from the transcript…
Sorry for the meandering thoughts….lol…
Let’s do another flipThrough!
This is Todd from toddYoungONLINE. This is a nice little spiral bound and one of the only examples of a working notebook I have. Circa 2010 – 2012, filled with school, work, and personal projects. I graduated in 2010 with my Associates in Fine Arts and 2012 with my Bachelors in Graphic Design. Projects for school are in here. More stylization of the figure and other little design elements.
I’ve been working out other projects I’ve been working on and trying to get through my head. I started being a little bit more diligent in writing things down so I didn’t lose them, especially when it was just like the seed of an idea for me that usually starts as some snarky comment or a flash of something.
More naked figures, of course, still working on the clothing, but you can notice that I am trying to put some clothes on these things. Sometimes I’m working from reference. I started working from reference a lot more. Sometimes you have to lean in to what you’re doing and develop it no matter how wrong it seems. Consistency is key.
There’s an animation project, Rhapsody in Blue. More journaling, more experimentation, using Sharpies, ballpoint, fountain pens. One of the things that I enjoy working with is ink, pen or a marker, the permanence of it make you have to be a little bit more intentional with the lines you make, give it a little bit more thought before you start and, for me, at least, I find that I draw a little bit differently when I do that.
I had been doing some volunteer work, that’s one good way to get experience, a couple of those projects are in here. Character design, writing ideas…
At one job I had gotten stuck on a help desk, so this is the Saga of Help Desk Ned, “Ask him your question and then you’re dead…” I did not care for that job…lol.
This is also a really good example of me, breaking the page down into a more manageable space and then filling it up letting the viewer create the narrative from the sequential images.
It’s one of my favorite things about doing this, no limits, putting anything in the panel or in the box, and letting somebody else create the story. Going from box to box, panel to panel, just put something in the space. It reminds me of, from a filmmaking class, in the beginning and were experimenting with the medium, finding ways to tell stories by juxtaposing images and how the audience filled in meaning.
And I really enjoy one of the things I really enjoy about work.
Ooh, I did a magazine layout for one of my classes in school. I went to Full Sail University Online. Remind me to talk about, online vs land-based education, I have many…opinions…lol. But anyway, going back to, trying to create, one of the fun and challenging things to do with art, for me at least, is to create something that you can have an individual experience with, but at the same time also have a collective group experience looking at. So that’s always been something that I’ve tried to do.
One of my classes, we did an Intro, The Owl and the Pussycats, my storyboards are here, a ten second stinger. We were under a strict time constraint, it’s not he best, but it’s out there. I had a good time doing it and like and planning to do more at some point, more animation, do more storytelling, I’m working more towards that now.
Just started doing these creating shapes like jigsaws. Create one shape, fill another shape into it, keep going until you fill up the page. That evolved into another project with other elements to help put things into an up against. And the same with typography, creating letter forms is fun.
These things kind of became like my I.D.K. project. I’ll talk about that at some point. The “I Don’t Know Project”, there’s a logo for it. It’s kind of funny because I really like non-figurative art. I like non-representational things. Creating a good composition and then letting somebody read into it. So I really dislike some of the pretension of naming things, those long silly over dramatic names.
I prefer simple, descriptive, and the viewer can personalize it. But by that same token, I came around and started branding my ideas. So like the IDK Project, Judgment Day, 24 x 36, for example, that helped me focus on the idea and develop a series of images.
Creating a coherent package.
You know, one one is interesting, but if you create five or more and when I was in Afghanistan doing 30, you know, trying to do a thing a day, it really helps make it more of a coherent thought. And especially if you brand it for me anyway, it helps me keep focus on what I’m doing.
I had some projects that meandered a bit, but once I started branding them a little bit better, then I was able to focus on what I was doing.
Working on just figuring out the figure. Yeah, the some of the stuff I’ve watched and looked at, you know, I forget who said it, but, you know, like your your style is everything you do wrong.
Maybe it was Erik Larson from Savage Dragon? Maybe he said that, I will give him credit for that, but…
This sketchbook still has a lot of unrealized projects in it that I haven’t completed yet. So I’m I’m kind of flipping through with you, but I got a lot more.
Okay. I’m sorry. I kind of got lost looking at this…
Here are more illustrations playing with line. One thing that I’ve come across more recently, be intentional with your lines, when you look at a comic book page or something and you notice like the line is the way the ink lines are or the drawing lines are, those are intentional, which to me I was like, you know, it’s kind of a duh, but they did it on purpose, it didn’t just happen magically.
But, you know, it’s like, you know, if the line is like, looks like it was drawn three times or has a certain character to it or shape to it, it’s because they did that intentionally in it. They went back over it to do that.
Here’s one design, an idea that I worked out kind of a stylized snake coming out of a tree.
I don’t remember why I did that or who gave me that idea. We were playing D&D for a while and I had a somebody asked me to draw a couple of his characters and that was one of them. I had this idea and tried to see how far I could take it.
The figure idea drawing like a simple, a dynamic line or shape, and then trying to create around it, see what comes of it.
Some perspective work, some figure work from life, more character work. I look through these and I was onto something with the figures. I need to go back to that.
I think that’s kind of where I ended up going back to these kind of stained glass pieces, creating interesting lines and then breaking the images down, adding interesting color palettes, working very kind of minimal and deliberate.
Okay. On how these came about. I think I redid some of these on other media, too. Yeah. Trying to be effective with my composition and trying to be effective with my line work and and typography. Again, trying to use line and black and white again, more typography here towards the end, playing with letter forms.
What if we all had acorns for heads ?
Your philosophy for the day.
A nice kind of short one, but thank you for your time. I really do appreciate the feedback and having you guys watch these and interact and encourage.
I hope you enjoy them.
I will talk to you soon.
Take care.
