Building! 2pt Perspective!

Okay I didn't particularly like this project personally! I hated buildings and the 2pt perspective! I really really struggled with this project and it shows in my final piece and prep sketches! This is one I will definitely be re-doing over Christmas as practice! In week 3 we started learning about 2pt perspective and how it works on the horizon line and how it has two vanishing points for either side of the building etc. etc. I don't know why I struggled so much. I knew all this before it was just putting it into practise! But every time I put my pencil on paper I just couldn't seem to do it! A lot of the time the vanishing points on the horizon line were wrong and that it made the building to squashed or too long and I hadn't made the building in proportion to my vanishing points! Sometimes where it starts above the horizon line I had it too high or too low! It became quite frustrating and started to fall behind! But I managed to pick it back up and end up with a few prep sketches and a final piece!

My final piece was okay. It was not brilliant and wish I could change it a lot! I am planning on doing a new building anyway! But for now I shall pick out the positive and negatives! The positives are that I managed to get it finished. It wasn't fully rendered but I wanted to aim for a more perspective look on the building, so it was more of a technical drawing rather then a fully rendered one! I found it really difficult to actually get all the perspective of the building correct and in the end it ended up being pretty poorly done! This is one I am doing AGAIN!

ROARRR! DINOSAURS!

ROARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

Dinosaurs! The creatures that ruled the world many of thousands of years ago, who got wiped out of extinction from a giant meteor! Well that's how the story is told, there are many other conspiracy but I shall not wondering into that debate! So we are now into our 4^th week project and we have made it to dinosaur bones! For this project though, we specifically looked at rendering. How rendering is used, what pencils we should use and if we didn't use the right pencil, it was snapped by the almighty Chris Wright! It's like a horror movie for an artist! “THE PENCIL SNAPPER FROM HELL”, the bio would be “In this twist of a movie, a group of young artists from De Montfort University in Leicester, decided to take a trip to the local museum to draw. But they never knew what horrors lie awake in the depths of that museum. One specific monster in particular hunts those students, who use, a, HB pencil or less and snaps them. Students end in tears, students die from the horror, some may even fight back with sarcastic words. Who will take down this monster. And when will he ever stop!”. Wow, I really got into that! No offence Chris, I didn't used a HB! You can count on that, because I like my pencils. Very much. Leave me ALONE!

Right so Dinosaurs. We took a trip down to the local museum to sit and draw the dinosaur bone collection that they had there. Now with this project I was happy with. I enjoy drawing organic life forms very much! I feel I am much more at ease with organic shapes than technical things such as canals, archways or buildings! I knew directional shading was involved and I am not really a big fan directional shading, because if you make it wrong the whole things look wrong, but if you just use shading that is say horizontally all the way through it can look very flat. So it is very hard to get a balance between the two without fucking it up! So I played safe to begin with, and I shall be returning to do more, but for my first final piece and prep sketches I used very straight shade and shaded in parts that were darker when it bends (in hoping that it would look similar). But with a keen artist eye it did not turn our very well. I enjoyed my prep sketches. I like drawings organic things! The shading I admit was off, but apart from that I didn't really see much else wrong with them. I probably could've done more but that was just lack of time and self motivation! I normally enjoy drawing the final piece more than anything!

Within my final piece I felt very happy with my smiling turtle skull! It was a small dinosaur part but I thought it had good shading and places where I could really show off my skill! Drawing the initial outline was tricky as I was trying to make him look perfect! I didn't want the head to look too squashed or too elongated as it'll definitely look wrong! I wanted it to be so in proportion that the outline itself took me forever to do! When I was finally happy I finished him off! I enjoyed the rendering and when I start to do my next final piece I will more likely use directional shading to add the emphasis on what is rounded. Apart from the poor non use of directional shading, I am very happy with my smiling turtle! SMILE!

Archyways!

ARCHWAYS! They're here, there and everywhere. Sometimes you don't notice them, sometimes you do?! They're like ninjas and you walk through them without realizing and they’re laughing at your stupidity! Okay that's a load of rubbish! What I'm trying to get is my reflection on our 2^nd week project for visual production on archways! Yes archways! Sometimes I call them archyways! Why not! You also meet cats while at the archway! Or you find people start filming you while your working! Yes I am being totally serious!


Any who’s! Where was I... Ah yes, reflection on the archway project. So in the 2^nd week of starting Uni after having churned out the canal project, we then run into the next one! So this project was the same as the canal. Supposedly! So it has a 1pt perspective, vanishing point, horizon line, you know the normal things that perspective includes! But this was SO different, that I had no idea what I was doing! I sat there like a lemon just chilling in the cold with a pencil in hand and a blank sketch book. It was clearly going well! I was quite ill as well while we started this project. I managed quite well to get into class, to try and listen to Chris talking away, to then sit out in the cold! I was not a happy bunny! I tried though, but nothing was coming to mind! In the end I went home early and went to sleep! However, after a couple of days the illness passed quite nicely and decided to meet up with some people down at the archway! I managed to get some prep sketches in, but because it was so difficult and didn't get much help from Chris because I went home early, some looked a bit... funny? Is that a good enough word? I clearly didn't know what to do! Because you can't see the vanishing point or the horizon line like you could in the canal project, you had to use references in the environment to gather what you need to make the horizon line and the vanishing point! Sometimes I had many vanishing points, sometimes it just looked squashed and a bit iffy! But I kept going with it. In the end I felt that my prep sketches were enough and thus I started on my final.

On my final piece I am quite happy with the work that I’ve done. The only problem Is, that I know where I have gone wrong! I accidentally made everything either too big or too small. If it was too small I had to stretch it to fit, so there wasn't any blank space of nothing. I did not enjoy the tree again! I really dislike trees. Especially with the angle that I chose. I felt I managed to get the horizon line and the vanishing point roughly right, but I did struggle a lot! Within my final piece I do need to add a few more things into it and some more detail. Within my prep sketches I know that I need to do more, and thus I will. This time I am going to analyse my photos of the archway and figure out the horizon line and vanishing point so when I come to do a final piece or more prep sketches this horizon line will be correct and everything will end up at the vanishing point! (Unless it's on another line, which I doubt it is!)

Canal Reflection

Canal! I love canals... OK well recently they're annoying! Sometimes they're pretty, but sometimes, they are just a pain in the arse to sit next to and get attack by a swan, which wouldn't go into the water! But oh well. Life goes on! Anyway, I’m babbling! This is where I now shall reflect upon my canal work within the very first week of starting! This week was stressful in particular, because I was still very alone with the people who I was with. But not only have I enjoyed doing my sketches upon the canal I have also enjoyed that while doing this Visual project I have met the friends that I am moving in with next year! How awesome is that! But that's besides the point!

As I entered into the classroom for Chris to start talking to us about perspective, I had a very positive attitude to the subject because I had actually practised this type of work during my A-Levels. But once Chris had finished, I. Was. Shocked. I have never experience the feeling that “oh crap, I do not know any of this”. I knew the basics, the perspective, the horizon line, the vanishing point. I knew that all the lines with the picture would go into a distance at the vanishing point, (although they didn't actually do that in real life) that's how you perceive the world, and that's how I am meant to portray it! Brill! I was rusty when we first got out there! Never truly realised how dirty it'd be either (new to Leicester!). But once I had settled I started to get into the flow of things and felt I produced some good few prep sketches! Yeah the horizon line was a bit high but all the lines went to the vanishing point etc! Some prep sketches went a bit skew and all theory went out the window! But majority of the time I was quite happy! But looking through very few had the right horizon line. Which is disappointing, but I have acknowledged this!

Within my final piece I did exactly what I didn't want to do. I planned it all out on the page with the horizon line and managed to get everything to get to the vanishing point. I made sure that everything was sized correctly and in proportion, but I got the horizon line to high up. It looks more of the middle of the page rather than 1/3 of the page up. This makes it look more like I am standing or floating in mid air! I have also found that the Fibonacci curve within my work is out of proportion and that the main focus of my work as it is, is in the middle of river rather than where the vanishing point is. This is mainly skewed by my horizon line, which can be fixed with a new sketch. I only realized this as soon as I had started my bridge and this meant that I couldn't go back. I felt I was doing well with what I was doing so I carried on but with making note of the horizon line. This I will fix with a new picture! Over Christmas I will be doing more sketches of the canal and more prep sketches along with analization of the canal and its technical side of things!

Overall the things that I like most about what I have done is the main bush on the right, where there is detail in the leaves poking out from the mainframe of the bush. I also like the shadows on the path and river especially where the water glistens and has a very bright shine to it. Although that was hard to portray I enjoyed doing the water as well as the shadows around the bushes that have hit the water. The thing most disappointing about the whole thing is the horizon line and that I am floating in mid-air! (Which you know, I can do secretly)!

Reflection... (thinking face)

So after a stressful day my assessment has been and gone! I am quite happy with the results that I got! I wasn't expecting something fantastic as I knew I didn't do enough to get there! Because of illness it has held me back, but that won't mean I won't bring it back and get higher! Because I can not take feedback lightly, I make it seem as an attack, it was quite hard for me to come to terms with what Heather, Chris and Mike have said! I know it was formative and it was just to see where we are and how we can improve. This is good, since I like having feedback a lot. I don't want to do work where I think I’ve done well and all the feedback is negative. It really hurts me when that happens, and im sure that a lot of other people feel the same way! Getting negative feedback isn't nice, and something I don't aim for, but I'm glad that I've had it now before it's too late! At the end of the day it's helping me to improve and that is what I am going to do! No point in moping around all day and do nothing about the feedback given!

So let's have some self reflection on what feedback I have been given. So with Game Production (Heather). I understand everything she has said about my feedback. I know that when I made my building I hadn't done it properly. My mesh for my building was extremely messy and poorly done! If I knew this earlier on I would have actually changed it. But because my mesh was so badly done and I had only found that out the week it was due in I felt like I had to keep going. I knew my texture maps were also pretty awful since all I had to do was just pile things on top of each other. Because of the poorly done building mesh I found it very hard to have a neat map and thus a sloppy texture map was made. In the end the textures weren’t bad. They could have been better by far! I know exactly where I went wrong and I am so grateful that Heather has given me till the 7^th Jan to get it sorted! I am planning on doing a new building, one that I am more familiar with! I am glad that I have taken this building as practice and now I can go away over Christmas and do a proper building that will have a clean mesh, detailed texture, good use of map space and one that is of a good standard. I also know what she meant by my folders. I am a very folder person and everything has to be in it's only little specific folder! I do this a lot and I’ve lost things because I have had folder within folder of work, Some of it is the same and copies of the same thing but I do not realize! This time everything will be clearly labelled so I can find them and so can Heather! At least I will remind myself to actually name EVERYTHING! Cause yeah... I do lose it!

So with Chris now! Visual Production! From doing a traditional art background at A-Level having a pencil in my hand is basically 2^nd nature! Although I hadn't done Art at GCSE I was never gonna let it stop me from doing what I wanted to do! Since being at Uni doing Visual work has become slightly more difficult! From seeing other peoples work I have realized how many styles there are! Sometimes I try to inspire to be like others, but maybe that's not the way! I am just finding it very hard to find who I am and my style! But I am very picky about detail and when it's enjoyable I love sketching and rendering detail! I enjoy more organic forms such as the dinosaur bones and that’s where my shading improves! I enjoy these things because they feel more natural! I struggle with the technical side even though I understand. I just can not apply my knowledge to a piece of paper! I am going to have to work on that now! Well when I go back at Christmas I will print out photos and examine their horizon line and truly look well into the picture! Within the canal study as an example it's all got to do with perspective and the horizon line and vanishing point! All of these technical things are quite scary to me! For the picture to look right, you have to get those 3 things right! To get those 3 things right you've pretty much got your picture. I know that in my final piece the horizon line is a little bit too high and that the focal point of the picture isn't to the middle, it's too much to the right! Which is quite annoying since I really felt like did well on that sketch. But I knew it when I had finished it and by that time it was all too late! But at least now I can take feedback like that and apply it over the Christmas holiday to broaden my skills within Visual Production!

On with Mike! So what can I say! Erm... well you wanted me to reflect and thus I shall do so! Hence this blog! But overall within my work I felt okay with it! I've learnt a lot within 8 weeks of being at Uni and it has put a lot of pressure on my emotionally and mentally! But I know in the end it's going to be worth it! Illness will not stop me until I am dead. I will keep going until it is right! But with a Good in Visual and Critical and an Adequate in Game I know that is a pass and that I know where I’ve gone wrong! The only way is forward and that's what I shall do! I have taken this feedback as something that is good and not bad! I know what to do, I know how to manage my time more and I know that I want this too much that nothing on this earth can match or satisfy the craving to excel and get better within this course! Hopefully I can keep making funny blogs for Mike, but then again, some people have said that you told them, they were funny!? So what is it Mike, hey, hey! Me or them!....... hey?! I joke, I joke! But in all honesty what you read, is what I think. Want a personal story of my life while going through Uni! Well here it is!