[Mike]

I've been meaning to post a few drawings i've recently been working on, but they're too big for my scanner. These are a few things i found to post. They're about 15-30 minute prismacolor sketches on 8.5"x 11" vincent vellum of various arrangements of a still-life.

let me know what you think of the drawing ability. are they good, not so good, painful to look at?

i'll post some digital stuff when i get the chance

thanks.

[Staff Sarge]

Definitely not mediocre and Yes, they're painful to look at; Being jealous hurts.

I know nothing of art but I those are way better compared to my mediocre scetches. 15-30mins you said?

Go digital asap.

[Frost]

These are awesome if you ask me. Some objects are hard to make out because of their irrelevance to the scene... (a pepper next to a paperclip and newspaper?). Otherwise, it's really really great in my oppinion.

[Azathoth]

I wouldn't normally say this, but:
YOU'RE THE MAN NOW, DOG.
Seriously. These are awesome.

[EviLToYLeT]

looks great! Very nice clean crisp lines..
And like frost said, wow, that stuff is completely random '

Anyway, perhaps you should try to work on composition next time. Hard to focus on things and that adds to the confusion of whats going on.

[Lukias]

Lovely work, I see skill.

[trudel]

Very well done. Much talent

[Mike]

thanks for the kind comments guys. it feels good to have some nice ones since i've being getting some pretty rough crits at school lately.

on the stuff in the drawings, we specifically needed to have a golf ball, newspaper, etc.

[burn0ut]

nice work man!
whats with the golf ball on the lastone tho?
is it resting on the paperclip some how?
where are ya being schooled at

[This message has been edited by burn0ut (edited April 11, 2001).]

[Mike]

burnout- yeah, the golf ball is suppose to be sitting on the clip. i'm a product design major at art center.

[burn0ut]

i shoulda guessed... pasadena... ya okay i accually thought youd say that...
my friend is applying there tomarrow heh, and i *might* sometime this month..
anyways

[TJFrame]

Ah.. Viscom II...(Nostalgia kicks in..)

Who's your teacher?

-TJ

[Mike]

burnout - good luck on your application. let me know what happens cause i've been working for the school to do new student orientations. what major are you trying for?

tjframe - i had gaylord eckles. he's one of the best teachers i've had so far. i'm taking him again next term for another class. when did you graduate and what major? oh... where/what are you working on now?

[This message has been edited by Mike (edited April 11, 2001).]

[burn0ut]

hey mike could i get your email, i dont wanna fill up the forum with foolish questions, id rather ask them directly haha :P

ill be applying for illustration

[TJFrame]

Gaylord!!! Yea I had him too! He rocks! That is so cool! I learned a hell of a lot in his class. He really taught me to loosen up and sketch rough - he really likes the rough sketchy look. I graduated in 97. For a while he used to show new students examples of other student's artwork at the begining of each term. So you may have seen some of my own Viscom 2 stuff in your class!

I have posted some examples below from that class. I used a toy figure as my object. I remember being very pleased with the standing robot image but Eckles blasted it because it didnt "Explode" enough.. I kind of knew that while I was drawing it but wanted to draw him a bit more "assembled" We had his class on Friday and would pull all nighters in the studio doing his "7 weekly drawings" What memories!!!

After school I freelanced for BMW for a short while and I've been working as a concept artist for Westwood Studios for about 2 years now. I've been working on my film portfolio lately.. ready for a change I suppose.

-TJ

[shardik]

*shardik builds up with jealousy and rage*
I WANNA GO TO ART CENTER... but im on the east coast... u guys have any ideas?

------------------
-matt

[Mike]

burnout - you can email me at [email protected].

tj - i saw your first exploded view, it was shown as an example. cool stuff. could i get your email or something to ask you a few questions?

shardik - you can check out risd or ccs(in MI). both are really good schools. art center is also offering some night courses in NYC. check here - http://www.artcenter.edu/atnight/index.html

[TJFrame]

Ask away. We have no secrets here!

-TJ

[Mike]

thanks tj. i was wondering what classes you took at accd that you feel helped you the most in terms of both sketching and preparing you for the entertainment work you're doing. i'm thinking of trying to go through the entertainment track, but i've been discouraged by my chair and there's talk of it being discontinued. it's all really fuzzy what being "entertainment" is all about and i want to understand that before i have to choose my track 5th term. i was thinking that i could try to see if any accd alumns would let me visit their work/studio during the break and answer a few of my questions.

just to let you know, next friday is senior show(today was super thursday) if you want to stop by the school and check out the work. i think it starts about 7ish.

thanks

[Aiko Ito]

Wow I'm jealous, I got accepted to RISD and SVA in NY. But instead I decidade to go for the cheap approach and stick to a University. And well now I barely draw at.

It's nice to see some non computer work, I wish I still had your patience.
Here's something old I did.

http://www.geocities.com/nightwisp4/stillife.jpg
ok so either I'm an idiot or geocities sucks, can't get the link to work.


[This message has been edited by Aiko Ito (edited April 14, 2001).]

[TJFrame]

Mike,

It's funny that you mentioned the uncertain fate of the Entertainment major because back from 94 to 97 they were saying the same old crap. "The market is flooded with entertainemnt guys", "The craze has ended", "No one is hiring", "People should stick to reliable stuff like product design" etc. It was all a bunch of crap. Not really sure where that attitude comes from. most likey from insecure teachers and alumni who don't want the competition. If it were me I would just ignore your chair and go for what you want in your heart. Maybe you kick ass and they want you to be a star product major to make them look good? Who knows? There is a lot of resentment for Entertainment majors becuase it is so high profile and seems more glamorous. A lot of the "old school" teachers think it's frivolous and not really worthy of a real major. Marty Smith was always nice to me though, and generally supportive of my interests. Don't know who is the chair now though

As to what classes to take. Keep in mind that that they have probably changed a bit since I was there. - make sure you take Sketching for Illustration, a storyboarding class, and some Alias classes. I had Dallas Good for a lot of my CG classes and he's a good teacher, I happen to know him pretty well too, or at least I used to. Make sure you take Norm Shureman's Viscom 6 which is all marker on toned paper sketching. I still use that technigue every day! Take all the Entertainment Design classes you can, as well as gear your "regular" product classes to entertainment projects. In my opinion it's crucial to pick a few big projects and work on them across several classes. For example, Say you have an entertainment design class in which you have to design a theme park ride. You could model and animate the ride in your CG classes, sketch out the ride and design it in Viscom. Take an independant study with someone like Richard Peitruska or Gary Meyer to so some large Guache paintings, and spend your time in Entertainment Design class working on a physical model. Thus you can have an awesome final presentation that includes more work than if you did seperate projects in each class. I liked Eckles so much that I did an independant study with him in 6th term.

As for what kind of work to do - just fuckin sketch everything you can - mostly environments, but also people, creatures, real life animals, etc. Thats why Viscom 6 with Norm is valuable becuase you go out to all these different places and sketch. I would focus on traditonal media with some digital thrown in. Make sure you work on both thumnails, loose skecthes, tight marker renderings, and paintings to get a good cross section of stuff. By 7th term you should be able to decide what media you want to focus primarily on: 2d, 3d, or CGI.
Spend the remainer of school with most of your effort in that direction.

Make sure you do a broad spectrum of project types, which is something that I didn't really do that much - so one term to a sci-fi environment type project for example, the next time do a historically based project set in ancient greece or something. Mix up your genres. You might want to do both serious stuff (think Matrix, Aliens) as well as whimsical projects (Grinch, Willy Wonka and the Choclate factory). You might end up doing theme parks for Disney, designing tanks and military stuff for games (like I am currently), or designing a secret victorian labratory for some film. You just never know what will come up so its best to be prepared with a variety of subjects. Once you have worked a while and know where you want to focus on you can start specializing more, but until you have worked a while I think its best to not pidgeon hole youself too much.

Of couse this is all just my personal opinion and experience, your mileage may vary.

-TJ


[This message has been edited by TJFrame (edited April 14, 2001).]

[burn0ut]

hey tj, i think thats great advice for everyone! thanks for sharing your thoughts

[Ozymandias]

Such amazing sketches you have Mike. I'm ready to go get some vellum paper right now and sketch away.

Thank you tj. I'm also considering applying to ACCD for product/entertainment design. Hey burnOut did you go to the Illustration Scholarship Exhibition at Art Center last week? I was there.



[This message has been edited by Ozymandias (edited April 14, 2001).]

[burn0ut]

hey ozy, yea i went, only stayed for a half an hour i think. I really liked that big model of some character, it had like bones for armor or something. it was bad ass, i liked most of it... except thoes pictures of some guy in some wierd positions haha!
What was your favorite peice?

[ex]

TJ - I used to have the first robot as my backround. The big version. I don't remember how I aquired it, but I loved it to much. That's great!

And, Mike, great sketches.