Katie Lofts MA Blog

 Here is the finished commissioned piece from the last few blog posts I have been working on.  I honestly don't know much more to say (I will, in fact, continue to have a lot to say about it regardless) other than I think this has to be my most detailed and best piece I've made so far.  Overall, everything I have said in previous blog posts does still apply.  For example, I think it was extremely evident the amount of struggle I went through trying to adequately paint the younger girl's face compared to anything else. Even now, when I look at this piece, I really do not love how that part of the painting turned out at all.  Individually, I find that the features of her face are not too bad. I still do not think that, for example, her eyes or lips etc are painted objectively 'wrong'. But still, when put all together as they are now, I cannot quite describe fully why I experience the dislike I do towards this face.  I have indeed asked numerous people of diff...

 I am still working on this biggest artpiece yet as I have been continuing my posts about it. Though, I think I am very much nearly finished and only need to paint a few more things. Something I wished to discuss on here is how I've become quite, I would say, efficient in aquiring my references and pushing these references even further to aid in my workflow.  I don't really know what to call the technique I have gotten myself using within the latter half of my art piece, but I feel like it was definitely inspired by the accumulation of Ross Draws art tutorial videos I've watched over the years on Youtube. There's one that really stuck in my head both now when writing this and when actually painting my piece, which is this one: This video is based around how to paint landscapes, which might not really apply to my portraiture project at first glance. I don't know when I even first watched it - at least 4 years ago now - but this is the video that introduced me to the ...

 Commission #5 This commission I am currently working on is by far probably one of the most daunting ones. Since I do my commissions by auction via a Discord server for artists, the final price is ultimately not decided by me. So far, I think that I've not discussed price on my blog for these commissions or any past work because I thought it was generally unneeded and impolite. But, this one has seriously changed my view of my work and the career path I potentially want to take. And this is still a result of my Masters - this self reflection and learning - because I am doing these commissions purely out of the ideal of wanting to challenge myself to translate various styles of references and characters/character art given to me by clients INTO my own style. I started working on this particular piece on 19/05/2024. The final price of this auction was 550 USD. Which is 431.99 GBP.  So - yes: my point with this is that I am very much trying to make this art piece the best I ...

 Commission #4 This time, I figured out how I can implement text-to-speech into my timelapse videos using the website Veed.io! So, there is not a lot of text here on my blog to explain the video as opposed to my last post on this project. Please watch the video and listen to what I wrote! I will add a bit of explanations for the things I didn't discuss in the video below though:  This portrait currently is by far the best one I have done. It took me at least five weeks to complete because of that. My client for this though is actually a friend of mine which is why we were both happy for me to experiment and really try my best and take as much time as I needed. He also paid quite a bit more than what I had usually gotten for the previous ones which is why I wanted to up the quality a bit. At least, to the best I could do. 

  Intro I decided to do some 2D portrait work after my research particularly for the Research in Context essay. After interviewing some industry practitioners, especially Kevin Manning, I felt as though most of these people's points were to emphasise the fact that in order to be a "successful" artist, 3D or not, most of their advice was to hone and focus on your fundamental art skills.  This led me to believe that I should focus on this more as well, as when I reflected upon these ideas, I ended up feeling as though this is an area I hadn't focused on or practised in enough.  So, I made a new learning agreement to explain the 2D work I want to try out. But, with the topic of MA being about art styles within games, this still hasn't changed. I just want to spend some time honing this particular area of my art in order to then (ideally) make all my other skills that come after the "fundamentals" improve too.  I decided to open up some portrait commissions ...

  As of 20/03/2024 I have chosen to create a new Learning Agreement to establish the new direction I would like to take for the current time being in my MA project of Art Styles within Game Art.  I will be putting the previous Dishonored practical (previous blog post) on hold for the time being as I find it to be integral to currently focus on strengthening my base understanding and fundamentals, particularly after my research and Principal 3D Artist at Riot Games, Kevin Manning, frequently saying that his opinion is that having an already strong art skill is more favourable in his eyes in my industry practitioner interview with him for the Research in Context Report essay.