Still life - Morla Gorilla Model

Morla Gorilla Model

I was watching  a still life demo by Awesome Horse.  While I was watching/listening I figured I might as well do something.  So I did a study of the morla gorilla model I used here. Morla is the Irish word for plastecine.  Every young kid in school gets to play with it at some time making snakes and the like.  
This study was a lot harder than I thought it would be probably because of all the colours.  Anyway It took me about as long as the livestream.  The stream itself is every Saturday - evening for me- but well worth checking out. 

Check out Punk Economics

I try not to mix anything else into this blog- keep it just for study but here is a crossover.  

It is  Punk Economics produced by David McWilliams and Irish economist.  People in Ireland have by necessity all become amateur economists.   David s is a professional economist.  Stuff that 10 years ago Irish people would have dozed off at the mention of now forms the basis of casual conversation and jokes.  In case you don't know Ireland is currently in the process of paying  billions to bondholders  to keep the European 'project' afloat.   The video is a product of this cocktail. 

Gorilla Study -Crimson Daggers Bloodsports challenge - final

Gorilla Guardians Bloodsports final

Here is the submitted piece for the final.  Lost all dynamism in the pose that I started off with. The arm is a bit wonky and there was a cop out on the foliage.  Gorilla ended up way to contemplative.   I suppose in that way it failed the brief.   I used colours in title. I liked the planet but most of it got lost when rendered.  So the final product drifted along way from the thumbnail and the drift was not all good. Next time...

Gorilla Study -Crimson Daggers Bloodsports challenge part 4

Jungle Photoshop study

This was a study I did to get some ideas for rendering a jungle environment.  I did this reasonably quickly.  About 90 minutes I think.  It went by really fast.

Gorilla Study -Crimson Daggers Bloodsports challenge Part 3

Morla Gorilla

I figured I would do something new so I made a model out of plasticine.  In Ireland plasticine is called morla (Irish word).    In truth it was a very rough modelling.  Took me an hour or so.  I took some photos at different angles. It was primarily to get some help with rendering.    This may or may not have helped as you will see in the next step

Gorilla Study -Crimson Daggers Bloodsports challenge part 2

Thumbs - gorilla

 Above  are the series of thumbs that I worked on.  I dropped the more static ones and went wit the following.  Looking at the now possibly the first standing pose would have been stronger but below is what got worked on.  I added in some colour which broadly was the final colour scheme. 

Chosen pose

Gorilla Study -Crimson Daggers Bloodsports challenge

Gorilla Photoshop Study 3 hrs

I went ahead and took part in the last Crimson Daggers Bloodsports challenge.  This is becoming a big commitment as the pace I work at and the time it takes to do the studies and get the piece to any level of finish is pretty much all the time I have available.  They are proving to be really good at getting a working process together and forcing me to make decisions and stick with them.  So for that reason I have stuck with them.  Besides that Dan Warren is giving a lot of coaching and there  are a group of people doing them so it is probably closer to a college situation.  So for now other projects + goals are on hold.  Anyway above is a study for what was the Gorilla Guardian IP.  

45 minutes

90 minutes

Reference

The Elusive Grand Landscape

Came accross this resource online.  

The StrobeOhio Blog: Workshop Wednesday

This site is dedicated to photography and  by association Photoshop.  They have a great video resource.  I watched one on landscpe photography which was great.  I dont do much in the way of photography other than gathering images for reference but ..

whether photography or for image making purposes the same challenge must be met.   How to produce an image that moves us and among all the possible subjects landscapes may be the most difficult. 

This presentation by Moose Peterson is great. 

He talks about how he builds an image and provides examples of how light, colour and texture build towards a great composition.  If your not much into the photography dont worry the vast proportin of the presentaion is about the image not the equipment.  Interestingly most of the questions at the conclusion were about the equipment...............

Moose also has a website full of images and instruction. 

Gauntlet challenge -Submitted Entry

Gauntlet challenge -Submitted entry

Well with time pushing on and alot of work to do I got cracking on the image.  I did make composition changes as I went along.  I did this work over 5 evenings maybe 3 hours each evening and I still didn't finish it. Still lots of detail to be added and rendering for the main light source + some environmental work.  I got it as far as I could. They all look very wooden.  I may go back and finish when I have had more practice. .  .

Gauntlet Challenge -archer study

With 3 characters left I choose to work on the archer next .

Archer Photoshop Study

  I was particularly interested in getting a good image with hands available.  Te reference colour was not ideal but the hands were visible. I had two more characters left but was running out of time as I knew rendering all 4 characters would take time.  So rather than taking time to do last 2 studies I went straight to the final composition .