thebulfrog's book

[thebulfrog]

So I've been on this forum for quite some time, leeching off the inspiration of others, drooling and biding my time to contribute and show my stuff. I've been wanting to do this whole character design thing for a while, just felt I needed to strengthen my grasp on anatomy, drapery, etc. etc. Fact is, it's just a matter of practicing, and I can think of no better motivator then the force which is CA. Perhaps a strange man with a whip behind me, threatening unless I continue to draw...perhaps...but I digress.

I'm currently studying Illustration at Syracuse, and we have this class with a rotating teacher-this five week segment is Brian Ajhar, so he forced me to finally get my act together and start drawing some characters. It's fun, but, man have I ways to go. I'm hoping for some biting comments that send me to tears, but then force me to kick myself and forgo sleep in lou of wanting to improve on X image in X way...or hearing that my hands are a sorry excuse for overcooked spaghetti. I haven't even bothered to include colors in this post, but that will come in good time.

I'm not sure if getting around to posting here is more of procrastination on my part instead of actually drawing, or just a really, really good idea that I should have done months ago. Either way, here's some drawings from the past couple of weeks. I want to say I spent no more then a half hour on each of them. They appear in no order whatsoever.













































Creating from my head is certainly a new thing-I'm used to working form photographs/life. Character design is infinitely harder and that's why I know I'll be growing to love it. To give you some idea of what I normally do, here's an image from another page of my sketchbook:



My website (which is about six months out of date) further demonstrates how different these are for me, but this is me just trying to justify what I feel is a serious lack of quality in these images when compared to so many others on this site. More room to improve-right?

More to come...

[Poohgee]

Welcome to CA

& that is a really good start IMO

I miss backgrounds in all of them .

[thebulfrog]

So it's looking like this isn't going to be one of those daily sketchbooks. Not because I don't have enough to fill the whole daily thing...rather because I don't own a scanner, and the scanner I use, while fast, royally blows. Anyhow, I've been trying to get better at this whole arm thing. Most of these I'm copying from a website or a book (Anatomy for Artists), but some are from my imagination. It's not so hard to tell which one is which. I'm still having trouble picturing a lot of the muscles in 3d. All in good time, I suppose. Anatomy is hard...but addictive.




(yes, not my best set)








(from imagination...not entirely right...but fairly close I think)









So that's my arm entry. Hopefully I can have a hand one fairly soon. Then more arms. Then more hands. Then maybe the shoulder. Legs will be happening in the distant, yet probably fairly soon future.

[thebulfrog]

So I figure if I'm going to start updating this regularly with my new stuff, I might as well show you all where I'm coming from. This thread is just a massive dump of some of the sketches in a sketchbook I finished last week.


Drawn around the time I was reading Loomis "Fun With Pencil" Based off of a Corbis image of druids.


So I started drawing him, got to the point where I usually stop (like the Brad Pitt below) and then decided to push for an hourish to see if I could. I was happy to see I am able to render when I want...but who wants to render? Actually, I'm curious-do you think it would be worth my time to spend more time on each sketch, taking it to this level, or would it be better to do six less rendered heads?


Someone commented that this was the sexiest looking guy I'd drawn, and he still looks a little evil...


Me trying to draw cartoons...always a fun change of pace that I'd like to make the norm for me.


Notes from Roger Demuth's class


Copying pictures from an Illustrator's Annual book


Copying El Greco


Stills while watching Fight Club


Figure Drawing in Bic pen


More Figure Drawing in Bic Pen


More Figure Drawing (not in Bic) I even went to the trouble of stitching together two images to give you the whole 11x14 sheet...most of these are 8.5x11 portions of 11x14 pages. I don't have a bigger scanner on hand.


More Figure Drawing


Roomates when I was at Hebrew U


Images based off of Loomis's head drawing tecnique which at first I thought was really awesome, and now I think is nice...but is really only good for drawing like Loomis, and only drawing old men like Loomis. Check out "Fun With Pencil" from saveloomis.com to see what I mean.


More Loomisesque heads


From the comic "Violent Cases" by Dave McKean and Neal Gaiman


More from that comic-definitely something worth picking up.


More copying from that comic.


Stills while watching Once Upon a Time in Mexico. I'd say the only good part of that DVD was the special where the director compares cooking to sex.


My mother caught in what seems to be some sort of menacing laugh


Drawings based off of newspaper photos


More drawings off of the newspaper pics


More newspaper drawings


"Why is he taking a picture of me?"
Oh, if only he knew....


These unsuspecting fools never knew it when I stole their soul with the digital camera that had joyously arrived in the mail the day previous.



All right. I have afew more pictures, and then I won't have to look at this sketchbook again for a while.

[thebulfrog]

So this is taking longer then I would have liked, but I suppose 55 images scanned, adjusted, cropped, labeled and uploaded very well might.

This is just a continuation of that last post. I'll probably do another update like this in a week or so.


Pierce, an excellent fellow I worked worth at Animation Collective


Wow, this image is old...hell, I was using blue pens back then. I don't use Bic at all these days...um...don't look at this...it's old.


Out of proportion attempt at my roomate in Israel


Copying Rembrandt


The left side of the page from the previous pick-still copying Rembrandt


Rembrandt in Bic


I want to say I was looking at Rockwell when I did this.


This was Rembrandt. Man, I love that guy.


Jeremy does Rembrandt does Pilgrims.


Yep, still more Rembrandt


I don't know about you, but I don't htink I can ever get enough of this guy.


This one's Rockwellian based


Another Rockwell butchered by yours truly


Copying Samwise...poorly. The plan is to be able to do these creatures without looking at the Wizard of Blizzard


Smoking is bad for health but good for my art


Not sure about this one...it involves someone wipping another for snow balls. Very true to life, I suppose


New York Subway


In class with Gary Trento


I love these pages in my sketchbook. I should do more of them. I was not in a good mood when I started this. By the end, I was happier.


Photograph and pencils are mine, and I'm rather happy with how it turned out, but the real site is the statue. I saw this one in Yad Vashem. The larger one is in a concentration camp in Poland.

So that's it for now. Perhaps I'll upload the 24 Hour Comic (the Scott McLoud inspired make a 24 page comic book in 24 hours) that I did last week. Perhaps the figure drawings I did yesterday. Perhaps the painting, stills from my animation-the animatic from it...plenty to come. I figure come Winter Break I'll be really going back and forth with the advice people are posting here.

[bdfoster]

Jeremy--

'Cuse represent! Get some of your classmates on here. I want to see somebody from the Cuse in the Student T-Dome.

I like the variety in your sketchbook stuff, but it seems you're moving too quickly to stylization without understanding the realistic form first. Somebody like Dave McKean can draw his ass off, but, as he says, "If you want something to look like a photograph, take a photograph." But he's also got the skills underneath that. Study realistic anatomy and proportions before you start imbuing it with your own unique style.

If you can, try and get into the anatomy class at SVA. If it's still the same teacher as when I was there ('99) it'll knock your socks off with the amount of info you get out of it. Otherwise, just keep up the drawing!

[Blahm]

well id say your keeping yourself busy! haha. I can definatly see you improving alot. its very good the you go to the trouble to fully render all your sketches. It shows your no slouch! One thing i thought looked a little wierd was how you mixed pen and white chalk in some of your first pictures. in my opinion it looks alot cleaner to stay with either white/black chalk or white/black ink and not mix the two. anyways, welcome to SSG8

[thebulfrog]

I just think I'll post everything I do on this forum. I want the line between sketches and finishes to blur-more to the point where my sketches are better rather then the finishes getting worse. Here's afew of the pieces I did over the course of this past semester. Just scanned these in last night. I probably spent between an hour and three on each of these.

Just joined a sketchbook support group-my signature will probably reflect that once I get around to changing it, and I'm happy to be a part of it. Hopefully it will motivate me as much as I intend it to.

I'll go somewhat chronillogically-this piece I did after not having painted for about seven months due to not having brought my paints to Israel...stupid me...anyhow, this is one of three-the first two are far too embarrasing to show, but they got me back into the groove.



Same model...he really isn't as scary as one might gather from these pictures.


These next two are finishes that I turned in along with another-I'm not too proud of any of the three, but I'm experimenting, and that's always good, right?





This one can kind of be considered concept art...but not really...



I meant to do all four beatles, but I ended up messing up and doing Gearge twice and not doing McCartney..no need to point that out...I know...not too happy about it. Did these four in one sitting over the course of a rather long day. (They're posted in the order I did them)









Here's my first worthwhile attempt at doing comic art. These did not take one to three hours...closer to eight a piece, not including the photo stage or photoshop compiling stage...it's a lot longer if you take those into account. I poured my heart into these. I'll get better-I have such a long way to go.





All right-that's it for now-I know these are neither sketches nor concept art, but they're what I'm posting-so deal.

There will be a post daily starting today however, mark my word...well-roughly daily.

[BrentM]

Hey Bullfrog

I love your style, I found myself enjoying those drawing that you create without a photo. Keep that up, keep developing your style, and Keep sketching!

Thats awesome that you are gonna draw daily, I look forward to it, and you can count on me checking it out everytime im on

- Brent

[thebulfrog]

First some responses, then some art.

Fat Kid-I see you all over these forums-it's good people like you are out there contributing and really making this community what it is. I agree with you completely-most of the sketching I do is based off of photographs or from anatomy studies or wrestling with all of those basics, but I just really, really want to get to the characters. I feel in attempting to do some characters I'm asking myself all of those questions-and need a hard answer if I don't want it to look like complete shit. However, yeah-basics-I'm doign those as well as you can now see, but I really want to get to a point where I can do the characters and they're building off of the basics

Poohgoe-I want backgrounds too. I took a try in the comic book pages I posted-I need to work on my perspective and hardware drawings, but I'll get there.

Foster-Jerome Witkin, an absolutely fantastic artist teaches anatomy at Cuse-there is nothing I would love more then to take the class-but alas it is not looking to fit in my weekly schedule. I'll be doing figure drawing twice a week, and should be continuing that for some time; looking at Bridgeman and Loomis; and I think I'll be making some flashcards-cause a lot of it ties back to me jsut having a lousy memory when I don't push it. After I finish college I'll be moving on to take some more anatomy classes-mark my word.

Blahm-I really liked the chalk when I first did it-it was new, nothing I'd done before...but now that you mention is-yeah, you're right-I need to get better and b&w before can really get to proficient highlights

Brent-First off, we really need to start getting on the tail of the rest of the people in the SSG-there's some serious nondaily slackers-more to the point, I'm glad you're liking the ones without photos-they're certainly the direction I'm looking to move to. However, I should mention that there are VERY few that don't have photo reference that I've posted. Which are you refering to specifically?

And now, the pictures....(give me a sec while I finish scanning)

[thebulfrog]

So I did most of these while watching some horrible movie with my folks-even the name has been blotted from my memory. That's a good thing.

This is a an attempt at doing yours truly-you may expect more of these-I'm a good model-I pose exactly how I want, I don't move-yep, couldn't ask for anything more.


This is me butchering a couple of Andrew Jones' self portraits in a warm up session to get me into the whole groove of drawing.


These next two are copied directly from random illustrations throughout the magazine CG World (I think that's its name-it's the one affiliated with gamasutra.com) Hence, I take no credit if they look bad and all credit if they don't.





Well, I don't know if all credit is fair...most, perhaps?

The painting turned out nothing like this sketch, but I had fun-and that's what matters.



Another sp-did it in 5ish minutes, if that-I'd say it shows.



Not sure what this one is...but enjoy.



(Not sure how preview a quick reply-hope this displays as intended)

[BrentM]

bullfrog,

What I meant was that I loved the style that came out of your drawings from life or memory. You drawings based on photo refs are of course awesome, but when you draw from nothing, I just like your unique style. Your very first sketches that you posted, for example, have their own style and I like that.

You got some awesome creativity, try more of just making up characters of all kinds. You might get some pretty cool results. Zone out, and just let the imagination flow. Keep up those studies though, you can tell that they are improving your drawing. Try doing an anatomy or figure study, then right after sketching a unique character based on what you just learned or remember.

I dunno, might not help, but I know that creativity is one the most fullfilling experiences I get from drawing.

oh, and thanks for checking my SB out, if our group doesnt support, at least we know we both will

- Brent

[Mindflaw]

Hi

In many of your drawings you just rush through the shading... I would suggest you to put some love in your shading lines too...imho it will improve the overall impression by far... It won't take much more time, but as I said your drawings will look so much better.

keep going

[Blahm]

hey bullfrog. thanks for stopping by my sb. Ide tell you to keep drawing but its obvious i dont need to hehe. One thing that i think you could work on is to draw some elipses ( circles in perspective). Start by drawing a vanishing point then draw two parallel lines going to it. Then section it off into squares and draw circles inside the squares you made. Lol hope that makes sence, if not let me know.

[bdfoster]

Jeremy--

I would do anything you can to rearrange your schedule to get into Witkin's class (sorry, I couldn't remember the name). I learned more in that class than any other I took at the 'Cuse. (except maybe a 5 hour painting demo Dave Devries put on). I would say it's especially good if you're having trouble with you anatomy and visualization. Another thing I would recommend is to do poses and rough in muscles from your head, then go and get your reference. Then you won't simply be copying a drawing or photo someone else has done, you'll be forced to really look at how what you've laid down fits in space, and you'll also have to study the reference harder to look at what is actually going on, rather than just how it looks.

Keep up the hard work.

[Magic Man]

some definitely cool shit in here, a real work horse!

[Bob.Razowsky]

some of peoples on your pics seem speading, that s a really funny&interesting feeling!!
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d1...g_George_2.jpg
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d1...og_sketch2.jpg
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d1...g_sketch17.jpg


Hope you keep it up

[thebulfrog]

Brent- Yeah, I defintely have the most fun when going from my head and I try to do it as much as I can. However, without the studies and working from photos I see myself staying at one place and not improving. Even the creature things at top use dozens if not hundreds of photos from books on everything from armor to animals.

Mindflaw-Freshman year a teacher by the name of Paul Nielson said I overshaded due to lack of understanding the form. I tried to start shading as little as possible and focusing my time on what mattered more-understanding the form and the right place for the lines. THis is especially true in sketchbook stuff. However, now-three to four years later, I think you're right and it's something that has never been pointed out to me before. Thank you. I will attempt to be more concious of it. It's a really good point.

Blahm-So I took your advice to heart, and spent a while looking at thissite. It covers the basics of perspective quite nicely. One thing led to another and I realized, although I've learned it before I've forgotten so much about perspective. I went in and drew a bunch of ellipses as well as seeing if I could challenge myself and use the perspective method to project a top down view of my room into perspective. I realized A)I can cause I now understand the concepts and B)I really don't want to. It was a good excuse to get back to relearn perspective.

Foster-I'm not going to give you my excuses why I can't take it as a course, and I'm not going to compound it with the fact that next semester I think it's Gary Trento and not Jerome teaching the course. I'm merely going to say I will try-mark my word-I will try to sit in on the class as often as is humanly possible, because I know you're right. There is a lot I can learn from him, as much as he does have a vendetta against illustrators. Concerning muscle studies-agreed. I'm trying to vary up the excercises, and really does help. Attempting to take a picture and figure out what anatomy goes where, both from masters and mere photographs. I'm going straight from my head with some. Also, I'm looking at Lookis, Bridgeman, Hogarth...you name it.

Magic Man-Thank you.

Bob-yeah, I see what you mean. I like that. hm. thanks.

All right, I hate to post without any images (I assure you there's plenty-I'll probably post later today once I have more then really boring anatomy and perspective studies) so I'll leave you with this-

Google Alerts discovered my name on a website I hadn't heard of. I head to it, and it's like the CGTalk of the Spanish Animation-my animation somehow made it to the front page. Take a look-mine's the one that has my name "Jeremy Shuback" in the description. If anyone knows Spanish I'd love to hear exactly what the little blurb says about it. It can be found at http://www.3dyanimacion.com/. It's a 3d piece about drones working their life away in a factory.

[bdfoster]

Trento's an awesome teacher too. Take whatever you can from people, no matter what their perceived "vendetta" may be. I mean-- look at Donato-- he wasn't even an illustration major there, and he's arguably one of the most succesful illustrators to come out of SU's program. Regardless, I'm not trying to push you to that class, just recommending it, and trying to say that while you're there, milk every single person you can for all their knowledge, because it's that availability is not quite the same once you're out. (Though communities like CA.org are great for providing a bizaare virtual-artschool environment). Most of all, keep plugging away.

PS. Been to any Red House parties this year?

[Serpian]

You've got great style, and draw very much, which is great!
Do as the big guys here at CA tells you: Draw, practice, study anatomy, draw, buy a book, and so on and so forth.

-Serp

[mentler]

Always love to see someone get serious about Bridgman <> he taught Loomis, Rockwell, Hale, Feitalson who taught Harry Carmen and Vilppu so he is the guy <> hard to grasp some stuff and also read the copy <> I have drawn all the pics several times <> you are right it is about practive

[thebulfrog]

So things are getting busy in this life of mine-which is nice. I have all these personal projects I'm hoping to complete (for instance, make sure to update this sucker daily...but also a weekly painting, and getting all the prep work done for my next animation...) Anyhow, the trick will be managing to do all that with the job I just took on...looks like someone trusts me enough to do their website. I looked up at my clock, and saw I had lost track of time emersed in the art of the design for the site. What I'm trying to say is that although I spent hours on what could be called art today, I didn't actually sketch. On account of this henious act, and in lou of sketches I'll post a couple of pieces that I just photographed yesterday from my class with Trento. For the most part they're me having fun experimenting in ways I haven't tried before...I'll let the pieces speak for themselves-

This one's interesting-first abstract piece I've ever tried my hand at. Wasn't exactly sure what to do-it's harder then one might think.



So I wanted to understand more about a walk cycle type thing-in no way did it turn out looking like one...oh well...



This was just flicked off in an hour's time-I was sick of pouring a day into a piece for the class just to have it be disgraced by four strokes of monkey shit on the canvas next to it....I guess what upset me the most was when the monkey shit honestly looked better then my own piece. Those crazy traditional artist types... With this, I wanted to see if I could call my cartoons a finish.



So the fun thing with these last three images is if you line them up they kind of form one continuos piece-it was my attempt at calling it a series-here's one of the more ambitious inkings I've done-



I like this next one-I didn't spend long on it at all-was working on one of the comic pages (above) I kept throwing things at it-gesso, acrylic, water coler, board, pastel, charcoal, ink...probably more...



I'll sketch tomorrow-ok? I'm really digging these arm studies-I think I'm getting a better grasp. Anatomy is hard, and time consuming, and..well... I love it to pieces

[BrentM]

Hey, awesome art pieces! The abstract is awesome and I really dig the walk cycle as well.

So you do web design? I dabble in that and I know how time consuming it can be. Good luck with it, and I'll be looking forward to your next update

[thebulfrog]

I won't even bother uploading the ten pages of arm studies done the last two days currently filling my sketchbook (a 14' x 17' behomoth). They're really just far too embarrassing-I'll get better, and upload what hyappens then. In the meantime I did some figure drawing this morning. It turns out the Scarab Club in Detroit is free to students and has figure drawing three times a week. It's an interesting crowd-being over the age of fifty and obsessed with the good ole days in college seems to be one of the requirements, but I'll get past that. It's nice that this place exists at all. There were even one or two people there who weren't half bad at drawing. I learned a lot about what sort of artist I don't want to turn into...(that, of course being the crazed think I'm good, but just look for excuses for my work, over the hill has been.) Perhaps I'm being harsh on the crowd....I don't know, it's just I don't want to turn out like that...had a good conversation after the drawing session-that was nice. Perhaps I've said too much. Too late to edit this post, however-wait-one more thing-It's the people who are clearly horrible, yet have being doing art on ad off for so long they feel the need to tell themselves what they're doing is good in order to justify themselves, and explain to others it's just their interpretation/style/abstraction.


Ok, now I'm done. I'll look at this post another day and see if it had any worthwhile words to say or if it was merely a meaningless rant. That said, here are the drawings I did over at the Scarab Club-

Notable about these is my attempt to actually shade them. Thanks again for the advice Mindflaw.

Warming up....


Settling in....



I know, just two pictures...
This page is taking too long to load as is...don't worry that won't stop me in the future.

[Flaskpost]

damn man! you&#180;re busy with the drawing! great to see. already making progress!

[Blahm]

nice work, i like how you keep trying new media. you will find your voice soon enouph.

[thebulfrog]

In the past month and a half I have uploaded 102 pictures. Now, I honestly don't think that's half bad. It comes out to two or three a day. In all honesty it would be more acurate to claim six pages one day, and none for the next two-but if i continue at this rate I forsee massive improvement. I find that to be a good thing.

Anyhow, I hope over the course of this next week to draw up a storyboard for my next animation. I've started writing the script - need to develop it a lot more. It's good, but it's not great. I'll start with working on the character designs, and than move into drawing them into the story. In other words, I'll actually be doing Concept Art on this forum-a novel concept for me. I have no doubt the comments you all give will shape its final look significantly. In the meantime, I thought I'd post the last animatic I did afew months ago, and the animation that turned into. I don't want you thinking me doing this animation is some pipe dream. So that's the plan.

I'll try to not let the whole web site job take over my life as it has been-balance is just far too crucial, and if I can't keep up my personal arts now with a job like this, I can't imagine how little I'd be doing when work starts to excalate in areas I don't expect.

Here's the Animatic.

Here's the finished Animation.

You don't exactly see the blood and sweat that went inbetween these steps-but I assure you, it was three months, of solid working on it. It was Priority #1 for me and Andrew and I learned a great deal while making it.

This post contains more work in it than all of my other posts combined, so I hope you appreciate it.

In the upcoming weeks (and months even)-hopefully you can help me with my next one. It'll involve a boulder, a giant, an angry man, and a very large stick. That's all I care to share right now.

[thebulfrog]

For the record I have indeed been drawing a great deal these last three days. I slowly let the website not take over my life, and now I've found a balance of no more than eight hours working on it a day. At that pace I'll get it finished with time to spare. (This isn't taking into account the extra time I'll no doubt spend learning PHP....but enough of that...I come here to show you what I do in my playtime, not work time...)

I've been reading through "Figure Drawing for all it's Worth" and had one of those moments where I read something that completely revolutionized the way I'll approach many pictures from now on. It had to do with laying out pictures in relation to the horizon. It's crazy. No sketches worth showing, but check out the book if you haven't-it will blow your mind. My next post I go back to stick figures, loomis style-It should be an excellent relearning of what I thought I knew. More on weight, on flow, etc.

I actually attempted to draw from my imagination this time around. I shall be doing it more-it builds confidence and is so very crucial.

Here's the pics (just so you don't think I'm trying to talk my way out of actually posting yet again):

Fun with characters from a couple weeks ago-just to give you a little history


A realization that I know little to nothing about legs (copying from Loomis, my hero)




Warming up at trying to get better at how all this anatomy stuff fits together.


Stretching some more


Drawing afew popes cause I saw a cool picture of the current one in the NYTimes and couldn't resist...I'll have to draw afew Rabbis in the future to even it out.




Top pic is me and only me, bottom two are looking at a comic book and trying to only draw the anatomy


This time I'm looking at Loomis (again)


Drawing my wonderfull mug...it's hard to resist at times.


Beginning to figure out the characters for my animation-finished the script enough to start on characters two days ago, so that makes me happy.


I promise-I will get better at anatomy and perhaps even dressing them...but it will take time...but I'll put the time in and it will speed right on by.

[Blahm]

nice work. If i were you i would get my anatomy from a real anatomy book because Loomis doesnt cover it thuroghly enouph to understand it well. hope you had a merry christmas!

[thebulfrog]

BrentM - I've been trying to start to follow your advice of just making up characters. It's a challenge. I mean, the ability to just say to myself I don't care how this ends up turning out cause I know I'll be learning more this way is tough. I'm doing it, and I know if I continue to do it I'll improve. I start doing a character and realize, why, I know nothing about this one area (shoulders, for instance, costuming, varying body types) and then I have a damned good reason to go out and learn everything there is to know about that. The end results at the beginning become questionable at best, but it's nice not being in a safe zone-a zone I forever try to avoid.


bdfoster - The first VisCom Symposium I went to was done by Donato Giancola, and was I all excited to hear week after week of artsits like him. Let me tell you-it was dissapointment after dissapointement after him. (Notable exceptions range from Peter De'seve to Sterling Hundley, so I'm more than happy to attend when I can...and when I'm forced) If I recall Donato said that he had wanted to do the Illustration program, but only the painting one had any slots, so he made the best of it and learned from everybody. I'm trying to do just that. I really am.

Oh, and alas-the Red House is no more. A moment of silence for its demise. Some frat has taken over where it formerly stood in all its glory. It is a serious shame, and hell on the 'president' or whatever of it when it crumbled (someone who I was good friends with, and have unfortunately lost touch). Last year's Sophomores and this year's Freshman don't even know what it is. On top of that (while we're on the subject of Syracuse changes) the Com Design students (along with ad and possibly others) are being moved out of Shaffer and taken to a building that they'll need to have buses going to off of campus...and the illustration students shall have the studios all to themselves...so many strange, strange changes.

Serpian - will do. You can track my progess here, I suppose. Belive me, I'm trying.

mentler - anatomy is hard. agreed. I have spent more hours then I would willingly admit memorising and drawing body parts. Right now I'm trying to put all the knowledge together and ignore anatomy except when I really need it...it just takes time-glad to know there are many of us struggling through it together (not to say I don't love it)

That fat kid - sp every day, eh? Well, I've got two in this post-they're easy, they're fun-they're awesome warm up, and dag nabbit, I think I'm getting better with each one. Good call.

BrentM - wait, didn't I already...anyways - yeah, web design dabbling-I've spent the last four days learning PHP and MySQL. I feel so hard core. The trick will be not forgetting it in the near future.

Flaskpost - you know, I wish that was as true as I'd like. This past week I've been putting off drawing and just doing web stuff. I mean, that's just foolish on my part. There's time for both. I wouldn't be on this forum if I didn't believe that.

Blahm - You're completely right to call me out on my current anatomy knowledge-here's the deal, and I'm not making excuses. I really have spent lots of time copying from anatomy books, and I feel somewhere deep inside more than I know is buried within me. I'm going with Loomis now just cause he's bringing all of my knoweldge together...which is really cool. I'll be studying real anatomy books as I need, and hopefully working with those together I'll be able to grow the most. Oh, and as far as finding a voice-yeah, in the world of Concept Art I'm as lost as anyone...thanks for the encouragement, and Chanukah's going well-thank you.

A happy new years to all-and some pictures....

First of the sp's I spoke of...they're all way too similar-I'll work on that once I get bored of this pose (soon, no doubt-I bore easily)



I really dug this dude...he's a bit sad, though-and quite off in many areas-suggestions on the most important immediate areas to improve on would be great....unless that suggestion is everywhere-cause that I can figure out on my own.



Perhaps I'll work on the shoulder I said to myself...and I did...



Another sad guy-


Bic Pen, 4 AM debating whether to sleep or draw-I think I made the right choice.



All right, enjoy the novel I've typed out, and until next time.