W32 Quite an unusual & unique approach to figures I say

Leonie’s small blog island says hullooo! (:
I got a cold again; not as severe though. I long for a year where I won’t ever catch one.
Next year? I’m probably too optimistic.

Let’s go! Journal Time!

21st Wed

• Self Portrait for the day & Figure drawing adventuuures: Felt horribly drowsy with a runny nose throughout the day hence the tissues up my nose.

• PV Progress: I finished the following: splitting shots 21 to 32 and any remaining shots into render layers, worked on Tonko‘s exterior building further, modeled the paint brushes and started going through all the shots up to 21 to add the employee portraits into the scenes.
• Employee of the Month portraits: started refining the Secretary

22nd Thurs

• PV Progress: Having another cold not long after recovering from another is so fun. 🙁 Anyway managed to stay awake through class time, kept away from people where possible and fought against the drowsiness and tiredness without actual cold-related drugs. As he was the lighting and rendering lead, I constantly got Tonko’s guidance as I did basic lighting and render tests as I started to work on each odd numbered shot (far from done)! It is time consuming as this is where anything we’ve overlooked are revealed and things to redo or re-light for a particular scene. It’s slowly coming along but we’re striving to catch up our loose schedule. The rest of the team are busy working on the characters, animation and dynamics.
• As I waited for renders, I also did some figure drawing adventuuures:

23rd Fri

• PV Progress: I personally didn’t get to do much in class (*gasp* you may say) as lighting and rendering issues arose and Tonko spent a lot of the day troubleshooting on both his and my computers.

Because of that, later in the day I was actually able to talk to people in regards to their projects, play a bit of Luigi’s Mansion 2 (charming Luigi game similar to the first but gameplay is still not my cup of tea unfortunately, especially when played over long periods). However I now have things to do for the project over the weekend instead (and you will witness later on this post).

As the team leader, I allowed people to do their roles, updated everyone on how everyone else is doing on an individual basis instead and also through our online communication channel. I think I’m not a fan of too many meetings but I don’t know if my team likes how I’m doing things; I haven’t gotten actual complaints yet! Since I’m the member not as heavily involved in the late production/post production stages, I guess I’m left as the team leader till this project’s end (unless someone wants to jump in next month). Stressing that I’m a leader by title but the rest of the team does a lot of the hard decisions for their respective areas.

• In the meantime, as I waited I did some figure drawing adventuuures: (and see glimpses of my thumb holding the pad down properly)

• Self portrait for the day: It’s Friday? I don’t know. I figured I should attempt a smile for one of these things. I have an axe in my arm apparently.

24th Sat

• Horrible Self portrait for the day: Have an embarrassing montage of my face.

My face does appear more terrible as time goes by

• PV Employee portraits: painting and refining time! 

Employee of the Month of October 196X: The Secretary

Employee of the Month of August 196X: The Bubbly Receptionist

Employee of the Month of July 196X: The Silent Supervisor

25th Sun

• To get there to the sketch meet, I went from car, to replacement bus, to train, to tram, to bus and then a hike around the place. Where was I going and what was I doing? Anyway, train adventuuures during the train phase:

• Because I got there an hour and 15 minutes early, I walked and looked around at the gardens and drew some things. I also observed two guys and two toddling kids play with an Australian football for a while.

Here I wondered…should I do detailed plant studies?

Then I had a go at sketching out a portion of the landscape. So many flora!

I found my place at a bench and drew other assorted things. Then a possum started running about and finally climbed up a tree. Didn’t stay still for long!!

Running out of things to draw so I caved in and drew a few convent buildings.

• Time for the life drawing session though it was…not a straightforward way to get in. The last time I did life drawing was last year so I was looking forward to this.

The session began in a very interesting way; it left me confused and wondering what my focus should be as it seemed to be consistently stressing upon self expression and only feeling the process rather than what you’re actually drawing. The top right is me trying to draw with my left hand (not dominant hand) as well as some blind contour drawings (it’s been ages since I’ve done either). Not long after starting, I decided to do my own thing later down this page. My own focus here is to study the human figure and gesture after all. (: I guess I had a go at a different approach?

My 2B pencil at work with 30 second poses but it began to reach a blunt point.

2 and 1 minutes

2 and 4 minutes

1 minute poses. A lot of short poses in this session than I would have liked. Yet, gesture practice galore! She definitely provides interesting poses!

5 minute and the circle that contains what I did in 10 minutes. She was hugging a female head bust. It was here where I could not be parted from my biro and embraced how unforgiving it is with my mistakes. The pencils I had were getting blunt fast anyway.

Back to 30 second poses.

30 seconds

The circle that contains what I did in 15 minutes. I’ve made her face so inconsistent!

This was the last phase of the session and it was an interesting exercise as the model kept constantly on the move or “flowing” at a very slow pace. So I drew as much as I could of each gesture on paper. I didn’t bother trying to keep up, I just went with the moment.

Both of these photos were all within 5 minutes of scribbles. In the end, this life drawing session was a unique experience though did not have longer poses to allow for finer studies. It was great to see how different people approached drawing the figure though!

• After some discussion about the experience we’ve just had, for me to navigate back home involved a bus, a train, a replacement bus and car; not as bad as I feared! I thought I would be getting back even late than I planned (the destination is not somewhere I’ve been before)! I managed some train adventuuures on the train back too:

These heads are not staged, I assure you!

• Self portrait for the day: What is this person.

26th Mon

• Self Portrait for the day: looking terrible once again with oogly eyes. I keep looking different in every single one of these.

• Figure drawing adventuuures

• PV Employee portraits finish up: the Bell boy and another thing.

Employee of the Month of September 196X: The Forever smiling Bell Boy. Left him with kooky eyes.

• PV Project Odd jobs: Went into Maya and modeled and unwrapped two books, finished unwrapping Tonko’s ceiling lamp and did basic Employee of the Month plaque text on the textures. Unlikely for me to create individual plaques for each frame due to how the assets are currently referenced and time is running out fast. Decided on SEPT for all of them as that’s the official finish month for this project. Got to work on texturing my books. Kept all textures basic without too much painting else it won’t look consistent with the other props.

Employee of the Month default plaque

Customised PV Books (click to view in 3D)

In case the sketchfab viewer doesn’t work and/or you’re not bothered going through the link to see it in 3D, here’s a screenshot:

I figured no one would really see these in film so consider this an Easter egg of my own. I am making the act of texturing books fun somehow! Yes I put my team members in. Their names were in the original concepts I made. Tony is holding his motorcycle helmet and gloves while Victor is holding his bowl of nondescript food.

27th Tues

• Self portrait for the day & figure drawing adventuuures:

• PV Project Odd jobs: Finally stacked up the bookshelf with books and went through each book to remove unnecessary geometry. Very time consuming to stack them up and arranging it without making it too boring. Am leaving Tonko’s bookshelf and ceiling lamp texturing for another time.

Reflection for the Week

Perhaps I’m being too blunt in this section or even my blog entries in general, but I’d rather go for something honest than give the illusion that everything’s showering with flowers and rainbows. Not trying to be a negative nut here but as we all know, where there is learning and good times, there are mistakes and frustrating times. (: Not the first I’ve said something like this before so I’ll aim to not repeat this in a long while.

Got reminded during this week that I need to keep working on my insecurities as I usually still feel discomfort in response to compliments, whether it be about my art or occasionally me as a person. It is mostly because I have grown up from an environment of constantly feeling unworthy, worthless and lacking a mind of my own (something I still can’t completely block myself from). I don’t consciously believe that I’m unworthy, useless and lacking a mind of my own but the unconscious part of me still has this and all the doubts that come with it, ingrained in me. And I won’t even try going into my fears rooted from the knowledge that only a couple out of the countless graduates get into the industry for a living.

For many of you who are in the same boat, I stress to you and myself included that we should accept and acknowledge our fears but do the things we fear anyway. Work with it rather than against it as it becomes a bigger monster otherwise. This is not easy and it will never go away completely, but it is better than suppressing it or avoiding it in the long run. This is sounding a bit preachy yet this is what I believe in based on my own experiences and I encourage you to find your own answers through your own experiences. (:

In regards to compliments, sometimes I do simply respond with “thank you” as I really appreciate and feel encouraged by helpful and positive feedback. I may even let the other person know I am encouraged and by doing so, I am probably trying to pump myself up with positivity as well. I’m never sure if it’s actually working, if the other person thinks I’m crazy or am trying too hard but ultimately it does make me feel good temporarily with hope and positivity in my progress! Other times I get caught off guard with surprise and am left speechless and in disbelief because I know there’s always something I could improve on.

I am happy with my slow progress and enjoying the art journey regardless. I can’t imagine myself doing anything else! As they say, you are fine the way you are but there’s always things you can do better; there is no endpoint! So just enjoy the process by each moment, appreciate the simple things in life, and do things with meaning. (But why should you listen to me? I’m just some person on the internet who types too much!)

Maybe I need to keep building my confidence, ignore the tall poppy syndrome and try even more things. As I think about it, I am slowly starting to but I have accepted that this will need time, hard work, persistence and the company of like-minded, understanding and supportive friends (am always working on this last one especially).
All part of the journey! (:

In regards to my self portraits: it is a cruel mix of self loathing, facial surgery, optimistic and negative self image, tad of narcissism, self torture and portraiture practice (the main reason). It’s been at least 3 weeks of this, hasn’t it? I am not a smiley, happy person by default either which is why you see my default face as the quiet, neutral, observing (unnerving to some), listening, or lost in thought deadpan face in my portraits. I’m going to keep at this self portrait thing as at least I have freedom to do whatever to my face in the drawing.

Also! I’m testing out posting only an image at a time at some other web places (my facebook art page is one of them) but nothing has changed in regards to getting updates from this blog. I’m sticking to blogspot as my main hub for my art adventures. I believe I’ve gotten comfortable and content here even with its limitations (arguably a bad thing as I’m not hosting it and I do have a neglected free wordpress account) and I don’t want to be spreading myself too thin by posting everywhere.
Despite the inspirational things you find sometimes, I’m trying to find new ways to keep time spent on social media and the internet to a minimum where possible!

Thanks for looking, especially those who have been reading! (:
Until next time, Leonie
(UUUinfinity/TripleUinfinity)