Etymotic Research hf3 headset + earphones
Figure Drawing: Design and Invention
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This week we’ll look at heads. Heads come in all shapes and sizes, it’s up to us to find a method to break the shape down into a basic form. Start with a primitive volumetric form, like a sphere, oval, or even a flour sack. Remember that the head is not flat – it has volume!
Once you have drawn the volumetric form, the next task is to establish the character’s eye line. In the top row below, you’ll see that event though the head shape and features are all the same, by establishing the eye line (horizontal axis) at different levels, we can get characters that look similar, yet different.
Volumetric surfaces have contours (lines) that follow the form. It’s important that you place the eyes on the eye line, but also adhere to making sure the eyes, nose and mouth follow the form of the head.
This week’s task is fairly straight-forward:
1) Draw 5 heads with different volumetric forms. Establish the contour lines for each form.
2) Draw 5 heads using the same volumetric form, but vary the eye line. Keep all the features identical.
3) Take the same volumetric form from #2 and now develop 5 distinct characters (young, old, male, female, anthropomorphic, etc.)
Good luck! And feel free to share your progress by way of a link in the comments below.
-Krishna
(Click the image above to embiggen.)
The Mentor Experiment critique continues – are you keeping up?
Today I’m analyzing Kyndra’s character designs. Overall, she did a terrific job! Let’s dive in, shall we?
1. Her mad scientist character is a blend of sharp and smooth lines – my suggestion – use sharper angles for the arms if you’re playing up his ‘evilness’, or just go with rounded shapes / forms if he’s the nonthreatening, bumbling type. I really like how Kyndra lowered the horizontal eye line to emphasize the character’s braininess.
2. Her slender, evil queen design is solid – very clear silhouette – I really like this one.
3. The clumsy pirate – I like the pose and the overlap of his shoulder against his head. My suggestion to enhance this pose would be to bend the back a bit more – push the foreshortening of the arm closest to us, and to move the other hand back, to make the silhouette read better.
4. The shrewd / cunning but heavyset police officer. Love the pose on this – she nailed it! Minor suggestion – have a gap between the upper arm and the chin to make
the silhouette read even clearer.
5. Love the lazy cowboy figure. Rounded shapes show that he’s really not a threat – the hat over his eyes gives us a sense that he’s not particularly sharp, and his pose suggests laziness.
All in all, great work!!
-Krishna
Above are my visual notes for Barry’s third assignment, focusing on body proportions. I think Barry did a solid job making the silhouettes for the characters read, by incorporating props to make the characters identifiable. In my notes, I have included some suggestions on exaggerating body proportions.
To convey intelligent characters, try lowering the horizontal axis line on the head, allowing more room for the “brain bucket”. To convey unintelligent characters, move that horizontal axis line closer to the top of the character’s head. With slender or tall characters, try making the legs long, or alternatively make the body and legs both long, with a slender (thin) face to compliment the overall figure.
For muscle bound characters, my suggestion would be to really place a visual emphasis on the chest and arms, making the other elements (head, legs, etc) smaller. You can exaggerate one part of a character’s anatomy to draw attention to their dominant trait, whether its intelligence or strength. How did you do on these exercises? Questions? Concerns?
Sound off in the comments below.
-Krishna
The full comic is now available on the Other World Computing blog. As always, I’m very grateful for Other World Computing‘s sponsorship. They make great hardware products (and have been since they started way back in 1988!) and I’m honored to have them as a sponsor.
-Krishna
