Two Sequential pages + 5 Drawings

Version 1:

Version 2:

I originally submitted version 1 thinking the deadline was earlier where in my initial OSS post, I lamented that if I had more time I would have added more details in and re-did some of the panels. Turns out, I HAD!

Having to do two pages, I really wanted each page to be distinct but with a purpose. The first page is meant to evoke a sense of familiarity/ recalling back to a specific time, hence the more “refined” approach with the shading, where the overall look is meant to look cleaner in comparison to page 2. For this version, I changed the last panel entirely because I found the first version’s to be uninteresting and did have the dramatic effect I wanted because the “camera” is pointing to the ground where it would’ve had been better if it was pointing upwards. The scenery is completely changed because I drew the 2nd version when I was at home, where the first was from my hall. For this page, I took inspiration from Mattero Pericoli , I noticed that although his work doesn’t necessarily has tone in the traditional sense, he makes up for it with the windows and bricks which in a way acts as its tones.

For page two, I wanted it to contrast, not only with the amount of darks I use but the overall composition as well, it’s lot more rougher and boxed in (which is beyond my comfort zone to be honest, but I wanted to be a little more experimental). The intention is ground page 2 more into reality in contrast to the more nostalgic approach I took in page 1. I changed the overall aesthetic for this page because I felt the first version was dull and lacked a distinct personality. Hence I tightened up the framing to give it a more “boxed” in feeling, which fits well into the new narrative of being unable to escape from something despite being self-aware. I changed this narrative because when I showed that to my friends, they were confused by the conflicting imagery as the monologue talked about food, but the visuals showed a completely different food. This would have worked better if the monologue and drawings were different enough. Hence, the change, which I feel works better. I also decided to ink it to make it more bold and gross to contrast the cleaner look of page 1 better (plus I also had fun inking page 1 and wanted to continue doing it haha). For this page, I took inspiration from Andre Wee , which was introduced by Noah’s post as the ones I picked weren’t “messy” enough.. but I guess that is the point of having us introduce each other various artists!

Class drawings: 

 

Not sure if we’re required to reflect but I’ll just do it anyways cause it feels weird posting class drawings without sharing some thoughts.

To be honest, I failed to keep up the habit of drawing during the semester break because of various reasons and commitments, which was why I decided to take up this module, to help me get back into it as well as to build on the foundation from year 1.

In the first drawing, my proportions are all over the place, and sketching them without line work made it even harder, which made me worried if this was the kind of output I’d have for every class so I squeezed in some time, whenever I can, to focus on anatomy and get back into the habit of sketching them quickly. Hence the vast improvement seen in picture 2 (at least I hope..).

The biggest challenge posed is definitely the environment, while foundation year has helped me gotten a lot better at drawing people, I still had difficulty plotting the environment quickly. I consulted with prof Jesse on image 3 and have gotten lots of useful feedback that I kept in mind in subsequent classes (and especially for the final assignment). Some of these advises includes; don’t commit to a single object until I’ve laid out the environment, draw my ellipses properly and use the eraser as a drawing tool and not just a tool to undo mistakes.

Still have ways to go but am pleased by the overall improvements I’ve made this semester.

6 Composition sketches

 Still Life:

Voyeuristic:

^Now that I think about it..shading the person in the foreground along with the environment (leaving the background area brighter) to obscure this person would probably make it more Voyeuristic…

^Noah had a really good point about hiding a person’s face behind the glass to make it more Voyeuristic.

^Probably my least Voyeuristic sketch. I intended the clicker at the bottom to be distracting for the viewer, so like a form of interruption from the Ipad. One way to improve on this is probably have a hand on the clicker with a faint reflection of whoever’s opposite be on the Ipad?

Reflection:

Honestly, I’m quite pleased with these sketches, more so because I feel I’ve gotten faster in plotting stuff down before getting into the details. Areas I definitely need to improve on is my line weight and adding more values in my sketches to separate the foreground and background.

Edit: AHHHH Sorry Prof Jessie!! I put a timer to publish this on Monday but I set the wrong Monday!!!

5 Artist Research

For this research, 4 of 5 of these artist are ones I found in the ADM library.

Mattero Pericoli

What caught my attention with Mattero Pericoli is the immaculate detail he puts into his environment drawings. In these pictures, Mattero captures his environment through his view from a window. I love that he used the window grills as his framing device. If I were to focus on just part of a drawing, through one windowpane, it still looks like a complete piece of work that is nicely famed (something we also discussed in semester 1 during one our critic sessions!). The grills are more often the only one that’s “shaded” through cross-hatching, further emphasizing them as frames to his artwork.

His sense of perspective is also on point. Although these are drawings of buildings and/or structures, all of his lines are done freehand, which I felt gave his environment more life.

Abdelkader Benchamma

Another artist with I feel has fantastic intricate linework. Some of his works reminds me of the posters for this film called “Lobster”. That being how huge chunks are deliberately omitted in his artworks. It’s very interesting to me as through the empty spaces, it creates this moody tone of his composition. While his line works are extremely detailed, his overall composition can be broken down to shapes whereby Abdelkader successfully plants them in his layout with a clear idea as to where his details will go and where he’d leave it blank.

 

 

Ruth Gwily

Her artwork in this book is mainly humans. But the interesting part is how she chose to represent them in this performance-art sort of manner. Looking at her history, she seemed to be involved in costumes at some point, so it’s no surprised she used that as a theme for her illustration.

But before looking her up, what struck me the most about her is her choice to have her subject wear costumes like an oversize helmet/masked as opposed to exaggerating proportions. Which is interesting to me as while she’s grounding her work into reality, its still just as, if not, more wacky than if she chose to just exaggerate their proportions.

The reason why I feel she manages to pull this off is her strong sense of human proportions as well as a good understanding of scale and weight

 

Sun Xun

Probably the most different out of all the artists I’ve picked. What drew me to his work is this dark, somber, almost surrealistic tone he has going on in this paintings which he achieved through his dark lighting, composition and the subject of his painting. I also noticed that most of his works seems a similar composition. That being on eye level, which puts the viewer into the scene, as though they’re observing an event that’s happening before them.

(I couldn’t clearer pictures online so I took a picture from his book. The pages are also glossy so it’s hard getting a picture without any light reflecting..)

 

Kim Jung Gi 

One of my all time favorite artist. What drew me into his work is similar or a combination to some of the ones I mentioned above. The immaculate attention to detail, understanding of anatomy and perspective, and his rendering grabs my attention. Seeing him create his works can be a little demoralizing at first (when I was much younger) because of how effortlessly he draws and paints without any use of guides but now it’s much clearer to me that he’s able to do all that because of how hard and long he worked on his craft.

 

Pictures in full res: Click here 

Final Assignment – “Sigh…”

Full res photos here

Selected Poses:

These are the poses I picked for the final assignment. I intentionally picked unfinished poses or poses I had issues with as references to take the opportunity to finish them as well as rectify them.

Initially the plan use the drawing I did for figure transformation as one of the panels but I realized it would have looked lazy on my part, so I decided to redraw it with a slightly different pose. I also took the opportunity to fix whatever problems I felt the original drawing had. Like how he kind of looks uncomfortable in the original, the barrel bands (as pointed out by Prof Jesse) didn’t ellipse properly and giving the hand a more 3 dimensional form (as Prof Jesse also pointed out during our class conference call).

References:

 

Final:

*My scanner wouldn’t connect so I took photos for the finals.

For my final layout, I went a little experimental. I’m not as familiar with the rules of comic layouts but I wanted to find a way to control the flow of the comic and use the space to emphasis each panels. I ended up going for single panels that moves in a horizontal direction that in a way, looks like a widescreen format you’d see in films. Since my designs are fairly realistic, I thought it would be fitting to put them in this format.

Areas of improvement:

While I feel that I’ve gotten a little better with cloth, although some areas still looks a little wonky (like the third pose from the left).

I’m also not really feeling the first panel as a whole (left) with how it looks composition-wise. Initially I wanted to make all the panels seamless, to make it look more dreamlike, but because my scanner refuses to cooperate, I couldn’t do it properly, hence I decided to be a little “creative” with the borders. Which explains why I drew an overlap in the first panel to create this seamless effect.

Reflection:

Coming into this cause, I had an objective to improve on my anatomy drawings as much as possible, as up till that point, I’ve had difficulties identifying my problems whenever I attempt to draw the human form. So I’m glad that these issues were addressed during the lessons as well as consultations.

Although I still have lots more to learn, I’m pretty pleased with the improvements I’ve made throughout the semester as well as finally getting myself to sketch quicker!

Figure Transformation

Updated!

These are my drawings and process for ‘Figure Transformation’.

Full res photos here

1)

The concept for this character is a bootleg superhero. He just a normal dude, nothing remarkable, no special skill, just wearing a costume that vaguely resembles another hero.

Character 01

I tweaked the original pose a little by shifting the weight a little back. I wanted this character to have a weaker fighting stance since the character I was going for had no fighting experience. Not my most favorite design considering he looks more generic than a supposed knock-off. Hence in my next design, I try to do something more wacky.

 

 

2)

Character 02

I tweaked this pose as well. I wanted to show the front a little more since the angle is a little similar to the first pose. This character’s costume is inspired buy Cockatiels. I wanted this character’s costume to be something he threw together hence the loose clothing.

The shading of the pants could definitely use more work (especially his left leg).

 

3)

Since my past 2 characters is based on normal people dressing up as hero, I decided to twist this concept a little, that being a normal person dressed up as another normal person. Which sounds strange now that I type it out because how can you tell if the person is dressed as someone else? In this context, I’m taking an office attired man, dressed in a farmer’s overall (The overalls the main theme of all 3 characters since they kind of all have it).  The point of this character is to poke fun at our desire to go outdoors ever since we were advised not to.

I’ve also rendered this character because I felt that it would make it more dramatic.

^After consulting with Prof Jesse, we both agreed that the feet and head is out of proportion.

Character 03

I’ve actually updated this drawing as well but I felt it would’ve been more fitting to talk about it in my final submission.

Interactive Narrative: The Final Evaluation

For this assignment I chose ‘Wix’ to host my videos.

The initial plan was to use YouTube but when I was uploading it, I realized that Annotations is not longer a thing, meaning I can’t properly time when the options would appear or customize the design to fit the game.

Wix on the other hand, also does not allow me to annotate videos but It can provide me an alternative solution where I could put buttons below the video. It’ll make more sense when you play it :’)

Slides and instructions (just in case) are also available in the website.

Click here to start game.
Click here for slides.

 

Alternatively, access the slides via Google Drive.

P.s. Since deadline is pushed to Sunday 2359, I will still be tweaking the videos here and there. Do provide suggestion/advice and let me know if there’s any errors that occur in the website. Thank you!!

 

5 Drawing Portfolio

Full res photos here

1) I liked that I managed to keep both subjects proportions similar to each other. I usually have a slight difficulty in that and would resort to digital manipulation to rectify the unintentional size difference from 2 characters.

Some improvements I definitely could make is making a better attempt with the feet, improve the twist of the subject’s waist (the rib cage is looking pretty wonky) and defining the knees a little more.

 

2)

One of the drawings I went back to improve upon, mainly fixing the proportions and improving the wrist and knees. I like the forward thrust of the rib cage, though the genital region could have been done better since at this point it looks like the belly is cutting into the genitals.

 

3)

One of our homeworks. We were tasked to observe fabric in real life, as well as in from tv shows/movies. I was re-watching John Mulaney’s stand-up special and realized how animated his movements were, creating interesting folds
in the suit he was wearing, so I did a couple of drawings focused on the fabric.

As discussed with Pro Jesse in the beginning of the semester, one my greater weakness is sketching quickly. So for each drawings since then, I time myself to make sure I didn’t take too long, hence I didn’t go to the hands, shoes and face. Though that was a little attention as I wanted to focus mainly on the fabric.
Some improvement would definitely be adding the rest of the body. Also to tone down some of the whites, especially the 3 image from the left, to make it look more cloth like and less aluminium foil.

 

4)

Context: Prof Jesse suggested that I should pay more attention to the subject’s environment as up till that point, I’ve only been drawing the subject by themselves. And since I’ve missed the lesson where the class got to improve their outdoor drawings, Prof suggested that I should find time to do more on location sketches as a form of make-up.

I’m quite please that I managed to capture this person since he’s quite fidgety when he was on the phone. If there’s one improvement I would like to make, it would be bending the rib cage and pelvic block in a little since it’s looking a little stiff.

Overall, while I personally feel that this sketch is the weakest out of the 5, it is still an important sketch as the fidgety man really forced me to sketch even faster.

 

5)

Another challenging sketch for me. As this person was stretching, he was constantly moving and I was afraid I couldn’t memorize his position in time.
It may still be a little off but I think it looks pretty natural overall. I also like how I managed to capture his back. An area of improvement would be to stretch his left leg a little more cause currently he just looks like his holding his leg.

Drawing on Location

These are the drawings I did during our on location session.

Full res photos here

1)

During consultation with Prof Jesse, we discussed on areas I could improve on, particularity the wrist, elbows and neck. Up till that point, I’ve never actually thought of the wrist as a separate block in between of the forearm and hand, where I usually draw them with a line separating it. That really opened my eyes cause I knew there was something wrong with them but could never see the actual problem. Hence I went back and redrew some of the poses (below) with them in mind.

2) Redraws

Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend the session where the class improved on their location sketches and Prof Jesse suggested I find the time to do more location sketches but this time to be more conscious of the space surrounding the subject. I still redrew some of the location sketches for practice.

I couldn’t find photo reference online so I took a photo of my hand instead.

Made her a lot less stiff. I used photo reference for her folds.

I used photo references for her legs and hands.

3)

These are some sketches I drew during work study. I tried to pay attention to the surroundings this time, how they sat, lay and eat, to make it look like they belong to the environment rather that two separate drawings laid on top of each other.

Overall if there’s one improvement I would make is to really work on my line work and explore the width of the strokes to get specific shading/effects.

 

Interactive Story update

The flowchart below indicates my progress with the narrative. Only 2 parts to go.

I’ve indicated ‘1’ and ‘2’ as there’s a slight change during that options.

  1. A suggestion provided with prof Don is to have a character yank the cables out as it allows the character to show more emotions.
  2. Character throws a rock as a form of distraction but due to his low accuracy, it hits the golem. Originally, the character sneaks around the golem, but felt it wasn’t as funny or interesting.

Storyboards and research are in my previous post. Other than the 2 changes, they’re pretty much still the same.

These are the updated boards for Act 1: