Tanks & Plane Sketches

Character Crit by David Coleman

Thought i'd share a critique i received yesterday from David Coleman.  For those of you who dont know him, do a google search and check out his sites:

www.davidsdoodles.com

www.davidcolman.blogspot.com

He's a great artist and exceptional character designer working in the animation industry for dreamworks, disney, etc.  

The main points of the critique focused on the characters readability and silhouette.  As you can see with the blacked out silhouette on the top right, it's hard to discern the characters arms and legs.  This is something the untrained (me) didn't quite see when designing out the shapes.  His quick gesture lay-in with the red in center will better help pop the individual things going on.  

Secondly, the structure is another aspect to focus on.  Even though I felt like I was focusing on that in this assignment, I need to really understand the form.  The character's face flattens out in areas where I dont spend the time to really delve into that side of things.  However, with that being said, there are some kudos I got for other areas.  I suppose what i learned here is that I need to analyze each part and fix what's not working.

Designing the hair was another aspect to him that was important.  Soft, rough, etc.  and using the appropriate shapes to show this.  I think I could practice that a little more.

Lastly the design of the whiskers and the smoke could have used even as much as 15 minutes to think through the nature of them.  They seem a bit last minute, which in all honesty they were.  I was trying to get a little spontaneity that I saw in Steadmans ink work, but even his seemingly chaotic nature is still thought through.  Crazy how that works right?  

Thanks David!  This will go into my memory vault for quite sometime.  Look forward to showing you the next set of things i come up with

Steadman & Seuss inspired Disney's Thumper

So I was having trouble coming up with something original on a thumper redesign.  What I did instead while surfing the web for great art, I decided to say "How would Dr. Seuss and/or Ralph Steadman" design thumper?  Here's the process and resulting image.  I spent about 3-5 hours on this because I really wasn't sure about the style's of each respective artist.  The resulting image in my opinion lacks the spontaneity I see in Steadmans work and I would like to have designed the whiskers a bit better.

Hand & Feet Sketching

Animal Redesign

This was a fun little exercise.  All together I spent about 5 hours on this project.  I noticed various animal features that I wanted to incorporate into my creature design.  Although the final piece is not as good as I think I can do, the process to figure out what I wanted helped.  I created a list of animal features first.  Then a little background on the climate.  And lastly I figured out why this animal/creature exists.  There could've been a lot more depth in all of that, but I didn't want to split hairs.  With a basic back story I was able to be satisfied with the final design.  The pose i feel could've been pushed more like I was able to do in my initial ballpoint sketches.  Enjoy!

Animal Drawing

Took a trip to the zoo and learned quite a lot about how to break down complex beasts into more simple to draw shapes and forms.  Hopefully these read well, but I know that I need more practice at it.