When I started the course I didn’t realized that I can upload my pictures and get a rating for them. I thought that this would only be possible for the persons who pay more for a private feedback. So as I realized that I will get some kind of marks on the lessons but hadn’t really much time left to do all the assignments properly I got hectic. So I redid some of the earlier tasks and took more time to finish the following assignments properly.

Lesson 6 – Custom Brushes

The most time of this Lesson Bobby talked about the different possibilities that one has while adjusting the brush tool. I always skipped through this menu, as there were so many different options that I was too lazy to think about them all in detail. But while Bobby described them all I really got a feeling for it … I hope.

We also created our own brush tips and with those ready our task was to draw hair for a bald women head that was given. The top two haircuts where described during the lesson and for the bottom ones, I used different images from the web for idea support.

Also new to me was the fact that one can take snap shots in the history. This makes it possible to come back to a previous stage of the picture, without having to save it several times under a new name.

Lesson 7 – Vectors

As I don’t like vectors for art very much, this wasn’t one of my favourite lessons, but still I’ve learned a lot again. I always struggled with creating shapes the way I want them. Adjusting them afterwards was so laborious to me. But with Bobbys style of working some of the aspects got clearer to me and I find it now a little easier to create some nice shapes… but still… this surely never will be my favourite tool to work with.

Again, we used a lot of textures too. They really light up this some kind of boring feeling of vectors for me. With the use of layer styles there was nothing new to me.

Lesson 8 – Color Sketching

This Lesson started with some information on color theory in general. It was very informative and left me with the wish to learn more about color combinations and influences. The first attempt with the ape in the snow landscape was drawn during the lesson. The other two were out of my own imagination. I think the right one didn’t really worked out but well… I still like the scenery … hmmm beach

I needed to turn down the opacity in the background again. I KNOW that this is better but I still always end up drawing with the same amount of saturation there like on the character. Maybe I will keep it that way and just turn it down at the end of the process.

Lesson 9 – Color Finishing

The last assignment was the biggest one. We continued our work from the Lesson before and refined the picture with the little ape in the snow region. This assignment combined all the techniques Bobby introduced and was a great possibility to try to work freely with his style.

I really got used to scale my brush size and hardness during this lesson with the help of the keyboard instead of the menu. Also the changing of colors, the color picker and the smudge tool came to me intuitively without the need to search for them at the tool bars.

The feedback on the other students works were really helpful again to finish up my work.

Lesson 9 – Bonus Assignment

In the end I still had some hours left, so I tried my best with the bonus assignment. As I didn’t wanted to copy his way completely I tried out different colors and a different background. I still think Bobbys original is way better but well, I also like my little dragon dog too.

Bobby also answered on some of my personal questions to him that one was able to post while uploading the assignments. It was really great to hear from him that way. I also got a nice certificate.

My final score was:

If you want to take the course yourself, or some of the other great courses they offer (I’m still thinking about taking part in “Creature Design” or “ZBrush”) you can click on this link to get yourself a little discount and me some extra money for my next course too.

I really liked Bobbys Art before but after this course one looks at the pictures from a different point of view as he told so much about his own thoughts and feelings while painting. There were 9 lessons and every lesson was split into several shorter video clips to watch and paint by yourself afterwards. So those pictures aren’t exactly mine, because most of the times the line drawing or even a whole grey-scale picture was given to start from and work on the different topics.

Never the less one can also watch feedback videos Bobby made for previous course students (and people who are willing to pay a little extra for the course). This was very interesting too, sometimes even more interesting then the lesson itself because, although the base image was the same for the students, there were always big differences in the resulting pictures and to watch how Bobby gave hints on the individual problems was very enlightening.

Lesson 1 – Visualizing Through Darkness

The first assignment reminded me on opening the picture in a second window, so that one can see the whole picture and concentrate more on the over all impact. I also forgot that one can change between the two main colors in Photoshop so easily by pressing the [x] key.

The main focus for this assignment was to think about the figure one wants to create while starting on a dark basis. This really helps on focusing on the main shape and slowly building up all the details.

Working with the Grey-scale picture before starting with all the colors is really a great idea for me, because I often get lost in all those great color combinations, forgetting about the picture itself and what I want to present.

Lesson 2 – Colorizing from Black and White

In the second assignment there was a grayscale picture with 4 cowboys to start from. The possibility to record actions was introduced. It can be used to look at the picture after some final treatments and then go back to your current working stage.

I also never used layer masks before. It’s an easy way to determine the parts of the picture that should be influenced, but leaving the possibility open to change it later.

An other possibility I hadn’t used before are the presets for your brushes, so that you can store your favourite brush with size, opacity and flow. I always thought that I’m so often changing the brush that I wouldn’t use it a lot but well, also for just one single picture it still makes sense to store 2 or 3 brushes to make piking them easier.

Lesson 3 – Textures Part 1

This Lesson really was shocking me.

I always thought that those pencil drawn pictures were REALLY pencil drawn, but well, we used at least scanned in pencil marks.

A really interesting effect one can achieve with layering dark and light tones over and over again.

Those wrinkles on the body are one of Bobbys favourites he told. He always liked wrinkles a lot. I found it really hard to achieve those many wrinkles, but well he’s right at this really makes the creature much more interesting.

Lesson 4 – Textures Part 2

This time we started from an unfinished picture of the Kangamolebunny. The use of textures was introduced. I found it really hard to achieve a some what cave like pattern for the wall in the background.

We used a texture as basis and then painted in those light and dark parts of the stones. There were also textures used for the bottom and the Bunny itself. The bottom one needed to be transformed in order to fit the perspective.

This time I even redid a whole part as I watched the feedback videos. Bobby pointed at the slobber dropping outside the mouth and how it should look really slime and fluid. As my actual slobber was more like a nontransparent fluid I redid it and yeah … I think it turned out much better.

Lesson 5 – The Smudge Technique

This was one of my most favourite lessons as I really liked the base drawing of Bobby. It was a black line drawing and we started to learn how to use the smudge tool. I always left out this tool as I thought it would some what like ruin my pictures, because you are just smearing pixels around on the screen.

But well, it can be pretty helpful to even out lines or to some kind of model the figure without the need of taking up the brush and different colors.

This time I also redid a lot after watching the feedback videos. One of the main points was the amount of contrast which was way too high on the whole figure. So I redid the whole beard to make it look fluffy and also evened out some of the darker parts which shouldn’t be as much in the focus as the face itself.

If you want to take the course yourself, or some of the other great courses they offer (I’m still thinking about taking part in “Creature Design” or “ZBrush”) you can click on this link to get yourself a little discount and me some extra money for my next course too.

part 2 >

The third semester started in winter 2011. I was able to choose my most wanted course at the btk: Scribbling and Illustration. Our lecturer was Volker Schlecht (Drushba Pankow). We started with different tasks on perspective, portrait and even collage.

Finally our main task was to create a little story or comic of our own interest. So I’ve chosen to create a small comic for Jane Austen’s romance novel “Sense and Sensibility” as it was possible to break down the whole story into just 10 pages. At least I hope that it worked out.

You can read the whole comic here: Sense and Sensibility Comic.

We also got a class project for a museum in Berlin. They want to create some kind of retrospective of the Dadaism Great International Fair of the summer of 1920. Our task was to think about innovative approaches and therefore, recreate the exhibition digitally. We got picture material from 1920 and from an earlier retrospective of it to start from. Our work will be continued by students from the following semester.

We talked about different media theorists and philosophers, like Vilém Flusser, Paul Virilio, Friedrich Kittler and Neil Postman and their view on the modern media society. It was really interesting how their past conclusions about the future really matching up with our society now, at least partly.

There was also an other group work with a compositing task, where a car model needed to be placed inside our gym. We worked on stuff like clean plate, mirrorball-image, card-dom, fitting the lighting and color correction, to produce a short movie clip.

At the end of the semester there was short entrepreneurship course, in which we talked about our business possibilities. After the last semester ended I still got one student research project open, where I’ve chosen to write about the topic of “digital painting” in general.

The article will follow.

]]> http://www.luiseschroeder.com/master-studies-part-3/feed/ 1 http://www.luiseschroeder.com/sense-and-sensibility-comic/ http://www.luiseschroeder.com/sense-and-sensibility-comic/#comments Sun, 22 Apr 2012 13:53:58 +0000 Luise http://www.luiseschroeder.com/?p=1166 A comic version of Jane Austens romance novel “Sense and Sensibility”. It was done for a course in illustration at the btk. The task was to illustrate something you wanted to for a long time. So yeah … as I really like Jane Austens novels, I’ve chosen Sense and Sensibility as, to my opinion, it has the clearest plot with the most possibilities to leave something out, as the time was limited. I hope the story gets clear after all and you enjoy reading at least just a little.

As they were both looking to the left into the dark, I’ve added a little fairy at this point, after a hint from a friend. They aren’t both fixing her very well but yeah… I think she liked the pics so everything is ok.

At deviantArt: [Abe and Biene] and the [Making Of]

At deviantArt: [Abe and Biene II] and the [Making Of]

We stayed in a nice small hotel near the main train station Termini. Although there are only two main metro lines, it was pretty easy to reach all the famous places we wanted to visit, like the Pantheon with its impressive light from the top. An other day we’ve visited the Castel Sant’Angelo and the Vatican City. The huge and opulent designed St. Peter’s Basilica was really amazing.

Those many fountains and little wells in Rome are really great in the heat. We visited the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain among other things.

The Circo Massimo really was my most loved place. There isn’t much to look at as there are only those 2 racetracks left, but alone this space and the freedom together with the Palatine Hill in the background … I really liked it a lot.

The Tiber and its bridges were interesting too. We even managed to see the oldest bridge called Pons Aemilius from the year 174 BC in such a great lightning. At the evening there was entertainment along the waterside with many little shops and bars to attend.

One day was reserved for visiting Anzio, just an hour train travel away from Rome, with some nice beach lines. It seems to be more of a local holiday place, with small shops and strolling Italian people. And of cause I’ve visited the zoo of Rome too. It’s named Bioparco and is situated on part of the biggest public park Villa Borghese.

One day we missed the opening times of the Forum Romanum and the Palatine Hill. So we used the last day for it, where we also traveled back to Berlin. Next time I visit Rome I want to see the Palatine Hill the first. I really liked it and we should have spend more time for it.

I’ve even printed my first picture book for this trip. I really like how it came out. Surely will make such a book for every trip from now onwards.

We mostly started with a fast sketching round, where we only got some minutes to capture the rough body shape and tension. I really needed some time to get into it.

Afterwards we got time to draw some position for 30min or even an hour. We started with basic positions and tried out different approaches, like drawing with some spotlights or starting with a black surrounding to the main body shape.

In some of the later courses we also started to concentrate on details, like feet and hands. Thinking about the rough forms and shapes really helped a lot to not get lost in the details right from the start.

All the pics at deviantArt: [life drawing]

I surely want to take more courses in life drawing if I have time for it. There are still so many questions I have in my head when drawing humans. Having somebody pose for you for such a long time really helps a lot.

The second semester, during summer 2011, was very practical too. The cooperation with the btk continued, but I had only one official course where the main topic was to create a new portfolio for oneself. The developed page can be found here: portfolio 2011

I’ve also taken part in an additional course in life drawing. This was pretty exciting and highly beneficial for me and my drawings. I’m sure to take more courses in life drawing if I get the chance in the future. An article and more pics can be found [here].

We also had some theoretical courses, for example in databases. I’ve chosen to give a speech about the mongo and the amazon simple DB. There were quite a lot of papers to learn from for the final test.

We also got a lot of small tasks during some input days. One task was to create a script idea for a new interpretation of “Faust”. As I worked together with a fellow student, we came to the basic idea of letting it take place in the nature with animal characters, kind of suitable for children. Our main protagonist therefore was a grey wolf and the bad guy “Mephisto” was a red fox.

One big project during the second semester was to create several stage designs for a script of our own wish. So I’ve chosen “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen for my project group, as I really like her romantic novels a lot and this one is probably the most famous one. The storyline was reviewed for its dramatic highlights and research on different stage design approaches was done. We’ve chosen to keep a somewhat classic style, due to the story, but with a comic influence. The final stage design sketches where then transferred into 3D space and later combined into a little flash application, to present the 2D and 3D work in comparison with different lighting options to choose from.

I’ve also got the chance to continue the work on my new dress up game number 22. The last semester I could work on a detailed plan for the new game during a course at the btk and now I had the chance to work on the graphics and the game itself. So instead of heading directly into the work with Flash, I’ve started with Illustrator this time, to create some nice and detailed graphics first.

An article about the game can be found here: “Game Date them all“.

part 3 >

In the other course I had the chance to create most of the in-game arts and animations.

The game contains the possibilities to date up to four different guys in different locations. The user needs to create a dressing style for the girl that fits the taste of one of the guys in order to earn points. There are the possibilities to save the dressing styles in four slots, compare the styles with each other and getting some hints on what the guy likes and what he thought about the style one has chosen and the place of the “date” itself. After the user successfully completed dates with all the guys there’s a final assembly to celebrate the success.

You can play it on my “PinkBunnyLilli – Dress Up Games and more” website: Date them all

Sadly the game got some critics by the owner of “dressupgames.com”, because the main idea is to “please” the taste of the guys. So yea, that’s really a good point that I should have given a thought during the development. It also reminded me about the critic from “dolldivine.com” who told me that I could add more “diversity” in skin colors to my games. And there are several posts around other gaming sited that show some people think the girls in my games are too skinny.

I really should think about the criticism the next time I create a little dress up game.

I’ve tried to give it some kind of “retro” feeling by adding some folding edges while dragging the clothes onto the girl. Furthermore the sounds of scissors can be heard and the clothes don’t automatically “snap” at the “right” position, so you need to accurately place it on the girl yourself. The background idea for the girl was to have clothes and a scenery for all 4 seasons of the year.

You can play it on my “PinkBunnyLilli – Dress Up Games and more” website: Mom’s Dress Up Doll

And as it was some kind of a “retro” project, I’ve also decided to add some old school real paper sheets for the kids to print out. So they can also draw some nice backgrounds for the girl themselves.