Josh's GDS108 blog

2010-08-03T20:17:00.002-05:00

This is an abstract image that I drew while watching Predator. I was trying to let the situation in the movie dictate how my hand moved, and this is what I came up with. While I was drawing this it was during the point in the movie when Arnold was "getting to the choppa!" and his team was being killed off one by one. I think that the jagged points were moments where someone was killed during that scene. Other than that I'm not sure what else I can say about this. What does everyone else see in this image, knowing that it was drawn while watching Predator.

2010-08-01T23:50:00.002-05:00

This one is similar to the pirate I posted last time, however this one is a ninja. I love both pirates and ninjas, and after I drew the pirate I felt obligated to draw a ninja to match. I am pretty happy with the stance this ninja has. However, I feel like this guy has some problems with depth. It's a little hard to tell which arm is in front, and since the sword is really dark I feel that it pops out more than the body despite it being behind him. At least there is some overlap to help with the illusion of depth.

2010-07-19T14:17:00.002-05:00

Here is a drawing a of a pirate captain done in a wire-ish sketch style. I love the Captain Morgan commercials and was trying to capture the feeling of bravado in them. The pose is really what does this in both the commercials and this sketch. The offset position of the legs (with one on an object) helps to give the figure a sense of moving forward. I was hoping the smile on his face would help with that, but I think the whole head came out looking rather odd.

More Blog Posts

2010-07-16T19:47:00.003-05:00

This is an image that was inspired by walking around the Urbana Blues Brews and Barbecue festival. I thought it was weird seeing a large number of people walking in the street with street lights flashing red behind them. The street lights seemed to draw my eye since they were bright and flashing. I was trying to use a one point perspective to give this a sense of depth, but I feel like it is off and inconsistent. I also made use of atmospheric perspective to make the people and tents in the background appear farther away. However, I made the street lights bold so that they'd stand out more and draw the viewer's attention.

2010-07-12T20:50:00.002-05:00

I was inspired to draw this sketch showing depth by the view out of a window next to our classroom (if you exit the classroom and turn left, there is window that has a similar view). I tried to draw this so that it created a sense of depth through repetition of smaller and smaller squares. There are also supposed to be pillars in between each wall, but I don't think they came out quite as obvious. I also placed the final window on the right third of page so that I was following the rule of thirds. Personally, I thought it helped create some visual motion to the pattern. Since the pattern leans to the right, it creates some energy. I don't think the same amount of energy would have existed had I put the last wall in the center of the page.

2010-07-06T21:19:00.002-05:00

I guess this is sketch of some strange, almost human hand. I had begun free-sketching near the corner of the page and eventually realized that what I'd drawn resembled a hand. So, I decided to go with that idea and finish it out as a hand. Since it was so severely cropped and had slightly odd proportions I felt that it was a little mysterious. After deciding that it was a mysterious hand I added the star tattoo in order to add to its strangeness.

2010-06-29T22:22:00.002-05:00

I study a martial art based on Okinawan weapons. One of the weapons I learn how to use in that art is the sai (the weapon Raphael uses in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). One of the things a person can do with a sai is throw it like a large dagger.

So, I got to thinking one day what the sai must feel like when it is thrown. My conclusion, it feels like that guy in the youtube video that got hit with a taser, who wisely proclaimed, "Don't taze me bro!" Thus, I drew this picture of a sai being thrown into the ground and proclaiming, "Don't throw me bro!"

I was trying to get across in the image that sai has just made impact with the ground. I made the sai diagonal in the hopes that it would give it a little more energy. I also tried to put in a "vibration" effect by lightly drawing the sai multiple times, once again in the hopes of giving the sai some life.

2010-06-21T10:36:00.003-05:00

These are some t-shirt designs that I had while talking to some friends before a film shoot. One of the actors was asking if he needed to dress up in his hero costume in addition to dressing up in a goon outfit. The answer he got from the direction was that he was going to be "100% goon" during the film shoot. I proclaimed that "100% goon" should be on a t-shirt, and thus these designs were born.

I was originally wanting to go for a high school gym t-shirt design or something like a police shirt, and I think the two on the upper left reflect that the best. The text needed to be large, well aligned, and as unified as possible in order to clearly proclaim to all viewers the state of the shirt's wearer as a "goon" (much in the same way police shirt must very clearly show the wearer is an officer). Then I thought it might be fun if a goon shirt had eyes, so I played with that. Definitely, the eyes make use of intellectual unity in order to be perceived as eyes. The final design, saying, "eat you," was just a random thought while looking at the eyes and mouth of the center design. I thought it looked like the shirt wanted to eat something, or someone, and figured that "eat you" might be appropriate text to accompany. Personally, I think the "eat you" could be a little more chaotic with the letters maybe being different fonts, or slanted in different ways in order to make it "scarier."

2010-06-18T20:22:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone! My name is Joshua Stafford. This is my sketchbook blog for Parkland's GDS108 class, Design Media and Principles.

On this blog I will be posting images from my sketchbook and discussing what was going on in my brain when I sketched it. In addition, I will try to comment on what design principles I used (either deliberately or by accident) when drawing the image.