Environment Study

With my focus on animation having been my primary practice as of recent, I felt that I was starting to slack in other areas of my work.  I was inspired by my friend Trey Buogniorno's recent post with the work he was doing of interior and exterior perspective drawings.  While ultimately, I don't plan on pursuing a direction that will utilize these skills extensively, I thought I should keep myself up to par.  I have recently got a new opportunity for a commercial, which I can't discuss any further at the moment, but I'm excited to jump into it and it's requiring me to create storyboards, so I feel this practice is well justified.

I decided to go the Orange Park mall here in Florida and do a few rough sketches.  I didn't have very much time to work with so I only got 3 sketches completed before I had to go.  I tried to limit myself in time frame, because I have a bad habit of slowing down and spending too much time on one particular piece.

The first piece was an exterior I did just outside of the entrance to the movie theater.  I think I captured most of the important structure and defining traits.  However, I do feel that I muddled some of the background too much and it's not as easy to see what's going on back there.  I also feel that I horizontally squashed the entire composition.

The second piece was an interior shot I did look out from near the center of a grand atrium.  I feel I did a better job here of not squashing everything horizontally, however my work got sloppy near the chairs and tables.  It started to feel like I was cramming things in and taking away from the rest of the drawing.

The third was another interior shot I did looking down a hallway from a smaller atrium.  I feel I got the perspective best on this one,  I decided to simplify some of my work and try and use straight lines as much as I could with curves accenting only where need be.  My depth is lost somewhat on the sides, so I'm still obviously squashing some, but I felt happiest with this one.

All in all, my work is alright in my mind, with plenty of room for improvement.  I need to gain more confidence when it comes to placing objects within my scenes and I need to do a better job of pre-planning when I am going to be laying in lots of smaller objects such as chairs and tables.  These were mostly big open spaces, but I can already see I'd be having many issues in a smaller, more cramped space such as a diner.