Translations/Übersetzungen

Posted on February 3rd, 2011

When switching the language to German you will only see the allready translated posts. The English version is up to date!

Wenn die Sprache umgeschaltet wird erscheinen nur die Einträge, die schon übersetzt wurden. Die aktuellere Version dieses Blogs ist die englische (also die momentan gewählte)! Leider kommt es auf der deutschsprachigen Seite zu Fehlermeldungen, wenn man auf eine Kategorie klickt. Das liegt an dem Plug-In für Sprachen, das jetzt nur noch Updates gegen Bezahlung anbietet und ich nicht die kommerzielle Version besitze :(

The Facebook page of Loyal2Art: I’m posting all kind of updates and answering questions there!

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Posted in Personal

“Fairy-Tale-Worlds” – Some Paintings and Drafts

Posted on May 4th, 2012
garden

First assignment: The Garden. I used a mix of traditional and digital painting for this one :) Mainly watercolors and inks for the traditional part. CLICK FOR BIGGER VIEW!

3 objects

Mini-assignment: Draw 3 typical fairy-tale objects. Tried to make them go with my "garden" illsutration. It was somehow tough to invent a cyber-apple XD Now it's just a normal apple BUT since fruits are so rare in the future world the "garden" is settled in you need special storage. Hence the shape-fit-keep-fresh-box... *_* CLICK FOR BIGGER VIEW!

griffonRobo

2nd assignment (still in progress): Create drafts for some flying creatures/objects in your fairy-tale world. Ok, I admit it, some of my creatures look more like videogame characters than fairy-tale creatures... But I wouldn't mind to see some cyber-illustrations for a Grimm fairy-tale! And that's what I might actually try for our current assignment :) CLICK FOR BIGGER VIEW!

big robo-creature

Another airplane-inspired quick draft. CLICK FOR BIGGER VIEW!

3rd one... CLICK FOR BIGGER VIEW!

Nr.4 with some color and less humanoid influences. CLICK FOR YOU KNOW WHAT

Nr.5 clickable :)

All creature concepts are very rough (but I kind of like that about them). By the way, *Chann* is my favorite :) There’s a reason for the name but it’s hard to explain with text only. Let’s just say it’s a sound it makes *chann*

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Painting Class 3rd Result

Posted on April 30th, 2012

In our third painting session in class we were supposed to paint objects of the “same” color.

My group picked the color “blue” :)

Painted Blue Objects

Acrylics. I couldn't finish this one in class, so I took a photograph and finished it at home.

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First results in Painting Class

Posted on April 23rd, 2012

The “Painting” class is all about traditional painting with gouache and acrylics. I painted a few times with gouache some time ago (for my application portfolio) but I wanted to get more used to the material. In my opinion painting and learning to see colors and experimenting with them is really beneficial for artists, even for digital paintings!

Here’s a short description covering some details:

  • only gouache and acrylics allowed (opaque pigment colors, so why not oils? because they need very very long to dry and because of the toxic aspect)
  • (almost) no photographs allowed for reference (sometimes you can make a photo of the object you are drawing in order to finish the painting at home)
  • we mostly paint in class (about 2 hours), but of course we get homework too :)
  • we do cover some theoretical aspects but in my opinion not enough…

But enough talking, here are my first results painted during class one and two only (I haven’t touched them at home BUT my scanner let out some soft color shades I couldn’t really recover digitally):

still life with 2 fruits and a coffee-thermo-mug

Gouache on watercolor paper. It's not as opaque as expected from the prof... I'm still thinking the watercolor-way :)

Fish in gouache

Gouache on toned cardboard. The blue rectangle was my cooling pad for the fish :D I actually ate this exact same fish a few hours later. It was a strange feeling but I didn't want it to go to waste :(

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4th Semester Classes

Posted on April 20th, 2012

Well, after a few weeks of searching for the right class-combo for this semester I finally found one that works for me :)

But first let me explain how the fourth semester works for students with a (partial) specialization in illustration:

  • the fourth semester is the first one a student can actually choose all of his/her courses absolutely freely
  • the student should decide on a project to work on intensively during the semester
  • additionally you need theory classes (I picked a really philosophical one “life-worlds“) and one complementary class on the appliance-aspects of your specialization (my specializations are illustration and media)

Up until now most of my classes were predetermined by the university. But to come back to my schedule, I started the only illustration project that actually consists of three smaller projects :D The first one is “Märchenwelten” (“Fairy-Tale-Worlds”). And I seriously went for sci-fi XD For now I haven’t been kicked out ~hehehe~ My appliance-classes are “Malerei” (“Painting with Gouache/Acrylics”), After Effects and Flash. That’s right, one wasn’t enough for me! :) And concerning my theory class I already mentioned above, we’re mostly sitting and talking about different influences on one’s life-world. At the end of the semester we have to write a scientific homework on an individual topic still to be discussed.

Well that’s my schedule. And now it’s time for me to animate some horses…. only tween-style (-ö-)

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New Semester has started!

Posted on April 8th, 2012

My 4th semester started a few weeks ago and I already have tons of things to do! Well, when creating concepts and drawing images there’s always more work to do: More concepts, better drawings and generally more training. Theoretically you could spend 24 hours a day EVERY day this way. Sometimes that’s a good thing, since it’s more or less fun, but other times it can be really overwhelming.

Right now I’m focusing on improving myself and (still) experimenting with different materials and techniques. This takes up a lot of time and energy so I often neglected loyal2art :( But I will definitely continue posting!

I’ll be off now, doing homework! :)

 

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Exams are over!

Posted on February 7th, 2012

Three days ago I had my last exam! We had to present everything we did during the last semester and the presentation was extremely important itself by the way! We had ONLY 10-15 mins. I had my brand new laser-pointer so I was happy no matter what :)

Here’s the short summary PART I

  • Illustration Basics (reminder) (grade 1,3  / A):

    (50% of grade) This is the title of a flash application I designed (and already partly created) explaining how we see colors, what light is and the two kinds of color-mixing (adding/subtracting light). I won't give you any more information for now, since I'm planning on finishing the application and uploading it on the Internet :) The original is in German but I will try and translate it in English!

Cover

"Cover exercise" (10%) This is one of three covers I designed for Albert Camus' story "The Stranger" published by "rororo".

editorial

"The World without God - Editorial Illustration" (10%) We were supposed to do a cover for the German magazine "DER SPIEGEL" (comparable to "The NewYorker"). I do not own the images I used in this exercise! There's no profit or commercial use involved - used them simply for educational purposes.

character design

"Character Design" (10%) We were given the choice between Children's Book and Comic / Manga for this task. I won't give all the details here (far too many), but this is one of 4 situations we had to depict with our character: "jump over a cat corps" XD By the way this is the first time I used real screentone.

duell

"Duel - Comic page Composition Exercise" (10%) This is the last page of my sci-fi comic. I aimed for a triangle composition.

If you’re interested you can find the rest of the characters for the Character Design task here.
Well I didn’t upload all of my work but I think you get the idea for the Illustration Basics classes: a lot of variety!

In my next posts I’ll sum up the rest of the semester for you :)

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Illustration Training x 3 with Composition Collages

Posted on January 6th, 2012

Perhaps some of you remember my older post about training composing your images with the “compo-game”. Well I have to admit it can get boring after a while, so here’s an alternative from which your skills can profit double!

The next time you paint something simply scan it (or take a picture and print it out, if you don’t have access to a scanner). Now open it with any program that can process images and zoom in (you could use a magnifying glass for the printed pic, I guess). Now scroll around and search for interesting parts. If something catches your eye don’t hesitate and copy just what you see on the monitor in that very moment (the zoomed-in part). Gather all parts in a different file and when you feel like there’s nothing more to add start freely moving them around. Your aim is to create a good balance between the parts themselves AND in regard to the negative space.

Here’s an example:

Composition Example Image

This is a quick image I drew on packaging paper. Nothing special as a painting but its great material for a composing collage! It has a lot of warm, natural tones, high contrasts and organic textures. (click for full view)

And now let’s see the collage I came up with:

Composition Collage

In my opinion the collage looks way better than the initial painting :D I worked with a very intuitive approach. No second thoughts on picking the right parts. If you ponder on either picking a part or not then it's probably not good enough for your collage anyway. The grey frame defines the negative space (click for full view).

At the end of the day you’ve created a painting, used it as a basis for a second image and you improved your composing skills. WIN! WIN! WIN!

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Summary: This Semester’s Classes

Posted on December 27th, 2011

Finally I feel like I can take some time for updating my blog!

I decided to focus on illustration and theory for this (3rd) semester and since I’m still rather slow when it comes to effective drawing I had the busiest four months of my life so far! Lucky for me I got used to sleeping less than 6 hours a night during the week (with an occasional all-nighter now and then). But I guess that’s normal for this branch…

But let’s skip to the classes:

  • Illustration Basics: Every week you get a new assignment covering everything from cover illustrations for books and magazines, posters, comic, storyboarding etc. NEW: For the first time the students have to commit to a bigger project during the last 1,5 months of the semester. One has to choose from 24 scientific topics and create so called “scientific illustrations” explaining the subject. I picked “white”, covering colors and light on a physical and physiological basis.
  • Illustration Techniques: This is where the students are introduced to a variety of different painting techniques. This semester’s choice is: Watercolors, acrylics, digital painting, vector graphics. I especially enjoy this seminar :)
  • Illustrator’s Survival Kit (optional): Very time-consuming but effective class! Mainly we are working on visual storytelling and character design. At the beginning of class everyone presents his homework to the other students and the prof (sometimes even in front of a recording camera) after which he/she gets a profound constructive criticism. Then follows a theory presentation followed by a practical working phase. Additionally workshops are provided on a regular basis.
  • Research (optional): Here’s where the students (not only illustrators) can learn research techniques including market research, book research and deep space. After an intensive theoretical phase every student has to do a profound research on a chosen design-relevant topic.
  • Extra lectures: Every student needs at least 2 extra (one-time) lectures in order to qualify for a theory class exam (in my case that’s “Research”).

During the Christmas “brake” we have to improve ALL of the homework assignments so far + the new assignments :( At the end of the semester we are going to present all of our work for the last months in all the classes.

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Typography Projects

Posted on September 24th, 2011

The semester brake is officially over and next week my new classes will be starting. I decided to go with illustration for the following half a year, hoping to improve some more :)

But first I need to sum up some results from the last semester. After the 1st semester was over we were supposed to manage our time and finish three small projects and a big one until the end of the second one, including the documentation layout. Each project stands in connection to a previously discussed topic during classes:

wortbilder

First small project. 29x40 cm poster. It's depicting the human body parts using word-images. So basically you know the part's name by simply reading it :)

bitmap A

Second small project. A1 (59x84 cm) big shooting range posters of letters. I presented three different prototypes. The main idea behind the whole shooting range targets is to place the letters forming a word and while the shooter concentrates on hitting the small dots he will memorize the spelling AND the word :)

 

Third small project. I made a leporello-comic with a slipcase. It's about an arrogant guy who gets killed at the end by a giant word-monster XD

 

magazine punze

The big project is a fun 12 page magazine on letter anatomy. It includes many stories, interviews and even collectable cards on the last page. Of course most of it is funny and made up.

magazine punze 2

Here's a spread as an example.

Of course all projects had to be presented at the end of the second semester. Each student got only 3 minutes :(

Well, that’s all for now. I know I haven’t made any updates for a long time… But since I’m running this blog on a non-commercial basis it’s not my first priority right now. I’ve been doing a whole lot of digital art projects and some ink/gouache training, so I wasn’t lazy during the brake, ok ;)

Oh and all the work I’m showing you is for informative means only! Please do NOT copy!

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The Documentation – The most Important Project in 2nd Semester

Posted on July 20th, 2011

The documentation of the 2nd semester is the most important and time consuming project! It’s covering the main work done during the course of the past half-year presented as a typographically demanding printed medium. This means that it counts for the final exam in FC and Typography!

picture of the book

I picked my main work (which I will talk about in a future post) as the leading layout element (the dots). The font ("5x5 dots") is used for the headings. The black censorship bar isn't on the actual cover of course :)

As you can hopefully see the black dots aren't printed! They are cut-plotted out of thin black foil and then stick to the cover. Hence, you can feel them when sliding over with your fingers!

Here is an example page for a chapter beginning. This one is the third one dealing with my main project "Wuchern" ("sprawling").

I used a three-column layout for the text, not the praised module-grid :)

I inserted some vector graphics a few times. This one's my favorite: At a certain point I had to iron about a 500m long ribbon! It took quite some time so I decided to show how long this was by naming all the movies I watched while ironing XD Don't overlook the changing iron icon! It's getting hotter and hotter all the way down.

The whole book has about 90 pages, format A5, adhesive binding. The paper for the cover is 300 g/m² and the one for the pages is 130 g/m². I paid about 35 Euros for the printing and paper.

By the way, here is my exam schedule with some further descriptions.

 

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