Tensai Tokyo Sketch Thread - Sept 28 Exhibition + Commissioned Work Tests!

**tensai** · October 26th, 2005, 11:14 AM

thanks for all the comments! - really appreciate it.

Atmospheria - thanks, maybe you'll have a crit later - there is always place for improvement no?

MorteM - cheers, my dad is a shoe designer so i grew up with shoes and the smell of glue and leather everywhere...

Shamagim - didnt know this book was anticipated.

the tentacle ship originally started out as a duct ship. see below.

PoohGee - cheers. glad you like the design..

Salaryman - that means a lot coming from you! big big fan of your work. hope to get to that next level drawing skill of yours.

Bojee - yeah i'll probably end up using it in an environment pic i need to occupy. more like starting from a city scene and occupy it with designs or character that i did. as opposed to making a background for a design i did, know what i mean? the environments are my lead character...

clogik - thanks man, love your book. i like to see books with design sketches. its CA after all.

alright. i went and did some more thumbs on the ship design. i like the tentacle ship sketch but when i did the first thumbs i was thinking of a ship made of ducts and pipes.

duct ship pencil line

and coloring in PS

i like the design, but think i like the colors of that glowing tentacle version better. i did pencils on my lighttable this time and i think i miss the blue pencil line, which kept things a bit more loose.

quick sketch with mitsubishi brushpen

with copic w i d e marker to add basic value

older sketch of my parents living room in amsterdam

quick bot designsketch, i like these compact low by the ground things. will have to try some more later on.

now if anybody is gonna hook me up with some crits, that would be cool

more soon.

**Atmospheria** · October 26th, 2005, 11:52 AM

Very nice sketches tensai. That little robot dudes are very cute. Good stuff. No crits for now. Post more

**Olof** · October 26th, 2005, 12:23 PM

Great that you've started a sketchbook!

Like the shoe, and it's good to se some studies. Keep it up

.peace

**Shamagim** · October 26th, 2005, 12:28 PM

I was hoping you would create a sketchbook here

.

Nice lips and eyes sketches, and kudos for a really original idea on that tentacle looking ship.

**Poohgee** · October 26th, 2005, 01:02 PM

You still did not have a sketchbook .. surprised I am

I certainly like the blue/violett / orange ( mmmmh my favourite colours

) ship above.
It reminds me of the anime stuff I saw on Matrix Extra DVD .

They remind me of worms or some strange sea creature attacking this guy & in a few seconds tearing him & his little ship/scooter apart.

You can propably find lots of "strange" looking things like the above in the sea .
All these alien-looking snakes - fish - snails hiding in the deep waters.
Also reminds me of Dune - sandworms .
And leeches (or is it leech - the plural ?) .

Shamagim : "kudos for a really original idea on that tentacle looking ship"
Yeah the ship could be an octopus or so ... that dude is riding an octopus back home

JUST IMO

**salaryman** · October 26th, 2005, 01:25 PM

yes!

now this is cool.

I like the bots, I love that ship.

good stuff tensai, keep it up.

**Bojee** · October 26th, 2005, 02:02 PM

Very cool. Are you going to put it in an enviroment now?? It's cool as it is but it'd be fun to see it flying over, through, or around something.

**clogik** · October 26th, 2005, 09:07 PM

cool stuff. i like this one http://www.lokjansen.com/sketchbook/lok180.jpg. keep postin!

**tensai** · October 28th, 2005, 12:00 AM

thanks for all the comments! - really appreciate it.

Atmospheria - thanks, maybe you'll have a crit later - there is always place for improvement no?

MorteM - cheers, my dad is a shoe designer so i grew up with shoes and the smell of glue and leather everywhere...

Shamagim - didnt know this book was anticipated.

the tentacle ship originally started out as a duct ship. see below.

PoohGee - cheers. glad you like the design..

Salaryman - that means a lot coming from you! big big fan of your work. hope to get to that next level drawing skill of yours.

Bojee - yeah i'll probably end up using it in an environment pic i need to occupy. more like starting from a city scene and occupy it with designs or character that i did. as opposed to making a background for a design i did, know what i mean? the environments are my lead character...

clogik - thanks man, love your book. i like to see books with design sketches. its CA after all.

alright. i went and did some more thumbs on the ship design. i like the tentacle ship sketch but when i did the first thumbs i was thinking of a ship made of ducts and pipes.

duct ship pencil line

and coloring in PS

i like the design, but think i like the colors of that glowing tentacle version better. i did pencils on my lighttable this time and i think i miss the blue pencil line, which kept things a bit more loose.

quick sketch with mitsubishi brushpen

with copic w i d e marker to add basic value

older sketch of my parents living room in amsterdam

quick bot designsketch, i like these compact low by the ground things. will have to try some more later on.

now if anybody is gonna hook me up with some crits, that would be cool

more soon.

**Yoshi's Island** · October 28th, 2005, 12:21 AM

Nice shadin technique. I like those lips.

**van** · October 29th, 2005, 04:42 PM

This sb rocks.

**tensai** · October 29th, 2005, 08:18 PM

bojee, van, thanks.

well, its not something you really see on one building so much but here is one that i have online right now.

its funny cause the building is a pachinko parlor in this neo-classical french style. so from the street you only see this clasic facade and then you go up and you see the amount of ducts they put on there and you go wtf?

that photo was taken around where that bus is at in this pic (on the right)

this is one of those vertical shafts in my trip underground. on the way down we actually walked past a subway line i often take (this is from halfway up i'd say).

i really dont want to turn this in to a photography thread though. if you want to see some more pics go here. theyre a bit old now though, need to update that stuff.

will post some more sketches soon. comments and crits appreciated!

**GriNGo** · October 28th, 2005, 02:17 AM

I'm loving the tubes man, the design is awesome. & the inks! Do you study design or something related?

**Bojee** · October 28th, 2005, 08:38 AM

tensai -Just read what you wrote, makes total sense. If your shooting for a duct/pipe ship I think you need more straight lines in the pipes, and when they do turn maybe make the turns sharper, the curves will always make it feel more organic. I think I like the ship before a little more, definitely more fluid, more of a sense of movement.
The guy and the interior look cool.

**tensai** · October 29th, 2005, 12:58 PM

thanks again for the comments.

Yoshi's Island - those are all from a little book 'human figure' book i got. i find that by just drawing all the drawings in there i remember bit by bit.

That fat kid - yeah just like to check out some different techniques and try to get to know them and find new combinations.

GriNGoLoCo - thanks man, glad you like the design on that one. i dont study anymore, i have two master degrees in architecture and that is way more than necessary. wish i could have spend some time in an animation school or something.

Bojee man, i agree with you on the ships crit. the first is more fluid, and the colours are more juicy. but even with the ducts version i wanted to keep it a bit organic cause thats what these massive collections of pipes always look like to me (i spend a lot of times on rooftops to take pictures here in tokyo). they are of course pure utlitiarian but at some point dont look that systematic anymore. like they got out of control or nobody knows how to handle the mess and they just keep adding and adding more ducts and machines.

anyway, here is the update:
did this with gouache to give to my friend. was too lazy to set my tripod and lights up so this photo is not too good.

quick sketch from ref from a young monk who apparantly wants to make buddhism POP if i understood the article correct.

quick brushpen/PS of a guy sitting opposite of me in the train.

i went into this huge, and i mean huge underground space a while ago. an insane tunnel system right under the busiest parts of tokyo. and these are some first thumbnail sketches for thinking about how we could be using the available technology and use it to make those underground spaces livable.

there are these central shafts from which a couple of tunnels go off into different directions. we could couple eight of those shafts to a bigger central space. that central space could be the public space of that underground neighborhood.

sketch out of scale but we could connect those central spaces with tunnels. the tunnels also carry utility lines like electra, phone, air etc. thats why they are built right now. diameter of the tunnel was between 5 and 6 meters. but bigger is possible. (i actually walked up till the drilling machine. and watched the drill head turn and i swear it was like walking into Akira with all the pipes and mad machinery everywhere.)

central space and using ducts with mirrors/lenses in them that would act as light periscopes to get light to lower levels

perhaps we would need bridges to cross the central shafts to connect tunnels

think i will develop some designs later on and when those are finished make some ills and make a little booklet out of it.

gonna try to do some figure studies. i love some of the amazing figure studies on CA and i would love to go to life figure drawing but right now i will have to do with ref that you can find online.

and i thought some grapefruit colours would make it a bit more juicy

more soon! again comments and crits greatly appreciated.

**Bojee** · October 29th, 2005, 04:37 PM

Tensai- can you post some of the duct photos, sounds cool.

**Shamagim** · October 29th, 2005, 11:49 PM

Hello again, nice start in the figure studys, the underground looks interesting and the pictures too, must say, that undergound picture makes an incredible reference pic for matte paintings, the pachinko/neo classical french/ with a lot of ducts building is quite bizzarre, it really makes you wonder how come they need that many ducts, or how come they use a neo-classic french building for a pachinko parlor.

Tokyo looks like an unique and interesting concrete forest ( i guess im going to see that soon if all goes well)

Anyways, take care, and show us more of that figure drawings of yours

**Bojee** · October 29th, 2005, 11:56 PM

Tensai- Nah man, I didn't expect it to become a photo thread.

Sometimes it's cool to see when someone does a whole lot of different things, to see some of it together to get a bigger picture of where they're coming from.

I'm glad I did ask you cause those are some kickass photos, Tokyo underground is a completely different world. How far does that stuff go on for??

**van** · December 10th, 2005, 09:31 PM

Still rocks.

**tensai** · December 19th, 2005, 09:52 PM

thanks for the comments / crits. its been a while, was out of the country for work/pleasure.

max1975 - dont know if ill use this for a full scene. might do some others though. the amount of information just comes from looking more at the subject than at the drawing. and then just drawing every little thing you see. (at some point though you start to see a lot more and have to leave some things out again.) its just a blind drawing exercise..

madplanet - glad it connected.

armando - definitely no fan of vector graphics, like i said, it was just an exercise.

van - thanks man. you seem to be doing good judging from your recent painting activities. looking forward to another update.

as for my update:

couple of quick pencil sketches from ref

brush pen/marker

some older trainsketches

and an old version of a cityscape i did. thinking of finishing this one too, but im not sure. hesitant to post this here, cause i wanted to keep this sketchbook different from my finished work thread. its not finished though so ill post it here. wanted to get atmospheric effects like fog down. colouring is obviously not done and might be changed if i choose to continu working on it.

more soon,
crits and comments greatly appreciated.

**sve** · December 19th, 2005, 10:43 PM

OMG, tensai, what an marvelous update, I love it!

First of all, it's a great drawing of Tokyo from the bird's eye view. Strikingly beautiful! I feel such an excitement observing this man's creation, and I mean both yours and Japanese folks. I choked when I look at it. In my opinion it's great just like this, no more colors, I think. It's much more elegant and stylish like this. just few transparent colors and I like that orange one too. Atmospheric effect is beautiful. Oh, I'm so glad I see it. Beautiful, full of your soul piece, you are very talented, sensitive to beauty artist. I saved it, thank you so much.

And I love this portrait on the second page of the woman with neck wear. Such a nice, rare expression of her face, I saved her, wish she was more contrasted though, and in bigger size. If you can do it, i would appreciate it very much. Very nice train sketches. Lots of information about those people.
Thank you so much
Sveta Dudetta

**BAKI** · October 30th, 2005, 12:50 AM

wow, that thumbnail that you drew on the train and colored looks bad ass
would love to see more work like that
amazing 3d stuff, great realizm

**jtheanswer** · November 1st, 2005, 08:53 AM

Cool stuff! I like the coloured thumbnail and the figure drawing with grapefruit colors as well.

**tensai** · November 1st, 2005, 09:32 AM

Shamagim - i am definitely going to use those pics for some matte painting when i finish that design. hope it will be worth it.

Bojee - i forgot how far that stuff went down for. on the day i went down there the guy who was in charge of all infrastructural projects in tokyo (first secretary of the ministery of infrastructure) came down with us and he gave me a bunch of technical schemes that i got lying around here somewhere. cant find m now though. funny things was, i was totally freaking out about how beautiful everything was and these engineers where kind of proud and answered all these questions and shit. they really took their time and let me in all these prohibited places.

BAKI - thanks man. i like it as well. as soon as i have time ill design some more stuff like that. about the 3D stuff - im not sure what you mean but to be sure - everything is 2D. if some of it actually looks three dimensional then im improving...

aight - update:
wow - i think i overdid the jpg compression a bit on these, well at least it will load quicker.

lips - a bit too high contrast, should have rendered some more mid value. im still way inconsistent with these.

not so much a design for a ship as a try out of PS brushes. marker sketch underneath but i dont think there is much left of it.

guy from before, colored

peeps studies from ref. trying to include some detail like clothing seams and folds.

little bit more charactization.

basic colouring. will try to do a proper painting job later on.

ok - more soon.

again thanks for the replies! - crits and comments greatly appreciated!

**Onir** · November 1st, 2005, 12:12 PM

Beautiful stuff here, man. Love the portraits you've done, they all look really good; your studies also look great as well. Must say my favorites would have to be the futuristic designs you've done; the vehicles you've done just look crazy haha, love the way you color them. Again great stuff.. keep it up!

**Sawa** · November 1st, 2005, 12:31 PM

great stuff, dude. i love your lines

keep on rocking!

**Poohgee** · November 1st, 2005, 03:16 PM

Not bad .

The green photo would propably make a cool painting - very spacy.
Good drawings - cool stuff .

You could maybe put several of your figures into fantasy environments - like .. ehh . sitting on top of a skyscraper having breakfast .. although that could also be real .

Just IMO

**tensai** · November 3rd, 2005, 06:15 AM

small update. havent had time to do more design sketches because of work. but i did do some more people stuff.

was trying to capture figures with with very little line - so i just observed, and drew real quick - and fucke dup the face

forgive me for this one but i just thought it came out so funny.

because i do so much with line i thought i should change to (almost) no line and use value only

same ref but then trying to get value with colour. not as succesful i would say

these were done in the train. real quick of course cause everybody is moving, train is bumping, etc. the little girl on the top is actually my wife sitting across from me. got good likeness there.

Onir - thanks man, im gonna put more designs sketches in here. its just that sometimes after a day doing design stuff i want to do something totally different, and do some peeps.. its also what im most unexperienced in, so i need the practice.

Sawa - thanks, but i dont feel its there yet. i need to working on my inking skills.

Poohgee - a lot of the photos im doing are for reference. so yeah, a lot will be used in illustrations. consciously or un consciously..

thanks for dropping by and leaving comments.

hook me up with some crits!
real update soon.