Film & Figure

Man am I bad about updating this thing...  Well here's a couple of sequences for film class, the first dealing with graphic elements and the second with point of view.

And here are some quick figures.

Toy & Company

So, I've kind of been too busy to update lately...  Mostly thanks to my toy project for 3D design, which sucked up so much of my time.  With this project I had to design a toy and it's packaging.  At first I was clueless as to what I wanted to do other than the fact that I wanted to use magnets; they're just plain cool after all.  So I figured magnets would work well with detachable parts, and what would have detachable parts?  Why, a zombie of course!  So this guy below is Greg, a pencil pusher zombie from a theoretical interchangeable set.  He's made out of initially half baked sculpy and carved with small flathead screwdrivers, 1/4" diameter rare earth magnet discs in each side of his points of attachment and feet, spray primer, and acrylics.

He's rather fun to play with and mess up.  And he'll probably end up being my fridge magnets.  He took a lot of time to make and get put together properly, but what really took a long time was making silicon molds of all six parts.  At first I wanted to turn in plastic casts of the sculpy prototype, but due to time that goal flew out the window not long after I dragged it in.  I still wanted to follow through and learn the mold making/casting process, it's just plain cool after all.  So below are some photos of the mold making.  I used a brush on silicon rubber from smooth-on and applied four coats along with two for building up the individual cut seams.  The last two pictures are for when I made the plastic support shell for the molds so that they keep their shape during casting, and hold them to make things a bit easier.  I haven't made any actual casts yet, I've still got to work out a kink with the molds, not to mention catch my breath after all this.  It may be a while before I actually see how the molds perform... like December, maybe.  It took so long to make these molds though, you have to wait for each coat to dry, mix each batch for each coat separately and everything, and working out side in 90 degree isn't nice either, especially since it cuts your pot life from fifteen minutes to eight.  A lot of work, but so cool.  If the casts turn out well I may even make some other toys in my free time (ha!), simpler toys.

This here is an earlier project where the assignment was to to make sequential wire gestures showing an action.  I chose to show a handspring.  I'm pretty glad with how they came out (not to mention they all balance on their own!)

The next project in 3D is to make a perching vulture out of metal with emphasis on plane and edge, so these are some of my sketches of the american black vulture down at jungle gardens.  I'm so excited to weld, it looks like so much fun!

The last project in film language dealt with the juxtaposition of images, the principle that two (or any other number) of neutral images, when juxtaposed against each other, form more complex ideas.  For example, a picture of a man's face next to a picture of empty bowl leads to the idea of hunger and even raises the question of wether not he will be able to eat, etc.  This works especially well when the viewer is in a situation where they are expecting a story (like at the movies!) and those eager beavers will just fill in all the obvious gaps for you.  The following sequence was my favorite from the project.

We wrapped up perspective in drawing class with an invented space project.  Pretty straightforward stuff.

Figure's kind of straightforward too.  Gestures and some long poses at the end.  I've got to watch my line quality more...

And here's a few drawings from fews.  I need to stop being so literal all the time... it's hard though.

Believe it or not, at art school I don't actually draw that much (figure drawing and classwork doesn't count).  Honestly, this is pretty much the only stuff I've actually drawn in the past month (and I did it while I was supposed to be doing homework, oops).  We had a caricature night in our hall and our RA had a bunch of irresistible 11x17 paper and this is the fun nonsense that ensued over the course of that evening.  It's mostly garbage but it sure was fun and totally worth doing despite my consequent mild midterm panic.

The Kickoff

I've been at Ringling for just over a month now and have enough work to kick off my blog!  So here it is.

In Figure we've mostly just done gestures with some sighting/proportion emphasis recently.  I've gone through so much newsprint and vine in that class.  I can't wait for FEWS to finally start next week so I can do even more figure drawing and just go crazy, without having to work towards objectives.

Gestures ranging from 30 seconds to 2 minutes:

Long poses, 1-2 hours:

In Drawing all we've really worked on so far is perspective, so aside from box still lifes and this observational drawing of my residence hall I don't have much to post.

Film Language is great.  These three shots were for a project illustrating basic camera rules.

depth in frame

medium shot

rule of thirds

I don't have any photos of projects for 3D Design handy, so I'll hold off on those for now.  The next image is an attempt to use painter X.  Hopefully my next try at it'll be better since I just learned how to actually turn on pressure sensitivity for brushes today.

This other drawing is for Concept and Ideas club where we come up with concepts for various chosen topics.  This one was to design a superhero in silhouette, which we did and then developed further.  I went with some sort of water/shapeshifting power, which is just plain cool and fun to draw.   Some suggested that I lose the bikini on her, but I think that would come off as water nymph -ish and a bit contrite in the genre of fantasy, and to be honest topics tend to bore me anyways.  I'd really like to make her more of a swimmer, maybe giver her some goggles and other accessories.  She's be like the Wonder Woman counterpart to Phelps.  I don't know why she's holding swords... she needed something and I just couldn't think of anything better, and while I do think they look cool, I'd like to replace them with something more fitting.  For next week we're supposed to come up with a composition of them in an environment and I'd really like to use some extreme forced perspective (if I can pull it off...) in a showdown with a nemesis (TBA).  We'll see...

Well, enough of me flapping my fingers.  I'll end off this post with some of my sketchbook pages.