This Week in the Forest! #192

YO FOLKS! Here's what we've been up to!

Starting with a quick word from Vixel:

7/1 update:

Hey floofs!! Last week I worked with Carrot to prepare the game for an Itch.io update we're planning soon. I'm still bringing in some of the new content we're adding to Acts 1-3, and should have that done shortly. Then on to playtesting!~ Have a lovely week! <3

~Vixel

While Vixel's been prepping our next build, I mentioned last week that we wanted to have an additional lil' date or something for y'all that isn't included in the free Act 3 Itch build. Just to keep content rolling 'n what not!

BUT MAN I'VE BEEN SO RUSTY WITH DRAWING! SO, last week I went back and hit the books!

Literally I pulled out my favorite animal drawing book called The Art of Animal Drawing by Ken Hultgren. I really recommend this book - it's FULL of solid information.

The upper right 4 images are all straight from the book. the other ones are from photos.

Back in college I was able to learn so much from this book, but even now, over a decade later, there's still plenty of nuggets to pick up! These sorts of books are super dense with info, so every time you revisit it, you learn something new!

Anywho I was mainly re-focusing on the understructure and proportions. This is essentially the building blocks when it comes to posing a character. These sorts of studies are hella valuable!

Of course, you gotta put in the time to solidify it too:

These studies had one version as pure understructure, and the other version as the actual study. Photo reference is good, but you need to make sure you can COMMAND this stuff. Ditch references and design your own poses, mess with camera angles too. This is putting your study work to the test.

Using similar processes now that I was warmed up, I was able to apply the workflow to other designs and animals. Mainly this is me testing to see if I'm shaking the rust off or not xD

This character is why I've been studying canines. I mean, canines is a really good thing to study for drawing animals in general, partly because they're very accessible and we have a ton of information/references of them. But lots of animals share a lot of the same building blocks. Spines, legs, arms, neck, skull, tail etc. Of course there are tons of nuances with every animal, but if you can draw one animal very well, you're well on your way to drawing any animal.

More photo studies. Great warm ups for the day, but also really trying to re-solidify this information in my head again.

More of my own designs testing the methods.

More studies. Majority of these are less than 10 minutes, some maybe around 15.

TFOL Critters!

The boy

More studies!

Study, and then adapting the pose to my own character.

To those who aren't familiar with my drawings or my background. I'm a firm believer in the classical art methods. Observational drawing equips you with the tools and knowledge of the things we're creating. I promise you, all of your favorite artists who are badass draftsman have pages of these kinds of studies in their sketchbooks. Probably SKETCHBOOKS full. Or y'know, the digital equivalent.

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With all that studying, I've been able to knock out the next date pretty quickly! And it's a sequence of 11 images! It's not in color though, so I'm able to get it done a lot quicker. This date is Charlotte reading a story to you. So I wanted to have a kinda storybook feel to it. At least, a visually different style than the normal illustrations. The very top picture is an example :>

OK That's it! Hopefully we'll have news on the builds soon!

Take care!

OH OH, I've attached the timelapses of all those sketches. You can download em and check em out!