Martian Ships Concepts

I have a couple of preliminary tasks that I set for myself before I actually go ahead and start the final illustration for the Art Order "Princess of Mars" challenge.  The first task is to design a Martian ship.  I must admit I'm really awful at vehicle designs.  Prior to these sketches I did do a few sketches of sailing ships like galleons and even modern ships like destroyers just to get a better idea of the basic shapes and silhouettes of ships.  I even had a look at one of Feng Zhu's free tutorials on vehicle design to try to get my head in the right space, but I just ended up being depressed at how dull my designs are.  As with most things it'll just take me time and a LOT of vehicle concepts to really get better at this.

I think I'm going with ship number 3 just because it looks the least Earth-like.  Next up, I'll have a crack at designing what the green men of Mars look like!

A Princess of Mars Art Order Challenge

I've been waiting for the opportunity to join an Art Order Challenge, so I was excited to find out there was a new one announced just last week.  The "Princess of Mars" Challenge task artists to create a "homage" artwork to celebrate the original work of fiction as well as pre-empt the visual designs of the upcoming John Carter movie.  I put "homage" in quotation marks since it felt a bit nebulous, and indeed it seems people aren't sure whether they're supposed to remake the cover or recreate a scene in the book.  I chose the latter, and decided to recreate this scene:

Sola and I had entered a building upon the front of the city, in fact, the same one in which I had had my encounter with the apes, and, wishing to see what had caused the sudden retreat, I mounted to an upper floor and peered from the window out over the valley and the hills beyond; and there I saw the cause of their sudden scurrying to cover. A huge craft, long, low, and gray-painted, swung slowly over the crest of the nearest hill. Following it came another, and another, and another, until twenty of them, swinging low above the ground, sailed slowly and majestically toward us.

Each carried a strange banner swung from stem to stern above the upper works, and upon the prow of each was painted some odd device that gleamed in the sunlight and showed plainly even at the distance at which we were from the vessels. I could see figures crowding the forward decks and upper works of the air craft.

After going through a couple dozen thumbnails I picked two that I liked the best and essentially altered each one's viewpoint slightly to end up with 4 slightly more polished thumbnails .  I have to thank my friend Chester Ocampo for pushing me in the more challenging direction (in terms of perspective) of thumbnail 3 (3rd from the top) by sketching that out for me.  I've gotten just one vote each for both thumbnail 3 and 4, so I'm waiting a bit to see which composition I'll go with for the final piece.  I'm not entirely in a rush since I'll have to conceptualize what the ships and the Martians looks like before I proceed any further with this.  Next up, ship concepts!

What I learned from the Gobelins Master Class on Animation pt3

This last section of "What I learned from the Gobelins Master Class on Animation" is gonna be much shorter than parts one and two because the tail end of the talk was very animation (ie frames of animation) focused, so there wasn't a lot of stuff for me to bring over to my illustration work.  However there were at least two things brought up during the talk that I think were very important.

What Leads Your Character?

In other words, the body part that the character chooses to lead their walk can give you an inkling about that character's personality.  To help explain this I sketched out the samples that were given to us above.  During the actual talk, Alexandre was actually miming these motions so they were even more impactful, but even these still images prove the point quite well.

What Questions Should You Ask Yourself?


The last thing I'm going to share with you sounds really simplistic and obvious, but I'm finding that knowing what questions to ask yourself when creating an artwork can be the most important thing of all.  When you're creating an artwork in isolation it's often hard to tell if you're doing a good job or not.  Some artists are good enough to just look at their artwork and instinctively "know" that something's wrong, but I'm not quite there yet. If you're in the same boat as me, here are some questions you can ask yourself when you want to self critique your work:

• have I brainstormed and chosen a story the feels right and clear and original?
• Do I have a clear idea how I will stage my scene and create an interesting composition?
• Do I like it?
• Am I communicating my ideas clearly?
• Is everything in the image there for a purpose?

I've already learned some of this stuff via Jason Manley's video tutorial on composition, but it's good to have a reminder from another source to help reinforce it.

That bring us to the end of this "What I Learned" series, which I hope some of you have found useful.  Please check out the links above for parts one and two and do drop me a line if you've found this useful or have any suggestions about how to make it better.

David Gemmell's "Legend" Mockup Cover

 A couple of weeks ago I saw a job post looking for an artist to create a cover for a fantasy novel.  Having never created a cover I decided to create a mockup cover for one of my favorite fantasy books so I could send in a sample .  I actually never did get to send the sample because some other work concerns got in the way, but I decided to finish it anyway.  I was going to go more in depth into the creation of this but frankly I'm a little tired right now and there's really not much to say about it.  I'll leave some process images here though, in case anyone's interested in seeing how this came together.

What I learned from the Gobelins Master Class on Animation pt2

In part one of this series of posts I discussed some of the things I learned from the Gobelin Master Class in Animation, including finding the right Camera Angle, Body Positioning, and more.  This second set will focus on  how different body parts work and the ways we can use  them to express emotions, beginning with the metaphorical "windows to the soul"

The Eyes

In many ways the eyes are rather hard to talk about since it's already common knowledge that the eyes are the easiest way to reflect a character's emotional mood.  For example, in the highlighted area the three sets of eyes easily read as sad/angry/surprised.  Something that seemed to be more relevant back then than it does now is the idea that an artist should think of the eyes as two separate entities; the pupil and the eyelids.  The pupil shows where the character is looking, for example at an object, and the shape of the eyelids determine the emotional relationship of the character to the object.  Again, stuff that's pretty common knowledge, but is still probably good to keep in mind.

Another thing about the eyes that was interesting to me is the effect called Alexandre called strabism.  After doing a google search I think he actually meant Strabismus.  In any case when a character is looking far away he said that the eyes should stray a little farther away from each other, and when they're looking at an object that's near then the eyes should move closer to each other, almost cross-eyed.

In the above image you can see my notes about the eyebrows.  I didn't think they deserved a section of their own since I didn't really learn anything apart from how they work, but you guys might find it interesting anyway.

The Mouth

I'm not a big smiler in photos.  I believe that when one smiles it should be genuine, and there's just no way to capture that kind of smile in a portrait photo.  That's because the muscles that control a genuine smile start from the cheekbones and involve contractions in the eyes as well, all of which will tend to move upwards.  A fake smile on the other hand will expand sideways.

Another thing that was brought up that was interesting to me is that anger is expressed on the face in terms of contraction.  Your brows scrunch down and the mouth moves up almost as if they were trying to squish the nose.  It makes me wonder if that kind of emotion could be expressed using an entire body as well.

The Head

It took a while for me to figure out what to say about the head.  I think I was losing a little focus at this point in the talk so I didn't quite write down what Alexandre was saying.  But after looking at these drawings I think that the basic idea he was trying to get across was that the more "bent" the head/neck was the more it showed that a character is thinking.  A character with a straight head knows his purpose and is heading towards it.  A character with a bent head not quite sure, and is thinking about his options.  Alexandre showed us a video clip of a villain that expressed the extreme end of this, a character whose neck could bend so far as to suggest being as flexible as a worm or snake.    This mirrors our cultural biases, where being "straight" equals being good and being "crooked" means being evil.  Obviously this isn't the case in real life, but it's good to bear it in mind when designing characters that are arcehtypes.

The Elbows

The interesting point that was brought up about the elbows is how their positioning in relation to the body can express a mood.  A neutral mood is expressed by having the elbows in a straight position.  Having the elbows sticking out to the sides shows a more aggressive stance, while finally having the elbows sticking inwards or having the whole arm curving inwards can show a more feminine or seductive stance.

The Hands

The last body part we'll discuss is the hands.  My takeaway from this section of the talk was almost ridiculously simple: Open hands equals an open, friendly mind, while closed hands (ie a fist) means a closed, unwelcoming mind.  I also sketched an open hand here that's supposed to show fear or "afraid".  I forget now why I drew that, or it's relation to my first insight, but I think it was supposed to show the hands sort of recoiling from something fearful.  I apologize that I can't explain any further than that!

Well, this part was a little more rough than the first one by virtue of more time having elapsed since the workshop.  I hope you still found it useful though, and I'll try to make the last installment of the series even better. Stay tuned!