These are my abstract thumbnails for the city of domes and god statues Diomira. This city is one of the more interesting that I have looked at. It reminds me of cities in old sword and sandal movies like clash of the titans.
Taking inspiration from old greek architecture and their agricultural lifestyle I included a lot of market stalls into my work and statues clad in armour or robes as a reflection of the inspired area.
All my thumbnails are still very abstracts and rough looking but I will be developing my ideas soon enough.
Over the past 10 years, Blizzard entertainment as been a massive part of my inspiration to become part of the art world, creating characters for interesting fantasy worlds. All of this is down to the high quality of the art that is produced by their In-house and free lance artists and their animation team who have frequently created spectacular in game and out of game cinematic's.
I would like to share a few of these with everyone here if you haven't seen them already, they are stunning examples of what can be achieved with 3D and 2D animation.
This video includes all of the opening cinematic's of the past 10 years. Each one has a completely different feel and atmosphere, whilst retaining its fantasy and story roots.
Personally my favourite of them all is the Third cinematic, from Wrath of the Lich king, compared to the previous ones and even the newer cinematic's it has a much more calming, sombre feel. If you know anything about the character featured in the trailer you will know why this relates so well to him. The art direction is beautiful and striking, leaving you wanting more, it definitely had that effect on me all those years ago
If you want to see some more of their animations, search for the Lords of War series on youtube, the style is very different to these cg trailers but is still amazing nonetheless.
Influence Map 3: Later on in the day I decided to go towards the animation side of city design starting with an anime that I recently watched and loved, called soul eater. All of the designs in soul eater are very impressionistic and Gothic, with a cartoon'y twist added to it. This helps to give the world an interesting feel and atmosphere.
Huge cities built up in layers, resembling Minas Tirith from The lord of the rings books and towers built onto the back of giant mechanical spiders. Every arch of this anime has vastly different environment design that helps to keep it fresh whilst wowing the audience. Keeping them hooked.
Influence Map 4: This series of images is taken from the anime Kill la Kill, one of my favorite animes of all time. It continues the idea of a city built up in rings but achieves it with a more normalized design in some shots but making it look more menacing and twisted later on in the story to reflect the plot and how it progressively gets more and more insane and unimaginable. I love the art style that has been used in this anime for everything from the characters to the environments making changing the style to reflect the story at that point, moving from soft and light hearted to harsh and violent later on.
As we had an hour or so to ourselves today I decided to take a look at some influential images based around the Idea of architecture from different sources of fantasy and animated media. Mainly because I feel that physical buildings, although breathtaking at times, fail to push the boundaries that artists and animators can reach. From developing cities resting on tree tops, to huge underground mining colonies and other worlds filled with vast alien technology.
Influence Map 1: My first influence map is based on the Architecture in the MMO "World of Warcraft". I chose to look at this world first because it has been the most influential in my artwork and my life itself. I've been playing for almost 10 years now so I feel at home in the concept art and the characters of the world.
Every environment is different ranging from desert cities with arachnid based architecture and designs to massive elven cities atop a world tree. Giant citadel's encased in ice and a floating bastion of magic and wizardry.
The artists of Warcraft have achieved the ultimate fantasy design and are continuing to evolve their ideas with future expansions.
Influence Map 2: My second lot of research focused on the bizarre world of Terry Pratchett's disc world. A world where everything rests on the back of a giant turtle floating through space and time. Cities resting on the back of huge six legged reptiles and human bastions representing the roman empire and the humanitarian side of fantasy archetypes.
Pratchett has managed to create a truly bizarre world that oozes charm and feels like it has an organic nature too it. His cities feel alive and in m cases like the turtle and the giant reptiles, they are.
As practice for this course I have reached out to a Youtuber called Nobbel87 who makes video game lore videos based around the "Warcraft" series. The idea is to recreate his character from World of Warcraft on my own style.
Now as someone who is new to digital drawing and painting I don't feel that my work is up to scratch compared to my more traditional pieces and I am definitely spending much more time and energy then I ever would have.
So although I am still in the process of finishing the piece I felt the need to share my progress with all of you and perhaps attain some feedback if that's okay with everyone. Ill gladly bring cookies to compensate.
I still need to tighten up a few of the details, add some clothing and colour but I feel that it isn't too bad, especially for someone who is incredibly new to the graphics tablet and drawing using photoshop.
During our first Photoshop tutorial we were introduced to 4 of Calvino's cities and were asked to create a series of quick thumbnails to try and in-vision the way we saw the cities.
I discovered during this day that I am not one for working quickly, I get angry quite frequently about the way my work looks and tend to spend way too long on smaller pieces. So I see the benefit of being made to create lots of very quick sketches as a way to loosen my hand up and get me churning out Ideas very quickly.
I still don't like working quickly, even after the session but I know see the idea behind them and will continue to practise and move forward with my ideas.
Starting off the movie program this year is the French Silent Film Le Voyage dans La lune made in 1902 directed by George Meilies, a French illusionist and filmmaker.
"Poster for Le Voyage Dans La Lune, 1902"
The poster that was released with the movie, really shows the effects that were available at the time this movie was created. You can really see how Meilies has used his knowledge of film making and his experience in illusion to create a world that would probably have looked realistic around the time. It's the same feeling we had when we watched films like Total Recall or Alien for the first time. The directors were able to use the levels of technology they had at the time to create these amazing worlds full of spectacular effects that still amaze people to this day. Whilst "Le Voyage Dans La Lune" wont amaze people now, it definitely has the charm and personality to make people laugh and become engrossed in the world that Meilies created. " a work of pure, playful imagination, a picture book fantasy brought to life" (Axmaker 2012) Whilst watching the Movie many of my colleagues and myself were laughing and becoming engaged in what was happening on the screen. Not because of the "amazing" effects, but the charm and charisma that is shown in the set design, costume's and direction.
"Mushroom cave under the surface of the moon, Le Voyage dans la lune, 1902)
"Scientist defends his ship from alien attacker, Le Voyage Dans La Lune,1902"
This Film definitely shows the beginning of the science fiction genre of movies,"Cinemas first Science Fiction story" (Shwartz, 2009). It has an outrageous story of a group of scientists who devise a way to fly to the moon and explore its vast, untainted land. Not so dissimilar to some of the Sci-fi movies we come up with today, only this was created because no one else had ever created something like it, whereas today. film makers are all about trying to tap into the nostalgia of older movies and TV shows to gain a larger audience, Meilies didn't have that opportunity yet made a piece that would impress. "The primitive silent landmark has more charm and originality than many modern CGI-cluttered epics" (Hall, 2004)
Le Voyage Dans La Lune is an enjoyable piece of classic film making that whilst wont leave you amazed by its visuals and screenplay, but it will capture your heart with its creative charm and ridiculous plot that defies modern physics and will leave you wanting more.
Using some of the thumbnails I have been producing over the day, I have come up with this quick design for the spider city, Octavia. I decided to take the idea of web's and spiders literally. Placing the city itself between a mountain range and having it coated in webs and walkways, in an attempt to give it a type of insidoud, foreboding feeling.
I still have some more to change but I felt that It would be best to get an early development shot up onto the blog as quickly as possible.
Another test with photoshop to try out some backgrounds for my final pieces in the coming weeks. I think it turned out quite well, what do you guys think?
Ill continue to experiment with different techniques and hopefully improve.
My first evening spent with my new tablet has been an incredibly fun experience. Learning how to mimic the same style I have in traditional forms is coming much easier now then it did during the tutorial this afternoon.
At first the brush strokes and the way lines are created digitally threw me off but once I sat back and ran through a few test images I was able to get the hang of it, leading to the creation of the this small character that I have uploaded.
It marks the return of an old character from my Final Project during the Foundation course I was a part of. During this course I came up with a female character who would become a central part too many of my sketches and bigger pieces. This character was known as my pig tail girl.
Here she Is. I welcome some criticism its always appreciated. I'm very knew to Photoshop and the tablet so I have probably made some silly errors.
I only coloured the hair for now as I wanted to see some reactions before I moved ahead and attempted the rest of her.
First day of the course that will consume the next three years of my life. First time using a drawing tablet and I can confidently say that it has already thrown me right off. I'm so used to traditional forms of art that using a digital medium is very jarring. It doesn't feel natural at all but I must persevere.
Too ease us into the new format we started with a few examples of different brush strokes that are available through photoshop and I can see just how useful they can be, especially to an environmental artist. There are so many ways to give items and objects huge amounts of texture and life that its quite amazing.
Then came the part of the tutorial that I am useless at, drawing quickly to produce thumbnails based on extractions. I have never been a fast drawer so trying to produce one small image a minute without focusing on any detail pains me. I love to be able to make highly detailed drawings and often sacrifice a lot of time to things that I really shouldn't. It's just the way I am.
However after a while I did start to get used to using the tablet and producing small drawings but I still have A long way too go.
Images of the work we completed in photoshop will be coming soon as will the write up on the Maya Tutorial that we also went through today.
Look at the lovely clean Blog.....Yeah I had hoped to have all of my Summer work uploaded onto here yesterday, however a rather major scanner malfunction has set me back a bit. I will be working to get the issue resolved and hopefully will be able to start uploading semi decent images of my work this evening or over the weekend.
Sorry to all of those who have come across this page and had there time wasted. I owe you all a cookie.
Here are a few examples of the work that I have finished there is much more to come soon.
Influence Map 4: This series of images is taken from the anime Kill la Kill, one of my favorite animes of all time. It continues the idea of a city built up in rings but achieves it with a more normalized design in some shots but making it look more menacing and twisted later on in the story to reflect the plot and how it progressively gets more and more insane and unimaginable. I love the art style that has been used in this anime for everything from the characters to the environments making changing the style to reflect the story at that point, moving from soft and light hearted to harsh and violent later on.
