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Hi Sir, How do you go about the analysing movies in term of study storyboards and analyse scene,shot, Is there diffence in analysing animated movie and live action movies, I have tried to see/study camera while watching it but after some time I get lost. How do you study movies to keep your cinematography fresh and inventive,

I used to study movies in a very technical way, sketching or thumbnailing every “cut” and trying to learn through osmosis. Doing this is super helpful to start understanding the language of film, but nowadays, I try to pay more attention to “set-ups” and “pay-offs”. What I mean by that is I try my best to figure out how the director/writer/cinematographer/actors are setting up tension or creating context, then giving the audience a logical conclusion or a surprise to said tension or context, within a sequence, and within the movie itself. Very close to the set-up of a joke, and how the joke turns out. There’s usually a tone, a context, and then (generally) a surprise twist at the end. That’s why I used to love watching/listening to Director’s commentary after watching a movie. It would let the audience in on the process. Harder now since I watch most movie in theater or online. DVD extras were my favorite. As to the difference between animated and live-action, I feel like the line gets more and more blurry as we go. Overall, I’d say live-action seem to be breaking more rules in terms of cinematography (breaking the axis, etc) but, i gotta say, even the best directors break those rules and that’s not always a bad thing.

Colour Studies

Doing painting studies like this can actually be really hard! Cascade Falls especially made me squirm and I almost gave up. I still feel like my colours are so dull in comparison to the originals and skin tones still baffle me a little, especially the darker ones like in Pelt Merchant of Cairo.

The studies are from:

Thomas Moran (1905) Cascade Falls, Yosemite. Link

John Singer Sargent (1907) Self Portrait. (I used this reference Link, but the colours from artrenewal.org might have been more interesting Link)

Jean-Leon Gerome (1869) Pelt Merchant of Cairo. Link

#creative elements #colour and light #week 18 #digital sketchbook #master studies

Real Colour Wheel

Found on: http://www.realcolorwheel.com/colorwheel.htm

These are useful to have open in Photoshop when thinking about master studies or devising a colour scheme.

#colour and light #creative elements #week 18

Master Studies: Colour

These are master studies that I attempted after watching 'Noah's Artcamp 1: Master Studies'

Laying down the initial colours is really hard. Every colour is perceived differently when laid down next to another colour...as if it wasn't hard enough to try picking the correct temperature and value to begin with! The unsaturated and grey colours seem particularly tricky. Sometimes what I think is a cool blue is actually a warm grey which just looks really cool next to a warm colour. Getting the value correct from the beginning is also difficult and I find I'm always having to make adjustments as I go along.

I found it helpful in the second attempt to start by very roughly blocking in the colours in large areas and then doing a quick sketch over this to start defining areas. It's like painting the palette directly onto the canvas and is a good way to get an early idea of colour relationships.

In Moran's painting. Near Fort Wingate (red one), I thought the shadows looked like they might contain a colder hue like blue. I was wrong again! The shadows are actually from the reddest hue, desaturated a lot and darkened. I used this as a base to begin with. The colours seem a bit easier to pick if you get rid of the white straight away like this. I've also learned that squinting is your strongest tool at the start of a painting! It really helps you to block in colours, values and shape.

Of course, I avoided using the colour picker while painting so as to learn more, but I did sometimes find it helpful either before or after the painting to do a quick 'guess that colour' and then used the colour picker to see how far off I was. Maybe if I just keep practicing someday I'll actually be able to see colour

This exercise was also useful for trying out different brushes in Photoshop. I was very zoomed out and painted only with a flat edged brush in the second one which turned out too soft and blurry so I'll keep this in mind for the future.

Paintings I studied (in order above):

Jean Leon Gerome (1857) Colossus of Memnon . Link

Thomas Moran (1913) Waterfall in Yosemite. Link

Thomas Moran (1917) Under the Red Wall, Grand Canyon of Arizona. Link

Thomas Moran (1915) Near Fort Wingate, New Mexico. Link

#creative elements #colour and light #digital sketchbook #week 18

I found these on http://galleryhip.com/color-theory-design.html. Can't be reminded enough about colour theory (I had forgotten the difference between CMYK and RGB:( but it seems simple enough now:)). It's interesting as well to see how one colour can have different effects within different colour contexts. Everything is relative!

#colour and light #week 18 #creative elements

Master Studies- Noah Bradley

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQfF-P70V2Q

This is a great video from Noah Bradley explaining how master studies can be used to improve your own art. It's something I've seen around in sketchbooks in art forums a lot but something I wasn't really sure how to approach. Bradley breaks it down into quick studies where you look at value and composition or colour or a longer precise study where you try to understand all the decisions made in the painting, look at the painting techniques and practice taking a painting the whole way to a finish.

My colours in particular definitely need a lot of work and this looks like a good way to practice!:) Bradley suggests looking at long dead painters for practice. He suggests the golden age illustrators in particular because they painted with strong silhouettes and readability in mind. I'm thinking that studying movie stills this way will also be helpful.

#creative elements #colour and light #value #composition #week 18

Yoda Value Study

I used this reference image: link

I think my values in my concept art still need a lot of work. I should probably practice some different materials and lighting situations also.

I tried to keep the method that I learned from ctrlpaint.com in mind when I did this. It makes a painting more approachable when you have somewhat of a method:)

#creative elements #value #digital sketchbook #star wars #yoda #wip

Value Study

Just some more practice. I think I might have messed the perspective a little and the tones are still off.

The reference image came from link.

#week 17 #value #digital sketchbook #creative elements

Modelling Practice: Solar Panel

I modelled this from a free tutorial on digitaltutors.com (Quick Start to Modeling in Maya Volume 1).

This tutorial was useful for:

learning how to draw a curve with the cv curve tool and extrude a nurbs circle along this curve to create the pipe shape of the legs. The pipe shape could then be converted to polygons so as to manipulate some of the faces.

learning about the different options available for duplicating a group for making evenly spaced structures.

creating smooth, sharp or bevelled edges.

#design discourse #modelling #digital sketchbook

Value Practice

I did this for some value practice by following a tutorial on ctrlpaint.com. I took the reference image from https://zbrushfun.wordpress.com/tag/lightning/.

The tutorial broke down the image into things to observe:

shadow shape

illuminated area

reflected light

occlusion shadow

then polish the image by refining the transitions between values.

It's nice to have a simplified approach for a painting.

#creative elements #value #digital sketchbook

Abigail and I have been wanting to redo this for ages but never got around to doing it. The top image is the one we worked on together back in week one for the placement module. We were told to fix the contrast to help the silhouettes stand out better and to fix the composition so that the aliens were not all on the same plane of perspective. I tried to do this myself for some practice. Above are some thumbnails I drew to help me figure out composition along with the final piece. I'm still finding that colour and rendering materials is a big challenge. (Along with everything else for that matter!)

#Module Image #feedback #digital sketchbook

Andrew Loomis Drawing the Figure for All it's Worth

I like Loomis' approach to shading where he breaks down the body into planes which can then be broken down into areas of direct light, halftones and shadow depending on what way they face.

Common enough sense but I need so much practiceT_T

#creative elements #life drawing

Part 2 of the article that Mark shared with us.

Chung also linked the graphic style back to a particularly influential section in Scott McCloud’s book Understanding Comics, where McCloud breaks down the relationship between the level of visual refinement and the strength of authorial intent. Chung summarized: “When you make a really detailed face… you’re basically saying ‘This is exactly how this character feels.’ But when it’s just two dots and a line for a face, [the viewer] gets to fill in the blanks. There’s room for them to participate.”

I've been coming across this idea a lot lately: instead of over explaining a game/story/picture leave some details up to the imagination of the viewer.

#design discourse #modelling

This is something I found when I was trying to better understand the difference between modelling and sculpting. In the short answer, modelling seems to take animation into account from the beginning of the process by allowing you to focus on the mesh.

Doomc asked: From my ignorant perspective I'm curious why everyone doesn't just sculpt all their models?

InfernalDarkness answered:

A very valid but as you stated "beginner" question. The root of the answer comes down to two main factors, both of them being based around animation, as opposed to still renders of objects (sculptures) that never move. It's about topology, and how the model will deform when attached to a character rig. Poor topology means your mesh will not animate predictably and important techniques like facial animation, expressions, and even simple movements will fall apart or look horrible, or bend and stretch in ways you don't want. You can't just rig up a model and go to town with it and expect to have decent results. Topology is also very important when texturing. But modern tools like Zbrush and Mudbox work in conjunction with Photoshop instead of against it (BodyPaint) much easier, these days. And you can retopologize characters in these types of sculpting programs now with decent results too. But to make a long story short, if you're not animating, it doesn't matter how you sculpt. You can use as many polys as you want. You don't even need a displacement map, if you have a decent workstation; I often use full high-poly models straight from Mudbox. But if you're animating, you need to know low-poly techniques if you want your models to ever be usable. Sculpted animation (displacement maps) is then possible, but your model needs to "work" first. Rigging up a high-poly model is not only ridiculous, but very anti-productive in an animation pipeline - you want your animators to have a simple rig they can use on ANY workstation, really. Even a laptop. This means you need a nice low-poly model too, generally. Just some ideas and reasons why you need both. Learn low-poly, but when you're feeling annoyed/stumped/bored with it, don't ever be afraid to just sculpt and be artistic!

#design discourse #modelling

Showreel for Design Discourse One

This is my showreel for all my fixed animations in Maya. I didn't include the models in this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPTaQZiJGeo

#design discourse #showreel

ImagineFx April 2010 'Sketchbook Ray Harryhausen'

So much awesome.

#creative elements #storyboard #animatic

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Natasha Crowley