Crankshaft's Sketchbook

Hey Crank, been awhile since I commented on your stuff but the new studies are looking next level!
Looks like you're getting real confident with your skills with vehicle design, looking spot on in your latest studies, my fav is the sweet beauty though, love the skin texture, has a subsurface scattering look the traditional looking facial design is a nice touch, the blue color of the silhouette is a nice match against the shadow on her skin town.

You have too much stuff coming out each time you post, it's sometimes hard to critique it all, but all I can say is looking great these days!

Thanks Micro! Still much to learn. Gotta keep practicing.

Here's a quick tutorial on cars. I could go on forever but due to time constraints I'll start with this. I kept the presentation simple since the focus is on knowledge. Fortunately this is consistent with all cars.

Cars are extremely sensitive with proportions, particularly with the wheels. Be sure to get proportions correct before going too far.



1. Most cars the cabin/passenger compartment/back seat extends over the rear wheels. It basically lines up with the back wheel.

2. The windshield starts just past the front wheel well.

3. The distance between wheels on a coupe is 3 wheels. Smaller car like hatchbacks are 2.5 wheels. Trucks are 3.5 wheels.

4. The height is about 2 wheels high.

5/6 The area where people sit inside is called the cabin. On a normal car it is 60-70 % the height of the body. On trucks it is about 1:1. Trucks' windshields are also more vertical.

7. The body rests below the half line/centre of the wheels.

8. Trucks often have large wheel wells to allow for suspension jounce/rebound, an automotive term for compression and extension.

9. On sporty cars the roof/cabin is much lower and the car as a whole is extremely low. Don't make the roof too low or else the car will have a bunker effect. Sporty cars are around 1.5 wheels high.

10. Sporty cars such as race cars have very narrow wells. On all cars the front wells are usually wider to allow for steering.

More gestures. Going to keep practicing.

Schoolism update. Calling this one done. Really proud of myself. Coming from a background of drawing cars I didn't expect to get this done much faster than my previous assignments. I'm sure there are a lot of problems but this is my first time rendering skin.



Spider mech update. Focusing on the legs. Juggling design, function, value, and perspective is really hard. Crit away.



Library design sketch. Another design added to my catalog! Learned a lot here. My goal was to combine some art noveau and a touch of sci fi. I treat all these sketches as blueprints, which is why I often chose boring camera angles that show the most info. After I get the design down I flesh them out as I wish but I tend to still treat them as blue prints, as if someone was going to use it as a floor plan to build something.





Was going to wait but here's an update on my crate. Going to flesh everything out, I'm going to put ortho views of the sides and show how the drawers work and put labels describing features of the product. I'm going to do this for every one of my previous sketches.



Some gesture fail. I have many more of these but I'll just post the decent ones.

Very well done with your skin picture. That's an amazing achievement for a first try, you're right to be proud of it. It's infinitely better than my first attempts.
You've worked hard to get that subsurface effect but there are a couple of areas where the orange part of the gradient could be toned down, particularly the lower part of the face.
Other than that the only crits I would add would be about form, perhaps softening the area where the neck joins the body and adding a bit more structure around the mouth. But on the other hand that geometric style does also seem appealing like those old Art Deco portraits.
I rather like the neat styling of the hair too. You seem to have learned from the recent fur assignment.

Also your spider mech is improving too. There's a really good balance between detail and readability. I think I would possibly add a different hue or saturation shift to the cube structures on top of the legs just to make that front one pop out from the body behind.

Overall this is some really impressive development. Well done again.

I've been looking through this entire thread, and I think a big issue with your anatomical studies is that they are largely lifeless. You're treating bodies like mechanical objects - a series of structural components - and it makes them seem like posed action figures or mannequins. There's no flow or sense that these are captured moments within a movement.

I'm a bit out of practice in drawing full figures myself (it's something I want to put some effort into over the coming months); but when I do, I think about the movement and design of the shapes first, then put the anatomy on top of that.

I've attached my quick sketch of one of the figures you have been using, and another - from the old IFX website - that I did to help someone who was doing a picture of a mermaid. In both cases, I've included the basic sketch of the underlying shapes.

Thanks Val! I've been feeling very burnt out lately. All this drawing is very hard on top of a full time job so thanks for the encouraging words!

Fixed the previous assignment as critiqued by Valence.



Update on my spider mech. Mainly focused on function and rendering of one leg.



Thanks em! Coincidentally I'm changing things up by doing gestures without a time limit then over laying the anatomy on top. You're definitely right I do focus more on shapes and objects. I'm finding it very hard to feel the rhythm and flow. I just need more practice.







Next schoolism assignment. I have a feeling that this will be harder than the last assignment.



Finished the underground tunnel! Another design added to my list! Need to finish my mech fast so I can clean these up. This one is cleaned up slightly and the other one is some of the thinking behind the design.

As Val pointed out I changed the top cubes with different hues and I think it looks awesome! Anyways crit away.

Updates. Progress everywhere but most are too messy to post.

Spider mech update. Mainly focused on the legs. Crit away.



Anatomy. Trying to combine gesture and structure together.





My next design is going to be a fuel tank that's based off a train rail tank. The design is similar to those portable fuel tanks you find at construction sites for heavy equipment. I'm trying to combine a gas pump with the tank.





Some hard points/design specs:

-It must have two halves, one for diesel fuel and one for gasoline.
-The time period must be current. I'm trying to avoid sci fi since it's too easy to cheat.
-The size should be slightly bigger than a person.
-There must be at least 2 gas pumps and 2 hoses.
-It must have 2 hooks for a crane to lift it on a flat bed truck for transportation
-There must be a central hatch for refilling.
-There should be one door on each side for internal cleaning

Schoolism wip. Never drawn mountains before so I'm sort of making up design.