Kitcheny Props

...Not kitschy. One hopes!

Anyways, I wanted to try doing some digital prop sketches, and soon realized that black and white is just too boring. If I turn this whole Ragneau thing into a portfolio page, these will be great decor!

Ragneau Rough

I took the sharpie sketch, scanned it into PS, and whipped up this rough layout. had to adjust the perspective a bit, still needs tweaking here and there. Only thing left is to clean up the lines and paint it!

Somewhere in the process Ragneau became jolly again...

Ragneau in the Kitchen...Dum dum duuuum!

I knew I wanted Ragneau deep in the heart of the kitchen, surrounded by precariously perched clutter (knives especially!). I did a few thumbs and then whipped up this rough drawing just for fun. I'm probably going to have to fix the perspective and pay more attention to the character and the props, but this is the feel I'm going for...

Except that Ragneau has somehow become a short, angry guy who looks like he could have stepped out of the mafia, or the KGB.

"What, you not like my soup? Hand me knife, I will show you somethink..."

Scary! Well, here he is, adding vodka to his fried eggs:

Ragneau Designs

Soooo I've been working on those Cyrano de Bergerac character designs in an attempt to get more comfortable constructing and playing with character and shape. It's been going ok. Here's some sketches I churned out for the fat baker, Ragneau.

Tom also told us that we're going to have to place our characters (or at least one of them) in an environment--ie Layout time! Lol so I started doing some prop designs for Ragneau's kitchen...What if, I thought, Ragneau is fat and short, but everything in his kitchen is tall and skinny? Maybe it looks like he'd break everything just standing in there.

Cave Lighting Keys

In preparation for submitting my portfolio to Disney, I did up some quick tonal paintings of my cavern layout, showing a different lighting scheme in each one. The idea came from Will--he mentioned that a student of his did this for 4 different layouts, with 4 different lighting schemes for each, and that it got him an internship at Pixar. I think the idea is to show that you can light a composition from any which way you choose...demonstrate versatility, etc.

I like how, using only light and shadow, you can communicate three completely different ideas, or moods, through the same layout.

Full painting to come later...

Cavern Rough Lighting Keys

Will says there's only 6 possible combinations for landscapes with a clear foreground, middleground, and background. You're gonna have light, medium, and dark tones, so there you go.

I'm working on some lighting keys for the cave layout, so I whipped this up quickly to give myself a basic schematic of what the different possibilities are (not accounting for unnatural or unusual lighting situations--lanterns, fairy dust, etc.)

Mostly for me but also for you to see how one layout can look so different...tone really matters!
FYI if you really want to see the difference, I'd suggest opening the image in a new tab, zooming in, and then focusing on each different layout. Looking at them all together boggles the mind...

Tonal Underpainting

I was talking to Ramon and he told me that it might be helpful to try doing a tonal underpainting in umber before launching into color--that's the way a lot of the old masters painted. It sounded like a great idea, since it would allow me to separate the value stage from the color stage (Will-style??). My paintings have been failing lately, and I suspect it might be because I spend so much time thinking about color that I neglect the anatomy, likeness, and correct value relationships. It's going to be a matter of getting faster and better, but for now I think this might be helpful.

In Karl's class I started out with a light underpainting, which I was hoping to have dry and then paint right over it, but he suggested i make a full underpainting then we try something he calls "glazing" next week--where we put the color on like a completely separate painting over a dry underpainting. Sounds good. Here's stage 1:

Texture Practice

I've always wanted to experiment with different styles of coloring and 'painting' in Photoshop. Other styles, that is, aside from brush-based painting. I found this awesome tutorial about how to make shape and texture based paintings, and did a short test on a very simple sketch.

Here's the result. I'm going to add in some more elements, but I need to get more comfortable manipulating the masking in PS before I continue. Gotta find some more tuts!

Final Cavern Layout!!!

At long last, it's here! The Cavern layout is finished! YAY!
Anyways, I finished this a little earlier than I had to because I need to get cracking on the digital painting. I want to have a semi-painted layout to show Will on Friday.

Why the giant squid/octopus tentacles? Glad you asked...somehow or another Will started making fun of me for not liking squid, and then drew a giant squid tentacle in the middle of my rough composition on his tracing paper when he was critiquing it. I decided that it would be funny to keep the tentacle in, but place it surreptitiously in the foreground.
That I did, and then after showing it to Will again, I decided to go big or go home! Tentacles galore! (That staircase just WASN'T working, you know? So why not replace it with another tentacle?)

The end story, which I made up to justify the excess of tentacles, is that this underground (underwater?) city is plagued by killer squids...so they hang lanterns filled with squid repellant outside their doors and windows...lol!

Here's the blue-pencil version:

And here it is desaturated:

Click on it for a LARGE view!!!

8-Minute Head Studies

Today in class the model didn't show, so we started drawing each other's heads. Heh heh!
Anyways, these were 8-minute poses, too fast for my taste (obviously)! I would get into the groove, start to find a real resemblance, and then the pose would end...alas.
I'll just have to get faster.

Jasmine saw these and said, "Either everyone in your class is good-looking or you draw people good-looking." Lol I suppose they're just all good-looking?

Character Studies

Sooo in light of my new realization that Character Design is my weak point...I think you'll be seeing a lot more of this...Expression studies (or in some cases full-blown character studies).

Basically, you pause the movie and capture the character's gesture and expression. After doing 300 it's supposed to help :D Lol I enjoy it, too. It's easy to tell if you're doing it right...because you ought to be able to recognize the characters. I labeled them, though, just in case.

Anyhoo, enjoy. (PS click on it them use the magnifying glass to zoom in. This image is way small!)

First Lantern Designs

I took a look at ref and did some quick lantern designs in sharpie and Prismacolor markers.
The one on the left is one of my favorites. I think I can push the shapes a little more, though...

Rough Cavern Layout

I gotta think of a better name than "Cavern" for this project :D

Here is the rough layout I did based on the 2nd thumb from the last post. I enjoyed myself a lot on this one, adding lanterns here and there to make it feel busy, and wireframing the heck out of everything to give some depth and form to the rocks and stalactites.

Will took his pen and tracing paper and pointed out all sorts of things that I've got to change, but that's great, and I'm super excited to turn this into a working layout...hopefully painted? (Cross your fingers!)

Cavern City Thumbnails

I went in and did some extra thumbnails just to make sure there wasn't a composition I liked better than the original one...heehee. I didn't find one :D

Enjoy!

Goodbye Star Wars, Hello Hanging Cave City!

So after doing some thinking (and drawing) to the Star Wars effect, I didn't really feel like the layout was working. I LOVE Star Wars, and still get a kick out of the idea, but I haven't been able to do any original design, since I'm basically drawing things that have already been invented and designed. Meh.

So I decided to ditch the idea, but I liked the composition so I chose to keep the same thumbnail. Then last night I was seized with inspiration! I'm going to create a hidden city with strange buildings hanging from the cave ceiling! (These will handily replace the bottom of the Star Destroyer in the original thumbnail...do you know how hard it is to convey "Star Destroyer" by simply drawing the bottom corner of one? No one's gonna recognize that...)

I traced over my thumbnail and replaced the ship with dwellings, and then did some designing. What do the dwellings look like? I did some doorways carved into stalactites and stalagmites, some rickety stairwells that will look like spun sugar clinging to the cave ceiling, and then designed some hanging lanterns to light the ancient city. Enjoy! Definitely more to come!

PS Please click on the image for a full view!