Leonie’s small blog island says hullo! (: Hullo friend! Here goes another week all about colourful Rex, ovens and cakes.
Let’s go crazy! Journal Time!
24th Wed
train adventuuuures! (aka creeping on other people to draw them via ninja stealth mission)
They are incredibly out of proportion but I’m going to bare my mistakes here anyway!
I still wished that a random guy didn’t sit and obscure the view of the sleeping lady in the top left as I wasn’t finished drawing her. Someone also farted loudly at one point but predictably, no one will own it and everyone will pretend it didn’t happen.
CwR (Cooking with Rex) Rex feedback: Heath seemed pretty happy with the Rex concepts so far during the feedback dailies! Belated hooray from a tired me (:
CwR Designs for oven prop: started making studies of ovens and honing down to a simple design
Oven studies/designs! As I drew my studies, I frankenstein-ed parts I liked and put them together so it’s half study, half designing. I did sort of got the final design the first study/design I did. But I did try to see if could get something else going but it didn’t work out. We wanted something sleek, modern and simple where the lid opened from the bottom. Had to talk to Victor beforehand to make sure I got what he had in mind when the time comes for him to animate the oven.
25th Thurs
Colours for camera shot: rough WIP colour script but then halted it as I couldn’t go any further
Colour and pattern design for Rex: collating moodboards & trying to create a workflow to make colour tests/studies for Rex. Taken up all day to refine 5 different colour studies!
Number 1: Violet + Green eyes + Blue/violet scarf. One of my favourite studies even though it’s not part of the Burning Safari’s palette. It’s bold and stands out from all the other colours. It is a shame that I haven’t designed the apron yet…I hope I will! I’ve been suggested to do a floral pattern for the apron but I’m not game for that because it will fight for attention with Rex himself. But it isn’t a priority right now, especially when it might not even be made at all in the animation.
Number 2: Golden + Aqua eyes + Teal scarf. Heath’s initial favourite because it fits with Burning Safari‘s palette. Personally, it is a good palette but it is not my favourite study because of the exact same reason. I don’t want Rex to blend into the background (especially with the same colour sky and green/yellow backgrounds) and I don’t want to refer to Burning Safari’s palette constantly all the time. It is a wonderfully inspiring piece of film but I’d like to pick and choose what suits this project so it stands out on its own.
Number 3: Golden Browns + Yellow/Green eyes + Forest Green scarf. Chocolate Rex right here and me playing with Burning Safari’s colour palette. I’m trying out options!
Number 4: Golden Oranges + Beige eyes + Forest Green scarf. Another variation of the Burning Safari palette.
Number 5: Maroon/Violet + Bright Green eyes + Dark forest green scarf. Another of my favourites that strayed away from the Burning Safari Palette.
26th Fri
train adventures again
I was in front of a very loving and talkative couple but their heads were so hyperactive in conversation that I resorted to drawing their bodies first and then somehow tried to draw their heads floating above their bodies. A weird approach to life drawing today.
More scary looking heads and a lady eating yoghurt right after I drew her on the bottom right.
Colour design for Rex feedback: in terms of choosing between the 5 choices, got feedback at first from Will, Victor and Heath but then had to work on getting the one basic colour script together to see which Rex colours fit the environment overall. Verdict from Heath’s, Callan‘s and Chris’ feedback: the pinklish-violet colours (Number 5) won in the end! I’m glad that my one of my favourite studies were chosen as it makes Rex pop out from the rest of the scene.
Really rough planning for the scene, outdoor kitchen and prehistoric jungle. It’s not actually designed yet so this is not the final background. Will helped out choose out the colours for the oven, table and props (which are not visible here) with the help of his colour wheel app.
material and colour studies for the oven
Colour Study 1: chosen design with the chosen jungle-like colours. I polished these orthogonals more as this was the design and colours we’re going to use.
Colour Study 2: tried another palette with a volcanic and dark vibe
Colour Study 3: more light colours and contemporary vibe
27th Sat
Had to edit a video for something in Premiere
Material studies and final perspective view on oven: I learned how the patterns of shattered glass works when I made the damaged version!
Rough Damaged version of the oven for reference
Perspective view of the final design of the oven. It looks pretty plain without the “Molten Lava” there now. This is the angle the oven would be in within the shot.
Studies and thumbnail designs for the perfect chocolate mudcake
Mudcake thumbnails and studies! Which numbers are your favourites? I drew floating pieces of fruit too because I am biased towards them. If they were real cakes, I would be eating minimal amounts. Eating terribly eye gouging sweet and sugar heavy things isn’t my idea of delicious.
28th Sun
Got feedback from Will on the cake studies: he recommended for cake number 28 to be developed further with some elements of number 2
Train adventures:
I started drawing trees on the train because I knew I had to do a jungle environment soon! It’s not surprising in how the number of trees decrease the closer you get to the city.
More interesting trees at the train station. Fuzzy mobile phone quality does what it can.
Attended my first sketch group ever: awkwardly said hello in person to Darren Yeow,Kristy Prause and Yangtian Li and some others, all of whom I didn’t actually get to talk too much due to reasons. However, I talked with Helen Cham and Kenny whilst sketching.
I hope to meet and talk to more people next time!! If you know me well enough in person, I usually go quiet and enter “listening mode” during large group conversations but it was wonderful to meet some like-minded people who aim to do the same things like me. It was fun and refreshing to go the the Botanical Gardens to draw crazy plant-life (even when I’m born and raised here, I’m a real hermit and shamefully I’ve never been out much around Melbourne to explore it! It was great to take a break outside of my hermit fortress and do something I’m interested in.). I’m really unfit so in my case, so I got a lot of exercise on top of it. I really welcomed this going out to do arty things and socialising with like-minded people and I felt like I got a tiny bit of a meaningful social life during this brief time. Overall, it was great and can’t wait for the next one! (:
For those who aren’t sure about what sketch groups are, it’s essentially made up of quiet periods of time life drawing things at the designated place. So irrespective of where in the world you live, I recommend that you either go by yourself or with a like-minded friend or even invite a bunch of your art friends, to form a small sketch group of your own. Then find an interesting public place or wherever you’d like to study and draw, then commence drawing (and eat things and share drawings if you’re with company). You may even find existing open sketch group communities online but according to Kenny, they halve in the number of attendees after each consecutive meetup until the very few dedicated remain. I’m only speculating but it might be because people can’t keep it up and are too busy with their schedules, got over the novelty of the process, would rather draw whenever they want or people just can’t be bothered anymore.
Actually you can simply make anything you do a life drawing session anyway. This is similar to what I do with my train adventures! Of course it’s great drawing with the right kind of company but at minimum, you just need something to draw on and to draw with. (:
Here follows my sketching results:
I started drawing some rocks, and foliage without any trunks attached. Now I can’t tell what these scribbles are if I hadn’t known that beforehand!
These gigantic plants were floating on islands in a “volcanic” pond. I was only able to draw a section of it here. I kind of wished that the islands rose to reveal themselves as gigantic turtles. The ducks kept swimming at different directions as they don’t want to stay still to be drawn!
I drew some interesting plants and cactii. Anything that resembles like a prehistoric jungle plant, I would have a go at drawing.
Cauliflower/coral plant that took a while to draw, a random artist in drawing mode and heaps of plants and leaves as well! I’m suspecting that I am one of the few at the sketch group that drew the most plants but I’m taking advantage of the situation–I plan to make studies of plantlife anyway for the CwR project. I need to design plants of my own by my next update!
I got some people in but they moved off very quickly after. The plants don’t move away at least! I still prefer drawing people so this is a weird experience where the plants are more interesting, crazy looking, varied than the people (seeing that it is the botanical gardens).
Mixture of more plants and people and I drew a little version of Yangtian Li from memory because of her fashionable clothes. The ink blots were getting annoying on this page though. A first for me: found a dead insect in one of my pages afterwards. Then on the way back two siren blaring firetrucks drove in front of me for them to be able to drive into a driveway.
Design and material studies for the cake: I also did it in perspective view so I didn’t need to redraw it another time
29th Mon
Concept for delicious mudcake: finally finished rendering it!
Personally biased towards “A” if you couldn’t tell already. I hope this makes you hungry as that means I did my job muhahah. Mudcake A’s candle was changed to a better matching one thanks to Victor pointing it out. (Psst. You saw the original candle in the preview image.) Anyway these gooey pacmans are not included if you decide to buy one of these cakes. Which would you like? In the end, Will and Victor also chose mudcake A, so I’m looking forward to see how Will would 3D model this.
Environment studies: based on Burning Safari, The Croods’ concept art but mostly based on the many photos I’ve collected from Google searches
30th Tues
Attended a seminar and learned heaps about people’s experiences in creative business making and saw Darren and Kellie, Mitchell(?) and Jacinta though essentially I hung around Kristy for the most part! Was also really glad no one heard my stomach grumbling for food.
Got a bit of train adventures in the afternoon and at the city as I got there 1 hour early! On the way back, I was shamelessly gobbling up my pre-made dinner so I didn’t do any train adventures shush.
I saw a pair of glasses on a bald gentleman’s head and I did a double take. His head was angled in a way that I thought his sunglasses were his eyes but he didn’t have a nose or mouth! It was a surprise to see a featureless head among the passengers until I looked closer.
These were trees at the city and hoards of people were all rushing to get home while I was casually sitting there on a bench.
Environment studies continued: I’m beginning to think I am slowly enjoying drawing plant life more than I thought I ever would. As I draw, I am learning how there are countless amounts of variation in trees! The combinations and possibilities!! (Still characters are firstmost for me, mind you). You will see the studies next week; still in progress at the moment!
Reflection for the Week
Indeed, this has turned out to be a rather colourful post relative to the others!
Now looking back, this worklog/journal approach I’ve been doing since February is proving very beneficial for me. I wouldn’t have expected that I would draw/update so much now. If I wanted detailed feedback I’d need to ask the right people to get it elsewhere, but here I’m more actively drawing, independently reflecting and feeling the progress as the weeks go by and I feel this is a great place for me to learn, run free and experiment too. Consequently, I’m going to keep weekly blogging like I have been; it will be interesting to see how things are by next year and I welcome you to come along the ride with me! (:
In terms of learning, I keep feeling I need more time to do things. So much to do; so much wants/should dos so the guilt is always there (I haven’t forgotten about all the plans I hope to undertake!!). It might mean that I may speak of this guilt in many weeks to come. I’m blindly optimistic and am trying to do my best with the Cooking with Rex project (CwR), get that out of the way and squeeze in some time somehow. Either way, at least my sole focus is on learning, improving and practicing!
Phew, have fun with your week to come and thanks for looking! (: Until next time, Leonie (UUUinfinity/TripleUinfinity)
