SPECIAL TREAT! Collected Viz Dev from great artists!

Ok so the other Day I was explaining to my sis, Meg, what visual development (vis dev/viz dev) is, and I ended up compiling a PDF for her with some of my favorite examples.

I wanted to post this up here so you all could enjoy this goodness, too.

The tangled stuff is some of my favorite, and that first painting is my desktop background (and forever will be...). I wanted to include some art from movies that everyone will recognize, so that the connection between the art and the finished product is clear. Thus, I put in mosty Tangled, Ratatouille, Prince of Egypt, and Kung Fu Panda. (The Ratatouille stuff isn't my favorite art, per se, but it's helpful to see it there).

I also included some excellent character design model sheets from Nico Marlet, to give a picture of what character design can be.

Aaaand just for fun I included some AMAZING concept art from Iain McCaig for Padme's outfits in Star Wars. Couldn't resist.

Enjoy this amazingness!

Vis Dev Demo

Gothic Painting

I took the underpainting back to Karl's class and we glazed it--essentially we mixed up a dirty purple-blue color and did a transparent wash over the whole painting using a lot of medium. Then I went in with specific colors and painted over both the underpainting and the glaze coat.

Karl says glazing often helps the colors look richer and more lifelike because of the many layers. Apparently some of the old masters used to glaze their paintings more than once.

I wanted to keep a semi-monochromatic look to the painting, but add a bit of color here and there. I think it's my most successful portrait in oils so far. Having that underpainting done sure simplified things when I got to the color stage (although that was, in itself, tortuous for me, even though Karl thinks I'm "getting it")

Mouse Sketches and Prop Designs

Did some mousey mouse sketches (Oh my gosh, mice are so cute!) and tried fleshing out my ideas more...

Maybe the mice are mummifying Pharoah using toilet paper and elmer's glue? Perhaps...

Maybe the mouse restaurant is built from an overturned croissant box held up by broken bottles. What would mice use to make their buildings?

Anyways...

Mouse Architecture Thumbnails

The final assignment for Will's class this semester is "Mouse Architecture from Around the World". The locations we can choose from are Egypt, Paris, Japan or China, and Hollywood.

For this project I've been having trouble generating ideas that I really like. Maybe because it's so close to the end of the semester, and I'm drained. (As I write this I'm supposed to be finishing an overdue paper...)

Anyhoo, I was experimenting with a few, such as:
Grauman's Chinese Theater made from Chinese takeout boxes and untensils
Mice burying a dead "Pharoah" mouse in a mouse-made pyramid, replete with trash for treasure
A mouse-sized bakery in the trash heaps of Paris

Since I was struggling for inspiration, I did literally dozens of thumbnails. These are just a few of the more clearly readable ones (A lot of the others were just scribbles that meant something in my head...)!
More on this project soon.