Week 2: Other bits and pieces

Decided to put this into one post as it wasn't worth a whole post each!

Critical studies
Our second critical studies lecture/seminar focused on character design and what exactly makes up a good character, discussing things like silhouette, believability, readability etc. We were then tasked with creating a three minute presentation on our favourite character. I'm not a massive fan of presentations, and really like to know exactly what I need to do but we've been given a bit of lee-way in terms of the precise content so I am a little bit on edge but once I've chosen a strong character and got good content I should be fine! (Hopefully).

Game production
In game production we learned how to unwrap a model to add a texture. The process was relatively straightforward but I expect it will get trickier with more complex models.

Lapsing finals

One of my 'finals' for the one point perspective canal.

I didn't get the chance to do this final until later in the week but I decided I should do it digitally because that was what I needed more practice in. I'm really pleased with how it turned out and feel like it really helped me to focus on colours. I did work from a photo reference but I tried not to duplicate the colours exactly and make them more like they were in person as the colours are never exactly replicated in photography.
I think I will do most of my finals digitally now as I really enjoy doing them in colour and they look more like final/finished pieces to me with more effort than simply a pencil sketch.

Pencil version of my final.

Other work
During the week I also got the chance to do some of my own studies:

'The girl with the pearl earring'

I wanted to try and establish what exactly made this painting a 'master' painting or what made it so famous and although I wasn't really able to draw much from it I recognised the importance of her gaze and the lighting. I really enjoyed painting this and really like the way it turned out although I have considered going back over it and making the edges a lot softer as they're quite harsh in comparison to the original.

Looking at lighting and angles.

This study was a bit of an afterthought when I found the photograph and decided I wanted to try painting it. To make it a useful exercise I tried working in a different way; filling my canvas in black and working up the tone without using any base sketching. As I got part way through I noticed I wasn't getting the angle of her face right and that's something I've always struggled with. After working over it with no result I figured I better leave it and come back to it later. Although now looking back at it I can see some faults which I couldn't before (example the nose is too long).