School Art
So in school right now, I'm taking classes that teach Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash. Anyway, I'm finished with the first half of the class and thought I'd post some of the stuff I did. In case you're interested in that sort of thing. So anyway...
[Art removed to save webspace]
More to come in June!
[Art removed to save webspace]
More to come in June!
Comments
I'd like to take this moment to say that I find gradients tacky and lazy. I find there's usually more skill involved in leaving an area blank instead of using a gradient to color it.
It seems to me you use more time learning how to use the tool than learning how to hone skills. Another thing that particularly miffs me is how your trees seem to be green starbursts set atop brown rectangles.
I used to draw stick-figures, I know, so nobody say it.
Constructive criticism is fun!
I also will recognize the Red Riding Hood comics as sentimentally awesome for reasons I will not yet tell.
[Art removed to save space]
That's all I have to show off right now. After Spring Break I'll probably be able to get the rest of my stuff. It's on a disk at school right now, and school's closed.
Some notes on outlines, and the color black:
When I took painting, my teacher told us to avoid the use of the color black-- it made the painting look dead. Instead, use dark-pigmented colors to aid in shading. Dark blues, purples, dark reds, dark browns. Changing to colors made a big difference in the outcome of the painting. Our works looked more like real life, and they were more visually inviting.
Outlines make an image look 2-D. Lack of outlines can help you suggest 3-D dimension, thickness, and space, even without gradients. (I don't have an example to scan in right now, but think of video games-- compare the art style in Paper Mario to any of the more 3-D Mario games. The outlines are a style choice, but they help to show the flatness of the Paper Mario characters. OR, compare Scary Go Round's non-outlined art to his drawn, outlined art.)
The reason for this is that lack of outlines makes an object into a blob of color, similar to what the eye might actually see. The mind tends to fill in details like space and distance. A second reason the colored outlines in the forest background work well is that it understates the outlines a bit-- by making them stand out less, we concentrate on the green bulk of the tree rather than the shape of its perimeter. This is a technique I have been trying in my own comics lately, using grey or brown as the outline instead of black.
Since I also make a comic with a lot of black outlines, I'm not anti-outline. They can be used to wonderful effect. (I do not use them to wonderful effect, unfortunately. I use them to keep the colors in one area when doing a fill.)
[Art removed to save space]
I'm kind of glad to be back to school from spring break. I was experiencing some major doodle withdrawal. Symptoms include:
-Drawing the Easter Bunny or other holiday mascots on the white board outside your room.
-The sudden urge to play Pictionary.
-Getting out Warioware: Touched for the first time in months.
So when I got back to school, I took out a pencil and started drawing. You know it's serious when I'm not using my usual pen. Anyways, I think I'm over it by now. But this being my last year in high school, I dunno what I'm gonna do in the future...
It's-a-me! Hlavco!
Here's a wolf I made in Illustrator.
Same wolf, transparent background.
Here's the cover for the DVD we're gonna make tomorrow. It's made of bits and pieces of my old projects. You'll only recognize the rainbow-background thing. The DVD has all the stuff I made this year, as well as everything I could find that I made in Middle and High School.
So that's pretty much all for this thread, unless I happen to make something really cool... tomorrow. Which won't happen because I have a lot of junk to finish before we're graded.
Don't kill me!