Friday, October 21, 2011

Last Vegas Special

I wanna take my blog back to its roots for this one. I recently had the opportunity to join my family in a trip to Last Vegas, so I'm gonna sum up the things I learned and the things I saw the same way I did on my Eurotrip two years ago.


Everyone has something interesting to offer you, whether it's material benefit, insight, or experience so learn how to quickly establish a connection with them.


Breakfast buffet at the Wynn: every kind of your favorite food is here. You don't even want to beat the system by eating more than you paid for. You just want to try everything. A meal is measured in trips instead of courses. Two is the standard, the first being everything you can fit on one plate.

Better genes get you more money, but if you managed to get some without blonde hair and blue eyes, you're in luck. In clubs, money is the the thing most critical to success. Then genes. Doesn't matter how you move or what you say.


Rocks in the sun are all about interesting shadow patterns, and local colour in the lit side.


Nature has similar patterns and detail distribution at all scales. The thing that makes you aware of the scale is most often the curvature of the earth on the horizon.


Rocky environment never just have rocks. In the grand canyon, there's powdery sediment and plants.


Remember transitions. Water = more plants.

Nature always variates, so should you.


When doing environments, always add some sort of wildlife, unless you want it to be completely man-made and dead. Then add dust, wear and tear etc.

The analytical mind cannot be a performer. In order to act, one must turn off analysis.

Thank God some dudes are shy, otherwise women in clubs would always be swarmed.

It's gonna take me a flight or two back to LA to get used to calling it my home.

Friday, October 14, 2011

Damn I Need to Blog

I got a whole bunch of work backed up now, which means I'm going to start posting more frequently. Maybe I'll get some of my street cred back.

Find a process for isolating elements of reality that leaves the prettiest artifacts. As in, the areas that aren't finished should look finished as quickly as possible. Constant time pressure helps you get better faster, because you begin to get rid of inefficiencies and you prioritize visual information so that the important stuff goes in first.

It's all about the bear necessities. Don't ask how many strokes it will take you, but ask how few. How few colours/values will it take to render a human body? What's important for you? Form? Pigment variation? Gesture? There are many ways to portray reality and none of them are "realistic" so choose to focus on a combination of visual elements that fits your brain.

Analyze the structure of  what you're drawing. That way your drawings will instinctively have more power, and you will learn more about your subject.

In entertainment design you can't stray too far from the zeitgeist. Your audience has to know and get what you're drawing right away.

When taking crits, always say "yes, and ..." If you don't understand, ask why.

Always keep in mind what the most important element in your design/painting is. ALWAYS. Before making any stroke, ask what is the important element.  I can't stress this enough.

Gradients give you more information that flat colours, however it's a lot harder to manage them to describe form.

Concept artists are basically prostitutes. You are hired to draw things without getting attached to any of them. I will probably return to this parallel.

The tighter the gradient, the harder edges you can use on your brush.

I repeat myself a lot, but that's only because these things are important. The easiest way to resist temptation is to give yourself no choice.

Life drawings from last night. 10s, 15, and 20s.




Monday, October 10, 2011

The Math of Design

Didn't get into the Marquee club because I didn't bring a dress shirt to vegas, so decided to blog instead. Fuck that shit anyway, the wait was getting up to an hour.

Yet another tutorial that I will need to do. For now, just analyze the wikipedia page for the Golden Ratio. If you want to learn the rules of design fast, make your distribution of detail, value, saturation and colour should adhere to the golden ratio. Essentially, if the information in your image were to be measured in bytes, as your eye travels around the picture the flow of information should increase and decrease according to the fibonacci sequence. At least at first.

Do what you love, but be careful. If a bunch of other people love doing it too, you'll need to work harder than them to succeed.

If you're not starving, share your food.

Break down value the same way you break down shape. Put down the big value changes, then take it down to less significant ones.

Use each brush stroke as a piece of clay that you add or chisel away to sculpt your form.

As you increase the values of your sliders, remember that your distance between them needs to increase too, because you have a lot more of a range of saturation.

When working in colour, you need to think 2-3 steps ahead, because it is relative.

Money gives you access to things that are desired by people.

By the time success or acclaim reaches a person or a group of people, they have already changed, for better or for worse. Those zen people had some good ideas, man.

If you think you're ahead on a project, you will almost certainly fall behind.