Week 15

Visual Design

Happy new year everyone, new year means a new term and to kick-start this term off we have been introduced to the preparation of the village character project via a so called a crash course in anatomy. In visual design our tutor Mike Kelly ran us through the general proportions of the basic human body from normal to idealistic to fashion and finally heroic.

These teachings were based on Loomis' idea of how the body is composed. I have briefly studied these proportions before however this has always been a struggle of mine as I found it hard to understand and find differences in the body depending on which head size it is. I always found Loomis work as you can see above as a foundation to my knowledge yet I never fully understood what the artist was trying to illustrate. However, with Kelly's class via his live teaching which really dissected what Loomis was trying to say in his image above I started to gain a better understanding as to how the body is composed.

This boosted my confidence in attempting character especially due the information I received about the neck length being about the same height as the distance from the nose and the brow. The neck has always been something I've struggled with when it came to figure drawing and with this bit of information it pushed me to explore my own characters and not only this but explore human anatomy more in preparation for the upcoming village project. 

Additionally in visual design to put our new knowledge to the test we analysed a few figures and broke them down via heads. The intention was to see how the artist has used this system to keep the proportions in check, as well as analysing how each part of the body may relate to each other and finally the actually visual reasoning behind the choice of heads.

From this exercise, I found that the higher amount of heads an artist uses the more powerful/stronger and sometimes intimidating a character can look depending on its context. The same goes for the opposite an artist may use less heads to deform a character making them look less desirable, weak and weedy or sometimes quite cute. As seen in the example of Mickey Mouse below.

One notices that unlike the character Mister Freeze's character which is about 8 heads Mickey Mouse is composed of only 3 heads to convey his cuteness and make him more approachable which fits in with his context and his audience of younger children who would be drawn to cute and approachable. Whereas, Mr Freeze's character is supposed to represent power and intimidation due to the nature of his villainous character hence the artist has made his proportions to 8 heads high and exaggerated his shoulder length to about 3.5 heads to make his shoulders more broader and really assert the power in the character.

Personal stuff - extension of visual design

Using my newfound knowledge of anatomy, I decided it would be best to put this to the test by concepting a character design for a personal project. I wanted to practise using the 7.5 heads system to get more accustomed to drawing more realistic human figures. However looking back, since this character is designed to be a heroic character I would design this character with the relative size of 8-9 heads tall according to Andrew Loomis' teachings to achieve the look of a powerful hero. 

One of my goals for this character was to test out what my tutor told me about neck length and see if this translates well when the neck is moving. For some reason in the image above, I found that there was something off about the neck and how it moves and its length in my drawing, and as a result, I decided to test Kelly's theory on neck length. I did this by measuring the distance of the eye to brow in many photos as well as one illustration (which looking back was not a wise decision as artists may exaggerate features subtly and therefore I am getting bad and inaccurate reference). I found that from this as you can see in the image below this measurement does not hold up quite right, especially when the neck is looking up.

However, I would propose another measurement instead of the chin to the top of the sternum being the same distance to the brow and the base of the nose since the chin may move up. I would propose thinking the skull/ head as a box and think about the back corner of the box as a measurement to use as you can see in the image below. I hope this measurement proves to be somewhat accurate, as this would help with my figures very well however, this is something I feel I would take with a pinch of salt.

Additionally the image above represents my attempts to study anatomy particularly, the facial planes as well as arm muscles anatomy to improve my figures as well as understanding how I could improve my rendering in portraiture. By drawing out these objects, this allows me  to work out how I could simplify this and remember these features as part of my visual tool kit.  Below are more examples of anatomical studies focusing on facial ones, which I believe will hopefully let me better understand how to create facial expressions and how the face contorts by studying what muscles move to create faces.

Using this information, I applied this knowledge to a few portraits I did of people when around Leicester. In visual design, we were tasked with taking pictures and recording visually interesting faces around Leicester. This was because as studying game artists we seem to limit our character designs as people around our age therefore to break the habit we were instructed to find older people who may serve as basis for our characters.

Life Drawing

In life drawing, we continued to record the figure via quick sketches some with continuous line and with our less dominant hand to get us to record the figure in a gestural way as well as think more about what I am recording down visually. In addition to this, we practiced more on measuring via the heads system. Using Kelly's information this aided my figure drawing during this session as I started to understand how exactly the model was built up.

Game production

In game production to prepare us for the upcoming village character project especially the modelling stage we were tasked with modelling a low poly woman via strip modelling. 

I've had some experience with strip modelling before, however this task really pushed me to experiment with the capabilities of it. In addition to this, during the task we were shown how to use the symmetry modifier. Using the modifier we were shown how one might go about modelling characters efficiently. 

When modelling this character I was supposed to follow the topology of the orthographic however, at the time I did not know this therefore I modelled this with my own insight.

As you can see in the image above the topology of my character isn't quite right. It doesn't loop around and it's not quite smooth. This would cause problems if I were to rig or animate my character as the topology would not be clean enough and would become deformed. From this experience, I have learnt that perhaps it would be best if I were to investigate achieving clean topology on organic models in the future.

Critical studies

During critical studies, we were given a talk on how we can move forward and prepare for the second term. I will explore what we have learnt and my goals for the future in the next blog post.

Other work

Developed character concept based on the one above - Drag queen pirate - legs could be improved as the models pose seems uncomfortable. In addition to this the image shows my process working from silhouette blocking in basic values and shapes and then painting on top of it.

Personal project - egg king based off of king louis xvii and king louis xvi - subject to be digitally painted hopefully when I can find free time - this should hopefully test how one may balance their values in a composition making each element readable

Character concept for a stylised monk warrior as well as just general practice with human figures

20 MIN digi sketch

Quick digital painting of monk character - If I have some spare time perhaps I will go back to this and iterate more on the costume and look of the character