Recent things i've made:

Some environment/composition thumbnails, inspired by James Paick and Daarken's Gumroad Tutorials

The above sketches were made referencing the pattern designs of maori and innuit cultures.

Apocalypto Film Breakdown

Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto" takes place in pre-Columbian America, with the fall of the Mayan empire. This movie (and Mel Gibson) is notorious for it's "bending" of factual and historical evidence in order to sell visuals and plot. For this study however, I was mainly looking at how Gibson used elements of Mayan culture to influence the aesthetic of the movie and create depth. I won't sit here and describe to you the plot in long detail, as it isn't my aim here. My goal here is to define a few particularly strong ways in which Mel Gibson and his art direction team can imbue the Mayan culture, and how these techniques add depth and story telling to each scene.

Physical Character Influence

The film opens to a tribe of Mayan warriors hunting in the Mesoamerican rainforest.

These 4 characters are considered the protagonists of the movie, as they struggle against rival tribes and the dangers of the forest around them. Straight away the audience knows this is a collective tribe through visual cues: all the members have long, dark hair all worn in a similar fashion. The materials used in the tribesman's necklaces and body jewellery are all of similar origin, and look to be local materials such as bone, wood and plant strains. Looking closely, the tribe all have similar body scarification on their upper abdomen too. This is a good yet silent indication that all these characters belong to the same tribe, a point which is pretty important to the narrative, as the film features hundreds of native american and Mayan actors, so it is a strong feature that helps the viewer tell each character/tribe apart.

This is the opposing tribe. Note the drastically different hairstyles, bold facial modifications and surlier dispositions. The audience sees this tribe and thinks "these guys mean business".

This tribe has bold chest tattoos, mainly strong geometric pieces (as were popular in Mayan times).

Their facial/ear jewellery is harsher, with larger stretched ears mostly made from bone. The use of more bone on these characters injects connotations of hostility and creates an ideology of threat.

We see the bone, we think "oh damn son what did he kill to get that".

Clothing comparison

Above: Material Studies

24/09/15 - Meeting with Ryan

Today I met with Ryan Locke to discuss the ideas and thoughts I had for my project. I explained how I wanted to create a strong portfolio piece, predominantly 2D concept art/visual development for film and games. I also explained how I was interested in different visual cultures and how they were used in current film/games. We discussed how a lot of cultural overlap happens without the viewer even noticing, and how it is used to create depth and help build a world.
An alien bar scene would seem bland without prethought to the worlds that each alien belongs to, and dressing them accordingly. Adding symbols and glyphs invented or borrowed from other cultures has been used throughout entertainment history, with most movies paying homage or referencing to other, older movies pretty much all the time. I found through experimenting with patterns and layers, I could add depth to silhouetted characters almost instantly.

So combined with my drive to produce concept art and my interest of cultural influence, I have composed a bunch of questions to do with my project:

• How does cultural influence improve depth within concept art?
• What IS culture?
• How is a culture defined?
• What is it that we as the viewer recognise as "culture" within a piece of art/concept/scene
• Which cultural traditions and visual iconographies are most present in current media (film/games)
• How does one "build" a culture in order to create character/world concepts?

What is culture? - A definition

Culture can be defined in a hundred ways, and my aim is to narrow this down to the barest of ideas and learn to build it back up from there. When I think of culture, I imagine textiles, patterns and dress. I imagine being able to look at something, whether that is a place or a person or a vehicle, and know it's history or location of origin by aesthetic alone. This is my own visual bias. Culture is more of what makes up a group of people, not singularly how they look. Culture forms from a group of people, and their traditions, religions, beliefs.

According to an article by Livescience, culture is the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people. This is defined by language, religion, attire, music, art, and everything else that makes up a "people". We can see this in modern day. As many different cultures emigrate from their homes and travel across the globe, larger countries become more culturally diverse. Even in Dundee, I see different ethnic groups, different collections of people. Each of these groups belong to and possess a "culture" that makes up who they are. This culture is past, present and future.

My goal currently is to properly refine and categorise all the aspects of what makes a "culture", and to create a list of subcategories that I can investigate in detail.

OpenCulture Star Wars Article

So today I encountered this article whilst searching the internet for articles and books on culture inspiration in film/games. Immediately I was intrigued to discover that the Star Wars series was directly inspired by Japanese samurai!
I learned that the series of movies were directly inspired by the Japanese movies being produced in the 1950-60's by director Akira Kurosawa.
Kurosawa was famous for taking inspiration from American westerns and detective movies to tell stories of Japanese samurai. In his prime, Kurosawa had wanted to produce western-style movies in Japanese theatre. At this time, Japan was at war with multiple countries, and had a heavy censorship on media release. Kurosawa was only able to release his films if they were heavily injected with war propaganda. It was only after the war that Kurosawa was finally able to release the western-styled movies that he had originally wanted to create.
His film Rashumon was suggested to be entered into the runnings for Venice Film Festival, which it won. After this, the film industry became obsessed with Japanese movies and a boom of samurai and Japanese romance films flooded the theatres. This influx of japanese movies inspired young film producer George Lucas to make a "space opera" about samurai in space.

Physical Resemblance

Darth Vader and the Stormtroopers are both modeled to look like Samurai armour. The helmet shape is the most obvious, with the large sweeping rim a direct inspiration from traditional Japanese helmets.

Above: Some notes I made on stormtrooper/samurai armour comparison. Note the layered segments and bell-shaped helmet.

Above: Basic shape armour breakdown and comparison. 

Lightsabers are samurai swords, this is a given.

Character design/attributes

(additional top knot added)

Above: These characters and this scene are inspired from 2 wandering peasant characters from Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress".

This is more character inspiration that visual, but even Kurosawa's use of a large character against a smaller one echoes R2-D2 and C3PO.

I painted over an image of a sandtrooper to demonstrate how easily the imperial armour could translate into Japanese samurai armour.

Textile Research

This week i've been reading Sheila Paine's Embroidered Textiles. This is a large collection of stitch, pattern and other media depicting various eras of history and culture. It provides a wide array of images and technical explanations, often providing the history and function of each item. Traditional outfits like the Japanese Kimono and Native American dress are covered as well as Turkish robes, Chinese dress and more. This book has provided a useful insight into the different designs and purposes of historical wear, as well as specific guides on pattern and colours for each time period.

Above: Front cover of newest reference book!

I used this book as reference to paint some pattern studies. I found these useful not only for practice but to later use as texture overlays in concepts. To create these, I used a variety of photoshop brushes to try and replicate the traditional patters.

I used the textures as overlays to add detail and motif's to base character silhouettes. This created an interesting layer of depth and provided strong inspiration for clothing details and colour pallettes. 

To create these, I placed each texture in a variety of ways and played with Photoshop's layer settings until I felt the image felt right. After this I painted additional details using these as a template. These designs were mostly Indian inspired, with some Scandinavian geometry thrown in.

I am very happy with these results. I feel that the addition of the patterned textures have greatly added depth to the silhouettes, and from this point I can take the forms further, using light and form to further build on the characters. These were sketched with Jack the Giant Killer in mind, as I tried to incorporate different Asian cultures whilst keeping with a "lone hero giant killer" idea.

Today with Lynn we were tasked with creating a "jellyfish" (essentially a very open mind map).
This involved asking ourselves questions based on our project, and writing them down.
Initially I found this difficult as I wasn't entirely sure what sort of questions to be asking,
But after some discussion I managed to fill the page. After this, the questions were sorted into themes, Personal, Industy, Technical etc.

Little messy (this was advised) but the main questions I got of this are:

Technical = How do I make my concept pipeline(s) more efficient and consistent
                    How to keep my art style consistent throughout character/environment/comp
                    How do I achieve a more balanced colour pallette?
                    How do I generate multiple usable outcomes from a concept?

Personal =  How do I make myself more employable?
                   How do I justify all this with a question?

Theoretical = How can I create new and inspiring concepts using a previously established theme?
                       How to research traditional cultures and incorporate this into my designs?
                 

Stuff i've been working on!

Some recent sketches/pieces i've been working on, taking into consideration my "character" pinterest board, using lots of dynasty-era asian clothing and armour as inspiration. This is mostly just to get myself back into the swing of character design whilst I wait to speak to a lecturer!

Jack the Giant Killer - Adaptation

A lot of people know this tale, or at least the latest retelling of it.

The original Jack and the giants story dates back to the early 18th century, where Jack was a commonly used character in puppet shows, depicted as a cunning young man who frequently outsmarted multiple-headed giants with ease and finesse.

This simple plot device was remade, republished and refreshed throughout the 18th century, with instances of Jack and Giants cropping up with nearly every new edition of children books. It is speculated that the public had grown weary of tales of King Arthur, the original giant slayer, and Jack was created as a new entity to depict these stories.

 Jack is renown for slaying specifically British giants, most of which resembled giant hairy men, often with multiple heads.




I would like to reinvent this story, drawing inspiration from other cultures and pulling Jack away from traditional British folklore.
As I said in a previous post, British armour and weaponry is not particularly interesting to me, and I would love to completely turn this tale on it's head. 
(see image on left, hehe)

Pinterest Research!

I've been using Pinterest to quickly collect lots of reference on characters, creatures and composition pieces that inspire me for this project. These ideas are still loose as I have yet to discuss my plans with a module tutor!

These boards can all be found at https://uk.pinterest.com/cthulew/

More inspiration!

I've always had a love for the clothing and armour of other cultures/time periods.
In particular, I have been looking at traditional clothing from Dynasty era, Tibet and other parts of central Asia. These designs appeal to me over traditional fantasy armour, which is usually based on English knighthood wear. Don't get me wrong, I like fantasy knights in shiny armour as much as the next guy, but to me the nomadic approach is a much subtler and aesthetically more pleasing.

These traditional outfits are bright and colourful, featuring many interesting layer combinations that I wouldn't have normally considered when suiting a character. I would very much like to incorporate these kind of outfits in my project. 

(above)

The asymmetry of the shoulder/arms is a really interesting concept here.

The hood/shawls here are intriguing, and steer away from the "armour" look.
I feel that my character(s) should be more suited for travel than defense.

11/09/15 - New thoughts and planning!

A base idea is forming! I'm thinking of doing a Visual Development project/book based on either an existing fairy/folk tale or creating my own world entirely.
Last year for Computer Arts Practice, I tasked myself to create a species as a world building/character design challenge to myself. I was fairly happy with the results, but I noticed that I quickly became disinterested creating the same style of characters over and over. The project was also limited by my own imagination, as I had tried to create these species and characters completely from scratch.
I've noticed a lot of my stronger concept/design pieces come from projects with an existing narrative or idea to sort of "kick off" the design process. This is probably a more realistic approach to concept design, as industry work seldom has artists creating concepts from their own imagination entirely. 

I also feel that having a full printed art book would be a great portfolio piece as well as a leearn

I've been looking through folklore tales, using Goodreads.com or Wikipedia to try and inspire some concepts. One that stuck out to me was Jack the Giant Killer. (the grimm tale, not the movie).

This immediately stood out for me. Just reading the title, my mind began creating concepts and images of huge, towering creatures in sprawling landscapes, being faced by a lone hero. 

This resonates with my love of the game Shadow of the Colossus, a game where a single human takes on 16 giant creatures, each one drastically different from the last. 

Some inspiring Shadow Of the Colossus screenshots/art

Another inspiring set of designs is FromSoftware's Bloodborne. This game features a plethora of giant creatures and disgusting, otherworldly concept designs.
I am particularly a fan of the gore/grotesque creatures in this game, as well as it's predecessor, Dark Souls.

Below are some character concepts also from Bloodborne and Dark souls.

I really like this style of concept painting, where the characters still look illustrative and painterly, yet show a full armour concept that makes sense to the viewer.

09/09/15 - Things I like/Things that are inspiring me at the moment!

Our lecture today further explained what was to be expected this year, more about what to think about when coming up with a proposal. It was a relief getting all this information so quickly, as I can immediately begin researching!

The last few days I've been pouring over my collection of art books and reference materials, thinking of what I would like out of this year, and the best way to achieve this. My personal goal this year is to produce something that I can use as a porfolio piece to ideally make me a desirable candidate for work in the film/games industry after university. 

One of the most inspiring pieces of research I've come across is The Skillful Huntsman, a visual development book based loosely on a Brother's Grimm tale. This book is a collaboration of 4 concept artists, and shows the various stages of concept design and visualization.

This book is one of my primary sources of inspiration, in both aesthetic and pipeline senses. The Skillful Huntsman demonstrates each and every stage of visual development, from thumbnail sketching to painted environmental renders. This is the kind of work I strive to produce.

First Entry! Decisions, decisions.

This will be my first entry as a 4th year Computer Arts student! Scary stuff.
Over summer, i've tried to build an image of where I want to be at the end of fourth year.
Number 1 on this list is being able to show off a portfolio that i'm proud of, and will hopefully secure me a job/internship/other opportunity that will take me further in my career and well, life!

My main problem as 4th year rolls around is the fear that i'm just not skilled enough to make it.
Throughout university, I have learned these things:

Digital Illustration/Concept Art - I like doing this, wish to improve and am proud of my work so far.

2D Character Design - I like doing this, and I want to get better at this.

2D Environment Design - I like doing this, I want to get better at this.

3D Environment Design - I enjoy this from an illustrative view, I create an environment for engine in 3rd year, this was a good experience and I learned a lot, but I really struggled at the technical side of modelling.

Now i'm faced with the decision whether to work into the things I'm less skilled at, to try and give myself a good "all rounder" portfolio, or to focus on 2D art and really polish my strongest skills.

This is a tough one. 

Putting all my eggs in the 2D basket could prove too narrow a scope for this project (i'm yet to discuss any of this with any lecturers/tutors). However, being novice in all things wouldn't give me a portfolio i'd truly be proud of. 

On top of this, I must come up with a question to answer/discuss with my project.

I'm leaning towards concept art/illustration, due to a few things:

• 2D art is my strong suite. I'm most passionate and learned in this realm.
• Following this would allow multiple paths for the future, concept art, illustration, visual development. This is what steered me away from 3D and programming-based roles, as I feel like 4th year is more about becoming professional in a specific field(s), as opposed to trying to become "acceptable" at all/most fields.

 Problem with this:

• Many times throughout my education at Abertay, I have been dissuaded from "chasing the concept art dream". I can understand this, as 2D concept art is a narrow field and being a professional in only this realm may limit my hireability.