Friday, March 29, 2013

The Illustration Master Class 2012 (my extremely late post about it)

Edit: Apparently I had this post set to 'draft' for some reason and no one but me could view it. I should have known something was up when no spam bots were trying to post on it. My IMC posts are always a favorite of theirs.
 I'm bumping this ahead two thirds of a year so people might actually see it.... but IMC 2012 was actually last June :)



Wow, what an amazing week. I love coming here... emotionally it feels a lot like summer camp... that's the only way I can really describe it... but taught by a bunch of incredible illustrators, painters, concept artists, and art directors.
There are lectures and demos throughout the week by the faculty and special guests in attendance. Between the scheduled events students go to their studios and work on an assignment overseen by the faculty.

Here are some random shots I took while there: (in studio and some of the faculty during the farewell address and open house on the last day of the workshop)

Greg Manchess Paintings
One of the studios

More Greg Manchess paintings
Iain McCaig and Donato
Scott Fischer and Greg Manchess



Scott Fischer and Greg Manchess



If you would like to know more about The Illustration Master Class click the link to go to the website and read up on the amazing faculty and see the students' work.

Having been to IMC before I knew a huge asset to the beginning stages of completing the yearly assignment was good photo reference.... and more importantly... research.

 Testing out the validity of using my action figures for lighting reference ;P

One of the several choices this year was 'The Hunger Games'. Having recently read the first book I decided to do an illustration based loosely on the scene when Clove ambushes Katniss. 



I photographed my extremely beautiful friend, Chantelle. I had her play with toy bow and arrows and run around my studio swinging swords and daggers... in the end I decided these two had a bit of potential so I refined them a bit through an initial sketch phase.



I also knew from the previous two years that any composition could change completely after the first day.

On Day 1 of IMC there was a sketch critique with the students being split off into groups and placing the initial thumbnails of their assignments at the front wall.

After a ton of amazing input from the faculty I changed up my composition and poses, shot new reference and spent some time researching a better background.

Here are some thumbs of the progression throughout the week from pencil drawing, to monochrome oils, to restarting in a watercolor underpainting, to final.

Julia vs Julia

Final: (some kind of composite of graphite, oils, watercolor, and digital rolled into one)


 

The last night of the workshop ended with a massive sketchbook party of many of the students and faculty in attendance. We took it back to the dorms and drew and drank some more... for hours.
When sunrise approached the last of us still awake went to a 50s diner... there were waffles with real syrup... and then sad goodbyes a few hours later.

'See you next year' :)

Resident Evil Credits

The artists who worked on the latest Resident Evil film had their names published in Cinefx magazine and I'm one of them. It recently received a Canadian Screen Award.



 It was fun to work on this one as I played the game and scrawled the characters into my sketchbook during my teenage years. Maybe at some point I'll post the concept art I did for the film on this blog. I mostly post my illustration work and sketches, but not my production art -- I may change that at some point and post more of my movie stuff.