Review - Creature Design with Anthony Jones

Anthony Jones is a senior concept artist who's worked for clients such as Sony Santa Monica, Hasbro, and Wizards of the Coast. He currently teaches at Red Engine Studios and the online-based Schoolism, while freelancing on the side.

For more information on Anthony Jones and his work, check out this extensive interview on Schoolism, or visit his blog at Robotpencil.org

Creature Design with Anthony Jones is, like most other classes at Schoolism, an online based course that can be taken either fulltime with recorded video feedback from the instructor, or as a self-taught course where you only gain access to the video lessons and other fulltime student's video critiques.

This review will cover my experiences with the self-taught version of the class.

There are a total of 9 lessons for the class, each encompassing a lecture ranging from 1-2 hours, and also an assignment that cover the subject matter of the lesson. Each lesson covers elements of design from thumbnailing, comparative anatomy to color and gesturing. The lessons will allow you to gain an insight into the workflow and visual brainstorming Anthony uses to design and paint his creatures in the entertainment industry.

He'll introduce each lesson with important principles and theories covering the subject at hand, and goes on to paint and demonstrate while explaining his techniques and thought processes. In some lessons he'll also end by showing a quick time-lapsed painting demo, summarizing all the techniques and theories he had previously talked about.

Thumbnails for the first assignment

Aside from the lectures, there are also student critique videos you can watch, often ranging from 20-30 videos for each lesson. I've found that the ability to watch these critique videos are what makes Schoolism such a unique addition to online classes, since they add so much more value to the class than what you already get in the lectures. Since every student is different, you get a very diverse pedagogical experience. Teacher feedback ranges from both beginner artists to real professionals.

When I took the class, the overall objective of the course was to design a new dragon-like creature, that was supposed to remind you of the majestic elements of the typical fantasy dragon, but encompass a completely unique visual design.

The course was designed in such a way that every other lecture would be based on design aspects, while the other half would be based on practical usage. We went from designing with thumbnails to constructing with sketches, studying animal anatomy and gestures to posing our creatures in a fitting environment, making color studies of real animals to coloring our own creatures. The final lessons were based on finalizing our creatures while Anthony shared some in-depth insight into the industry he's worked in.

The class focuses on design, not on the technicalities of drawing or painting, and although Anthony gave plenty of great pointers on how to improve your digital painting skills (I probably learned more photoshop effects, hotkeys, digital workflows to speed up my drawings than in any other prior course I've taken), the main focus is on how to design and come up with unique creatures. I would not recommend that you take this class if you don't already have some drawing experience. That said, Anthony doesn't shy away from giving his best critiques even to the most inexperienced artists. Regardless of your skill level, most artists who entered the class with some rough work, ended up leaving with really great final pieces.

From thumbnails to value sketches

Anthony's teaching and critiques lean more towards a laid back and down-to-earth teaching style, which makes his lectures feel a bit more personal than the typical teacher that tends to be a bit monotonous and impersonal. Anthony manages to avoid this, but at the same time he never steps away from taking his work highly serious. If you've ever watched his his broadcasts on his personal livestream channel, then you know what kind of personality to expect from his critiques. At times it almost feels like you're drawing along with a really skilled art buddy. There were a few times where this trait could cause his messages he wanted to convey become a bit vague, for example it sounded like he would struggle a bit with his choice of words, but you never really failed to understand the overall points he wanted to come across. I think this is where taking his full class with video critiques comes handy since you can ask him as many questions as you want, which he highly encourages throughout the class.

Posing your creature in an environment

A really great thing about Anthony is his willingness to talk about his prior experiences from way back when he was still a student, to his more recent discoveries as a professional artist. He talks about numerous inspiring stories of both his own journey when working hard to improve his skills, and encouraging tales handed down to him from his teachers and co-workers.

He continuously makes some great points on that drawing skills are bound to the artist and not to the tools we use. Drawing digitally or traditionally, what brushes or what tablet you use shouldn't affect whether you can turn out great work. There's a really great video critique where he basically searches for a picture of a toddler on google image, pastes it into photoshop, turns it into a custom brush, and then goes on to paint this really awesome looking dragon head with it. Just to reiterate, he accomplishes this with "a baby brush". Not a bad way to prove a point.

I think that the most important thing I walked away with from this course was the concept of reiteration. Anthony stressed numerous times the importance of reiterating on your designs, and I could see how much it changed when applying this method to my workflow. It was a real eye-opener, to see a method I had previously taken for granted invigorate so much improvement to my own work.

Could you paint a dragon with
this as your brush?

I need to point out that it does seem like Schoolism has some issues with their student critique videos. Just as I mentioned in my previous Schoolism review, Advanced Lighting with Sam Nielson, I came across some technical difficulties with some of the critique videos. Every once in a while some of them would just stop playing halfway through and some would not load at all. I suspect this might be an issue with the Schoolism dashboard system, since it's not tied to just one class, and I did try it with different web browsers without any luck. In any case I've forwarded this problem to them in hopes that they will fix it. Since there are so many of the critiques you can watch, it's hardly an obstacle to your learning process, but it really does stink when a video just suddenly stops playing, especially if it's in the middle of an important story or point the teacher wants to express. This never ever happens with the actual lectures, just with a few of the student critiques. If anyone who reads this review decides to take the class, or already has done so, please let me know if you experienced similar issues with the critique videos.

To sum things up, Creature Design with Anthony Jones is a great introduction into the world of creature design. You'll need some prior drawing experience before taking the class, but the class is primarily aimed towards artists who haven't dealt with creature design on a professional level previously. Although I would say Anthony's fascinating insights on the industry, stories of his artistic journey, his down-to-earth lecturing and his efficient painting techniques makes this class interesting for artists of all kinds.

My final 3 dragon designs for the class:

  

I want to end by providing a couple of really nice resources and websites that I used, both for studying and for inspirational boosts:

Animal Anatomy for Artists by Eliot Goldfinger 

This was my choice for a animal anatomy book, it's shock full of wonderful pictures and charts of animal anatomy, primarily focused on four-legged animals. The only downside is that it only features one or two flight-based animals.

I would highly recommend that you study animal anatomy alongside human anatomy, it's so much easier to remember the skeletal structure and muscles when having something to compare with. It might sound like twice the amount of work, but I would say this is one of those rare cases where more is less.

http://katepfeilschiefter.blogspot.com 

Kate is an artist I found while searching for artistic interpretations of dragon anatomy, her anatomical accuracy in creature design is truly inspirational. Check out this cool dragon diagram she drew.

http://brenthollowellart.blogspot.com 

Brent pumps out new creature illustrations and concepts every day, his work ethic and discipline is really something to behold. I always get inspired whenever I see new work from him every morning.

Muddy Colors, a collective of professional artists had a Dragon special earlier last year on their blog. Check out their work for some jaw-dropping material!

In addition, Anthony Jones has a few more free videos on Schoolism you can watch where he explains and demonstrates some of the tools he uses in photoshop.

http://www.schoolism.com/interview.php?id=84 

http://www.schoolism.com/interview.php?id=88 

http://www.schoolism.com/interview.php?id=78

Schoolism class - Final Assignment

Here is my final assignment for the Advanced Lighting class I took!

The painting was based on Line Art by my instructor Sam Nielson.

Teacher/freelance illustrator/coding guru Mark Chong also gave me some really useful advice on how to proceed with adding texture and detail to this image. Texture density and Edge Tessellation, were some new concepts that I learned from him. Thanks Mark!

By the way, since I have enrolled in a Schoolism class, I am eligible to giving out discounts on any of their classes. If you want to try taking a Schoolism class, make sure you take advantage of my offer. You can do so by simply clicking on the Schoolism Alumni icon on the right sidebar of the blog.

Schoolism review

My first experience of studying art online is about to wrap up on Sam Nielson's Advanced Lighting class.

For an introduction to what this class is all about, I refer you to the official website and an interview with the instructor Mr. Nielson.

Now for my own impressions of the class since I started it back in late October 2011.

Advanced Lighting is comprised of 9 lessons covering different aspects of lighting. Each lesson is also accompanied with a digital painting demonstration where Sam shows you how to apply the lecture's explored principles.

The class starts out by explaining basic but fundamental lighting theories and makes way into more and more complicated light and surface interactions.

Each student is also given an assignment with which to practice the theories covered during each lecture, these can be uploaded to the Schoolism hub for grading, and as a full-time student you will also get personalized feedback from the instructor.

The Schoolism dashboard where you get access to all lectures and where you can upload your assignments is very simple and easy to navigate, there is no mistake what links lead where, it is self-explanatory at first sight. All video content, whether lectures or feedback is streamed in HD resolution so there is never any doubt about what your instructor is showing you on screen.

The Schoolism dashboard accessed through your web browser

The lessons are brilliant. Sam goes into great depth trying to explain the way light behaves from both a very scientifically grounded and a layman's point of view. Switching between these two modes, he ends up with a very convenient way for artists to approach lighting interactions with different surfaces, without having it become too overwhelming. It is deep, it is incredibly fascinating, but this is not a rocket science course. And unlike some tutorial DVD's out there that claim to explain the same principles about light and color by compressing all that content in under 2 hours, Sam instead takes plenty of time, around 1-2 hours for each lecture, to both explain, using a wealth of knowledge about light, his own conveniently designed documents, showing photo references and demonstrate using Painter, how artists should tackle common lighting challenges.

Taking the self-taught course, Sam was still generous enough to give me a little feedback on how to further improve some of my submissions after I handed them in, so it was not a complete walk-in-the-dark after uploading the assignments. 

The way the self-taught system works, it also allows you to watch any lesson and hand-in any of the assignments at your own pace during the 100 days you have access to the class. It should be noted though that you must hand in your assignments at least two weeks before the class ends to allow the instructor some time to go over them if you want them graded. The assignments, depending on how much effort you decide to put into them, probably will take a lot of your time to complete so make sure to start early if you want to present your best work.

The ability to watch critiqued videos of classmates who had taken the class previously was just about as helpful as the lessons themselves. In them Sam paints over a submitted assignment while both explaining and more importantly, showing how he would improve it, using his accumulated experience as a professional concept artist at Disney Interactive. He explains his planning stages and performs the execution of the critique without any hassle. It's clear, precise and to the point.

Since the class is open to anyone regardless of any previous knowledge in light or digital painting, you will find that the critiques cover artists of all different kinds, ranging from beginners to the truly experienced. Sam is great at adjusting his feedback to fit anyone regardless of skill level, and since there are so many critiques to look at (around 30 for each lesson) there is a high probability that you will find a critique that covers similar problems that you encounter as a self-taught student. Of course, as a full-time student, you don't even have to worry about that since Sam gives you personalized feedback to fit just your work.

The Feedback page, where you upload your assignments and watch video critiques

My first experience with Schoolism has been a highly positive one, but there were still some issues encountered along the way.

Sometimes the audio of a few videos had inconsistent volume, making it very hard to hear anything even with the volume of the web-based video player set to full, but it was nothing that couldn't be fixed by adjusting your computer's system volume.

The biggest issue I had though was that a few of the video feedback critiques suddenly stopped playing midway through. The videos would still be playing the entirety of its duration according to the web-player, but the image was frozen and no sound was available. This happened to me on perhaps 5-6 of feedback videos (none of the lessons, they were fine) and reloading the page did not fix the problem. However ultimately it did not concern me much since there were over a hundred of other critiqued videos to watch in total.

One of the lessons, which covered the aspects of transparency and refraction, was one of the shorter and more complicated lectures and probably could've fared better with a few more examples of real-life situations where these phenomena occur. This lesson also did not have a longer painting demonstration at the very end which might be why it felt a little incomplete (it does have several shorter painting demos scattered throughout the lesson though).

On the other hand Sam does give plenty more examples of refraction in many of the video critiques but unless you make a note about it, it is oftentimes hard to go back and find the correct ones among what is usually over 30 critiques.

In retrospect, the 3 months I have spent with Advanced Lighting has helped me piece together countless of different issues of painting I've always found difficult to find answers for or even know where to begin look for. If you've ever wondered how some artists manage to get such beautiful and clean lighting on their artwork, this is where you'll learn, or at the very least, acquire the most important stepping stones required to reach that level. While it's impossible to cover the exact way light behaves with every single material or surface that exists in a 3 month class, the 9 lessons have taught me important fundamental skills to use for the analytical study of light interactions in the real world and in photographic reference. Using these principles together, it no longer feels as intimidating to pick a surface apart and study the effects lighting can have on it. I feel like I have a solid plan of attack of nearly any kind of material. So if you find it hard to treat light and color as separate entities to be picked apart for study, like I always did, then this class will greatly help you along the way of becoming self-sufficient in tackling challenging lighting problems.

Of course, like with any other class, the amount of progress you make during the course is entirely dependent on your own effort you put into it. There is never any guarantee that you will walk away from a class as a master of some subject by just taking it, there is only the results of the amount of dedication and time you put into it. Take the newly gained knowledge and experiment with it, do plenty of excercises and studies with this in mind, so you can ultimately understand how to apply it to your own work.

Mr. Nielson has helped me grow significantly as an artist and for that I can only give this class a top score.

UPDATE: Sam has linked to this review from his blog and responded that the few aforementioned issues I had will be taken care of for future students of his class. Awesome!

Painting skin

Here's an assignment on human skin I did for my Schoolism course.

Based on line art by my instructor Sam Nielson.

Form and Light examples

These are some typical examples of how I think about light interacting with form. Basic random shapes lit by different light sources to give the illusion of 3D form.

Mark Chong's excellent art tutorials, coupled with some of the principles gained from the early lessons of Sam Nielson's Advanced Lighting course, has inspired me to do these quite regularly.

Schoolism course!

I am taking Sam Nielson's Advanced Lighting course at Schoolism.com
It is comprised of 9 video lectures, each ranging from anywhere between 1-2 hours in length, simply shock full of invaluable information and painting techniques regarding light and color and how it all interacts with various real world materials. Each video also comes with an assignment to hone your newly learned skills on.

I am enrolled in the self-taught version of the class which is more limited than the full course in the sense that you don't get any feedback from any teacher on your assignments. But it still comes loaded with all the video lectures and assignments that you get from the full course, + the ability to watch the video feedback students who are taking the full course are getting from Sam Nielson himself.

Here's a great 50 min interview and painting demo with Sam Neilson held by Bobby Chiu which I highly recommend if you want an idea of what this course is all about: http://www.schoolism.com/interview.php?id=58

Lastly, I will be posting some examples of different exercices I am doing which applies many of the principles I've learned from the course as this blog moves forward.