Weekly Task #001

Every week someone in the Red Baboons Sketchgroup comes up with an idea that can be illustrated. The so called "Weekly Tasks" started monday. I posted the idea for the very first task: The task is to create a character that is a muay thai fighter who does not look like a typical one. My sketch:

Animation Excersise

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This was my first animation excersise.
My lecturer was Oswin Skomroch from Bluebyte.


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My second animation excersise.
This time we first had to draw a jump animation with 5 keyframes as a reference for this 3D animation.

Color Study

Quong Cover

That is the cover of Quong, the school project that I have mentioned in my earlier post.

Sketches

"Manga Talente 2009" Contest

My contribution for "Manga Talente 2009" contest of the Leipzig Book Fair.

Meeting Harald Siepermann

First of all... WOW!
If you had asked me a year ago whether I could imagine meeting a real Disney artist so soon I would have said "No, of course not!". I'm really happy about meeting Harald Siepermann, a german character designer who worked on Mulan, Tarzan, Roger Rabbit, Alfred Jodokus Kwak and many more great animated movies!

He came to the Games Academy to teach us Character Design.
His lecture was awesome, although it was only the first day of the lecture I really learned a lot. Not only his didactics impressed me, it is the fact that Siepermann has great experience in terms of art, especially animation.
He often refered to Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, two of Disney's Nine Old Men.
It was also great to find out that hes also a modern person (it surprised me that he knows Dr House and Grey's Anatomy), that he is a person with a great humor and that he does not discriminate against anime such as those oldfashioned art lecturers (you probably know what i mean!) =D
He even told us Hayao Miyazaki's secret that makes Ghibli characters special.



On this picture you see Harald Siepermann and me.
I am holding a drawing of Alfred Jodocus Kwak , that he drew for me:

Learning!

My lecturer in Photoshop Christoph Krumnow from EA Phenomic tought us how to create own brushes and he told us to speedpaint mountains (with mouse!).


3dsmax homework: My lecturer created a character.
He wants us to model and textur it with about 1000 triangles.


Photoshop homework: I have to create a UI for a screenshot.

Game Project: Quong

Currently I am working on a project for school.
We have to create a modern remake of pong in which you can choose different characters. In my team I got the task to design those characters.

Rat for Art Lesson at Games Academy

Games Academy: Art I/Pro I 2008 FFM

Old Stuff

Project Management and my first task

I learned a lot about Project Management in the last two days.
Erik Simon, former Development Director at SUNFLOWERS, taught us a lot about this subject. He told us how important it is to plan the whole process of the game development and he even gave us a few examples of his experience when working on Anno 1701.

Furthermore I got my first task!
I have to create a game that is similar to either Tetris, Pong, Boulder Dash or Space Invaders. To do so I will have to create a team with at least two of my Games Academy colleagues.

First Days at Games Academy

Yesterday, I had my first day at GA. We mainly got introduced to the house rules.
Today we set our PCs and talked about requirements of an Game Artist & Animator.

Ju-Jutsu German Open

This weekend 402 Fighters and 76 Duo-Teams from 16 nations competed at the Ju-Jutsu German Open in Hanau. As a beginner in German Ju-Jutsu I just had to take the chance to go to that event. It was great fun! My talented club mate Natascha Gaida even got 3rd in the Kids Division.

Faces #2

Speedpainting

I'm studying Mathias Verhasselt's speedpaintings http://mv.cgcommunity.com
Here's my attempt:

Why so serious?

I just finished a sketch on ban's paintchat.
She gave me her secret brush settings and I tried them out:

This is Joker with his old hairstyle from the cartoon asking: Why so serious?

And here's another junk:

Junk

Here's some junk. I love creating junk!

Faces

I'm currently practicing drawing faces.
Here are four of them.

There’s more to come!

Paintchat and more

College begins in october, so I have plenty of time to draw. Currently I am working on an Illustration for a Manga contest of the Leipzig Book Fair and besides I am working on a painting that I promised to my friend Jane. As I am no fan of putting incomplete work on my blog I will post them when they are done.

Of course sometimes I do not feel like working on the WIPs, thus I spend some time in Jane's Paintchat! :D I love Paintchat and this is what I've sketched there just now:

I am pretty content with the result. Aiming for being as good as my idol Zhanglu (his blog is linked on the "Idol" list) clearly helps me improving. Last but not least the picture of Zhanglu and me:

Portfolio & Application to Games Academy

A few weeks ago I applied to Games Academy and I had an interview.
I showed them my portfolio including these illustrations:








 

... and fortunately they accepted me =)