#the pose. the anatomy. the muscles and details. gorgeous

[t4toro]

[ID: black and white scan of a poem titled Beastiary 1, written by B. L. Barr, most likely a page from an old Star Trek fanzine, the poem reads as follows:

Like a cat

Your graceful covenant

Your slender body

Hair

glossy and dark

Bearing

aloof and regal

Moving

silently

Sharp senses

Ears

tapering at the tip

Eyes

see all

and reveal

little.

Tell me

my feline Vulcan

whose touch

can make you

relax

and even

purr?

Perhaps....

mine?

below the poem is an accompanying art piece, a drawing of Mister Spock lying naked on his right side with his back facing the viewer, right arm against the floor supporting his upper body, his face is turned so that only his left profile faces the viewer. a black tail is extended from his tailbone, his legs taper into anatomically correct black cat paws in place of feet, left leg slightly bending at the knee to be in front of his other leg. his clawed left hand is extended to hold his left calf]

[ghost-in-the-hella]

for the artist ask game: 4, 5, 7, 10, 21

4 = Fav character/subject that's a bitch to draw

Oof, tattoos. I love characters with tattoos, but they’re a pain to draw. Trying to figure out what parts of a tattoo would be visible in a particular position, trying to get it in proportion with their anatomy and pose, trying to get all the details to be right (or at least right enough), *and* trying to integrate the tattoo into a different drawing style than the original? It’s a *lot*. And yet, tattooed characters are so good!

5 = Estimate of how much of your art you post online vs. the art you keep for yourself

As far as fan art goes, I post almost all of it. 

7 = A medium of art you don't work in but appreciate

I have no experience with making 3-D rendered art, but I respect the hell out of it. When it’s done well, it can be gorgeous.

10 = Favorite piece of clothing to draw

I actually really don’t like drawing clothing much ^_^’ So maybe tight pants? With tight pants it’s just kind of the muscles of the legs and then a few little folds at the knees and ankles, so that sounds like the next best thing to just drawing leg muscles. Sometimes drawing a fancy jacket or something can be fun?

21 = Art styles nothing like your own but you like anyways

Ooh, I like a lot of different art styles that aren’t like mine. I love really detailed, realistic art (whether digital or traditional) with elaborate backgrounds and all of that. I also love really cartoony, cute, “simplified” art. Neither is something I’m particularly skilled with, but I have a huge appreciation for both.

[mawwart]

Anon doing the splits, whoever you are, tumblr ate your ask 💔

For everyone else anon asked about tips on drawing robots so I’m gonna give ya some tips and cool stuff to look at

To make fleshy squishy into cool robo bits it’s all about SIMPLICITY. Trust me. Every robot (or creature!) design can be broken up into basic human(oid) anatomy. Here’s a method that I use for just about everything with a similar structure

I use the second figures shapes all the time. And break down the shapes of other parts of human anatomy so they fit together on a mechanical body

The biggest concerns with making fleshy bits (like an arm where skin can squish, stretch and fold) is making it rigid with parts that can still move smoothly. Which is why I love having organic shapes! I could probably go into a lot more detail but I wanna keep this short (for now).

The biggest refs/insp I get are mostly from movies (especially movies since you can see how a lot of those parts move!!), comics, and most importantly enough toys.

I’ll probably come back to add more onto this post since I’ve hit the pic limit BUT here’s some choice examples of the stuff I reference. Most tend to be either robots, armor, or armor suits.

Terminator is an obvious choice since the robots are literally modeled after human skeleton and muscle structure

Bungie has both Halo and Destiny (I lean more into Destiny of course, my beloveds💕) with both all sorts of different designs for armor and robotic characters (exos from destiny are especially my favorite). Warframe is also great since it’s way more heavy on organic shape design with their characters.

Pacific Rim!! Oh my beloved Pacific Rim has wonderful designs in suits, robots, and kaiju 💕

Also I’m obsessed with Alex Milne’s work in Transformers like. Oh my god.oh my god.

And speaking of Transformers...

Toys!

Not only are they great for posing yourself, but if you don’t have the money to buy (like me rip) there’s always plenty of pictures of the toys doing cool and dynamic poses! Take the absolutely drool worthy masterpiece Tarn

Like look at him. He’s gorgeous, beautiful, stunning, amazing, perfection

I’ll add more onto this post later but I hope this helps! It went more into a show n tell about my favorite designs but I’ll be sure to actually provide some better demos onto this

[alexanderessex3dstoryart]

Character Design - Anatomy and Robot Design Research -  28th of December

For this research section for my character, I thought I looked at body anatomy and robot designs online to help with my research for the character design project. This will mainly help to look at not only interesting robot designs that I can help towards my research, but also think about functionally how and mechanically would these parts work and how could I carry this over into a CG model-making process.

To start off with, I began to look into anatomy online like the different types of body forms as well as looking into muscles and bones for humans as this would help me with my visual library in coming up for ideas for my characters as well as helping me out later for my silhouette designs/drawings later on. I first looked at different body language in not only in a design sense but also posing wise too as one of the criticisms with my turnaround previously was how stiff the character looked as it didn’t have any flow to the character. This is why I didn’t just look at body shape but also something called contrapposto flow which shows how you can give flow to a model/character in a standing pose using Michelangelo’s statue as reference. Through just exaggerating in areas like the shoulders and ankles by titliting them, you create a more true to life character on screen than a character that’s standing in an A-pose that gives freedom to express which can also in term describe the character from just looking at it. Learning this, I understand the comments from the tutorial a lot better as this creates a much more dynamic and varied pose that allows you to understand the character better.

Body Form Diagram 

Michelangelesque Contrapposto

After this, I then did some research on bones and muscles in the human anatomy as I felt inspired from one of my favourite artists of all time (Igor Verniy) as one of his projects led to him combining human bones with scrap metal and mechanical parts he found in a scrapyard to create these really disturbing but gorgeous looking sculptures. 

Because of his artwork, it influenced me to look down this path of bones with technology which a video I found online really helped solidified what I wanted to do for the Hyde character’s design. From casually browsing on Youtube, I stumbled across a video of a deer snorting in the cold where visibly you can see the cold mist fly out of it’s nostrils. Because of this detail, it clicked in my head that I wanted to base my Hyde character using a Deer head as the basis for the design which linked in with Igor Verniy’s work, influenced me to look into trying to make a deer’s skull incorporated with technology. This was because I could imagine a mechanised deer that is collectively made from scrap and bone that is collected from the ground to help build up this monstrous beast as well as smoke snortling out of the deer’s nostrils.

Whitetail Buck Encounter With a Serious Snort || ViralHog

Because of this new revelation, I began to research into two different types of mood boards for the Hyde character with one looking at deer heads and skulls and ideas for the Hyde character based off my deer prompt. Starting with the first mood board, I wanted to look at the designs of the antlers and the skulls as I plan to use these as a base for the head of the character and maybe design aesthetics for the body too. Two images I really love are the more metallic deer skulls and the real skulls with their large teeth as the teeth aesthetically is something I might enhance on the characters deign as well as the metallic skull of a deer as i’m looking to experiment in both fully metallic skulls and a cross between the middle.

For the the second mood board, I came across a scandinavian folklore called a Kyrkogrim which is a deity that often protects christian churches and they’re grounds from people that want to try and harm it. From this, I found that there could be symbolism from the folk tale could be implemented between the characters as Hyde while his methods are outlandish and brutal is all in all trying to protect his smaller vessel from straying away from his self and losing his identity. Researching the Kyrkogrim online, I found a lot of depictions of the creature being very human like but having a deer like head for its appearance which I was particularly fond of ‘Specimen 8′ from Spooky’s house of Jumpscares (the deer deity on the left of the mood board) as I love his creepy design to him from the antlers to his long and elongated cloak flowing down his body. I think if I was to create him more nuclear, it would be the main basis of where I would want to be taking forward with the character. In addition to looking at the Kyrkogrim, I also looked at the designs of the Wendigo as it’s another piece of folk-lore that I was inspired by as it also contains these deer like creatures in its depecitions. In addition to the folk-lore research, I looked into big bulky character designs mostly of the mechanical nature as the character is going to be made up of scrap metal lying across the ground which I instantly gravitated towards the bottom robot design for it’s cluster of colours and unproportionate shapes.  

Through doing research on robots, I look into few images of real life robots that are made today and see how mechanically they work as well their design aesthetic. In addition too, I looked into robots built up from scrap metal for references and compare in visuals against the real life robots.

I first started off researching looking at robotic movement to see how morden robots have evolved in their articulation. This is where I stumbled across this video where a robot can simulate human movement in its body. Whilst not a fully autonomous robot that moves itself, understanding its movement was really fascinating to watch from how jittery but also smooth the movements were from the arms, legs and body of the robot were but quite strange at the same time with details like the legs and hands being so stiff in places. The design of the robot was something that really struck me as they use a lot of smooth and curved panels to hide the electronics of the robot but also have exposed areas in the arms and legs like wires and bolts.

This Humanoid Robot Can Mimic Human Movement In Real Time | Mach | NBC News

From this first bit of research, this then led me to the Boston Dynamics Youtube channel where their most recent video showcases all of their most developed robots dancing to the song ‘Do you Love Me’. I was completely mesmerised by the animation and how in sync they were all in together especially for something that's been made today. The main highlight was how each robot had their own style of movement to them giving them a different personality as they danced. The robot people acted jittery and stiff but somehow smooth with the dog and crane robots much smoother but much more limited in flexibility compared to the human based robots. Overseeing the robots dancing and watching a few more of the other demos of the robots opening doors and doing stunts, they have a very slow and jittery movement to them before they do a really quick action like they’re building up energy for the action. This is definitely more seen in the human based robots as the non-human like ones operate movement is a lot smoother but often hold a position/stance before a next move is made. 

In terms of design, they almost follow the same principles to the Toyota robots with the smooth white panel design to them with loose cables visible to the eye. However I prefer these robots to the Toyota ones very greatly as their visuals are more the kind of design I want to imagine for my Hyde character as they may have the protective panels on the more sensitive parts of the robots so they aren’t damaged, the loose cables and the exposed mechanisms that can be seen are so up my street for the character as it gives it a very futuristic look to it without looking too smart which what modern robots tend to look like. This is mostly shown in the human based robots that Boston Dynamics have made as the dog and crane are designed to have no protective panels or completely protective. Not this is a problem as both of their designs I really enjoy as I love the smartness of the dog looking robot and the complex and technical nature of the crane as they complement each other really well from how they move.

Do You Love Me?

Hey Buddy, Can You Give Me a Hand?

What's new, Atlas?

Images from the ‘Do you Love me’ video by Boston Dynamics

After the Boston Dynamics research, I then looked into scrap/junk based robot designs on the internet as that's how I imagine the Hyde character to look like when I will design him. Going back to when I was first thinking about the character in this blog post. the character ‘Metro’ from the film ‘Reel Steel’ is the the exact direction I would want to take with this character and possibly for the render style too. This is mostly from the irregular shapes that have been attached to the design like they’ve been randomly placed on the character in a frankenstein sort of fashion to the character which would work really well with my Hyde character as he gathers bits and bobs collectively around his surroundings. Going back to variety, I love how the arm joints are constructed here as its on a three ball hinge but being really exposed compare to the other arm which is heavily built too. I think from observing this design, I want to do a cross between irregular shapes on the characters design in addition to the smart looking design of the Boston Dynamics robots. Essentially, a fusion between Reel Steel’s Metro and Boston Dynamics Human-like robot is what my Hyde character should look like with deer elements inspired for the character.

Below is the mood board I also created when looking into the scrap aesthetic and creating a scrap robot of some kind. Like with ‘Metro’, i wanted to focus on irregular shapes for the Hyde character as this is how I imagine he's going to be built up which I looked at character which were not inherently bulky but more going along that brief. With the top right image in the corner of this mood board, it uses an excellent use of these irregular shapes with bits of metal sticking out of the body. Another thing I like from these mood board images is that I’ve looked at a variety of both bulky and thin character designs as they use different ways to build up the metal and parts to make the character like the one on top with the purple background being comprised of one solid object compared to the one below it with different parts scattered across the design with different patterns. 

Looking back on my research over these couple of days, I’m really happy from my findings as not only have I developed my understanding on the themes for my characters but also coming with new ideas and visuals that I can work from to make a final design for my characters. I think my favourite part of my research was looking up the deer-related content for the Hyde character as I ended finding a lots of cool references dwelled into like the Kyrkogrim and looking at modern day robots like the ones from Boston Dynamics. Their design of the panels being spaced out is something I would really love to incorporate into the character with loose cables and mechanisms being exposed to the eye.

[rubypeterson]

When she’d started working at The Loeb Boathouse, Ruby hadn’t thought much of Central Park right there beside it a perk until the warm weather started up again. It was a good spot to unwind and she found it easy to toss a thin blanket in her bag and sit and enjoy the sun. Not to mention it was a good people watching spot and she often found herself sketching random park goers as a bit of a warm up before she went into the shop for the day. She always gave herself an hour between two jobs which gave her plenty of time to get some basic anatomy down in her sketchbook for the day. Forms of kids, parents, college aged looking kids on benches reading, they littered a page drawn in various details from just their poses to the shading of the clothes they wore. Selection was often done at random or she looked at clothes she liked, poses that could challenge her a little but-

This guy. New York was full of joggers, it was full of gorgeous people, but this guy was kind of something else. He’d hardly slowed to a stop before she was moving her pencil across the page, tongue just barely sticking out of the corner of her mouth. Was this how Italian artists felt when creating sculptures? Fascinated by rippling muscle and strong jawlines. There was just something aesthetically appealing about him in general and she was quick to try and get down his overall physique, eyes darting from him to the page and back again. @everettupshall