Heyo!
It's an eclectic bunch this week!
So let's waste no time and get stuck into my resources, thoughts, 'aha moments' and announcements directly from my brain to yours from this past week.
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- Resources
IG Post - How on earth James Gurney makes such realistic lighting for his invented characters
This baffled me for a long time... Does he have photographic memory? Is he a just a genius at painting light?
There's one thing to paint accurate lighting from reference, but another to accurately depict light on something that doesn't exist.
Apart from reading his two awesome books...
- Color and Light
- Imaginative realism (which goes deeper into how he produces such magic!)
This post is a nice little insight into James captures such realistic lighting. Especially for those of you who think using reference is 'Cheating'.
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Resource - Library of different figure poses with muscles overlaid on top
This is a handy little tool called Pose Maniacs I came across this week. It's a library of 3D modeled figures in all different poses.
A huge positive, is that the muscles are shown overlaid on top of the models, which will be a huge help with anatomy study!
Worth a look for sure.
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Video - Some tips on likeness
In this video, Chris Legaspi takes you through a technique he uses to get a likeness in his drawings.
I'm always looking for ways to get better at certain things in art, and likeness is one of them.
Although I'm personally familiar with the concepts Chris talks about in this video, I find it SO beneficial to keep reinforcing these ideas from different teachers to help them stick.
Each teacher has slightly different ways that they describe similar ideas and I'll always look to absorb a different points of view!
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Video - Character design process by Knight Zhang
This is a great little video on the Proko youtube channel shows how much prep goes into great character design
Knight goes into her research and iterations, showing when the design doesn't quite go to plan and how she fixes it.
I think the eye opener for me was how many iterations it took to get the final design.
If you're the type of person that gets frustrated if you try and draw something a couple of times and it doesn't look great; this ones for you.
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Video - Drawing different perspectives challenge
This was a cool video by HadesPsd showing a 3D drawing drill with the skull as a the subject.
It shows drawing the skull in all different angles and is worth a watch!
This video got me thinking about doing some more 'mileage drills' to get better at specific topics
For example I might draw…
- 50-100 knees
- 50-100 hands
- 50-100 heads
All in different angles
I’ve never really attempted any of these 'mileage' type challenges before, but it makes sense that it could be beneficial by being exposed to the same thing over and over again until its ingrained in my muscle memory.
Although I think there could be some downsides or (wasted study time) if they’re done mindlessly.
Keeping mindful of the 3D forms/line quality etc while doing these type of challenges might be the way to go if I were to attempt this 🤔
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Updates
Blog Progress
Been working to get the more content added over the last week, some sneak previews will be dropping in my IG stories in this coming week.
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Progress on the secret project continues
Nothing super specific to be updated on just yet, but know that I'm trying to condense as much valuable information into this project as I can, and setting up systems to be able to consistently release more. Cryptic... yes, exciting? I dunno about you, but I can't wait to show you!
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That's all from me, and until next week.
Stay consistent, use reference, have fun with it and remember; it's only pixels baybee!
Cheers,
Ben
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