Personal

DMC’s Vergil: “Classical Appearance”

May I introduce to you Devil-May-Cry’s Vergil.

  • Materials: acrylics + oils on illustration board (250 g, rough)
  • Size: 12 x 17 cm / 5 x 7 inch

This is obviously a personal fanart piece. Although I enjoyed last years DMC 5 a lot, I couldn’t quite agree with “Neo” Vergil’s style… Reminiscence and gold-acrylics pressured me into painting the portrait you see before you and destiny led me to the decadent picture-frame. Thanks to a good friend (with a nice cam) I was able to take a picture with a 100-times higher quality than my crappy old mobile-phone. YES!

Behind the scenes:

Technically I finished this painting December last year but I was very cautious when it came to the oils, which as you probably know need a while to dry. You see, while I was painting a friend accidently wiped away his right eye and I couldn’t cope with the loss 😉

Here’s the painting, full-frontal, without the frame for you to enjoy:

 

DMC 3 Vergil portrait

in Illustration / Personal  by Savina 0 comments

New Semester, new Post

Aloha!

I know, I know. It’s been a long while since my last post but I’ve been having a busy time, mostly work and life 😀

Last semester I dug into web-design with our gueast teacher from Cologne: Analysis, sketches, wireframes, mock-ups, style-tiles, usabilty, grids, responsive web-design, personas and prototypes – you get the idea. Now, I decided to go one step further and learn more about HTML and CSS (then I might finally redisign this blog and include a nice gallery). I don’t know why but I like the coding and the design part 🙂

At the same time I’m doing a lot of anatomy studying, sports, healthy cooking and meditation. I’ll try not to get a burn-out in my 30s 😀

So the next 5 months at the uni I’ll be learning coding, film-history and continue my 3D project “The General”. Mixing it up!

in Personal  by Savina 0 comments

4th Semester Classes

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 😀 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-)

in Personal  by Savina 0 comments

New Semester has started!

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! 🙂

 

in Personal  by Savina 0 comments

Summary: This Semester’s Classes

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.

in Illustration / Personal  by Savina 0 comments

The Exams are Over!

The exam period is finally over and I’ll be updating soon!

The last few months were really exhausting for everyone. Only one week for all design students at the university isn’t really long. I had my FC presentation at 22:00 (10 pm.) and like most of my co-students I hadn’t really slept for the last three weeks. But after a few coke bottles and 20 minutes Bubble-Shooter I was ready for action 🙂 Honestly, as strange as it sounds, I kind of enjoyed the intensive working phase! At times like these I get absorbed in my workaholism and spend every free minute with productiveness 😀

For the beginning of my major updating I’ll summarize the exams/presentations (here is my schedule):

  • 27th July, Digital Tools: At 9:30 am. Everyone gathered for a written multiple choice test on Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. Fifty questions had to be answered in German (some students prefer using the English versions of the Adobe products, including me).
  • 27th July, Illustration: At 14:30 (2:30 pm.) the illustration students showed EVERYTHING drawn during the first and second semester, even private drawings (of course only if one wanted to share them ;)). The more full sketchbooks and visible drawing skills improvement, the better the grade.
  • 28th July, Foundation Course: Every student got an appointment when to present their documentation of the second semester (which I’ll be describing in a future post). At 22:00 (10 pm.) It was finally my turn. Unfortunately everyone was already tired, including the professors. One last student later we popped the champagne bottles and enjoyed the rest of the night outside the university buildings 🙂
  • 30th July, Typography: At 11:00 am. The four homework tasks for the first semester and the documentation had to be presented to the whole typography class. Afterwards the professor took everything home for thorough revision. The return is in two weeks.
  • ? September, Media: This Friday we will get our big homework on movies for the semester break. It will be due to the beginning of the next semester in September.

That’s all for now! I’m working on a big drawing project right now and I feel slipping into obsession mode again 😉

I’ll be writing more posts soon.

in Personal  by Savina 0 comments

My Schedule

As I promised in my last post I’m giving you my personal schedule for this semester:

schedule semester 2

Although some may say my schedule isn’t really demanding I have to stress (as it was done by the professors) that this is only the time we have to be present at the university in order to compare the results of our mostly very, very big homework we get every week! The actual workload is immense! But this is normal for a design Bachelor.

Well then, I’ll be doing homework now 😉

in Personal  by Savina 0 comments

Semester Schedule Winter 2010/11

Some people asked me about my semester schedule and I decided to share it with you!

I did a little bit of censoring, just erased the professor’s names. I think no one’s going to have a problem with it being posted on the net openly now 🙂

semester schedule winter 2010/11

click on the pic for full-view please

  • pink fields: Design Foundation Course (only one gets assigned)
  • blue: Typography
  • left violet: Fine Arts
  • right violet: Media and Communication
  • white with yellow stripe: the four different drawing classes (only one can be assigned)
  • white (Tuesday): Workshop for materials and photography (the cube project)

The schedule is basically giving the students an overview of the mandatory classes they have to attend. The most work however is done on one’s own initiative. And believe me, we are talking about a lot of time here! I have to be honest with you , studying design means you’ll have to sacrifice most of your free time, if you really want to make progress that is. Please bear that in mind.

in Personal / University/College  by Savina 0 comments