During the course of this module, I've found out a lot about my personal practise, both professionally and personally, and how I want to proceed in the future. At the start of this module, I felt completely lost and confused about what I wanted to achieve with my illustration and I was finding it really difficult to picture my future. I really had no plan and it was getting quite stressful, because I had no idea what I wanted to do and what road to go down.
I had a complete style turnaround and I made myself so many random personal briefs of different types of illustration to try and figure out what was best for me. I experimented a lot to try and figure out what style fit me best and I felt I created a few diamonds in the rough, and then went full steam ahead with those ideas and trying to refine them as much as possible, before going back to my character and environment designs. I saw a huge amount of growth in my work, especially as I dedicated myself to my illustration and I drew pretty much every single day for hours trying to refine my style. I really gave it my all this year, because I was feeling so much more confident once my work started feeling better.
I plan on continuing my refinement of my work and trying to find clients. As I mentioned in my Career Thoughts blog post, I want to find an agency and do older children's book illustration as well as perhaps asking them to find me some animation concept art work. I will see how that would work, but I would definitely like to start with some children's book illustration work, even just to bulk out my portfolio and CV with work. I would love to do book covers and the inside illustrations for books for the ages of around 7-12, as that would be my ideal solution.
I will also be applying for my Masters in Illustration, as I would like to do that part time as well as working in the illustration sector, because I would love to be a tutor one day and having a Masters is another step towards that goal. But I can't sustain myself for another two years without work, so I will try my hardest to get into an agency and get enough work to sustain myself through that period.
I am so glad I used this module to really find my illustrative voice, and I would like to thank every one of my tutors for encouraging me and helping me figure out what I want to do. I'm so much more confident not only as an illustrator but as a person, and I feel so much more motivation and drive to become the best visual storyteller I can be. I'm so excited for the future and I hope my plans come to fruition, and I really can't wait to start working as a professional illustrator.
Friday, 5 May 2017
Career Thoughts
So now I've finished my work and had my presentation with Fumio and Kieren, I've been given a lot to think about. Mostly, about my career going forward and how to present my work if I decide to go down the route of being a slightly more Jack of all trades.
Artist Research
Firstly, they asked me to look into artists that do both illustration and concept art and even if I don't like their particular style, I should comment on how they present their work and how they prevent confusion regarding their different roles.
When searching for, 'illustrator and concept artist', it comes up with a lot of random pages that are all asking the same questions. What's the difference between being an illustrator and a concept artist? Are they two different jobs? What does each entail? There's obviously a lot of confusion over the matter and from the looks of things, people do try and pigeon hole the two into different boxes, rather than having them mixed.
Artists that come up when searching for the term tend to be concept artists first and foremost, and don't tend to have any illustrative work on their websites. Such as Peter Chan[36], who was one of the first to come up.
His website is very minimalist and simple, not distracting from his work at all. His front page rolls through his work and it's all concept work he's done.
His gallery is all films and games he's worked on, showing his sketch work and how he conceptualises the characters are environments. It's very traditional, and he uses a lot of sketching instead of digital work. It's really interesting to see that concept artists are still working in this more traditional way, because people tend to try and do things that would end up being the fastest and easiest method, to try and cut down on the time frame of creating the movie, but it did surprise me he still works like this on modern films. It does give a different, more classic feel to his work.
Now to go on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, we have Noah Bradley[37] who is incredibly digitally minded, has a busy and personality filled website and creates much more adult styled artwork. It's not exactly my style, but I appreciate the amount of effort, time and energy it must have taken to get to such an amazing level.
He starts with a lot of information about his many different exploits in the artistic community. He mentions a lot of what he does, what he works on and has his upcoming shows and such on the right hand side. It's interesting to see how different this website is to the previous one, as it is pretty much the polar opposite of it.
I think I prefer the cleanness of Peter Chan's website, and how everything is sectioned off rather than having this huge section of words on the top of the page. He almost doesn't have any artwork on the first click of the page, which could possibly be detrimental to anyone wanting to hire him, because people like to be captured upon first click, and not have to scroll to find his artwork.
His work is so different to mine, but I do really enjoy it. It's beautiful and has such depth and interest. I do really love the feel of his images and he has a consistent style throughout all his work. But again, even though he describes himself as a concept artist and illustrator, I only really see concept art on his website.
I think what I've learned about this exercise is that there's a tendency to need some form of separation between the two different artistic worlds. I feel like perhaps there is no real differentiation between concept art and illustration, and they're pretty much just one and the same. People using the same style for everything they do, and not caring about whether it fits in a certain category. The community may try and pick it apart but at the end of the day, concept art and illustration have the same roots: They both tell stories. They both show characters, environments and where a story is living. So to try and separate them is perhaps not the way we should be going, but embracing they're one and the same.
This may cause confusion to some people, but I think presenting a website full of high quality work of the same style to a client is basically all that is needed. Especially with work like mine, where it could be construed as animation concept art or children's book illustration. The artwork would pretty much look the same either way.
Finding My Career
After much thought and deliberation, I have decided that I would love to be an illustrator first and foremost, and also try to be a Jack of all trades as well. I would like to get represented by a children's book illustration agency, and perhaps tell them of my loves for both book illustration and animation concept art, and if they get any work associated with animation, they could help me with that. I definitely would like to get an agent, as finances and contracting scares me to death.
I have a slight mental disability called Dyscalculia. This is something I have lived with all my life and have only in the past couple of years learned what it is, because it's not very well documented and nowhere near as well known or researched as Dyslexia. What Dyscalculia means to me is having difficulty with my rights and lefts, an inability to do mental arithmetic under pressure or remembering times tables and answers to questions I've just done, a difficulty reading long numbers such as phone numbers and card details, and a hard time with time management and budgeting, to name a few. It is mild, and usually flares up when in a pressured situation, but university has taught me how to manage my time even with this disability, and has given me confidence in my abilities. But I do still feel I could perhaps slip up and calculate something wrong, or mess up my time management, so having an agent would negate most of those worries and allow me to focus on myself and my artwork and personal finances instead of everything all at once.
We will see how this turns out, and how my career blossoms in the next few years. I hope to be represented by an agency in the next few months and living off of my illustration, as that would be my ultimate goal.
Artist Research
Firstly, they asked me to look into artists that do both illustration and concept art and even if I don't like their particular style, I should comment on how they present their work and how they prevent confusion regarding their different roles.
When searching for, 'illustrator and concept artist', it comes up with a lot of random pages that are all asking the same questions. What's the difference between being an illustrator and a concept artist? Are they two different jobs? What does each entail? There's obviously a lot of confusion over the matter and from the looks of things, people do try and pigeon hole the two into different boxes, rather than having them mixed.
Artists that come up when searching for the term tend to be concept artists first and foremost, and don't tend to have any illustrative work on their websites. Such as Peter Chan[36], who was one of the first to come up.
His website is very minimalist and simple, not distracting from his work at all. His front page rolls through his work and it's all concept work he's done.
His gallery is all films and games he's worked on, showing his sketch work and how he conceptualises the characters are environments. It's very traditional, and he uses a lot of sketching instead of digital work. It's really interesting to see that concept artists are still working in this more traditional way, because people tend to try and do things that would end up being the fastest and easiest method, to try and cut down on the time frame of creating the movie, but it did surprise me he still works like this on modern films. It does give a different, more classic feel to his work.
Now to go on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, we have Noah Bradley[37] who is incredibly digitally minded, has a busy and personality filled website and creates much more adult styled artwork. It's not exactly my style, but I appreciate the amount of effort, time and energy it must have taken to get to such an amazing level.
He starts with a lot of information about his many different exploits in the artistic community. He mentions a lot of what he does, what he works on and has his upcoming shows and such on the right hand side. It's interesting to see how different this website is to the previous one, as it is pretty much the polar opposite of it.
I think I prefer the cleanness of Peter Chan's website, and how everything is sectioned off rather than having this huge section of words on the top of the page. He almost doesn't have any artwork on the first click of the page, which could possibly be detrimental to anyone wanting to hire him, because people like to be captured upon first click, and not have to scroll to find his artwork.
His work is so different to mine, but I do really enjoy it. It's beautiful and has such depth and interest. I do really love the feel of his images and he has a consistent style throughout all his work. But again, even though he describes himself as a concept artist and illustrator, I only really see concept art on his website.
I think what I've learned about this exercise is that there's a tendency to need some form of separation between the two different artistic worlds. I feel like perhaps there is no real differentiation between concept art and illustration, and they're pretty much just one and the same. People using the same style for everything they do, and not caring about whether it fits in a certain category. The community may try and pick it apart but at the end of the day, concept art and illustration have the same roots: They both tell stories. They both show characters, environments and where a story is living. So to try and separate them is perhaps not the way we should be going, but embracing they're one and the same.
This may cause confusion to some people, but I think presenting a website full of high quality work of the same style to a client is basically all that is needed. Especially with work like mine, where it could be construed as animation concept art or children's book illustration. The artwork would pretty much look the same either way.
Finding My Career
After much thought and deliberation, I have decided that I would love to be an illustrator first and foremost, and also try to be a Jack of all trades as well. I would like to get represented by a children's book illustration agency, and perhaps tell them of my loves for both book illustration and animation concept art, and if they get any work associated with animation, they could help me with that. I definitely would like to get an agent, as finances and contracting scares me to death.
I have a slight mental disability called Dyscalculia. This is something I have lived with all my life and have only in the past couple of years learned what it is, because it's not very well documented and nowhere near as well known or researched as Dyslexia. What Dyscalculia means to me is having difficulty with my rights and lefts, an inability to do mental arithmetic under pressure or remembering times tables and answers to questions I've just done, a difficulty reading long numbers such as phone numbers and card details, and a hard time with time management and budgeting, to name a few. It is mild, and usually flares up when in a pressured situation, but university has taught me how to manage my time even with this disability, and has given me confidence in my abilities. But I do still feel I could perhaps slip up and calculate something wrong, or mess up my time management, so having an agent would negate most of those worries and allow me to focus on myself and my artwork and personal finances instead of everything all at once.
We will see how this turns out, and how my career blossoms in the next few years. I hope to be represented by an agency in the next few months and living off of my illustration, as that would be my ultimate goal.
Monday, 1 May 2017
Storyboard and Animatic
So I started wanting to create an animatic quite early on in the project. I decided to start making frames for it and to make it quite detailed, which was perhaps my first mistake.
Here were the frames from the animatic I wanted to create. I could see the potential, but I realised quickly that it was going to take me far too long to create anything substantial because each frame was taking so long.
The review of my style and the method of which I was producing work in this project pushed me to create my work differently, and I decided to start off with a storyboard. This would allow me to be free and flowing with my mark making and give me the freedom to keep it sketchy, so I could add more frames to the animatic. I wanted to take the same scene and draw it how I would now, and then I can make it into an animatic and hopefully add music and perhaps even sound effects.
Looking Into Camera Angles
I have a good called, 'Dream Worlds'[31] by the animator Hans Bacher, and he goes very in depth about camera angles and how to produce different feelings with different ways of framing the subject.
These are just a few of the many pages he has that explain different camera angles. You can see how different compositions, angles and subject matters change the way the frame looks. Making something slightly off centre will help to produce a balanced composition, or having the frame slightly askew will produce a disturbing feeling. Close ups will give certain subjects more impact, and having something further away will give more information about the area and where it's set.
I wanted to try these things out for myself, so I decided to create my storyboard for my animatic and try out some of these things, such as the tilting of the camera and having a variation of close up and far away shots. I will also try to make my compositions varied and interesting.
Storyboard
I decided upon 9 frames all in all for this animatic. I knew I wanted to perhaps make certain scenes move, so I knew certain frames would last longer than others. I tried to add different composition types, the first three frames have the tilted frame to show her anger, and then we go into a wider shot to show her slamming the door open. I then went to a profile shot, showing the fireplace so it would show the light source. I then went to a close up shot of her, to show her anger. Then we have Colin in bed, looking at her, and then he props himself up, getting angry before he starts crying again in the final close up.
I tried to add shading and dramatic lighting to the scene so I added the fireplace, but I didn't add too much other details. I feel they just take away from the emotion of the scene and don't need to be there if it's not completely vital. I'm happy with how these frames came out and will now try and add them to an animation to see how it works.
The Final Animatic
I always forget how tedious it is to make animations, even with it just being a few frames. I'm glad more than ever now that I didn't decide to make a full animation.
I decided to use music from the website Incompetech[32] from Kevin Macleod, as he makes really good royalty free music and I've used his songs before. I always enjoy his style of music, especially the soundtrack style. I then also used FreeSound[33] for my sound effects, as I wanted to add the slamming of the door, stomping down the hallway and rustling of the sheets.
My animatic can be viewed here[34].
I am glad with how it came out, and I liked how making the frames move and putting sound in gave the animatic more life, but it did remind me that this part of animation wasn't what I enjoyed the most. It just doesn't excite me as much as character creation and making the still artwork, so I now know I won't want to be involved in that part of animation in the future.
Overall, I felt a bit frustrated by this part of the task, but I was glad I did it. It did make me realise some things about my career overall, which I'm happy with. I'm just glad I have made some really nice artwork for the book and that's what I will be taking away from this project.
Post Presentation
After showing my animatic to my tutors Fumio and Kieren, they asked me to try and add some voice acting to my animatic to give it a real animation feel and make it much more inclusive to the viewer. This sounded like a really good idea and I decided to write the very short script according to the scene in the book.
The scene I have drawn up is only quite short, so the script isn't long. I have decided I will do the voice of Mary, and my friend Sam will be providing the voice of Colin.
We had fun doing the voice acting, as it was quite a dramatic scene so it required a lot of emotion. I added it to the animatic and had to move some of the scene around to go with the voice acting.
Here is the video with the added voice acting[35].
I feel the voice acting really has added the final layer to the animatic. It makes it much more authentic and the emotions read so much better, and having the script being read aloud really shows what the scene is about. It flows really nicely with the music and sound effects choices and I added a bit more motion to the scenes to create more of an emotive set up.
I enjoyed doing the voice acting part of this task and making sure it flows well with the music and images. I think perhaps I wasn't as happy with the animatic beforehand because it didn't feel finished and felt a bit wishy washy, but now I'm much happier with it and I'm so glad it was suggested to me.
Overall this has gone much better than I thought it had, and I'm feeling far less deflated about it now. It just goes to show that perseverance really helps to elevate any work you feel is under par.
Here were the frames from the animatic I wanted to create. I could see the potential, but I realised quickly that it was going to take me far too long to create anything substantial because each frame was taking so long.
The review of my style and the method of which I was producing work in this project pushed me to create my work differently, and I decided to start off with a storyboard. This would allow me to be free and flowing with my mark making and give me the freedom to keep it sketchy, so I could add more frames to the animatic. I wanted to take the same scene and draw it how I would now, and then I can make it into an animatic and hopefully add music and perhaps even sound effects.
Looking Into Camera Angles
I have a good called, 'Dream Worlds'[31] by the animator Hans Bacher, and he goes very in depth about camera angles and how to produce different feelings with different ways of framing the subject.
These are just a few of the many pages he has that explain different camera angles. You can see how different compositions, angles and subject matters change the way the frame looks. Making something slightly off centre will help to produce a balanced composition, or having the frame slightly askew will produce a disturbing feeling. Close ups will give certain subjects more impact, and having something further away will give more information about the area and where it's set.
I wanted to try these things out for myself, so I decided to create my storyboard for my animatic and try out some of these things, such as the tilting of the camera and having a variation of close up and far away shots. I will also try to make my compositions varied and interesting.
Storyboard
I decided upon 9 frames all in all for this animatic. I knew I wanted to perhaps make certain scenes move, so I knew certain frames would last longer than others. I tried to add different composition types, the first three frames have the tilted frame to show her anger, and then we go into a wider shot to show her slamming the door open. I then went to a profile shot, showing the fireplace so it would show the light source. I then went to a close up shot of her, to show her anger. Then we have Colin in bed, looking at her, and then he props himself up, getting angry before he starts crying again in the final close up.
I tried to add shading and dramatic lighting to the scene so I added the fireplace, but I didn't add too much other details. I feel they just take away from the emotion of the scene and don't need to be there if it's not completely vital. I'm happy with how these frames came out and will now try and add them to an animation to see how it works.
The Final Animatic
I always forget how tedious it is to make animations, even with it just being a few frames. I'm glad more than ever now that I didn't decide to make a full animation.
I decided to use music from the website Incompetech[32] from Kevin Macleod, as he makes really good royalty free music and I've used his songs before. I always enjoy his style of music, especially the soundtrack style. I then also used FreeSound[33] for my sound effects, as I wanted to add the slamming of the door, stomping down the hallway and rustling of the sheets.
My animatic can be viewed here[34].
I am glad with how it came out, and I liked how making the frames move and putting sound in gave the animatic more life, but it did remind me that this part of animation wasn't what I enjoyed the most. It just doesn't excite me as much as character creation and making the still artwork, so I now know I won't want to be involved in that part of animation in the future.
Overall, I felt a bit frustrated by this part of the task, but I was glad I did it. It did make me realise some things about my career overall, which I'm happy with. I'm just glad I have made some really nice artwork for the book and that's what I will be taking away from this project.
Post Presentation
After showing my animatic to my tutors Fumio and Kieren, they asked me to try and add some voice acting to my animatic to give it a real animation feel and make it much more inclusive to the viewer. This sounded like a really good idea and I decided to write the very short script according to the scene in the book.
The scene I have drawn up is only quite short, so the script isn't long. I have decided I will do the voice of Mary, and my friend Sam will be providing the voice of Colin.
We had fun doing the voice acting, as it was quite a dramatic scene so it required a lot of emotion. I added it to the animatic and had to move some of the scene around to go with the voice acting.
Here is the video with the added voice acting[35].
I feel the voice acting really has added the final layer to the animatic. It makes it much more authentic and the emotions read so much better, and having the script being read aloud really shows what the scene is about. It flows really nicely with the music and sound effects choices and I added a bit more motion to the scenes to create more of an emotive set up.
I enjoyed doing the voice acting part of this task and making sure it flows well with the music and images. I think perhaps I wasn't as happy with the animatic beforehand because it didn't feel finished and felt a bit wishy washy, but now I'm much happier with it and I'm so glad it was suggested to me.
Overall this has gone much better than I thought it had, and I'm feeling far less deflated about it now. It just goes to show that perseverance really helps to elevate any work you feel is under par.
Going Back to Character Creation and Environments
Redoing My Character Designs
After doing so much personal work and getting through other modules that demanded my attention, I went back to my character designs and tried to redraw Mary in the same way.
On the left is the original character design I did, and the middle and right drawings are what I tried to draw now. I realised the design wasn't really intricate enough and just didn't look right with my current style and methods. I realised I would need to create a whole new set of characters, otherwise I knew I wouldn't be happy with how they looked. I also knew they weren't very historically accurate and I needed to do more costume work, so I decided to do that too.
Again, I started with the main character, Mary. I started with a set of different heads, trying to figure out how I wanted her to look. I knew I wanted her similar to the original facially, but I wasn't sure what type of face shape and hairstyle I wanted. I decided on the bottom left design, because I felt connected to her the most and she seemed to fit into the era the book is set in (the late 1800's) the best.
I then wanted to do some costume designing to try and figure out what would look best for her. I looked at this website[30], as it had a lot of reference images. I really enjoyed looking through them and trying to make clothing for the characters. I started with Mary.
I used what I learned from 'The Art of Big Hero 6'[8] book where there's a set pose and clothes were drawn over the top. I wanted to try a few different dress types, one being lacy and frilly which I didn't think fit the character as well, the middle one being a bit simpler and plain, like how she's described in the book, and the third one had a lot of pleating which seemed much too busy and would be quite difficult to animate. I picked the middle one, as I wanted the clothes to represent her.
This character design is worlds away from what she was. She's so much more lively and has much more character, with her hair being wild and her pose. I feel my gesture drawing practise helped this as well. I liked the way I coloured her too, with a lot of texture and not too much shading. I learned that over my personal work journey, so I'm glad it's showing through in my current work as well.
So after Mary, I started work on the two boys. I started with Colin.
I wanted him to look grumpy and entitled, like his character. I tried a lot more variation to his face shape and overall look, and decided upon the middle right design. I liked the way his face shape was completely different to Mary's very boxy look, which would give them completely different silhouettes.
Here are Colin's clothing samples. I wanted him to look rich and like he has a lot of money spent on his clothes, as I wanted Dickon to look the opposite because his family is poor. I really wanted him to look opulent, so I gave him a lot of tailored layers. I decided upon the final design, because I liked the contrast of the different shades, having some very light and some very dark.
Colin goes outside in a wheelchair and isn't seen standing up until very late in the book, so I decided to draw him in a wheelchair for this picture.
I really like the way he turned out. I enjoy the different textures and the contrast of the colours. I gave him a blanket over him like he has in the book. I also tried to keep the different shades of grey, instead of making his clothing a certain colour, because I really liked the way the shading came out on the costume sketches. I am leaning much more towards black and white now I've been doing it for a while, so I may end up changing how these look in the end.
Then came Dickon, who has a completely different personality to the two previous characters.
Dickon is a much happier and more jovial character. He loves nature and is quite a free spirit, so I wanted to try and indicate that in his design, making his hair a bit more wild and his expression completely different.
Again, looking at the Victorian clothing, I wanted to make Dickon look much less uptight and rich than how Colin looked. I wanted him to look scruffy and have a slight disregard to his appearance, because he's so much more involved with nature and how his animals feel. This is something I wanted to show with the flow and overall rhythm of his clothing. I picked the last design because I felt his clothes are probably hand-me-downs, and so he would need something to keep his trousers up and they would be a bit of an odd fit.
He's supposed to have red hair, so I enjoyed giving him freckles and a more reddish tinge to his skin. I gave his character an overall red/brown colour palette because of his association with nature, and I feel it works well.
After Dickon, I decided to start playing around with environments again, because I was starting to get more of a feel for the overall style I wanted, and I wanted to see how it would translate onto the page.
Redoing My Environments and Finding My Style
Here was my first environment trial after a long break from it. I wanted to keep it really simple and only have certain shapes, so I could focus on textures. I used charcoal brushes and pencils to create the majority of the texture, and an actual stone wall brush for the wall. It looks a bit out of place, so I decided after this picture I'd stick to creating the textures myself, because it doesn't look right.
I made it in black and white first so I could try my hand at lighting again. I feel I did a pretty okay job creating the contrast and I feel it does have the depth I was looking for, but it was quite difficult. I feel I needed to pin down a light source before just laying down values in future, as it took a while to make it look like the light was all coming from the same place.
I then tried to colour the piece, because at this point I was still playing around with keeping the backgrounds in colour.
The colours didn't feel right. I didn't enjoy the way the textures and the colours mingled together, and that may have been because I did the textures first and overlaid the colour second, but I just felt I preferred the first version of this much more than this version. I decided then that I would change the way I was going to colour my pieces, because I connect so much easier with black and white at the moment.
I decided I would start doing selective colour, only adding colour for the areas where I want the audience to pay attention to the most. This is going to be a challenge, and getting values correct will be much harder with only grey scale to work with, but I'm willing to try and challenge myself and see what I come up with.
I did another forest scene, as I wanted to correct some things I felt went wrong, like the grass and the trees, and I added Mary into the scene with the Robin. I made everything black and white except for her hair, the flush to her face and the robin. I feel this does really draw the eye into her, and the different values of white, black and grey really look appealing to the eye. I love the way texture has been achieved and having a mixture of flat colour as well as texture, to balance the composition.
I tried to give the composition a foreground, middle ground and background, and made it so the values go lighter the further away they went. I think this really helped create the depth I was looking for, and the texture of the trees and clouds gave interest to what would be pretty boring areas.
I tried this technique on a different composition, this time using a previously draw area and trying to change it to fit this style.
I was very happy with this piece when I first did it, but now I feel like it doesn't have the same punch that I wanted it to. I also feel it would look really interesting with the different layers of ivy in black and white. I also feel I didn't really add too much extra interest to the picture, so it's a bit flat.
After drawing it again, I feel like it's got a completely new lease of life. I flipped the values on this one, making them go darker the further away from the camera they went, and I feel that really looks interesting. I knew I wanted the ivy to be the darkest part, so I needed to balance the values out somehow. The off white bushes in the front give balance to the composition.
I added a lot more detail to this picture. It has so much more depth and intrigue for the eye to look at. I really love how it came out, and how the selective colour really focuses the eye and makes you see the most important parts first. I added highlights to the wall, door and floor as if there was a break in the clouds and light was piercing through. I think that also helps to focus the eye and makes the blue stand out even more.
I'm so glad I've decided to change the design and method of these pieces. They feel so much more successful to me, and I'm really excited to see how it translates into future pieces too.
I have a lot of trouble drawing architecture, it's definitely one of my weaker areas. But I do like how this one turned out, and the way the texture adds to it. I tried to make the shading consistent all the way through the piece, and it is successful in some areas but could've perhaps been a bit less scattered. I feel the shadows on the grass especially are a bit too textured, so it doesn't look like a proper shadow.
I wanted to play with the sky and see how a darker, more cloudy sky would look. I made the hill on the right a lighter colour to push that further into the background.
I feel this perhaps isn't the most successful piece, but I have learned much more about values and composition and can take that into the future with me.
So after doing many black and white images, I decided to try and draw the garden, which I want to be in full colour so it juxtaposes with the dullness of the outside world.
I wanted to have the differences between the black and white and the colour, so I decided to frame it looking through the door into the garden, so I could have the mixture all in one image.
The garden in the book is supposed to be overgrown and messy, and have trailing rose bushes strewn everywhere. I tried to give a sense of that by adding the bush of different weeds and normal flowers on the left, and having the roses trail over the trees and back wall. I added the broken off branch in the middle because that was how Colin's mother supposedly died, falling from the tree on the branch.
I really like the comparison of full colour and black and white, and I feel it does represent what I want it to, which is that Mary thinks the entire world is dull and boring and she hates everything, but the garden represents freedom and joy and the thrill of keeping a secret. The bright colours help accentuate that feeling I think, and it does show what I want it to show.
I am really pleased with how this one came out, and am looking forward to doing more of my redesigning of the character.
Continuing With My Character Redesigns
So after decided to make my work selective colour, I had to go back and try to create my characters with that in mind. I started with Mary, because I had already made her into selective colour for my recent pictures and I wanted to draw her in more poses to try out my gesture drawing skills.
I feel my gestures have come along much further than they were at the start of this project. I felt I could draw her posture much quicker and easier now I have built up more of a visual vocabulary of gestures. It definitely needs more work, but it's looking much better than it was.
I also wanted to try different expressions, and I think I did well with them. I wanted to try annoyance, anger, shock and disgust, and I think they do speak for themselves.
I really like the mixture of the colour and the black and white. It looks really interesting, and gives much more focus to her face. I think that will hopefully really help in telling the story.
I think went onto Colin and Dickon, giving them the same treatment.
They also look really interesting in black and white. I really do enjoy how they look in this style, and I think they'd fit into the world I've created well.
After making these characters in the way I wanted to, I decided to create a few more characters. I wanted to make Martha, the maid who is also Dickon's sister, and Ben Weatherstaff, the old grumpy gardener. I wanted to make these characters because they were different from the original three; Martha is a kind but spirited young woman with more of a rounded figure and obviously would be wearing a maid's outfit, and Ben is much older and I imagine him to be quite rotund, which would be completely different to how I draw the others as they're all quite lean.
I started with Martha, and did the same thing as I did with the others. I started with a face sheet.
Martha is described as having a rounded face and kind eyes, so I wanted that to come across in my designs. I really liked the first design I did, so after trying out a few more designs, I went back to that one at the end and fixed the nose as I felt it didn't really show her personality. I then chose that final design because I felt it was exactly how I wanted her to look.
I looked on the website from before again, and drew up some simple designs for her maid's outfit. I knew I wanted her to have some kind of frills on it because I didn't want it to be really super simple, and so I decided on the final design. I really liked the ruffle on the top and having a shorter apron. I felt this suited her better.
I then coloured her, knowing already that I wanted it to be selective colour so I didn't waste my time. I wanted her to be red headed like Dickon and have a flushed face with freckles, so the audience could see the family resemblance. I really enjoyed her design, and feel she would go with the other characters.
I feel the way I draw eyes and facial features has come on a long way recently and the eyes especially look as though they rotate with the face a lot more. I am glad my practise is making my work look better even on things I don't really realise I'm practising.
Next up was Ben Weatherstaff.
I definitely knew I wanted him to look larger and older with lines around his face. I wanted him to have a larger nose and a more weathered face, so he would be a good contrast to the other more youthful characters. I also gave him a flat cap like he had in the book, and played around with different facial hair.
I liked the top two designs the best, and they look pretty much like the same character just with different noses, but I preferred the more rounded, squiggly nose of the first design. I took that face and tried to add the costume to it as I did with the others.
After looking at men's fashion in the Victorian era, I saw a lot of men still wore suits and waistcoats when doing manual labour, so I decided to put him in tailored clothes. I wanted to see how different combinations looked, so I tried just a waistcoat and trousers, adding an apron and having a full jacket. I felt Ben would be the kind of person to be able to hack any weather and not want to get too hot and bothered by a full jacket, and the apron made him look a bit too much like a butcher, so I decided on the first design.
I then made that design into a selective colour picture, cleaning it up and making it look more professional as I did with the others.
As Ben was older and would've had grey hair, I had to improvise with the selective colour for him. I decided to make his hat colourful, as I felt he would've looked too plain with just the flush of his face being in colour. I feel this worked really well, and the textures add a lot of interest to his character.
So after creating all these characters, I wanted to do turnarounds for their faces, because I felt that was a bit lacking in my drawings. So I did a front view, profile view and back view of all the characters I created, so I could work out how their faces would look in 3D space.
This exercise really did help me to see how their faces would work when turned around. I found it quite hard to visualise how profiles would work with their rounded or more sloped faces, but it seemed to get easier as I went along. I feel now I can see the different angles of their faces, and how the planes of their faces would react to different camera angles.
I am so much happier with how these characters have turned out, and I feel much better with how the style is looking. I want to try and create my storyboard and animatic now and see how they turn out with these new characters.
After doing so much personal work and getting through other modules that demanded my attention, I went back to my character designs and tried to redraw Mary in the same way.
On the left is the original character design I did, and the middle and right drawings are what I tried to draw now. I realised the design wasn't really intricate enough and just didn't look right with my current style and methods. I realised I would need to create a whole new set of characters, otherwise I knew I wouldn't be happy with how they looked. I also knew they weren't very historically accurate and I needed to do more costume work, so I decided to do that too.
Again, I started with the main character, Mary. I started with a set of different heads, trying to figure out how I wanted her to look. I knew I wanted her similar to the original facially, but I wasn't sure what type of face shape and hairstyle I wanted. I decided on the bottom left design, because I felt connected to her the most and she seemed to fit into the era the book is set in (the late 1800's) the best.
I then wanted to do some costume designing to try and figure out what would look best for her. I looked at this website[30], as it had a lot of reference images. I really enjoyed looking through them and trying to make clothing for the characters. I started with Mary.
I used what I learned from 'The Art of Big Hero 6'[8] book where there's a set pose and clothes were drawn over the top. I wanted to try a few different dress types, one being lacy and frilly which I didn't think fit the character as well, the middle one being a bit simpler and plain, like how she's described in the book, and the third one had a lot of pleating which seemed much too busy and would be quite difficult to animate. I picked the middle one, as I wanted the clothes to represent her.
This character design is worlds away from what she was. She's so much more lively and has much more character, with her hair being wild and her pose. I feel my gesture drawing practise helped this as well. I liked the way I coloured her too, with a lot of texture and not too much shading. I learned that over my personal work journey, so I'm glad it's showing through in my current work as well.
So after Mary, I started work on the two boys. I started with Colin.
I wanted him to look grumpy and entitled, like his character. I tried a lot more variation to his face shape and overall look, and decided upon the middle right design. I liked the way his face shape was completely different to Mary's very boxy look, which would give them completely different silhouettes.
Here are Colin's clothing samples. I wanted him to look rich and like he has a lot of money spent on his clothes, as I wanted Dickon to look the opposite because his family is poor. I really wanted him to look opulent, so I gave him a lot of tailored layers. I decided upon the final design, because I liked the contrast of the different shades, having some very light and some very dark.
Colin goes outside in a wheelchair and isn't seen standing up until very late in the book, so I decided to draw him in a wheelchair for this picture.
I really like the way he turned out. I enjoy the different textures and the contrast of the colours. I gave him a blanket over him like he has in the book. I also tried to keep the different shades of grey, instead of making his clothing a certain colour, because I really liked the way the shading came out on the costume sketches. I am leaning much more towards black and white now I've been doing it for a while, so I may end up changing how these look in the end.
Then came Dickon, who has a completely different personality to the two previous characters.
Dickon is a much happier and more jovial character. He loves nature and is quite a free spirit, so I wanted to try and indicate that in his design, making his hair a bit more wild and his expression completely different.
Again, looking at the Victorian clothing, I wanted to make Dickon look much less uptight and rich than how Colin looked. I wanted him to look scruffy and have a slight disregard to his appearance, because he's so much more involved with nature and how his animals feel. This is something I wanted to show with the flow and overall rhythm of his clothing. I picked the last design because I felt his clothes are probably hand-me-downs, and so he would need something to keep his trousers up and they would be a bit of an odd fit.
He's supposed to have red hair, so I enjoyed giving him freckles and a more reddish tinge to his skin. I gave his character an overall red/brown colour palette because of his association with nature, and I feel it works well.
After Dickon, I decided to start playing around with environments again, because I was starting to get more of a feel for the overall style I wanted, and I wanted to see how it would translate onto the page.
Redoing My Environments and Finding My Style
Here was my first environment trial after a long break from it. I wanted to keep it really simple and only have certain shapes, so I could focus on textures. I used charcoal brushes and pencils to create the majority of the texture, and an actual stone wall brush for the wall. It looks a bit out of place, so I decided after this picture I'd stick to creating the textures myself, because it doesn't look right.
I made it in black and white first so I could try my hand at lighting again. I feel I did a pretty okay job creating the contrast and I feel it does have the depth I was looking for, but it was quite difficult. I feel I needed to pin down a light source before just laying down values in future, as it took a while to make it look like the light was all coming from the same place.
I then tried to colour the piece, because at this point I was still playing around with keeping the backgrounds in colour.
The colours didn't feel right. I didn't enjoy the way the textures and the colours mingled together, and that may have been because I did the textures first and overlaid the colour second, but I just felt I preferred the first version of this much more than this version. I decided then that I would change the way I was going to colour my pieces, because I connect so much easier with black and white at the moment.
I decided I would start doing selective colour, only adding colour for the areas where I want the audience to pay attention to the most. This is going to be a challenge, and getting values correct will be much harder with only grey scale to work with, but I'm willing to try and challenge myself and see what I come up with.
I did another forest scene, as I wanted to correct some things I felt went wrong, like the grass and the trees, and I added Mary into the scene with the Robin. I made everything black and white except for her hair, the flush to her face and the robin. I feel this does really draw the eye into her, and the different values of white, black and grey really look appealing to the eye. I love the way texture has been achieved and having a mixture of flat colour as well as texture, to balance the composition.
I tried to give the composition a foreground, middle ground and background, and made it so the values go lighter the further away they went. I think this really helped create the depth I was looking for, and the texture of the trees and clouds gave interest to what would be pretty boring areas.
I tried this technique on a different composition, this time using a previously draw area and trying to change it to fit this style.
I was very happy with this piece when I first did it, but now I feel like it doesn't have the same punch that I wanted it to. I also feel it would look really interesting with the different layers of ivy in black and white. I also feel I didn't really add too much extra interest to the picture, so it's a bit flat.
After drawing it again, I feel like it's got a completely new lease of life. I flipped the values on this one, making them go darker the further away from the camera they went, and I feel that really looks interesting. I knew I wanted the ivy to be the darkest part, so I needed to balance the values out somehow. The off white bushes in the front give balance to the composition.
I added a lot more detail to this picture. It has so much more depth and intrigue for the eye to look at. I really love how it came out, and how the selective colour really focuses the eye and makes you see the most important parts first. I added highlights to the wall, door and floor as if there was a break in the clouds and light was piercing through. I think that also helps to focus the eye and makes the blue stand out even more.
I'm so glad I've decided to change the design and method of these pieces. They feel so much more successful to me, and I'm really excited to see how it translates into future pieces too.
I have a lot of trouble drawing architecture, it's definitely one of my weaker areas. But I do like how this one turned out, and the way the texture adds to it. I tried to make the shading consistent all the way through the piece, and it is successful in some areas but could've perhaps been a bit less scattered. I feel the shadows on the grass especially are a bit too textured, so it doesn't look like a proper shadow.
I wanted to play with the sky and see how a darker, more cloudy sky would look. I made the hill on the right a lighter colour to push that further into the background.
I feel this perhaps isn't the most successful piece, but I have learned much more about values and composition and can take that into the future with me.
So after doing many black and white images, I decided to try and draw the garden, which I want to be in full colour so it juxtaposes with the dullness of the outside world.
I wanted to have the differences between the black and white and the colour, so I decided to frame it looking through the door into the garden, so I could have the mixture all in one image.
The garden in the book is supposed to be overgrown and messy, and have trailing rose bushes strewn everywhere. I tried to give a sense of that by adding the bush of different weeds and normal flowers on the left, and having the roses trail over the trees and back wall. I added the broken off branch in the middle because that was how Colin's mother supposedly died, falling from the tree on the branch.
I really like the comparison of full colour and black and white, and I feel it does represent what I want it to, which is that Mary thinks the entire world is dull and boring and she hates everything, but the garden represents freedom and joy and the thrill of keeping a secret. The bright colours help accentuate that feeling I think, and it does show what I want it to show.
I am really pleased with how this one came out, and am looking forward to doing more of my redesigning of the character.
Continuing With My Character Redesigns
So after decided to make my work selective colour, I had to go back and try to create my characters with that in mind. I started with Mary, because I had already made her into selective colour for my recent pictures and I wanted to draw her in more poses to try out my gesture drawing skills.
I feel my gestures have come along much further than they were at the start of this project. I felt I could draw her posture much quicker and easier now I have built up more of a visual vocabulary of gestures. It definitely needs more work, but it's looking much better than it was.
I also wanted to try different expressions, and I think I did well with them. I wanted to try annoyance, anger, shock and disgust, and I think they do speak for themselves.
I really like the mixture of the colour and the black and white. It looks really interesting, and gives much more focus to her face. I think that will hopefully really help in telling the story.
I think went onto Colin and Dickon, giving them the same treatment.
They also look really interesting in black and white. I really do enjoy how they look in this style, and I think they'd fit into the world I've created well.
After making these characters in the way I wanted to, I decided to create a few more characters. I wanted to make Martha, the maid who is also Dickon's sister, and Ben Weatherstaff, the old grumpy gardener. I wanted to make these characters because they were different from the original three; Martha is a kind but spirited young woman with more of a rounded figure and obviously would be wearing a maid's outfit, and Ben is much older and I imagine him to be quite rotund, which would be completely different to how I draw the others as they're all quite lean.
I started with Martha, and did the same thing as I did with the others. I started with a face sheet.
Martha is described as having a rounded face and kind eyes, so I wanted that to come across in my designs. I really liked the first design I did, so after trying out a few more designs, I went back to that one at the end and fixed the nose as I felt it didn't really show her personality. I then chose that final design because I felt it was exactly how I wanted her to look.
I looked on the website from before again, and drew up some simple designs for her maid's outfit. I knew I wanted her to have some kind of frills on it because I didn't want it to be really super simple, and so I decided on the final design. I really liked the ruffle on the top and having a shorter apron. I felt this suited her better.
I then coloured her, knowing already that I wanted it to be selective colour so I didn't waste my time. I wanted her to be red headed like Dickon and have a flushed face with freckles, so the audience could see the family resemblance. I really enjoyed her design, and feel she would go with the other characters.
I feel the way I draw eyes and facial features has come on a long way recently and the eyes especially look as though they rotate with the face a lot more. I am glad my practise is making my work look better even on things I don't really realise I'm practising.
Next up was Ben Weatherstaff.
I definitely knew I wanted him to look larger and older with lines around his face. I wanted him to have a larger nose and a more weathered face, so he would be a good contrast to the other more youthful characters. I also gave him a flat cap like he had in the book, and played around with different facial hair.
I liked the top two designs the best, and they look pretty much like the same character just with different noses, but I preferred the more rounded, squiggly nose of the first design. I took that face and tried to add the costume to it as I did with the others.
After looking at men's fashion in the Victorian era, I saw a lot of men still wore suits and waistcoats when doing manual labour, so I decided to put him in tailored clothes. I wanted to see how different combinations looked, so I tried just a waistcoat and trousers, adding an apron and having a full jacket. I felt Ben would be the kind of person to be able to hack any weather and not want to get too hot and bothered by a full jacket, and the apron made him look a bit too much like a butcher, so I decided on the first design.
I then made that design into a selective colour picture, cleaning it up and making it look more professional as I did with the others.
As Ben was older and would've had grey hair, I had to improvise with the selective colour for him. I decided to make his hat colourful, as I felt he would've looked too plain with just the flush of his face being in colour. I feel this worked really well, and the textures add a lot of interest to his character.
So after creating all these characters, I wanted to do turnarounds for their faces, because I felt that was a bit lacking in my drawings. So I did a front view, profile view and back view of all the characters I created, so I could work out how their faces would look in 3D space.
This exercise really did help me to see how their faces would work when turned around. I found it quite hard to visualise how profiles would work with their rounded or more sloped faces, but it seemed to get easier as I went along. I feel now I can see the different angles of their faces, and how the planes of their faces would react to different camera angles.
I am so much happier with how these characters have turned out, and I feel much better with how the style is looking. I want to try and create my storyboard and animatic now and see how they turn out with these new characters.
Saturday, 29 April 2017
Initial Colour and Lighting Experiments and Environments
After going to the North York Moors, I started trying out some environment work. My first go was before I even started looking into lighting and colour, so this is my first try without any practise.
There are some nice bits of style coming through within this piece that I've picked up along the way, such as the smoke, the little flicks of grass in opposing colours, and the texture I used. But as a way of showing colour and lighting, it's a pretty poor example. The shadows and highlights aren't clear, and it's not as if there's anything casting the shadows. The shading seems quite inconsistent and doesn't seem natural.
After doing this initial trial, I decided to take the photos of the York Moors and use them to make thumbnails, colour picking from the photographs and making them into blocks of colour, so I could understand better how light works.
These seem much more believable and natural. The colours work well and the pictures that have more sunshine and therefore a more stark contrast seem much more dramatic. It was great to get a greater understanding of how sunlight effects colour, as well as distance, such as the hills in the first image. The further away it goes, the less saturated the colour gets.
This was a really interesting experiment, and it definitely seemed to help my environment art.
I started with a rather simple sketch of what I imagined the door to the secret garden would look like, with the ivy hanging down. I didn't want to over complicate it and add in too much information at this stage, so I left it quite scruffy and mangled.
So I created this picture from the sketch above. I still wanted to keep it quite simple and not overdo it with the details, but I definitely wanted the robin in it as he's the one that leads Mary to the garden door in the first place. For the ivy, I made a few variations of vines and then layered them up, flipping them, rotating them and recolouring them to make it seem as though there were a lot of layers to the thick ivy covering the door. I made the top layer the brightest, and made the layers darker and darker the further down they go.
I gave the shovel some stark contrast with the bright edges, and made it have a shadow underneath it. I also wanted the light to come from the top left hand corner, almost over the wall, and so I gave the grass a patch of highlight in the bottom right hand corner to show that, as well as the shadow from the shovel indicating the path of the light source.
I made the door blue as I wanted it to stand out under all the green and browns. I did think about perhaps having it red, but it took away from the contrast of the orange from the robin, so he wasn't as noticeable. I liked the blue though, because if it were brown like wood it wouldn't have shown up really against the wall.
So after that outside environment, I wanted to do something inside. I was really inspired by the many fireplaces in the castle in the Moors, and in the book Mary sits at the fireplace with Dickon's sister Martha, who works as a maid in the house. So I wanted to give that a go, and it would be a much more dramatic lighting situation.
Here is the sketch I started with. Very inaccurate, but it definitely helped me to understand where I wanted everything to be placed. It seemed a bit unbalanced, so I decided to move some things around and try to make the composition feel better.
As I knew this picture would require quite a lot more precision, what with things needing to be symmetrical and placed right, I decided to do a black and white flat version first, so my image would turn out looking right at the end.
I added a few extra pieces of furniture and made it look a bit better composed, so it would look nicer once it was finished.
I wanted it to be night time, and the fire to be one of the only light sources in the room, the other being a candle that's lit above it.
I took a lot of inspiration from things I saw in the pictures I took at Castle Howard. The floor, the basket, frames and furniture all came from photos I took. I was really interested with how I could construct an entire picture with little pieces from here and there in the castle, instead of just copying a scene. I was very excited to see how it came out.
It was a huge challenge to take on with this picture. It took me a very long time to get it to look just how I wanted it to. It's got the high contrast I was looking for, but also has little details like the wallpaper and the wicker basket the wood is in, and the picture frames having different layers.
I was so proud of this piece. I can really feel the depth and it has such a lot of detail that the eye is drawn all around the image. It was a brilliant exercise in how lighting effects different surfaces as well, with the shine of the golden hearth to the basket, to the mirror reflecting another light source from the window. I really loved doing this piece and although it was a lot of work, it was worth it in the end I feel.
For this one, I also wanted to test how pattern would work. Such as the flooring, I made it so the floor almost looked flat, like it were running vertically. I wanted to see how the contrast of the shading and the pattern would work, and it does give a very strange but interesting result. I will have to try this out even more later on.
I'm not sure just how these are going to go with my character designs, as they're not as intricate as this and they may look a bit odd, but I will have to see how that works.
I have learned how lighting can effect a scene, and how it can add atmosphere into a piece. I also feel as though I've learned more about environments and how to utilise visual information gathered from other sources, and how they can be sewn together like a patchwork to create a whole new scene.
I'm going to try and take these things on with me as I continue my work and use them in my future illustrations.
There are some nice bits of style coming through within this piece that I've picked up along the way, such as the smoke, the little flicks of grass in opposing colours, and the texture I used. But as a way of showing colour and lighting, it's a pretty poor example. The shadows and highlights aren't clear, and it's not as if there's anything casting the shadows. The shading seems quite inconsistent and doesn't seem natural.
After doing this initial trial, I decided to take the photos of the York Moors and use them to make thumbnails, colour picking from the photographs and making them into blocks of colour, so I could understand better how light works.
These seem much more believable and natural. The colours work well and the pictures that have more sunshine and therefore a more stark contrast seem much more dramatic. It was great to get a greater understanding of how sunlight effects colour, as well as distance, such as the hills in the first image. The further away it goes, the less saturated the colour gets.
This was a really interesting experiment, and it definitely seemed to help my environment art.
I started with a rather simple sketch of what I imagined the door to the secret garden would look like, with the ivy hanging down. I didn't want to over complicate it and add in too much information at this stage, so I left it quite scruffy and mangled.
So I created this picture from the sketch above. I still wanted to keep it quite simple and not overdo it with the details, but I definitely wanted the robin in it as he's the one that leads Mary to the garden door in the first place. For the ivy, I made a few variations of vines and then layered them up, flipping them, rotating them and recolouring them to make it seem as though there were a lot of layers to the thick ivy covering the door. I made the top layer the brightest, and made the layers darker and darker the further down they go.
I gave the shovel some stark contrast with the bright edges, and made it have a shadow underneath it. I also wanted the light to come from the top left hand corner, almost over the wall, and so I gave the grass a patch of highlight in the bottom right hand corner to show that, as well as the shadow from the shovel indicating the path of the light source.
I made the door blue as I wanted it to stand out under all the green and browns. I did think about perhaps having it red, but it took away from the contrast of the orange from the robin, so he wasn't as noticeable. I liked the blue though, because if it were brown like wood it wouldn't have shown up really against the wall.
So after that outside environment, I wanted to do something inside. I was really inspired by the many fireplaces in the castle in the Moors, and in the book Mary sits at the fireplace with Dickon's sister Martha, who works as a maid in the house. So I wanted to give that a go, and it would be a much more dramatic lighting situation.
Here is the sketch I started with. Very inaccurate, but it definitely helped me to understand where I wanted everything to be placed. It seemed a bit unbalanced, so I decided to move some things around and try to make the composition feel better.
As I knew this picture would require quite a lot more precision, what with things needing to be symmetrical and placed right, I decided to do a black and white flat version first, so my image would turn out looking right at the end.
I added a few extra pieces of furniture and made it look a bit better composed, so it would look nicer once it was finished.
I wanted it to be night time, and the fire to be one of the only light sources in the room, the other being a candle that's lit above it.
I took a lot of inspiration from things I saw in the pictures I took at Castle Howard. The floor, the basket, frames and furniture all came from photos I took. I was really interested with how I could construct an entire picture with little pieces from here and there in the castle, instead of just copying a scene. I was very excited to see how it came out.
It was a huge challenge to take on with this picture. It took me a very long time to get it to look just how I wanted it to. It's got the high contrast I was looking for, but also has little details like the wallpaper and the wicker basket the wood is in, and the picture frames having different layers.
I was so proud of this piece. I can really feel the depth and it has such a lot of detail that the eye is drawn all around the image. It was a brilliant exercise in how lighting effects different surfaces as well, with the shine of the golden hearth to the basket, to the mirror reflecting another light source from the window. I really loved doing this piece and although it was a lot of work, it was worth it in the end I feel.
For this one, I also wanted to test how pattern would work. Such as the flooring, I made it so the floor almost looked flat, like it were running vertically. I wanted to see how the contrast of the shading and the pattern would work, and it does give a very strange but interesting result. I will have to try this out even more later on.
I'm not sure just how these are going to go with my character designs, as they're not as intricate as this and they may look a bit odd, but I will have to see how that works.
I have learned how lighting can effect a scene, and how it can add atmosphere into a piece. I also feel as though I've learned more about environments and how to utilise visual information gathered from other sources, and how they can be sewn together like a patchwork to create a whole new scene.
I'm going to try and take these things on with me as I continue my work and use them in my future illustrations.
Personal Work Style Evolution
Before London Book Fair
So, as I started getting more confident in my work, I started drawing more and more. I decided to do more personal work as I was trying to get a portfolio together to show an art director at London Book Fair[26], and so my final major project work went on the back burner for a while. I also got quite frustrated as the characters weren't looking right, and so I needed a break from them for a while.
I got an iPad Pro[27] and decided to start working on the app Procreate[28] because my parents had an iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil[29] and over the Christmas break I had a go with it, and really enjoyed it. I felt it would really help me to draw more often if I had something portable to take around with me that I could draw on. This was possibly the best decision I've ever made, as I feel it has allowed my artistic growth to soar. I can draw digitally pretty much anywhere, and that has really given me a huge boost.
Whenever I feel I need to revamp my style, I always go to self portraits first. I'm not really sure why, but I feel it's probably because I know myself better than anyone else, and I won't ever be offended by something I've drawn of myself.
This portrait was the first thing I was really happy with in a long time. I tried a new style and technique with colouring, adding more texture and stronger line work, and I did really enjoy it. It gave me confidence to get onto other artwork and see what I could push myself with.
After creating something I was really happy with, I really wanted to push it as far as I could, and I also thought about perhaps making a secondary style that would be more editorial. I used so much texture and different pencil brushes to experiment with how colour can be brushed across the surface, taking into account the work of Taryn Knight[19]. I really enjoyed experimenting with this style, and although I still really like it, it definitely helped my other style evolve even further as I started to use more textured brushes.
I also wanted to experiment with flat colour with pattern, like Yelena Bryksenkova[20], so I started trying to mesh the two together, both texture and flat colour with pattern. I really loved creating the background to the second book cover especially, with the layers of clouds and gradient.
My drawing style was taking a life of it's own. The way I drew hair, eyes, noses and hands were all taking on their own style, and I felt more confident with it with every piece. I really love the red blush marks and red noses and ears. It feels like a trademark to my work, and I really do enjoy creating these characters to look like that, so it's almost becoming second nature now to create characters that look like this style.
I now wanted to put that into more practise, and try different types of character.
Here is a drawing of a girl from the forest. This was one of the first images I made where I really loved the result and felt immensely proud of it. I tried to stay loose with the brush strokes and gave myself quite a limited colour palette, and I feel it really worked out well. I started drawing hair and eyebrows with more defined strokes and tried to keep the shading simple.
I tried to keep it even more simple with this piece. It doesn't have a name and isn't based on anything, but I just really felt inspired by ghosts and the Victorian era, so I drew a little girl who was haunted. I used even more defined strokes for her eyebrows and tried making her eyelashes a lighter grey instead of black to see how it would change the image. I feel it makes it much less harsh, which I feel definitely suited the subject matter of this piece.
Again I was just inspired by something completely random, and I loved this colour palette. The teal with the pink I felt really went well together. I didn't have anything in mind when creating this piece, I just started drawing and this was what came out of it.
I love the simplicity of the skeleton and how it doesn't have too much detail, so it really reads well. I also tried adding texture to the dress of the skull lady by using overlapping pencil brush strokes, which I felt worked really well. I kept the tones quite flat and added a spotty background in a dark colour to not distract too far from the characters themselves, but it adds a bit of interest.
London Book Fair was coming up quick, and I really wanted to add some children's picture book pages to it. The first two images were inspired by my niece with my dog and the mischief they get up to together, and the third image is inspired by the idea of a Teddy Bear's Picnic.
I wanted to try out different environments to show first of all that I could do them, but also to test myself and see how well they would come out. I was very happy with how everything looked, and I really enjoyed making some younger looking characters. It was definitely more of a challenge, but one I really wanted to take on. I also tried to add texture and pattern wherever I could to practise those too.
This illustration was something completely different. I wanted to try working inside a silhouette, and see how the limitation would affect the feel of the image. It definitely made getting the flow of the image right much more difficult, but I feel I took on this challenge. I made it so the girl was leaning slightly and there were bushes all curving in towards her, making her the focus of the image. I also added some trees to extend her line at the top, to make the eye bounce around the image better.
I really enjoyed this and wanted to try different characters, but I haven't had time to do that yet. Perhaps in the future it's something to think about.
I also tried a different shading technique on the bushes, having much more flat shading but still adding some texture. I really liked that style, and will try it out again sometime in the future and see how it integrates with my work.
After London Book Fair
So after going to the London Book Fair and speaking to an art director, I was told my style suited older children better and that I should look into more black and white imagery. This scared me, as I had never done black and white before and I wasn't quite sure how I'd approach it. It was completely different to colour, as you're completely relying on the values rather than any hues. I wasn't sure how mixing textures would work either, and so I was quite scared to try it out, but I started trying it.
Here were my initial trials for black and white drawings. I tried both more flat textured hair and then more of a pencil shaded style like I did before, and I found neither were really feeling quite right. I also did find it very hard to find the right values. It was so much more difficult to make people look different, because having just shades of grey was much more limiting than being able to make people wear different colours of the same value.
I then tried some spot illustrations. I started with the homework illustration, and I found I enjoyed it a lot more having just objects to draw. It make finding a style and different a bit easier, as they could be any shade I wanted. things like the pretzels and chocolate bar were nice to try and figure out the values to, and I found it was becoming much more enjoyable.
I decided to draw a house because I wanted to try an environment drawing. Again, the values seemed to be a bit easier to find here. I tried to use lots of different pencil textures and a mixture of outlined and non outlined areas, which I felt really worked well.
Lastly I drew some cake, and I tried stronger line work. I do like it, but I feel perhaps it could've been a bit better achieved without such strong lines for everything. I will probably try and redraw it at some point.
I then tried black and white characters again, taking what I learned from the objects. I wanted to have more texture and less outline, so I decided to shade the hair with a large sponge brush so it had gaps and texture through it, and then I drew over the top with black to add in the hair strands. I really enjoyed doing that, as it had the feel I wanted. I also used different textures for clothing and only drew outlines where objects overlapped each other, and I felt that was really effective as well.
I continued trying out different textures and value combinations, and I now feel much more confident with my black and white work. I now wanted to try the things I'd learned in my black and white work out on my full colour work, such as using the strong lines in conjunction with the flat textures, and see how that looks.
I do feel it's given my work much more of a unique quality. I am really much happier with my work, and although I'm sure it will probably change even more, I'm finally happy with how my work is going and feel it's much more professional than when I started this year. I feel I have a set style and although that may evolve, it's something I can work with and possibly get jobs from, which is a world away from where I was 6 months ago.
Now I need to apply this all to my work for this module and see how it changes my initial designs.
So, as I started getting more confident in my work, I started drawing more and more. I decided to do more personal work as I was trying to get a portfolio together to show an art director at London Book Fair[26], and so my final major project work went on the back burner for a while. I also got quite frustrated as the characters weren't looking right, and so I needed a break from them for a while.
I got an iPad Pro[27] and decided to start working on the app Procreate[28] because my parents had an iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil[29] and over the Christmas break I had a go with it, and really enjoyed it. I felt it would really help me to draw more often if I had something portable to take around with me that I could draw on. This was possibly the best decision I've ever made, as I feel it has allowed my artistic growth to soar. I can draw digitally pretty much anywhere, and that has really given me a huge boost.
Whenever I feel I need to revamp my style, I always go to self portraits first. I'm not really sure why, but I feel it's probably because I know myself better than anyone else, and I won't ever be offended by something I've drawn of myself.
This portrait was the first thing I was really happy with in a long time. I tried a new style and technique with colouring, adding more texture and stronger line work, and I did really enjoy it. It gave me confidence to get onto other artwork and see what I could push myself with.
After creating something I was really happy with, I really wanted to push it as far as I could, and I also thought about perhaps making a secondary style that would be more editorial. I used so much texture and different pencil brushes to experiment with how colour can be brushed across the surface, taking into account the work of Taryn Knight[19]. I really enjoyed experimenting with this style, and although I still really like it, it definitely helped my other style evolve even further as I started to use more textured brushes.
I also wanted to experiment with flat colour with pattern, like Yelena Bryksenkova[20], so I started trying to mesh the two together, both texture and flat colour with pattern. I really loved creating the background to the second book cover especially, with the layers of clouds and gradient.
My drawing style was taking a life of it's own. The way I drew hair, eyes, noses and hands were all taking on their own style, and I felt more confident with it with every piece. I really love the red blush marks and red noses and ears. It feels like a trademark to my work, and I really do enjoy creating these characters to look like that, so it's almost becoming second nature now to create characters that look like this style.
I now wanted to put that into more practise, and try different types of character.
Here is a drawing of a girl from the forest. This was one of the first images I made where I really loved the result and felt immensely proud of it. I tried to stay loose with the brush strokes and gave myself quite a limited colour palette, and I feel it really worked out well. I started drawing hair and eyebrows with more defined strokes and tried to keep the shading simple.
I tried to keep it even more simple with this piece. It doesn't have a name and isn't based on anything, but I just really felt inspired by ghosts and the Victorian era, so I drew a little girl who was haunted. I used even more defined strokes for her eyebrows and tried making her eyelashes a lighter grey instead of black to see how it would change the image. I feel it makes it much less harsh, which I feel definitely suited the subject matter of this piece.
Again I was just inspired by something completely random, and I loved this colour palette. The teal with the pink I felt really went well together. I didn't have anything in mind when creating this piece, I just started drawing and this was what came out of it.
I love the simplicity of the skeleton and how it doesn't have too much detail, so it really reads well. I also tried adding texture to the dress of the skull lady by using overlapping pencil brush strokes, which I felt worked really well. I kept the tones quite flat and added a spotty background in a dark colour to not distract too far from the characters themselves, but it adds a bit of interest.
London Book Fair was coming up quick, and I really wanted to add some children's picture book pages to it. The first two images were inspired by my niece with my dog and the mischief they get up to together, and the third image is inspired by the idea of a Teddy Bear's Picnic.
I wanted to try out different environments to show first of all that I could do them, but also to test myself and see how well they would come out. I was very happy with how everything looked, and I really enjoyed making some younger looking characters. It was definitely more of a challenge, but one I really wanted to take on. I also tried to add texture and pattern wherever I could to practise those too.
This illustration was something completely different. I wanted to try working inside a silhouette, and see how the limitation would affect the feel of the image. It definitely made getting the flow of the image right much more difficult, but I feel I took on this challenge. I made it so the girl was leaning slightly and there were bushes all curving in towards her, making her the focus of the image. I also added some trees to extend her line at the top, to make the eye bounce around the image better.
I really enjoyed this and wanted to try different characters, but I haven't had time to do that yet. Perhaps in the future it's something to think about.
I also tried a different shading technique on the bushes, having much more flat shading but still adding some texture. I really liked that style, and will try it out again sometime in the future and see how it integrates with my work.
After London Book Fair
So after going to the London Book Fair and speaking to an art director, I was told my style suited older children better and that I should look into more black and white imagery. This scared me, as I had never done black and white before and I wasn't quite sure how I'd approach it. It was completely different to colour, as you're completely relying on the values rather than any hues. I wasn't sure how mixing textures would work either, and so I was quite scared to try it out, but I started trying it.
Here were my initial trials for black and white drawings. I tried both more flat textured hair and then more of a pencil shaded style like I did before, and I found neither were really feeling quite right. I also did find it very hard to find the right values. It was so much more difficult to make people look different, because having just shades of grey was much more limiting than being able to make people wear different colours of the same value.
I then tried some spot illustrations. I started with the homework illustration, and I found I enjoyed it a lot more having just objects to draw. It make finding a style and different a bit easier, as they could be any shade I wanted. things like the pretzels and chocolate bar were nice to try and figure out the values to, and I found it was becoming much more enjoyable.
I decided to draw a house because I wanted to try an environment drawing. Again, the values seemed to be a bit easier to find here. I tried to use lots of different pencil textures and a mixture of outlined and non outlined areas, which I felt really worked well.
Lastly I drew some cake, and I tried stronger line work. I do like it, but I feel perhaps it could've been a bit better achieved without such strong lines for everything. I will probably try and redraw it at some point.
I then tried black and white characters again, taking what I learned from the objects. I wanted to have more texture and less outline, so I decided to shade the hair with a large sponge brush so it had gaps and texture through it, and then I drew over the top with black to add in the hair strands. I really enjoyed doing that, as it had the feel I wanted. I also used different textures for clothing and only drew outlines where objects overlapped each other, and I felt that was really effective as well.
I continued trying out different textures and value combinations, and I now feel much more confident with my black and white work. I now wanted to try the things I'd learned in my black and white work out on my full colour work, such as using the strong lines in conjunction with the flat textures, and see how that looks.
I do feel it's given my work much more of a unique quality. I am really much happier with my work, and although I'm sure it will probably change even more, I'm finally happy with how my work is going and feel it's much more professional than when I started this year. I feel I have a set style and although that may evolve, it's something I can work with and possibly get jobs from, which is a world away from where I was 6 months ago.
Now I need to apply this all to my work for this module and see how it changes my initial designs.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)