Don't Drop the Doughnut

So reading through Andrew Loomis’ book “Drawing the Head and Hands”, my initial feeling is already the book feels dense and my concentration is starting to slip after 5 or 6 pages but at the same time I have already gleaned a few valuable golden nuggets of advice from here and there.

Below are is an extracts that I want to draw attention to:

“In general, textbooks seem to confine the material solely to problem and solution, or to technical analysis. That, in my own belief, is one of the reasons why textbooks are so difficult to read and digest. Every concentrated creative effort involves a personality, since skill is a personal matter.” (Loomis, p.19)

So the reason I highlighted this extract in particular is that I see it as Loomis saying to not make this too rigid and not focus on creating exact replicas (which is especially important for me since in my last post I say that I am a very systematic person who likes to work with formulas and specific guidelines). Hopefully throughout the learning process if I find myself feeling like I am falling into a rut over a specific exercise and frustrated because I can’t get the drawing exactly right, I’ll remember to remind myself of this quote.

15 June 2020 - So I might be wrong but then I thought I might be right but then I checked again it seems like I’m wrong?...

So I have the weakness of being very systematic; if there’s a rule for something, I want to follow it 100% to every letter. But For the process of trying to build up my skills in drawing faces, this is definitely something that would slow me down since each face is different (and art in general is meant to be expressive and unique rather than a factory copy). 

That’s why when I was so happy when I thought I’d made a personal breakthrough and figured out a rule I could apply to every face I drew. I always talk about the 1% increases in skill if you keep working consistently (even if you don’t feel like there is change), but here it felt like I’d made a tangible step forward with the rule: “The bottom of the base circle you draw rests on the cheekbones of the face”. And even better was that I thought I had a legitimate explanation for it in that when you look at a skull, the bottom of the generally spherical part is the cheekbones!

But sadly when I went back to look at the sketches I did in my first lesson on facial structure from Ethan Nguyen’s class, it’s completely different from what I was claiming. The cheekbones and the bottom of the nose does not rest on the circle line. Instead the line lies where the mouth is and the bottom of the nose is within the circle.

It’s so frustrating to think that I’ve made some progress and then see that it was just a wild leap that didn’t land. What I really want to have is a set guideline for drawing a generic face that when I’m practised enough at drawing it, I can then play with the rules to create more interesting face designs (like how Blad Moran does it on an awesome level!). I know that Ethan Nguyen does tell you the guideline in his lessons but that’s in a more superficial sense leading to I know the rules but don’t understand them and I feel that if I don’t understand then I can’t break them.

12 June 2020 - My big realisation on the structure of the face

So in my last post I mentioned that whilst doing drawing exercises of faces at different angles, I had a sudden realisation on a rule that I could apply on how the face is structured. Realising this makes me so happy because for me I think it’s now so much easier to draw out the guide for all future heads.

And this is the rule: The bottom of the circle rests on the cheekbones.

It’s literally just this simple. I know this is probably something that is so obvious to other artists but as a beginner in drawing faces, I was really confused about the positioning of the circle for the longest time. Even at the beginning of Ethan Nguyen’s class, I was still unaware exactly where the circle fits in relation to everything else (I had a bad habit of the circle being too high and the bottom resting on the eye line).

To test out this idea, I did a couple of reference studies focused on the rule to see if it works on different faces and I saw something else extra that just triple confirms the rule but at the same time, bonus rule! So pretty much for every face the bottom of the nose rests on the bottom of the circle. There are a few cases where the nose might be quite a bit above or below the circle (as seen in the old man face) but otherwise this is another rule to follow when drawing faces.

Doing the study on the skull was the important because it let me see properly what I was visualising in my mind; the explanation of why the circle rests on the cheekbones. So the skull is made up of two parts and the top part is loosely a sphere with a little bit sticking out at the bottom (where the upper row of teeth goes). You can see the bottom of the sphere aligns with the cheekbones and the bottom of the hole for the nose rest on this line as well, confirming the two rules.

Just taking a brief look at the structure of the skull has been so useful, I should have done this sooner! I’m gonna do more studies and I’ll post all findings and new knowledge in future posts (getting back to this blog being focused on a guide for people who want to get into a visual development career).  In terms of goals for visual development levelling up, I want to have a solid understanding by the end of the year on the structure of how the head is built up; to have extensive knowledge on the fundamentals of drawing faces.

These are the goals I want to hit (or at least be working on) by the end of 2020 which is 6 months away:

Study the structure of the skull and know the generic rules for where the eyes, nose, mouth and ears should lie in proportion to each other

Study and understand the breakdown on the planes of face so that I can apply it to every face (like Angel Ganev does in his art reviews)

08 June 2020 - Class #1: Lesson #5 (Part 2)

So I did a few more the face mapping exercises as planned. 

Originally I thought I could learn quite a bit if I used photos of different people; different genders, ethnicities, ages, etc... But looking at these three side by side, I don’t really see much difference. Sure, you can see that the proportion between lines such as the bottom of the nose to the chin is varied but overall it looks pretty much the same, especially between the first and second.

One factor that I didn’t take into account is the degree of the head tilt downwards and it’s affect on the proportions between lines. In the lesson, Ethan Nguyen explains the impacts of the degree. Looking back, the reference photos I used in my studies don’t have the same the level of tilt so I can’t really do an accurate comparison here.

Overall I don’t think I’m gonna learn much more doing these mappings. But I will do some super quick and loose sketches on faces titled downwards, just because it is important to train the hand and muscles in drawing. 

08 June 2020 - Class #1: Lesson #5

So here are my drawings from the class on drawing a face that is tilted downwards. This lesson was actually pretty informative since Ethan Nguyen explains briefly on how specific anchor lines (the hairline, the brow line, the bottom of the nose and the chin) change positions on the circle depending on the angle. He also explains why these lines are shifted which is then useful because once you understand how it works, it’s easier to recall and apply to other faces.

The smaller sketch is the one I did whilst following his class. During the class he mentioned using references so I decided to use a photo found online and map out the lines specific to the image since the ratios between features differs from person to person. The larger sketch is also my drawing which I did alongside mapping out the structure on digitally.

I really like the idea of finding photos of different people and mapping out the structure. It’s a much better way of seeing different structures without just trying to make it up in my mind. Also I imagine I can learn more this way since I’d be observing from real sources. I’ll find more reference images, do some more mapping and then post up the results together so you can have a look at the differences.

Also I think I might go forward doing more studies digitally like this rather than drawing by hand because it’s quicker but also at the moment, my main goal is to learn how the head and face structure works so I can apply these to more stylised drawings rather than trying to draw a realistic portrait from a reference (even though the name and aim of the class is to literally draw heads and faces realistically).

06 June 2020 - Class #1: Lesson #3

So here is my drawing from the third lesson. More practise on the planes of the head and the structure from a different angle.

04 June 2020 - Class #1: Lesson #2

So here is my drawings from the second lesson. It was pretty  fun practising this method and I can see that mastering this fundamental will be extremely useful in character design.

At first it felt pretty janky drawing these since I’m not used to drawing circles as evenly as possible and then plotting the lines at equal halves or thirds.

As recommended I tried to mess around with proportions and create different outcomes instead of just drawing the same ratios multiple times. Variations I tried out were:

Lowering / raising the hairline

Moving the eye line, bottom of the nose and mouth line closer and further apart

Making the chin shorter and longer

Just by playing around with these ratios, I can see how it affects the overall structure of the head but without drawing in the features, it’s not as impactful.

03 June 2020 - Class #1: Lesson #1

So here is my drawing from the first lesson. Looking at both images side by side, I can see a few small inconsistencies in my drawing;

lock of hair in the middle should be closer to the eyebrows

bottom right part of the lip is too big

bottom of ear too big

left eyebrow too prominent

gap between bottom of nose and top of lip too big

As a whole I think I managed to capture the likeness of Benedict Cumberbatch pretty accurately but I don’t think I’ll pursue more of this method of drawing. Whilst it can help develop observational skills as you plot points of intersection between the grid and reference image to draw the lines, it’s too much “three blind men and an elephant” for me. You get too focused on the small and lose sight of the overall image. This can definitely become a problem if you plot one of the points incorrectly without realising because it then throws off the ratio of the surrounding features.

01 June 2020 - New month and onto the second half of this year!

So again these thoughts of “Oh no! I haven’t been posting to the blog with useful information” are popping into my mind. Same old same old babble that I’ve said before on haven’t got much art to show, doing personal projects instead of visual development skill practise, etc...

Time for some action and not just words then!

For me, Skillshare is a bit hit and miss. Although I also have to say that I do very heavily judge a book by it’s cover in this case and at first glance, many of the classes didn’t appear interesting to me so I dismissed them. Also my opinion is very unfounded (is that the right word to describe the situation?) since I haven’t actually watched many of the classes...in fact I’ve only ever tried out one class completely, the one ran by one of my favourite artists. But still, Skillshare seems like the place to go to find a solid collection of classes on learning to draw the face the good old fashioned way with the basics and building solid fundamentals.

The plan now is to spend the next two weeks (since that is the remainder of the free time I have left until I go back to work) practising drawing faces for an hour a day. Then the rest of the time can be spent on personal projects so that I can achieve both and maximise progress.

19 May 2020 - The Sugar Bowl! (Forcing myself to get comfortable with using colour, even if this illustration is 99% greys)

So recently I watched Netflix’s adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events. I remember reading the books back in Primary school (so weird to think that that’s how long the books have been out for). Back then I loved Bret Helquist’s illustrations. As I read along, the most fun part (and also the bit I looked forward to the most) was his full page drawings depicting scenes of the story. I would just stare at each small detail hoping to catch a glimpse of some small clue to the mystery in the books.

Watching the TV series has just made me appreciate even more the creativity in the books and especially how even without Brett Helquist’s illustrations, the words conjured imagery so strongly. Lemony Snicket does well in fun descriptions.

Above is a work in progress on my interpretation on the sugar bowl. I know in the TV series it’s a ceramic bowl, but I wanted to go for a classic silver vintage style. I feel it would match better to the sophisticated style of Esme Gigi Genevieve Squalor for who appearance is everything; very hoity toity to match her personality. 

10 May 2020 - After so long...an update! The furthest I’ve ever gotten with an illustration (very sad but true...)

So it’s been more than two weeks since the last post on this blog...lots of slacking done, very sad times. To be honest for the month of March, April and beginning of May there has been very little skill development for the visual developer career. 

But looking to the small wins, I am well on the way to completing one fifth of my only art goal for 2020 (which I decided on in the middle of April); finishing 5 pieces of artwork and too 100% standards. The current project I’m working on is a pet portrait I started in the beginning of April with the deadline set for 26th April (missed it but even if the painting had been completed, the whole present is still missing a piece I can’t buy yet with lockdown happening so not completely on me).

My biggest weakness with creating art is I never finish pieces..ever...I have the mental block of “it doesn’t look good” which turns into “it’s hard to do” which becomes “it’s a chore” and finally “there’s a new exciting project I’d rather do”. But to really give this goal a go because I’m sick of having no artwork to ever show for all my efforts and time spent on drawing (and I do spend a lot of time on it) and to be able to present this portrait and see how happy the friend would be, I pushed through even when all these familiar thoughts crept into my mind, especially “this is a chore”.

I’m really happy with the progress, in literal terms the line art and colouring might not have the wow factor and finely rendered quality that I was looking for from Beka Duke’s (thedrawingduke) Cats inspired cat illustrations, but it’s a big step forward for me! In my mind, my illustrations have gone through the dip into the “ugly stage” and come out on the other side where it looks good to me. Also like they say in sales, if you can make one sale you can sell! If I can finish one piece of artwork fully, I create more finished illustrations.

25 April 2020 - I made my first animation! Well...sort of (Also a short review of the iMovie application I used to make my animation)

So as the title says I made my first animation! It’s very very amateur but surprisingly it was quite quick and easy to do. The theme is a birthday message based on a quirk about the recipient’s pet cats; they have a fondness for pulling down towels from radiators and then lying down on them. He also tried the square / towel trick where if the towel / square fits, a cat will sit. 

The creating process was quite simple; I started off with drawing the frames in Photoshop (in total there are 14 separate frames I’ve used) and then I used the iMovie program which comes free with all MacBooks to combine the frames and add some background music.

It was my first time using iMovie so here’s a short review of my first impressions. When you open up the application the first steps are pretty self explanatory, you click on “Create New” which then loads up two options; “Movie and “Trailer”. I watched a YouTube video for the beginners to using iMovie which explains that generally you want to go for the “Movie” option since the “Trailer” option follows the set structure for well...trailers.

Once the blank project opens up, it is a little confusing though. What would have been really good is if Apple added a quick tutorial feature (maybe there is one but it wasn’t enabled so it would be better to have that enabled for first time opening the application). It would be good for the tutorial going over the main important basics such as a short video demo on the components to go to putting together a video, important buttons and their functions such as “import”. Still once I learnt these basic functions from testing, it was quick and easy to get the hang of compiling and editing - it’s all about adjusting the duration of even frame.

The animation itself is simple where each frame has a new item pop up or change. I decided with the simplicity of the animation to go for a very minimal art style; Cream background, black and white foreground with clean and bold lines. I can’t quite describe it but this style has a posh and upper society vibe to it for me (and with the jazzy lounge music I chose to go with the animation it definitely conjures up the feeling of fanciness). It’s hard to put into words but this style along with a few other styles always makes me think of fancy living with shopping at places like Harrods or Fortnum & Mason followed with afternoon tea at the Ritz.

18 April 2020 - Progress is slow but it’s going (Mindset Talk)

So I was speaking to my friend from university yesterday (we both studied the same illustration course and after uni, have both kept art as a hobby but with hopes to make it into an income source) and from the conversation I’ve come to the decision to mentally discard all these goals and expectations and self-disciplines of needing to create certain types of art or do specific art practises improve my skills. Since my high school days, I’ve always had a mental block and struggle with colour. Just something in my mind sees the use of colour in my artwork as difficult...too difficult for me to attempt, so I often avoid it and 99% of the art I make goes unfinished. The accumulation of vast amounts of unfinished artwork over the years has chipped and knocked down my confidence in my art skills and my frustrations over my lack of artwork to display proudly grows and grows. 

So going ahead, I’m going to have just one goal; to have 5 finished pieces of artwork by the end of the year. It doesn’t matter that it might take me the whole 8 months to make just 5 pieces. If I can have these 5 pieces (which I fully complete with 100% effort not half-heartedly), then I will celebrate this as a big win.

I think to have the personal knowledge that I can make completed artwork will be a huge confidence boost and help me a lot with the mental block of abandoning artwork projects because suddenly I don’t find the process as fun anymore and the excitement of starting a new project has worn off. Above is a small screenshot of the current illustration I’m working on as a birthday present. In the last two days I went through the frustration phase where the initial colours I laid down looked flat and it all looked wrong. Lots of doubts crept in as I tested out different colours on the jacket; I went from dark navy blue to warm orange to grape to finally settling on this salmon / coral pink. Even after settling on the pink, it stilled looked boring, flat, dull to me which just reinforced the thought of this isn’t working and the temptation to move onto something else. 

What did change is after lots of mental sulking, I tried to work more analytically rather than emotionally. Before I start every project (this one included), I envision the vibe and style I want the final piece to have and I look at various examples of illustrations I want to emulate. For this project there’s a series of anthropomorphic animal illustrations I’ve been using as a guide. I’m completely in awesome of this set of illustrations for a few reasons; the character designs are fun and lively as they give off the posh British upper society vibes I like so much and more importantly the use of colour in each illustration makes the overall image vibrant and almost buzzing with life. It’s this energy I want to capture in my pet portrait. 

So first I was going through my usual habit of looking at artwork and despairing that mine doesn’t look the same and that why couldn’t I achieve the same?! But then I took a moment to take a closer look and analyse why did the colours look more vibrant? To figure out how the artist’s method and how they worked with colour in the illustration. I managed to figure a few aspects and applied them to my own illustration. The result wasn’t some instant transformation but I did see small degrees of improvement which was enough to motivate me to continue working on this illustration rather than abandon it; to be able to see small signs of progress is enough I reckon.

16 April 2020 - Just gone off the rails at the moment really in terms of skill level up

So I know that I put a lot of things on hold in terms of skill level up and hitting targets that I set for myself each quarter to do Ten Hundred’s 30 day online class. But even that has been procrastinated away now as I have started a new project; I am now currently working on a painted illustration of a friend’s cat as their birthday present (which is coming up in the end of April).

My attention span is so so limited which is worrying since working as a visual developer (or for any art career) requires the completion of projects and the meeting of deadlines. I think it’s less that I can focus but more that I have now come to the stage in Ten Hundred’s class where colour is being used and with my weakness in colour...I have put it off and off and off as it’s suddenly hard and no longer fun to do. Of course this is a mindset I will need to work on...instead of putting off something that is difficult to accomplish, I need to train my thoughts to dive in to try and master it...

For now I will try to at least finish this illustrated pet illustration (currently working on a colour mock up using Photoshop to make sure I get the colours and tones right) before going back to my sadly abandoned painting for Ten Hundred’s class. I do really want to complete it so that I can send  photo of the finished piece in a message to Ten Hundred if nothing else. 

09 April 2020 - CalArt’s BFA Program in Character Animation

So doing a quick search I found the course catalogue for CalArt’s BFA Program in Character Animation where the modules are listed. Each module is accompanied by a very short summary of main points that will be studied.

It’s not an in-depth guide with detailed lessons plans but just having this list of main points gives me some direction to take my learning so that I can follow the same skill development that an animation student has.

Below I’ve listed the major aspects listed in hopes that it can help someone who is also struggling with focus and direction.

Character design; shape, composition, gesture and construction

Life drawing; form and anatomy

Design & application; shape, proportion, line and movement

Perspective

Story development

Digital methods; painting, composing and editing

CG foundation; Software and tools

CG Character Animation

I feel a little more focused having this list of pointers...now I have some sort of structure and guidance for the direction to follow for which skills to develop. From this list character design and life drawing are the two which I’m going to work on first, without strong skills in these two aspects, the rest are pointless when it comes to being a character visual developer.

So doing a quick look around, these are the big animation institutes if you thinking pro level (listed in no particular order than the name that caught my eye first when doing research). These are pretty much all US schools since it seems like if you want in with the big players of the animation industry, the US is where you want to be. I did look into some UK universities as well just because I live in the UK currently so the idea of attending one the courses seems more accessible.

(California Institutes of the Arts) CalArts; California

Ringling College of Art and Design; Florida 

Rhode Island School of Design (RISD); Rhode Island

Savannah College of Art; Georgia

University of California; California (LA)

University of Southern California; California

School of Visual Arts; New York

Pratt Institute; New York

Tisch School of the Arts / New York University; New York

Texas A&M University; Texas

Bournemouth University; Poole

Royal College of Art, London

Falmouth University, Falmouth (Low key biased towards this as I complete my illustration degree at Falmouth)

University of Hertfordshire, Hertfordshire

Teesside University, Middlesbrough

I decided to cap the list at the first 15 that popped out to me from the multiple tabs I had open. Listing further would just be endless with the amount of great animation schools; just looking at the first website gave a list of 50 institutions.

So from these animation schools, I’m gonna see if I can find out some more specifics on the modules taught. I’ll post up findings in my next few posts. 

Just for anyone who is interested doing further research themselves, these are the websites I looked at when compiling this list.

Reference:

Animation Career Review; Top 50 Animation Schools and Colleges in the U.S. – 2020 College Rankings https://www.animationcareerreview.com/articles/top-50-animation-schools-and-colleges-us-2020-college-rankings

Animation Career Review; Top 5 Animation Schools and Colleges in the UK - 2019 College Rankings https://www.animationcareerreview.com/articles/top-5-animation-schools-and-colleges-uk-2019-college-rankings

Ringling College of Art+Design; Grad Brittany Shively Takes Us Into the Spider-Verse (not related to research into art schools but the interview is an interesting read from the perspective of one of the visual developers working on Sony’s animated feature Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse.) https://www.ringling.edu/content/blog/grad-brittany-shively-takes-us-spider-verse

College Magazine; The 10 Best Colleges for Animation https://www.collegemagazine.com/the-10-best-colleges-for-animation/