Month: July 2018

Today I got a bit inspired, in more than one way, by a video tutorial I watched on how to create randomly generated worlds in Unity. The example used in the video made use of some very simple but effective line art drawings as game assets, and something about them caught my eye, so I decided to try my own version.

Mine certainly didn’t come out as nice as the examples I was working off of, but it was a lot of fun to make, and gave me another chance to play around with shading and blending, as well as work on my line art, so I think it was a good time investment. I don’t think I’ll be creating my own randomly generated worlds in this art style (or any other, really) any time soon, but the technique used seems sound, and you never know what the future will hold.

The other thing I managed to get done today was to finally get the editing completed for the Day 15 video. I’ve been slacking off a bit on that front over the last few days while I was neck deep in game programming, but since I’m getting incredibly close to filming the next one, I thought it would be a good idea to complete the last one. On the plus side, the editing process once again went pretty super smooth, I think I’m getting the hang of the workflow, and it seems like I’ve worked out all of the settings needed to avoid serious problems, at least for the time being.

Of course, uploading and checking the video to youtube reminded me that I still didn’t have any channel art, a crucial part to add uniqueness to any youtube channel. Since the channel so far has been about my journey into artistry, I decided to draw my own.

I wanted to go super minimal with it, an impression of a landscape more than the actual thing, with the nice, thick and tapering lines in black and white. It’s kind of representative of the journey itself, a lot of land to traverse, and so much potential in the crossing. Increasingly difficult peaks to scale in the distance. For contrast, and to indicate a small amount of progress on conquering that canvas, I put in a rendered tower in the distance, part of the Illustrious Kingdom I’m trying to reach. I think as time goes on I may update the image further, incorporating new elements into the canvas as my skills grow and evolve.

So let’s see. Today has primarily been about pouring some major updates into Runic Alchemy. I think it’s coming along pretty nicely, and is turning out to be an amazing learning project, covering more game dev concepts than I originally thought it would. Of course that means that development will be slower, but it also means I get to figure out early how to do things (more or less) right.

As far as drawing goes, today I did only one piece, but since the last few days have pretty much just been a series of doodles and quick practice, I thought it was time I tried to do some “actual” drawing. This eye actually came out pretty decent, all in all. I think so anyway. Things are certainly coming along. It looks extra dark shrunken down, so I made the image a link to the full sized version, if you want to see it in all of its glory.

Do you ever have one of those days where you find that you are both really inspired and also on a roll at the same time? That’s been today for me. Well, mostly last night. After making my post I put several more hours into game development, and made some real breakthroughs on the project. Of course since I make these posts late at night anyway, that meant very very little sleep.

Overall I’m really enjoying my experience with Unity so far. It’s certainly got its quarks from time to time, and I know that I’m only scratching the surface with its capabilities and have a lot more to learn, but that’s also really exciting because I can already see the progress and the possibilities. It’s possible that if the learning curve continues at this rate I may even have something playable in the not to distant future.

Speaking of possibilities, I’m also fairly excited about the new purchase that arrived today: a brand new, larger drawing tablet. My little Star630 is fine, I guess, but I’ve been having issues with it lately, and I lost the stylus for a short bit there, so when I saw sales for the beefier models pop up on [major online retailer] I decided to go ahead and jump on it. I’m still nowhere near the level of skill or need required to for me to be able to justify one of the really nice ones with the built in monitors or anything, so I picked up a 10″ model, and spent most of today’s thirty minutes playing around with it, trying out some settings, and generally getting a feel for the new hardware. It really does seem to make for a smoother drawing experience.

As far as the actual drawing goes, the part of thirty minutes that wasn’t devoted to drawing random lines and circles, or playing around with the various Photoshop brushes went into this doodle. It’s not without its learning merit, though, for most of it I was paying particular attention to trying to change my go-to style and improve my line art. I tried to stay away from being overly sketchy, and stuck to a single brush size and no eraser. The only line variation is from the pressure sensitivity on the tablet being assigned to the brush transfer, so it’s more or less a standard mechanical pencil.

I wanted to spend some time playing with shape, fill styles, shading, and texturing, while also trying hard to stick with more solid and confident lines. Honestly, I think it came out pretty well.

Today I decided to just go for a lot of random sketching. Practice makes perfect after all. At least, I certainly hope so. It wasn’t without purpose, I was specifically practicing gesture with stick figures, and some of the basic shapes for arms and ribs, as seen below

 

 

 

 

 

Aside from some hardware issues with my tools, I think it went pretty well. I also spent a bit of time playing around early in blender, and probably way more time than I should have working out the next step of my game development for Runic Alchemy. I think I’m starting to make some real progress on the user interface, so that’s a nice change.

Alright! Day 15, and halfway though the first Drawing 30/30. I say the first because I am definitely going to require more than one if I’m really going to reach the point I want to be at.

Even so, I feel like I’m actually making a bit of progress.

Due to a missing stylus, I didn’t have access to my regular drawing tablet today, and ended up drawing on my android tablet instead, using Adobe Sketch. Aspect ratio doesn’t match my normal, but even so, I think the results are pretty good.

I followed along with a quick figure drawing course on skillshare.com to create some heads, arms, legs, torsos, etc, and get some practice in with drawing the various forms. It seems like I have line control, at least to an extent, since I’m still getting used to the drawing tablet, but I’m hoping that the balance will eventually shift, since having access to the larger drawing surface, pressure sensitivity, and not having to worry about touching the screen are all very very helpful.

The end result of the day’s study and work is this guy right over here.  I know he’s still not much to look at, but hey, way better than the figure from day 10. The arms and legs still need some work, and his mouth is too wide, but hey, I’m learning. It’s pretty good to feel like I’m actually getting somewhere, so I’m looking forward to seeing how things end up at the end of day 30. And even more so by the end of the second 30/30 challenge, although of course that will have to wait, there’s so many things to study before then!

Honestly, I’m having a hard time deciding where to go next at this point. It’s either going to be a music study, taking a break from visual art to spread things out a bit, or a deep dive into 3d modelling and texturing, to reinforce the concepts I’ve learned from the 2d world and add them to my renders. There are pros and cons to both, I’m kind of leaning toward keeping the visual art flow going for a bit and diving straight into the modelling next, and just making sure that I continue to draw and model on a regular basis to keep my skill levels up as I dive into music and narrative for the next two challenges. We’ll see. Regardless of the order, I can’t wait to see how everything turns out.

Another thing I can’t wait for is reaching a point where I can actually put out a game. I’ve been learning a lot on the game dev front, getting into the capabilities of Unity as well as how to use them, and my head is brimming with ideas. I know its overly optimistic to believe that any of them are going to be the next big hit, but I think that any of them could at least be popular if I can pull them off well with a studio of one.

Regardless, that’s all in the future, so I’ll have to wait and see how it goes just like you. Unless you are reading this in the future and already know, in which case, if time machines exist, can you pop me back a message?

Another day, another drawing. Today I focused on studying body proportions using the Hale method. This approach uses the cranium as the standard unit, rather than the whole head. Apparently it is recommended for a couple of reasons. First, the cranial units line up more easily with solid bone structures, versus the more fleshy landmarks that you get with most head systems which have a tendency to move depending on body type and pose.  Secondly, the cranium is more spherical than the whole head, allowing for more consistent measurement in odd poses, since it isn’t subject to foreshortening. It seems like a good deal all the way around, so I thought I’d give it a try.

Not too bad, all in all. There are a few of the proportions I still need to get a better grip on, and of course I’m still working on my overall technical ability, but with some more practice, hopefully I’ll be able to get a better grip on relative placement and size for the different body parts.

 

Alright, so another day of going back to basics. Today’s art challenge: draw a landscape from simple shapes. Unfortunately this one image is all I managed to get done today, since I immediately decided to go into colorizing it. The color version isn’t completed yet, I may have it ready for tomorrow.

Also going back to basics, I spent a good amount of time today and late last night working my way through a Unity training course. The way I see it, the more I learn before I dive too deep into my own games, the fewer times I’ll have to rewrite absolutely everything during the development process. So I’m following along with the class, doing the homework, and creating a 2d platformer game for Android. It’s pretty fascinating so far, diving into Unity’s tilemapping features and animation setup. I’m fairly impressed with the engine’s capabilities so far, and I can’t wait to see what else it has in store.

I think I’m getting ahead of myself again. It’s a bad habit, and one I’m trying to break.

I did a few more of the Loomis heads today, because I do still believe that putting a strong focus on the figure drawing is going to be really beneficial, since that’s one of my main goals. That said I also realized that I’ve been neglecting my basic drawing class, and that it would probably be a good idea to master the basics before spending too much time on the advanced. So, a little of both then.

The first item of homework for the drawing class is practice in recognizing simple shapes in reference photos. I’ve done some of this already, even posted some here, but with a strong focus on figure. So I thought if I was going to practice it would be a good idea to try some other types of artwork as the reference.

I picked out three different fantasy images, two landscapes and one feature scene. And then I tried to locate the simple shapes. I’m not entirely certain that I’m going about the breakdown correctly, though. The idea is that you can only use basic squares, rectangles, trapezoids, triangles, circles and ellipses, so some of the more organic shapes have to be broken down in places that make as much sense as possible, like the skull shaped tree in the third image. I tried to follow the facing planes as much as possible, but honestly the thing is a mess. It’s good practice, though, and being able to do this reliably is a skill that will come in handy both with drawing and when I start to dive deeper into 3d modelling.

The rest of my learning time today went toward Unity. I’ve invested in some training courses to see if I can get a better understanding of the common practices and what the engine is capable of before I put more time into my own games. It seems like the more I know going in, the less time I’ll have to spend rewriting things to be more efficient. Learn to walk before you can run, but it’s hard when you can’t wait to fly.

Today’s work turned into a bit of an adventure in file management. Now that I’m starting to get a small handful of video files it became apparent that I needed to change my storage and backup strategy. That is to say, my hard disk pretty much completely ran out of space.

So, online storage and local sync issues addressed I decided that it was also high time to do something similar with my game files. I was already backing them up on cloud storage, but I went a step further and set up version control for it. A step I really should have started with, but still. The upshot is that now I can work on my code from any computer that I can download it to.

As intended, today’s drawing practice was much more focused and deliberate.  Precisely four “Loomis” heads, so named after the creator of the technique: Andrew Loomis. Or at least something similar to his technique, anyway. The idea is to simplify the head into a round head shape and a squarish jaw area. The circle of the head is cut off and flattened at the sides by an ellipse, and the size and angle of the ellipse can help not only locate where to draw the jaw and front plane of the face, but also gives a sense of dimensionality to the form, indicating the tilt and angle of the head. I need to keep practicing the head to make sure I can get it just right from multiple angles, and to help improve so that maybe I won’t average ten minutes to draw an over-simplified head shape. I’m already moderately certain that I put the chin line too low on pretty much all four of these. But then, that’s the point of practice. You have to do it wrong before you can learn to do it right.

Alright, a full ten days into the Journey, and I’ve only wanted to quit for a little bit. That’s saying something, I think.

I’ll admit, I had a moment earlier today when I began asking myself if there was any chance I wasn’t crazy for even trying to do what I’m attempting. Fortunately I was able to shake off the blues and keep on keeping on.

Amazingly, I finally managed to get a decent video render for Day 4, so that’s currently up on youtube, and the Day 4 blog entry has been updated with the better file. Recording for today’s video went smoothly as well, you’ll see it here once I get it edited and rendered. Hopefully that won’t take the next five days. (Post Edit: Only 3 days to post the video, but it was really down more to actually having the time to do the editing. Amazingly it worked on the first try.)

As far as the drawing practice and progress goes, I find myself stumbling a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I fully realize that thirty minutes to an hour of drawing every day isn’t going to get me to professional level in only ten days. It won’t even get me there in ten months. Maybe ten years, but we’ll see. Even so, I would have hoped to see a bit more improvement than I’ve been seeing.

I think the issue is my approach. I am probably attacking the problem too broadly, trying to learn too many new techniques and practices too quickly, without giving my hands and eyes enough time to really internalize them. Basically I’m getting ahead of myself and stepping on my own feet.

So, with that being said, I’ve got a new plan for the next part of the 30/30 challenge. I threw together the following image:

I don’t have to tell you it’s amazingly bad. I drew this very quickly, but still at least vaguely attempting to put into practice some of the techniques I’ve been learning. Obviously much more learning is in order. On the plus side, I think I actually know enough now to at least know what’s wrong with it, and possibly even how to fix some of it, so I’m counting that as some progress.

For example, I got the chest to pelvis proportions at least vaguely right, but the legs and head are way too small. The arms are completely out of whack as well. I’m not too chuffed about the hands or feet, since I haven’t spent any time learning those at all yet, but really I should have known better for everything else. I made pretty much every rookie mistake I’ve been learning about over the last ten days, and yes it was a super quick sketch, barely more than a doodle, but I should still know better.

I’d have just dumped it and started fresh, but then I remembered that the main point of this blog is to track my progress, and one of my main goals for this sprint is being able to draw a character like that. I realized that I don’t really have a “before” picture of that kind of drawing to compare to anything I’d be able to produce after the next twenty days, so incredibly sloppy horrible picture is here to stay, if for no other reason than to serve as a reminder of why I need to improve. You. Are. Welcome.

So, yeah, the plan. The plan actually starts with this drawing. I’m going to try to systematically break down the mistakes I’ve made in this one image, carefully study those mistakes, and practice correcting them, one at a time. Her head is terrible? Draw it over and over until it isn’t, and then draw it some more. The proportions are off? Work on the gesture and pose shapes until they are somewhat reasonable. Hands? Yeah, figure out how to draw something that could reasonably be called a hand with minimal snickering. We’ll see how it comes out.

Hopefully with more focused study and practice I’ll be able to achieve faster and more consistent improvement. It may only help me learn to draw this particular type of character, but in theory it should apply a bit more broadly, or at least lead to the next thing coming far easier.