How My Mind Works

Earlier last year in November, my company held a Stick-fighting martial arts demonstration, in which the arts originated from Philippines. The demonstration was primarily meant for animators to study and get real references to the complex and fast movements happening in martial arts. It was an eye opener for me as I had not seen in-person any stick fighting before. This art uses a rather short bamboo stick and has very fast movements. As I am not an animator, all I could do was to crazily sketch down gestures of the movements that was demonstrated. Very fun!



Most of the time, I like to fill up my sketchbook with small, really rough drawings similar to thumbnails. I often start by doodling some shapes and lines and playing around with composition until I see some sort of idea emerging from the doodles, or if the doodles resemble some creature or environment.
Sometimes, the composition is dictated by the available space I have on the paper, for example I usually end up with a long vertical images when I get squeezed to the edges of my paper. Anything goes!Inevitably, there will be some images that stands out from all the small rectangle doodles, and I'll select those to color them up eventually.
Below are some of the sketches: