The needs of many...

Happy 81st Leonard Nimoy.

2429 A.D. The Sleeper

I decided to do a Buck Rogers sketch. I am going to explore on the subject more, and probably find ways to push the overall design and shape of the character to make him more appealing. This study was done for the purpose of understanding his basic color, costume, and pose. Outside of those main elements the design is pretty straight forward and basic.

As far as explorations go, I will do a few different head designs, and play around with his overall silhouette, in order to come up with the most appealing design I would prefer to give him.

Where no man has gone before

I have always enjoyed me a good ol' episode of Star Trek.

This was a fun sketch exercise focusing on the differences of facial structure. I stylized and exaggerated Spock more than I did with Kirk.

Trees of Oz

I was doing some tree sketches and some of them came out quite appealing, I like the Seussish (try saying that) look to them. These were done mostly for shape exploration purposes. I think Oz would have some interesting trees like this.

John Carter and sketches

Today I did a few fun sketches in my sketch book, and I even decided to color one after watching the Disney movie John Carter of Mars.

Finding time to sketch in the sketchbook every day is important to maintain, so one can continually develop ability and stay is "shape".

Also, today in class, we did some figure painting, I think it came out nicely in spite of the lack of completeness.

Ding Dong the witch is dead

(repetition allows each of these houses look as though they belong in the same town)

In these studies I explored the various shapes and diversity among the Munchkin homes in the Munchkin village. The color scheme follows that of the citizens and their shapes are based loosely off of farm equipment. If I were to take this further I would go in and detail the interior and exterior of each house.

It is also important to note that after I come up with one simple design through silhouette studies, I base a majority of the other designs close to the first one.

There's no place like Home

(silhouette studies are an important preliminary step)

Dorothy's house was pretty fun to do, I figured I would go for a very simple style for presentation that focuses more on shape design instead of detail. When designing and environment I feel it is important to work out the architecture and other structures first, then worry about where they are placed in the composition. Now that I have the basic idea of the house, I will base a three dimensional design off of the silhouette.

People of the Harvest

(variety in every one)

The Munchkins were a group of people that lived under the oppression of the Wicked Witch of the East. Above are some quick sketches of them.

When designing them I kept in mind that their life styles were not all that far from that of the Hobbits from Lord of the Rings. Seeing as they have more of a rural life style, I based their shapes off of squash like vegetables. The color scheme I used was a washed out blue. Blue was the color of the Munchkin kingdom, and I washed it out to show the drab life style they faced while under the oppression of the evil witch.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

I have been working on a few portfolio related pieces involving L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Above I have two character lineups I have been working on, the top are my pencil rough's of the characters and below are the colors I plan on using with each character. I am certain a majority of people have seen the film based loosely on the book, The Wizard of Oz, so they will be familiar with most of the characters presented here, however, I am going to explain why I designed the characters the way I did.

The Scarecrow feels he will never be smart because he doesn't have brains, ironically he comes up with the most solutions in the group, my design for him gives him a carefree look and an over-sized head to show that he is less worried about the world around him, and more focused on what is going on inside his head, the inspiration for his look was Spike from Cowboy Bebop.

The Cowardly Lion was a real challenge to design. He has the largest mass and body of them all, however his posture shows a lack of confidence and shyness in his character. I originally went for sharper features, because Lions normally do, but to avoid having too confident looking of a character, I added more curves and circles to his overall form to help bring out his docile nature.

The Tin Man I gave Lumberjack proportions to his body, a larger chin, upper torso, and forearms is a common trend to those body types. I was certain to make his chest large because he had a large heart, or at least a strong conscience about all living things around him, truly one of the more emotional characters in the book. The red vest and beanie combo are tokens of his former life that he never let go of.

Dorothy went through many transformations. From young adult, to an adolescent child, I chose to go for very young age to help impress upon her innocence. I was certain not to go too far overboard with her design because I wanted to make her the most relate-able character. Even though she comes from a colorless world, I thought making her more vibrant than most of the characters would show how she brings color and harmony into the very colorful land of Oz.

The Gesture

I went to the 9 a.m. drawing session and did a few 2-3 minute gesture drawings, some came out better than others. I first came in with the mind set to produce some killer gestures to post on the blog, needless to say, that wasn't working out for me very well. I then decided during the 1 minute gestures, to stop caring and focus more on the practical application of figure drawing, and see what I was doing poorly versus well.

While these studies are far from perfect, I feel they demonstrate more of what I learn about myself the more I draw. Focusing more on the shapes and forms in a simple manner, allowed me to more effectively interpret the model when I worked on the more quick studies.