Sketch, Draw, Paint.: 2011

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Nathan Fowkes

Hey guys!

So I just came back to the apartment from Nathan Fowkes' workshop, and I've learnt quite a few things over the 5-hour talk about colour and lighting, which I thought I'd share with you guys. Nathan Fowkes has been working at Dreamworks for over 17 years (if I'm not wrong), and he's worked on Prince of Egpyt, Sinbad, Spirit, Puss in Boots, Shrek: Forever After, How to Train Your Dragon and etc. He does mostly colour keys as well as production paintings.

I am sorry to say that there isn't a lot of visuals to work with, and these are the most I could churn out during the talk because it was going so fast, and all I could do is write down notes on Pages. I've attached a link to download the PDF file to my notes, if you want it. They're all written in mel-language (not Maya) so if there's anything you're not sure, I can try to explain it.

[Download the PDF here]

Here's also a tidbit on a couple of Scott Willis' (Samurai Jack) stuff: http://pumml.blogspot.com/2008/08/message-from-scott.html

Monday, October 31, 2011

FACE STUDY

emma frost redesign

elf girl

Books or authors that is good for me

Force by Michael Matessi
Bridgman
imaginee
Dreamworlds by Hans Bacher

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Sculptris!

http://www.pixologic.com/sculptris/

It's still free and they have versions for both Mac & Windows.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

First exercise of the week: Fundamentals of Painting

So last week was my first week at Laguna College of Art and Design, and I did an exercise for Fundamentals of Painting. It's in oil paint, and it's a grayscale chart and a sphere (no reference).

It's pretty good practice. Oh btw, I recommend James Gurney's Color and Light: A guide for the Realist Painter. It's quite informative.

Main points I learnt from this exercise:

- Make sure the darkest light isn't darker than the lightest dark
- Value is relative, so compare values next to each other
- Start from big shapes, and then add detail with smaller shapes
- Try not to blend first, show exactly where the hard shadows are, then blend in the soft shadows after. It's easier to view where your light and shadows are.
- The most focused area is the point where light is shining on the object (largest contrast)
- Occlusions are areas that light does not reach at all

So yeah, this is first week at LCAD. I did other exercises, but I'll probably post them later instead. Good luck with painting and stuff. (:

P.S. : I'll just keep editing this post if I think of any other points I learnt from this exercise. They're probably all very basic stuff, but I hope they're useful. (: And a disclaimer, all these points don't exactly apply to all paintings, so yeah.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Mmm tasty Marios!

Paper Toy Design Competition with awesome prizes! (template given)

http://boogiechopper.deviantart.com/#/d48bddz

Check it out and see if you're interested.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

spiky rocks and towers

Everyone loves spiky rocks.

And towers

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Culturepush

A design website catered for local artists/designers. Makes you open your eyes on Singapore art community. Oh, they also have a jobs listing page. (:

http://culturepush.com

Sunday, June 19, 2011

EPIC PORRIDGE

My very first freelance lol.

This years' mother's day is long gone anyway so I'm just gonna put it up for fun.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Bobby Chiu's Re-imagining Contest

Re-imagine fairy tales contest

Deadline

3 months to see who will be the last artist standing.
May 4, 2011 - August 4, 2011 Final entries are due by August 4, 2011 12am pst.

Challenge Brief
Fairytales with a Twist – take your favorite classic fairy tale and re-imagine a scene or character from it. Cinderella in space? Sure! Sleeping handsome and Princess charming? Why not? Here's your chance to re-invent the classics! Art is self-referencing, which means we often have to re-imagine old stories in such a way that we make them new again. This is your challenge.

What's Bobby looking for? "The idea will always be the most important thing. I'm looking for visions that break clichés and make me think, "Hm, I've never considered this story in that way before...". In addition, I will obviously also look for technical skill (good structure, posing, textures, lighting, composition, etc.) to convey the proper mood and allow the image to stand up in its own right. The only rule is, the fairy tale you're re-making should be recognizable in your image. That's it. Other than that, the sky's the limit. Go nuts with this challenge and have fun!"

We would like to encourage artists to reference the original Grimm fairytales and also Aesop's Fables for inspiration. It's important to understand the origins of today's popular fairytales in order to evolve them into something new and interesting. Here is a list of popular fairy tales. Click here for a breakdown of popular fairytales.

Go wild and think about all the different possibilities, you could re-imagine the fairy tales occurring in different worlds and genres of steam punk, post apocalyptic, horror, cute, sci-fi, fantasy. Maybe your characters are ninjas, robots, aliens or something else altogether. Maybe you cross over characters into other worlds, historical periods or universes. Use your imagination!

All artists should maintain a WIP (work in progress) thread so we can see the work evolve. You should not post your final image at the very end without showing and WIP images, you may risk being disqualified. One of the main goals of this challenge is to share, collaborate and learn from the community.

Deliverables

-2D & 3D artists must submit their finished images to the finals thread which will be posted near the end of the challenge.
-2D artists may choose to do a full illustration with characters, or just focus on the character(s) design without environments.
-2D artists may use 3D software as a base to paint over, for example backgrounds, etc. To qualify as 2D the image must be fully painted over.
-3D artists may choose to do a fully rendered image with characters, environments, lighting textures and effects, or you may choose to just do a character sculpt by itself, which may be untextured if you'd like to just focus on sculpting. If you are doing a 3D character without environment, please include ortho views along with your final hero render. Not required but going above and beyond would be a 3D turntable or your character.
-2D & 3D artists may work in groups or teams (multiple 2D artists for an entry, multiple 3D artists per entry), there are no limitations or restrictions, however you must pick one person to receive your prizes and from there divide them up on your own.

Remember, whether you choose to do a full scene or just focus on a character(s) the work will be judged on the idea, originality, and quality.

Final images should be suitable for print. We will set up an FTP for hi-res entries nearer the deadline. WIP images should be posted in jpeg format while final images should be tiff or PSD, 300dpi landscape or portrait.

Get the rest of the info on the forum if you're interested. 8D

Monday, June 13, 2011

Art Contest yo

http://apps.facebook.com/mightandmagicart/contests/128313

Check it out, it's an art contest for Might & Magic. 12-13 days to do a painting ha if you wanna. Cheers

Friday, June 10, 2011

mech that wants to hug you

mech thats likes to flick off

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Theme: Mecha

15 mins sketch, Adobe Photoshop CS4. WIP, gonna update it.

MECHA.

Hello people,

I have decided to come up with a theme to kickstart the summer!

Theme shall be:

MECHA

Anyway this blog as been pretty inactive nowadays 'cause everyone else is busy with their lives, and I realise that I haven't been doing enough personal paintings or studies and stuff, though I don't know about you guys. And well, I thought it'd be good to continue this blog so we can keep in touch. (:

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Happy/Peaceful/Ambient/Relaxing/Inspirational/Restaurant music

Rage/Workout/Motivational Music

Sunday, February 20, 2011

hoity toity modern pirate wip

Saturday, February 19, 2011

steampunk engineer headgear

Friday, February 18, 2011

The Tower Keeper

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

some random updates

Monday, February 14, 2011

Happy St Valentine's Day (:

Just trying a new style today while I was supposedly suppose to work on portfolio

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

speediesketch

Speedie of a sketch I did in school

Monday, January 31, 2011

HouseHold Boy (HHB)

Not sure if you guys have heard of these applications before, but i'll post here in case you guys need it for avfx.

http://crazybump.com/
Software which generates normal map, bump map, AO, spec from an image.It's easy to use. Some games studios use it. It's only free for 30 days though. There's a beta version for Mac too.

http://shadermap.com/
An alternative to crazybump.

Some people prefer to use the nvidia plug in for photoshop though.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

mrt concept(WIP)

Tribesman

Tribesman

Sketched in PS : 'Bout 10 mins
Vectored : Approx. 5.5 hours (really slow, i need to speed up)

untitled

Friday, January 21, 2011

stuff ~~

some random portfolio work

factory terminal

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Futurecity V2

A quick sketchover of my previous futurecity.

Hopefully I managed to improve the composition and story a little bit.

Which is better, this or the previous one?