Hand practice

I've been starting to improve drawing hands, looking at my hands at different angles and drawing them as observational drawings is hard but i pushed myself to get the hang of drawings hands.

here are the hands i drew, each time i learned something new such as how the outer bit of the finger would be angled, here's a quick example of what i mean.

so as u can see the straight lines are at different angles and the bumps follow.

heres the hands:

I'm starting to understand the basic shapes of a hand and i think i will start to get better in placing the hand in simple and natural poses. once i start to get better i will look up references and be able to create a similar hand and pose it with ease since i had trouble with hands.

MAF trip

In the last three days I've been at Manchester attending Home for MAF (Manchester animation festival) during that time I watched many animation that were constructed really well, for example one of my favorite animation was fresh cut grass. The animation's narrative showcases a brother travelling to the city to find his older sister, the animation style was great because of the 3d elements and lighting used in each scene, also the character design really appealed to the audience because they looked adorable. It's a very nice story and I loved it.

I enjoyed the various different lectures from many animators who have worked in industry or have made their own established studio, each animator explained the difficulties of being an animator and how they produce their short films. They explained how they start with an idea which then becomes a rough storyboard, it undergoes many storyboards that gives everyone a main understanding of what is happening in the scene. All this then gets given to the animator teams which all animate various things at different departments such as the environmental animators do background animations.

I enjoyed the whole trip and would love to go back next year, and go through the experience again of watching short films that inspire me to make my own short film which I'm aiming for. By summer next year I'm hoping to make a short film before coming back for 2nd year of animation!

Thought bubble part 2

This blog is about the artists i met and became friends with at thoughtbubble, I'm only going to write about one artist because of the amount i can write for every artist i met.

Minyi

Is an environmental artist and developed many concept drawings which inspired me a lot, Each drawing I saw had a variety of details and colour variations, heres an example of her work:

this drawing is done using Photoshop with various techniques in order to capture the foreground and background of the environment, and the lights and shades are really well shown to help make the drawing stand out and have depth which is difficult to achieve. She gave me ideas such as looking at many photos and trying to build based on them photos, I hope to use all the advice and ideas she has given me in order to create similar backgrounds which show depth using lights, shades and composition of foreground and background!

I hope to make some interesting environmental concepts in future projects and in the year coming.

Thought bubble

The first day of thought bubble was great because i got to meet many people who are into making comics and manga's. The whole point of thoughtbubble is to showcase people who are in the business of making art or visual books.

So many people were at this convention which was why it was so busy, I manged to get to the artists I wanted to check out, Some of them appeared last year and the year before which I’ve met before, it’s nice catching up on projects they've been doing throughout the year and hopefully getting their name out as well as improving their art skills. Some of the artists also do animations as a side thing rather than wanting to do it as a main job which inspired me to keep trying my best to make it my main job.

What there was at the convention?

The theatre

At the theatre artists would go up on stage and showcase whilst talking about their art work and process that they take in order to achieve what they want on that piece of paper or whatever medium they use. Throughout the years I've gone to this convention I’ve learned many techniques and I’m sure to keep learning ways to improve my artwork.

The Halls

This year they used 3 halls and had to use a big tent because of the amount of artists who applied this year, each hall had artist selling work and merchandise. Every artist I met I'd ask for tips or advice on what to do in order to improve my work, with that said There are techniques which I never thought about such as doing shadow drawings which make a sort of thumbnail drawing which helps with proportions, this was really helpful advice and I’m hoping to explore this area and make some interesting concepts using these new techniques.