LANDSCAPE CONCEPT (HAND-IN)

      This is by far my favourite task and piece for university that I've worked on. If I had to choose, environment art is definitely a route I'd like to explore further. I feel I could, and can, improve on my talents in this area - I really want to. Not that character or vehicle design bores me, it's just I like the idea of having an entire canvas to freely work on - the entire scene can become a character itself, and I love that.

After another hour of work, I finally finished my environment concept. It could still be improved, but I have no idea how to move forward with that - I need my tutor's criticism and advice. Regardless, I think I've done a good job and as I say, it's my favourite piece. Both it and I have come a long way since its basic line drawing, and I'm glad it changed the way it did. 

Have a look at the development .GIF below and the of course, the final concept.

COMMENTS AND CRITICISMS APPRECIATED!

CAVERN ENVIRONMENT CONCEPT - DEVELOPMENT .GIF
By Christian Whelan

CAVERN ENVIRONMENT CONCEPT
by Christian Whelan

    Don't get me wrong, it could be better. The foliage could be less cartoon like, the highlights could be more effective and the foreground could have a little more character and detail. However  compared to my usual standard of work, I think I've improved, and if there are any inconsistencies, I'm sure my tutor will highlight them so I can improve for future art.

I literally cannot wait to get this printed off on glossy paper. It's gonna look sexual. Yeayuh!

NEXT POST: STYLE MIXING: THE BRIEF

LANDSCAPE CONCEPT - PROGRESS 04/03/2013

        Spent a couple of hours refining some of the textures and making a drastic change with the colour palette. Rather than red, I opted for orange as a second lighting source. I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier, orange contrasts and compliments blue (the base colour for the scene). Red just doesn't fit in this vibrant scene any more. Finally, I've managed to capture some form of fantasy like atmosphere.

CAVERN ENVIRONMENT - IN PROGRESS
by Christian Whelan

 
Again, it's not finished, some of the lighting was placed to get an idea of its final positioning. I aim to carry this theme throughout the entire scene and add in some stalactite geometry (maybe?) to add depth and help define the lighting.

    A couple of additions have been made. I refined the grass texture, added in some vines (I hope to add in some moss), some water spray, water texture, further highlights and some bats on the horizon and within the cave. The bats will be great tool when coming to defining the scale of the scene with lighting.

    The idea was to have people residing within the cave, banished from a hostile world. There only methods of light is ember magic, the source of which was found within the cavern and harnessed when civilisation was forced to move underground. This scene captures their determination to venture outwards and far. 

It's just a case of adding in elements and refining everything within the scene now to ensure it's consistent and effective. Hopefully, by tomorrow, it should be done. There's no reason why it shouldn't be.

NEXT POST: LANDSCAPE CONCEPT (HAND-IN)

LANDSCAPE CONCEPT - PROGRESS 03/03/2013

         Not had much time today to make any progress on my environment concept, but I made some progress that has given me ideas on how to progress with this work. With my last progress update, I'd adopted a new style and direction and had a light attempt at executing it. Today, after two hours of work (whilst watching Scarface) I added in the sky, further lighting and highlights, a character silhouette, a moon, a second lighting source and some grass. Have a look at my progress below., again, nowhere near finished.

ENVIRONMENT CONCEPT - IN PROGRESS
By Christian Whelan

ENVIRONMENT PROGRESS - GIF
by Christian Whelan

      Honestly, I have no idea why my GIFs are so temperamental nowadays. Anyway, you can see how it has improved upon the last milestone. However, the grass needs finishing, the red lighting source needs to be used in the scene and finally, the cave needs some damn colour. It's looking way to black.

      Some notable things to mention are the sky, the grass and the silhouette. Developing the sky and primary lighting source was a real help. It let me understand the colours and direction of light in the scene, telling me I needed some more colour - the grass. The grass is something that helps frame the horizon and create a focal point for the scene. Adding in the green highlights is what accomplished that, but it still needs development - at the moment, the grass seems out of place. Finally I added the silhouette  This was an attempt to one, add some life into the scene, and two, to highlight the scale of the environment because this was (and still is) an issue. More work needs to be done on that using lighting.

          At the moment, I'm happy with it, but I need another pair of eyes to look at it so I can move forward, luckily I'm visits my mother tomorrow - I'm sure she'll be brutally honest.

NEXT POST: LANDSCAPE CONCEPT - PROGRESS 04/03/2013

LANDSCAPE CONCEPT: PROGRESS 02/03/2013

           Painting an environment challenges everything creatively - composition  perspective, lighting, scaling, colour etc. My normal methods to approach all the aforementioned are restricting, plus, everything just ends up looking too bold, too 2 dimensional and too cartoonish - crap. I had to rethink my approach to concept art as a whole and in result, it absolutely changed everything.

   Now, it inst even remotely finished yet, I'm still finding my feet, brainstorming ideas for lighting and colour pallets. But by challenging myself, my art seems to adopt a theme and dare I say it, character.  Normally, my work would use one lighting source, no complimentary colours, and always the same pallet - black and red. It was just boring!

I aim to leave my restricting comfort zone from now on. I want to;

• Stop being afraid of contrasting colours.
• Stop using white and black alone to light scenes.
• Develop my highlighting skills.
• Focus less on detail at the start of work. 

So, after looking at concept art and theory books to develop my understanding of concept art as a whole, I took my first step at applying it to my scene (below).

CAVERN ENVIRONMENT (BEFORE) - IN PROGRESS
by Christian Whelan

CAVERN ENVIRONMENT (AFTER) - IN PROGRESS
by Christian Whelan

   You can see the difference between the first image and the second. If I would of gone down my usual cartoon like route, It would of ended up looking like a blind baby drew it with crayons and glue.

    Like I said, vary early in it's development  The second red lighting source was just an attempt to get an idea of things, I'll rework that later. At the moment  I need to get in the basic lighting, then add highlights until finally, adding in the red light and refining the back drop. I'm actually exciting to see how this turns out.

NEXT POST: LANDSCAPE CONCEPT - PROGRESS 03/03/2013

LANDSCAPE CONCEPT: PROGRESS 01/03/2013

      I've always found the task of painting landscapes and environments daunting. It just seems like a huge task to craft a world using an entire canvas, not just a section of it! Maybe its the fact that the entire image has to be perfect for it to work, and my perfectionism along with my lack of experience cripples me when it comes to such a task. Anyhow, the tenth task at university is to draw a landscape using Manchester (or any other city) as inspiration.

    Well, after worrying about it, I threw myself into it in blind hope and for the most part, it turned out fine, but my intended perspective and scale went down the drain as it progressed, and I didn't like the way it way turning out, so I made some changes whilst envisioning the possible colour pallet of the environment.

Note: I have no idea why the GIF has a little panic attack on the last image. Every time 

I create it, it does the same thing. Maybe it's so terrible it doesn't want to look at it...

PERSPECTIVE WORK - PROGRESS GIF
by Christian Whelan

PERSPECTIVE WORK - IN PROGRESS
by Christian Whelan

       It looks pretty cartoon like at the moment, but once I've got the basic colours and lighting in, the lines will be removed so I can render it. Also, I want to add something into the scene that gives it more character - something that contrasts the generic cave's eventual colours. The structure far in the distance will do that, but I want the scene to carry two consistent themes.

    I have a tendency to start a fresh over and over again, only to look back at the old work an prefer it, then start again, and again and again. I end up hating everything I work on for some strange reason. Ah well, I'm just going to stick with this idea and see it though until I'm happy. When it comes to painting the scene, I'm going to research painting techniques, most notably in the Borderlands 2 art book and Mass Effect environment concepts. Whilst I'm at it, I'll watch a few speed paintings to see how they build a scene using colour (which I should of done to begin with).

NEXT POST: LANDSCAPE CONCEPT - PROGRESS 02/03/2013

TASK 9: VEHICLE AND DRIVER DESIGNS

         Long overdue blog post. But after developing the original silhouette designs for the vehicles, I asked friends and family which of the designs they preferred. Surprisingly, they chose the one I preferred, but the one I didn't think anyone would of liked. So fortunately for me I began to design that silhouette.

     Now, this vehicle was inspired by an early 40's car with the idea that when developed, it would be extremely patriotic in design (flags, american colours etc) and the driver would be am androgynous female american hero figure. However, as I started to develop the idea, I realised, that although it looked functional, it just wasn't an interesting. The top down view, of which I began with, inspired a new idea - a intimidating dragonfly design.

     However, this would render my patriotic concept useless. So, as I developed the vehicle I started to see a dragonfly and an eagle within the same silhouette. From that point, I had in mind a vertical police force vehicle (it's intimidating and patriotic) - one which can switch between a close quarters upright hover craft and a normal fighter jet. 

Note: the design below is it's upright position.

     With this police force idea in mind, the colours blue, white and red came to me (naturally), but considering its futuristic look, I decided to go with the robotic look which in turn, inspired the driver - a mass produced law enforcer that shared the same visual and physical characteristics as it's vehicle.

     In all, I'm really happy with the vehicle and character  I think the concept itself could be a little clearer on its orientation, but other than that, I like the concept behind it and the designs execution. I still have a lot of room to improve though. I'm trying.

COMMENTS AND CRITICISMS APPRECIATED!

THE ODREAGLE - VEHICLE DESIGN
by Christian Whelan

THE COMMANDMENT OFFICER - CHARACTER DESIGN
By Christian Whelan

       My next goals are to really plan out characters before I design them. I seem to just go with the flow when it comes to characters, resulting in a mixed bag that's just above average for the level I should be at. When vehicle designs are considered, I need to learn perspective because to be perfectly honest, the only reason there isn't a perspective view of the vehicle, is because I was too intimidated by the idea. Maybe next time.

    

 Most importantly, I need to practice at grey scaling, I've seen other student's vehicle designs and you can really see the jump in quality when it's used effectively to develop shape. Again, next time.

NEXT POST: TASK 10 - LANDSCAPE CONCEPT - PROGRESS 01/03/2013

TASK 9: FINAL VEHICLE SILHOUETTES

       Spent the last hour conjuring up some mindless silhouettes and developing them into inspired vehicle designs. So far I'm absolutely chuffed with the results, I've even started brainstorming some functionality ideas and even accompanying characters. Yes, a couple of the silhouettes are laughably horrific (the flying bird killing machine), but have a look at them anyway.

COMMENTS AND CRITICISMS APPRECIATED!

VEHICLE SILHOUETTES / DESIGNS
by Christian Whelan

     I tried my best to come up with a wide variety of ideas here, and as it turned out, most of them are inspired by some form of animal or insect. To me, this allows for some really wacky characters designs for the drivers that have to go along with the final vehicle. 
  
     My absolute favourite is hard to decide upon. My 'favourites' are the top right mole design, which is a cross between a bike, a tank and a construction vehicle; the top right fly inspired aircraft; the bottom right spider inspired chopper; the bottom left space ship inspired by a dolphin; the left hover drone and finally, the top left hovering 360 combat ball. So really, its a question of what I don't like (I tend to like my own stuff...).

I'll attend university tomorrow and get some further criticism or praise and make a judgment on that. It's really a question of which is the vehicle that is the most interesting, but the most plausible (at least that's what I believe). Of course, the character who drives it is also an important factor, but that can come afterwards.

NEXT POST: TASK 9: VEHICLE AND DRIVER DESIGNS

TASK 9: INITIAL VEHICLE IDEAS

     Never, have I drawn a vehicle in my life. Unless you count the firetrucks I designed when i was 3 years old, I can't say I'm that experienced. So, considering my next challenge is to design a selection of vehicles and choose one to polish, I can imagine this is going to be the hardest. So hard in fact, I had a 3 hour mind block and only came up with the basic (very basic) designs below.

VEHICLE DESIGNS - BASIC
by Christian Whelan

      Surprisingly, I only designs that use references, are the large construction vehicle and the red hover craft. The construction vehicle was inspired by a monster truck and a spider (Yes, I know it doesn't look like a spider, but it hasn't been finished) and the hovercraft was inspired by a the 40's vehicle (by the way, its backwards, because that how the shape came out).

These where drawn with my mind block not my mind, after 3 hours, I overcame it, and developed the rest of the design in the last 5 minutes. Funnily enough, these are my favourite. Generated through random shape blocking, I think they are varied, interesting and most importantly, really quick! I can't wait to get a few more ideas down!

NEXT POST: TASK 9: FINAL VEHICLE SILHOUETTES

REFERENCING PRACTICE

         Referencing images when developing artwork is frowned upon by many artists, regardless of this snobbery, our tutor decided to demonstrate fine line between 'copying', and 'referencing' when using an image as a baseline to help create your own - he then let us try. My terrible attempt is below.

REFERENCING PRACTICE ALIEN
By Christian WHelan

     It's one of my worst drawings to be honest, I rushed it and really wasn't invested in the pose (can't actually believe I'm blogging it to be honest). As a rule of thumb, the idea is take the reference image, lower the opacity level, copy the basic (very basic) muscle shape and structure, delete the image and start your drawing from there. As you can see, mine didn't turn out well. But it is effective to be honest, some of the other students did a fantastic job!

NEXT POST: TASK 8: WEAPONS AND ARMOUR (IN PROGRESS)