Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Stuff from break.

A tibetan girl. Not sure how historically accurate this is, but oh well. And a quick portrait.




Some environments. which I'm pretty bad at, so i decided to put in some extra practice.

13 comments:

Unknown said...

can't go wrong with a hot chick and a whip, it's like a burger and fries, cereal and milk, pencils and sketchbooks, etc.

Terry Song said...

yes, sorry if I sound racist but I thought you'd be from China or Japan...Minnesota, wow. THanks for the comments=)

Like your ninja/samruai warrior chick...nice colors and designs on her costume!

Allen Song said...

Great studies, Helen. I especially like your enviro concepts. See you soon!

Anonymous said...

Um, so why Helen do you think you suck at environments?

yah, sorry, I'm calling you out on this. You are totally lying. Frankly I think that's bullshit. Your environments look great! What in the world are you lying for? Attention....maybe? yeah I bet that's it.

The girl looks great! Yeah maybe not historically accurate, but as long as that was not your overall goal, who cares?

Just don't get Roman Legionaries wrong.....but that's just if you want to avoid my wrath.

Great work Helen!

Carmen Chow said...

Yeah what the h*ll were you complaining about your environments?!

Jelter said...

cool stuff. i like the environment with the building/organic in the same one. makes it look high quality.

Sergio Lopez said...

What's up, dont know which one of these you look at more, so I'm posting what I posted on your ca.org sketchbook here also:

"hey, not a bad start with the environments...
It does take a lot of practice, just like figure drawing.. Pretty much think about them like the figure, pay attention to edge, shape, line, etc. Certain shapes look good, and certain shapes dont.. The hardest thing to get into your head is perspective, keeping things in perspective can be hard, but doing things like having a vanishing point template pre-made, or using M@.'s perspective brush can help with that..
But I know what you mean by thinking you dont have "it"... I do environments at work all day and I still dont think I have "it." I think it comes down to having a desire to do them.. If you really dont like doing environments at all, then you will never get very good at them, but if you honestly enjoy them but are frustrated by not knowing how to do them, then you'll eventually get better at them once you get practice and some knowledge. Its just like learning to draw people, where the better you get at doing them the more fun they become to do them.. I found that was true in my case..
One way to practice them and not have them feel like a chore is to take a story, or movie, or video game, etc that you like and create environments for them.. or take a character you like and create the world which they inhabit.. for example, the tibetan warrior girl, what kind of house would you put her in? or where has she fought? Where does she go for spiritual retreat? Build on what you already got. Its about being a storyteller.. You can tell stories about characters by the places they inhabit just like with their poses, constume, and all that.
Once I started thinking about environments as being one more tool in story telling, it became way easier for me to work on environments, because now there was a goal I was trying to achieve by any means I could go for. It wasn't "I have to get good at environments or else I wont ever get a job" anymore.. Sorry if I'm wrong, but thats what it kind of sounds like with you, and I feel like I might have started to lead you down that way of thinking with some comments I posted a few months back. Thats really why I felt like I needed to give you some more advice..
One thing that helps in the actual creation of the environments is learning a bit of 3-d, where all the perspective and basic forms can be laid out without having to draw everything from scratch, and you can also position the camera any way you want in the beginning which eliminates the need to do an excessive amount of thumbnails.. I use Sketchup just about every day, it's a life-saver..."

yeah I know, long... you just got one of those legendary main loop crits, be proud..

Unknown said...

we should go landscape painting, I've been looking for a landscape buddy for a while now.

Helen Chen said...

dermidlet: Yeah! let's go, as soon as it stops freaking raining.

terry: I am from China. :) I just moved to MN early.

espen: thanks, dude. Haha I took it off already :P if you wanna see the full comic, pm me.

Allen: you better be in my VisDev class!

Scotland: Oh if only you knew how much i struggled... More practice for me, I guess :D Thanks for the comment.

Carmen: sdkjfacxf says you!

jelter: thanks :D I'm excited to see what you do for dig. portfolio, its gonna be a hell of a class.

Main Loop: Thanks a lot for the critique, man. Haha, I didn't take your meaning that way at all, its just that I don't like flat out not being able to do something... I'm impatient and concieted that way :P. Besides, I know that while I need to continue working on my character stuff, it would benefit me to be able to bring environments my environments up to a certain standard. Hopefully this semester's Illustration 3 class will motivate me into actullay dedicating myself to a full story illustration, bg and charcters. Thanks again for the feedback!

Konstantin Pogorelov said...

Wow , Helen , thats your character ??!! already an awesome painting! That tekkon collection is excellent, thank you !

Albert Sorrentino Jr. said...

lovely paintings! nice blog you have here! really enjoy the flow of your sketches! good luck to you

Willie Baronet said...

Hey, here's a little secret. You do not suck. :-) Nice stuff.

jon said...

very cool man.. nice drawings!!!