Sketchbook: Bandersnatch

Bandersnatch

Hello everyone,

I've recently finished studying Games Design (degree pending) and wish to improve my abilities in 2d aspects of design, specifically painting.

I thought I'd tackle two elements at once, so I'm also improving my knowledge of human anatomy, starting with the head.

After consulting Proko's video tutorials as reference and watching several videos on ctrlpaint.com, I have done several sketches of the human nose.

I would greatly appreciate any feedback or suggestions for my work.

Thanks,
Lucy

A collection of celebrity noses:-
1. Scarlett Johnansson 2. Kate Beckinsale 3. Sarah Jessica Parker 4. Kristen Stewart 5. Steve Carell 6. Morgan Freeman 7. Own Wilson 8. Leonardo DiCaprio

Bandersnatch

Day 2; I've started research into lips.

Keeping it strictly female, currently. Though it's difficult to find nude lip reference.

Here are a collection of female celebrity lips, 2 for each celebrity (left-to-right: Dita von Teese, Lucille Ball, Kim Basinger, Angelina Jolie, Nicki Minaj, Jennifer Garner, Megan Fox, Rihanna, Beyonce). These images don't particularly look like the reference; low quality images and bad lighting meant I had to do a lot of guess work. Note, I couldn't find any good lip skin colour palettes, so I had to sample directly from make-up.

Bandersnatch

Day 3; more work on noses and lips, but this time, they're together!

The paintings are looking a little airbrushed because I'm only using the hard-round brush. I should find a brush suitable for texturing skin.

Body parts become very abstract when you isolate them, I've started to see characters and faces in these studies.

1. Rihanna 2. Sandra Bullock 3. Avril Lavigne 4. Emma Watson 5. Megan Fox

Bandersnatch

Day 3 Mark II; male lip studies.

I've spent the last hour or so studying male lips, and I'm finding it difficult to make them look masculine. While I may have chosen some voluptuous lip types, it seems the key is to make them thin, muted and with very little specularity.

1. Elijah Wood 2. Chris Hemsworth 3. Justin Timberlake 4. Keanu Reeves 5. Joseph Gordon-Levitt 6. Will Smith

Bandersnatch

Day 4; male lips and noses and bad, bad facial hair.

Finishing up my studies of lips and noses before I move onto the ear, I've done some celebrity male features. I've never done hair before. And this was a bad attempt at best. It's worth scouting around for some good tutorials.

1. Benedict Cumberbatch 2. James Franco 3. Tom Cruise 4. Ben Barnes 5. Gerard Butler

Bandersnatch

Day 5 & 6; ears from the side, front and back.

I've spend some of yesterday and today researching the forms of the ears. It's been really difficult to find good ear reference that isn't too low resolution or too out of focus. I enjoyed drawing the ears from the front perspective most of all.

Bandersnatch

After watching Nacho Yague's speed painting of 'The Librarian' yesterday, I wanted to try my own speed paint of a portrait.

This is my first attempt at a portrait, using the Lord Commander from Game of Thrones as my reference. I added a helmet and an army, but I feel like the helmet looks like it's just stuck on the painting, as opposed to being part of it. I wasn't sure how to fix that.

OXGears

Lol, i thought the BG was brush marks till i looked closer. GJ on those details.

Bandersnatch

@OxGears Thanks a lot!

I doodled a quick pirate-esque character design a few weeks ago, and finally got chance to model it today.

First real attempt at a low-poly character and I'm worried about the geometry around the joints causing havoc when it comes to animation. And maybe the spheres are a little too high poly for this character. Also worried about unwrapping a sphere, I've no ideas.

I'm not entirely sure how to do the hands and fingers. They are currently very sloppy boxes. Any suggestions?

Bandersnatch

I've unwrapped and started texturing the pirate now. And I can see some major seam errors, which, should have been avoided in the UV mapping stages. But this is a learning experience, and this shouldn't happen again now. The hat and pants especially, show some obvious seam issues.

In texturing terms, I'm struggling with the bandanna and the boots, they really suffer in comparison to the rest of the texture. The model is 450 polys / 744 tris.



I see a lot of people with really neat texture sheets. That's not in my nature.

Bandersnatch

I fixed the seams issues with the pirate using Deep Paint 3D. I still want to edit the face/beard so I'll update more on that later.

In the meantime, I've started and finished (until I change my mind) the cutlass. GAH, I'm really struggling with the hand painted style, especially painting metal.

76 polys with 512 dif.

Bandersnatch

OK update. I've set up a little scene for the pirate. But boy, is it brown! I need some other colour in there, but will that detract from the character? These are the questions on everybody's lips. Maybe.

Still not set on the face. I'm not about that face.

Bandersnatch

I added a splash of colour by adding in some fish. There's a pun in there somewhere, I'll let you try and find it, and when you do, tell me where it is.

Final scene (inc. props and pedestal); 848 polys / 1,461 tris with 2x dif.