Looser Life Drawings

The comment I most regularly get on my life drawings is that I am fearless, and I'm not really sure that's reflected in the body of works I consciously show to others after the fact. I'm not afraid of making a big mess on the page, or just doing something because it feels right. My reasoning for that is that, if you are only as good as the weakest piece in your portfolio or demo reel, the worst drawings you make are really the ones you should be working on the most.

I don't think I'm unique in the unfortunate reality that I sometimes get too caught up drawing tiny, detailed sections that really don't contribute to the overall strength of a piece of artwork. I did feel that, maybe only for today, it might be nice to put up a more accurate reflection of what my "visual handwriting" is. Balls-to-the-walls fearlessness and defining the figure with tone and shape rather than a refined line drawing.

Thesis Film Inbetween

Hard at work on my film! I'm busy making this kind of "unimpressed" face at drawings on my laptop screen.

Old Working Boards

These were the working rough boards for my thesis film from the middle of September of last year. It's bittersweet to look at for me now - the huge chunks I've reworked, the original intent of what I was trying to do, the large amount of horses I was able to remove entirely. As a matter of personal preference I feel compelled to say that boarding this particular short film was a very frustrating thing for me. I was beating myself in the face with culture shock, getting lots of feedback from people without any previous experience with Ukrainian culture. Some of the comments I got you would not believe! It wasn't making it easier to get at what the issues with the boards really were.

Colour Studies and Exploration

I went through a whole lot of exploration of colour before I deciding on the colour styling for my film. Ultimately, I thought it would be best to stick to jewel tones and warmer shades, without straying too far towards a "cartoony" colour palette.

I started with the colour bars, making sure to cover the few variations I thought might be appropriate for this film at each approximate time of day. After building up the colour studies I weighed in on what I thought would be most effective for the content of each individual scene. Most of my opinions on those little decisions changed when I put my choices together, side by side.

Below you can see my working colour palette for the film. Kozak Mating Dance is ending up with much more red in it that I had set out thinking it would. I'm very glad I did this work, if only to have had the good sense to remove the whole "evening" palette from consideration. I think I've hit on something that works! As you can see, the workflow test scene a couple posts down is from the first colour section, in the top left corner.