LA 2017

Now that I'm in California....I gotta post my shit. For posterity.

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Dec 2, 2017

Week 8 in Enviro~ some line art still using our word combo (mine is Spanish Marsh). Sometimes I don’t feel like I fully understand what we’re being asked to do lol. The direction we were given was to draw the “approach” into our building’s backyard (as opposed to the grand entryway look most people did in last week’s thumbs). For the second image, it was supposed to be a view into the courtyard using crowds. I’m....still not sure if this will become our final project :’) but I got good feedback and these will be refined later on.

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kristine lee portfolio 2017

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Dialogue Test

Nov 8-22, 2017

Yeahhhh I’m a little too lazy to compile these boards (unless you guys know a faster way than photoshop?) plus they’re easier to read one at a time, so here are two scenes from TMNT - one dialogue, one action. 

Any feedback is appreciated!! We had 2 weeks for the action boards, so those are a little more polished (also holy crap boarding action is so hard). I don’t have the best eye for super “cool” looking shots, but the instructor said mine were very clear at least. Apparently I need to watch more anime. He also said I have good posing :) which makes sense, I’m definitely more comfortable drawing characters than camera movement/backgrounds/perspective. Between action and comedy, comedy is probablyyy a little more my style. But I think an ideal show for me would have elements of both, like SU :D

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Nov 16, 2017

Refs and thumbs for our final project - the idea is to combine an environment with an architectural style (I got “Spanish Marsh”). Probably would’ve done more if I hadn’t done these at CTN :’D

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Nov 11, 2017

Lighting studies for Enviro. First two are from Disney Concert Hall in LA, others are from pictures I took in Seattle. 

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Oct 25, 2017

FIRST ACTUAL BOARDS. Got a lot of great feedback for this, looks like I need to work on avoiding “weird” cuts, especially in terms of camera angle. 

I might try cleaning this up for CTN, but (time traveling here) that is exactly what I attempted to do the following week. I’m not going to post it because most of the boards are identical, but apparently my roughs are better than my cleanups. I (FOR SOME REASON) draw more angular and it loses some of the simple gesture-y quality of the roughs? Man, I don’t even know how to combat that. I want my drawings to be better if I show it to people, but I also don’t want to lose what I have right now. how do

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Oct 27, 2017

This week was all about “tone”, but like, in a very specific way? It’s about using tone to describe the form, but NOT lighting. And also using tone to group together elements so the viewer can get a clearer understand of the space. Hmm. If you can’t tell, this is a new concept for me and I don’t quiteeee get it yet. But I tried :’D We also had to do a mid-term compilation of all our hw so far~

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Oct 18, 2017

Week 2 of Storyboarding~ This week was all about gesture drawing, taking poses online and exaggerating the fuck outta them. It was...surprisingly hard to loosen up after all the “slow down!” and “use construction!” from last semester? Thank god for the Griz and Norm book I got at CTN last year. It had a whole section on gesture drawing which saved my ass. Bottom image is feedback - still gotta work on foreshortening (lol perspective)

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Oct 21, 2017

👻 Time to get sp00ky 👻 This week’s enviro homework was to take a previous sketch (last week I drew buildings near my house, aka rural as fuck), and add set dressings to make it Halloween-y. We were supposed to find a video game for reference but I guess I don’t play enough because I had to idea what to choose. Instead I just went ham and found as many references vaguely related to what I wanted >> a spooky, abandoned Old West kinda feel?

I’m pretty happy with how these turned out, considering how much trouble I had with similar assignments in Perspective last semester. Composing environments has slowly become a little easier, and I know now to be more deliberate with fore/mid/background elements. (I was also supposed to do 10 mileage sketches but didn’t have time for those :/ )

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Oct 14, 2017

Environment homework~ Admittedly not the best week in terms of volume. I’ve been sorta let this class fall to wayside due to storyboarding, but next week was a bit better. I will need to find a way to do more life sketches (we call them mileage drawings) because when work ends at 5, I only have an hour and a half of sunlight left to draw :/ Oh also, the bottom drawing is a “grid sketch”. I’m still....kinda confused on its purpose. Guess it helps define volume or something?

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Part (3/3)

Finally, here’s some homework feedback. Our class is super feedback-heavy, like our instructor will spend 80% of a 5 hour class critiquing and doing draw-overs. It’s awesome btw, I feel really lucky to be given that kind of attention for a class that meets only once a week. 

Anyway, most of my problems were with perspective (heyo guess what never fucking goes away?) which just makes me more grateful I took Perspective last term. I had no idea that knowing this stuff would be ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL KNOWLEDGE for literally every other art job. Dunno why, but that makes me really happy. Perspective is so fair. It’s wrong or its right. And I should definitely get in the habit of drawing a grid in all my boards, because if I eyeball it it’ll probably be wrong  👍

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Part (2/3)

More storyboard homework~ That kid wasn’t supposed to look exactly like Steven but apparently I can only draw children with curly hair.

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Oct 11, 2017

(Part 1/3)

Storyboard homework for week 1 was basically to draw every possible shot at every possible angle :’) It was an excellent exercise in realizing how fucking hard it is to draw humans with correct perspective, but when I wasn’t crying I genuinely had fun doing this. And yeah, since we had the freedom to draw whatever we wanted I did Tintin. Of course.

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Oct 5, 2017

⭐ OKAY TIME TO FINALLY POST ⭐   This is week 1 homework for Sketching for Environment, which is basically Vis Com 2.0 but with places instead of things. We talk a lot about thinking in terms of shape instead of line, which is crazy for me because I definitely fall in the latter camp, and thinking a different way is challenging but exciting. I have a lot of notes for this class, so if I don’t get too lazy about scanning I will upload those as well as homework~

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Thoughts on Vis Com (Su17)

So apparently before you learn how to draw, you gotta learn....how to draw. 

For real though, this class kicked my butt. For some reason, I had the hardest time finishing homework for this class after I started working :/ I wish I’d done better, but I can be proud I made it and at least did SOMETHING each week. I said the same thing with my other classes, but...overall I’m really glad I took this class and I think everyone should take it if they want to do art for a living.

I’ve learned, like with story, underlying structure is the most important thing because everything builds on it. If you draw boxes with inaccurate perspective, the tanks you draw inside will also be wrong. If the proportions of your circles is off, so will your beetle. I think my instructor intentionally put less focus on rendering for our class. The end result is that we might not have as many “pretty” drawings to stick in our portfolio, but the ones we do have will be better constructed. Personally, I really like construction for geometric objects (trains, planes, insects). I guess it just makes more sense to me! But that means I need to work on organic shapes and secondary forms as I move forward. Oh, and drawing ellipses. Because how the fuck.

I have a lot of notes for this class I still need to scan in, so I’ll put that in its own post. Meanwhile enjoy this final comp I made for the last day of class: 

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Thoughts on Figure Drawing (Su17)

It turns out the class with the most organic/illustrative drawings also had the most rules and rigid construction. 

I honestly feel like I barely scratched the surface on what our instructor was teaching us (I will almost certainly retake this class in the future). Even though I got my ass kicked, I’m so glad I took this class ^__^ I’ve realized now that nobody just “feels” their way to beautiful well-constructed drawings. They’re thinking about a million little things, or they’ve done it so many times their hand can do it without having to think. And that makes me insanely happy, because that’s kinda how my brain works? I like deconstructing things into simple pieces, building off foundations, and having invisible guidelines that show me where to go. Instead of “chasing the form”, I can look for the underlying manikin and make a pose work without getting fooled by what’s happening on the surface.

In theory anyway :’D figure drawing is a lifelong endeavor, and I have a looooong way to go. But thanks to this class, I have a roadmap with checkpoints of where I want to head next. In regards to storyboarding, I see now that drawing figures quickly (and sometimes crappily) requires knowledge on how to draw them slowly and non-crappily. So many artists cheat their human bodies, and it’s not even surprising considering how fucking hard this is. But you gotta try. And you gotta struggle even if it makes you wanna die.

I do have a LOT of notes and artist recommendations from this class, but due to their length I’ll put them in a separate post~

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Aug 19, 2017

And with the determination of a thousand California suns, I finally have a good week in vis com! Thank god, because this was the final week :’) One spot I’m still weak in is rendering - which is odd because most people in my class were comfortable with rendering but struggled with construction. I’m the opposite - I like understanding my drawings from the inside out. I like thinking about simplifying shapes, perspective, and choosing the right building blocks. As much as I struggled in this class, I want to keep working on these skills and get better at what I suck in. If I wanna go into storyboarding, I gotta have those drafting skills ya feel me.

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Aug 13, 2017

This was by far my worst week in vis com u____u For whatever reason, forcing myself to do the homework in this class was so much more painful than other classes. Still don’t know why. But anyway, this week was all about tanks, which are surprisingly hard to draw. I got some good perspective feedback on the righthand tanks, turns out my perspective sucks and I have way too many horizon lines :D I tried to be more mindful of that for next week~