A New Illustration Workshop

[ThreeOhFour]

Hello

The last illustration workshop was great fun. Tons of great entries, stuff to learn from and energetic discussion about drawing techniques and ideas. It's been 2 months or so since we did one, and I'd really like to see another one happening sooner rather than later. The saccharine lure of the joy at being part of a group of people all working on creations with the common goal of improving and learning is too tempting for my creative sweet tooth. So, this raises a number of questions:

1. Are people ready for another one? Is it a bad time of year to be holding such an event? Will most people be able to find time in 3 weeks to do another piece again?
2. Is Andail willing to run another one of these workshops for us?
3. Is there a topic we'd like to cover? I know portraits were mentioned last time, and I am personally in favour of a portrait focused illustration workshop, but would also welcome a workshop on, well, basically anything.

Interested to hear thoughts!

[miguel]

I'm all for it!
Portraits would be great but any other topic will do fine for me.
I really enjoyed being part and around talented Agsers.

[cat]

I'm not too much interested in portraits, but I think I might join nontheless. Please wait until after Mittens

[ThreeOhFour]

Yes, I agree that waiting until after Mittens is a good idea, to make sure anybody that goes and wants to participate can join in.

As I said, I'm not biased much more towards portraits than anything else - I'd quite happily do one on characters, forests, cities, anything, really - but I saw someone mention portraits last time, and it's definitely a weak area of mine.

Glad to see some initial interest already.

[cat]

What about a character design workshop? This could include a portrait, but also the complete figure and considerations about the character's personality, role, look,...

There is this amazing book by Tom Bancroft about this topic.

[ThreeOhFour]

That's a nice idea. Perhaps a character concept for a video game, even.

[dactylopus]

I'd love to see it, even if I don't end up participating.

I do need to hone my skills, though, so I might end up joining in.

[Dropped Monocle Games]

I haven't taken part before as I'm pretty new around here but I would be interested in taking part! I vote character concept

[Ghost]

That's a nice idea. Perhaps a character concept for a video game, even.

I LIIKE the sound of that! Colour me interested!

[Andail]

Yeah, I've thought of starting a new one, but wanted OROW to finish, and also as you say waiting for mittens is probably a good idea.
I'd happily administer it. We can discuss the theme here, and eventually I'll go for whatever seems viable. And fun.

[Ilyich]

I'm all for a new workshop as well! Character design could be fun, but I feel that it needs to be a tad more particular than that to really spark people's imaginations like it happened last time. "Monster" was a great topic, because it allowed for your imagination to run wild, but at the same time gave a strong enough vector to start thinking things up. We need something similar this time as well, I think. Or maybe we should do it completely differently, either way - I'm onboard with this.

[Andail]

First I was thinking a box art workshop - every participant will be given a random game from the Ags database, and the finished result will be something that could work as a box/cover illustration. Then there was a background painting round that used splash screens for a theme (imaginary but still) so I figured it had been done already.

If people don't mind the unoriginality, I really like the idea, because it's s complex design that needs to take style and genres into consideration, as well as more refined versions of the characters, but still everyone has an idea of what such an illustration is all about.

[selmiak]

I totally suck a portraits and I'm not that interested in improving on this... but I'm definitely interested in a new workshop. Also backgrounds, from forests over deserts (draw an interesting desert scene!) to megalomaniac cybercities sounds interesting to me.

[ThreeOhFour]

I agree with Ilyich that a more specific focus than simply "Character design" would be better than a generic idea - specifying something like "Public servant" or whatever would be a great kicker to get ideas more focused.

I like Andail's game cover idea a lot, too, and I'd be sad if we let the splash screen kill this idea. I really love cover art for games and books, and it'd be quite fun to try and interpret a game into a piece of promo art. Great idea!

As for backgrounds, a background workshop would be absolutely cool (like the first one), but I think it'd be fun to focus on stuff we don't usually draw very often for now. There's already a background activity, and while it's not a workshop, there's not really a "Design a character/portrait/box art" activity, so those voids would probably be better to fill first.

[Ilyich]

I really like the box-art idea too - it's a fun challenge and you can approach it in many ways, which should allow pretty much anyone interested to join in. And I don't think the splash screen blitz is a problem - that one was mostly funny and silly(and awesome ) and didn't require participants to try and interpret existing characters and worlds, which, I imagine, would be a big part of this one.

Not too sure about assigning random games to people, though. Personally I don't have a problem with it - I know I'll have too hard a time choosing one myself, and I'm willing to draw pretty much anything, but if someone would like to use this opportunity to make a nice cover-art for their own game, or for a game they love, or have some clever idea in regards to a particular game - I'm not sure it would be wise to stop them - it's mostly about challenging ourselves to improve our skills and having fun, not having a fair competition, after all.

[miguel]

I love Ilyich idea about specific characters. There's so many possibilities, and it could be set in teams as well. Like lets do Public Servants From Mars on one team VS Public Servants From Australia on another!
Teams would be given colour costumes and they should come up with a "Boss", a "Grunt" and so on...

Or not.

[cat]

Box art sounds great, too! But I'm with Ilyich, I think everybody should choose themselves which game they want to make the box art for.

[Andail]

Hm, I strongly disagree. I can almost guarantee (trust me as an art teacher here:)) that being given a random game will improve the learning experience vastly, plus I think it makes the competition more fair (no preparations in advance, etc).
Getting another person's game also mimics the experience of being a freelance illustrator, where you don't have a ton of emotional investment in the subject.

I'm also having second thoughts about waiting until after mittens - that's almost 3 weeks away, which means that most (other) people will probably have started working/studying again. Maybe we should get going as soon as possible, and then we could always set the final deadline well after the end of mittens, giving those participants some extra time.

[ThreeOhFour]

Andail does make a good point about the notion of being a freelancer and being thrust into something you're not 100% familiar with. It's relevancy depends a little on how many participants actually want to do the freelance thing, but it's still relevant to everyone, I guess. I personally quite like the idea of working with a randomly picked game, as daunting as it seems.

[Ilyich]

That's the thing, though - I sort of am a freelance illustrator (and so is ThreeOhFour, which is why his opinion doesn't matter ) - I have no problem with painting whatever I'm told, and this approach would make it easier for me, while possibly pushing me out of my comfort zone in an interesting and educational way, but most people have no intention of becoming professional artists(or even not interested in trying out that role), and this is not an art class either - people can come and go as they please. Improving your drawing skills might be a big part of it, but it's still a community activity, and such activities need volunteering participants.

If there's enough people willing(or better - wanting) to participate in it when you get assigned a random game - great, I'm all for it, really, my only concern is whether we'll get enough people so this workshop can end up being as splendid as the last one. I'm trying to think from someone else's perspective here, so it's entirely possible that I'm mistaken on several of my assumptions - feel free to disregard the opinion of a person I constructed in my head.

I guess we can also solve some of the problems of random generation by allowing people to re-roll their game until they are willing to participate, although that has it's problems as well