William Thorup

Illustrator, Motion Graphics Designer, Animator, and VFX Artist

Category: Weekly Sketch Review

Weekly Sketch Review | Turkey Dinner

Another round of highlight worthy sketches for another week. Enjoy! If you wish to stay a while, this week I wanted to talk a bit about persistence and consistence. This topic comes from encountering some emotionally down points when drawing and painting recently, and an article posted by Wacom. A short interview article with an amazing Disney artist, Aaron Blaise, about his “Four Tips for Artists Who Want to Succeed”.

The article touches on two things that I have discussed before, but are so important that, talking about them again will help me reaffirm their importance for myself, and hopefully others. I will try to tie these into my feelings as of late, which I believe many artists, aspiring artists, go through on their, long, artistic journeys.

Persistence

This is my new favorite. I have found myself to be stubborn from time to time, more often then I think probably. Thankfully, this is a blessing, more than a curse most time. With that stubbornness comes the drive to continue to learn new things, and to learn them well. This has been very fulfilling in most of my endeavors, including art and programming.

This stubbornness does not come without it’s down side though. The most noticeable adverse effect that I see is burning out. When I am pushing through a project, and I am churning out good results, then the end of the project rolls around, one of two things usually happen. The feeling that I have done enough, and I can take a brake (the biggest lie!), or, the feeling of zero inspiration. Of just not wanting to do what I was doing anymore.

These two points are where I think persistence contrast stubbornness in the extreme. When one is persistent, they will continue with something with confidence in a good result. Okay, stubbornness will get us that far as well. Now here is the difference. Moderation. To push through a project is one thing, to push through a project at a steady pace is another. This leads to my other favorite point.

Consistency

Ah consistency. For those of us who feel we have a million things we are doing everyday (whether its true or not), consistency is like the Holy Grail. We write to-do lists, we setup reminders on our Google Calender, we try to develop habits, and 90% of the time, we fail. It’s not that we aren’t getting things done, we just are not reaping the benefits of being consistent.

My personal experience with consistency has always been good, when I am consistent. My abilities, with whatever I am consistently doing, obviously increase. I feel better about what I am doing, and I can’t wait to see what I produce.

So, what’s the problem with trying to be consistent, and why is it so hard for me to do? And, why do I go overboard with persistence? I have been able to narrow it down to a few things so far.

Turkey Dinners Always put Me to Sleep

It not necessarily just the turkey, but instead, how much food I put on my plate. Unfortunately, I am not talking about my dietary habits in this instance. Earlier I mentioned people who have a million different things they are trying to do, I am one of those people, and I don’t like it either. Problem number one. I have always been curious, and I was raised to try things, and fall in love with what I try. Problem number two. There is the complex anxiety of knowing that I wont be able to accomplish everything that I wish to, because there just isn’t time to do it. Just like that Turkey dinner, you may be able to get it all onto your plate, but it doesn’t mean you are going to be able to cram it all down.

The closest artistic analogy that I can think of to fix this is to reduce your pallet. Pick out the colors that you think will tell the story the best. Now by applying that idea to what I put on my plate for dinner… Maybe I should prioritize the things that will define me best as a human being, and tell my story in the best way possible, to future generations. Easier said than done. How do I know what will tell my story the best? I don’t know. Maybe a bit too deep, but I believe it is something we should all consider on our artistic, or our non-artistic, journeys.

Take the time to look through some of Aaron’s great instructional videos on his website. I just watched a video about straight and curved lines, nothing new for me, but definitely something I am not consistent with in my line work.

July 3, 2014
Weekly Sketch Review | Happy Monsters

Warm ups. I am trying to do them more often, and often find them boring, and these are the wonderful results of trying to make them interesting.

While loosening up the shoulder, I decided to take the random scribbles and turn them into fun loving monsters. Don’t you “Lurv” summer too?

June 26, 2014
Weekly Sketch Review | End of the Year Sketch Dump

I have neglected my blog a bit over the past few months, but I have good excuses. My brother and I have started to get more involved in the Atari Jaguar community, and that has been taking most of my time. I have been picking up C code, so I can do some work with my brother on that end.

I am really looking forward to learning how to code games. So far I have found it very fulfilling, and I believe my are will be able to reach more people through it. It is quite an enabling skill to learn, and I would recommend to anyone to take the time to learn to code.

I also have had some things with work, and other end of year things in my personal life that take up my time. Through all of these things, though, I find time to draw, and having a very portable device that I am comfortable with make all the difference.

Because it has been so long since I have done a Weekly Sketch Review, this will probably be the last one of the year, and it is much more like a “Sketch Dump”. I hope there is something here you will enjoy and comment on. I have had several down points in my artistic endeavors over the past few months, at it has been a good thing for me to look at some of my work over the last few months. I am still progressing, even though my focus has shifted in a different direction.

This only represents the work that I have done on my Samsung Galaxy Note 8, I have done quite a bit in my Moleskin and on loose sheets of paper. There are also a few illustrations that I never finished, before I post those though, I would like to compile the screen recordings of them all, and put together a time lapse video. It is hard to believe how many pieces you start, but never finish.

December 13, 2013
Weekly Sketch Review | Faces and Characters

I should probably start calling these bi-monthly sketch reviews, considering how much time that has elapsed since the last sketch review. I am drawing quite a bit, it’s just getting around to putting these posts together. It’s more time consuming than I expect.

I have been working in both Krita and Gimp lately, and I definitely lean towards using Krita for my study. Smoother workflow and all. I mainly use gimp for its more intended purpose of post processing now. Adjusting color curves, sharpening, etc.

The first few poses that are drawn in the video are actually from an illustration, I did over a year ago, here. I liked the original and I wanted to draw poses, so, I tried fleshing out the character a bit with some different poses.

The faces in the middle of the video are purely study. Then the last set of drawings are a character concept for one of our Jaguar games.

August 26, 2013
Weekly Sketch Review

I have been slammed for the last couple of weeks. Things in Thor Media look good business wise, but that means more of a burden on our shoulders. With so few people working in the company full-time, it becomes very difficult to find time to do anything on my blog.

Also, I had a very close grandparent pass away, so the family has been dealing with that. But this doesn’t mean I am giving up on the blog, and these recent events have provided sources of inspiration for both work and personal projects.

I decided to dive into a bit of composition. Practicing on creating a focal point and depth in an image. These kinds of studies are simple, fast to do, and seem to be one of the most effective ways for me to study composition.

Then during the week, I worked on anatomy and various poses, faces, random ideas for paintings, and costumes/fashion. I covered allot of ground over the last few weeks, and I am thankful to these Weekly Sketch Reviews for that. This has been a great way to motivate myself to draw and paint more.

I would suggest to any budding artist, get a blog, and try something similar. Its great way to look back on your previous work and see the progress. With me the progress is slow, and sometimes frustration, but gratifying when it is seen.

June 23, 2013
Weekly Sketch Review

Armored Empire is in full swing, and other prospects for the company are growing. We have been very busy at Thor Media, we like what the future is looking like. Amidst all the commotion and work, I always seem to find some time to sketch and paint, that is what these posts are for. Keep the train rolling.

And that is never as easy as it seems. These time lapse videos are encouraging though. I can see progress in my anatomy and gesture drawing, and I am better realizing how important these two things are in obtaining my artistic goals.

More faces. Trying to broaden my portrait skills with different ethnicities, and also some more fictional studies. I used Krita’s multibrush option to do the alien head below. By selecting and axis point and setting the mirror direction to horizontal, it is very easy to sketch out faces, and relieves the pressure of making sure the face is not lop sided. I can see how something like this would make things more efficient in a production, but it is something I definitely don’t want to become dependent on.

All the sketches here are a mix of digital and real. I enjoy switching back and forth. I get to see the differences in how I draw lines, and the differences in the feel of both mediums. There is still a stark contrast between the two, something I believe that will never go away, but I enjoy both, and find that both have their pros and cons.

I have also been working on some characters and costumes. The animal mechanic below was fun. I don’t work with animals much, I am not sure what kind of animal he is, but I thought I would give it a try. The other images are basic costume and anatomy studies.

The last couple weeks have been a bit of a roller coaster. I stress out about how much I am practicing, and I am worried that recently acquired skills will disappear. I struggle with this more often than I should, and I know that part of the problem is that I don’t incorporated these skills into my work enough. I spend allot of time in Blender, modeling, texturing, and animating, which I enjoy, but I don’t want to do for the rest of my life. I hope, in the near future, we can find someone that can cover this work at Thor Media, so I can focus more on the 2D artistic sides of things. On the up side though, I seem to be doing thumbnails allot more. For trailers, interface design mock-ups, and other technical stuff. So my pencil still gets used allot.

June 9, 2013
Weekly Sketch Review

I have been able to do some casual sketching here and there, and I would like to just share a few sketches that I have done over the last few weeks. No real focus, but I am sure you will enjoy them anyways. These where all done through Sketchbook Pro on my Lenovo Thinkpad tablet.

The portrait sketch above isn’t completely mine. At Draw Night, Michael, Ethan and I began talking about how difficult it is to draw the eye, furthest from the viewer, in a 3/4 portrait. I handed my tablet over to Mike, so he could adjust my handiwork. Thanks Mike!

May 26, 2013
New Cintiq 13HD

I am going to brag a little bit, only because this is such an awesome device. But before that, I apologize for the lack of posting. We have officially started our next project, so, I have been doing allot of writing, organizing, and discussions, to make sure we give this project a good start.

This Cintiq 13HD has been very fun to work on. Having worked on an Intuos for such a long time, it takes a bit to adjust to working on a display, but it comes with some advantages.

The first thing that I noticed was how much easier it is to do line work. It is more accurate. The reason for the increase in accuracy is because the disconnect created by drawing on one surface while looking at a different surface, is gone. This makes it more like a traditional medium, which, for some artists, can be very attractive.

Pro number two, is how portable this thing is. It is the same width and height as my 15.6 HP ENVY 15, and they easily fit side by side in my bag. I take it between work, Draw Night, parent’s house, and my house with out worrying about it at all. It does add a few extra cable to my bag, and is slightly heavier than my medium Intuos 4 tablet.

Which brings me to my next point. This device is deceivingly light. And, even thought I don’t do this often, I can easily draw with it sitting on my lap. This is the big plus to this device, light and portable.

Now some down sides. The screen is a bit dim. Most of the time I don’t mind it, just because it is still brighter than most LCD’s. I heard somewhere there is a way to adjust this, but I haven’t been able to find a service manual to adjust brightness. There isn’t anyway to change the brightness with Wacom software unfortunately.

This one isn’t really a con, seeing it will be resolved soon. Getting it to work in Linux was a bit of a chore. Because of how new the device is, native support won’t be around for a little while. I was able to build the latest driver from source, and then I have had to trouble shoot the Settings GUI so I could map the buttons. A bit frustration at first, but I eventually got everything working right, and it works great in Kubuntu 13.04. It also works great in programs like the Gimp, MyPaint, and Krita.

The one big downside to this device is the connector for the proprietary cable, and how it connects to the device. It is a bit flimsy, and one good bump would definitely render it useless. With some extra care though, this can be avoided, and shouldn’t be a problem for most people.

Overall, it has been a joy to use, and for the price point it is a very good device. Great color, great portability, and a great price. I would definitely suggest it to anyone interested in getting a Cintiq, and not wanting to spend more than $1000.

May 20, 2013
Weekly Sketch Review | Mechs

These weekly sketch review posts are a bit easier to put together, simply because they don’t take as much time. I have a few long term paintings in the works, that I hope I can get published here on the blog soon. With time lapse videos and every thing. But, there just isn’t enough time in the day to get that stuff done sooner. Too many other projects and jobs to work on.

I have been focusing on the face this last week, with a bit of an emphasis on facial expression. Working with expression forces you to have a better understanding of the structure underneath the skin. This is really good, as I do still struggle with heads and faces, so working with expression should help me get to that next level.

The image below, is just a sheet I was doodling on during other work. I have actually taken the center image and reworked it for a larger painting that I hope to post in the future.

Concerning projects though. I believe I have mentioned Thor Media’s next app project in previous posts, so, here is a little peak into that project.

I have been spending allot of time putting together flow charts for our programmer. Mainly menu and game mechanics. But, I have also had some time to sketch some mech’s, something that I have never really done before. These sketches are nothing to write home about, but considering it is my real first attempt at drawing mech’s, I think I did pretty well.

And along with some mech design, I have spend a bit of time just drawing random maps and thinking about layout and balanced level design. Something else I have never really done before, but it is fun to think about, and stretch a bit. It turned out to be a good way to get thinking about additional game mechanics and possible story scenarios as well.

April 9, 2013
Weekly Sketch Review | 4-2-13

This last week was really weird. Topping off stuff with Josh the Whale, and doing rush work for Overstock.com, it has been a busy week. But enough of my excuses for not posting more often.

But between the confusion and stress, I was able to enter the serene fields of sketch and study. This time around there isn’t much to talk about, just some random stuff. Kind of all over the place. So enjoy the time lapse, and any comments are welcome.

April 2, 2013