sketchbook selection

From time to time, i like to visit my old sketchbooks. I browse them discovering them with fresh eyes, and new perspectives. Here is a quick selection of what caught my eyes recently.

 

 

 

 

Having a break

I took a mental break this afternoon from my current project.  Mixing colors for dark complexions still puzzle me, I should try an auto-portrait someday.

 

 

Bat Dog

- Alfred, have you walked the dog?

The Tank

 

The Scout

 

Recent Sketch

Lost Lagoon - Final

I've done some more research & studies, and tried to really nail down the gesture of the girls. I'm kinda satisfied on how they turned out. I guess I find myself at one of these cornerstone again.

The Golf Player

If you l.o.v.e. James Bond you surely know where I got my inspiration. That character always elude me no matters how many time Iwatch it. I would like to redesign the whole shapes, I'm often way too conventional and I could use a bit of excentricity. Skew things a bit, get a stronger statement. Yeah, lets focus on that.

Crash!

A bit of fun today, the quotes along side with this could be...

"I didn't meant to interrupt m'am, but do you know where I can get a monkey wrench? It's a national security matter"

The real deal here, is... I wanted to test some grass, twigs and flowers work... so I started with the setup. The foreground would need to be opaque and I wanted to try gouache, I really struggle with gouache and I wasn't sure of my success. But by the time I was done with the setup(all transparent Watercolor), I couldn't proceed by fear of ruining it. I liked it too much the way it was, but still I gave few gouache brush stroke and kinda ruined the foreground. So I stopped before making it worse. Lesson learned here... ALWAYS follow your instinct.

New Year Rez

Happy new year to everyone,

So my resolution for this new year, is to artistically seriously kick ass.
Below are some vizdev for a story I'm trying to come up with. It's about the friendship between a butterfly and a lost fox cub. I'll post some more as the ideas are getting clearer in my mind.

From my sketchybook

Tom Buchanan

I'm reading The Great Gatsby and feeling inspired by the era and the setting, I'd like to make an attempt to design some of these characters, here is a quick study for Tom Buchanan. My design for now is too suave, Tom should be more rugged and beasty, a gruff husky voice.

SHoWMaN

If you've been in a karaoke night with me, you'd know who that guy is!

Trying Stuff

The Crow

The main evil character of the the animated short I'm working on. This is just a 1st draft to get the ball rolling. Ideally I would like more stylized lines and shapes. A lot has been lost in the watercolor phase, and I was too eager to ink them back... and failed most of them. I'll give another try someday.

Some Updates

Ok, so The short movie is done, we shot it last weekend, but we couldnt make it to the 48hours competition, the render time took 30min too long. We missed de deadline by a hair. Nonetheless the movie was still screened tonight, but unfortunetly I missed it... duh... yeah I know, I was already absorbed by something else... the other short movie I'm working on. Below are some recent studies I've been doing.

10,000

There is saying, every great artist has at least 10,000 bad drawings behind them. Considering another theory, to be excellent at something, you'll need 10,000 hours of practice. At 5000hr you can teach, at 8000hr you're good, but at 10,000 you're excellent. I tried to make a count... of how many hours I've been doing all this, since... 2001. I've reached a gross average of 6000hours. Considering my daily job is kinda related and the amount of actual practice I'm doing outside of the job. What is seen on this blog, is maybe 1/20 of what I'm actually doing. (All failures are usually tore to pieces before the water has dried out.)

There are 8760 hours per year, in which 2/3 is dedicated to work and sleep. The last third is to eat, leisure, transportation etc... so there isn't much left for self improvement. If you're lucky enough to work in your field of interest, you can leverage some of the 2920 hours you spend in the office for self improvement. Otherwise it's really hard to get off the office, reach home, be good at parenting, and then find some time to improve. But not impossible if you believe in it. And remember that....The only way for an artist to fail, is to quit too early.


 Below is a study for a character research I'm doing for an animated short. More to come later!

Project with friends

I havent posted anything much recently, here is an insight with a project i'm working on with some friends.

Char Dev #3

So again, saturday, locked in my room and forcing down something. I did some figure studies, browsing history books, reading about the Kwantung Army. I wanted later to make a full render in Watercolor, but I felt too exhausted after 3hr of drawing\researching. My concentration stamina is quite low :).

Watercolor Time Lapse

The music by Mr.Oizo

If you know Ubisoft`s games you might recognize this one.

It took me 18 minutes to complete this.