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.