Reflection!

As the submission draws close, I am currently tidying and ensuring that my blog and portfolio are in order. This marks one of the last submissions i'll ever have at Abertay! It's been a ride. Looking back at the work i've produced this year, i'm a mixture of excitement, happiness and anxiety. When I began this research, I knew I wanted to produce concept art, for film, games, whoever would take it. From where I stand now, it seems that little bit more possible. Throughout the honours year, i've collated a pretty sizeable portfolio of work, and the brief chosen allowed me to explore many aspects of concept art, from blue-sky character sketches to high-polished environment art, concluding in my own published portfolio book, showing this process.

But enough about that, time to look over the project as a whole.
I believe my character design has improved in both a visual sense and a pipeline sense, meaning that i've improved in both creative abilities and scheduling. Each stage of iteration through the character design pipeline came faster than the last, and as I completed my project, I feel like I was at my peak ability, which is both something to be proud of and a curse, as I now look back at my earlier work and think "i could've done X or changed Y". But no matter, it just means i'm improving.

I think the pipeline is fairly clear, and the framework created throughout the project allowed for the interpretation and analysis of visual culture, which could then be applied to my own designs. As the document continues, I tried to steer further from the exact existing culture, creating my own concept designs imbued with this culture. 

Reflection on Character Designs

As a whole, I feel as though my character development skills have definitely increased since the beginning of this project. This may be a combination of multiple factors, such as improving my own visual library whilst analyzing all this visual culture data. 

 The characters weapons armour and apparel were all created with consideration to the analysed materials, and I tried to make their outfits seem as authentic as possible, as if they belonged to an existing culture. I decided to re-use the farmers hat in 2 designs, this decision was purely an aesthetic choice through iteration.

The textiles and patterns used in these concepts were lifted from the previously created pattern studies in order to imbue the clothing designs with visual culture. These designs were sourced from Han Dynasty textbooks and museum articles.

I tried to diversify these concepts after choosing them from a list of possibles, the rest of which were left at an earlier development stage. Each character design sports a different body type, as I tried to cover the spectrum of slim to muscular. Out of the designs, I believe the first design displayed here is the most effective. It's hard to tell whether or not this is due to my own visual preferences, or other factors like shading/detailing etc, but I do genuinely believe this character displays the strongest visual culture without it being too direct. I feel that the other 2 designs were strong, however I believe that they look a little to similar to the original culture, as opposed to generating a "brand new" one from the influence of another. 

One of the regrets I have as the submission draws near is the lack of full-colour character designs. This was just something i'd have liked to have included in the concept design document, but as I tried to focus on the true cultural designs behind the costumes, this became primary importance.

Final Image Process

This is the development process behind this particular final image. After consideration to a couple of the environment thumbnails, I combined 2 previous ideas. I liked the scale of image one, but the composition of the second thumbnail. I decided to try and create a valley of trees, as is prominent in modern depictions of Asiatic landscapes. Using the studies previously created from Bonsai and other familiarly structured flora, I set about creating this piece. The giant is dressed in a Hanfu, as previously researched. The oranges and purples used were inspired by the previous analysis of Tibetan monks, in co-ordination with the lush green natural environment. I'm fairly happy with this piece, there are a few things I would change for the future. The bright colour palette still seems a little too yellowed to me, but this is something weeks of staring at it has done. I'm happy with the scale created, and I feel as though the piece does ring slightly of a fantasy/Asiatic setting.

Above is one of the final images for my research project. I'm actually pretty proud of this. Also considering using part of it for the poster in the showcase. After analysing the designs of bonsai trees, and other flora native to Eastern Asia, I used the gained information to imbue this design with life, utilizing their colour palette too. In terms of success, I feel this piece was reasonably successful at incorporating the gathered visual culture information and displaying it as part of a concept art piece. 

Creating the Portfolio + Planning business cards

Creating the physical printed portfolio is an important end product to this research project. The layout and design of this particular aspect is not of highest importance in the grand scheme of things, however I still wanted a method of presenting the highest quality work produced throughout the research project.

As our display methods are limited to a PC monitor and an A2 poster, this book will allow me to physically display my work in more physical way. As well as these, I plan to print of some of the earlier development work to surround my plinth.

Once the final designs were settled on, I had to ensure each image was 300dpi, and the correct format for whichever printing method I decided on. (Blurb.com) Each file was resized and converted to jpg in order to correctly display. After testing how the images appeared on the preview prints, I fiddled with the levels, contrast and saturation of each image to ensure it would appear as intended when published. (Luckily, this didn't take ages as Blurb.com use a photo-style printing for true colour).
The designs were cropped and arranged in order to suit the format of the book. I have decided to print it landscape, as most of my images are suited to this dimension. I decided to keep the display portfolio simple and free from text. This was mostly because my images were all of varying size and dimensions, so I didn't want to clutter the book with unnecessary information. I'd like my practical work to speak for itself, free from additional font.

Above - laying out the images in Blurb

I decided to use one of the environment images as the cover for the book, cropped slightly in order to fit the page. I didn't want to put a huge amount of my time into making the portfolio book, as it was mainly the contents I was concerned with in this project. 

The image is a good precursor for what can be found within the book,, and I feel it creates a sense of atmosphere and wonder as the crop doesn't show the full, giant-including image. 

For the business cards, I chose the strongest 4 images from my portfolio, making sure to cover both characters and environment design in order to show off my work. 

For the back of the designs I decided that simpler was better, keeping it white with black text.

Rendered Character Pipeline

Creating costume-themed moodboards for visual research. I applied these to the existing character thumbnails i'd previously created, using the newly gained information to enhance the design of the character. This character started out fairly strong, but looking back i'm slightly unhappy with the finished look of the coloured sketch. I'm not sure if it's the flat background or just the shading I did but it sticks out for me. The colours chosen were referenced from previous studies into the costumes and clothing of the Han Dynasty, with this particular character wearing my stylized version of a Hanfu. 

With each set of character turnarounds, I tried to create a small variant in costume to allow for even more ideas to come through. This meant changing the outfit slightly, such as the image below where I removed the characters scarf and belt, whilst I made some design changes to the hanging parts of the silk robe.

Netflix's Marco Polo - Aesthetically Great, Historically Trash

Marco Polo is an American-made historical drama inspired by the great traveler Marco Polo, and his years in the service of Kublai Khan, ruler of the Mongol empire and founder of the Yuan Dynasty. Marco must learn the politics and culture of his new home, whilst his master strives to conquer the world in fire. Filmed in Kazakhstan, Malaysia and Venice, the series is aesthetically beautiful. Vast landscapes, sprawling deserts, and attentively detailed costumes are predominant throughout. More than $90 million was spent on more than 6,000 character costumes, and 15,000 accessories, in order to make the series believably 13th Century. The art direction relied on two costume designers, Timmy Yip (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) and Jo Korer (The Duchess), who were tasked with outfitting hundreds of actors in costumes that were to appear to have been made 800 years previous.

Marco Polo incorporates a huge plethora of visual cultures, spanning the stylistic regions of Venice, Mongolia and China, In order to accurately understand and depict these cultures, Yip extensively poured over museum exhibits, films, history documentation, often travelling to Venice in order to work alongside tailors and tradesmen creating the costumes. In order to fully comprehend the extent of the costume design, Yip had many discussions with historical specialists.
The costume design team went to excruciating lengths to ensure each actor was costumed uniquely in order to stand out on screen, being adorned with many necklaces, belts, jewellery and apparel.
The production used at least 7 different animal furs to design the array of costumes, with each character having their own visual style and colour palette. The armour designs used throughout the show clearly differentiate the ranks of each soldier, with the higher ranking more wealthy characters adorning more expensive patterned items.

The series received mixed, predominantly negative reviews. This seemed to be mostly timeline-concerned, as many argued that many of the events that occurred within the series were gathered from a wide array of time periods, and were collated together in a manner that appeared disjointed and clumsy. Other historical inaccuracies included the Mongol court speaking in English (as opposed to Persian), and that the series depicted the Mongol armies breaching the Great Wall of China, a feat which was never achieved in reality.
Despite negative reviews and historical inaccuracies, our study lies with Marco Polo's visual design, as opposed to it's plotline.

Lake Giant Process

Gathering visual information on existing Asiatic architecture, using analysed imagery composed from Avatar and Pandaria studies, as well as further analysis into Han Dynasty architecture.

These allowed me to visualize the structures within the compositions, and further understand how this information can be utilized to enhance the concept art being created.

Using these designs allowed the foreground of the rough thumbnail to be composed, and adding the Asiatic motifs to the background structure design made the piece more uniform in terms of cultural influence. I tried to create a composition which fitted within the realm of the fantasy-Asiatic visuals I had researched in the case studies previously.

Iterations were made, and the scale of the giant figure was thought over at length. As I began to detail the higher-rendered piece, I realised the characters had lost scale, and I re-shuffled the composition in order to regain the feel of the first variant. The colours used here are mostly muted greens, blues and reds, hues which commonly occur in stylized Asian landscapes. For the giant design, I used one of the previously made costume studies from the Avatar case study, manipulating it to create a strong silhouette against the background. 

I am fairly happy with the finished concept. As each piece was created, I became more comfortable with my own painting techniques whilst considering the use of cultural influence, and I feel that my work reflects this as the project continues. I tried to achieve a painterly-yet believable look, detailing the most important areas of the piece whilst allowing for imagination and the rest of the piece to speak for itself. The buildings in the background were referenced using the previously generated architectural concepts, utilizing the tall spires and sloping rooftops of Asiatic architecture. The flora used in the piece were referenced from the tree/nature moodboards made previously in the project. With this I was trying to replicate the rolling landscapes portrayed in Pandaria, whilst pushing my own ideas and concepts. 

The piece was cropped for use in business cards and portfolio display, mostly due to the unusually wide canvas size used. This wasn't a failing, more just an inconvenience for certain formats. I feel as though this crop still stands pretty strong as a standalone concept.