Foundational Art Resources?
polycounter lvl 16
Any aspiring game artist needs to have a solid understanding of the basics when it comes to art. The elements of art, principles of design, color theory, and beyond.
Do any of you have recommendations of books, videos, papers, or other things that have aided you in understanding art at it's foundation? I'm looking to expand my knowledge as much as I can in this area and hopefully this thread can help others as well.
Do any of you have recommendations of books, videos, papers, or other things that have aided you in understanding art at it's foundation? I'm looking to expand my knowledge as much as I can in this area and hopefully this thread can help others as well.
Replies
http://www.huevaluechroma.com/021.php
Books
Interaction of Colors - Josef Albers
Color and Light - James Gurney
An Atlas of Anatomy for Artists (Dover Anatomy for Artists) - Fritz Schider
Successful Drawing - Andrew Loomis
Figure Drawing For All It's Worth - Andrew Loomis
Creative Illustration - Andrew Loomis
The Eye of the Painter - Andrew Loomis
also:
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/New-Drawing-Right-Side-Brain/dp/0874774241"]The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain[/ame] - Betty Edwards
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Perspective-Made-Easy-Ernest-Norling/dp/9563100166"]Perspective Made Easy[/ame] - Ernest R. Norling
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-What-Practical-Books/dp/0823023753"]How to Draw What You See[/ame] - Rudy De Reyna. This one kind of sucks for figure drawing instruction, but it does do a ok job of showing the real basics of learning to draw with traditional media.
EDIT:
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Animators-Survival-Kit-Richard-Williams/dp/0571202284"]The Animator's Survival Kit[/ame] - Richard Williams
EDIT2:
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Film-Directing-Shot-Visualizing-Productions/dp/0941188108"]Film Directing Shot by Shot: Visualizing from Concept to Screen[/ame] - Steven D. Katz
Really worth watching. I never get bored with theses videos.
How useful would you say Perspective Made Easy is for a complete nub, Ben? I always had trouble with perspective back in jr. high and never really touched it since. That being said, I realize how important it is and since I have so much trouble with it, it's one area of the basics I feel I should tackle as soon as I can.
http://enliighten.com/
Tutorials by Daarken
Seconded. It took me a couple of months, but I watched them all starting from the beginning; really useful and enlightening. The next stage is to re-watch them and where applicable, put it into practise as I go along
Perspective Made Easy starts with the very basics and moves forward from there. It doesn't get too advanced. I think it's a good book for a beginner.
Don't rely much on books, especially with something as basic and hands-on as perspective.
In my experience, literally any book that covers it will be fine (Andrew Loomis covers it all, for example),
but once you've got through the theory, grab a sketchbook, go outside and start drawing so you could see how that stuff applies to real life and how it's best transferred on paper.
There're plenty of perspective examples outsides, any street is a 1-point perspective at its finest; any square building seen from a distance will give you two points;
leave 3-point perspective aside for a while, until you've mastered previous two ( = I've fallen into that trap myself, still see how much of cliche it is, and how affected my perception of perspective was by camera lenses in movies and reference pictures - those tend to push 3-point too much imo)
http://itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm
Found a super awesome thread over at conceptart.org going over perspective:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?p=1485584#post1485584
You may need to sign up to view it.
Here's another with some other information regarding positioning and value in relation to perceived distance and space.
http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=181436
I'm not sure why I was always so puzzled by perspective... at least the basic logic behind it is simple enough to understand with research. I'm bored of drawing boxes though, time for some life drawings.
http://youtu.be/45eXa4DCvpQ
Some stuff here, but I would love to add the links above as well.
http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryConceptFundamentals