Week 5 - (reading week) Character One Sketching

So now that I have enough reference, I have started to block out some rough poses and tried to create, some drawings that are readable.
  What I am trying to achieve here is, when reading the character history of Sylvia the following applies to the design:-
- Consistency, the back story fit's with the portrayal of the character in the sketch.
- Body shape, her body curvaceous and elegant as described in the history, it also fits the requirements of an Ectomorph
- Dynamic pose, the character is positioned in a dynamic pose, to draw the attention of the eye.

 When creating these sketches, even though they are pretty basic, I didn't want to get into heavy detail, because it can throw me off tangent, I wanted the basic idea initially, so I could then silhouette the character later in Photoshop, and slowly add more height to it there.
  Most character designs that I create consist of a large work load, I usually spend a lot of time creating thumbnails of characters trying to get the right idea, but I actually found this design quite easy, I knew exactly what I wanted and what I needed to achieve. It came to me quite quickly and I only needed to translate it to paper so I could justify my ideas.

Below you will find my finished character sketches, i create these with the intention of portraying a sexy, curvaceous and intriguing character. I am treating my character designs as if I am creating them for a target market audience, probably of teenagers age 16+, if they want to see a character, they want it to be eye catching and immersive, something to remember.

Week 5 - (reading week) Character One Reference

It is stated in the brief, that we are to create 3 character concepts of three different bodytypes, these consist of Endomorphs, Mesomorphs and Ectomorphs. This reading week has been the perfect oppurtunity to try and get some design influence and search up character references for the pre production stages of creating the characters themselves in photoshop.

So throughout the design process of creating my characters background histories, I decided I needed some reference to back up the character designs themselves, and to base the actual drawings off. The plan was to create some rough poses and then import them into Photoshop to try and block out the silhouette of a pose. To do this i would need lots of different  reference, i use magazines and all sorts of different pharaphenalia to achieve the reference i need, even if its a picture cut out of a news paper. By compiling a large library of reference for characters, vehicles, weapons, environments adn props, i am able to composite different scenes and scenarios in my mind of what my designs will potentially look like.
It is rare that the Michael Angelo's of the industry, create works of art without using reference, even the most talented artists need inspiration to kick start the creative spark and channel innovative ideas through their minds. After all, everything you create and see is generally based of something you have seen before and it is stored in your sub concious.

The best source of inspiration for me, is looking up artists work that I really enjoy looking at.
A few inspirational artists for me would be:-
 Mike Nash, a talented illustrator who's work revolves around the fantasy genre.
 Feng Zhu, similar to Mike Nash, his work also revolves around the fantasy Genre, but i find it far more surreal and it applies to films and games, Mike Nash's work consists more of beautiful stills and illustrations that dont really encompass a huge story.
 Leonardo Da Vinci, who doesnt love his work, he is a pioneer and an excellent artist, not only was he a huge inspiration after inventing so many things, I find his anatomical work absolutely phenomenal, infact most knowledge that we have gained about the human body has been through peoples works like his. Da Vinci's art mainly represents the technicalities of drawing and mark making, such as the famous Virtruvian Man, it describes the methods used to create traditional art, and his artistic talent supersedes excellency.

It is artists like these who really succeed at inspiring me, and giving me a burst of creativity which allows me to search my mind for thoughts which could potentially create a great piece of art work.

My first character design revolves around a Sylph, This is a mythical creature, they are more commonly known as air elemental's  but I have completely improvised on the characters back story and i really like the design. I now need some suitable reference for creating a nice female Ectomorph design, I will compile a series of photo reference below, this will help me design the character in photoshop visually.

Week 4 - Foot Study (Task 4) and Zbrush Torso

Life Drawing Improvement 

In life drawing today, we worked mainly on the  longer poses, most of them consisted of 8 - 10 minute poses which was great, because I have been wanting to do some more drawings which will enable me to get into some different mediums of art. I decided to use willow charcoal today, I have found that by changing materials, you adapt to each one differently and each medium uses its own special technique. For example, with charcoal, i like to smudge and use my eraser for highlights, where as with pencil, i like to cross hatches shade, and outline my work using a 5mm HB led mechanical pencil. So each approach is always different.

I found today's lesson quite enlightening, iv'e been struggling to understand the method of measuring using the length of the pencil with a fully extended arm. This is done to get a sense of scale and knock down the fundamental proportions of a figure. I am so use to creating my own illustrations form eye, working like this proved itself difficult, but i am happy with the results of my work, even if they don't look brilliant, I think I am improving when I compare my more recent work to my older pieces. 

 Task 4
This week we had a little insight about how the people on my course including me, as 3D Artists, are to try and make our way into the industry and what approaches we should take if we want to be concept artists. As an artist it is our duty to constantly be observing minute detail, and trying to get a good grasp of the fundamentals of all things; How they are constructed and the perspective they they are in.
Concept designers are people that completely open their mind to anything and everything creative to allow new ideas flow into their minds broadening their creative scope. This allows the designer to create innovative ideas that could really inspire and captivate their audience, but how do they get to that stage?
Through hard work, constantly practising their traditional skills such as life drawing and transposing it to character design or environment design. They are training their mind to understand the fundamentals of traditional art, no artist can draw or create a masterpiece without using reference, Pacasso and Michael Angelo didn't, they all used reference material to aid them through their work and its exactly the same for everyone in the media and games industry.

Producing good work doesn't necessarily mean that concept artist has to produce flawless line work and seamless character designs, in fact  most concept stages start out with quite choppy drawings that look very sketchy. This adds a level of authenticity to the drawings.
The point is, the idea of these life drawing sessions, is to hone our skills and allow us to understand the fundamentals of how the anatomy of the human body works, even when creating simplistic Chibi style characters like Mickey Mouse, you still need a firm grip of anatomy to understand how the character would move and what it would look like if it were to be animated. Understanding the human structure allows you to then go on to learn about the anatomy of animals and even made up organic creatures. It applies to all forms of character art.

 Our main task for this week was to create three anatomical studies of the feet, I decided to find a female friend of mine and politely ask her whether it would be okay to do a anatomical drawing study of her feet, I was shocked and delighted to hear that she said yes!

Below are three drawings that i created using a Mechanical 9mm B lead pencil, I decided to use thicker lines for my drawing to add some definition overall I'm quite satisfied with the three studies but I'm a little disappointed that they didn't turn out as well as I hoped. none the less, I have enjoyed this task as drawing feet was where i actually fell back.

Here you can see the there drawings that I  have created, I tried to do different angles of these feet but it was proved difficult as I'm a slow drawer so it would have been annoying for the model to be standing for a long period of time, so i had her prop her foot up on a cushion. 

Zbrush Torso

Today we were given a Zip file containing the base meshes for guide planes, and a 7.5 and 8 head high human, although the models were androgynous, I decided to sculpt mine into a female because everybody else chose to do a male and i wanted to stand out and try to challenge myself, there was also less reference about, i have discovered that the female anatomy is far more subtle than male musculature, so it was interesting creating the model. 

I started out first of all by importing the models, by importing them both, then turning them both into sub tools, i was able to draw them on the canvas both at the same time, this allowed me to place the guide planes in the right areas of the human torso. As  you can see on the left, the guide planes are perfectly translated in the 3D space, now as useful as they are, i decided to turn them off, I found them far too distracting and they got in the way a little bit when I was trying to work, I didn't really use them at all.

The next thing we learnt whilst in the software was the use of the transposition tool. by enabling this tool and selecting scale or move, is proviced a slider that you can tailor to the size of your character, and by manipulating each controler, it affects the movement and scale of the model, so resizing the model is a very easy thing to do. It provides a lot of leeway and it is very stable. 

Now that everything is set up, its time to subdivide the model, but not too much, we want it to be blocky so we can get the fundamental landmarks in. To subdivide, go to Geometry on the right tool palette  and hit 'Divide'. When you are sculpting, by hitting "Shift + D" you can go down a sub division, and to go up again simply press "D".

When i had completed those steps, i selected the clay tubes brush (best for blocking out) and started sculpting in the main areas, such as he stomach muscles, consisting of the 'rectus abdominous' and the 'external obliques'. 

Next week there will be participially no lessons at all, so i will use all of that time to practice using Zbrush, trying to get my model to a high standard and get some anatomically correct sculpting finished to show Tian for feedback.

Week 3 - 2D Character Histories

Character Histories

Here I will be writing about my character designs, each will vary and all three will not be tailored to the same theme, I'm trying to do things I haven't done before, and go with characters I never really would go for, just to see how I cope, and to broaden my horizons.
I will design characters that revolve around middle earth and are mythological, such as faeries, barbarians and trolls. My designes will not be based on modern times, they are more influenced by modern fantasy, form games suchas World of Warcraft, Fable, and films like Lord of the Rings.

Character One – Sylph

Name: Sylvia

Nickname or title: Sylvia Wind-Walker; she is neither here nor there, a free spirit, always embarking on new endeavours and has the most inquisitive of minds. 

Age: Sylvia appears to be a young adolescent girl of around 14-16 years old, but as an element of the spirit world she is about 100 years of age, which is actually very young as Sylphs can live to be thousands of years old.

Gender: Female

Body Type: Ectomorph

Appearance: Sylvia has the looks of a radiant young woman as her skin is immaculate, and it has a tint of sky blue to it. She has elf like eyes and has a blue aura surrounding her external form. As an air elemental she is translucent and has a strong definition to her human like form.  Her appearance is slender giving the impression of lightness, with little body fat. Facially She has a well defined bone structure. Sylvia has a curvaceous body and is very attractive and desirable to those of her kind.

Clothes: To show of her form she wears the most basic of clothing and that of necessity. She wears white cloth that envelops the upper and lower regions of her body, and winds around her with pieces of fabric loose and moving freely.

Characteristics: Sylvia is free spirited spirit with a euphoric affinity to life. As a character she loves the world that she has been born into. She is the beloved daughter of the two greatest wind weavers in her world. She is admired by everyone; all of her kind see her as the epitome of purity and good life. She acts as a beacon of hope for her kind, and cares for her people and is protective over the ones she loves. She is intelligent and very mature for a young spirit, but also has a wild side as she can be mischievous and a little over confident in her abilities. A trait she has inherited from her father, but will it get her into more trouble than she expects?

Lifestyle: Sylvia lives in a valley filled with the spirits of her kind where she is educated and catered for. Those that live there are content, but they live there only because they are forced to. Most spirits are restricted and told not to leave the main grounds of the valley. The air elementals live a life of constraint in which they never have peace of mind and there are always dangers where they dwell. Sylvia on the other hand, being stubborn like her father, ignores these constraints which are the root cause as to how her own story unravels.

Where is this set: On a planet not so different from earth, where buildings are more organic and the air is more dense. Wildlife flourishes and it is inhabited by humanoids, quadrupeds and all kinds of unique creatures. This planet is filled with life of the elements.

Where she is from: Sylvia was woven into existence by wind weavers. These beings are considered elders of the element air, full of wisdom and pure intent to restore the balance and equilibrium of the world. The elders believed that they were created by a force of unimaginable power, but they do not actually know of their origins. There are many theories to their creation; many think that they were summoned into existence by a celestial entity with a divine purpose to protect the earth and fight against their rival Fire. However this is also questionable and to some sounds completely uncanny. Regardless of what the legends and stories tell Sylvia has been born into this world and it is up to her to try and change it and make a difference, even if she doesn’t quite know it yet. 

Past: Sylvia was raised in a valley above the clouds by her loving parents; they were the image of splendour and she had a life that no other youngling (a name for spirits in their adolescent years) had ever received. Her parents had both fought on the elemental plains centuries before she was born. Through their trauma and grief of losing so many loved ones and sacrificing their home land on the surface of their planet. They were forced to retreat to the skies and live in the clouds creating a new home for their family and people.

Hundreds of years later Sylvia was brought into their world; woven and formed atop the apex of the highest mountain in the farthest reaches of the valley, a process that took weeks of pure concentration and energy. It is said to be the reason as to why Sylvia has such ethereal looks is because she was woven out of the purest of air which could only be found atop the valley where no spirit dare lingers for too long. The air was created by lustrous air elementals that possessed the looks of goddesses; these looks were used to deceive other spirits. At heart they were malicious and cruel; they sought only to harm others and thus they were banished from the lower regions of the valley and are known as Tormenters. They say the air can allure and intoxicate wandering spirits into an enchanting dream which they are then unable to escape from. Many families had lost brothers and sisters to this fate. This is why no one ventures to the far reaches of the valley, and also why Sylvia is the only pure essence air elemental left in existence.    

Present: In present times Sylvia spends most of her time drifting. Her kind refers to drifting as riding the wind, a mode of transport for the spirits as they thrive mostly in the skies. Most spirits are too frightened to wander out of the valley and go beneath the clouds after hearing of the terrifying stories about the great wars and the Tormenters. Whether the stories are true or not is a different matter of course; I’m sure protective parents tell their younglings stories to instil them with fear of the dangerous outside world, encouraging the spirits to not leave the valley. Unlike the younglings, Sylvia is un-phased by stories of legend and myth. She avidly wants to see more of the world, rather than residing in the confines of the valley.

She spends most of her time outside of the valley below the clouds, helping tortured spirits and trying to strengthen the bond between the air elementals and the life-stream that lives within the trees and plants, as nature in turn purifies the air. Many forests have been decimated due to fire, elementals that know only rage and live for destruction. They spread the quickest out of all other elements and their fiery core is filled with malice. Sylvia does have fears and is afraid of the dangers she could face, but she is loyal to nature and the lives that bloom within it.

Future: Sylvia wants to bring righteousness to her kind and put an end to all of the fright and terror that has infected the minds of all spirits below the clouds. She also thinks that her people deserve a life of that not in a cage. Sylvia will discover that she has a big part to play as stories unfold between different races and human like creatures start to rise and join their cause to fight the elements. As Sylvia ventures deeper into the cracks of the world she discovers that it isn’t only her kind that have been forced to live a life of grief and struggle. As a sudden moment of clarity occurs Sylvia realises that she is to play a part in healing their broken world; to try banding all those that have suffered together, to rise and fight a war with no predictable outcome.

Characters Purpose: Sylvia’s purpose is to inspire and instil hope into those that have lost theirs, to purge all evil, bring forces together and commence the healing process that will determine the fate of the world they live in. She will also be the cause of another elemental war which she will inevitably lead.

Does she/he wield a weapon? Sylvia doesn’t wield a physical weapon but possesses the power of elemental air. This could consist of wind or weather effects such as storms, rain or blizzards.

Are they of legend or myth? Yes a Sylph is a Greek mythological creature.

Character Two – Mountain Troll

Name: Grath

Nickname or title: The Butcher

Age: 289 years of age

Gender: Male

Body Type: Endomorph, Fat, Rounded.

Appearance: Grath as character is portrayed to be tall, about 7 feet, and grossly overweight with a huge head, greenish skin, and yellow eyes. He moves in a sluggish manor and breathes heavily. His ears have notched lobes adorned with thick earrings or plugs. He bares the scars of battle, on his head and part of his right ear is missing.

Clothes: He wears half armour and tight fitting leggings, with stout boots. His cloth which sits beneath his armour is ragged and stops just above his stomach. 

Characteristics: He is foul tempered and will attack at the slightest provocation. And if he looks into your eyes you will turn to stone. At first light of dawn, Grath and all other trolls turn to stone, and at nightfall they come back to life filled with malice and evil intent towards humans and their lands.

Lifestyle:  Grath and his kind, spend their waking hours at night, hunting for human prey, but failing to eat human flesh, they will catch and consume any living creature large or small. After killing their human prey, they will steal any goods or clothing, storing their plunder in caves which they guard at all times.  This means that they do not venture very far from where they reside.

Where is this set:  The Dark Ages, before man had come to power and the world was governed by sorcery and creatures of darkness.

Where he is from: Grath is from the ancient forests that border the black mountains and comes from a long line that was created by the ancient sorcerers that dwelled in the mountain peaks. These were creatures never to be seen, known only by tales and stories of legend.  

Past: Grath was raised by his parents to continue the line of guards to the gateway of the sorcerer’s kingdom in the mountains. During the Dark War, the sorcerers fled the mountain, abandoning the trolls. The trolls no longer had purpose or means of protection and nourishment, which forced them to loot and kill. Grath as a child had been forced to live in harsh conditions after leaving the forests. After lasting long winters without food, and spending lonely nights without his family who he lost in a raid. He now lives a solitary life  with his brothers whom he hates. Through his trauma he has grown to be a vicious and cruel character when he needs to be, but a gentle giant when he is alone, he hopes to see his family again.

Present:  Grath hates the life he is forced to live, he seeks redemption through good will and trying to kill less, but with the influence of his barbaric brothers, he is forced to join in with their cruel games, torturing and tormenting the humans and killing their livestock. He is the youngest troll and is punished by his brothers if he strives against their wishes.  

Future: Grath wants to become independent, and to be relieved from the bonds that he is bound to. He wants to reunite his family and re-establish the line of trolls that were once looked at in aw, but are now looked down at with disgust and pure hatred. He will come to terms that he will need to face his brothers, leave his camp with the goods he has stolen and try to rekindle what once was with his family. On Grath’s endeavours, he will face challenges which will determine his fate and existence.

Characters Purpose:  Graths purpose is to become independent and face the world he has been born into, but before he can face what’s out there, he must deal with his brothers and the predicament he finds himself in now. Inevitably, he will find himself in the dark world; facing enemies he thought didn’t even exist.

Does she/he wield a weapon? Yes, Grath has a sheathed cleaver and carries a large mace which trails behind him on his journey’s, his weapons have seen much death and are symbolic to Grath. They were given to him by his family.

Are they of legend or myth? Yes, trolls are based of mythical stories and folklore, which I have applied to my own made up time period. 

Character Three – Warrior

Name: Drak

Nickname or title:  (No nickname given)

Age: Drak is Human and about 25-26 years of age.

Gender: Male

Body Type: Mesomorph, rigid, hard and muscly.

Appearance: Drak has long wavy black hair and he bears the scars of a warrior. He has defined musculature and facial features, his nose is straight and solid, he has a scar from a sword, which draws vertically down the middle of his left eye lid, past his eye and onto his cheek. Drak has black facial hair, well shaven and has large ears. His eyes are blue and his face expression straight.  

His arms and chest are large due to training with a heavy weapon, his legs are toned and he is built like a brick wall. He appears to be a vigorous warrior, good looking, and a protector of his people.

Clothes: Drack wears leather around his waist, and has plate armour attached to his chest, he has rad cloth beneath his armour and has his arms and legs revealed.

Characteristics: As a person, Drak is reserved; he vows to protect the people around him and whom he loves. He is intrusted with “The Sword of the Eagle”, this is an ancient weapon, passed down from a long line of ancestors, given to one of pure blood, possessing bravery and courage. Only a selected few are able to wield this weapon and it is looked upon as a symbol of the human’s existence, it has won many wars and Drak is the wielder of this weapon, he is seen as a leader.

Lifestyle:  Drak is a simple minded person as are the rest in his village, he doesn’t seek comfort through wealth, fame or any other luxuries of life. He sleeps at night knowing his village is safe and that he has food on the table. Every day he helps the peasants with crops; he ploughs and tends to the animals like any other member of the village. He believes in equality and everybody in the village does their fair share to help keep life thriving. At night he helps watch the wall, this is the outer ring of the village, made out of wood and protected by an iron gate, it makes the village very hard to breach, but it has happened before so he keeps watch on his part, just to make sure that mistake never happens again.

Where is this set:  Set 13 years after the decade of the black purge a time where half the human population were wiped out due to plague and illness, medicine wasn’t invented then and the humans are starting to repopulate the world.

Where he is from: Drak was born behind the walls of Caltarass, given birth to by his mother, he had a happy childhood until the age of 10, when life started to become difficult and everything changed. He lived in the outer circle of the great kingdom Caltarass, controlled by the High Lord. 

Past: Drak was born and raised into a family of six, he has a mother, father and three siblings, and he was the fourth and the youngest of all the siblings. His family were killed in the fires of ‘Calterass’ this was the kingdom he once lived in. As a child, he grew up in the outer rings of the keeps grounds. This was where the poor lived and the population was most malnourished. These people were considered the scum of Caltarass and were isolated and secluded from the rest of the population.

The kingdom consisted of 4 great rings, each level becoming more wealthy and aristocratic as it grew nearer to the keep in the middle.

When Drak was just 10 years old and he just started his weapons training with his father. Life was good, besides the illness that was spreading, rumours of a plague were spreading through the colonies and villagers were starting to become disconcerted and were feeling worried for their families. A year later Drak was 11, the illness’s started to become more progressive and rapid, it was spreading like wild fire and many villagers had fled to the barren lands to try and escape the effects of the plague, and to their children from catching it.

When Drak was age 12, things became dire, carriers (people who carried the plague) had left the city, not knowing they were infected, spreading it throughout other colonies. The High Lord of Caltarass signed a Waiver, and on his command, eagles were sent to fly over the villages and colonies, dropping fire bombs to try ad extinguish the plague, killing everything in its path. It was genocide, Drak lost his family in the flames, when he found out what was happening, he ran back to his village, only to see his family burnt and charred. From this point onwards he has become a changed man, he never spoke of his past to anyone and nobody dared ask.

Present:  Drak prefers a solitary and quiet life, he has experienced a lot of grief and lost his family during a ambush on their village by the bandits thirteen years later, survivors had banded together to try and repopulate the world. The bandits are a cult of individuals who raid villages, stealing food, money and women. They enslave the children and rape the women. Fortunately this hasn't happened for a very long time in Draks village, under his protection, he has kept the people safe for many years. Different villages on the other hand are not so well protected and the bandits are recruiting more people every day, they are suffering which causes Drak to want to leave his village and help them, but if he leave, his own village may get ambushed.

Future: Drak will pick up the Sword of the Eagle, and lead his people into battle, to try and save the other villages and bring down the bandit cult. Throughout his journey Drak will seek to train warriors and build up a force, able to take the bandits head on in battle. This will take years of preparation though, and he must train his village first.   He will also find out that it was the High lord of Caltarass that made the orders for the bandits to attack the villages, so he can rebuild his own empire.

Characters Purpose:  With his new found purpose to train the villagers and avenge those who died in vein, Drak will lead his own people into victory with an army and he will meet the bandit cult in battle to try and reclaim their land an people.

Does she/he wield a weapon? He wields a two handed sword, and has a shield on his back and a short sword sheathed on his side.

Are they of legend or myth? No, a made up character.

Week 3 - Musculature, Torso (Task 3) and Zbrush

Life Drawing lesson

In this weeks life drawing session we were given the opportunity to observe the musculature  of the human body, this was a very useful session because it allowed us to understand the complexities of the human body and how specific muscles connect, overlap and entwine around certain parts of the human body .

Sam also brought in a model which the entire class looked at, I found it very useful and I was amazed at how perplexing the human body actually is, it is made up of so many different muscle groups, obviously only the major and fundamental muscles are necessary to learn, but the whole lot of it captivated me. I decided to buy a book on artistic anatomy by Dr. Paul Richer, this was requested by Tian.

The model above is very expensive, they are made and painted using fine resin and these are the works of Andrew Cawrse, a very talented artist who has taken his work into the sculpting area of the industry. Successful artists such as Feng Zhu have models like this on their desks and in their offices as inspiration, and as a reminder as to how the human anatomy works. They serve as good reference for character design.

Below are some photos of the drawings that I did during this week, to try and achieve musculature of the human body.

As you can see in the above images, I have tried to draw the musculature of the human form using each model (Gordon and Hollie) as a basis, when drawing, I try to pinpoint the major landmarks and extremities of the pose. So if Hollie had her legs folder, the farthest most extreme point would be the knees because they protrude further than any other part of the body. Once i have the basic proportions, i start to shade the characters in lightly and get a feel of depth. This is always difficult when you have three minutes to do a pose but i think they turned out rather well in the end.

Task 3

For this week, our main task was to create three more human anatomy studies of the Torso, showing a front, side and back perspective including the shoulder girdle. In some torso drawings people cut off the neck and the shoulders, but we are to include this in ours hence the shoulder girdle.
I decided to draw my art using a mechanical 5mm B lead pencil, I think these pencils are brilliant as they allow for fine lighting and tiny cross hatchet shading which i enjoy using.

Below are three pictures that I drew, I tried to draw them as accurately as possible from a book that I was recommended to get, it is called Artistic Anatomy by Dr. Paul Richer. His anatomical drawings are fun and easy to understand, so i really enjoy working out of his book, it also has a encyclopaedic knowledge about the anatomy and the human form and is very interesting to read.

When I was drawing these, I tried to draw them in ever so slightly different styles, the drawing of the front torso, I drew how I use to draw, it was quick and sketchy and I let my hand roam all over the page, I discovered that I had an excessive amount of lines everywhere and I was forever using my eraser to get rid of them ad refine parts of my image. The other two, I decided to draw with a steady and more calculated hand, using more confident lines, and I think the results have proven better, they have more definition and the lighting is much better and makes more sense, particularly on the back of the torso picture. 

Below are a few photos of some pages of the "Artistic Anatomy" book by Dr. Paul Richer, these prooved themselves very useful when i had to complete the above task, they enlightened me on muscle patterns, and taught me a lot on how they work and where they are positioned on the human body. 

Zbrush Column

So today we started using Zbrush properly, we were given a zip file which had tons of reference materials and all sorts of guidance with using Zbrush. This was useful but it was mainly to do with creating the torso which is a stage we aren't currently at.
In the lesson we imported a very basic OBJ column, and started using different types of damage methods. We fiddled around with the brushes just to see what we were able to achieve, and most of the damage seemed pretty unrealistic and I was a but curious as to what Tian was going to teach us next about the software.

A little bit into the damage build up, tian introduced us to the 'Projection Master'. This takes your 3D object and takes the current view into a two and a half D piece of geometry. The glorious thing about projection master, is that you have full control over all modifications you make.
The thing i like most about projection master is its use of alpha maps. I will show you my finished column and then explain the method I used to create it.

So on the left you can see my finished column, the first thing i did was 'Drop' the column into projection master, when I dropped the geometry, I added the extruded squares onto the mesh. I did this by selecting the grid alpha, and choosing the square brush (Alpha 51 brush), when i had selected them both, i right clicked the brush and set the repetition on the vertical axis to 23, this meant that the squares would repeat all the way down the column, as opposed to tiling them continuously.

When I had achieved a nice look, I decided to create a extruded top and base, this was simple, I changed the stroke to 'Line' and clicked to the left of the column held shift and dragged to the right, this allowed me to create a straight line across the top and the bottom of the object.

Now the damage! When i was happy with everything so far, I 'Picked up' my object from projection master and returned to 3D view. The result looked really nice all the way around the column, but now i had to add some wear and tear. To do this, i clicked 'Lightbox' and i hit Brushes', I navigated to the right (moving the scroll bar) and clicked on 'Mallet', this then opened up a folder which took me to three different mallet brushes  the one i used was called 'MalletFast', I double clicked it and imported it into Zbrush.

Now that I had the mallet brush selected, i increased its size, turned up the intensity and started bashing away at the pillar. I used this brush in conjunction with 'Clay Tubes' both I found very useful and effective when designing the column.

Next we will be moving onto the torso, but I found this exercise very helpful when getting to grips with the software itself.

Week 2 - Mark Making (Task 2)

So for this week we were to look into research to do with the human form after studying it visually in lesson. As good as it is to draw what you see, its also important that the student understands the fundamentals of the art they are creating when it comes to anything really, it would be the human form or landscapes.

In simpler terms, say you had a sports car, lets say a Ferrari, a very elegant car in terms of structure and its made even prettier with a wonderful red paint over, now lets compare that to a Ford Escort, no matter how well you paint it, it will never look as good as the Ferrari because the structure of it and the fundamentals are not as elegant. So the point is, you can spend hours making something look very good, but if you don't understand the fundamentals that lie beneath the visual aesthetics then it will never looks as good as you intend it to.

To relate the above paragraph to my human figure drawing, I could make a character look very good with different techniques using shading and light in my favour and so on, but to truly make a wonderful piece of art, I would need to be able to understand the human anatomy and how muscles entwine and wrap around each other to succeed in an anatomically correct piece of work. With drawing you can cheat this, but with 3D when I have to transpose my drawings, its more risky and it can make a character look out of proportion and not make sense.

TASK 2
Our task for this week was to have created 3 more studies of the human form that relate to a specific artists style. I decided to do some more zoomed in areas of the body particularly to do with the torso and lower part of the male body.

Artist styles

For my three different artists styles so I decided to choose my favourite, all are listed below:-

Leonardo Da Vinci - Da Vinci was a Italian renaissance Artist, most famously known for his painting the Mona Lisa, he was very talented with a brush and his work is world renown to this day. He was also a Sculptor, architect, a wonderful musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, geologist, cartographer and a writer; the list literally is endless, but the reason i chose Da Vinci as my number one inspirational artist, is because he was an incredible anatomist. With his anatomy skills combined with his artistic flair, he conjured some of the most incredible lifelike drawings portraying the human body perfectly and all of its forms. It was because of men like Da Vinci that people understadn the human body as well as they do today.  

Glen Keane - This man is a exceptionally talented animator, he is most famously know from the characters that he has created at Walt Disney Studios, these consist of The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the beast, Tarzan and Tangled. He is also a very talented author and illustrator, He has won multiple awards including the 2007 Winsor McCay award for a lifetime contribution to the field of animation.                                                                                                                                                                                      

Feng Zhu - Feng Zhu is one of my most inspirational game and film artists, he is very talented at creating visually stunning fantasy art as well as game characters, he has done plenty of work on big names in film and games, he's worked on Starwars 3: Revenge of the Sith, specifically doing work on the mustafar lava environments, and he has also done plenty of character design work with games such as Command and Conquer, Duke Nukem Forever and The Sims 3. 

I will continue to talk in more detail about each artist later on In this page but first lets crack on with the visuals!

Below you will see three drawings that i created that relate to Da Vinci's particular drawing style.

The medium I used for these is traditional HB and sepia toned pencils, I'm looking to broaden my horizons with traditional drawing styles like the masters of old.. I'm aware that many people are using Photoshop and their digital skills but I think its better to do art traditionally, and transfer your traditional skills to the software instead. This way you get to learn the best of both. I think if you jump straight into digital art, you can hinder yourself a little because going back on yourself to traditional art is much more difficult to learn once you have stylised yourself.

I based these drawings off Leonardo Da Vinci's anatomical art. I found Da Vinci's work to be most interesting and inspiring  his work is simply astounding and the height of detail that he puts into his drawing is unfettered. When I was researching into his life story I discovered what an inspirational man he was , I already knew quite a lot about him because I have previously looked into his chronological past. This time it was far more art focused and i discovered new things that I hadnt back then. For instance, his eye for observation and how he captures the most minute details and portrays them seamlessly.

So more about Da Vinci...

Like i said above, i chose Da Binci over the other artists due to his extraordinary knowledge of the human form and the work he has created in his life clearly depicts that of his intelligence. 

I could tell from his work that he is a very theoretical and mathematical man when it comes to proportions. He knows the human body and he doesn't simply draw what he sees, he studies the form and then applies it to his drawing, so his work is anatomically and proportionally correct. 

I noticed that in most of his art he uses a Sanguine or Sepia types of medium be it pencils or paints, this is excellent because it best brings out the different shades and highlights of the human body and its nice on the eyes, its good for layering and marking too. He is also very unique in his sense of shading and lighting, he usually used strokes or lines for shading that are widely spread apart, or he uses cross hatchet shading, a method still used to this day, in fact  I use it myself. 

Vitruvian Man

This picture depicts the exact proportions of the human anatomy, it consists of two men superimposed on a piece of paper in pen and ink. It portrays a man stood in a square and another man with his arms and legs spread which form the circle. Mathematically the man in a T pose forms a triangle form where his toes connect to each middle finger. This man is called Vitruvias, a greek architect whom Da Vinci was thoroughly interested in in his search for human proportions and the study of science. 

This famous study basically depicts the proportions of the human body, and the diagram shows this in small segments. I will elaborate.

Through research I have discovered that the top paragraph of the diagram shows the following measurements of the human anatomy:-

• A palm is around the size of four fingers.
• A foot consists of four palms in size.
• A cubit (otherwise known as the forearm) is about six palms long. 
• Four cubits makes the height of a man.
• A man is twenty-four palms long

The second paragraph at the bottom of the image translates that:-

• The length of a man's arms spread, from each middle finger, is the height of a man.
• The length of a man's body is approximately the size of a man's head from hairline to chin stacked 8 times on top of each other. 
• The length of the hand is a tenth of the height of a man
• From below the chin to the top of the head is and eighth of the height of a man

There is such a long list of measurements  I don't want to bore anyone reading this blog page, but this is just a taste of how much detail Da Vinci went into with the human form. 

To the right is another image of a man, yet again and excellent piece of work that clearly portrays the construction of the human body but specifically with the face. Da Vinci has constructed a grid around the face of this man to differentiate the space between each facial land mark to create an accurate perspective of the proportion of the head. 

This method is excellent for drawing, and the grid itself can be drawn on paper which then allows you to have some basic guidelines which will help you to draw the human head accurately.

On the right you can see multiple images that I have used as reference material to create my drawings above. As you can see in Da Vinci's work he is very meticulous and precise with his style of shading and line work. I have tried to replicate this in my drawings of the human anatomy.
What i love about his drawings, is the definition between muscle groups, for example, on the side view image of the human standing up, i love the detail that is incorporated into the drawing where the latissimus dorsi and external obliques wrap round. Its details like this in drawings which really help me to appreciate the human anatomy and the way we are built.

On the right you can see a study I created, I found two of my best side and front perspective anatomy drawings and labelled all of the muscles that I went through in the lecture with Sam. I also delved into more detail and labelled some muscle groups that I found In Da Vincis drawings detailing the anatomy of the human body.
Labelling the muscles has helped me a lot with trying to understand the construction of the muscles in the body and how they connect, i think this will help me in the future a lot whe nit comes to doing more life drawing and being able to remember muscles that i have memorised from studying them more. 

Feng Zhu
This is my second favourite artist, Feng Zhu is more of a contemporary  modern artist who does work for the game and film industry creating environments and character concepts. The main reason why i love his work is because all of his work is so brilliantly made, and his concept of colour is outstanding. I love his sense of light and shadow detail in his work. His general art style is that of a digital oil painter using Photoshop or Corel painter. Some of his work will be shown below in GIF format that i made, and you will be able to see for yourself just what kind of art he actually creates himself. He is now world renown in the games industry and has worked on huge projects.

As you can see in his artwork, he uses a variety of brush strokes and uses lighting and colour to his advantage to try and manipulate or depict an enchanting and visually enticing environments.
This is why I love his art work, because whenever I see a piece of work by him, I am instantly pulled in and captivated by his artistic license.

Glen Keane
Last but not least, my third favourite artist, I really enjoy looking through Glen Keane's work I find it quite enchanting and engrossing to look at, but it doesn't quite grab me as much as the other artists, I think his style is a bit different and his drawing style unique but his work looks quite simplified at times. Things that captivate me are vibrant coours, striking scenarios, poses or scenes and i done really feel that in his work. None the less though, his work is brilliant and his character designs flawless he has a wonderful eye for creating elegant characters with exaggerated poses, the characters look proportionately incorrect, but believable. Below I will show some images of his work and the things that he has created that i enjoy most.

As you can see below, his drawing style is very unique and that of a talented artist, but I don't feel captivated by his work when I look at it, but I do very much appreciate his art style and the way he creates his character designs. 

I particularly like the style of shading and his use of colour, its quite vague but it gets the point across and I think sometimes something that looks sketchy is far more genuine and it adds a degree of authenticity to the work.

So that concludes my three chosen artists, and I hope this justify's as to why I decided to choose Leonardo Da Vinci as my leading artist who I found most inspiring.
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On a side note, when we were in our lecture, we did some charcoal drawings that were related to this particular task, and we used different styles of translating whatever medium we were using onto the page, the method I choose was to coat a page in charcoal and then use my eraser to bring out the highlights. Here are my first attempts of trying to achieve that.

 Each picture is pretty basic but in time my charcoal skills will improve and i will be posting some more pictures later in my blog showing my progression using different art mediums.

Some extra Input...

Below are 5 or 6 drawings that i made in my spare time just to try and understand the human figure a little more.

Above are a series of images I made which weren't part of our main tasks, but I wanted to develop my art skills a bit more  as well as understand the human form a lot better. One drawing that I did quickly and roughly was the Davinci method of drawing the human body. This is the last picture, it starts as a series of dots and you halve each one which gives you a rough direction of where things are landmarked, so for example, if you find the half way point between head and toes you will find the naval.
  This is a slightly different method to using the head to measure out the human body its a little more mathematical and practical. I also took the liberty of investing in various books, those of which i found incredibly useful below is a photograph of the books I invested in.


Force: Character Design from Life Drawing - Michael. D. Mattesi
The Fundamentals of Drawing Anatomy - Tom Flint
Artistic Anatomy - Dr. Paul Richer
Zbrush Character Design - Scott Spencer

All of these books are brilliant and i look forward to reading and studying them with great enthusiasm.