SwiftThought Games

Tag: The Magic Box

  • More Make-a-thing days end of m1

    More Make-a-thing days end of m1

    OK so i lost a few days to kids, illness and a mini-vacation to PAX South (which was awesome!)

    But none the less, scribbles were made, but i’m having a hard time ‘finishing’ even these things. So I’ve been making myself to more and more thumbnails to just start being able to see the composition before starting on the actual drawing. And i feel that it’s been improving my sense of wholeness of each thing, if that makes any sense.   That and watching The Hair lessons on the Magic Box there was a total ‘ah-ha’ moment, where talking about visual rest and the need to NOT render something felt like it clicked. ( see the goblin girl’s hair below)

    sketch-20

    But finally I’ve watched a bunch of other artist talks and one struck me as particularly poignant,  essentailly you should be able to describe your painting in 5 values.  Which I did below and a couple of them are fairly successful.  Now I used the full range and the same 5 values across the board instead of selecting high key / low key values specific to each thumbnail which was probably a mistake, but I’m actually pretty happy with the graphic result.

    sketch-24

    Other misc thing a days, that were more of a mental check out rather than focused on actually learning something.

    sketch-23

     

    Ok Failing to grasp cloud structure was kinda fun.sketch-17 sketch-18 sketch-19 sketch-19b

    Other than the overworked face and broken neck structure.. this was actually much nicer looking 45 min earlier. sketch-21

  • More thing a day, week 2.

    More thing a day, week 2.

    More art and stuff playing around. Trying to make a conscious effort to design shapes that works as a whole instead of just pieces that fit together.

    sketch-11 sketch-12 sketch-13 sketch-14 sketch-15 sketch-16

  • Perspective forever

    Perspective forever

     

     

    Took another pass at this, and made a binch of thums and eventually came up with perspective I liked.

    Then I tossed into the perspective view maker http://drakkheim.com/perspective/grid.php?image=2a811acb319a27b462e6185e36aa491d.png&save=2 and saved out some guides.

    download

     

    Then a little bit of time blocking out some of the shapes and it’s something I’m beginning to think works.

     

    perspective-3But now it’s time for some holiday cheer so perhaps things will be a bit slow for a while.

     

  • Perspective Homework Beginnings

    Perspective Homework Beginnings

    So the next homework assignment in the Magic Box is 3 point perspective and basic environment drawing.

    Start off with a sketch.

    perspective-sketch

     

    And then go back and really nail down the perspective.

    Which I’m in the process of doing …

    Still have a long way to go.

    perspective-2

  • Flying Golden Turtle Final

    Flying Golden Turtle Final

     

    I think this is going to be it!  Gonna sleep on it but I think this is where this journey ends for this piece. At least for tonight. Barring any last changes I’m looking to get this to a printer this week.
    turtle-final-5

     

     

     

    And here’s some details of some of my favorite parts of the painting.
    detail-pathThe little path into the forest

    detail-house

    The little church and houses on the hill

    detail-turtle

    The turtle.. shell and belt buckle just make me happy.

    detail-water

    And my favorite part might just be the little glistens on the water.

  • Almost there!!!

    Almost there!!!

    Getting really close to getting this beast under control.

    Need one more pass on the mid ground trees and then maybe some more balance adjustments but I’ve stared at this for over a month now and it’s almost time to get it sent off to the presses.

    turtle-final-4

  • A Rendering we go

    A Rendering we go

    Foreground just about done.

    Mid ground mostly done maybe needs another pass.

    Castle almost getting there.

    turtle-final-3

  • TEXTURES…galore

    TEXTURES…galore

    okokok.. end of summer and life gets a litte crazy so it’s taken a long time to get this far.

    I know I overdid it, but there’s not a whole lot of structure to work off of in the original.

    So I had to pull in a bunch of other references to get something resembling a Victorian dress out of it.

    mainTexture2

  • Lady Gazelle paint.

    Lady Gazelle paint.

    Ok a couple weeks of quiet, but not unproductive.

    So Month 2 of the awesome yet super challenging Magic Box digital painting course unlocked and the next step is to work on brush skills and economy of brush strokes.  So pushing onward, I’ve started rendering out the Lady Gazelle color comp.

    And here’s where I’m at.

    ladyGazelle

     

     

    And here’s the final color comp from month 1, all lasso tool and gradients.

    finalComp

    And the original Master’s painting

    source

    Man was this hard.

    I mean .. seriously hard.   I’m a scribbler, and forcing myself to think about EVERY SINGLE STROKE, was at times, frustrating and enlightening on a profound level.  But after watching the lesson videos and reading and just examining other peoples work, I’m beginning to ‘get’ it.  I couldn’t have even come close to doing something like this 2 months ago, and I already see so many things regarding edges and just stroke economy that I’d never seen before.

     

  • Homework week 3

    More progress on moving along to the color comps portion of the month 1 homework.  Next week is looking like not much painting time so I’m going to crunch the rest of this week and see if I can get these guys done.

    lesson1-wk3