Justin Lloyd's Thinkering

Somebody needs to think about this stuff...

art

Studying – Beast Lighting

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This week I am studying “Beast Lighting”

Haven’t had much occasion to play around with the Beast Lighting plug-ins for either Maya or Unity 3D and I felt I was falling behind on both those fronts. Time to correct my oversight. Based on the (on-line, interactive) class content, it appears this will take me 30 or 50 hours of studying to plow through if I do all of the examples. It is supposed to be a three-month class, but I think I can get through it reasonably quickly if I push myself.

Studying – 3DS Max

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This week I am studying “3DS Max”

I use 3DS Max quite regularly, and have been using it since it was just 3DS Studio back in the mid-90’s.

However, I am much more facile with Maya and SoftImage and have never sat down and just got to know 3DS Max inside-and-out.

Looking to fix that oversight this month with this extensive workshop from Gnomon.

Studying – Integrating type in to videos with After Effects

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This month I am studying “Integrating type in to videos with After Effects”

Short video course and exercise files on how to do various type effects in After Effects.

Update: Pretty basic stuff. Not sure it was worth my time. Wrapped everything up inside of a week. Think I will just spend the rest of the month practicing my figure and landscape drawing.

Studying – Creating retina graphics with Photoshop and Illustrator

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This month I am studying “Creating retina graphics with Photoshop and Illustrator”

This is an online class consisting of a bunch of pre-recorded video and some exercises.

I’ve got a lot of experience making assets at different resolutions for the same project. Though I suspect that there are some tricks I can still learn.

Update: Was rather disappointed. I didn’t come away with a single new piece of knowledge. It was good practice, but I think I could have spent the time on a more fruitful pursuit.

I managed to log 30 hours of study (watching videos) and then self-directed practice.

Studying – Creating a technical illustration cutaway

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This month I am studying “Creating a technical illustration cutaway”

In-person workshop/class with instructor feedback on work.

I looooove maps.

Maps and cutaway illustrations have always fascinated me.

Now I get to spend an entire month learning how cutaway illustrations are put together and designing some of my own.

Studying – Google SketchUp Pro tools & techniques

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This month I am studying “Google SketchUp Pro tools & techniques”

This is an in-person class. Two day workshop at local art school.

New version of SketchUp Pro, new skills to learn. Have been using the package for years to design the furniture I build in my workshop.

Update: Logged 25 hours between the 12 hours of the workshop (8 hour days but not counting lunch and coffee breaks) and 13 hours of extra studying and practice.

Studying – Optimizing 2D graphics for games

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This month I am studying “Optimizing 2D graphics for games”

Cannot imagine it will take me more than a week or so to work through the instructional part so I will dedicate the rest of the month to just doing extra exercises.

This is an on-line class, prerecorded video, some interaction with an instructor, bunch of exercises to work through.

Update: Got done with the instructional videos and the exercise files in a long, quiet, three-day weekend with the wife out of town at a convention. I guess I will spend the rest of the month just doing more exercises.

Log update: Logged 30 hours of study and practice.

Studying – Foundations of layout and composition

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This month I am studying “Foundations of layout and composition”

An on-line course, with some classroom interaction through two-way video.

Most of my art training stops dead at the end of an individual piece. I’m interested in broadening my exposure to understand how to compose larger pieces of work; a magazine for instance, or a comprehensive look and feel of a set of characters in a game or comic book.

Update: Logged 18 hours of study and practice.

Studying – Lens reversal macro photography

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This month I am studying “Lens reversal macro photography”

I want to spend a month playing around with my new point and shoot camera and this looks like a great class to actually try that out in. I can always pull out one of my Canon DSLRs if I need to do anything super-fancy.

It’s a non-credit community college course one night a week for four weeks.

Update: Logged 18 hours of study time between the eight hours of class time (2 hours per evening for 4 weeks) and an extra 10 hours of practice.

Studying – Studio photography

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This month I am studying “Studio photography”

Two separate two-day workshops with a local photography studio.

Going back to my photography “roots” and getting back behind a camera for a month to try my hand at photography in the studio.

Not really my roots, because my roots are in electronics and software but photography has been one of those subjects that pops up every now and then in my life.

Update: Between the two workshops (four days total) and then just “getting out there and doing stuff” I logged 43 hours of supervised study and practice.

 

Studying – InDesign typography

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This month I am studying “InDesign typography”

Already studied a bunch of typography techniques over the years so I am treating this as more of a refresher course and how to apply specific techniques using InDesign itself.

This is an online class consisting of video tutorials and exercises.

Update: I logged 28 hours of studying, between the all-too short video tutorials 21 hours of practice.

Studying – Adobe InDesign tips & tricks

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This month I am studying “Adobe InDesign tips & tricks”

Good time to figure out some shortcuts and hidden tricks that I maybe didn’t pick up in the previous months.

This is a short-course, just 6 hours of video, with no real exercises to speak of so I will just fill in the rest of the month with my own self-directed work.

Update: Was not as “tips & tricks” laden as I had hoped. After I got done with the 6 hours of video I went ahead and logged another 14 hours of InDesign study just going through specific design exercises.

Studying – InDesign advanced training

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This month I am studying “InDesign advanced training”

Well we got the basics down last month with 15 hours of recorded video and a bunch of exercises. This month I figured I should try and take it to the next level with more advanced techiques.

Update: A lot of the advanced training was to do with typography, page layout, composition, etc. Most of the stuff I know how to do in Illustrator or Photohop. The actual studying was a breeze to get through.

Between the video tutorials, exercises and just practicing what I learnt I logged a total of 29 hours of study for the month.

 

Studying – Introduction to InDesign

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This month I am studying “Introduction to InDesign”

InDesign is one of those packages I hardly ever use so I sort of fumble around more than be productive. I am hoping this course will correct that.

Update: I would say I have a working familiarity with InDesign now. It is not a particularly complex package to figure out. I doubt I will have much use for the knowledge going forward unless I plan on creating my own magazine.

Log update: 27 hours of study and practice.

Studying – Tracing artwork with Illustrator

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This month I am studying “Tracing artwork with Illustrator”

This is a short class on using Illustrator to convert artwork to line drawings using the built-in tracing tools.

I don’t really need to take a class in this subject, and I certainly don’t need to spend an entire month studying it. I am in a time crunch this month. I am splitting my time between teaching an advanced iOS development class at the Apple campus and developing Lucky Ace Slots for release in the New Year. Just not enough hours in the day.

Update: Managed to at least log 16 hours of study and practice throughout the month. Hotel rooms are great places to just focus on what work needs to be done.

Studying – Package design with Illustrator

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This month I am studying “Package design with Illustrator”

I’ve always had a fascination with really good package design.

Not just the language and metaphors used in the packaging, but also how graphics are wrapped around a three dimensional object.

Expecting to extract a lot of useful knowledge from this intensive design class.

This is an online class consisting of video tutorials and practice exercises.

Log: Managed to log 18 hours of tutorials, study and practice exercises.

Studying – Creating website wireframes with Illustrator

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This month I am studying “Creating website wireframes with Illustrator”

Generally when I want to do web design I stop at the wireframe/prototyping stage with either pen & paper or Balsamiq Mockups and turn to doing the code.

Wondering if there is any advantage to using Illustrator to go one step further towards a complete design.

Update: Between watching the videos, practicing the exercises and doing some extra-curricular work, I logged 21 hours of study time for the month.

There does seem to be some advantage to this. I need to start thinking of the design as a pipeline going through “normal form” like I would with data. Sketch on paper becomes wireframe on paper becomes wireframe in Illustrator becomes flesh design out in Illustrator becomes convert to HTML/CSS/JavaScript.

Studying – Creating logos and icons for mobile apps

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This month I am studying “Creating logos and icons for mobile apps”

It looks like the course primarily relies on Adobe Illustrator for most of the work, with a few outline sketches.

The course is about 12 hours long, and there are several lengthy exercises to work through, so I am anticipating this will take me at least a month to work through, complete the exercises and then review what I have learnt.

Update: I studied and practiced for 26 hours total.

Studying – Cartography illustrations

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This month I am studying “Cartography illustrations”

Had a lot of fun creating a bunch of maps in Illustrator last month so I decided to actually take a class in cartograpy for this month.

This is an in-person class of about 8 hours split over two days.

Update: Logged 11 hours total between in-person class time and extra practice.

 

Studying – Creating maps in Illustrator

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This month I am studying “Creating maps in Illustrator”

I love maps. I am looking forward to this class on how to make them in Illustrator.

This seems to be a hybrid class. It has an in-person one-on-one workshop component and then a bunch of video tutorials and exercises to work through. Should be interesting to see how the format plays out.

Update: 27 hours logged between the half-day workshop, the video tutorials, the exercises and the extra work I did.

 

Studying – Changing a portrait studio background in Photoshop

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This month I am studying “Changing a portrait studio background in Photoshop”

I am thinking it will take me about two weeks, but if I allow myself a month I can do some extra free experimentation exercises.

Update: Managed to work on over a dozen different portrait studio images in my spare time. I had to go back and review some of the techniques because I wasn’t quite achieving the look I wanted.

Studying – Drawing on the right side of the brain

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This month I am studying “Drawing on the right side of the brain”

I’ve tried sitting down and working through the book and the video twice and just never finished it.

There’s a month long class at the local community centre I am going to take and this time, I will finish it.

Studying – Designing an infographic

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This month I am studying “Designing an infographic”

Who doesn’t love an interesting infographic

As I’ve always said, “An infographic is a clever and interesting way to show off how ignorant you are about a subject.”

Studying – Drawing with confidence

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This month I am studying “Drawing with confidence”

I have never drawn anything with confidence and I doubt that by the end of this two week course I will still be able to draw anything with confidence. But I am willing to try.

The two week course is four nights a week, two hours a night.

Update: Logged 16 hours between class (which is about 13 hours by the time you take out short coffee breaks) and an extra three hours of practice.

P.S. Still not confident.

Studying – Comic book illustration

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This month I am studying “Comic book illustration – Developing ideas and design concepts”

The last month of learning how to create comic book. This month I will be studying the 21st, 22nd, 23rd and 24th months of material. One month of material per week. Figures crossed I can keep up this pace.

This has been a 24 month on-line course on drawing and illustrating comic books that I have been able to cram in to seven months of study so far.

Update: That was a two year college course I crammed in to a little over six months. Also did a bunch of extra coursework and exercises and I am pretty happy with my progress.

Studying – Comic book illustration

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This month I am studying “Comic book illustration – Fundamentals of sequential art storytelling”

This is the 6th month of study. This month I intend to do the coursework for the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th months. One month of study and practice and assignments per week.

Update: Looks like I am going to overrun my stated goal by about a month. Life is intruding with a move from Washington to California that wasn’t exactly planned for.

Studying – Comic book illustration

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This month I am studying “Comic book illustration – Drawing comics”

I’ve always wanted to create my own comic book.

Or at least, I’ve always wanted to know *HOW* to create my own comic book.

This is going to be a great introduction to that.

It’s a two year course that I’m going to wrap up in about six months.

Studying – Foundations of figure drawing

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This month I am studying “Foundations of figure drawing”

Two nights a week, one month course offered at the local art school in San Diego I just enrolled for. It’s sort of a follow-on course to last months offering.

Update #1: I am bad at anatomy. But I am getting really good at drawing stick figures and stick figures that look like sausages.

Update #2: I won’t be attending the final week as I am moving from Carlsbad, CA to just North of Seattle at the end of September.

Update #3: Between the 18 hours of class (rather than 24 because I had to skip the last week due to moving house) and some extra practice sessions to make up for the fact I skipped two classes I managed to log 28 hours of practice and study.

Studying – Basics of colour theory

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This month I am studying “Basics of colour theory”

Short, in-person course offered at the local art school in San Diego. One night a week for one month. Should be super-easy.

Update: Between the 12 hours of scheduled class time and the homework and extra reading I covered, I logged 31 hours of study in colour theory. There are interesting splits between age and gender demographics on preferences for certain colours. And oddly, I fall out of the usual demographic range for age and gender. I prefer yellows. Deep, rich yellows.

Studying – Foundations of drawing

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This month I am studying “Foundations of drawing”

Local art school off Pacific, just a block from the Osiris Studios office, has a couple of workshops. Two hours a week, twice a week for eight weeks. I spoke to the instructor and they will let me double-up with the other class they run (had to pay twice) so I get four nights a week and complete the class in four weeks.

Update: Logged 82 hours total between the classes and take home exercises.

Update #2: I do not wish to see naked people of a certain age ever again… can certainly put you off your dinner.

Studying – Pencil drawing

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This month I am studying “Pencil drawing”

Decided to take some of my accumulated holiday (stupid “use it or lose it” policy) from Activision and use that time to improve my pencil drawing.

This is an in-person five half-day workshop.

Update: Logged 20 hours of study and practice. 16 hours of class time, four hours of extra practice.

 

Studying – European art history

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This month I am studying “European art history”

MOMA has another one of those exhibits, decided to indulge in a one day workshop

This is a one day instructor lead workshop at the MOMA

Update: My mistake, it is actually a four week, two nights a week in-person, instructor lead class.

Update #2: Slow paced class. Mostly reading and discussion. Should have picked something else to study alongside this. Thank goodness it is only a four week (two nights a week) class.

Studying – Fundamentals of art history

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This month I am studying “Fundamentals of art history” and also continuing with the third month of “Female character drawing”

MOMA is having a special exhibit, along with a couple of workshops.

The “Fundamentals of art history” is a one day instructor lead workshop at the MOMA. 3rd month of “Female Character Drawing”

Studying – The great photographers

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This month I am studying “The great photographers” and also “Female character drawing”

On-line study, with instructor lead discussions. I am combing this area of study with the female character drawing as the drawing class is too slow for my tastes.

Four, two hour sessions plus some self study for the photographers class. My 2nd month of “Female Character Drawing”

Studying – Painting the sea in oils

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This month I am studying “Painting the sea in oils”

Oil painting.

Because we all want to be Bob Ross — or Nancy if you are British and grew up in the 80s.

This is four separate half-day, in-person workshops.

Update: Oil painting is freaking messy.

Update: I think I am done with oil painting. I might return to it in the future as a hobby but it’s not something that interests me right now.

Log update: 20 hours spent in class, and another 7 hours for a total 27 hours of study and practice.

Studying – Fundamentals of oil painting

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This month I am studying “Fundamentals of oil painting”

I enjoyed the oil painting class last month enough I’d like to try doing some more. Not sure I am going to make a hobby out of it though.

A series of four, one day (six hours a day if you don’t count coffee and lunch) workshops.

Update: 24 hours of class time, 3 hours of extra practice.

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