Monday, March 26, 2007

Episode 13 - Posing
Figure drawing for storytelling...

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for the new posts! And it's cute how you stuttered due to flattery! Keep it up. I'm learning, slowly by surely. More exercises would be great too.

More practice on terminating lines too! That is a major issue that I have. 10 mintes on pure terminating line problems would be awsome.

I'm interested to know as well why you seem so happy that you're not working for the visual effects industry anymore.

Also, perhaps it would be interesting to do a show on animating with perspective. I think it is often easier to see perspective when you're working with animation...

Clothing tutorial, yea!

And I have an idea for you. You should find some way to do what you are doing, but live. And change a couple bucks for people to enter the classroom (or free of course), and boom! you've got paid, and bang, people are learning to draw. Then record all those sessions and open them up for access to the community like you are doing already. I would help you if you'd like (drpoo (at of course) drpooville.org) (at of course)=@.

Chao

-Chris

Médard said...

This was another fun ten-minute drawing class. :)

Is there a possiblity you could make the movies sharper quality? A lot of the detail gets lost, which is a shame. Youtube makes everything blurry, so maybe www.stage6.com is a nice alternative?

Thanks again.

Unknown said...

I am 61 years old and have always wanted to learn how to draw. Your tutorials have been VERY helpful. I can draw things now that I never thought I could.
Thanks for taking the time to share the talents that God gave you with us.
Joe

Mark Chong said...

chris >> every week I make some new discovery -- and it's usually not some new technique, but it's finding out that some NEW technique is just a variation of some OLD technique... The more I learn the more I realize that we really only need a basic few skills and have to find different ways to apply them.

As for the visual effects industry -- well, here's the problem. You work for 3 months on a bit of footage that flies by in a couple seconds -- and if you do your job right, nobody's supposed to notice. Gotta hide all the strings that keep the actors in midair during their flying kicks -- deal with the greenscreen spill, etc... Countless late nights and baggy eyes and by the time you see your name on the credits on the screen it's scrolling way after the gaffer and the best boy and the catering guy who brings the sandwiches get their due...

Drawing is fun. You get to create. There's no software to crash, no render farms to administer, and the raw materials to draw are so much cheaper and it's all you! It's a job that beats the heck out of grunt-work in front of a computer where you're tearing your hair out trying to get the computer to do what you need it to do. Instead, you can build your own skills, reprogram yourself to think differently and more efficiently and see the world in a different way! And you can do it nearly anywhere -- In bed, in the can, outdoors on the porch on a warm summer's day... some people have to get all kinds of expensive cameras and lenses and pay for expensive plane tickets and hire expensive models to photograph what they want, but if we pay the price of learning the fundamentals of drawing we can photograph our imagination for next to nothing! So yeah... that's why I could never go back to being an ordinary 3D grunt...

I have a program called TVPaint that I use for hand-drawn animation... I'd wanted to do some lessons with that but I'm a little unsure of how to structure them at the moment. I'm also not that great at animation! So I have to beef up some of my skills in that department before I can work up the arrogance to teach it... :P

menno >> I'm working on a high-quality DVD with all of the episodes re-recorded and edited so that you don't have to listen to me going "ummm..." and "errr..." all the time. At the moment I'm also applying to a few colleges around town for a teaching position to see if I can teach some real live human beings -- instant feedback (like seeing a look of confusion on someone's face) is something that I feel is really lacking from the series, so I have a lot to learn from that...

joe >> Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.... *falls over* The thing I realized was that our eyes, unlike cameras, only pick up acute details at the centre of focus. The majority of our vision is reconstructed from bits of information gathered from our peripheral vision. We're capable of interpreting patterns of light on paper as the actual subject and we do it automatically! We are blessed with this magical ability to make something out of nothing in our minds -- you don't even have to have particularly acute eyesight or steady hands.

It's within all of our grasps to be able to master the ability to draw -- it's just a different way of thinking!

Anonymous said...

It's funny to hear you muttering while you draw the little stuff.

"hmm... frying pan... *mutterings*... cheese grater..."

This was a very fun lesson.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Sylverone, hearing you do all the umms and errrs in the videos hunamizes you and gives a feeling of comfort to the listener.One thing i always hated about school was the robotlike teachers.The way you speak on these videos is like you are actually talking directly to us like a normal person. Great job on these, I am learning alot.Thank you for taking the time to help us.