Journey

I recently played a game called Journey and my gosh it was stunning! Unlike most of games I normally play, Journey is stripped down to the very core of emotional expression using visual and audio interaction. The game takes its vagueness to advantage, allowing the player to figure out everything from the very beginning and experience the journey up close. I absolutely love the way music and the visuals intertwine in the game as every moments is designed so precisely to accentuate the best experience possible. I’m really looking forward to playing this game again and getting the white robe! I also read that the company (called thatgamecompany) has finally made all 3 games for PSN marking the end of their contract with Sony to produce solely for PSN. Now that they have more freedom, I can’t imagine but to be excited for what comes next. It’d be super cool if their games (like Journey) came to the iOS.

Daily Doodles

I've been trying to get into the habit doodling everyday to keep my hands sharp and also have an excuse to experiment. I started this a few weeks ago and since then I have been posting my daily drawings on tumblr where I use it as kind of a visual diary. Here are some ones I like from the doodle. So far through doing this, I got the chance to experiment and discover a great inking brush, draw stuff I really love but never had the excuse to, and most importantly exploring areas where I need to push further. Right now I'm spending more time with character development. I've just discovered the important role gestures play in the process of creating unique and dynamic silhouettes. This might not be something new to others but it is quite a discovery for me. I'm going to put more time into characters and hopefully find more tricks!

Arrival

 

I discovered that this ink brush I have is very useful. It emulates the bumpiness of lines that is drawn on textured paper, and also leaves a clear solid marks similar to inking in real life. I used this brush in the forest piece I did last week and instead of incorporating into layers of painting, I tested to see how the brush works when used for inking by itself. Here’s my result and I think it turned out okay. I like the brush but I’m not exactly familiar with this method of work and I think there’s more to uncover. More to come!

Ode to the Bouncer

I just started tumblr and that gave me excuse to make updates so I started doodling a lot of pictures. Just kidding, I just graduated and have nothing to do at the moment so I'm just spending more time with my lover art. So anyways, I painted a character named Cherry from a music video called Ode to the Bouncer by Studio Killers, its a super catchy song with awesome sass and perky visuals. If anyone’s interested, all of their songs have great rhythmic dance feel, and their music videos (I think there are only two so far) are very well made. Its worth checking out!

The Street - Designing World

Here's some sketch I did that is continuation of the pit city concepts I did earlier. Instead of designing a broad structure of the whole thing, I decided to dig into the detail of the city, especially where the people live. The people in this world lives around the giant pit wall forming a massive network of jumbled buildings filled with tight spacing and routes to get to different levels. I had a lot of fun coming up with the maze-like structures as well as the playing with perspective.

Concept Sketches - Designing World

Recently I've been doing some concept works for fun. At first, I was doing some city/space designs in my sketchbook and I liked one of the thumbnails so I decided to elaborate a little bit further. I liked the idea of city inside of the giant pit that is connected to the upper level by pipelines so I did other sketches that shows different angles and other objects in the surrounding environment. Although I didn't have any storyline involving this design, as I got into designing the details of this city, I started to incorporate rooms for potential narratives. For example, when I was designing the pit city, I had an idea that I wanted it to be the labor place that is kind of slave to the upper, luxurious world. So when I got into designing the tower on the upper level, I wanted it to be utopia for the humankind and maybe at the same time, represent power and control over the labor level in the pit. In addition, I designed the tower so that when it is seen from the pit level, it cast a silhouette of tomb cross, symbolizing an evil figure. So far this is all I have but I'm planning to go further with this one. Maybe in the future, I will post more character designs and other environmental objects I could come up with.

Doodle

Sometimes mindless doodling produce surprising results. In my class today, I was struck by a sudden impulse of drawing jumbling buildings with emphasized perspective. I'm fairly satisfied with this piece as it reflects my personal interests of subject matter, something I didn't have opportunity to explore in my recent projects.