On the 3rd June I attended a Schoolism workshop in London.
I’ve been intrigued by their teaching and learning model for a while. They take practising industry artists, from areas like computer games and film and get them to work up a piece over a couple of hours, so you are literally looking over the shoulder of an expert. Both of these working artists emphasized the importance and value of drawing as a key skill.
I attended a workshop on effective colour and lighting for illustration by Ryan Lang who showed how he’d created some of the concept art for the film “Big Hero 6”.
There was useful detail about selecting the darkest dark, and lightest light and the colour that could most accurately be matched from reference sources, to create a tight profile for an image. He then explored how some projects like Dr Strange which required a different more desaturated palette and dynamic composition approach, (although apparently industry stalwart Craig Mullens says “there is no such thing as composition”.)
After lunch there was a session by David Levy who began by proposing that no-one works alone in the industry, even a concept artist is part of a team. He highlighted the role of the concept artist as being chiefly to save money for the production team, and how this can best be achieved by working fast. He talked through his work on Prometheus and Tron Legacy, before explaining his process for rapid world creation. David’s approach is to build extensive collections of brushes in Z Brush, render them in and import to photoshop.
The day ended up with a crit of portfolio work submitted by delegates.
I’m not sure I’d attend another workshop by Schoolism, they aren’t inexpensive, and getting to Kensington for a 9am start on a Saturday was a pain, but I was inspired, and have started to work through the Z Brush tutorials in Lynda.com.
