School - The Wrecked Odyssey - Final

And it's finished. About time, don't you think? On to the rest of the whole story!

School - Ruins of what was - Wrecked Odyssey

Another Work-In-Progress! Well I added the ripped sails beside the ship, defined more of the wooden hull and now I'm perfecting it. After that the beach follows and the background needs refining!

That's all folks!

School - Ruins of what was - Wrecked Odyssey

A work in progress of the ship so far. Cough cough!

School - The Ruins Composition

Yes, it's going to be an odyssey! And for now.. the composition sketches!

School - "De ruine van wat was"

Well a little translating here: "The ruin of what has been". This is my third assignment, and I've started sketching to let loose of some ideas. So here goes!

I'll clarify what everything should represent.
Upper-left: An ancient dinosaur has been revealed by a river bed that has dried up. However due to erosion half of his skeleton has "melted" into the rock.
Upper-Right: Two rotten apples. I had an idea to make a story-board like effect to show the process of these "ruins".
Lower-left: An old watermill which has been abandoned and forgotten. Located at the edge of a forest/cliff/river.
Lower-right: Old ruin located in Combodja. Those ancient vietnamese ruins of legends fascinate me.


Well I nearly made my decision when I continued sketching and I stumbled upon these designs:

The ship of Odysseus, which has crashed upon the waves in a storm of Poseidon.
While the original concept was to make a ruin for a certain theme park, this would be a great combo. A ruin which really caught my eye and at the same time it's capable to be put in a theme park (as an eye catcher or maybe as a sort of ghost ship attraction?) Here we go!

School - Matte Painting 02 - Sinkhole

My second but my first finished Matte Painting! Here I portrayed Rotterdam being tortured by a sinkhole. It's even big enough to create a second sinkhole to the left. Cars are trying to hurry out of Rotterdam by the only road that has not yet collapsed.

 And here are the resource photo's I've used to construct the whole image. Oh the smoke? I've used brushes.

School - Matte Painting 01 - Meteor Shower

Posting an update on a Matte Painting. Thing is that I need to do a hell lot more updates if I'd plan to show my recent work.

This obviously represents a meteor shower. And it's missing quite a few elements. Destruction, rubble that flies about and a bigger impact. It's all going to be in the picture.

School - Photo research Matte Paintings

I'm shortly a proud owner of a SLR camera and I decided to use this to help me out getting good shots of Rotterdam. And here I present my research on good photo's for matte painting!

School - Vervorming Background

Final assignment for school. I've changed the background towards the Asian theme so it would support my character.

Not too much time has been put into it - sadly. I guess this will have to do.

And this ends my first semester of this year. Bear with me!

School - Concepts "Toen we uit Rotterdam vetrokken"

I made a few quick concepts (However the blizzard one was too much fun so it quickly got out of hand!) for a matte-painting.

I suppose four are plenty to work with and I'm sure you can guess the theme of the matte-painting!

School - Colour & Lightstudies

In one word: Exciting! I love how much you can do with colour and what effects you can achieve with it. Loads and loads I tell you!

School - Character & BG Combined

Finished up my character!

Now that's done, I've combined the two to put them together. 

However I'm not really satisfied with the result... 

Ahh well, I won't be too much of a critic this time, else I'd never get this done with!

School - Background final

I finished up the background a while now... Time to finish up my character and do some colour/lightstudies!

Stay tuned!

School - Background character

Time to work on the background!

The assignment tells us we need to choose a photograph about a background with at least one building on it.
(Well that's correct for sure.)
But there's a twist to it... I need to choose a background that's totally unrelevant to the theme of the character.

So now you know why I and my group has chosen for this photograph.

Above: My W.I.P Background.
Under: The real photo

Not judging about pros and cons this time... I'll wait till I've finished it up since I'm going good right now.

School - More Clothing, More poses!

Time for two updates! First off: More clothing!

I made two quick sketches to get a better idea of what I could do with chinese clothing. I'm not totally satisfied yet, since there is more to be gotten out of this. 

It's a nice sketch and worth posting, though.

Pros:

+ Clean

+ Poses

Cons:

- Character on the left

- Simple, maybe a bit bland clothing design 

School - Character Design W.I.P

Finally, I got it working and uploaded the most recent W.I.P.
Comments are welcome!

School - Clothing and Textures

There actually is progress!

Peeps, what I've done now is a quick color sketch and added more details to the armor.

What's next?

- More details, refining and finishing up.
- Correcting the anatomy for the pose
- Matching the colours and create balance.

Personal - Website progression and preview

Hey guys and gals!

So yet another post! If you guys were wondering if I'd ever get my portfolio site online, here is a small sneak-peek! I decided to do a front doodle/visual depending on my mood, a recent happening or the season (like now). It's something Google has as well, and I think it's a nice idea!

So, what's left for me to do? Pretty much.. like:

- Finish the portfolio + its gallery.
- Write my own Bio and design the page
- Contact is nearly finished, only some tidying up!

Oh about the pose... I'm progressing on that as well :)

Cheers!

School - Character Design W.I.P

Small update on the character I'm working on.

I dislike her face for now, need to work on that. Hairstyle needs more changes. After that, I need to get more demonic with her.

Ahh well, just gonna finish this one nonetheless. Who knows, maybe something extra for my portfolio?

School - Character Design W.I.P

Hello peeps!

I don't mind the way she's looking right now, but I'm going into the wrong direction!

The theme is: "Sexy, armoured demonic female"

Due to the pose it helps the sexyness, but she's going asian-like and I'm missing out on armour. How to fix this? I'm going to dawdle somewhat more and longer on this to see how it turns out, but I hope I get it back on track again.

That's it for now folks!

School - Shadow & Lighting

Hey there lads!
I've been working on the shadow and lighting versions of my character/pose.

Well, it still needs work, but there is still one more to be done. I kept the second one (on the right) quite rough, so sorry for that.

Pros:
Values +
Direction of the light +
Form +

Cons:
Sketchy -

Coming up:
Detailed version of the pose.

Personal - Colour Study

Doing a colour study, what makes which colour and why?

Since this is an outside shot (and a really pretty one!) I decided to make use of it to study natural colours outdoors.

Pros:
+ Form
+ Colour
+ Composition

Cons:
- Contrast
- Values

I put the Values under cons but I'm going into the right direction, so it's more or less considered neutral.

P.s. This is going to be an A3 size digital painting for a special someone. I will finish this up and hope to make someone happy.

School - Pose and planes

The pose I've chosen is pretty obvious, I guess. It isn't as easy as it looked first hand, but it went decent. More practice would be a good idea, though.

Pros:
+ Lines
+ Form

Cons:
- Messy

Overal I call it decent. Next stop: Lighting!

I've already finished 1 lighting, but there is 2 more to follow. After that I'm allowed to do the details, clothing and whatnot. As in: The most fun is yet to come!



Oh and since we had to theme our final drawings, I'll announce our theme right here:

Demonic Character.
But we decided to take it a bit further and choose to make it into:
Armoured, but sexy looking demonic female.

Now isn't that something? Cheers!

Personal Work - Pose, Costume and Colouring

I thought I would update this with a personal work of myself! This time it's a pose, clothing and colouring. All for the need of practice! I'm trying to get a good sense of colour and form.
(Note the textures).

As you can see it's far from finished, but we're going forward!

Keeping you posted! Cheers!

Studies - Pose Sketches

Sketches made with chosen photographs. Counts as studies as well.

Pros:
+ Form
+ Perspective

Cons:
- Hands & Feet
- Messy Lines

That's it for today...!

Photography with style

We made a choice from all the photographs we've made. And we've chosen these!

Light, camera... action!

Only we're not making movies, instead we do photographs!

Well then, on the left there is an example of what our photoseries are about:

Action packed poses

Now what is the point of these photos? We are supposed to chose the best three out of them all.

Now we will print one of these and start to practice anatomy. We need to draw the silhouette and fill them up with planes.

This is a great way to practice and learn about anatomy, but also a great way to see about how gravity affects our clothing and how it creates the folds in clothing.

Next coming up: sketches of various poses!

Eye & Lips study

I suppose it won't hurt doing a small study in the weekend. I'm expecting to do some more effort tomorrow. I don't want to waste time which I can spend in more useful ways!

Pros:
+ Form
+ Trying to understand the form and seeing through the object

Cons:
- The scribbles, blegh...
- Amount of content

Random drawing sketch

Estimated time: 35 minutes.

Done a scenery while waiting for my class to arrive at the spoken place.

Pros:
+ Texture
+ Form

Cons:
- Perspective
- Proportions in comparison with other objects.

Practicing hand-eye coördination. Lots of work to be done.

Baby steps into the wide world

Coming to think of it and facing the fact. I just became a second-year student at my Graphic Design study course.

First of all, it's going to be tough. And why? I know what awaits me, hard work and the dedication is needed to finish up this year succesfully. Ofcourse I'd be able to round it up nicely if I would do less effort, but that would just be under my standards and since I like a challenge or two... I'm planning to give it my all.

What can you expect me to post here?

My school expects me to post everyday sketches, works and projects and keep it up to date as much as possible. This is a great way for my instructors to see what keeps me busy and how dedicated I am. And hey, I'm sure you'd like to see as well!

That's it for today, I'm off to cook today's meal... Happy drawings all!

Introduction to Thimerit.com!

For the third time, I'm remaking this damn blog! But since it's linked to my personal portfolio site this time I suppose I'll be updating this more frequently.

Welcome to my blog, talking nonsense and thrashing about, that's what I'll be doing! Oh, and showing drawings and (daily) sketches/studies I'm planning to post!

Aside from those things that will appear here, also recent schoolprojects and various studies surrounding my education will appear here. I'm motivated this time to keep it up and fill up this blog!

I'll also fill you in about a few things in my life that's worth mentioning. If I come across a nice quote, surely I'll be sharing that!

First off, my name is Martijn Verstappen, as for my nickname: Thimerit or my old one: Tinusss. Most friends refer to me as simply Martijn, though.

Me being 18 years old at the moment of writing this, making me a young lad. Pretty obvious, though, I just wasted a few seconds of your life!
Aside from that, I age up on the 18'th of November, making me Scorpio and thus pretty stubborn. But still.. I'm a really nice guy, trust me... Muahaha...?

My goal to life... Good one, I'd love to become a Game Designer... Especially on the Concept Artistic side of it. Inventing new ideas, new plots and new schemes is so thrilling that I'd love it all equally as much. But the problem is, am I having enough talent and enough motivation to become one of the better Concept Artists? We'll see what future brings me... :)

After a year of failing my education to get accepted into the Graphic Design world (2008), I took my chances to try again and succeeded. And now, the upcoming posts will inform you about my recent works, studies and anything aside from that!

Anyway, that's it for now, Cheers people!