Thursday, 28 January 2016

28/01/2016 - Research

Week 03
Research 

Final Physical Pieces

In this post I am going to compile my research into what possible techniques I could employ to make physical final pieces for my characters, as well as these, I will also aim to have digital paintings of my final designs...these will aid me in the final physical pieces. I have also decided to focus on 3 characters, "Hunger", The Minotaur and The Arch Rogue. That means I'm dropping Icarus and Kitty Grau, I do intend to finish them in the summer though to complete of this project for me.


The Minotaur

The Minotaur is from ancient Greece. The obvious thing for me to do for The Minotaur is a Greek pot, I have come across statues as well but I think doing any form of statue (clay/Plasticine) would be an unrealistic target for me in this project. As for the pot idea, here is a moodboard below depicting several pots and designs used on ancient Greek pots in general.

I do not own these images or hold the copyright for them, they have been purely put together in this moodboard for educational purposes.

On the left are some Black-figure pots and on the right there are some Red-figure pots. in the middle are some common patterns that would be used to go around the whole pot. 

There are two kinds of ancient Greek pottery, Black-figure and Red-figure pottery. Black figure pottery was commonly used from the 7th century B.C to the 5th century B.C, it is around this time that Red-figure pottery was developed and it soon took over from Black-figure, lasting until around the 3rd century B.C.

The style that I go for will depend on what type of pot I can get. Of course, if I manage to get a black one then red-figure will have to be used...but if at all possible, I would like to do The Minotaur in Black-figure design because I find it more appealing.


"Hunger"

“There is a place at the furthest bounds of icy Scythia, with sombre, sterile ground, a land without crops or trees. Torpid Cold inhabits it, Fear and Trembling and barren Hunger." This is said by Ceres. 


It's on this basis that I am planning to research into for my physical piece for "Hunger". Based on the mention of Scythia and Caucasus, I can pin point the general location of "Hunger" to around present day Georgia on an icy mountain. The description above, for me, conjures up images of scared villagers who paint/scratch images of "Hunger" around her location to warn people not to go any further. Scythia was also a barbarian nation so it would be more likely that there would be paintings on rocks/caves to warn of the danger.

I do not own these images or hold the copyright for them, they have been purely put together in this moodboard for educational purposes.

Above is a moodboard of stone art from around the world (my assumption of using stone paintings to depict "Hunger" from the point of view of a Scythian are purely speculation). There appear to be three main techniques used here, carvings, paintings and a combination of carving and painting. I find the ones that have been scratched into and then painted appear more interesting, its adds more depth to the paintings.



The Arch Rogue

Luckily I re-read the tale of The Arch Rouge, I had forgotten that he was accustomed to the black arts, this will inspire some of my newer designs for him. 

Its difficult to date and locate The Arch Rogue, All I know is that he is from Germany (because the tale is from Germany) and that he is placed in a time period where there are kings...which should give me a time span to work with.  Roughly Medieval Germany. My thought for this was to do it in the style of old German manuscripts (as can be seen in the moodbaord below). This would require an "epic" piece of paper that I can then replicate the style of German manuscripts for The Arch Rogue



I do not own these images or hold the copyright for them, they have been purely put together in this moodboard for educational purposes.

Here are the manuscript pages, This clearly shows the direction I am looking for The Arch Rogue.

After I have run these ideas past the lecturer I will do ore research into what I would need for producing all these physical pieces. 

Wednesday, 27 January 2016

27/01/2016 - "Hunger" - Silhouettes

Week 03
"Hunger" - Silhouettes
 Below are silhouettes that I have been working on for the past week. This is to help me quickly gather interesting shapes for "Hunger" to hopefully influence my final design of her.

 After blackening these in, I realised how useful these are to my project, the bottom left one is particularly useful as its quite close to what I have imagined in my mind already. I'm not not sure if this process would be as useful to my other characters though. Although, my process here was to first imagine on paper what my general look was for "Hunger" and then silhouette based on that, so I might use this same process for my other characters.

After a talk with my lecturer today, I am going to look into having a final physical piece for the end for each character. I'm also considering focusing on just the three characters instead of five, this way I would be able to polish off the three to  a better standard. The best example to give for my physical pieces is for The Minotaur, the thought is that I could design him in a style where I could then paint him onto a vase/pot to mimic the Greek pots where they would show depictions of famous heroes and their triumphs. I will of course research into this and also research other ideas that I can use for my other characters like "Hunger" maybe being painted on stone to symbolize her being painted on the inside of a cave by some scared villagers.


For next week I hope to have researched these ideas for my final end product and also have more character development.

Thursday, 21 January 2016

21/01/2016 - Character Development - The Arch Rogue

Week 02
Character Development - The Arch Rogue

Today I have done a page of development for The Arch Rogue, for some reason I have approached it with a more stylistic/cartoon angle. I think because I am developing 5 different characters, I want to approach them with different styles to try out new techniques and keep things 'fresh'. So you'll find that the approach for The Arch Rogue so far has been aimed towards the body keeping the shape of the hood to create a harmony of shapes. I think I will stick with this theme but also explore other different ideas to see if I like them better...but i'll probably stick with it.

The Arch Rogue Development - 01


I really like the direction of this style for The Arch Rogue, I really think that I will stick with it for him. My favourite sketch is the bottom left one, I will further explore him along with new ideas.

Wednesday, 20 January 2016

20/01/2016 - Character Development - The Minotaur

Week 02

Character Development - The Minotaur


Today I have been drawing up designs for The Minotaur, I have also created some images on Photoshop using photo bashing to help me better visualize some of my ideas.I minor adjustment to my thinking for The Minotaur is to really make him look like he is suffering with every breathe and step he takes. 
Below a sketchbook page for my development of The Minotaur along with the photo bashing image created this week.

The Minotaur Development - 01


After struggling to sketch out an idea (bottom left) I decided to use photo bashing as a method for realizing my idea. The result can be seen below.

Below is an idea for one of The Minotaur's arm. The idea is basically to have one of his arms shriveled up and retreating into his torso as I am aiming for a grotesquely mutated character.

The Minotaur Photobashing

Tuesday, 19 January 2016

19/01/2016 - More Inspiration/Research

Week 02

More Inspiration/Research


Here is some more inspiration I have come across in the past week, of course, research is something that should have been finished by now but inspiration is always useful and important.




This link has sculptures on it. These images are extremely eye catching and inspiring (especially the mask). It is an image that has helped me to generate more ideas about how "Hunger" will look. There is also a theme of big narrow spikes coming out of objects, This is the sort of thinking that I want to apply to my own character designs.


This link is full of sculptures by Liu Xue, These sculptures blend humans with other various animals, some of them are gross, but beautiful and he manages to give a sense of believability to each form. This is particularly inspiring for The Minotaur and "Hunger".


This link is full of digital paintings by Damon Hellandbrand based on the zodiac signs. These are beautifully designed creatures with an interesting technique used to make up his images. This is more inspiration for the likes of The Minotaur and "Hunger". 


This link with works by Anastasios Gionis, is full of monster designs, some of them pretty frightening. These are really inspiring, again, for the Minotaur and "Hunger". More so for "Hunger", he has managed to create some scary designs based on some sort of human experimentation.


This link is full of images from books based on fiction, This particular link is to a page based of freaks and monsters, This will be useful for my designing of The Minotaur. It has some really unique designs based on a centaur and the devil but they seem to have a small focus on humans merged with other animals, this as you can probably tell, is great for inspiration for my depiction of The Minotaur.

Wednesday, 13 January 2016

13/01/2016 - Character Development

Week 01
Character Development

In the past week, I have just been developing physical attributes for my characters, below is a page of my sketchbook for "Hunger", my approach to character development is not to focus on the proportions just yet and how the limbs actually relate to each other, but to focus on how I might want the arms and hands to look and how I might want the head to look independent of each other etc. I have however, done a few sketches of how I imagine the posture to be, but most of this page is what I have naturally built up in my head and I will need to dig deeper into the development of my characters to fully explore all the possibilities I can think of.

"Hunger"

"Hunger" Development - 01

Here I have been exploring her posture the most. I want to at least have her in such a position in the final piece so we can see here back because I feel it would be more real and brutal being able to see her exposed spine poking through her skin.

"Hunger" Development - 02

Here I have been exploring her face more.  I had the thought of her not have any cartilage in her nose, as if maybe the intense hunger has forced her body to eat it like it would with fat.

"Hunger" Development - 03

Here I have been exploring her legs in more detail. I started out trying to depict an actual knee but I'm trying not to aim too realistic but more stylistic, those are always the characters that catch my eye the most.

I will complete a few more pages for "Hunger" like this and then try piecing her together with the various aspects I have designed separately.

Tuesday, 12 January 2016

12/01/2016 - Semester 02

Week 01

Semester 02

This is the beginning of Semester 02.....Term 02?

The lecture for this class is now on a Tuesday and the practical for me is on a Wednesday, That means my regular blog post will be on a Wednesday now. 

For this weeks post I am aiming to do quick versions of silhouettes for each of my characters. The intention is that after I have done these, I will outline them on a different layer in Photoshop and analyze the properties of the shapes to help inspire my character designs. This idea came to me with the thought of using different brushes/brush strokes to reflect the different characters, for example, for "Hunger", I will use the smallest brush I can to get a sketchy feel to her and to also get jagged outlines, this is to reflect her viscous and intimidating presence.She will be made up using quick, straight lines zig-zagged to create lots of variations of silhouette, where as for "Kitty Grau", I am thinking more about using rounded shapes to reflect her old woman appearance...these quick silhouette are probably going to be easier to explain once I have actually done them.