed into, its something Akira related.

Tetsuoooooooo (link to Randis's SB cus hes doing some awesome Akira stuff too atm)

[ThomasM]

Really like that second painting man, has loads of character - looking forward to this akira project! Out of interest, do you have like 9-5 studio hours on your illustration course or is there a lot of self learning involved with the course? Keep it coming!

[oren90]

cool thumbs my fav one is the most right one on the second line

[StolenSky]

Lovely sketchbook dude! Your studies are really paying off. I love your Akira thumbnails (I'm watching it tomorrow, hurrah!). I'm also a student studying Illustration but I'm in my first year. I'm in Plymouth, so not far from you.

Keep it up

[PHATandy]

Tom - Cheers dude, i like it too - the photos are worked on were pretty great though. Lovely old photos from the 30s and 40s.
My Course is pretty much full time, its 9-30 to 4-30, 5 days a week. But in the first year its a lot of being taught and being set projects all the time - and having to be in everyday. But even so, its what you make of it. Its easy to not turn up, sometimes it gets to you and its easy to just take days off.
But where i am now in the second year about 4/5 of my week is sort of 'self-negotiated' work, which means we work projects, but they are our own projects that we set. Hence why im setting myself animation projects and stuff on Akira etc. Its about doing what u wanna do, but still forcing yourself to deadlines. Its supposed to be 9-5, but i have work to do on the computer etc so im not always in. But the 1st year is a nice introduction to that, quite rigid in attendance.
I think its always the same though, especially for me now - it is what you make it. You do your own work and you do as much as you need to. In uni, or not. CA.org is a pretty good place for that. You gotta work hard, which is what i *try* to do.

haha, sry for the overcomplicated reply!

Oren - yeh thats a pretty different one to the rest but i kinda like, gonna try and incorporate some elements of it into the others.

Stolensky - thanks for looking dude, hope Plymouth is going well for you.

MORE THUMBNAILS... ARGHHHH.
I had a pounding headache all day, which stopped for no more than 5 minutes at a time. So now i need to sleep.
Gonna start picking thumbs and working some more details and ideas in tomorrow. Would have done some studies tonight but i had Housing stuff to attend to

[Jamie Romoser]

digging those thumbnails gotta start doing more of those myself
have a good one keep it up
-Jamie

[ThomasM]

those thumbnails are awesome! - definitely gonna try and get some done myself this weekend now that I've seen how easy you make it look

[teapo]

woot awesome updates PHATandy :3 You're really capturing the spirit of Akira. A lot of your thumbs remind me so much of it, so you must be doing something right for that project lol. Also I really love your digital studies. Btw, what size paper do you use for your thumb studies?

Keep going Andy~

[Asahi-SD-]

wow those thumbs are pretty awsome O_o luv it

[PHATandy]

Omerta, Tom, Teapo and Asahi - thank you so much , its nice to know you can see whats going on and like them. Sometimes i even forget whats going on in the little messes.

Teapo - these are just done on a4 printer paper - so each of those thumbs is maybe 8cm tall. these ones are on a4 paper too.

More thumbnails. Im starting to nail down what i wanna be doing with the picture. Like what elements i want in the picture, What scale i want etc. But its just finding the perfect composition that fits it all in. Might do a 30 min digi sketch before bed. Need to do something crazy after thumbnailing for like 3 days.

Found these awesome environments for a Japanese RPG called Ar Tenelico 3.
They're Pretttyy AMAAZIINNG
Love how crazy and wacky yet detailed and kind of thought out they are. Its like just going balls out for something pretty wacky looking. Fantastically painted too!

[PHATandy]

About 20 mins in Photoshop!
A ponsy looking knight. He might be ponsy, but look how serious he is! That letter must have been about some princess in distress or something equally perilous and cliché.

Edit - the sword is clearly a decoy. Its a blow up sword - look how massive that grip is!

[oren90]

looking good so far

[ThomasM]

again, nice thumbnails - definitely gonna try and put some in my own SB after seeing these!

[kingkostas]

i loved this whole page of your sketchbook
First thnx for the nice links and the nice work you are doing for this beautiful project
So beautiful thumbs with nice composition

Keep up the good work .

[PHATandy]

Oren90 and Tom - Cheers guys!
KingKostas - Thank you very much dude, very complimentary words. Thanks for dropping in

Ok so i have had a pretty bad weekend, but the will do to art has built up inside my again, from not doing any (and looking at Trevors Sketchbook with these aawweesooome mechs)

Was working on a little anatomy - its mostly notes, sorry about that. But i find its kind of good to make notes, and then i do it alongside relevant drawings. The mis of the 2 seems to drive the point home - when i draw it and write it out. Spending that little extra time thinking about it, helps it sink in. Although it might not show much in my work, this FACS stuff has made me much more AWARE of stuff i should be doing in anatomy and other things.

And a small GIF for a little animation im working on. Its for the Magic Concepting challenge over at http://artorder.blogspot.com. (hope the gif works)

Now to read some Roadside Picnic (read: 'book STALKER is based on')

[oren90]

great to see you're working and taking notes is always good it's the stage where all the knowledge you've gathered sink in and the gif looks intresting a bit fast but looking nice

[ThomasM]

hey this SB is getting awesome! Really liking this page so far and that last anatomy stuff looks interesting too. Just wondered if you could recommend any books for stuff like doing landscape thumbnails or landscape placement. Have had a go at some thumbs (which I'll post on my SB later) but they are nothing like this, I struggle with the originality of what I'm doing and they don't seem exciting enough! Yours seem to have so much more depth, how is that achieved?!

[kingkostas]

this is getting more and more interesting.
Gonna subscribe
keep it up

[PHATandy]

Oren and Tom - Cheers guys.

Tom - for me, seriously, its been nothing but practice and just looking at Artists who do perspective and landscapes well. Ive never been taught anything about perspective, i pretty much just learnt the rule that parallel lines meet on the Horizon from looking at Feng Zhu's work, and then practiced. But even so i kind of just 'know' how to draw in perspective (i have a 'logical' brain so to speak), then i just practice to see what looks good. Ive done a lot of thumbnails in my time.
You just have to look at photos/drawings and understand it, then replicate it - and slowly youll learn what it is that is making the depth and how the horizons work and viewpoints work - and how they create depth.
But even so, im so SO FAR away from good use of perspective.
Bumskee did a post a few months ago with some very good perspective stuff. Look at how he uses the horizon differently and how he overlaps obects and stuff - Beautiful.

Work to do tomorrow, so off to bed!
Some more thumbnails (well about 2"x3") and some crazy shit to loosen up. Really wanna get into some concepting stuff soon, otherwise im gonna burst.

Edit - Sorry Kingkostas i didnt see you post! Thanks very much for dropping by! and you better believe im subscribed to your SB, love it!
Also sorry for the thumbs being small and theres a bit loss in quality in the 1st pic. Everything is smoothed over. Im in a hurry to sleep and its all gone mental!

[AztcFireFlower]

My goodness, this is a hard working show of a thread.
It's amazing to see what determination and the right tools can do. FAC arean excellent course to work thru, you've just made me pull out my set and start doing what you're doing. Fill in the gaps.

And it's rare to find the Japanese animation vids you are studying. NeoTokyo is pretty rad for effects....Used to study that stuff when I was an anim. efx artist, eons ago.

Anyway, great SB and keep up that energy for learning, as Mike said, you'll be thundering into the art world.

[TheGnoll]

maaaaaaan my socks blew off, as usual.
You're an incredibly dedicated worker man, and the amount of good stuff you produce is impressive.You are going to rock the artworld indeed!
stopped by at the falmouth website the other day and PHHOSH, that looks like an awesome place to be for a fertile mind, and looks like you're taking the best out of it.
Hit me up again when you take a break from all the hard work!