Iam currently working on a simply 2D based animation for my new college project, i will be uploading my practice version that i have created, just to get the feel for the project, next week i will be carrying out some research to understand more about the techniques in this type of animation too give me a better understanding of what effects and tools that i should use when i make my final animation. Heres a sneak peek (pun intended):

Im currently studying animation, games and special FX at Newcastle College, i believe so far that i have made good progress in the creation of art work. However i also have a huge passion for concept art, creating visual master  pieces simply from your mind. I am currently teaching myself this, but i have currently heard that we will also be studying concept art at some point along the second year course. I love various artists scaling from the high ranking gaming industries such as 343 industries to the FZD school, the youtube channel who teaches concept art, both have such beautiful pieces of art work and i would love to see myself working among them in the future, this oft course will require a lot of hardwork but i need to believe in myself that i can.  Here are just some of the few pieces if concept art that i love.

This was the small animation that i created for the E-Stings (E4 advert) for my live college brief, this is probably one of the most enjoyable animations that i have made as i had gotten a chance to familiarise myself with a lot of the effects that can be used on after effects and that lead to make some better animations in the future because of this, please, post some feedback if you think there is something to be said about this.

Research

Over the past few posts that i have posted i have mentioned one o two artist that i gain inspiration from, this has been a task set from college, what i find interesting about these artists are that they are there own person, you see a lot of artists these days and if your a massive gamer like myself you can tell that they have been taken from somewhere else. Darren Bacon is by far one of my favourite game artists, however but what else i have found interesting is that i have incidentally found myself following the research of my new brief, researching logos. Heres what i found:

Whilst researching many different type of logo designers, i believe that my most enjoyable learning experience from me was looking at the work of Aaron Draplin, what makes it more helpful is that he is also a youtube and for a massive viewer of youtube like myself, this allowed me to learn and see how logo designers set out there work, when creating there designs. The art style that he takes is very modern and chrome, this was the kind of logo that i wanted to create for my blog, so i knew straight away that this would be the best learning experience for me. From what i have seen he first takes a few minutes sketching out some random shapes and using those to fit in with the name of the company he is designing for. He also mentions this in his blog, additionally he then makes out measurements and additional tweaks to finalise his favourite designs, he then moves onto the computer were he uses illustrate to recreate his shapes digitally. When making this i learned from him that it is very useful to create numerous designs and then get the opinion of others, as he states that they can tell you why they would and why they wouldn't click on your blog because your logo is going to be the first thing that they see. Using many designs you can go off the best and make it better, once you have completed this you then send of a few of these finalised newer versions off to the client. Clearly i am not making my logo for a job, however i can use this knowledge to gather information on my current designs and work off the feedback to make mine better. Another logo designer who i came across was Will Paterson, another designer who uses youtube to share the work, i have also seen his site and his blog to gather some additional knowledge on what type of work he does. From what i read and watched he uses very different styles of work in each design he does, he explicitly explained that using various designs expands your audience gathering more and more jobs along the road, again I'm not creating my logo for a job I'm creating it for a blog, however i used this to create various versions for both my logo and my blog to decide which would suit my personality more but also see what would attract more audiences. I think the great thing about doing this research was the fact that i could watch the videos of how they worked, its really helpful to see how the work progress is set out compared to how i create my development, it gives you high amount of knowledge to not only how to present your work but how you should personally set out your work to give yourself a better mindset and how to create better designs. When researching these two artists i have found myself shadowing there work progress when it has came to designing my logo designs for my blog.  Finally the major thing that i have noticed about these two artists is that they have very different work patterns, both will create a sketch of how they want to set it out but there mindset is very different, making them create very different designs, which inspired me to create the best work that i can using my personal experience and that has truly helped me design a few logos that i am very happy about and i am currently awaiting on the feedback to make my work better.

Additionally, i have also been researching the concept art from both bungie and 343 industries, there is a artist who happens to work for both companies, an artist called, Darren Bacon, the artist has a very gritty and apocalyptic style to his work however like in most of the halo and destiny games, within these apocalyptic scenery he also makes something stand out in his, work, something thats worth taking the time and looking at.  Thats why i love his work, he always catches the eye of audience. Thats something thats very important in the design industry, out of thousands of people, your work has to stand out, you have to be unique. I am not mentioning this for people to copy his work, but to get inspiration of how he has achieved his goal and that everyone else can achieve this through hard work and imagination. For example in the image showing the wreckage he uses the fire to create that dynamic and hostile environment. As you can also see in most of his work he uses very dynamic lighting in his work to produce a very unique image, e.g. the image below shows the city surrounded in purple neon lights creating a very beautiful and vivid effect.

For anyone who doesn't know, 343 industries is my favourite gaming company, (current creators of halo), i just really love there design and concept art of each game they make. in my latest task in college i have to research logos and i am trying to stick to that bold and plain look to the logo and if you see 343 industries logo, you will see that there logo is very plain but is highly recognised in the gaming industries. The same goes with the Bungie logo, the previous creators of halo, they also had a bold logo that is still recognised even today, even after from moving away from there original franchise. I am following the idea o these two logos, of course my title would be under 'NeedToDraw' here is the design I am following at the moment.

This is by far one of my favourite pieces that i have done in a very long time, i generally thoroughly enjoyed doing this piece, i love ho the light fades in with the helmet of the elite. Even though i enjoyed creating this i also learned a lot from this, especially how o create lighting effects on the armour, message back your thoughts at jackdingwall14@gmail.com.

If you didn't already know, i am a massive fan of the DC hero, The Flash, and whilst reading one of my many comics, i found a double page including a picture of the Flash running and i had the instant urge to make this piece in my own kind of motion, using many effects of photoshop i used vibrant colours upon a black background to give a very dynamic effect, finally using the motion blue effect, it gave him the illusion of running.

In my opinion this is a relatively slick design, i like how the body tones upwards, making it feel   more aerodynamic. This is my very first design of a vehicle that i have done in a very long time and to be fair, i don't think its all that bad, please email me at jackdingwall14@gmail.com, to give me some feedback on some improvements that i could make.

Introduction of Jack Dingwall

Hi i am an passionate individual studying at Newcastle college, i have and always love the concept of drawing and art in general, so i thought, what the hell, lets show a few things that i have done. I know what your thinking, why pick the name, NeedToDraw, well... theres no other way to explain it, i am always drawing something, from mythical landscapes to the high altitudes of space battles and spaceships. On this blog you will find numerous and random pieces of art, scaling from animations to illustrations. I love free hand drawing but over the past year i have also realised that i also thoroughly enjoy the technical side to animation, to making your drawings come alive.

If i was being really honest i am a huge nerd who loves super heroes, games and movies and i have always admired the art and visuals of them and i would really like to do my part, making a blog simply helps me, get my art out in the world and interact with the community.

When i draw, i don't like simply copying off the image exactly, i like to make an artists impression, so in many of my pieces that you see, if you recognise them you will notice that have twisted them to suite my vision that i see them in.