CoP 3 Poster Updated

This is my updated CoP 3 poster with writing that links directly to my written element of the project. I took the feedback that I was given and added titles, descriptions and obviously my name to the poster which makes me feel that it is rather finished now. Overall I am happy with how it looks and think that it has a very postery feel to it but also enough writing for it to also be academic enough. For me though the focus on an interesting looking poster really is the visual appeal and thats what I decided to stick with in this.

PPP and Thought Bubble

So Thought Bubble for the second time was fun, I didnt have as much time as the first to look around at everything the event had to offer. I did though get my questionnaire results that I needed for research in my extended essay (dissertation) module. It was a fun event as usual and I think the cosplay adds to that a lot, you find yourself talking with complete strangers in bizarre costumes and its fine! The image directly below is the 'costume' I went in, casual Thor cosplay :D I actually managed to get money off at the door for this which completely made my day haha. The other images are from the event also which I managed to spend upwards of £100 which I think is not a lot considering the amount of stuff there actually is there to buy.

I think what I learned from this Thought Bubble is that I am nearly ready to start marketing myself the same way these artists do at this event, I showed my work to some people who I bought a poster from and they said why dont I have a stand myself, I do think I am almost at a standard of work to confidently market myself to the general public, its just making that last step.

CoP 3 Poster

We were all tasked with the making of a poster for the purposes of easily identifying what our CoP dissertation essay is about with others. I dont know if it was just me that thought a 'poster' is meant to be something that advertises a piece of media but in the most interesting way possible, a poster is meant to be eye catching and make the viewer want to look at and find out about what it is advertising, but from what I saw of the rest of DFGAs attempts at posters I began to think maybe Id done mine wrong, sure we were told to have an emphasis on writing but that contradicts what a poster essentially is, a picture sometimes accompanied by writing not writing maybe accompanied by pictures. 

Anyway I did this 'poster' as best and as interestingly as I thought I could selling a students 9000 word essay,  I knew that I would have to include some text and titles and things but the feedback we got on the day really solidified what I need to add and include to my 'poster' to finish it. 

I will be uploading a finished version of the poster with texts included soon, and overall think this was a good exercise as I like the look of my work all together which kind of sums it up in an interesting looking package.

CoP 3 Development 3

More and more development work! These are again all to do with my CoP 3 dissertation. The image below is based on the idea that a similar character archetype can be very varied while at the same time stay within the limits of what defines them as the Archetype they are. The rest of the images are environmental sketches which I discuss in my essay, the idea that environments and places can inform the appearance of an archetype was the focus of these pictures. 

Another focus in my essay was the idea that a certain character archetype has to fit the certain environment that it is in, the last image where the character is in a futuristic looking room with breathing aparatus on is a good example of this, a character from a different genre like a knight or a ninja or something medieval like that would look out of place in a space station or anything futuristic looking. 

CoP 3 Development 2

Some more of my development work related to the CoP 3 dissertation, these were primarily studies into the progression of a characters clothing in a narrative, which is part of my essay, it also touches upon the mental state of the character in each stage of clothing, trying to find if there is a link there at all. I feel that my essay goes in to waaaay more information about the work I have done in these images so I dont think I need to be writing anything more about them. 

A Break from CoP!

These are some of my personal pictures done in spare time between dissertation work and PPP stuff. I think at the time I did these, Thor 2: The Dark World came out it the cinema, of corse being a huge Thor fan I just had to draw something related. I think other than just being a fun distraction from serious work, I have learned a lot about digital painting, I know I have said this a lot over the 3 years on DFGA but I can actually start to see my improvement and it is quite encouraging. I have uploaded these images to other online art websites and will be using them in my portfolio probably at some point soon. 

CoP 3 Section of Written Work

So Ive been writing and researching a lot these past weeks, I managed to get a lot of practical work done over the winter holidays and so didnt have that much to do other than write about it, I thought it would be good to put part of my Essay up just to be able to see the progress I have made really. This section of writing is part of my second chapter which focuses on the Monomyth.

The 17 stages of Monomyth Campbell discusses will be compared to the 12 modern Archetypes based on Jung's studies and each will be categorised into the predetermined places Campbell's Monomyth describe. Firstly then one must acknowledge the 17 stages of Campbell's Monomyth, which can be found in Campbell, J (2004), The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 4th ed, Oxford: Princeton University Press, p34, and which are 'The Call to Adventure, Refusal of the Call, Supernatural Aid, The Crossing of the First Threshold, Belly of The Whale, The Road of Trials, The Meeting With the Goddess, Woman as Temptress, Atonement with the Father, Apotheosis, The Ultimate Boon, Refusal of the Return, The Magic Flight, Rescue from Without, The Crossing of the Return Threshold, Master of Two Worlds, and finally The Freedom to Live'. Now looking at the modern 12 Archetypes there are 'The Champion, Rebel, Magician, Explorer, Mentor, Innocent, Creator, Ruler, Caregiver, Lover, Everyman, and The Jester'. Finally linking some of the 17 stages of Monomyth with the 12 Archetypes, results based on Campbell's methods may look like this; The 'Call to Adventure' would involve the 'Champion', the 'Refusal of the Call' may involve the 'Magician', the 'Supernatural Aid' may involve the 'Creator', the 'Crossing of the Threshold' could involve either an enemy that needs to be overcome or maybe the 'Rebel' Archetype as a hindrance, this list of possible scenarios is endless in that while Monomyths can be similar in plotline, are never exactly the same and so can never fully be predicted using the Monomyth pattern. This brings into question, how can something with so many seeming endless variables  conform to a set of rules which limits it in such a way? A quote again from Campbell's book helps answer Campbell, J (2004), The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 4th ed, Oxford: Princeton University Press, p228 'The changes rung on the simple scale of the monomyth defy description. Many tales isolate and greatly enlarge upon one or two of the typical elements of the full cycle',  this explains how varied a Monomyth can be and is a disclaimer of sorts saying that a Monomyth will always entail certain events, but those events vary vastly from tale to tale. This begins to start sounding similar to the earlier quoted Jung in Jung, C (1964), Approaching the Unconscious, London. p57. 'nothing more than conscious representations; it would be absurd to assume that such variable representations could be inherited'.

I think the interesting thing about this dissertation, is how interesting I found the research to be, working on something personally interesting to me was clearly the way to go. I think that will be good advice for the future, do what you enjoy and everything seems to get easier.

CoP 3 Development 1

This is some work done for my CoP 3 dissertation, the work is for chapter 3 which is focused on silhouettes and defining a character through their silhouette. It is also looking at how a silhouette enhances an Archetype, through the ideas and shapes people associate on a silhouette.

The sketches were also meant to portray different Archetypes and explore why certain ones are definable as what they are, and why. 

CoP 3 Lecture 3

The notes I took on the Context of practice lecture 3. Now just to write 6000-9000 words

Old Over the Summer Work

Some stuff that I had forgotten about but I think are worth showing. At the start of the summer earlier in the year I made a few notes about what I wanted to achieve over the time we had off, I dont think I did quite as much as I would have liked in the aspect of achieving exactly what I had written that I wanted to do, but I am very pleased with the overall amount of work and progress I had made in total. Anyway here are just a few bits of work I had done and have recently found again.

Here is another speedpaint video showing how I do my pictures, I dont think there will be many more videos after this one as I recently bought a Mac Laptop and primarily use that to work on now and since the recording software I used to record these videos dont work on Mac I dont think I can afford to get a Mac version of recording software anytime soon.

CoP 3 Lecture 1

My CoP 3 lecture 1 notes, they have been helpful in preparing me for the vast organisation and focus of the dissertation project written aspect, which I will be getting fully underway with in the coming days. 

CoP 3 Proposal

This is my updated proposal form for the context of practice project I am working on at Uni now, it is basically the third year essay I need to write and will consist of about 7000-9000 words (woohoo). I decided I didnt want to let this essay be like the others in the sense that I would put it off for a while and not really want to do it unless I have to so I thought hard about what I could write about that really inspires me and that I find interesting. I came up with archetypes in games, I have always wanted to do some form of game art and specifically it has been game characters that I have connected with and which inspire me. 

With the proposal form completed I can get straight to work on initial sketches and ideas, this will all be going into my thought process work which I will reflect on and advance further with written research. I have been told to go out and get as many sources and research as possible before diving into the practical element of the dissertation but I think I will be fine doing a little bit of practical work first as I know how hard this module will be to motivate myself to work at and so I have to have a little bit of incentive to at least break into the workload and think that my work will work best for me. 

I think the proposal for explains what I want my project to be about fairly well and with it complete feel a lot better and ready for the bulk of the module. Now just to write 9000 words...

PPP Freelance Invoicing

http://enliighten.com/blog/freelance-basics-invoicing-with-billings/

So I have been spending my time usefully and looking up good ways to start professionally keeping track of any work I have or might have in the future, Daarken as usual did a really useful tutorial on how to use the Mac only program Billings, I have downloaded this and given it a go and think that it is good for what it does.

What it does is keeps a record in an easy to tell apart sort of graph that you can edit and update easily, it has split sections and timed sections and basically anything that you could perceive needing in an invoicing program.

I am glad that I found this as it is one less thing to worry about when going out in to the industry and am sure it will be a big help in the near future (Hopefully) :P

PPP3 Work over the summer

Over the summer I have worked on a few styles of digital painting that I want to advance in, I have been again looking at digital art tutorials online and have generally been keeping practice up. A few things I am quite happy with that I have recently started doing are portraits, I started doing them just for fun but then when a portrait I did of the actor Tom Hiddleston as Loki and it gathered a little bit of popularity on DeviantArt I decided to do a few more, some of which are below.

I have been a lot more active online the past few months as I have kept up with posting on DA and have even started up a few other accounts on sites like Twitter, Conceptartworld and CGHub. This really helps with keeping up to date with what new artists are doing to become recognised and makes it easier to understand what level I have to be at to break in to the industry. Anyway I am happy with the work I have done and feel that as long as I keep up my practice then Ive got a lot more to give than a few portraits :P.

Back Again!

So this will be my first post in 5 months and it has been quite a nice break but its now time to get back to work. Before the summer holidays we were told to research into some initial ideas that we might want to discuss in our dissertation but not dissertation? anyway I did do a little bit of research as I have eventually learned over the 3 years here that getting things done early is a must. I looked at character design books as well as a lot of game concept art books some of which I have bought specifically for the sake of this CoP module. I enjoy reading these sort of books anyway so it kind of felt like the research was too easy or I was sort of cheating, but I did get a lot of interesting points that I have noted down to further develop and research later. So I guess even though I feel like I havent done much I think I am well prepared for the CoP module and have more base research then I realiesed to start working with.

I also kept up with my practical work as I have been sketching as much as I could and still looking at tutorial videos and inspirational artists and work so on that front I feel I have been doing rather well. I have been working on portraits more than I usually do in my personal development but they seem to have more interest online than my other stuff. Heres one of the pics I have done in my own time, it was done on request for a woman in america so I guess it was a request / commission which I was happy about. I will be creating a separate blogpost discussing my PPP work in more detail for my summer work.

The second year of DFGA went so fast that I am a little worried the same will happen again, although this time I feel confident that I am up to the challenge as I managed just fine last year and want to tackle this coming year head on and put as much effort into it as possible.

Bring on DFGA 3rd year!

503 Finished Animatic Transmedia Element

Well here it is, my finished 503 trans media artefact. I tried to divide the workload of the project into an almost half and half, with all of the research and development as well as the artist studies and finished digital pictures into one half of it and the other being using all of the work I had done up to that point as the animatic half of it. This way I thought that I could explore them both almost at the same point whilst still keeping them sort of separate enough to count them as a trans media element. I think I did this rather well, the way I have converted my 503 project from one media to another was to use all of the still images that I had created in the 503 self directed side of the module and making them move and animate and tell a completely different story than the still images alone with no contextualisation do. In fact the still images tell almost no story at all by themselves and with just simple basic movements and and a little contextualisation the images seem to come to life, keep in mind of corse some of the fundimentals of film making to keep the piece interesting to the audience and visually stimulating.

It wasnt really very hard to come up with the trans media element of my project as from the start I knew I wanted to do a moving image sequence of the images I create during the project, I knew that I wanted to use After Effects more than I already had done as I find it to be a very versatile piece of software. The hard part for me was probably getting the initial workload of images done to start with, there would have been more dynamic story telling scenes in the piece if I had realised just how much work could be done in the time that we had, but am generally happy overall at how it all turned out in the end.

I guess the main aspect of the trans media of my project would be the simple change from stills to moving sequence, I liked exploring just how much you can do to a piece of video by just using a simple sound or a different kind of transition here and there, it is kind of like still images in a way where simple changes can effect the entire theme of a piece but with video it just seems to be much more noticeable.

The other form of trans media I was thinking about during the project was to try moving a little bit into 3D I thought that any character or piece of scenery from my images could easily be turned 3D and that would open a lot more possibilities to what could be done or told about the project then. I ended up sticking with the animatic as that was a suitable workload for me in the end but will probably try branching out it to all areas when looking at trans media aspects of a project again. A thought that I have only at the end of the project when there is not enough time left to do it would be to draw aspects of my world in a different type of drawing style, this would open possibilities to the characters being part of a kids show if the characters were cartoony and friendly looking enough, maybe be part of an IOS game if they were to be made pixelated and un detailed looking, and also part of 2D games or even magazines and book, the possibilities for making any characters trans media are endless but in the end I did choose going with an animatic which was I think just the right thing for me workload wise and it did challenge my skills artistically a good but not too much amount.

Battlescene Picture

This was one of the pictures I did that I was most happy with, I tried new methods of digital painting when I did this piece which are both very time efficient and easy to do when I knew how. I liked how the tonal value of the image stays nicely together and the only real changes are the differences in grey values. The image was done to be the last or near the end of the animatic composition, a kind of go out with a bang idea. I tried to finish with a good picture and start with a good picture, this is what we were told to do when presenting work and I thought it would work in a short animatic too which I think it did. Anyway probably my favourite picture of the module, enjoy!

Aaand Two More Landscape/Character Pictures

The pictures here are showing the city and characters that may appear in the city, the colours as well as the style of both pictures are made to be slightly similar. The reason for this is that from the start I knew that I wanted the guards or the authority in the city to be similar looking to the architecture of the buildings they protect, I would say that I have effectively implemented the styles together as they do look as if they are part of the same sort of concept. 

The above picture for me was another learning process as I used until now foreign concepts of drawing to me, I turned out really well but think that I need to work on my colouring a little bit more as it seems a bit lacking. Another thing I am getting better at is the perspective and distance in pictures, the bottom picture shows that by the character having his sword right up to the viewers perspective with a sort of dominating threatening kind of look which is another aspect I am getting better at which is dynamic posing.

In both pictures especially the top one I can say that I am getting happier with the way I work, but there is always room for improvement.

Character Designs Page 2

This was the last but by far the most fun character sheet to create, I did this using the thin lines trick I had learnt previously and found that more details and intricacy lead to a more interesting final composition. The reference images were a big part of what I think made this piece stand out and work, I took reference from related content and pictures like what I would like to be able to create. 

With this last design I had a simple description that I needed to bring out as much as possible, I think I could have done way more on the side of detail and time on this piece, I was a little pushed for time when on this 6th character and think I have learned to maybe bite off as much as I can chew next time. I did try a different approach to this concept than the others as I didnt create a line art step before moving on to the colours and shading, this is probably what made it look a little under detailed and out of contrast but I think it gets the point across enough for an initial concept art character design.

Character Designs Page 1

Here are the finished character sheet designs that I have done for three of the characters, I have finished the Thief Assassin character that Brad asked me to do. I am very happy with this design as I managed to get the variations in there relatively easy and successfully and feel that there is a real sense of variation in the three different designs at the top. I have added the process that I used to get to the finished product to show a little more of how I develop my work. 

One thing I had overlooked until this point is the presentation of the character sheets, these would do for simple blog post presentations but for presenting these designs on a website featuring artwork on the internet then a more refined version of a character sheet would be more appropriate. I will probably be doing this at some point over the summer as I have not uploaded them for the DA community to critique yet.

For this next character design, which is based on the character concept that Joel gave me, I enjoyed creating the character as I have done things similar to this before, the colours that I used I think were appropriate and brought out the right details and things I wanted the viewer to see. The pose I think is what I am most happy with in this design as it says a lot about the character before the details even come in to play. Overall I am happy with the picture but again think it needs to be presented on a nicer finalised character sheet to really make it shine.

This last character design is the character that Jess asked me to, she made the description and backstory for him as well as his name and thought of the colours of the clothes he would wear. I think I could have done a little better with this piece if I had spent more time on it, I think it was a good learning process as I have solidified in my mind the fact that I prefer to and create better drawings from artwork i start with thinner line drawings, this piece has helped me to learn as an artist and so am happy with it.

Another Two Landscape Pictures

Here are another two landscape picture that I have worked on over the course of this module, I initially intended for them to be just concept art images that I would use to create further developed sketches of with the characters being able to interact with and move around in, however the amount of time taken to draw this amount of concept art took long enough and as I think I have mentioned before with more time I could have developed more in depth illustrations on top of these initial placement shots and environments.

The below image only took an hour and 20 and is one of the last things I think I drew as part of this project. I am happy with the improvment in speed when creating these compositions as I have gotten a lot faster during this module than I even have all year. Anyway this is more the sort of thing I meant to be including in the story driven animatic because it has more of a close up personal touch to it but in the end I settled for what I had (which I was still fairly happy with) and did what I could with it. 

A Few Initial Sketches

So this was one of the first sketches I did in photoshop when I was first thinking about what the story of my project could be about, I did all of these even before I asked people or even thought of asking people what the character they want designing would be. This actually ended up informing my work a lot in the sense that the style of the armour is very unique and I ended up sticking with it when developing more of the cityscape sketches and the guard commander designs. 

Here I refined the character a little because I liked it so much, I tried to put him in more of a context and contrast as I thought it would be a little more interesting. I tried a grey dull kind of background to bring out the gold and colours in the knights armour. 

Here are two sketches I did very early on in the project and didnt develop any further as I went with other options. The crystal formation might have been a good picture to further develop and also the creature concept, I will be doing more of both of these in the summer and see what I can create with what I have left over from this project.

Two Of My Landscape Pictures

A quick sketch I did for the 503 project followed by the final developed piece which I have used in my transmedia animatic sequence. I like how easy it is to see the transition from the first one to the second one. I also tried to keep the colour range in the entire piece very similar as it helps to just keep the overall feel of the piece related to the colour I have used, for example the browns and dark yellows keep the composition looking very earthy and uninhabited which is the kind of look I was going for.

I also tried to keep the layers as organised as possible because I knew that I would be using them for the transmedia aspect of the module and would need to animate the different parts of the image individually and this can be very confusing to do if all of the layers are unorganised and mixed up with all the different layers overlapping and effecting each other.

Second 4 Character Sketches

 My brother was the one who decided the details of this character, he always likes to play as the assassin thief types in games and asked me to design a character that wears specific clothes and explained his personality and morals as well as the characters fighting styles and weapons, all of this gave me a good bases for designing the character and I think that the designs turned out so well because of the description I was given beforehand as well as the fact that I had many references to work from.

 The prisoner character was thought of by my friend pete who wrote the description in a narrative context, since pete writes books the description of the character was very dynamic and atmospheric and made me picture the environment and backstories of the character rather than the actual look of him. I do like how the character turned out but think I should have worked in my traditional greyscale colouring before adding the end colours as with the finished version of this character I only used colours to create the finished designs.

The commander character was really just my own character that I had been thinking about as I made all of the other designs, I wrote a backstory to add to the character just as I have done with all of the others and think that the end designs turned out rather well as they fit in well with the theme of the city that he is the guard commander of (golden and spikey looking).

The last character I was asked to design was the witch character from my friend Emma, when she was describing the character to me I could tell that she had not done nearly as much roleplaying in games and imaginary universes as I have but I worked with it and rounded off the edges of the character that I think stuck out a bit. I wrote a lot about the character and would like to develop her further in the future as I didn't actually do any more sketches for this one like I did the others, nevertheless I think the concept of the character is a big part of the story and will be doing more on all of this in the future.