Personal Development - Feedback/Critique

I asked academic tutor Ryan Locke to give me regular feedback on my digital art, and he said he will. So I'll be adding this to my list of personal development. His most recent feedback to me:

I will revisit this piece in the future and apply his feedback into future pieces.

Revisal of Aim/Objectives/Project

Moving away from species/races > to cultures.

As 2nd semester rolls on, I've finally clicked things in my head of where I want to go with my project, dissertation, and digital illustrations. I focus so hard on species and races, and I started realizing this is not what I want to do. Instead, I want to focus on cultures and faith, rather than biological appearances.

I proposed the following to Robin:

"To create and show multiple characters showcasing a range of different cultures, religions and backgrounds neutrally and realistically, co-existing and interacting with one another suitable for a fantasy videogame."

to which he responded with:

"To examine cultural, religious and spiritual factors that impact on human appearance, and to embed this knowledge in the design of original characters for the fantasy genre"
Title - 'An investigation into culture, religion and spirituality in fantasy character design'

My reasons for this direction; all characters in video games that belong to one race (in this case from henceforth, human) look the same, dress the same way, believe in the same faith, and live in the same environment, believe in the same government system, etc. I personally believe this is stale and doesn't allow for individuality. This is not the case in reality. And fantasy is limitless.

Critical framework post will much clearly explain where my research will go from here.

Supervisor Meeting of Semester 2

From now on, me and 4 other fellow artists will be meeting with Robin Sloan on a weekly basis, Friday. I will probably not blog about it weekly, as I'm filling out weekly Supervisor Meeting sheets instead to keep on track. But I felt it appropriate to blog the first one :)

Agreed/talked about points:

Lit Review - The feedback is more important than the grade. Things can be bumped up! But I have to very carefully follow my feedback.
Dissertation - We can submit drafts to Robin more regularly, and I should take advantage of this.
Semester 2 - The course didn't start in January, it started in September. Remember all my previous research! Read this blog over and over.
My personal project direction - I felt that the transition from 'race' of cultures to 'interaction' of cultures was going to be scrapping everything. But in truth, I've learnt much from the past semester and it's still very relevant.
Critical Framework - I finally understand!! :)

Things to do for next Friday:

Critical Framework
Critical Criteria
Pipeline of work
Continue Story/Illustration studies
For blog: Personal style development

As I have a 48 hour Games Jam this weekend, updates will be slow this week.

Personal Development - Speed Painting

Mix of good tunes and sudden urge to paint! I wanted to focus on speed painting. I need to:

- Get faster at my work
- Know when to stop
- Try not to zoom in and detail one area too much. Time consuming, less is more, and it sits unevenly with the rest of the picture

Also practiced some lighting, but did not adhere to proper anatomy or a reference.

Initial sketch (afew minutes):

Half an hour mark:

An hour:

Not happy about the legs/feet, which I started to try cut off. Hair took 3 fresh attempts, which usually isn't allowed in a speed paint! About 5 layers. Wish I did more with certain areas, but happy with the subtle lighting and skin :) All practice!

And a cropped zoomed up version:

DmC: Devil may Cry

Finally got to play this long awaited game! Filled with angels and demons, I knew it would be to my tastes and pretty relevant to my angel/demon religion  but what I've found most interesting so far about the game (still playing through) is the subtle mind-control techniques of demons, and how a simple visual trick (rotating the camera) reveals these messages to the player.

The game is only a few days old, so there's no clear examples to show exactly what I mean, so I've taken some screenshots from a Walkthrough on Youtube. You can see everyday signs such as "Fast food" and "Jackpot!" on the signs transit to "Gluttony is good" and "Spend". There's also "Submit to Debt", and in later missions in the game, especially one taking place in a drinks factory created to dumb and docile humans, the words "Stupidity", "Obesity" and "Poison".

I loved this subtle play of demon influences, and can relate it to my own demon creatures, Belphegor and Mammon.

Story Study - Development sketches

Process of my "story/illustration" piece:

Story Study - Final

My final illustration. I moved away from doing two, and focused my energy and time into completing a singular image that could portray both the good and evil in both creatures.

Of course, I wish I had more time to refine my illustration, and awaiting feedback from Ryan Locke, I may revisit them in the future, as I hate time constraints to be the reason for my lack of showing art skills. Learnt alot about staging, colours, and lighting and happy I was able to put my new knowledge into these pieces. Got to look up some interesting references too, such as "body sliced in half"...

My goal with this piece was to show not everything must stick to the norm, and that there is no set pure good/evil. This case study/test became a personal learning experience and test of skills. Very interesting experience, my favourite so far I think!