Moai's Sketchbook

[Moai]

Mr. Man- Thanks so much, man! Good luck with your creature designing!

Doodles:
-Tank sketches from references, and a buncha designs for a backpacker droid I'm planning on painting sooner or later.
-The Manticore may be my favorite mythical beast, so I'm inclined do draw a new version of it every year or two. This one's a lot more 'beefy' than the last one I drew (1st page of this sketchbook, I believe), and has a more human-like face. No poisonous barbs on the tail, though. More robot designs. I was frustrated with this guy, and after some thought I recognized the source of my frustration: I was unconsciously trying to draw the Super Battle-Droid from Star Wars. Well, kinda.
-A pair of absent-minded doodles. A large stegosaur-like hexapod, and a goony ratite/flightless pterosaur.
-Here she is again! Rendering the lower body.

[Turisas]

Hello there, Moai. Sorry I haven't been commenting lately, nor posting on my own SB. I've been both busy and lazy. Busy because I need to study hard right now (34h of school per week this term and a crapload of homework) and lazy because... well... All my 'potential' goes into studying right now.
BUT, I thought to comment on some of your latest just as a sign of life.
Here we go.

#362:
About the armoured vehicles: I'm actually a bit surprised seeing how well you managed, after seeing that you mostly master round shapes. Especially on robotics, which shows even on the same page =P. But these tanks (Propably because of the references, aye?) look blocky and therefore they look correct to me.
I have pretty much nothing to say about the creatures, as I can't really do crap when it comes to creatures. And my knowledge on them is inferior, so I have nothing to critizice. Although, they do look, once again, great and realistic.
About your painting of the woman; I like the background, character and the ruggy cloth she's wearing as the top, but the folds seem a bit odd to me on the 'dress'. Anyhow, again, I can't really criticize as I can't draw clothing at all.

#345
I jumped over your studies because this is a work I've actually had an itch to comment on. That doesn't happen too often, so you know you have done a great job on that one so far.
I like the way you kept it simple with the scales. They look good but don't distract because of too much detail. I also like how you made the last fin. Transparent look works on it somehow. The other fins could have used this too, but they also look good. One more thing I love about this W.I.P. is the nicely flowing red hair. Really, it's beautiful. A few shiny highlights and it would have been perfect.

---------------------------------------------

In a nutshell: Keep up the great work!


PS. This must be the longest comment I've written. EVER.

[Yautja892]

Post # 360

Nice batch of sketches. Really like that big head guy very cool design. The other creature designs look pretty good as well. I think you could push the values more and experiment with the lighting. Also you should play with your composition within your sketches more instead of just having the creatures floating around on the page. Also maybe experiment with more angles with your creatures instead of just the ¾ view, or side view. Really like those loose faces you are doing, you should experiment more with them, maybe even apply that looseness toward other subjects. The clothing thumbs are really great, nothing to much to crit their. The larger female sketch seems a little flat in the face, don’t seem much of the bone structure. It could be the perspective that’s making it look strange to me. I like the hair, and head piece she has though. Oh which sketch member influenced you on the genetic annelid?


Post # 362

Great Manticore design I really like him. His face is great, almost creepy like. Interesting tank designs, good to see you experimenting and changing up your subject matter. I like the concepts for that robot, just think he doesn’t have much form to him seems a little flat to me.

Enjoying your progress on the painting, its coming along pretty well. The composition is nice, don’t see any problems there. What is she holding actually? I think something with the hair seems strange to me, it feels like its more laying on top then attached to the head. The lighting is looking good so far. Where you going to use one primary light source for this piece? Going to be day time? The skin tones are looking pretty good, I think maybe add some colder colors to the skin. Overall though this is going in the right direction, keep working on it.


Overall some good stuff, I think you should experiment more with you values, lighting and even your composition when you go by sketching. Also maybe experiment with more angles to your designs. Yeah I notice the new workshop is right around the corner think you might attend? I’m seriously thinking about going, hopefully can save up some money to go. See ya next update.

[Sickbrush]

Prepared to get mentored
mwhahaha

[Moai]

Monsterkill- You're back! I'm sorry you have so little free time, man. Hopefully your getting a decent and useful edjumacation, though. Thanks for your comments and crits! The folds on my chick's skirt thing are definitely weird and inaccurate. I may just have to post that in the critique center. I'll make some adjustments on my mermaid based on your critique as well. Thanks, dude!
Yautja892- Thank you for your crits, man. As usual, they are appropriate and insightful. About the girl, she is going to be holding an orb of some kind. I think you have exposed a major flaw in your question about the primary light source, since I know the direction its coming from but I never thought about what kind of light it may be. Sunlight? Something else? I have no idea. The hair definitely needs work, too. As for the workshop, I dunno. Jason Manley is giving away two free passes (not including transportation) to the two best entries in COW round 100, so I am going to absolutely bust my ass in that. Creature design is my forte, and since the 100th round is basically a huge sheet of creature sketches, and my sketches are usually always more popular than my finished pieces over there, I feel like I have a good chance.*crosses fingers* If I don't get that, I really don't know if I'll be able to go.
Slayer- Awesome!

So anyway, sorry for the lack of non-sketch updates recently. Not much free time. I'm going to try to get a good chunk of my wood witch babe out of the way today, so I can move on to something else. I'm also in a new life drawing class, and all my time spent studying Bridgman is paying off and it feels great! I'll post some photos of those soon.
Another announcement is that I'm going to be both a mentor and a mentee. I am going to mentor Justin Oaksford in animal anatomy and creature design. I'm planning it to be a very comprehensive "course," covering almost every major type of animal from antelopes to annelids. For each type of animal, I'm going to begin with the skeleton and musculature to explain important points of anatomy, then go into more detail and explain the different design opportunities each kind of creature represents. I'll then give an assignment entailing a bit of sketching from reference to get familiar with the actual animals, and then a concept assignment to apply the new knowledge to some original creature designs. Or something like that.
My mentor is going to be _^SlayeR^_ (hereafter simply "Slayer" ), who is going to teach me a thing or two about designing vehicles and buildings and whatnot. Lessons I sorely need . So, thanks Slayer!

Anyway, sketches.
-A robot, and loose single-line sketches of my hand and arm. Some are obviously better than others.
-More of the same, plus my silly cat.
-Critter designs. The top is based off of the rhinoceros iguana and general lizard knowledge, the middle is a kind of Parasaurolophus-antelope, and the bottom two are Moschops-like bulky mammal-like reptiles. All animals just mentioned are real. Look them up if you want.

[Ellingsworth]

Nice stuff, Moai. You have a great nack for creating creatures. Really imaginative stuff. Good shading skills also. I don't know why but some of your earlier stuff and creatures are reminding me off Oregon trail and this amazon adventure game I had when I was a little kid, brought back some good memories. Keep it up, man.

[Sean Vaul]

dig the creatures, animals, dinos, etc

[amer-nazri]

Hey There! Sorry for the really really long inexistence within the forums, but I'm back from my vacation and now back to work on improving! You seem to be improving at an explosive rate!! Your painting of the lady in the woods show a lot of promise, and the colours are great! A little thing that bothers me is the repetitive creases on her skirt, which look too similar. I think if you reduce the number of creases, or vary the flow of creases along the skirt, it would look more natural. I get it that the creases are there because of the pull from her right leg, but reducing the number of creases and emphasising the shape of her legs abit more underneath the skirt would make her look even more seductive. Her skin tone is marvellous, I might need to "eyedropper" that one if you dont mind!
See you around!

[Sickbrush]

we'll have to discuss about the mechanical joints and parts separately.
for now, keep doing those reptilian studies, we're gonna try out a mech-reptyle later.
keep goin, make me proud

[Moai]

Ellingsworth- Thanks! I have no idea why my art reminded you of those things either.
Sean Vaul- Thank you.
Amer-Nazri- You're back! Weefun! I hope you had a good time on your vacation and got some good sketching in. Thank you very much for your critique on that painting. That's exactly the kind of advice that I need for that. And I will finish that painting too, dammit.
Slayer- Mecha-reptile make me happy inside.

More sketches, and still no paint updates. I know, I'm bad.
-Study of gorilla musculature, from the excellent Body Worlds book that my teacher let me borrow.
-Bridgman feet. That man draws the stubbiest toes, I swear.
-Feng Zhu studies that my mentor had me do. They pretty much kicked my ass, as you my guess by the file name.
-Bovidae studies, in preparation for my own mentoring in creature design and animal anatomy. I'm going to start with cows, goats, and antelopes, because they're basically the archetypal quadrupedal herbivores.

[Caskin]

Heya Maoi! Someone's been busy
I like that Iquanoid from post #366 looks like his wrist could use a tad more definition, but I think the head looks top-noch. I'd love to see what you could with your creature designs if you tried mixing about some features and body types, aside from just combining two seperate animals.

Keep up the good work man! Awesome to see your mentoring someone on creature anatomy too. I'd love to do that, but I don't think I could come up with lessons or assignments too well

[AztcFireFlower]

MOAI! Been wanting to post in here for a long time....
Of course I love the Bridgeman studies, I'm pulling out my own copy to study the leg and knee. Very nice copies.

Also find your one line hands and critters quite appealing. Often there are exercises to simply get coordination and a feel for fluidity. This is what those line studies would do for me. Lovely.

I like the mermaid concept. And actually, I liked the original gradiating peach BG you started with, sorta reminds me of the elegance and simple color scheme, with accents on the brushwork & shapes, of Chinese paintings. Just my taste tho.
I think since you went a little more open with your palette, perhaps adding hints of contrasting colors on the flesh colored body will add more life to the slight monochromatic scheme.

Careful on the planes in her face, soften them to make her seem more ethereal, and less masculine.

I really like the color palette you chose for the Wood Witch.

As always, I LOVE your cute critters. Fun to see all the variety you come up with, yet , I can spot your designs a mile away. Keep creating.

[Moai]

Caskin- Thanks for the crits and comments! If you could, I'd like you to keep an eye on my mentoring thread (I'll be adding a link to it in my sig pretty soon), just to make sure I'm not missing anything.
AztcFireFlower- Yay!! I'm glad to see you here! I'll be sure to hop over to your sketchbook pretty soon as well. Thanks for the crits and comments!

So yeah, still no updates on my digital paintings. I'm going to finish the mermaid today, and hopefully the Wood Witch this week. I'll also be posting my efforts for CoW 100 pretty soon too.
So yeah, some more sketches.
-More antelope studies.
-A made-up big nose dog thing, and some more studies.
-A large cat study from Charles R. Knight's animal drawing book.
-Made up carnivoran skulls.

[angelo cordon]

hey m -


cool works. excited for that mermaid piece to get going again. sorry about not being able to hang out this week, hopefully one day. i mean, we're only four hours away from each other, its bound to happen sooner or later.

how is the mentoring program? im going to sign up for it as soon as i can. not much to critique today, will wait for your real pieces

[Yautja892]

Hey Moai, strong updates since I last commented. Really not much to crit on any of these. Cool to see your mixing it up with the ship and perspective studies as well. I noticed the mentoring thread opening up, cool to see you participating in that. This is something I'm wanted to do as well. Good luck on the 100th cow, can't wait to see all the thumbnails.

[Moai]

redSpade- Dude! I'm bummed that we weren't able to get together. But yeah, hopefully sometime.
As for the mentoring program, it's okay so far. I haven't had much of a chance to get together with my own mentor yet, and the mentoring program I'm putting together won't get started until next week. But it should be fun!
Yautja892- Thanks, man. Good to see you again.

This is kind of a non sequiter, with all my talk of my mermaid and wood witch, but here's what I've produced in the last few hours. It's a frogman! I've had him in my brain for a few days. I don't know quite what inspired him. Anyway, I rendered him up until this point, and then my brain stopped working, so it'll have to be continued. I may give him more props and bits of costume, also.

[ab4185]

hey just a quick question but do you look at any of Terryl whitlatch's creature designs?

[Lazy]

Hey man how are you doing?
I see your still at it evolving nonstop, i like that you're entering new fields with more humans and machinery. Love the colors, you are really going places now!
I would like to see more scenery!

[Ignominious]

GAAHH!! you're amazing Moai, i've been off for the past couple of months and i just signed on today. You've so gotten so F*CKING BETTER!!!! it blows my mind! you're spaceships are amazing. great work on the igaunoid, the pencil rendering is great ( i really like the way you depicted its' extra skin flabs) the eyes of the woodlady are little off looking. the eyes look are shaped like her head is facing you, but it isn't, it's tilted down and to the side. other than that, absolutly amazing work

[Ignominious]

btw, i've finally gotten back onto working on my own sketchbook

[Kamikazebob]

Nice work ya got here Moai. Loving all the animals and cirtter anatomy work.

[Lazy]

Thanks for your kind words and great tips on improving my latest cityscape, i have now fixed the contrasts so it's now a little more clear that they are high above th city, i think i'm gonna keep it black and white.
Thanks again mate!

[Ellingsworth]

Thanks for the reply, Moai. The encouragement and advice really helps. Great new animal studies in your recent update, I too love drawing animals, I need to do some more actually. Keep pumping out those studies and drawings, dude. Later!

[Caskin]

Caskin- Thanks for the crits and comments! If you could, I'd like you to keep an eye on my mentoring thread (I'll be adding a link to it in my sig pretty soon), just to make sure I'm not missing anything.

Hey, sure thing! I'd love to I've been waiting for you to get that first lesson up too really looking forward to seeing how the mentees will improve with their new mentor.

[FactorZero]

your construction when you draw animals is really good. I like the colors on that last green guy too.

[Moai]

Hey, everyone! I'm sorry it's been such a long time since my last update. Ironically, I've been doing a whole lot of art. Most of it, though, is for the 100th round of CoW. Fozzybar, the moderator of CoW, has asked us not to post the images anywhere until the competition is done (on the 30th of this month), so I'm going along with that. It'll be cool to show once it's done, though!
Anyway, some images that I can post. Here are some things I've done for the first lesson in my animal anatomy mentoring thread. Nothing too special. Feel free to check that thread out, if you want.

ab4185- Is that subtle-ese for "Your creature designs remind me a lot of Terryl Whitlatch's designs you should try to make your designs less similar in style to hers"? Well, whether that's what you were saying or not, I somewhat agree with that statement. And yes, I'm very familiar with Mrs. Whitlatch.
Lazy- Dude, as soon as this crazy CoW month is over, I will flood this thread with environments. My enviro-thalamus gland is full almost to bursting!
Ignonimious- Thanks for the crits, buddy! I should point out that those spaceships are copies of Feng Zhu's artwork, not original creations. I've noticed that you've updated your thread. However, I'm very busy right now. I'll critique you when I have some free time. Sorry, dude!
Kamakaze- Thanks, you old testicle-quoter, you!
Ellingsworth- Thanks, and no problem, pal.
Caskin- Thanks for posting in my mentoring thread!
FactorZero- Thank you. My construction method is taken mostly from Joe Weatherly (The Weatherly Guide to Drawing Animals).

Oh yeah, and in all likelihood I won't finish that frogman I posted. It was a half-assed concept and drawing, anyway. I am definitely going to finish my wood-witch, though. I miss her already. Next month, next month!!

[angelo cordon]

good studies m,

looking forward to your cow entry. that round is going to be so intense! not much to critic for now but to keep up the good work!

cheers,
spade

[Bard]

Nice, I'm learning from your bone breakdowns!!!
I just have the Marshall Vandruff dvd from animation class....It helps a lot!
he said that studying the bones is the most integral part..

Iguanoid and the frogman is stand out for me...
And thanks for the response on the bubblehead goldfish...hmmm...never though of it that way...How could you not learn from this thread?

I'm off to view the mentoring thread....thanks amigo!

[Moai]

redSpade- Thanks, dude. I'll go comment in your sketchbook in just a few!
Bard- Thanks! Glad I could teach you something. I really can't wait until my mentees start posting work and that thread truly gets underway.

So yeah, as the title of this post indicates, I'm experiencing a bit of frustration. Part of it is that whole work/school/art dynamic that we all struggle with, but mostly frustrated with some of my own painting habits.
Yesterday, I was tired of drawing CoW thumbs, so I took one of the thumbnails that I liked the most, blew it up, and decided to make a larger rendering of it. I had a fairly specific goal of what I had in mind when doing this painting. Specifically, I was going to work on my value contrast, and in my handling of light and shadow, especially cast shadows. In these two goals I was inspired by two CA artists. The first is Fungi, an excellent artist who won a few CoWs back in the day, but hasn't been active on this site for quite a while. Here's a sample of his work: link. What I like most about Fungi is his use of value contrast. He is very conservative with contrast, using as little value difference as possible to describe the forms. He prefers larger value differences between objects, rather that a wide range of values on a single object. I really like how this minimalist approach to values looks, so I decided to try and reproduce that sense of value in this painting.
The other artist who inspired me is one of my very favorites, M.C.Barrett. His art is so incredibly inspiring to me. He's one of those rare guys who can create interesting creatures, characters, vehicles, buildings, etc. with seemingly equal ease. But what impresses me just as much as his design sense is his thorough knowledge of light and shadow. Even in his briefest thumbnails you can see the depth of his knowledge. Just look at this image: link. Just look how freaking beautiful those cast shadows are!! Great creature design, too. God, I love that image. Look at this one, too: link. Highlights. Beautiful highlights. Also, fan-flipping-tastic textures and color variations. Though I had no illusions that this painting would come out as great as those two images, I wanted to really push my boundaries when it comes to representing realistic light and shadow, and to get a bit more brave with cast shadows.

As you can see, my success in both of those areas has been very limited so far. Though I tried to resist the temptation, I have a wide range of values on pretty much every object. Fungi would not approve. And though it is probably the most conscientiously-lit painting of mine to date--probably due to those light and texture spheres that I made to help myself--the cast shadows are still too indistinct, and the highlights leave a bit to be desired.
So, as usual, writing all of this out has gotten the juices flowing, so I've thought up some solutions for this painting.
-Darken the values and lower the contrast of the hair. That's a first. The contrast between the beast's bright head and dark coat is an important part of this design. Making the hair bright too bright could kill it.
-Lower the saturation and perhaps the values of the head. One of the things that's bugging me about the head is that it's uniformly quite saturated. If I lower the saturation of the entire head and then add some vivid reds in fewer places, it'll increase the interest in those places as well as make the lighting more realistic. If I lower the values a bit, too, the highlights would pop more.
-Completely redo the foot. Scaly feet like these are hard for me. I think by completely erasing the foot and starting over from the planning and drawing stages I could create a much better foot.
-Do some other stuff.

Any more ideas that you guys have would be appreciated.

[angelo cordon]

hey m -

just woke up from a nap and the first thing i do is look at your sketchbook. so pardon me if my critique will not be as organized as they should be because im just going to start spitting this out there.


:

i think that the reasons why mcbarrett's cow piece works is because its monochromatic; our eyes are not distracted by the color design of the piece. he also uses value principles like from the usual sphere exercises. we see highlights, cast shadows, reflected shadows and core shadows and good variation in between it all.

fungi's buffgrowl works because his color pallet works with each other. he kind of has a cool (as in cold) colored theme going on. This also goes with mcbarrett's hydralisk painting. the color pallette for the creature works tightly together. also his desaturated background does not compete with the creature but really more helps framing it or helps set the mood to the creature.

also, none of the pieces you mentioned above are done in a straight ahead side view shot which i think might be limiting to you in terms of composition.


i think that you should keep the head but lower the saturation of the fur. the face should be the focus point. right now the first part that my eye goes to is the line between where the neck stops and the fur grows.

also the orange background could probably be less saturated. i like the orange but if you could push it more to an orange brownish color it might not be as distracting. because right now my eye sees all of this vivid colors. bright red, bright orange and bright purple.

i think because the fur isnt done yet, its also distracting the eyes from comprehending this creature vs the head. i mean we all see hair everyday so we know why this fur isnt working therefore we cant suspend our disbelief to appreciate the piece as much as you want us to or as much as you want to. i think once you put more hours into this, it will work out.

i think that you're just getting frustrated too early but i think that you're definitely going the right track. hope this really helps!

cheers,
spade