Obscurus - Comics, Illustration, Art

THE GREAT ARTBOOK POST!

2011-09-10T23:18:00.001-07:00

My Big Uber-collection of the best art e-books I’ve found so far for you to download and to study!

As promised, and as long put-off, here are my favourite pdf art books, these are the best of the best I’ve found in my travels! They’re all great but each author has a specific area he’s great at:

Bridgman: really sketchy, like sometimes almost too much. Good for proportions though and seeing how things fit together.
Burne Hogarth: really stylized and so not quite 100% realistic, but he protrayed the 3D shapes really well, and if you study this and keep his drawings in mind when you draw people, your figures will have a much more realistic weight distrobution.
Jack Hamm: an old fashioned guy, good for drawing faces in a realistic, old comic-book-y way. Covers lots of hard-to-draw angles of the face that others forget, too!
Eliot Goldfinger: this is really really technical almost medical anatomy-level complexness. But it breaks things down into muscle masses which are good to keep in mind if you have a difficult character to draw.

MY FAVOURITES:

Michael Hampton: THIS IS THE BEST. This one has everything, everything is colour coded, it’s fucking amazing in every way. This is like the be-all end-all of anatomy books, GET THIS.
Force, Life Drawing for animators: this one is amazing. This one teaches you how to DRAW the ENTIRE FIGURE, but not in little chunks- you need to know how to capture the flow of the body to make it not look like shit. This book teaches what seperates the good artists from the MASTER artists. GET THIS.
Vilppu Drawing Manual: This is also a great book that combines some of these two big elements of drawing. Sort of retro but everything is really amazing, this is a big one.
Victor Perard: if you’re like me you revolve around line art, not painting. This book is awesome for us people. Lots of great poses to study and learn from, teaches you how to take masses and make line art of them. Very good.

so, Go forth! Share and reblog this post for others, if needbe, it is full of win. Or just the URL, that’s cool too. Thanks everybody who waited for me to upload it all!

This was collected by a very awesome individual on Tumblr. I've already downloaded some of the books and they've been all sorts of ridonkulously helpful ♥ GO AND DOWNLOAD AND READ AND LEARN!

Ashel:// This is A Public Announcement

2011-07-31T22:43:00.001-07:00

Look!

A cereal advert!
For my fake, imaginary company, Rustee's. This is part of my Malay Lang. project where we had to design an ad and write a blurb about it. I'm sure I will fail the Blurb-Writing part so hopefully the visuals can make up for it.

The Mechanic - by Benben

2011-07-31T22:15:00.001-07:00

One of eight characters that Ben's going to use in Side Dishes. Yes, this is not Ben talking but Ashel. HE'S A TERRIBLE OLD MAN, asking the young uppity kid to do all the technological-shmological for him. Sooner or later I'm going to make him MODERN AND HIP.

But yes, went off into a tangent here. Work is still going on for Obscurus; sorry for the lack of updates!

Oh boy

2011-05-29T08:09:00.000-07:00

There's this weird thing on Blogger that keeps making the posts appear as 'Published by Reimena Ashel Yee' (who is me, by the way) when the post is done by someone else who is definitely not me. I'll see what can be done to fix this.

Dolling Up the Mannequin

2011-05-29T08:07:00.001-07:00

Eris

2011-05-07T23:06:00.001-07:00

She'll be starring with Cupid in Lonely Hearts Cafe ;D

Ich Liebe Dich

2011-05-07T04:20:00.001-07:00

I don't normally do horror themed stuff, but a friend of mine had been a terrible influence lately and I soon found myself drawing horror pictures in one night (oh boy).

The characters featured are Delilah and Ruth, who run around in my crazy comic Anfänge ♥

Ashel:// You've To Know

2011-05-07T04:13:00.001-07:00

Ooh, another comic from me! This one is a gift for my favourite Brazillian friend; she has this wonderful story that she MIGHT or MIGHT NOT turn into a webcomic, and seeing that I'm working on one myself, I'm absolutely PUMPED to have her join me in my erratic comicking adventures.

The comic is just a CLEANER (by miles. My panelling layout is artistically complex and confusing and misunderstood) experiment with colours and style and stuff. It's inspired by European comic art.

Ashel:// Phrenology

2011-04-29T02:10:00.001-07:00

I thought this might of some relevance. It's a fun experiment I did of my character for my upcoming webcomic/graphic novel/sequential art-story/ INSERTSNOOTYNAMEHERE. I was experimenting with achieving a look that resembles ink, and over here, I was pretty close to it. The story isn't as fully fleshed out as most of the work that swims in my head, but it served its purpose for the experiment. The idea was that after my character has seen this Messenger Crow off, he heads to the oak tree somewhere south of St. Victor's Graveyard, and we assume the key has something to do with unlocking some knowledge hidden in the tree, which explains the Phrenology diagram. I also wrote in more detail on the process behind this image, which is in my blog.

50 Things Every Graphic Student Should Know

2011-04-28T23:49:00.001-07:00

On Jamie Wieck's blog is a list of 50 nuggets of wisdom compiled from his friends and colleagues, all condensed into less than 140 words (making them Twitter-friendly! Share them!). This is totally useful, and a lot of them are common sense that just gets forgotten.

HOW TO STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST (AND 9 OTHER THINGS NOBODY TOLD ME)

2011-04-22T06:58:00.001-07:00

How To Steal Like An Artist is an article containing 10 pieces of advice from artist Austin Kleon. It's been going around the online art community, and for good reason. The article is inspiring, and tells us the things that we should know but forget.

Here's a preview of the list (more can be read from the link):

1. Steal like an artist
2. Don't wait until you know who you are before you start making things
3. Write the book you want to read
4. Use your hands
5. Side projects and hobbies are important
6. Do good work and put it where people can see it
7. Geography is no longer our master
8. Be nice.
9. Be boring.
10. Creativity is subtraction.

We hope this inspires you! It certainly has inspired me!

Hello!

2011-04-10T06:54:00.000-07:00

Whoops! We're not dead yet! Some of us are currently busy at the moment, especially during their final graduation year, and the other beginning her first year, in art school. I'm swamped by the Typical Science Stream Student Responsibilities (all in the name of science!).

We've made some progress, especially with Rust Bucket and Side Dishes.

Most likely by the middle of the year, things will start picking up.
Watch us, yo!

A Bunch of Cute Stuff

2011-03-26T20:04:00.001-07:00

A bunch of cute animals that I may try to badger the group to make merchandise out of these.

Stupid Cupid

2011-03-18T19:04:00.001-07:00

Cupid, a charming fellow who stars in Memai's Side Dishes comic. Though what business a God of Love has to do in a sleepy neighborhood cafe is anyone's guess ♥

Professor Clift

2011-03-17T10:24:00.001-07:00

For my side of Side Dishes! He's an academic, tutoring in History. You may or may not know his real job.

Rust Bucket - An Art Book

2011-03-17T10:21:00.001-07:00

We plan to hit up this year's local Comic Fiesta, and we ain't going there empty-handed (that would have been embarrassing, wouldn't it?) ! So exclusive for the Con, we're going to make an art book just for you!

Rust Bucket is Steampunk-themed (!!!) and showcases the style, artwork and talent of the Four of Us. There are going to be 7 illustrations from the each of us, making it 28 illustrations/pages in total, more or less. It's gonna be printed in colour, and it'll be A5 size.

I'm not sure what the other Amoebas are doing in the Art Book side of business (I know about our progress for the Anthology, and so far, all of us have a premise already). I've completed my quota of 7 illustrations and the thumbnails/compositions are in my head. It's just transferring them to paper that needs to be done.

More update on both the books as we progress into the future!

Side Dishes - A Comic Anthology

2011-03-16T08:11:00.001-07:00

Out of all the projects, this is the one we're most excited about! The Four of Us are comic-gnerds (geek and nerds) at heart, so an anthology = best thing ever. Also, I've always wished to be part of a comic anthology, and this hopefully would be the first of many others!

Side Dishes was initially Ben's idea for the Group's name (when we first started), but we decided that it would be best used as a name for the anthology.

Side Dishes is a Black and White (this is due to printing costs, but hopefully we will upgrade in the future!) book with four stories centering on a cafe/restaurant theme. The theme is open to interpretation, so you get to see an individual take on each vignette.

Urm, Hello

2011-03-16T07:36:00.001-07:00

Hey, Reimena talkin' here. I've the honour to compose Obscurus' very first post, and I hope it won't be the last.

Everytime I look at organisations or businesses with blogs and their gadget-macharoonies, I always can't help but think that Obscurus should, like these orgs and bsns, have a professional, stiff-sounding first post in the Blarg (blog).

It's like trying to force myself to do things according to what others have done, and it does leave me feeling awkward.

Ironically, that's not what the group's about.

Obscurus was created because we wanted to get together all these artists with unique or individual styles and make them use their talent and imagination to create things that others will enjoy. If there's one thing the four of us agree on, it's that there's a saturation of anime-inspired artists inflitrating the local, mainstream art industry, and that it may be causing it to stagnate. It's starting to get...unexciting. Like there's no flavour.

We're not saying that anime-inspired artists shouldn't be given the chance to promote themselves, but we're asking 'Why can't we do something different?'. Why isn't anyone doing it, exactly? Why isn't anyone trying to use their creativity and their talent to work on something nobody else has ever seen before?

Obscurus will answer these questions (cheh, syok sendiri)

I mean, if everyone eats nasi lemak everyday, that tends to get kinda boring, doesn't it?

We're going to make the Malaysian Art Industry EXPLODE. We're going to turn it upside down.

This year is our first year, so we're most likely making our debut in this year's (2011) Comic Fiesta. We ain't gonna go empty-handed, so here are some projects in development:

An Art Book (with 28 illustrations!)
A Comic Anthology
Original Prints
Fan-Art Prints
Merchandise (buttons and keychains and such!)

I'm going to discuss a couple of these later.

Hopefully 2011 will be a good start for Obscurus!

Keep a lookout! And oh yeah, we need your support too! There's nothing better than going through the journey with you! ;D