Merry Christmas 2019

Finished this greeting for my school just a few hours ago and would like to feature it here to say hello and wish you a very Merry Christmas !! It's our mascot character ArtShark just being himself.

I hope you have a special time full of love with people that mean the most in your life. Thank you for the fun of sharing my art and thanks for following my humble blog and for visiting also. Wishing you joy and peace and prosperity and good health and creativity and all the good things in life !!

Ho Ho Ho... Is that you Santy Claus?

Seasons Greetings dear Blogger friends and followers! I hope this finds you well and happy!

It was last Sept 17 this year that I was toying with images of Santa Claus helping a student in class understand the idea behind concept design. That is to try different approaches to a theme and see what you wind up with. So here's the demos I did that evening starting with the original page and then featuring each design on its own.

Elfin Girl Head Rotaton

Here's another class demo for my beginning character design students. I started it on November 5 then did the 2 back views on December 2 and completed the pencil line early today on December 5. Sometimes it's not possible to do the entire work at once so I break it into sittings and eventually complete the drawing in class.

I'm sure you've heard it before from me that rotations are an essential aspect of professional character design as they are the bridge between the concept and production. Also they're excellent practice for developing solid draftsmanship skill and they're fun to do.

Crash Bandicoot Doodles from 2013

In the early days of posting on my blog it was a time of uncertainty for the Crash Bandicoot community. I noticed a high level of anxiety among fans so I did what I could to contribute to keep Crash alive by drawing him. It had been a long time and only periodically would do something I wasn't especially excited about.

I knew I had to practice so on September 19 2013 I sat down and sketched Crash to get back into it. These are the pages I did minus some images that didn't quite make the cut. 

I'm archiving my work from the past few years. That's what lead to this rediscovery. It was fun and something special drawing Crash back then. Like visiting an old friend you haven't seen in a while and catching up on things.

 

Facial Expression notes

Here's something from over the summer. I gave my students a little demo on things to keep in mind when managing facial expression models for their characters.

Spyro the Dragon - finished painting

Hello friends! How are you? It's been so busy the last month and a half I can't begin to tell you. Causing some genuine issues which I fully intend on addressing soon. But that's a subject for a later time.

Meanwhile remember this post from last August 21? It was a pencil drawing of Spyro on illustration board. I posted that I was going to paint it. Well I'm happy to report that I did. Here it is...

Took a while to complete. I worked on it at different intervals. I figure around 18 sittings a little at a time since that day in August. Finally finished it the morning of November 2 around 6 am. Then I went to the corner shop at 7 am when it opened and bought a frame. By 9 am I was at a local art gallery to feature it in an upcoming art show and I had to deliver the painting that morning to make it.

The acrylic color palette I used was very odd and also limited. As such I noticed the colors were getting away from me as I progressed with the painting. Spyro was turning out as something other than the red violet he is known to be. So I went with what I had using these unusual colors and decided to make this a different character.

I call the painting "Dark Spyro" and imagine him to be an evil counterpart from another dimension that creates havoc in the world Spyro inhabits. I think I'll call him Oryps.

Thanks for you patience with my extended break from posting. Working on this was one of the reasons. As an added bonus I'd like to feature scans of the painting at different stages of its development going backwards in time. The original is 8 1/2 x 11 inches (around 21.6 x 28 centimeters). 

 

Here once again is the original sketch...

Big Bad Bunny - Head Rotation

A couple nights ago in class while working with beginning students in character design I was lecturing about the importance of being able to create a professional rotation. Being able to turn a character is an essential skill in the scheme of things when it comes to production. So I came up with a fun character concept and did this demonstration turning the head.

Pet Octopus?

I started this demonstration a month ago in class helping a student with her interpretation of an image she was coming up with concerning a strange hairstyle she was creating for her character. That's the drawing on the left. Then I saw something in what I sketched which gave me the idea of a girl who wore her pet octopus on her head. Thus the drawing on the right.

Character head design - Class demo

Greetings folks! I came up with this little sketch the other day in class for the beginning students in character design at my school. You can see signs of the basic construction of the character in blue pencil. Once I had the concept developed I committed to the form with a final line in graphite. Then I followed up with blue pencil again to accentuate an overhead light source and bring out the dimensional aspects of the forms that make up the design giving the image depth of field. Nothing fancy just something quick and fun.

I'm on Twitter

Lately people have been encouraging me to go to Twitter and open an account. I registered years ago in 2009 and left my account dormant. Over the past few months friends have really been getting on my case about launching it. So I started by developing some art dedicated to a Twitter theme.

A little while ago I drew some sketches of Coco Bandicoot. One in particular featured her with Crash. I thought that version of Crash would work well for what I had in mind and created a graphic for Twitter from it. Then I modified the image for header art on Twitter.

Late in the evening on Sept 11 the account went live. I though I'd get maybe 20 or 30 followers by the next day. Boy was I wrong.

Currently a little more than 24 hours later my follower count is at 1769 as of this writing.. 

Additionally I have 107 comments that need attending. 

I guess I've got my work cut out for me! Anyway my longstanding Blogger community is great and I will continue to interact here. If you're on Twitter and you'd like to follow me there you're welcome to do so if you like.

Here's the link... https://twitter.com/zembillas

Here's the Twitter art I did. Thanks everyone! I'm a lucky person to have the attention of many wonderful people!