This spring I enrolled in two foundational CGMA courses: Intro to Perspective and ZBrush for Concept and Iteration. The workload was heavy but I learned a lot. Perspective proved to be quite challenging, although in hindsight many of the challenges were self-created. My perfectionism (i.e. fear of making mistakes) emerged again; this time in the slavish application of perspective rules, which made the process painfully slow and resulted in stilted, lifeless drawings.
Reykjavik in winter. Sterile and lifeless.
Dr. Haber’s office from Ursula K. Le Guin’s Lathe of Heaven. Clinical.
The Sic Mundus Time Machine from Dark. An endless loop of shift-clicking…
Midway through the course, I realized I wasn’t having much fun. To keep up my motivation I decided that I needed to come up with interesting ideas, and that I should be telling some kind of story with my images.
For week 4, the assignment brief was to incorporate inclined planes and stairs in a two point perspective drawing. I spent some time brainstorming and came up with the idea of stair trucks for first class passengers versus everybody else.
First class and “Use at your own risk” class. Step right up!
One of the challenges of staging the stair truck scene was dealing with the foreshortening of the 747 wing. Not sure of how to solve the problem on paper, I found a Sketchfab model of a 747 and rotated it to the desired angle. Somehow this felt like cheating, but my instructor, Scott Caple, assured me that no art crime had been committed and that artists have been using technological aids for centuries (e.g. Vermeer and the camera obscura. See Tim’s Vermeer for a fascinating documentary on this subject).
In Week 5, the assignment brief was to compose a scene in 3 point perspective. After brainstorming, I came up with the idea of pollinators with flower dance partners engaged in a ballroom dance-a-thon (Check out the sordid and weird history of dance marathons from the 1920s and 1930s if you want an interesting read).
1-800-DANCE-TILL-THEY-DROP! Which couple will be the last ones left hovering?
This idea proved to be too ambitious. In hindsight, I should have recognized the warning signs when I couldn’t visualize the scene at the thumbnail stage. Having been given permission to use 3D models as an aid in the previous week, I decided that I would try to model my way out of the problem (i.e. build a ballroom and then “find” the scene by moving a camera around within the 3D model).
Colony 54. It’s got lots and lots of tables and chairs.
A lifeless ballroom. In hindsight, the colony’s collapse was inevitable.
And so I built a 3D model, moved the camera around, and then attempted to reconstruct the shot within a 3 point perspective system. In the end, I ran out of time and failed to complete the assignment. Looking back, I feel like I should have pushed through to get something I liked at the thumbnail stage. That said, if you have a complex scene a 3D model can definitely help solve complex perspective problems.
For week 6 the brief was to incorporate complex, organic forms into a drawing. Finding inspiration in Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky, I decided to stage a scene with a lantern headed robot tending a Japanese garden. Unfortunately, following the thumbnail stage, I again fell into the trap of trying to be “correct” via the rigorous application of perspective. Another week, another stiff, unfinished drawing.
Week 6. Initial thumbnail and an unfinished super stiff drawing of a robot computing the precise number of Newtons required to crush a puny songbird.
In week 7, the assignment was to add value and lighting to one of our previous drawings. Here I departed from the curriculum and decided to soldier on with my concept from week 6. I reworked the scene by adding lanterns and incorporating a small Shinto shrine. I tried to give the robot a bit more life by adjusting its pose.
Week 7. Puny bird! I have you now! You will rue this day!
I wasn’t very happy with the drawing, so I decided to take a break from it and follow Scott’s suggestion of doing some studies of Hokusai’s woodblock prints.
Studies from Hokusai.
To emulate Hokusai, I had to vary my line width, and so I turned on tablet pressure sensitivity in Photoshop (which I had never used before). What a revelation! Drawing on the Cintiq suddenly felt like actual drawing! Returning to the scene, I drew in the foreground tree and found that I liked the sketchy line. I didn’t have enough time to complete the drawing for that week’s deadline, but I felt that things were moving in a good direction.
For Week 8, I did a reappraisal of my drawing and decided that although I liked the general idea, the robot wasn’t appealing and the composition felt too stilted. So I redesigned the robot and reworked the composition in a detailed rough drawing. In contrast to previous weeks, I decided to trust my own judgment instead of getting bogged down with “correctness” (although I did use perspective gridlines as an aid).
Rough reworking of the scene.
Released from the strictures of correctness, I felt freer to explore. The rough came together in an organic and enjoyable process, and after I felt like I had settled most of the compositional problems, I moved on to making a clean line drawing.
During this last stage, I fleshed out the finer details and applied what I had learned in Week 7 from doing the Hokusai studies. Fleshing out the details was pretty time-consuming, but by applying the lessons learned in previous weeks and from Dynamic Sketching, I was able to produce a final drawing that I felt happy with.
The semester is done, but I plan to continue the work by making small tweaks and doing a lighting pass on the drawing. Should be fun!