# The Art of Blackthornprod (14 to 25 years old)

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Blackthornprod
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLLYqCVGGZY
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/39392

## Транскрипт

### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) []

I broke my right hand practicing Brazilian jiu-jitsu which means I cannot draw but I can share my art journey so far from when I was a kid where my drawings look like this to later on this and then this. I'll share what I learned and how I keep on improving because I'm still at the very beginning of my art journey and lots more. And before you ask guys, yes, we will respond in the nearest future. So I've been drawing ever since I was a kid, mainly Dungeons and Dragons related scenes and characters. Around 14 years old, my dad showed me Autodesk Amaya and the world of 3D. From there, I made a couple characters such as Big Brady Bob, the Flame Imp, and Mr. Jinxed. I also made a game called Pumpkin Dash using Unity. In 2016, began my GameDev journey in earnest, making small 3D games such as Midnight Fire, Color Shooter, and Surviving Hell, all of which pretty much had the same cartoony bouncy art style. In 2017, I was really getting into 2D game art and animations. making a bunch of characters called the Halloween horrors using Adobe Photoshop and animating using the Unity game engine. It's safe to say from 2016 to 2022, practically all my artwork was digital. I drew in Photoshop using a drawing tablet, and I animated inside of Unity. Traditional mediums such as pencil or pen on paper were used from time to time, but mainly to scribble down game ideas, take notes, and brainstorm. I did take part in Inktober two years straight with some really quirky looking characters. Cog boy, little round pilgrim, fourlororn warriors, delicate manylegged girl. Meanwhile, I made the dreadful whispers, a puzzle platformer with strange silhouette artwork. It mixes all kinds of vibrant colors, effects, and toothy creatures on your quest through the mind. Dashing Fire featured equally strange, bright artwork. A lot of it remains very simplistic, partly so it's easier to animate, keep consistent, and actually finish the game, but partly because I couldn't really make anything else. My drawing skills were pretty much confined to cartoony, wobbly, flash-like style and abstracts, which was fine by me. I enjoyed working around limitations and leaning in on ultra cartoony colorful characters. Silhouette worlds, such as in Necrobomb, also felt filled with possibilities. I also tried a weird art style that mixed heavy photo manipulation to create the fantasy world of Whitebirds. In 2022 and 2023, I was refining my style with a bit more detail in games such as Strange Machines and Dwarves and Cathedrals. Early 2023 is also when I picked up my pencils again and decided on improving more classic drawing skills. I wanted a break from screens and more flexibility in the worlds I could bring to life. Right after making this piece, I had a stroke at 23. No warning, felt in perfect health that morning and suddenly, bam, an explosion of pain in the brain. This amangled my drawings to a whole new level. I couldn't draw in a straight line and could barely write. Thankfully, I quickly trained back up my hunger for improvements remaining intact. So, a couple months later, I was back on an upwards curve and becoming a little obsessed with portrait drawing. The simple way I went from this to this, and basically a year, was consistent morning practice, usually one to two hours right upon waking up. It was mostly a truckload of trial and error, drawing thousands of faces. I created a whole series where I merged faces and architecture. pleased to notice that improving up portraits along with the human figure being one of the most difficult drawing topics had made me improve at drawing everything else. This is pretty obvious yet I don't remember thinking that way a couple years back. It was almost as if drawing faces and birds and monuments were entirely different skills. Sure, each has its specifics, but for the most part, the fundamental skills underlying each are the same. So improving at drawing the human figure would naturally lead to better bird drawings. For example, I went to live figure drawing classes, which were 3 hours of non-stop drawing a nude model from various angles, and took greater and greater pleasure in heading outdoors to make observation drawings. This helped me improve further. But I mainly enjoyed noticing all sorts of interesting details and atmospheres I hadn't noticed before. So, I'd say that is one of the main benefits of drawing directly from life. It gets you out the house and engaging with your surroundings in an entirely different way. So, even if you end up making a rough, ugly sketch, you'll have lived a unique experience and have observed whatever you've drawn with so much more detail and presence than if you had simply pulled out your iPhone for a quick snap. Meanwhile, at the start of this year, I was making the lightning struck orphan with my bro Liam with its odd gritty art style and wobbly creatures. Okay, guys, little sketchbook tour. Yeah. And so, this is a bit of an iconic statue that we have in the town of Nice in France. And I really quite like this. Lots of simple geometric shapes and perspective. I really recommend this as an exercise. Yeah, I just love the visual idea of having this little character covered in pigeons, literally covered in birds. So there we go. I'm putting to the practice my life drawing skills with this faceless lady. And this is a famous trampenise that just plays his fiddle. He plays the same tune over and over again. I think this is Cog Boy V2.

### Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) [5:00]

I know she looks serene, but if I had a nest of birds at top my head, I'd probably go mad. During the summer, I spent a lot of time making large scale drawings, portraits of course, old gnarly men, nuns, fat faces, skulls, and hobos. I practiced more human figures using Steve Hudson's great book, and again tried to keep a nice variety of topics going, sketching birds, insects, fish, and cathedrals. Throughout improving at life drawing, I quickly realized how important it always was to keep the imagination on fire. I didn't want to slowly become completely reliant on reference photos and models. So, of course, making game art always kept me on my toes, flexing the imagination. But then, I'd also make heaps of drawings purely from the imagination. I've got literally hundreds upon hundreds made this year alone. Monument Boy, sharks, tiny floating towns, Siamese elements, lovesick orphans, tentacled beasts, ogres, an infinite range of monsters, tiny bird perched top his head. Oh, yeah. Iconic bring your imagination to life. Blackthorn prod mascots smoking a pipe and also perhaps meditating on his mortality as he watches the sunset. A woof being chokeked out by sheep. Tragic. This is a little photo in reference to the stroke I had. Now it just felt like this immediate thunderbolts that tore my head in half. Very enjoyable warm shower. Later I discovered watercolor and filled a sketchbook with more bizarre creations. Mixing pencil with a splash of color. We have tiny monks, preying clerics, fireb breathing warlocks, cat hags, woodland shamans, moody poets, meditative hermits, aquatic beasts, and this poor kid with a tree growing out his head. Fantasy adventure with my childhood passion for dungeons and dragons in every nook and cranny. From squashed medieval towns riddled with rats to ogres, gargoyless, greedy sailors approaching naked mermaids and castles in the clouds, we've got a giant battle here. This was a cathartic experience designing a huge host of monsters, wolves, goblins, dark wizards, lunatics in full flight, and giant centipedes. We've got abstract weird monuments growing in paradise. Artists unleashing other worldly creatures through a pencil. Then, in preparation for a game I'd love to make on letting the players build their own Gothic cathedral, I created a couple cathedral ccentric drawings. Here we have Nutraam dear being built by a host of gnarly looking gnomes. Framing your drawings really adds a lot to the overall look. In this piece, we have a bunch of tiny villagers entering a Gothic church to perform strange rights and make pects with gods. Here we have another cathedral built in a precarious mountain and under siege by a host of undead creatures. Priests come out and pray. Soldiers prepare for battle and birds escape gravity. Again, these drawings are fueled towards a game I'm slowly starting with my brother where players get to build a giant Gothic cathedral. Constant mix of practicing observational drawings and pure imagination drawings that make the whole art experience really special and leads to great improvements. By mixing both, we get such freedom in what we can make. And of then, of course, there's all the art I'm mainly known for, which is artwork for YouTube. dozens and dozens of thumbnails, usually featuring very cartoony art that will stand out and clearly show our viewers a new episode in the past game challenge series, the game of competitions, or the engine battles has just released. To wrap up this video, I'd like to give a few key takeaways I've learned from the art journey so far. First of all, no matter whether you're making games, movies, websites, whatever, going back to the root and drawing outdoors or drawing from life on paper is a great break from screens and a fabulous way to collect ideas and improve. Next, consistent practice is king. One small hour every day for one year will have you improve tremendously. Even if like me you use brute force hardly studying from books and tutorials which is not great and yet simply drawing face after face led to great improvements. It goes to show action will beat trying to overthink and overanalyze the best way forward. So just get started. Lastly, I've shown you my best finished artwork in this video throughout the years, but I'm equally delighted when I stumble upon older sketchbooks filled with awkward, messy drawings because it shows improvement. Thanks so much for joining me on this journey. Make sure to subscribe to the channel and like the video. It's a huge support. Merry Christmas. Have a great end of the year. Oh, I love this one. She's not very beautiful, but um it's still something quite elegant, I find. Only in their dreams can men be truly free. It was always thus and always thus shall be. This character here is well, he's barely bearing the weight of the universe on his shoulders. And a couple portrait lighting studies to complete this sketchbook.