This is a holder thread for the tutorials I will be conducting weekly.
Learning to Draw - v001 - Shapes and Silhouettes
[media]https:
Learning to Draw - v002 - Shapes In Practice
[media]https:
Learning to Draw - v003 - Perspective + Pose
[media]https:
Learning to Draw - v004 - Application of Skills 1-3
[media]http:
Suggestions, comments, and questions are all welcome.
I watched both of the videos, and they were quite interesting (actually they have inspired me to create some sort of systematic approach for doing the art in my upcoming game, so thanks!).
My only major gripe with it is I don't really understand what you are trying to achieve. The video title is "Learning to draw", but I find that to be quite vague. I'm no artist, but there are lots of styles of drawing and there are lots of areas to cover. I think different styles have different approaches to achieving their final product. What am I going to get out of watching your videos that I'm not going to get out of any other drawing video?
Another thing: This is more of a personal thing that I have against all of these tutorial type of videos, but I always feel like they are too slow. For example, in your video, you explain to us everything that you are doing while you are doing it. I feel it would be more educational and entertaining if the video were compressed down into 3-5 minutes and presented in a sort of powerpoint slide fashion where you show before and after pics of each step. This would save time and give you more brain space to think about what you are saying. If you look at Extra Credits, Minute Physics or Vsauce, they unload all the information you need very quickly and very entertainingly. This is something I never see with art-related videos which I think would benefit the viewer a lot... but it will be more effort for the creator.
Just my 2 cents.
I would like to get it out of the way so, I felt your first video was too long, simple editing would shorten it.
You could make the video then remove the audio, do a voice over and edit out the parts where you have noting to say.
When you first announced that you would do a tutorial series, I wondered where you would start.
By the time a artist reaches the point that we don't fear onlookers judging our art, we have forgotten the questions we first asked.
You chose a really good place to start.
It isn't for those who pick up a pen for the first time, when someone draws an apple and asks WHY! doesn't it look like a apple, then thy will value these tutorials.
The second video was great, I found it interesting how the silhouette differed from the "rough sketch and refinement" method often taught.
In your future tutorials you should introduce each new step and then apply it to the owl image, showing watchers how each step builds on the final.
You should remind game developers why this is useful to them, at the beginning or end you could show a piece of level art or game character that thy could make after watching.
Topic ideas:
Form and shape, how thy influence shading.
How the thickness of lines can change a image.
How to plan moving parts.
Drawing a pose.
Color and contrast.
Geometric and Organic drawing.
Anatomy.
Choosing a art style for your game, and sticking with it.
List of simple art tips.
Simple daily exercises to improve your art.
It is always good to review the basics, and you could even learn a thing or two that was missed, I will continue watching and learning.
Thanks for the great tutorials.
Thank you for the comments. On a personal note, I tried not to focus too much on making the video powerpoint'ish. I wanted to slow it down and give some time, but I can see where this could be annoying for a person as well. I will try to make a more "choped" format in the next two videos.
My only major gripe with it is I don't really understand what you are trying to achieve. The video title is "Learning to draw", but I find that to be quite vague. I'm no artist, but there are lots of styles of drawing and there are lots of areas to cover. I think different styles have different approaches to achieving their final product. What am I going to get out of watching your videos that I'm not going to get out of any other drawing video?
Good point. Although, most of my videos will be teaching you from my thoughts and my perspective. Furthermore, I plan to teach you as if you knew nothing about art and are a programmer. At the very least a programmer could watch these videos and understand from a simplistic view what their art people are doing. If, they actually spent some time playing with it they could actually do some decent art as well. I can, however work on the pitch a bit more. With future videos I do plan on going into the different styles and how you can achieve them, but before we can turn to that we need to teach the basics first.
I think its a fine start for your series... a lot of books on how to draw actually start with silhouettes as one of the planning stages both for a new design and a new picture.
One reasoning that made sense to me was to get a silhouette that is easy to see and understand for the viewer, thus making things more obvious. Like when you see a human with all 4 limbs visible versus limbs not visible in silhouette.
So yeah, makes lots of sense to me to start with this. Also the shapes...
I would also say you could make the video a little bit shorter at some places, but it wasn't too bad for me. Most of the time you kept the flow up.
Since we are dealing with recreating 3 dimensional volumes on a 2 dimensional surface I think its more helpful to think of objects as 3 dimensional volumes rather then flat shapes. Cubes, Cylinders, Spheres and Cones. We usually dont want a resulting flat image so drawing out the volumes seems to be a better approach then flat shapes. If we can feel the cylinder of a animals belly it makes it easier to shade later because we can feel the roundness of the object. Maybe im wrong. It just seems easier to me then flat shapes.
Well, as with anything we need to start simple rather than jump to the most complex form. For you to understand a Cube you need to first understand a square. Volume+Shape is certainly a crucial element in art. We will go over the wrong method (what most people do) and the proper when creating 3d shapes shortly. This currently teaches the people the importance of silhouettes and shows them how easy drawing them can be if you look at things from a shape perspective.
Another tutorial will be coming out this week. We will be focusing on turning silhouettes into forms. If I have time I will add in the lighting tutorial as well.
This video from Mark does a great job going over and using many of the tips in these tutorial videos. Starting with silhouette and fleshing out the object. Its a good video to watch after the tutorials.
Any chance we can see the next tutorial? Its been a few weeks. I am curious where this is going.
