The Composer

 I didn't want to tighten it up too much so I left everything rough and loose. Felt that it was more important for me to capture the feeling I envisioned. I've been wanting to play around with lighting for awhile since its something I wasn't taught much about in school.

I think one of the most important aspect of this piece was getting the hands right. I learned in school that hands could be one of the most expressive part of a piece and its definitely true. Sadly, I still often struggle with drawing hands but I've come a long way! I used to draw characters with their hands behind their back or in their pockets so I could avoid the frustration haha! Now I can draw hands without having to google the PERFECT angle (or another trick is to photograph your own hand with your phone- quick and easy).

Anyway, this piece was inspired by an OPB commercial I saw when I was a kid. It's been so long but its one of the few commercials that etched in my memory because its so darn creative and clever!!

One thing I learned in school that changed the way I painted in photoshop was to have a desaturated layer that I can turn on and off while I worked. This helps me keep my values in check.

Stage 1 and 2. First stage was literally just scribbling whatever I had in my head without really thinking of anything technical. This stage was done without colors. Literally looks like chicken scratch. Second stage was cleaning it up a bit and trying to capture the mood I wanted.

Pineapple Girl

Inspired by the most adorable costume I've ever seen :)

Fashionista 03

This one is more loose compared to the other two, and also more stylized. I tried to focus more on exaggerating his proportions.

Also all of these 'fashionistas' are wearing sunglasses not because im lazy to draw eyes, but because these are referenced from Korean celebrities 'airport' fashion photos. Long story short, they're photos of celebrities taken before or after a flight. Because all of their fans (and press) are usually there to send them off or welcome them back, they put tons of effort into dressing well. They usually don't have their make-up professionally done before/after a flight, so they hide their faces with sunglasses or surgical masks. Anyways, I definitely want to draw some eyes so this will be the last sunglasses one in awhile. :P

Fashionista 02

Another one. Quicker and less challenging because I didn't try to stylize it much. Was more interested in the colors.

(fyi: depending on your monitor, this piece could look crazy bright red but its supposed to be a bold but toned down red with orange strokes. Just noting this because I viewed this on my monitor at work and it almost blinded me)

Fashionista 01

Tried stylizing from reference without going too extreme. Also messed around with my new brush pack...it came with 100 brushes but I found myself really only using one or two.  Not too pleased with the way this came out...but I'll be doing more of these for sure, they're fun!!

Mulan

Here's another rough one.
Haven't drawn anything like this in awhile. Keeping it loose (more like im lazy to go into details haha)

Bucket of Bunnies

Here's a quick chicken-scratch doodle just because I feel guilty for not drawing in so long. Maybe I'll actually clean it up and finish it some day.

Forest Friends

Was determined to finish this piece before the end of the week. I've been working on this since...forever. Mainly because I kept revising it over and over again...then I would stop working on it for days weeks. I hate to admit it but its tough to drag myself towards my desk and get some art done without feeling like its "work". However once I sit down, turn on some music and get drawing, it becomes the best feeling in the world :)

Did a wintery piece because im so tired of this hot weather thats been going on for waaay too long. Okay im so gonna regret saying that once the gloomy and rainy Portland weather returns...

Messed around with other color variations. This one is slightly warmer, feels more like dusk.

Flies...flies everywhere

Here's my mom and her new electric fly swatter :D hahah

Ladies of animation

One of my favorite art books yet!! Got the works of several of my favorite artists :D

From the Stars*

I guess I would call this part II of my previous swimming baby piece.  Wanted to try incorporating some depths of field into my work :)

That one useless button

My (dusty) keyboard. 

I think modelers can understand this. 

Swim awayyy~

Don't worry, they're just toys :P 

(Always thought those baby head floats were hilariously cute. example )

School works!

Looong overdue blog entry, but here are some works I did during my last two terms at Ai. I finally graduated and it still feels a bit surreal...but I've been trying to keep doing art on my free time and im hoping I can start blogging my WIPS. So here is a last "homeworks" post!!

Also here is my new official portfolio that I rebuilt before graduation. Finally got my own domain!!
www.joycefanart.com


My demo reels...I had to make two of everything because my focuses were 3D modeling and concept designing (animation/game based). My goal was to combine 3d modeling with my own concepts but I never found the time to work on major personal projects due to school and work. I spent most of my last term re-rendering and revising everything I wanted to put in my portfolio.


fanJoyce_ModelingReel from Joyce F on Vimeo.



fanJoyce_ConceptReel from Joyce F on Vimeo.

Ecorche modeling/sculpting class

Took an ecorche (anatomy) class to keep up with modeling and sculpting, but most of all I really wanted to nail down my anatomy before I graduated. I took an anatomy class during my second year but never really got anything out of it. Simply drawing and memorizing muscles didn't help much cause I couldn't visualize it in 3d form. This class was exactly what I needed. Every week we focused on a certain area of the body and our instructor was very particular about anatomical accuracy. We would keep revising our sculpt using a variety of references. It really required studying every muscle and understanding the form.

 Heres an example of my feedbacks. I revised the model at least 3 times for each body part.

Final sculpt! I didn't realize how big the feet were until my final renders...







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Digital painting class

Learned a lot in this class. A life-changing technique I learned was to paint SMALL. Whenever I painted digitally, I would spend HOURS trying to paint everything in details with the smallest brush possible. Now I enjoy digital painting a lot more using a large loose brush and starting small (zoomed out). Also focusing on values before adding color (or just using a desaturated adjustment layer) helps a ton.

Egg studies!

Value studies using film stills.

 Did a loooot of these quick studies- trying to match colors to the original image and using only hard edge brushes. Every week we focused on something different - portrait, environment, etc.

Wood texture studies.
Found 3 types of wood textures, drew a box or rectangle with 3 values, tried to paint the textures on.

Portfolio revisions- before & afters

Went back to something I did a few  years ago and revised them for my portfolio. Was surprised by much my approach to digital painting has changed within the last two years or so (thanks to all the painting classes I took)

Painted this during my second year. Values were a mess. Hard to see whats going on when you zoom out. Focusing too much on the little stuff. 

Repainted two months ago. Looser but easier to read, took a LOT less time to paint, and actually felt like I knew what I was doing.

After. Could even take out line work =O

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Pre-production class

Took this awesome pre-production/concept class and was lucky enough to work with a group of amazing artists. Whats great was that we were all good at something different so the whole concept team balanced out extremely well. It was amazing watching the project grow from rough sketches to a solid concept to final models, then rigged and animated. Our character designs were a major challenge for the rigging team but they turned out awesome. Can't wait to see the final animation!!!

Our story and characters were inspired by Laurel & Hardy (comedic duo during 1930s). Had a lot of fun thinking of all the possible scenarios and storylines. 

Here are some of the works I did for this production. 

 Character explorations- rough sketches.

Character explorations stage 2

 Final characters turn-around

 Some construction drawings. I realized my technical/construction drawing skills need a lot of work. It was a good challenge though. Learned a lot.

Some environment ideas.

I painted over the models for fun. These aren't the official colors for the characters.

 Made a little clay maquette of laurel. Don't have high quality pictures yet. Took this while he was baking in the oven.

 Printed a large poster to hang in my studio! This was definitely one of my favorite projects I've worked on. Really proud of what our team achieved :)

Better idea of how big the poster is, its around 3.5 ft although it looks tiny in comparison to the large painting underneath.

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After Effects class

Sooo glad I took this class. Not only did I learn a lot, but I found another favorite program. Putting my demo reel together would've been a huge pain if I hadn't taken this class. Really enjoyed making some of these. 

Heres a kenetic typography video I made based on a scene from Despicable Me. 

Final project was to make a motion comic using at least 1 page of any comic.

The rest of the projects I made in this class are in my older blog entries.

Illustrations and conceptual illustrations 

See more in my portfolio

 Just a quick random drawing. I wanted to try combining 3d with 2d.

 Who knew drawing with the photoshop lasso tool would be so fun?!

 Revised some old works.

 Re-rendered my models from our Pinocchio project several terms ago.

 Made these bottle cap magnets to give away during portfolio show. On the left are my business cards (front and back)

My table! A little boring and missing the laptop I borrowed...
But im glad I made a physical portfolio because it made it easier for people to look at my works.














Its been a tough but fun journey and I feel like I've gotten more out of Ai than I'd expected. I have no regrets going there despite in all the "complaints" I've heard from other people. I would like to blog about my experience there but I think it would turn out to be a twenty page essay. Maybe someday ha! :D

Portland Bus People - Part II 

I already posted most of these in a previous entry but I ended up putting all my individual sketchbook pages into 1 huge page so everything's all mixed together. There are some new ones I haven't posted. The last time I took the bus was around 1.5 years ago...if theres anything I missed about taking the bus (which isn't much) is that I no longer get to draw interesting people :(