The creature..

I have had so much trouble getting hold of pictures of a Japanese spider crab's head..even on Google theres not much. But then i randomly found a real good closeup and was like 'have to draw it!' so here it is. I kept it to a line drawing so i could see all where everything goes, and it kinda looks more icky that way. I drew this at 10pm and i'd been awake since 4:50am for work so i was trying to keep myself awake to draw this before i forgot where on Google the picture was.

This is a face only a mother could love..

I was trying to find crab heads, and for some reason a picture of a crab against the glass popped up. So i drew it because it looked awesome :) it reminds me of armour plating...which it is. The way the legs come out of the body is pretty much exactly the same as a tarantula.. O_O and i hate tarantulas...god, why do i have to get a combo of 2 animals i hate..

This one was also drawn about 10pm, and i struggled with the head as it wasnt very clear on the picture. This has given me an idea for my splice..

Life Drawing again

This is round 2 of the life drawing class. To be honest, i prefer my first lot of drawings i did..they seemed to turn out better. Although, with this lot of drawings, i was in a bad mood and wasn't really giving them my full attention so that's probably why they didnt turn out as great as i'dve liked. The first drawing i did (very top one) was supposed to be of the whole figure, but i only managed to get her torso done, whereas last time i managed to at least get some lines in over her whole body. I was having trouble with my shading on this one, it kept going wrong and blotchy which made my mood worse. That drawing was a 30 minute one.

The 4 different sections drawings were about 5-10 mins each, and i think they turned out okay. There wasn't as much variety of sections as last time as the model was either facing or turned away from me. I'm not blaming her for it, im just saying i didnt get a chance to draw interesting forms.

My preferred drawing is the last one for some strange reason, and those who know me and the way i draw will be like 'what the fuck?!' because im so nitpicky about details and being a perfectionist. And this drawing is exactly the opposite of that. I think its because by the end i'd really had enough and didnt care much, so i was actually able to do what i was supposed to do and not concentrate on details, just shapes. If i had cared like i normally do, then that would've been torture.

Sorry about the quality of these pics, i have no idea why they've turned out that colour :S the lighting in my room is fine..its just my camera being a div ¬_¬

Something smells fishy...or should i say, crabby..

These are some drawings of my animal. The first one (above) was drawn from a picture of its skeleton, which is basically the animal anyway as the crab has an exoskeleton. I never realised how many spikes it has on its legs until i drew it them...

The second drawing up is just some quick sketches of its claws, just so i can get an idea of what i might do with them for my splice.

The top drawing is a kinda quick sketch of my animal from the front, and making it look more spider-like as i'm thinking of playing around with that idea as it is a SPIDER crab.

I have also decided that i work too lightly in pencil...my dumb scanner never picks it up properly. But i find it hard to work darker as i layer on the pencil slowly to build a picture up..should i change my technique?

Feet...

I got round to drawing, or rather trying and kinda failing, my feet. The first one (above) didnt really go too well. Im not sure why, but it doesnt look quite right...i dont think my usual drawing technique really worked for this. So i decided to try just simple lines and shading, and they seemed to have turned out better, although im not sure about the third one up. Theres definately something odd about it, but i drew it as i saw it so maybe its just my foot thats retarded. I actually quite like the back view (second up) but maybe that's because i didnt have to worry about the toes. It seems i cant really get feet to look like the angle that they're seen at...if that makes sense...

Drawn in pencil :)

The Fly (Jeff Goldblum version)

The remake of this film was directed by David Croenberg and starred Jeff Goldblum as the scientist who gets spliced with a common housefly. The review from IMDB about this film is very positive towards the main actors, saying 'The story is not just a dumb horror-creature movie, but an intelligent science fiction tale with both leading actors excellent'.

Film 4 was also quite positive in their view towards the film saying 'If a fly hadn't crept into the machine with Brundle, he and Quaife would be free to live happily ever after. As it is, the man of science undergoes an alteration that leaves his lover warning those around her to 'be afraid, be very afraid'.

This film includes a lot more special effects than its 1958 counterpart, although they're still quite dated. The use of horror makeup is a lot more profound as Jeff Goldblum is transformed slowly into the fly throughout the last half of the film. The fly creature itself was moved around using a rig that was attached to puppeteers who could move it around how the director wanted.

This film includes a lot of vomit and disgusting fluids that are a lot more of a shock to the audience, such as when Jeff's character, Seth Brundle vomits on donuts to break them down so he could eat them, and when he shows people how a fly eats. Me being squeamish, couldn't watch those parts heh, but the sound effects that went with it were enough to create an image in my mind. The New York Times didn't take well to the goriness of this film, saying 'This all-out flaunted goriness becomes distracting, and completely destroys "The Fly"'

I found the fly creature to be sort of unrealistic in the way that it moved, but that's just because its a dated way of creating that sort of character and getting it to walk. Lots of different rigs were used depending on how much of the creature was seen by the camera, so getting them to match up would have been a challenge.

The Fly (original)

As part of our metamorphasis project, we watched the original Fly film. Made in 1958 and directed by Kurt Neumann, it is a classic 50's horror film, including overdramatic scenes of the woman screaming and fainting. Not full of the special effects we are used to today, this film uses a rubber mask for the effect of the fly head and other prosthetic makeup such as the fly 'hand', which invokes different views from different people such as Film4 who said 'Despite one of the silliest concepts in horror cinema- Price admitted being unable to keep a straight face during filming- there is something irresistable about this tale of a man who swaps heads with a housefly.' However, IMBD found this film to have a more psychological theme, saying 'this one grabs your psychological neck, shakes it about and forces you to answer serious questions regarding the scientific exploits of man.'

This film is quite dated now, and doesn't have the same effect on the audience as it did back in its time. Most of the effects in this film are laughable to us such as the big reveal of the fly, which would have terrified audiences. The New York Times also found this film laughable but had this to say 'If this story sounds like a sidesplitting howl, it doesn't play that way. Not with the shaking, hooded figure lunging at a blackboard for 'Plees help- find fly- LOVE YOU''.

The film did have some good points, such as the ending when the little human fly is in the spider's web crying 'help me!'. The editing in this part did build some tension as it cut between the spider and the fly caught in the web, and made you feel as though you were trapped with the fly. It almost made you feel sorry for the creature.

Life Drawing

Ok, these are my life drawing pics. As far as my life drawing goes, im quite happy with them as they actually look vaguely like the model. But part of that might have been using my favourite media; pencil. I really focused on the hands for the 3 drawings as i find drawing them quite hard. I wanted the practice. I think i work too light in pencil tough, so the drawings could have been darker, but i didnt really have time to make them to my complete satisfaction as we only had 30 mins on the main drawing, and 20 for each of the hand drawings and the one of her back.

Very handy...

I managed to get round to drawing my hand. I was gonna leave them as just line drawings, but compulsion made me shade them as they did look weird otherwise. I'm still not sure about some of the shading on a couple of them, i think it makes the fingers look like they're at the wrong angle to what they were. I did them in pencil :)

I've got CRABS!!!!!!

Yup, this is my mystery animal.. just for the record, i hate crabs....specially when they invade my teleportation unit :O

Looks like it's crabsticks for lunch for me..wait..I'm spliced with it so that'd be a form of cannibalism...ohhh the mindfuck!

'You have caught...KRABBY!' ¬_¬

Drawings of boredom

This is the kinda thing i do when i get bored..

mostly done with pencil.

The tiger and giraffe were presents for friends at Oxfam ^_^

The black dragon was done in biro.

Summer project

The life-forms mainly consist of animals, probably coz i watch National Geographic too much haha. Really had no idea what i was doing most of the time, the drawings just happened somehow. Machine ideas came from PlayStation games mostly (yes, im a gamer :D) and structures i didnt have a clue with.