Max's Game Art Blog: Catch Up Time: Life drawing and personal project

Now that the sentry turret project is finally over I have the chance to update you on how I've been getting on with my personal projects of the year 1 redo and how my life drawing is getting on.

We will start with the weekly personal Sunday drawing session. I missed out on updating you last week because I was too busy learning how to bake normal maps and ambient occlusion maps and I didn't show you what the subject was. Last week I went out to repeat the Car project from last year which is just a use of boxing and perspective to generate cars that sit well. I never finished the final to this project because the car drove off early on leaving me freezing and annoyed. I will do a full final this week if I get time (which I think I will).

The project this Sunday was the space center project which involves going to the national space center in the outskirts of Leicester. I walked and did some thumbs of the outside before moving in to do some sketches of the items in the lobby and a final of the Soyuz space capsule on display their. Its amazing that they still use these machines that were designed decades ago. It also fits the space theme recently with the Philae lander touching down on comet 67P after leaving the Rosetta probe.

First launched in 1967 the Soyuz capsule is the most widely used and safest space craft and is still used today for ISS missions.

This now brings me onto the next topic of this post which is Life Drawing. Last month I said that I would compare my life drawing progress every month and now is that time. Over the month I continued to do life drawing often always at least three times a week and during the first weeks I did it every day. However as the projects have heated up I must say I have been slowing down and the last 2 weeks I didn't really get enough time. I did however get selected to life draw during the Leicester Media schools opening which was an interesting experince as I got to draw a model wearing some costumes which really made me feel like I might be drawing a game character.

I really like this pose and costume it had an air of authority.

So after looking at these most recent drawing I would say that I am improving. My knowledge of how to plan hands and feet has definitely improved due to life drawing on thursdays with Jeff he has a nice feedback technique where he really analyses your work and taking this on board has allowed me to improve in these areas. I would say that I still really struggle with 30 second and 1 minute poses and I should get out of the habit of drawing a circle for the head because it looks quite silly (besides nobodys head is a perfect circle).