Thursday 30 May 2013

Getting back on the graphics tablet thangg.

After handing in my essay at the start of the week I've been able to finally focus solely on my layout project (rejoice!), which also meant having to quickly reaquaint myself with my beloved graphics tablet that served me so well all the way back in my GCSEs and BTEC, really it's one of my oldest friends (techology-wise it is Paul McCartney - old but still great).. Anyway, turns out I had managed to forget some of it, and I did hit that I-can't-do-this wall a few hours ago, and it's only now (at 00:49am - now, friday morning (yikes)) that I've started to get back into the flow.

Anyway, after numerous "development" drafts and redrafts of my final idea I've final settled (I think) and started to paint it:

.. That's a little bit of it, still got a lotttt of work to do to make it less fluffy and blurry, but it's finally heading somewhere.. sort of.

Also, I'm excited because my parents will be in Bournemouth in less than 11 hours (eep!).

And also I'm currently dressed in my Totoro poncho that arrived earlier today..


.. And I'm currently feeling the bite of eating too much Nutella-spread-inside-Oreos, so sleep, what is sleep right now?

Toodles!

Sunday 26 May 2013

Essay week

So it's 1am, I've been sat up watching The Muppets and mooching through my awesome course mates blogs, and I kinda feel inspired to start making my blog more personal, not just the occasional badly drawn naked guy.

So I got to thinking, and I ended up doodling out how I thought this week would go and then how it actually went, I might start doing it more often, it's safe to say that if I'd done this week as I hoped I'd have saved myself a lot of stress and lack of sleep by the end of it. 



Saturday 25 May 2013

Developing my layout idea

The following pages from my sketchbook are taken from over the past month to the present as I ran with my favourite idea of the three - a dark castle where a guy cloned people - figuring out everything from what is going to be in my layout, to what angle and position the camera is going to be in.




On one of the pages in my initial sketches I painted a square and later went back and doodled a jar with an eye in it, I really liked the way to came out so I explored that some more. I also found myself hitting a wall with the layout and ended up forcing myself to look at all kinds of images (everything from HBO's Game of Thrones to Dreamworks Rise of the Guardians) to try get out of the rut - it worked. 


These were me going off on a serious tangent - I looked at a lot of the concept art in the art book for Dreamwork's Rise of the Guardians and fell absolutely in love with some of the really dark stuff - I love Santa's studio in it too! I showed my ideas to my housemate after and he pointed out how much it reminded him of the interior of the 2005 Tardis in Doctor Who.. Awesome, the Tardis designs looked really cool, but I wasn't sure that it was the direction I ultimately wanted to head in.


More explorations of where things would be placed and where the camera would be - Because there is a hole in the ceiling in the previous drawings I experimented with placing the camera above that space.



I love the cloning tanks and the figures in these two right-hand pages above. They're something I really want to refrain from sacrificing in my final layout if I can help it.


I showed my ideas to one of my lecturers and we discussed that this guy who clones people would have a serious god-complex. He probably wouldn't be hiding in a cave experimenting on his subjects - instead he'd be working in a grand studio, something that resembled churches and biblical settings. So I had to start thinking about drawing big, not tiny little caves but big grand studios, with arches and huge windows - the chequered floor is something that everyone I have discussed my ideas with has said should stay, and it's seriously helping my create the illusion of perspective - so it remains.


More camera angle sketches, I really like the little doodle mid-left of the cloning tanks - I like the idea of them being the congregation to what this guy is doing in the distance.

Initial Layout ideas

Essay printed and ready to hand in - woo! So now I can start working on my artist studio layout (I've found I absolutely adore layout - particularly the thumbnailing and concept-y stuff so far).

So here are some pages from my Moleskine exploring several initial ideas after being given the brief :-)

A Frankenstein-esque castle, totally the wrong colour palette for what I was going for with this idea. these objects we supposed to be in extreme perspective, but I like to think my perspective improves tenfold as I draw and re-draw my ideas..


More dark castle type ideas, working on perspective slightly better in this one, definitely happier with the choice of colours.


A less concise and focused page from my sketchbook, I was toying with the idea of creating Roger's attic room from Disney's 101 Dalmatians, but I just wasn't feeling it too much. I hate that pink - hideously out of place.


An industrial  kitchen - This idea was one I really loved, figuring out how to mix golds and bronzes was a lot of fun, but I ended up getting bogged down with how much I wanted to base it off a French kitchen - I didn't want to just recreate a copy of a kitchen from Pixar's Ratatouille. Definitely going to keep it as an idea to explore more when I find the time over the summer.

Tuesday 7 May 2013

Travelling home for the weekend


Drawing people whilst sat on waiting for a train is fun, I especially loved the sassy guy holding his girlfriend's handbag and the elderly fella in his anorak, comb-over and bag hanging off one arm who posed for ages reading (both sides of) the timetable board right in front of me :-)