Evaluation

Throughout this first module I have learnt a range of new skills and developed my art in new mediums. The first part of the module was collecting information around me through visits to the Museum and Royal Armouries, by taking photographs I was able to piece together mood boards of different aspects of what my character would look like as well as the time period that they lived in. I also used the internet and researched a range of different concept artists to get a better feel of what style of art I wanted to use and what my character would look like not aesthetically (facial features ect) but more on the art form itself ie: Cartoon, Realistic, Anthropomorphic.

Collecting this information then lead to creating my characters back story and fitting them into an Archetype, of which my character is the Shadow. This brief allowed me to play around with my character and improve proportions and posing which not only developed my own skill but improved the over all quality of my character and future ones to come. This brief widened my thoughts to the environment my chosen character would live in and how it has effected the way she looks, thinks and acts respectively. I really enjoyed this part of our module as I felt it really played to my strengths and my imagination, I found that creating a back story for my character was very enjoyable and gave me the freedom I needed to turn my character into anything I wanted her to be.

On the other hand, when It came to focusing solely on my characters environment I found myself more times than not getting highly frustrated, unable to create environments that looked natural and realistic without using thick black lines. I did however, correct this and the final outcome of my laboratory environment was to an artistic level that I deemed suitable. Although I may not be one hundred percent happy with the environment outcome in comparison to the work of others, I understand where I need to improve and develop in later assignments and in using media's such as Photoshop I feel I've grasped a range of drawing styles quite quickly that will aid me in the future.

I feel this module as a whole has been successful for me, I have learnt new skills in drawing traditionally as well as digitally and I know which areas I need to improve upon. The skills I have learnt on Photoshop will definitely be carried on and developed as I begin new modules and I will hopefully improve the skills that I need more work on.

Things To Be Improved:

• Avoid outlining characters & environments with think black lines.
• Attempt to make characters & environements more realistic and professional.
• Write more blogs on more artists.
• Participate more in class & group speaking.

Things I Have Enjoyed Most:

• Developing & improving human proportions.
• Creating a backstory and history to my character.
• Being able to use my imagination freely.

Environment Progress

A run dow of the environment that iv been doing for my character. The layout is far from extravigant but it is correctly labled and to scale. I'll be adding more with correct measurements soon.


Environment - Lab

 I took this picture in the Museum during our collect briefing. It has been of use to me as it shows blueprint-like designs.


Museum Blueprints



Story Board

Storyboard for my animation that Im currently working on. The basic plan is that my character is facing the camera and raises her hand revieling a terrified man being held in place. She then proceeds to sever the head from his shoulders by grabbing the mans arm and effortlessly pulling it away from his body then dropping his head as if nothing happened.

Completion Of Wrath

Been working like lord knows what in order to complete my characters chosen design so that I can crack on with more environment work. So here we are:

Ira (Wrath) Final Concept

My character's name is Ira, latin for Wrath. On the whole comparing her to her previous design nothing has actually changed. However, in choosing to use human studies for my characters design the proportions have changed, she now looks a lot more slender which adds to her emaciated appearance rather than having a fuller figure. Although I've also been using colour in pretty much all of my studies I've now decided that presenting Ira as a monotone figure makes her appear more unique and also very threatening as it appears she is so void of happiness that the space around her has become grey.

On the whole I'm happy with how my character has turned out, and the process of getting from my beginning ideas to this final one has also been interesting when reflecting. However, I would like to improve the outlines in the image, although they are thin I hope to achieve creating art with zero outlines and rely solely on the different colours and textures I can blend.

Wrath Turn Around Attempt

Pretty much microblogging this one. attempted turn around for Deadly Sin, Wrath (Ira). As far as im concerned this is a simple one that needs to be improved over the next day or two.

Photography

Recent work in the photography department has really opened my eyes to how satisfying taking a good photo can be. As part of the task that was set we were instructed to bring in something personal to us. I brought along my healing crystals and spiritual matter. The photographs shown below show a range of lighting and the use of both standard and Macro lense.



Crystal Study 1 (MACRO)




Crystal Study 2




Crystal Study 3




Crystal Study 4 (MACRO)




Crystal Study 5 (MACRO)



Inspiration Sources

The following shows a study along with photographs that I took to improve my sources and ideas for my early character development. Mainly Greek and Tribe weapons.

Greek Face Study



Weapon Inspiration 1



Face Study



Weapon Inspiration 2



Weapon Inspiration 3



Concept Artist Research

Over the course of the last few weeks of creating my character and its environment, I've been picking out concept artists over a range of different sources in order to try and get a grasp of the textures, looks and emotions provolked from each artists work.

My first characters resembling animal headed humans and Armoured Anthro's naturally lead me to search for artists focusing on anthropomorphic works. The first artist that caught my eye was Kekai Kotaki, a Hawaiian concept artist currently working on Guild Wars 2. The first thing that attracted me to this picture was the armoured canine like creature, I was naturally drawn to this picture as I have always had a fascination with anthropomorphic animals and for the first part of my character research, designed all creatures to be heavilly armoured and generally stood upright. Least to say this piece ticked all the boxes.



Kekai Kotaki - Guild Wars Concept



Kekai Kotaki - Guild Wars 2 Charr Hell Bringer

Kekai Kotaki - Guild Wars 2 Charr Gunner



Kekai Kotaki - Guild Wars 2 Battle Concept

Another piece that caught my eye was Kekai's Magic Card, "Sphinx Of Uthuun". 

Kekai Kotaki - Sphinx Of Uthuun

This perticular work of his challeneged my origional thoughts on what I wanted my character to look like, as the character had developed from being a fairly ordinary looking armoured beast, to wanting it to resemble some of the Egyptian Gods being animal headed humans. The Sphinx Of Uthuun as previously stated challeneged and questioned what I wanted my own character to look like, as in some ways roll reversal came into play, having a human headed beast rather than a beast headed human. This stirred thoughts up in my withered psyche: 

• "Which combination would be the more fitting?"
• "What design would be more unique?"
• "Could a combo of the two artworks make one successful piece? EG: Armoured Sphinx?"
• "Which art form would best portray my own characters morals and beliefs through visual aesthetics?"

Other works which caught my eye focusing on similar concepts include Ben Mauro's Ape hybrid which I found extremely interesting as the thought of drawing animals with other animals had not previously crossed my mind but made for some exciting research surprisingly back to my days of working in Snakes n' Adders specialist reptile & Invertabrate shop and recalling on the many cross bred snakes and creepy crawlies that used to find their way into many a coustomer's hands.


Ben Mauro - Ape Hybrid

The final artist I looked at for my first step of the character creation process was Dark Natasha. Dark Natasha has been an influential artist to me for years now and I have always admired her work, focusing strictly on anthropomorphicic beasts, Dark Natasha manages to combine traditional tribe behaviour, clothing and coustoms in our past and present world with that of the instincts of animals, generally pack hunters such as Wolves, Lions and Hyeenas.


Dark Natasha - Tribeceratops



Dark Natasha - Cougar Medicine



Character Development & Environment Work

Carrying on from the last post, my character designs and concepts have changed dramatically over the past week or so, from masked people to the Seven Deadly Sins and Holy Virtues. The problem I had from the word go was not knowing who to choose, given that I now had 14 stock characters to consider. In the end I narrowed it down to two of the deadly sins, Sloth and Wrath/Rage.

I knew what I wanted each of my characters to look like, or atleast had a rough idea. For Sloth I wanted the character to be a male in his early twenties, wearing baggy, relaxed clothing, slippers and a messy bed head from lounging around. I then decided to give him his own animal representation which in a way reflects my previous 2 ideas of masks and anthropomorphic beasts, as shown below, Sloths companion is a somewhat disturbing representation of a 3 toed sloth found in tropical reigons of our world. This interpritation however, has been given a simple rounded mask stitched to its face as well as bloodied bandages wrapped around its forearms.

Sloth T-Pose & Natural

 

Sloth and Slithe

Now that I had the basic idea of what i wanted my first chosen character to look like I needed to think a bit more about colour schemes and more close up concept art so I designed a simple body piece of Sloth as a WIP and reused its begining form for a simple colour chart to decide what sort of colours and tones would suit him best. Looking back at this reference chart I decided that I would stick to more relaxed and bland colours shown in the first grey and blue example, the mottled red and purple also did a nice job of complimenting what I wanted others to persive Sloths personality as. However I decided against the bright green and grey chart example as I thought it looked too vibrant and active, both of which Sloth is not.

Sloth Concept Colour Chart

After hours of getting tiny little things right for my sloth character I had my character final outcome along with his companion and some character information. As you can see I made the slightest of changes to Sloths design by making him appear more like a "dr.Frankenstein's monster without a purpose" by adding some random stitching along his face, neck and arms.

Final Sloth Concept

The other character I chose to create was also one of the seven deadly sins, Wrath (or Rage). When plans to design Wrath first began I had originally intended for it to be a male, sporting short spikey red hair and bright loud clothes. Least to say the idea was thrown out of the window when I decided to change both Wrath's gender and aesthetics. As the concept art below shows, I have designed Wrath to resemble a sickly, emaciated young woman who comapred to what her name would suggests, appears to very weak.

Wrath/Rage

I wanted to give Wrath a murderous look so added bloodied bandages around her limbs and lacerations on her skin. Her face hints at my previous character designs of masked humans although her mask is completely blacked out thus making her blind to everything around her, relying on other sences to survive. I have also added spider-like vectors pertruding out from her back which further adds to her sickening appearence.

The environment I chose to design for Wrath is a small lab that was used to keep her captive away from all other human contact. Although the lab itself is small, it is heavily protected with laser gates that surround the borders and around Wrath herself. She is also in a coccoon made of bandages keeping her body in a tight foetal position, not allowing any movement explaining why she appears so frail.

 The location of the lab is in the middle of a dessert as can be shown by the sand gathering around the outside of the Lab walls and also inside from where it has blown in (as the lab is so well protected a door was not needed). However saying that I have drawn obvious blood stains smeered along the walls of the inside of the lab, suggesting that those who were responsable for keeping Wrath in its walls were murdered by her. I have chosen this to be Wraths home as although her character is an instinctive killer, the lab is the only place she has known and thus uses it as her own humble abode.

Wrath Envrionment

Other than the two main characters that I have been focusing on, I also attempted concept art on the Holy Virtue of Charity, designing her as a little girl. As youngsters often enjoy collecting little treasures and exploring I thought it would be fitting to design her wearing welly-boots and crafted seashell necklaces and bracelettes as shown below.

Charity Concept 1

Charity Concept 2

Character Metamorphosis

Previously my character development has followed a rather straight and narrow path of humans with masks. However, last night while wrapped up in my nest of quilts I had a new idea, an idea which I now strongly believe to be my final evolution of my characters final outcome: Religion.

Animal Headed Humans + Masked Humans = Religion (?)

The reasons behind this new idea seem quite simple in my eyes, I wanted characters that reflected my beliefs and also characters that would not normally be considered to appear in video games. Infact I can only really think of 2 games that have made solid attempts to include religion in some way or another, Bayonetta and Dante's Inferno. Although I'm more spiritual than I am religious I love the thought of what Angels look like, often feeling like they should look more monster than man.

The characters that I'm currently in the process of doing are human forms of the 7 Deadly Sins and Cardinal Virtues. Each of these characters have their own name, traits and appearence depending on which Sin/Virtue they represent. Although I dont have any tester images of what I've done yet, iv made 2 detailed moodboards listing the above which will give me better insight to what each character will look like. In the end I know Im going to have to narrow the characters down to one or two what with there being so many, but hey ho!

So thats the new path Im now following in my character development, should be an interesting one to follow!

Development

So continuing with the character development stated previously, iv been trying to breathe life into my guys, adding colour and such. I was surprised actually on how much I got involved with my character, going so far as to write stories about their lives. The following pictures are just a few test samples of the characters iv been making through the help of Photoshop.

Sun(male) & Moon(female) Concept Masks, Fuller image of Female Masked Dancer. 

Emotion Board Of Male Character, Mattah'l Sheq'Sai (present day)

The second is simple an emote board for what the Modern Mattah'l looks like and would look similar to under his mask. In its own way, the two have slight relation to Desmond and Ezio through the Assassins Creed series. Another thing I have been focusing on is creating an environment for my character(s) to inhabit. Below is my first attempt to recreate a mock environment with Photoshop using layers and learning about ways to avoid "destructive editing."

Mock Environment (Before & After)

So far I feel like my skills as an artist are improving and the help of photoshop and other programmes are aiding me greatly. However there are things I need to work on in order to improve, mainly avoiding large block lines when drawing characters and developing them through the programmes.