Last semester was busy, but through a lot of time well spent I made some art I feel was successful, and I think I made a lot of progress!
This was an Academic style drawing done for the last several classes of the semester in my Figure Drawing class. This assignment was challenging in that it was hard to feel motivated sometimes, but rewarding because after all the time spent on it I feel that it was a very successful drawing. This assignment also opened up more of my love of shadows since they're such an integral part of the Academic drawing proccess.
This guy is my buddy, he hangs out in my kitchen on top of the cabinets now, mostly because I just really enjoy seeing him every day. This project, to make a grunt that could appear in a game, was absolutely the most fun out of all of the projects in my 3D class. Because I was so excited about making a character it made the outcome even better. I loved the experience of seeing my ideas change and having to work around obstacles in design, and I'm especially proud of the fact that he turned out 99% like my sketches and ideas, and there's nothing more exciting than that.
While technically speaking these sketches aren't anything special, they marked something of a turning point for me where perspective was finally starting to make a little sense for me. On top of that, I felt more confident in using values, and while these values don't really work and aren't as expansive or all encompassing as they could have been, it was progress for me.
Finally, I think this quick sketch rounds off a lot of the things I learned last semester. My values finally started to make more impact, and I'm quite fond of the perspective I've drawn this from. All of this is the culmination of a lot of effort on my part, and even though I've still got a hell of a lot to learn and practice, I'll continue to look back as necessary to help myself see my own improvements rather than the daunting distance I still have to travel.
Despite being a brand new trailer from the most recent E3 conference, this Rise of the Tomb Raider trailer brings me a great deal of nostalgia because Lara and I have shared a lot of time together. When I was 8 or 9 and still so impressionable, I was watching a lot of bad ass ladies do some bad ass stuff, so between Buffy, Lara, Sailor Moon, and even Halle Berry's Catwoman (yea, yea, I know bad movie, whatever. I adored it.) I was sure I was destined to be one of them. While I haven't had many (any) propositions to fight vampires or bad guys or raid ancient tombs, I've learned to create those instances for myself in other ways.
Playing any Tomb Raider games is one of those ways, so imagine my surprise when I found out that the last Tomb Raider game was less about actual tomb raiding and more about Lara's first experience with life threatening adventures. At first I wasn't excited at the prospect of being Lara at her least skilled, but as soon as this trailer was released for the sequel I understood that the developers were giving players the most intimate look at Lara ever, and that they were giving her humble beginnings more importance. This trailer is skilled in the way it handles Lara's newfound craving for adventure, comparing the mundane life in therapy with the death defying life of finding ancient, lost secrets. For any Tomb Raider fan, these games are, in my opinion, the best way to get to know Lara again, and to reconnect with the wonder we might have had for her the first time around.
