Friday, December 19, 2008

Semester Overview

So, the semester was a lot of fun. Like most people, drawing out the skeleton wasnt my cup of tea, but I think it really paid off and its something that I will reference often from here on out. The building up of the skeleton was very important to me, as I was a lot more confident drawing out the full sized version after having studied each of the parts thoroughly.

If you look on my semesters final post, I added one of the leg bones I had done pretty early in the semester. Taking that and comparing it to the final skeleton, you can have a pretty good visual of how one was a direct reference of the other, and how the final was built up through studies.

This has all helped me immensely in drawing figures. Areas that are particularly noticeably better are areas of the figure in which the skeleton is more visible, such as the shoulders and the elbow and knee joints. However, it has also helped me grasp the more abstract areas of the figure, where bones are covered in layers of skin and muscle, giving even these areas a sense of structure.

Overall a great experience, and something I will be happy to show off in the future.

Skeleton In Progress and Details

Quick post with a bunch of the in-progress pics on the full skeleton we worked on during the semester, because I missed posting them back then.


















Semester Finals

Leg


Vertebra Section

Skull

Model Drawing




Edited slightly because his back was bugging me (notably the Obliques)


Self Portrait


Full Skeleton

side note - the right leg (viewers left) got shrunk horizontally due to the page curving when I took the picture. The full body one show it in the correct proportions.


Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Hello

I'm Alex Courrier. Welcome to my blog.

A quick few things about me - I'm a super senior at UW Stout WI working on my Multimedia degree. I've always enjoyed art and visual design as a timeless practice, being that we are such visual beings and that we will always have a need for design, regardless of the period or the media in which it is presented. I like Multimedia because it is the latest form of this, and is an expanding field that still offers change and diversity.

I am currently taking Life Drawing 2 for a variety of reasons. Having worked with 3D computer graphics programs before, I have been exposed to various attempts to mimic the human figure using the computers 3D capabilities. While there have been some incredible results, a movie or image done in a 3D program will still feel not real. Many people say that the human body is too complex and that we will never be able to mimic it. I don't know if this is true or not, but it certainly does pique my interests.

Some of my work from the past


Desperation

This was a video for my Digital Narrative class. The idea behind the video was to pick an emotion and create a video depicting this emotion while generally maintaining a short plot or logical beginning, middle, and end. The way in which the story was presented, whether abstract or not, or what the characters were if there were any at all, was up to the student.


Still Life

This was done on medium tone gray paper to emphasize the importance of the different gray values, and to express shapes without the use of line. A little on the earlier side of the work I've done but I included it because I like the cross-hatching that ended up giving it a nice depth.





Flagship

The goal of this project was to create a commercial for a fake car company. The commercial was to introduce a version of a hover car to the market, as kind of a pioneer company introducing new technologies as 'the way of the future.' The car was done mostly in Maya, while the environment around it was actual footage of some streets in St. Paul. The reflection on the car of the surrounding area was all photographed on the scene, which can probably be seen better on the image as the video is a bit small.