Perspective drawing cheat

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Bumps in the road

Having produced a couple of business card designs using a template that I found online (see previous post) I uploaded them to a printer's website last week, only to discover that the dimensions I'd used weren't standard business card dimensions.  The template that I used was, I assume, for hardcore artistic professionals who print their own cards.  I spent Friday evening re-doing the cards to use the correct dimensions, regretting the wasted time.
These are the sorts of things that vaccuum up the time.  It is very rare that any artistic project, no matter how small, turns out right on the first go, and occasionally something will have to be done over from scratch as there will be no way to salvage what I've already done.  I have a number of pictures on the go at the moment, that are being held up by various factors - refererence material isn't available, or there are technical issues, or I just can't make a decision regarding which approach works best with a particular picture.

Artists' Reference

Believe it or not, there was a time long ago, when I thought that all comic book artists made up every single image in their stories out of their heads.  This idea was reinforced by reading  "How to draw comics the Marvel way" by Stan Lee, which demonstrated how John Buscema would construct scenes and characters completely from scratch, beginning with lines, cubes and cylinders, with other details filled in afterwards.  Believing that this was the only way to draw comics, I attempted to imitate Mr Buscema, only to find, sadly, that all the resulting figures looked like robots.
Later on, I got into artists like Jon J Muth and Bill Sienkiewicz, whose artwork was more lifelike, and I began to suspect that there was some photo-referencing going on.  The clincher came when Muth illustrated a book whose hero bore a suspicious resemblance to James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause.  He illustrated further stories "starring" Marcel Duchamp and Anthony Hopkins, their likenesses having been lifted from photos and film stills.  Although I'm now not one to play the "cheat" card with artists, at the time I couldn't help being a little judgemental, particularly as my teachers at art college had told me that I shouldn't draw from photos.
Muth is not unique in this regard, however.  With the standard of reproduction in comics having improved, painterly artwork and photo-realism have become industry standards.  Occasionally it is possible to identify the source of some of the artist's figures.  With some artists, it is a little harder to tell where that familiar face has come from, and that nagging sense of familiarity becomes a distraction.

Occasionally, use of found imagery can land an artist in hot water.  Back in the nineties, Jackson Guice drew a cover for an issue of Doctor Strange, lifting an image of Amy Grant from one of her album covers.  Grant's management, not wanting Grant associated with the occult content of a Doctor Strange comic, took legal action and had the comic withdrawn from bookshelves.

Wyeth

This evening I watched an old South Bank Show about Andrew Wyeth.  What he had to say on the subject of painting was very interesting.  Firstly he described how other painters had turned from realism to abstract painting because, in their words, they had "exhausted the possibilities" of realism.  Wyeth's riposte to that was that they had exhausted the possibilities within themselves, and revealed their own shallowness.  The other point he made, a couple of times, was that you had to wait for the perfect moment in time to capture a picture.  He said that taking a photo (or painting from a photo) doesn't suffice, because you have to be present in the moment.

Razorback Pictures 4

Another one.  I assembled the "hovercycle" by adapting an existing model, stripping away quite a bit of its' body and then adding on parts of my own using Wings and parts from Doga-L1.

Doga is a Japanese program that allows a user to assemble models - robot, spaceship, etc. - from a built-in collection of parts and animate them.  I've never used it for animation, but have found that the parts, which can be exported in DXF format, are brilliant for use in making sci-fi models.

The biggest pain with Poser is actually posing the figures.  It has got easier over time, however, especially since I learned to use Inverse Kinematics.

Razorback Pictures 3

Another one.  I wanted an image that shows Razorback in his capacity as child-minder, protecting the innocent.

Razorback Pictures 2

A couple more reference pics for my Razorback story, both showing scenes from the third chapter.  The bottom one is a giant insects' nest, and I think it's turned out looking quite pretty.

Razorback pictures

I am currently working on illustrations for my Razorback story.  My chosen method is to create the scenes using Poser, Bryce, and reference pics from the web (where models are unavailable) and base my final pictures on that.  To that end, I've been putting together models of the characters in Poser, modifying the geometry of existing models and adding accessories and props to make them as close to the characters in my head as possible.  My alien reptile bounty hunter (shown in an image in a previous post), for example, is created by placing the Poser Velociraptor's head onto Michael's body, and adding the Velociraptor's tail, some custom-made accessories, and modifying the legs to make them more dinosaur-like.
The biggest headache has been Razorback, the hero of the story.  In the story he's a two foot-tall cat-like alien with a lynx-like face and backward-jointed legs (like a cat's rear legs).  A few years ago, the perfect model on which to base Razorback was available online; all that was needed was to change the figure's proportions to make them more childlike. Unfortunately, that model requires a piece of software called an "Objaction Mover" and the original Poser 4 man in order to work, and the Poser 4 man has been changed in later versions of Poser. 
My workaround has been to take one of the child models that ship with Poser and stick a cat's head on him.

The art of self-promotion

Three blog updates in the same day - this is wholly down to the fact that I've been ill in bed.

I have taken advantage of a recent Wix sale to obtain a domain for my website, in order to dispense with that unwieldy address that has (no doubt) put off any potential visitors.  simonfaiers.wix.com/simonsbrain is no more - my new address is sbfcreative.com.  Still not my first choice, but sfcreative was already taken.

I've also had a go at producing business cards that reflect my creative output - and website address - more accurately.  The previous card showcased my cartooning skills, but I haven't done any proper cartoons for quite a while, having spent a lot more time on the pencil drawings.

I'm still undecided about whether to go with the bird or the building:

Reference pics for Razorback illustrations

Thought I'd have a go at posing some of my Razorback characters and putting them in some scenery.  Poser's really improved the "toon rendering" tools since version 6.

Charley (the swimming character) is meant to have webbed feet, but I haven't yet found a way to "morph" a character's entire foot.

I recently read a Stephen King book called "The Wind Through the Keyhole", which included some black and white illustrations.  There were only about half a dozen illustrations in total - they were quite simple line drawings, and made me realise that illustrating a story doesn't require complicated pictures stuffed with scenery and characters - that it is possible to convey a lot with very little.

Framed picture

Okay, that doesn't look too bad.

Framing 2

It's been a good summer as far as drawing goes.  Despite the inconsistency of the weather I've still managed to get outside and draw the scenery around London and, for a couple of days, in Paris.  There is now a heap of pictures in a box in my room that all need to be sorted through, completed or scrapped.

This afternoon I went to IKEA to purchase some frames, and have got a couple, one to fit an A4 picture and one to fit an A5.  So one step taken in a forward direction.

Giclée (/ʒiːˈkleɪ/ zhee-KLAY or /dʒiːˈkleɪ/) is a neologism coined in 1991 by printmaker Jack Duganne for fine art digital prints made on inkjet printers. The name originally applied to fine art prints created on Iris printers in a process invented in the late 1980s but has since come to mean any inkjet print.

Framing

I am in the process of trying to print and frame some of my drawings, with a view to possibly exhibiting them somewhere.  I have nowhere definite planned to exhibit, but people keep saying I should, and I can't exhibit without first printing and framing my pictures.  There are a number of considerations, however, and this is all new territory for me:

•  Where to print.  I tried one photo printing place online, and the colour of the pictures got lost a bit in translation.
• Framing.  IKEA list a number of different types of frame, all with funny names, and with dimensions given for each type of frame.  I don't know whether what they are giving is the size of the frame or the size of the picture each frame will accommodate.
• What to print on.  Matt or gloss?  Textured or non-textured?

Two figures

Two of my rigged characters - not great by any means, and certainly not figures that I'd feel happy about releasing to the public (the monkey's tail is particularly embarrassing) but with some postwork they could pass muster in an image.

Wix vs WordPress

I have just attempted to create a website for my pictures using WordPress, only to run into the same issues that I had the last time I used it.  It is terribly unintuitive, especially when compared with Wix, and even a small matter like creating a gallery for my pictures on WordPress is a headache.

Breathing Life 2

Work continues on the rigging of figures.  It has become something of an obsession now, and is beginning to eat into my bedtimes in the evening.  Which is probably a good sign.

The penguin is looking a lot healthier, as is the monkey.  Doing this is giving me fresh insight into what a time-consuming business rigging is: naming each body part, setting limits, assigning polygons to different bones, etc.  It is also teaching me a lot about the importance of good modelling.  I have discovered that my monkey's tail isn't anywhere near subdivided enough, and there is no way to fix this in the rigging process - it's just not going to bend naturally.  My only options are to start again with a modified version of the model or create a new figure for the tail and attach it to the monkey's bottom.

Piggy

My latest character-in-progress.

Rigging

I hate rigging.  It has always been the most difficult part of creating a 3d character, and something I would bend over backwards to avoid doing.  Few things are more soul-destroying than spending weeks on creating a model, UV-mapping that model, texturing that model, and then importing it into Poser's set-up room, only to find that the thing bends all wrong when you try to add bones and movement.  The biggest source of frustration is not knowing why a body part creases, bulges or distorts when you try to make it bend or twist, and not being able to find a single tutorial or forum post online that explains clearly how to remedy the issue.

Over the past week I have had another go at using Poser's setup tools to try and complete all the models that I started rigging years ago but abandoned.  Fortunately, Poser has changed its' tools to add weight-mapping, a process that highlights vertices that are affected by a bone's movement, highlighting the most affected areas in green and the least affected areas in red (or vice-versa, I can't remember which way round it is).  This makes it a lot easier to see what is going wrong when the movement is incorrect.  Also, rather than approaching rigging as a horrible-but-necessary job to be got over and done with as quickly as possible (and letting myself in for a world of exasperation when the job ends up taking much, much longer) I am trying to enjoy the process and take my time over it.  This yielding much more satisfactory results.

The theme here is "finishing", and it is something that has applied to all of my creative endeavours of the past two years.  I read recently that Stephen King had a near-fatal accident, which motivated him to accelerate work on his "Dark Tower" novels and bring them to a conclusion, realising that he didn't have all the time in the world to complete the book at a leisurely pace.  As morbid as it sounds, this awareness of one's own mortality is a strong motivator: you realise that bringing something to the point of perfection is no good if nobody ever gets to see it because you shuffle off this mortal coil before it can be released to the public.

Fishie

This week I decided to have a go at finishing rigging a fish model that I'd started rigging a while back but put on indefinite hold.  At the time I was concentrating on making simple characters, as I was sick of trying (and failing) to rig complicated biped figures with hands.  The biggest issue with this character was the face, which I didn't know how to morph (particularly the opening and closing of the mouth) because of the shape of the character.  In the end I used a magnet to make the jaw open and close.
He's now in a more serviceable state, although some post work was required on this image because the jaw is still a bit bumpy.

Breathing Life

I have purchased Anime Studio Debut as it was on sale (40% off) last week, and because 2d animation is something I've been wanting to try for a while now.  Having been bitten by the animation bug, I also had a go at using Poser's built-in animation tools last night.  I decided to start with something easy, so tried giving movement to my robot character.   It was a lot of fun.

This naturally led me to take a look at some of my other Poser characters, of which there are quite a few littering my hard drive.  My rigging skills are still very poor, and a lot of my models are incapable of being animated as things just don't move correctly.  This doesn't stop me from periodically trying again to rig the blasted things.

Animation is, however, the latest digression from the previous digression from the digression before that.  I've got into that rut again, of starting a lot of things without finishing them.  I tend to pursue something - story writing, cartoons, drawing, digital art - until I'm sick of it and then I divert into another mode of creative expression.  Now the unfinished cartoons, drawings, models etc. are starting to pile up.

Shelving

I'm having to put drawing on the back burner for the time being.  Not because there's no time, but because I seem to have temporarily lost my mojo where drawing is concerned.  All the nice buildings that I would like to draw in London are obscured by the currently-blooming trees or some other obstruction.

On Sunday I went to Hyde Park looking for something to sketch.  The weather was flipping erratically between rainy and sunny but I decided to chance it.  I came upon a sculpture of a cherub wrestling with a dolphin.  The perfect angle from which to draw it would have been from the front, but the bench nearest to the front was occupied by a guy who had taken his shoes off.  I had to settle for a bench to the right of it instead.  I started drawing and soon realised that the sun was positioned in a place behind the sculpture that made it impossible to make out the cherub's head.  I decided to make the best of it.  It soon became clear that I was using the wrong pencil and the picture was going all wrong as a result.  I started again with a different pencil.  The second attempt went wrong.
I gave it up for a waste of paper and walked next to the lake looking for another subject.  I found an interesting building and began to draw it.  Then it began to rain.  In the end I gave up.

Checking in...

Okay, I'm back after yet another extended break (busy busy busy!).  So what's new?

3D: Over the past week I've been producing morphs and textures for my rigged tortoise character, using Hexagon for the former and Blender for the latter.  The texturing has thrown up issues: firstly, because the model is broken up into "material groups", there is now no single overall material for the model that I can paint on to; secondly, while painting a superhero texture for the character, I find that the lines dividing his skin from his mask (for example) are far too jagged.

Story: I've invested in a Bluetooth keyboard so I can type on my Kindle at work.  This means a lot more is getting done on it, and the story has gone into some strange and unexpected places.

Poser reference

A while ago I had this idea of using Poser as a reference tool for producing illustrations for my Razorback story.  I managed to produce a few suitable models for some of the characters - Razorback, Matt, Charley and Roptar - but then I got sidetracked for about a decade.  Just lately, with the writing of the story having taken off, the idea of using Poser as a reference tool for the illustrations has resurfaced.  Unfortunately, the original models that I produced got lost when my computer was stolen (around 2008) so I've got to produce the characters again.
These are not meant to look exactly like the characters, just resemble them enough so I can base pictures on them.  I think of it as being like dressing actors up in costumes.  Matt was produced by taking DAZ's Michael figure and producing a bunch of extra bits (belt, shoulder pads, etc.) using Wings.  Razorback was also based on Michael, but with his proportions shrunk to child size, the legs distorted a bit to give them a more feline structure, and DAZ's Millennium cat's head and tail added.  So far so good...

Selling

I have just been through a steep learning curve in the process of selling a print of one of my drawings.  On a friend's recommendation I went with a particular printing service and received the image through the post only to find that they'd lost the colour and the picture was more grey than blue.  I then had to apologise to my friend/customer, get in touch with the printing service and get another print sent out.  Fortunately they didn't charge me for the second version, which had retained more of the colour than the first one.  Next I had to get hold of some of those "do not bend" envelopes, sort out the postage, print out an invoice (which had to be done elsewhere as I don't have a printer at home) and try and find a post office that I could reach outside of work hours.  Lacking a post office anywhere near my workplace, I had to go to the one at Charing Cross last night.  The picture is now, hopefully, on its' way, two weeks after it was first requested.