Week 1- Benchmark

For this project I want to learn more about, and develop on my perspective skills as an artist. When it comes to the digital entertainment industry as a whole, the most appealing jobs are in concept art and illustration stemming mostly from character design, however, this is an exceptionally hard field to get into with no industry experience due to how competitive and important the role is. Because of this, some concept artists find an easier time working to develop the environments and backgrounds of a show or game as it is more of a niche interest you can build up from to get into higher positions. That being said, I personally do have a lot of interest in creating and developing worlds and scenes. I've written short comics that require a lot of backgrounds and environments and I've concepted work for smaller game projects. It is a skill I have been trying to work on so I do have some understanding of the fundamentals. With this task though, I will try to identify where I am and how to improve on these skills since I believe I am far from fully confident in my abilities.

For this beginning week I am going to dig up past work that include perspective elements and try to identify the weak spots so I have a better idea on what I need to work on and what I still don't understand.

October 23, 2017 - 13 years old

This picture was a request I took on DeviantArt when I was younger. It is defiantly off perspective wise.

To help identify the problem I drew perspective lines over the scene. While some of the parallel lines do converge at a point in some of these cases, the main issue stems from the lack of horizon line. Without the horizon line, objects appear to be angled oddly with little consistency.

December 13, 2018 - 14 years old

This was a commission from a deviant art user. Initial impressions: I'm not sure how to go about analysing this piece. The rendering stands out as impressively bad. There's a lack of clean lines and objects are poorly filled in with shadows making little sense other then the vague indication light was coming from the right. I don't think I held this piece very highly at the time. For the perspective, It's hard to find good examples of parallel lines converging since it's very flat, however, the beam in the middle has it's right-side protruding out? but the floor patio floor behind the beam doesn't converge to the same point. The round tables look as if it's slanted towards the camera. There again is a lack of horizon line. If I were to approach this scene now I would would commit to a one point perspective with most lines converging towards the middle of the horizon line.

October 28, 2019 - 15 years old

This was an Inktober piece (Ride) from my sketchbook. I was attempting simple 3 point perspective. Despite knowing I drew in a horizon line and attempted to line everything up using a ruler, it's still clear to see that some of the parallel lines aren't converging to the correct point properly. This maybe could have been avoided by checking the lines more carefully before inking - the time pressure probably didn't help though. Some of the fish seem off and it's a little hard for me to put my figure on why - Maybe they needed more foreshortening due to the extreme angle. Compositionally, the fish could be doing a better job of guiding the viewer through the drawing instead of being placed seemingly randomly.

October 22, 2019 - 15 years old

A few days before I had attempted a different perspective style drawing for Inktober (Ghost). I was much happier with the result of this piece and I'm still proud of it till this day. There are mistakes looking back on it: the chairs at the front warp in odd ways, not following the perspective point, and the hanging handles are higher on the left side. Unintentionally it somewhat gives the effect of the train twisting a little which somewhat works with the subject matter. The human isn't standing in perspective amazingly, her head it big and the anatomy of the arm feels odd. Overall I think this piece worked best out of the ones I've used so far because I used a lot of references, there's also the convenience of most points on a train converging to the same point as opposed to multiple as I don't think I was full introduced to the concept of multipoint perspective yet.

September 26, 2020 - 16 years old

A pretty ambitious page from my old comic using 3 point perspective. The perspective serves the purpose of establishing the environment and the characters that used to inhabit this wacky shop. Perspective wise, the characters don't look amazing. Characters in perspective is still a challenge for me. Looking back on this picture the the person on the left looks like they have an elongated torso. The shelf on the right doesn't seem to conform to the rounded wall that greatly. I remember having a lot of trouble getting that circular stand to look right but it's still hard to tell what's off about it. Looking at it I probably added it to fill that corner of the page but it's cool colour competes with the left figure. As well, this could have been a good set up for interesting lighting in the doorway compared to the inside but I can't remember if the top of this shop had an open roof, even so, there could have been some cast shadow.

October 12, 2020 - 16 years old

another inktober piece (slippery) After analysing these old pieces so far, I think it's clear I can identify problems when it comes to organic creatures in perspective. This will defiantly be something I have to work on since at the current moment I don't think I have the technical understanding in order to know how to fix this.

March 2, 2021 - 17 years old

This was a commission requested by a DeviantArt user. Although the line art, to my understanding is technically accurate there's something about it that comes across as odd to me and I can't quite place what. Looking back the piece does suffer from some bad colour choices and lighting. It seemed like a lot of work to render the background so I worked in greyscale and layered a gradient map over everything, slightly altering the colours of bits and pieces. This could have been handled better if I studied more refences of roller discos and applied more cast shadow. I think this work highlights a big problem I have when it comes to rendering the background. Maybe I could look into animated shows and see how they approach colour and rendering in background and how that works with the colour and rendering of there characters.

December 2022 - 18 years old

This was a piece made for a class at university last year. What helps the work a lot was having all the vertical lines angling slightly towards the centre. The workflow mainly consisted of drawing out structures flat and then using tools in photoshop to skew them into the right perspective to give a quick and accurate result. I worry this method may come across as a crutch however so I would like to do physical studies as well as digital so I don't fall into a habits on relying on tools instead of properly engaging in the fundamentals. The piece did get a high grade with the Marker highlighting how the structure of the boat is well done but inaccurate and to look into the book Scott Robertson’s How To Draw (2012) - this maybe something I can look at in the coming weeks.

April 24, 2023 - 19 years old

It gets a lot harder to comment on recent works but it's still quite evident there's a lot to be improved. The colours of this piece feel muddy to me, the grader commented that the lighting looks a bit flat. Maybe I should have done more when it comes to rendering the different materials since they come across as a bit samey? Better referencing could have benefited the work a lot. The angle was an ambitious choice. Some of the lines, especially near the window, are jagged. I'm hoping I'll be able to comment a lot more on this work after the next few weeks.

After looking back at all this work, I think I have a good idea of the areas I can look at over the next few weeks. It maybe a lot to approach them all in this project but I can look into a few at least:

Creating perspective with and without reference

Being able to create and exaggerated 3 point perspective piece

Figuring out how to place organic creatures in perspective

Rendering environments - Might be worth looking into animation

Reading Scott Robertson’s How To Draw (2012)

Using traditional mediums so I don't start relying on digital tools