Lighting

My friend once told me that "rim lighting can make anything look nice". While that's not entirely true, I must admit that the statement ain't too far off. The reason why rim lighting often 'lifts' the object out of the scene is due to the high contrast value that is created when the light color meets the dark background.

The important thing to note when painting is that you have to envision the object as a real-life 3D model. Imagine how it would look under a proper lighting set-up. While I am not a lighting expert, I do understand, and try to establish, the classic 3 point lighting.

The hues I used for the foreground character and prop is similar to that of the background. To bring attention onto the character, I tried to play with a stronger value contrast and added a medium intensity rim light. Of course, there are many other depth cues in play, but those were the main ones utilized.

The Case Against Video Games

I was reading Digital Art Masters Volume 4 a while ago and came across the article by Weiye Yin for his artwork Fly Together. He was talking about how he was inspired to create the image from a wooden toy from his childhood. As discussed in an earlier post, i believe that inspiration comes from everywhere. But I think that we often get inspired from past experiences and events, particularly from our childhood. And that got me thinking.

Kids this days play a lot of video games, whether it's on a PC, a console or a handheld device. Don't get me wrong, I grew up playing games too and I am glad I did. Video games (or at least, the good ones) transport the player to a brand new fantasy world, thereby stimulating the imagination. The only problem is that the experience is predetermined by someone, often the game designer. This person is the "God" of the universe that takes the player plays in, controlling what can or cannot be done.

This is different when kids interact with a real life toy. They create their own rules. They determine which toy is the protagonist and which is the antagonist. By mixing up the toy components (Lego, anyone?) the player can create their own environments. They are the "Gods" of their own universe. They create their own stories and scenarios. Now you could argue that games these days also encourage user generated content like Little Big Planet, or take a more sandbox approach like Grand Theft Auto where the player can do whatever he wants. But with all due respects to these games, I think it would be hard for a kid to intuitively and quickly establish his or her own world through the medium of video games.

In contrast, the sky is the limit when interacting with real life objects. Back in the day, me and friends could come up with more than a dozen ways to have fun with a ball. Its this kind of limitless possibilities that is lacking with games right now. And it is this factor that really opens up the kid's imagination and cognitive abilities.

I was lucky, growing up in the '90s and getting to experience the best of both worlds. I hope this post isn't one of those "old dude trying to diss at the current generation" rants. But maybe next time you should think twice before introducing that iPad game to your 5 year old cousin.

Figure Drawing - Part I

I guess every artist knows this, but I want to emphasize:
Figure drawing is IMPORTANT!
It helps, even if you have absolute zero interest in creating characters (which should not be the case, since all stories involve characters, and all medias deal with stories)in honing your speed of drawing and your observation skills.

The following are some of the figure drawings I made during the first half of Spring Semester this year. I will be compiling all my figure drawings for this semester into a pdf. Hopefully I can find somewhere to upload to and share it around.