Mannequin legs

Lighting exercise done this past fall in color theory - my dining room in daylight, by lamplight, and in blacklight and the orange lamplight filtering through the shades.

I learned so much during these about digital painting, with no small thanks to Reach for pointing me towards this tutorial. I hadn't experimented much with brushes before then, and simply adding an angle brush to the repertoire helped so much. Once I was able to figure out how to apply my traditional skills to digital work, it was like something just clicked. I really look forward to doing more digital painting in the future.

The Face

This is work from this semester in a class called "The Face." In it, we explored various media and approaches to one subject - our own faces. It was good to be allowed such exploration, and I'm definitely taking what I learned during the process into my other work.













Academic Drawing, Pencil line drawing













Studies of eyes, noses, mouths













Geometric forms, straight lines vs. curved lines in simplification













Tribal mask, Multiple Exposure













Veiled Face 1 and 2













Tattooed Face (Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian patterns)


Stencil - Iconography series 1 and 2 - spraypaint on paper for series 1, wood panel for series 2













Collage + conté crayon - sketchbook, drawing over collage, then pure collage

A Displaced Heart

Displaced Heart from Sarah Walker on Vimeo.

Final for my 3D Image and Movement class - made in Maya. I built the model, textured her using photographic textures I made myself (except for the one on the box, which is from Hibbary ), built the environment, and rigged an animated the model. There were quite a few challenges along the way, learning the program, and although Maya can be extremely counterintuitive at first, I'm really pleased with the finished result - what I can do with it.

I'd like to go back and fix the hair, which is an nCloth object, so that it doesn't collide as it does, and figure out a way for it to fall more properly. I'd also like to just play around with this character and her environment some more.

The title doesn't convey this quite right, but I'm not sure what would. This little character is a piece of unease and loneliness, it seems. She has no home.

Youtube link

Tumblr!

I've set up an art tumblr, for mostly sketches, studies, practices. This blog has more finished work, whereas the tumblr will be more informal.

So if you want to check it out, here it is!

Come and See!

My good friend Fran Rowan is organizing an art show for Comm Arts seniors at Realitea here in Richmond! I'm going to be in it, along with several of my talented peers. She wanted to put together a show of the work we liked to do, in a place we liked as well, and it's finally all coming together! So if you can stop by April 30th, 5pm to 8pm, we'd love to see you there!


Here's some of the posters we've created for the event!

This is my flier!



Poster by Erin Conley


Poster by Brit Austin

Meanwhile, in the lab...

I'm taking 3D Image and Movement this semester, and learning how to use Autodesk Maya. Early on in the course, we were working mainly from tutorials, but now we're getting to work on a project of our own for the final.

This was the design I came up with -



I wanted to create a doll-like figure, but I tried to stray from typical baby/cute or fashion doll style. I also wanted something simpler to model, so that I could spend more time focusing on the physics of the spring and hair/cloth, as well as texture - knowing from games such as Silent Hill 2 and 3 that even with a lower polygon count, you can get characters rich in texture and detail that look realistic.
The goal is to have the head and arms to look like they are made of wood, the hair and body be fabric, and the legs be metal and scissor-like.

So with this design in mind, I drew on my knowledge of dolls, having collected them, and made a few myself, for how the joint structure works, as well as looking at 'penny wooden' or peg dolls. I roughed out the shapes first, then smoothed the body, and manually went in and curved the jointed portions. The hair is probably my proudest accomplishment thus far - and nCloth object, it falls and swings around according to gravity.



Next up is mapping the UV's (making a pattern from all of the surfaces, essentially) so I can make the textures - which will be interesting since the joints are all individual pieces.... - and figuring out how to rig this for animation. Then, I'll be creating her environment and animating her! Wish me luck!

A Tease for the Teaser

Here's a taste of what I've been working on - a walk cycle.



The mechanics are all worked out, but there's still a few more refinements to be made, and then the individual frames need to be scanned or photographed properly. I'm delighted that the tracing paper works for the shading, and with just one sheet instead of two - but moreover, that the whole thing works!

Erin Conley created Virgil, and I have brought him to life. The magic of this medium is beginning to come to fruition.

Expect a more detailed update in the coming week, with the final, polished version of this, as well as a look into how it was made.