Industry Interviews.

The last few weeks have flown by.

However, I have a few exciting things happening in the development of the project in the very near future.

Exciting thing number one!

Junior Concept Artist Sarah Morris from Atomhawk has agreed to help me out with a bunch of questions I have concerning my project.

Atomhawk's visual designs are breath-taking.

Also, my Academic Tutor (Lynn) has been kind enough to get in touch with freelance Concept Artist Kenneth Anderson on my behalf. He has also been kind enough to help me out. So it looks as though I'm going to meet up with him and conduct a sort of discussion/interview about his practices.

So I'm currently drafting up questions and topics that I'd like to hear their opinions about.

Will hopefully remember to record that interview, because I'm sure I'll get some really valuable advice.

So a big Thank You to those mentioned I feel is in order.

Exciting thing number two!

Kenneth Anderson, whom I previously mentioned, has an awesome portfolio on his website, and so I decided to take the colour palette of one of his paintings and use that to do my own concept design work.

Here's the end result.

Also here is his original, which i took the colour swatches from. 

Andersons' artwork has a very interesting style. 

What did I learn from doing this? Well quite a lot actually. 

I got a lot better at blending colours and facial tones. (Even making the nose and ears a bit rosey adds so much to these studies, it's quite unbelievable.) 

I also learned that I need to keep practicing in order to get to the quality of work expected in the industry. So I may do more of these studies. 

However, I feel like the first two characters I drew (the top two), are the strongest of the four, and the last two are visually weaker. So I think I need to think more about the sort of character the person is more thoroughly before I dive in and start throwing colours around. With the first two I knew what sort of characters I was after, and with the final two I was just sort of trying to make something that "looked cool." And that just didn't cut it. 

I have also managed to add some books to my collection since my previous post. 

One that I started reading recently, "Drawing Basics and Video Game Art" by Chris Solarski has me very excited. The book is very much "as it says on the tin", in the way that it teaches drawing fundamentals and thereafter goes on to illustrate how these translate into the world of video game art. 

The book explores the work of Da Vinci, Rembrant, and others.  

Like a book I read last year, ("Creating Characters with Personality"), Solarski also provides the reader with exercises to complete in tandem with your reading of the book. This is something I am a big fan of, because it feels like you are getting so much more out of the words written on the page by actually doing, and taking the time to think about what you've actually read, as apposed to merely rushing through book after book hoping that something will stick. 

The next book is "Watchmen: The Art of the Film".

I've always loved the graphic novel and the film. So I had to track down this one for my honours project. In honesty I came across this book by chance during a visit to Dundee University's library. 

The Art of "Watchmen"

Nevertheless, at a glance the book looks like it's going to be a great help. The fact that the concept artists for Watchmen did very much adapt the style that was already in place from the graphic novel makes this a great resource for my project specifically. So hopefully I'll pick up some useful advice.