Robin Hunter Preproduction Introduction

So eventful month! Went home for Christmas saw the family, came back to find that the internet had been deactivated! Yay! So had to fix that.

Now on to the show. I didn't actually know where a lot of my sketches are from when I was at home so I'll just upload those as I find them in or on my bags/floor. In the mean time I'm going to try and pump out a set of concept art and hopefully a few illustrations for my project 'Robin Hunter'.

Robin Hunter is a concept art project that retells the story of little red riding hood (with creative license) in the way I envision it. Right now I'm working on the main character Rebbeca Burnhart, nickname is Robin with the call sign Little Red. She is a mercenary fighter pilot turned courier with an time sensitive mission to deliver a vital package to grandmother that could change the tide in a hot war at the teetering point! This story is full of conspiracy, danger, and betrayal! =P

My process is pretty haphazard right now as I read and reread the Grimm tale and jot down ideas. I think I've settled that the world is going to be something like a 'Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow' aesthetic. Still debating what level of technology the world will be and if I want to mix any magic in the world. I am leaning really heavily toward a sort of world war two heavy propaganda war town industrial feeling.

Robins reference images are all over the place, from hours jockeys, motorbikes, fighter pilots, Swat and army body armor, space suits, and snowboarding gear.

Her plane is currently being inspired by the American thunderbolt xp-47H and p-47 thunderbolt aircraft. As well as various 1940-60's sports cars and some modern motorcycles for curves. Trying to find a cool sleek look that doesn't get to much into higher fi visuals. But who knows I just started thinking and sketching down ideas for the project five hours ago.

Some of the photo reference I'm looking at. I'm really digging the back-end cockpit with the motor and stuff on a rise in the front. Along with the swoopy wheel wells.

That's it for now, I need to get back to drawing instead of maken this. Thanks for reading! =D

W16 - 7 - F - No F's Were Given!

12-20-14
An other comp on the flip side of my page from the 20th. Just popped into my head so I scribbled it down.

12-23-14

Today i'm working on understanding this reilly method of figure abstraction. My thought process for this distilling what is going through my head while looking at an image. How I see the spacial/proportional relations and taking a step back and asking my brain. "You're giving me the ok that yes I get the relation but HOW am I seeing this relationship?"  So turns out I see things in triangles. I mean I already kind of knew I liked doing measurements that way but now I'm sort of embracing it.
So I did the large figure with the Reilly method, looking at what my source artist was doing with it and trying to break down what they are using the lines and curves to represent. Then I referenced her work and photos and drawing tutorials for about thirty minutes and really tried to make as many relations and connections as to what exactly this method is suppose to be doing for me and how these lines are relation to the figure.

My sketching notes can be found on the side of the large figure.

4:22pm just finished uploading everything I've done in the past few days. So I Need a lunch break now.

Space filler while cooking=P

tired scribbles

W17 - 5 - O - No F's Were Given!

12-21-14
Scribbling follow up comps from last night during lunch break at work.

W18 - 12 - FOM - No F's Were Given!

12-20-14
Laying in bed doing random comps for an illustration I'm doing. Playing around with the Rule of thirds, the golden spiral, and generally spirals hah.

W20 + W19 - 2 - 8 - FOM - No F's Were Given!

12-18-14
A sketch based ion the bubble suit idea from yesterday and an upset baby from google.

12-19-14
random stuff, and some Reilly figure sketching trying to understand the representations of the lines.

W22 + W21 - 1 - 9 - FOM - No F's Were Given!

First image at top left is a very quick sketch from an anatomy book. The rest are sketches based on the Sketch daily 'Nemo' post. Idea search for a kind of underwater assault/swat buble helm scuba suit. With a clown fish as a primary design consideration.

W23 - 7 - FM - No F's Were Given!

Breakdowns:
12-15-14
1 (Imagined): Action pose, figure with a sword/spire?
2 (Imagined): from my head, inspired by a standard while watching conan the barbarian. I stick figure dude in a "victory pose".

12-16-14
1 (Imagined): An attempt at sexy shoulders.
2 (Reference): Sort of a Meh sketch just getting my pencil moving.

3 (Imagined): Did a swirl that lead to a quick face. I actually was going for a 'realistic' shaded I but I messed it up and turned it into a simple 'P'. Kinda reminds me of Jessica rabbit.

4 (Reference):  Feel good "volume" /gesture sketch. Keeping it as simple as possible.

5 (Reference): another gesture sketch. Going for smooth clean and confident lines.

W24 - 30 - FO - No F's Were Given!

Had a headache so went to bed after work around threeish on Sunday. Started sketching poses around ten or twelve that night.

When I started drawing I was playing with how I held the pencil. Switching between a "sketching grip" and a writing grip. I was trying to look at the reference and capture its feeling and less trying to copy the image. I did try and pen over one of my sketches but the ball point has no fading so I kinda killed my sketch. As I got over how strange and kind good it felt to sketch with a new grip I started working toward confident lines were no f***'s were given to how crappy the result looked.

Here I started getting comfortable with the grip and what I'm trying to accomplish. I feel my lines are getting more fluid and less jagged. Making one mark for the gesture and not retracing it over and ever for the right line. Nor did I use my eraser in any if the drawings. Graphite went down and stayed down. You can see little after thought notes of the poses I was pushing. I was trying not to think while sketching from the reference and just going with what I felt I was seeing. Then analyzing it afterwards.

I started to loose steam here around three or four in the morning. Pushing Walking poses is strange. I was trying to instil what I thought walking should look like and couldn't stop doing it. I managed to dew a few more sketches before running completely out of juice. I Finally broke the rules of the session on my last few sketches at the bottom and used my eraser, so I stopping drawing.

I did a quick light study of an image at 25% in photoshop. The top is what I was working with, the bottom is the full size of the image. After finishing I played some Guacamelee for a while before heading to bed.

I must say that this felt like a much longer endeavor than the poultry work shows. But I guess that means I was learning things yes?

W25 - 6 - FO - No F's Were Given!

Wasn't really feeling it that night. I was trying to get the juices going but it wasn't working. Work is just not good for art stuff.

The bottom picture is like a thirty second sketch of Kevin Macio's "Sith" image Link.

W26 - 2 - F - No F's Were Given!

Started measuring and was like F*** it! Then just started maken marks with the brush. Nothing Technical here, I was going! I'ma start studies after posting this.

It's kinda scary now that I've taken a step back to look at it. Think I need to look at some fashion mags and see how the ladies apply makeup.

W27 - 11 - FMO - No F's Were Given!

Some quick sketches before work.

I'm working at being less precious with my paper and materials and putting any ideas I have on paper even if they are bad, or the execution is coming out in a way I'm not happy with.
Again trying to kill some of my bad habits, like looking up reference or watching other artists and not actually drawing myself. So I'm draw images I like as I come across them. Or jotting down ideas as they come.

7 trying some things with squash and stretch.

W28 - 25 - FMO - No F's Were Given!

5.5x8.5 sketchbook

Power went out today around 4pm. So I took a bus trip downtown to draw at Powells books. Rather dumb of me to take the bus instead of the max. Took me two hours to get downtown. As you might imagine I sketched most of the time.

This first page was trying to take numbers letters or a single or pair of lines and turn them into an expressive form. This is not actually the case with 5, I was trying to create a composition of tension between the figures with a harsh angle. I found that my attention gets drown to the left of the intersection in this case. So would be a good place to put something of importance. Each was about 30 second to a minute.

Breakdown; 8 a dude sitting across from me sleeping. 9 a blind gesture looking at myself in the window, kind of got overtaken by 12. 10 a terrible care from my head. 11 an eye? 12 my shoe and pant bottoms with a little of the back bus step. 13 my thumb on the page, 14 random circles to refresh my pens ink turned skull. 15 an 'S' with a diagonal line through it turned into a woman sitting down with her arms crossed. Each took about two minutes.

These were drawn at powells, I was rather stiff and cold at this point. 19 is a reclining figure derived from a '7'. 20 is two figures interacting. 21 again going for the  harsh angle composition. Ended up decapitating the background figure in the comp. 22 a hulking figure. Each of these as maybe a minute? I like 20, I might do a paint of it if I remember to.

Bought four new uni-ball pens (two black, two red) today for sketching since my old ones are running low on ink. This page is the first I used the black pens on. I was rather disappointed as they do not laydown ink consistently without a lot of pressure and even then it is sporadic. I will make sure to test all the pens I buy from now on. Though I've never had this problem before. I switched over to red after the second sketch. 25 and 24(actually 26) were different black pens. 25(actually 27) was my red pen I was using on the bus. Felt good and laid consistent ink. 15, 25, 26, 27 are all rodin sculptures from Google. Each is about three minutes.

Thanks for reading here are the images of Rodin I used.

15

25

26

27

W29 - 9 - FMO - No F's Were Given!

5.5x8.5 sketchbook

My scanner was down for a bit then I had a power outage. So here are my drawings from that down time.

Was working on doing stronger poses that feel grounded. Messing around with a couple of 'design tricks' for form and proportion on image 2. I was playing with a flowing and jagged juxtaposition of each side of the form. I was also playing with the idea of lines of continuity (or lines that continue, i.e. lost and found lines), I used an 'X' at the back as it seemed easy for the time. Last I was playing with a trick for keeping the planes and proportion of the limbs in mind. I sort of related it to an IK chain from rigging. Basically you place a point at the shoulder, elbow, and wrist and draw a triangle by connecting said dots. The straight line is always the distance from the shoulder to the wrist. The length and angle of the other two lines is the direction and foreshortening of the limb section in question (upper arm, forearm.)

Forgot this one in my bag last night.

Some sketches before I went to bed. Most of the page was from watching Reiq flip through his sketchbook. A few were out of my head. Trying to reinforce my habit of drawing while listening/watching. 12 and 11 are both sketches from Reiq's sketchbook with a small spin on 11 and just the basic pose on 12.

If you haven't seen Reiq's stuff go check it out, he has a really nice cartoon manga style and draws many sexy chicks. Sketchbook flip through video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl5cybsrk2A

W30 - 5 - FO - No F's Were Given!

5.5x8.5 sketchbook

Figure 1: was looking through my warcraft art book and was looking at the orcs 'to the victor' sketch. I liked the woman's foot so I drew it.


Figure 2: first sketch of the day, not really sure what my goal was for this, was just going.

Figure 3: Was going back to my normal box in of torso and pelvis. I didn't really care for it, so I started going for more gesture C and S lines.

Figure 4: Was sitting there just before bed, thinking to myself "I'm f***ing tired." Was about to put my head on the desk when I saw my mouse. When I saw my mouse, so I drew it from my viewpoint. The start of the mouse was a diamond rough perspective. From there I started refining closer and closer to what I was seeing added form lines to remind myself of the volume I was creating.

Figure 5: Needed at least one more sketch on my page before bed. Was surfing the web for something interesting when I saw a Overwatch Tracer illustration that I enjoyed, so did a quicky of the pose.

W31 - 5 - MF - No F's Were Given!

Sketch Reference images and quick process breakdowns.

Figure 1: was trying to do quick mental measurements based off the egg head as my base.

Figure 2: Trying to exaggerate the upward thrust of the pose and simplify the body parts. I started to get a little loser not trying to capture 'exactly'  what I see, but more the feeling.

Figure 3: I start at the but as a mass to start measurements then I just drop the mesurments and go for the stretched feeling I was getting while doing more flowy 'gestural' lines.

Figure 4: again trying to go for the major masses simplified into a 'C' or 'S' line. And curving the lines in a way to show the tension or direction of the body. Did this as fast and loose as possible.

Figure 5: I liked the belly and blance of the image. Trying to go as fast as possible while getting the flow of the pose.

Overall Tonight was me focusing down on one or two things at the exclusion of anything else. Thanks for reading!

Racial Faces

I normal draw Asians and Caucasian women so I thought I'd do an African woman. My first paper sketch in a little while.

The tools I used were a HB2 pencil, free hand horizontal/vertical pencil measurements (on paper and for my reference), and a relative scale with the front of the face as the reference point.

Process overview:
blar! I'll make this readable when I get back from work! ya thanksgiving black friday!

I started with a line from; the forehead to brow, to the bottom of the nose, and down to the chin.

I then drew an angled line representing the nose and another for the brow line.

hair line and strand that stretches from the top of the head to the shoulder to isolate the face/neck.

then the cheek "Y" to find the plane of the face. connecting the left arm of the Y to the edge of the brow, and extending the foot of the Y to the chin.

Did a little more brow/nose work blocking in the nose and connecting it to the outside brow. Then found the top of the eyelid for my photo ref and then the bottom and traced them across.

you can see I did a lot of griding. I tried just drawing angles but it looked wrong so i stick to finding the estimated distance with straightish horizontals and verticals given my reference scale than used the negative space of a triangle to find the curve. Such as I did on the forehead. You can see I grid it off and then find the triangle in relation to the straight lines to get my curve.

after I had the eyes I traced in a sort of "S" shape from where the ear should be to the bottom of the chin to get the shaded jaw area.

I went back and forth between the hair proportions and the neck shading.

Then I moved onto getting the arm in place, the finding the front plane, or light facing plane of the arm. Then found a reasonable cutoff point do box out the length and shade it in a little.

The I found the deltoid's end and the area of the armpit. Then shaded that in.

Thats pretty much it, thanks for reading!

Gioteck EX05 Multi-format Wired Headset - Postmortem Review

Before I talk about the EX-05 (multi-format, wired, black). I want to give you some perspective on the writer (me). This was my first set of "actual" headphones. The only other headphones I've had in the past were Logitech mono headsets. I am by no mean's an audio expert or audiophile. So bear that in mind while reading this review.
The number ratings I give for each bullet point in my review are based on my satisfaction with the product. With the EX-05 being my only experience and basis for 'over the ear' headphones.
Alright now that's out of the way!

My standing opinion of the EX-05 is this; These headphones are great! Now for the nitty gritty.

Price for Quality: (3-5)
I paid $50 (usd) for these at Target. The overall quality for the price was alright. I would have expected a little more durability out of the EX-05's for the cost.

Sound Quality: (5-5)
Sounds are very clear and crisp. The audio balance makes it easy to hear smaller details and voices apart from music. The full tonal range is captured well, I was not left feeling 'flat', or close to ear sound.

Sound Leakage: (5-5)
Depending on the volume you are using and the output of the software you are using. The sound leaked from the ear cups is going to be minimal to a moderately load whisper. As long as you don't have creepers in a quite room with you. No one going about their business should hear what you are listening to.

Microphone Quality: (3-5)
The microphone is very good when in a quite environment. It picked up my voice at a whisper to a yell without cutting out or popping. Though I do not normally have a quite environment. The mic will pick up almost anything from the creeks and crack of the headphones plastic to your roommates laughing in the next room crystal clear. Noise cancellation is nonexistent.

Comfort: (5-5 stars)
They were super comfortable! My EX-05's ear cups held little to no heat, was large enough to comfortably house my ears without contacting the cups or inner liner, and the materials felt good when worn.
The clamping pressure was enough to keep the headphones in place as long as I didn't tilt my head to any extreme angels or make really sudden movements.
The headband was comfortable when warn correctly. But could be very uncomfortable, digging into the skull if worn more forward on the head. I wore it sitting far back on my head.
I have spent upwards of 20 hours wearing the EX-05. After ten or so minutes I forget I am wearing them. They are very lighting. I experienced little to no fatigue when wearing the EX-05. I dare say they were even a joy to wear.

Durability (1-5)
This is where the EX-05 really falls down. My headset broke only a few months after purchase from Target. My right ear cup (the mic cup) went out after the control box got yanked. Even before that the audio would crackle or be significantly reduced if a volume dial was tilted or you touched the control box wrong. With a bit of fiddling it would be fixed in a second or two. But this should not have happened in the first place. The control box was a major source of issues.
The ear cup height adjustment bands were the other major issue with my EX-05. A lot of pressure is repeatedly placed on the plastic plate that holds the ear-cup bands to the headband. This plate proved to be flimsy when it busted one day when I picked up my headphones. It was the twisting force applied by the ear-cup band when held that broke the plate.

Compatibility: (5-5)
Tried the ex-05 out on most of the systems that had a usb or correct sized jack; PC (windows 7), ps2, ps3, TV monitor, xbox360, as well as my htc "hero s". Hooking up to all of the listed systems was as easy as plugging in the usb. Save for my xbox360, that did take a little doing with the audio cables.

Annoyances:
Every now and then the length adjustable enclosure (the part between the headband and the ear cups) caught stray hairs and yanked them out when removing the headphones.

The control box was far too close to the headset and dangled at a very inconvenient location, frequently getting caught on me, my chair, and the local environment. It was far to delicate for this kind of daily beating of being yanked and bouncing off things whenever I got up.

My Final rating for the 'Gioteck EX05 Multi-format Headset for PS3, Xbox360,PC, & Mac' is a 4 out of five (average of all bullet points). If the durability was significantly improved this would be a hands down recommendation to buy. Though, as it stands they are a great headset as long as you are very delicate with them.

I hope this helped you make a more informed choice.

I've included some photos to help you get a feel for how they fit.

look into my face O.O