joe randel's art dump

So I went to that whole Massive Black Art Workshop. You wanna hear about what I did? Okay, first I’m glad that my work paid for this thing because if I had shelled out $550 bux out of my own pocket I would have been quite dissapointed. There was no “class” or even “workshop” set up as I would have expected it. I thought that those there would be drawing and the MB team would look at what we’re doing, give us tips or point out what we’re doing right and show us how to add polish to our work. Well it really wasn’t that at all. What it was, was a lot of watching the pros paint on thier PC’s/Mac’s which where then projected to large screens. We could as questions during each “session” as to what the artist was doing, where the ideas came from and so forth. Which you almost had to do if you wanted any info out of the artists because most where pretty quiet when they where painting. Dull, dull dull.

Well it wasn’t all that bad. I’m a very big visual learner so watching them use Photoshop and/or Painter was good for seeing how they use the brushes and such.  I did learn a lot through that.  And some of the art pro’s did do a good job on explaining what they do and the steps they go through.  Dan Milligan did a super awesome job talking about storyboarding and the art that he does (good enough art as he puts it).  Coro Kaufman also did a great job getting the audience involved with his tech demo and told everyone to look for inspiration for ideas everywhere, then told a story about how he gave someone a spacehsip design by showing them a shoe from a Victoria Secret cataloge.  BioWare was there as well and did a great presentation on character and location concepts and what we should be thinking of.  Here’s some points.

• Things you you should always be doing to help get ideas.  Observe, Analyze and Study.
• Only put in elements into your drawing that you need.
• Don’t be afraid to be obvious with your ideas.
• Draw all the stereotypes you can think of regarding your character idea.  Once they’re all out you’ll explore more the over all design and concept.
• THINK before you draw.

So over all it was actually a pretty good experience.  Not what I expected but still pretty cool.  I think what I came away was a better understanding of my own art skills and how I was limiting myself in my ideas and through Photoshop.  I’m now starting to experiment more with brushes and I’m having lots of fun with it.  Oh and incase you’re wondering who did the painting at the top, that would be Andrew Jones.  He did the concept art for Metroid Prime 1 & 2.  Very cool guy but he dresses a little on the wierd side.

And now you know, the rest of the story.