Monkeyslunch Blog

A Slew of Ways Skyrim Could Be Improved

Being trained to have a critical eye and constantly look at how things can be improved can have its drawbacks.  For instance, when you play a video game that everyone else claims is amazing you will notice numerous ways in which it could have been improved (although I think Skyrim is amazing too).

While I do love Skyrim, here are a few different ways in which I thought it could have been, or still be, improved upon.  Fingers crossed that some of these requests/critiques are answered in upcoming DLC.

Note: Yes, I am Canadian, and I spell it “armour.”

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Some of the experimentation I did for Shaw’s food bank drive this year.  Only had a couple hours here and there to come up with a concept- 3 were done overall from different designers in between our schedules. I liked where this was going, but I didn’t have enough time to flesh it out.

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The Shaw Exo WiFi Finder App for Android.  Designed by Moi.  
On a wonderful team of devs and UX.

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Matcha sludge

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Alive

I’m still alive, folks.  After a long string of bad luck and bad news, however, I have to thank a lot of friends and my girlfriend for helping pull me out of depression and hibernation.  Work will resume shortly.

This Is How Design Works

Block it in, find proportions, find the large shapes, find the hard defining lines, measure, compare, correct, find the whitespace, make every mark with confidence, measure, compare, correct, add value/tone, compare, measure, correct.  Start over, make a hundred more until you’ve forgotten the first one, only then can you share it with the world, when it’s no longer a prized possession and gloating over it doesn’t impede you from making more work, and better work.

-notes to self.

(Source: monkeyslunch.com)

13 Brief Tips For Better Figure Drawing

Not a full list or anything that will make you a genius with a pencil, just a few pointers.

1. Stare at the model, not me or the window.
2. If you’re done a pose early then do it again, slower, or choose a body part in general to practice. 
3. Compare every line to it’s brothers and sisters and the negative space before you put it down.
4. Think about every line even more, before you put it down.  Mean it, every time.
5. If you can’t make out the area you’re trying to draw then why draw it at all?
6. Lay down a quick frame work with the correct proportions first, lightly, then draw on top of that.
7. If you aren’t achieving what you’d like, maybe you’re going too fast.
8. Try different papers and materials.
9. If you don’t think you’re good at drawing hands, feet, or anything else in your regular work, then guess what you should be drawing from the model before anything else!
10. If you’re having trouble getting the posture right, or if your figures look like they’re falling over, find the S curve in the spine and plot it out along with a quick line skeleton to find the right proportions, weights, etc.
11. Make sure your music is down low enough it isn’t disturbing everyone else
12. If you finish the last pose early, show some respect for the model and your peers and wait a few minutes for everyone else to finish before packing up, whether you think you can be quiet about it or not.
13. Clean up after yourself.

(Source: monkeyslunch.com)

In case you were curious what some of those prints were in the previous posts, here are a couple.  A mixture of linoprint and monoprint.  These are for my 365 Abstracts project, which you should check out now!

花鳥風月 Kachou Fuugetsu 1 & 2, with variant - Spencer Goldade

• Literally: Flower, Bird, Wind, Moon
• Meaning: Experience the beauties of nature, and in doing so learn about yourself.