Final Evaluation

The Overall Project

When i first started this course, my drawing ability was severely lacking in all aspects. This was probably apparent from my original portfolio where i could barely even draw a cartoon without the entire drawing becoming alien and generally disfigured. This kind of struck me two ways when it was announced that we needed to develop a prop, character an environment as i had apsolutely no prior experience.

The first thing i thought about was how it would even be possible in the time frame, especially with all the development required along the way, making me rather nervous. After taking quite a risky leap towards designing the character from scratch in the very first week, i spent countless hours just working on a head until i was left with something relatively decent. After adding simple shading and spending an un-neccersary amout of time drawing scales across its face, i was left with something that i had no idea was even possible for me.

This is where the course struck me a second time with the realisation that if i kept working at it, i could probably make a lot of progress within the 12 weeks, even if it was quite a short time period. After showing my original sketches to both CDDA lecturers i began to see the faults in my work and huge areas i had managed to overlook, more specifically in the shading. After being shown a few example of how the light and shadows would affect various objects and shapes, i was able to then go away and practise this in photoshop by overlaying black and white brushes over my original drawings.

It may have taken a huge amount of trial and error but eventually i managed to get it relatively correct which allowed me to apply it to differant areas, allowing me to visualise flat images/ sketches as 3D work, showing me roughly where differant levels of shading should be located. Combining these new skills with the texture development in the Intro to 3D section of the course, i began experimenting with the photoshop colour pallet, real images and the lighting techniques, applying them to my work whenever possible.

By this stage, i had spent roughly 8 hours a day on average from the start, jsut practising and trying my best to get apsolutely everything i possibly could from the course as it was very possible that i would never get this level of feedback again. I was left incredibly overworked for the entire unit with between 300 to 400 hours total put in from start to finish but this was my choice and i do not regret it in the slightest as my level of understanding and general improvement through these countless hours has left me in a position where i feel fully comfortable drawing and creating what i otherwise thought was impossible for me.

Spending roughly 20 days of the 12 weeks on the final products and the rest of the time developing my skills, im very happy with what i have achieved. I still find that i struggle quite a lot with drawing faces from scratch at odd angles, especially animal faces as atempting to imagine them in a perspective view feels abnormal due to their generally long shape but the skills picked up in life drawing, the creative freedom and general appeciation for art which i have picked up on the way are priceless, allowing me to now further develop my ideas and style independantly. At first, i thought that the constructive feedback from some third year students was quite harsh but this was only due to my lack of understanding.

Now i just see it as an excellent way to improve, allowing me to see areas i may have overlooked from an entirely new perspective. I wouldn't say that i had a favorite area of the concept development as i enjoyed eahc of them equally, some may have been rather long winded, leaving me worn down by the end of the 12 weeks but this is always expected with leaving myself very little to no breaks. Character wise, i loved the concept of creating something entirely new but getting hte correct proportions in differant angles is fairly tedious, especially with msucle definition.

The prop seemed rather straight forward as it was generally a far less complex shape and allowed me to play around a lot with photo-overlays but the environment truely gave me freedom. As it more down to scale, perspective and lighting, i did not have to worry very much at all about proportions as nature generally creates entirely unique forms.

In conclusion, what i learnt from this has given me a new level of confidence with my drawing in general, i just wish that i had transitioned to Photoshop from the very start as i adopted quite an awkward technique of drawing something by hand before then painting over it within the software, forcing me to adapt the photoshop work around any issues with the original drawing, be it lighting or down to general errors which would then be near impossible to change.

I will be attending life drawing sessions in the future due to how much progress is made over such a short period of time. Having a life model just makes it far easier to draw and understand proportions, texture and lighting in comparison to a photograph.