Sam Guss
College Station, TX
Old guy, newb artist. Digital artist wannabe. Learning like a mad man.
jdn
added comment inFirst reference sketch that I feel good about.
2yr
bruh that looks pretty good
Sam Guss
2yr
Thanks!
2yr
this is pretty nice . i mean yes it can for sure only get better with time. but you have a good understanding of the eye . so yeah great job you made a pretty big leap wile you where gone in my opinion 😉👍
and real quick i am still struggling with drawing eyes but i just like to have fun when drawing for the most part so i mean 😂 i could get better sooner but im to busy just goofing off when drawing lol.
but anyway great work cant wait to see what you do next . and god bless 🤘😉✌
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First eye I am "ok" with2yr
Hey folks, it's been a couple of months since I was last here. I've been off working on both my digital art techniques and my sketching nd drawing. Finally drew an eye this morning, that while I know won't rock anyone's socks off here - is still what I consider a big step for me. So, without further ado...
An eye.
2yr
I'm new enough to know I don't know what questions to ask. But I do know I like your work and can't wait to see what you have to teach in the future - 'cause I want to be there.
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Leap of Faith
My film is an animation film for children (not 3d rendered), created with CSP.
It's a film for the heart but also funny.
The story is about a girl, called Holumpa, her cat and her teddy. They live in a dull grey multi-story building. Something is weighing on the family, on the whole city. One night they wake up and see a tiny colorful creature hopping out of the window, they decide to follow it and reach a cliff. Way down below pink, sunny clouds hover over some strange magical buildings. The tiny creatures jumps right into the clouds and the three decide to take a risk and jump after it. Of course they find a wonderful, magical, strange world and encounter many dangerous and funny adventures.
Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith to find new wonderful places. Maybe we have to leave a bad place behind or we just have to leave a comfortable but dull place to find new inspirations or happiness. It takes a lot to leave the known behind, jump into the unknown, even if you don't like the place you are in.
I chose this theme as representation for the last years of my life, I didn't want to go to literal and deal with the death of my child in this challenge so I transformed it into this story and fosed on the new beginning. After some dark years I had the chance to change my life radically, I needed courage and trust in myself and it was sometimes overwhelming, but I did find this metaphorical great magical world. And of course I too had help from some wonderful persons and also a cat :D.
2yr
Beautiful. The symbology, the imagery, the colors. Wow. I like it! Thank you so much for doing this. It may sound silly but seeing you and other talented artist who are so much further down the road than me, finding your ‘voices’ and doing this contest is strangely encouraging to me and I am happy that you let me coax you into it.
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I've gone straight into digital, bypassing most traditional (except sketching I guess) methods. However, I will be the first to point out that I'm not career orientated for art, just personal stuff for fun. So my direction in learning is a lot off kilter from the norm I think. But, I am finding and seeing improvements in my digital techniques, so there is that. :-)
I'm still working on mine and it's nowhere near ready, but I wanted you to know that I like your challenges and will try to participate more in the future. So please keep these challenges going! :-)
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2yr
I would love to hear your thinking approach to creature design - it's currently one of my topics I'm exploring, so seeing or finding out how others at all different skill levels do it is fascinating to me.
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First piece I'm OK with2yr
It's just a Procreate step-by-step tutorial from YouTube, but I actually LIKE this one. And that makes it my first piece of Art that I've done that I do. So, yay? Still lots of things wrong, some basics I need to get a better hold of, but again, I like it and that's a first.
This sounds like fun.
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2yr
Procreate is the best if you have an iPad. For myself I'm about to adventure out with Clip Studio Paint and drawing tablet for my PC - but the reason why is that it is cross platform with the iPad. Apparently while some pros use Procreate, Clip Studio Paint is a recommended alternative to Photoshop that pros seem to prefer and while I am nowhere near a pro nor want to be a pro, I do want to be familiar with the professional techniques and software that pros use. Anyways, welcome to the world of digital painting!
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And here it is. My first work for a contest. It’s lousy but I learned some cool things to take into my future pieces.
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Update 3: So, this is nowhere near as complete as I thought it would be at this point, but I will be done by this weekend and ready for final submission. I have changed up the colors that I originally thought I would go with and pretty much just sticking to a basic color palette. I have to learn perspective better and how to add 'volume'? so things and people don't look so flat.
In the end I am struggling as this piece isn't much better than I would expect from a kid, but I am reminding myself that a kid and I are at the same artistic level, so to get over myself and keep putting in the time. Speaking of time, that has been a bigger limitating factor than I originally thought. So, I am currently trying to bend and shift my energies and schedule to make time to practice and to work on fundamentals.
I think this will be my last update until final submission which should be between Friday and Saturday night CST.
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I look forward to getting home from work tomorrow to watch this!
With this being a learning experience for me as well as for fun, I want to document my processes and development thinking patterns. Concept art for me is a recent lightbulb in my brain and hobby I want to pursue for personal art reasons and directions (mostly along the lines of world building and story telling for myself and others interested in this type of stuff). As you can plainly see in my description of what I am really trying to do is still being defined, explored and yeah I’m a lost excited puppy in the rain here. So, I am looking for generic feedback and would welcome focused feedback if you can see me struggling with a theme or a technique that I keep coming back to. With that out of the way…
As a forward note: I am using Procreate and an app called Pose. Will update as I move forward with any other major apps I may put to use.
Day 1, Step 1. Figuring out what my movie’s genre will be. I play in a LARP (well did before this whole Covid thing) called Dystopia Rising. It is a dystopian, future horror and zombie full immersion weekend long LARP held several months out of the year. My character Remington has a fake MtG card designed after him with a great photo of me in my LARP gear and an awesome saying for flavor text that nails my character. Since I really like horror fantasy and dystopian science fiction, I figured that is the direction I want to take my movie genre in.
Day 1, Step 2. Figuring out overall concept design for movie poster with the genre in mind. I looked up zombie horror movie posters and found 3 that I really liked that had some aspect I really liked about it. I wanted it to really challenge me, bring in techniques and such I barely recognize as a beginner, but want to push myself into learning. My overall design which you will see below I think captures the feel I’m looking for and what aspects of the original posters I like. The “look” of I Am Legend with background elements from both that and Zombie Apocalypse Now and foreshadows and text blocks of Zombieland 2.
Day 1, Step 3. Quick line art and some color blocking. Nope, probably looks like scribble to everyone else, but I got the idea of what I would like where, the color range and potential palette. I forgot to add one aspect I wanted to, so will correct soon.
Day 1 Technical Issues… so on my iPad Pro I can’t design a 27”x41” canvas in Procreate. I don’t have enough memory maybe? I dunno. So, I halved it to 13.5” x 20.5” and intend on “blowing it up” to twice the size down the road before final submission. But for now, will be working on a half-sized canvas.
Here are my next immediate plans, where I’ll execute most of this (hopefully) and will update in the next day or so.
Step 4. Perspective layout. The street continues behind Remington and his puppy into a vanishing point that isn’t “seen” by the viewer. Same with some city buildings, a river, and a falling bridge. In the very back background, are more buildings. All of this needs to be outlined in Perspective View in Procreate to give me the lines to use moving forward.
Step 5. Using Pose, I will put together the mannequin of Remington and import him into the foreground of the canvas on a layer above the perspective layer. I am learning how to draw faces (Loomis method) and starting to do 1st grade anatomy drawings, so Pose is a shortcut/crutch that is allowing me to jump ahead of my actual skill level by taking care of base body language positioning.
Step 6. Using a spare layer that I might even delete almost immediately, put down color blocking again, to see if things look OK. Will take notes for the final color palette.
Step 7. Post my next update and read and appreciate any feedback I get before moving on. I am keeping myself open to the fact that I may have to redo or rethink something during the next steps.
Ok that’s it for now, will report again in a day or two when these steps are done!
2yr
I expected to be done with these steps by now, but work last week and a long weekend caught up to me. This is what I have so far. I'm learning I need to learn a lot about perspective and figure drawing.
I'm struggling right now because I know my work looks childish, like what I would expect one of my grandkids to come up with. Then I take a deep breath and remind myself, this is a skill like any other and we all start from roughly the same points when it comes to drawing. Then I tell myself to shut up and go through the paces.
I appreciate being part of a community that despite my newbness, you all are encouraging and kind. Thankyou. And here is my progress - or lack thereof - so far.
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2yr
Let's see what the community wants. We were planning on keeping this category clean with only official challenges, but if there is enough interest in allowing user created challenges, I'm ok with it. I can just pin the official ones to the top.
Let's VOTE.. Reply to this comment with your thought!
2yr
I agree about having a separate category for user-based challenges. That way confusion between those and official Proko challenges can be kept to a minimum, especially if Proko or any instructor for that matter happens to comment or critique.
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2yr
No critique here but I really like how you labeled each head with what instrument you used. I'm not ready myself for this challenge but is on my bucket list and I think I want to do this. So thanks for the inspiration!