Wow

Okay, I just this made me smile with designer joy.

Look carefully.... You see it?

No? Look again...















Isn't that brilliant :)

Fan Picnic

I really need to keep track of where I find these things. If someone wants recognisition for any of these let me know and I'll stick your name on it.

The fact that 3/4 of are fanart for some thing or another is totally coincidental. I just happened to like them for various reasons

First, some Hellboy fanart by Patricio Betteo (see last post but one for my thoughts on him) I love the use of colour on this, and the silhouette. Just check out the bulk of his body and stone hand against his tiiiiny little legs, and tell me that's not brilliant.
















A Harry Potter illustration by this anonymous person
I'm assuming it's the scene from book 3 where Harry summons the Patronus. It's a very simple drawing, limited colour, and I like how it's not actually showing the action scene, but the quiet moment of builup immediately before it, leaving the actual drama to follow to the viewer's imagination.

















As for this... I have no excuse, I just like how retro it is. I would never draw this way but it's interesting to see nevertheless.

















And finally, something not fanart! I don't know who did this, but the 360-degree idea of it is very clever, and makes perfect sense. I printed it out to stick on my wall and spent a some minutes just turning it round and round a few times to make sure I took it all in.

Smiling...

...at the work of Patricio Betteo. Question: Can he do no wrong? Answer: No, he cannot... or, wait I think that's a double negative, so... yes he can!

Anyway...


I bought his artbook 'Mirador' and it encapsulates one of the things I really enjoy about his work, his crazy lines. The book is purely black and white (and in my case came with a free lollypop!) but he's great at thinking in terms of shapes and not being afraid to stretch and bend things. Girls have huge semicircular legs and everything is built on some occasionally seriously odd shapes and proportions but it all holds together. Really interesting to look at.

The other thing is his use of colour, which is probably easier to show you than to tell you about.





He has a blog and some stuff scattered over the internet, but probably the best place to go is Patricio's deviantArt account

Handy genius

Been over at this site lately Art and Story They host podcasts, videos and article relating to techniques, tools and and bits and bobs. A lot of it is focussed around comics but knowledge is universal and there's some useful stuff in there.

This weeks 'Oh how I wish I could draw like that award' goes to Drew Struzan. I saw a review/tribute to his movie posters over on ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com and he's done some pretty epic stuff. Not just in terms of the movies he's been hired to produce posters for (Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Back to the Future, Harry Potter, Hellboy, Blade Runner etc etc), but just the quality of it all.















He's got a great sense of cinematic layout and drama, and everytime he paints a key character not only does it physically look like them, it stands like them and conveys something of their personality, which is really what every good character drawing should do (says I, who am nowhere near understanding half of it!)
His painted posters are often far more interesting than many current posters made using photographs and computer manipulation, because he knows how to put them together.
Go oggle at him
here

Magic Stick!

Did these for a friends handout. They are for Levistick, a piece of juggling paraphenalia, which he is selling and wanted to give out some information with to help get people started. It's basically a stick that hangs vertically, and if you do it right it looks as if it's magically floating in midair and you can do spins and kind of dance with it.

Ok so you're unconvinced, I can see that, but it looks better than it sounds.
His specifications were 'bright and colourful', and I had about a day to knock something out, so I did these.



I can't help but feel the backgrounds are a bit of a cop-out but I was in a hurry and it's better than nothing. The guy on the right looks a bit of a ponce too; there was a more masculine looking boy as well but it didn't come out quite right so I won't post it. He just looks.... odd :)

Dragons Google Holiday

First, a little review... or more of a gush if I'm honest. I really loved this film. REALLY.

How to Train your Dragon

I went along to watch this one with 2 younger siblings, really hoping for something good -oh please let it be something good. The title was a bit childish and ..hokey is the word I think, but nevertheless I wanted to see it (Chris Sanders of Lilo & Stitch co-directing was encouraging) and it blew me out of the water, it really did. When the credits rolled I and had a huge grin plastered all over my face that stayed there for a good ten minutes after. Maybe I'm just easy to please, but then again maybe not.

For those who don't know (shame on you), the film centres around young Viking-in-training, Hiccup. He's not particularly strong, brave or beefy, all the things that his village values most and all the things that would help him make his mark in the long feud his village has with the dragons that routinely plague it. Inventive rather than violent, Hiccup manages to snag a dragon with a rope-loaded catapult of his own design but when it comes to killing the injured beast he just can't bring himself to do it. The more he observes 'Toothless', the more he realises that his new pet is more than just a vicious creature, but his friendship with the dragon clashes with his attempts to fit in with the rest of his village. Eventually of course, bigger events overtake them all and Hiccup and Toothless both have to battle in order to secure the future of both the village and the dragons.

Long story short, I was impressed. There were so many ways this story could have gone cliché but somehow it managed to shuffle round all of them and produce a film that was pretty epic for it's small scale setting, funny, sweet, dramatic and also genuinely moving. Also the soundtrack is a bit fantastic.
Story clichés were mostly avoided. Of course all the conventions were there; the misfit, the overbearing father, the comedic peer group, the feisty love interest, but none of them are overdone to the point where they become cheesy. A few celebrity voices do appear but that's not the point, which is a great note for Dreamworks and something they've struggled with in the past, where famous voice actors have been the pull rather than a strong story. Characters have dark sides, Toothless in particular is prone to being a brooding sulking beast, and I liked the fact that this film was happy to be ugly. The dragons, while being unique and brilliantly rendered, are by no means pretty. Even Toothless (whose resemblance to Sanders' previous creation, Stitch, has not gone unnoticed) is not the most graceful of animals. He's somewhere between a cat, a dog and an axolotl (google it) and his idea of cute is to sick up a fish. There's also a little twist on the ending that most other “kids films” would not have the guts to even try (Praise be to Sanders, I'm pretty sure that was his doing) that I genuinely did not see coming, but it not only saves HTTYD from a sickly-sweet ending, it also cements the friendship between the boy and the dragon in the last few moments of the film. And it's good like that. It's a strong ending, a better one for it's imprefection.
Although there are a lot of comic elements, this is not primarily a comedy film, which again makes a nice change from Dreamworks' previous offerings of Shrek et al. and Kung Fu Panda. While both a lot of fun, comedy did seem to be forming the staple of Dreamworks' animated films of late. This film is based on a relationship, and a very believable one at that. So it's a familiar pattern, but there's also a quirky edge to it which is really refreshing.

But the thing that really sold it to me was the character animation, or acting, or whatever you want to call it. It was really ...real. The characterisation of each of them was really “well seen”, as my tutors would say. Hiccup in particular is very noticeable for this; he doesn't do anything generic in terms of movement. The scene where he has to eat Toothless's fish is wonderful, just for the little gagging motion he makes after he swallows. I remember looking at it and thinking 'I do that! I make that face!' but it's not the caricatured expression you might expect from something more cartoonish, it's a real face, a real expression, and somehow it's funnier that way. Since Toothless is most definitely a wild animal and doesn't speak once (thank goodness) a lot of the dialogue in the film is done via gestures and body language, and they've really done a good job. Near the end of the film Hiccup discovers something very sad and although nobody speaks, his emotions are completely clear. Of course there are a few gags, but in the more emotionally touching moments of the film this observation and realism carries them through very well.

A note on the 3D-ness: I watched it in 3D, but within five minutes I had totally forgotten that this was the case. It's used subtley and well, there weren't any gimmicks or annoying shots where they try to poke you in the face with something. I've seen a couple of films in 3D now and I think the clincher for them all is going to be whether or not you care. I don't care that it was in 3D, and I wouldn't have cared if it was 2D either, I was too tied up in the story to notice. That said they do use it to their advantage. The flight scenes in particular were excellent -better than Avatar's in my opinion- there was a great sense of movement , speed and depth and some of the shots were wonderful, I really felt part of the ride rather than just observing, and with the first person camera mainly on the extremely dexterous Toothless, there are some pretty awesome feats to look at. He seems to be the dragon equivalent of a peregrine falcon, one of the worlds fastest and most acrobatic birds, so following him around is a lot of fun.

Think... Think of Up. It was a good, honest film that was genuine with it's emotions and just a little bit on the fantastic side. Slightly sad in parts, but all the more joyous for that. But now, rather than some light-spirited geriatric hi-jinks and talking dogs, throw in a few fire breathing lizards, some really big swords, and Actual Mortal Peril. Yeah it's your classic unlikely-friendship/coming-of-age story, but there's something just a little bit special about this one. A little bit of originality, and a thoroughly satisfying story.

I'm going to watch it again this weekend. :D


Now a change of pace. Here's some pictures by C. Billedeux, who I've been watching lately.










































I have a week left of my holiday, and have I done much work? Not really no, but I think I needed the space to settle my head. I refuse to have a repeat of Semester 1 at this point in the game, so to not think about work for a week or two was a good way to recover. But I have my plan, and I have... about 5 weeks.
5 weeks.
When I realised that I nearly had a bit of a meltdown, it seems such a short amount of time, but I have to believe I can produce some good work in that time. No more small projects, but big, extensive, imaginative final pieces. That is the goal.

Good Advice Juggling Camera

Lovecraft is Missing by Larry Latham. A very well put together webcomic (still in progress but a good number of pages). Loads of suspense and some great character development. But if you go to the blog section there is also some very helpful advice on things that ought to be common sense, but always seem to get forgotten -storytelling, colour theory, useful things like that.
Turns out HE cant draw straight lines EITHER! And he really cant, he has a shaky hand. I checked through the whole thing and, unlike Thompson who does them anyway despite hating them, not a building in there is entirely straight! It's just using your quirks as part of your style.

I'm feeling a bit uninspired. We've just finished for Easter, and the week before a holiday is always mental. There are a hundred things you need to do and it seems like none of them are work related. Plus I managed to get my days muddled and miss my tutorial. Well done Michelle. So now I'm just pooped, and would like to a) have a break whilst b) still get lots of work done. Hmmmm...
Been sitting up late doing some little character drawings based around Chocfest which was a week or two ago, and is a kind of amalgamation of two of my favourite things, chocolate and juggling. It was a good day, although I spent most of it bemoaning my lack of a decent camera. Still I managed these, which aren't tooooo awful.











It's a beautiful place, the sun was out and the atmosphere amongst a group of common-minded people all enjoying the same weird hobby is always lovely. I just wish my camera wasn't so prone to blur, even simple shots seem to much for it, it has no focus at all, and it either makes everything very grey or very very yellow-like in those three above. None of the people shots I took on it were really worthy, these two shots of Selby Abbey were the only ones without any significant blur, but that's only because nothing is moving!... but then I nicked my friends super-awesome Nikon camera with the telespcoping focus and fared rather better, although he's not put half the pictures I took up on Facebook so I cant post them here.



I know they say a bad workman blames his toold but not in this case. It was an awesome camera and I got some great shots, mostly of people I know who might object to me showing them here. But yeah, I meet a lot of interesting looking people, so I figured I should draw some of them. If they come out ok I'll put them up.

Anonymously footwear

I seriously need to start writing people's names down when I find images I like. Normally I just save them on the fly and sort them out later, but then I never know who to credit.

Also, some BEAUTIFUL sneakers:
Princess Leia Sneakers

These are the Princess Leia Sneakers, apparently designed around that slave costume she wears, you know when she's in Jabba's Palac in RotJ. The rest of the outfit is more or less a bronze bikini, but are these shoes not GORGEOUS.

Welcome to the Jungle

...and now I have that song in my head.



















From 'Gungle', by someone who only gives his(/her) initials, which are W.J.C.
Simple, angular, scribbly drawings, cel-coloured by computer with textures... so more or less how I am trying to let myself draw. There's a Flickr page full of these called 100 days in the Gungle and I daresay there's a book about too.

Other random finds include:

Dr Who Comic cover art


More Scuba Diving (I had a phase on my Tumblr with scuba diving. I don't know why, there was just loads of great scuba-themed art at once) I like all the layers to it, the depth it has.



and something from A Softer World which I like a lot, in that quietly but contentedly aware/sardonic and bitterly funny kind of way.

A fellow straight-line hater

Turns out even Craig Thompson hates drawing buildings.

Doot Doot Garden Blog

Although he still does them, perspective and everything. I guess this means I have no excuse.

I have never been taught how to do decent perspective in my whole educational life. I guess this is one more thing I need to go find out how to do. Research!