Tag: digital art


Dec
2020

Animation Character Design

categories: AAD010

Sketching Exercises-

Before drawing my character I drew out some different shapes and allowed myself to get used to drawing digitally. I drew out some basic lines and shapes to get used to both anatomy and drawing different types of lines accurately. I just used a basic pen tool to get the shapes and lines drawn out as I knew this is what id use when creating my character.

 

Flour Sack-

I wanted to make the flour sack have as much personality and possible, I wanted to do as many different attitudes and poses as I could think of in order to show the sack in as many lights as I could. I really love how he turned out I think he’s really cute. My favorite poses I did for the flour sack are defiantly the “sexy pose” and the “buns pose” I think they look very flirtatious and show off his personality well. I even included the death of the flour sacks cousin when he got made into a piece of bread.

Design Task-

I made some digital drawings of the three pictures that we were given. I fully intended in drawing all three as silhouette style portraits as you see with the first two, however I couldn’t get the image of a bear out of my head when looking at the third image. Therefore I decided to make him into a cute bear with a beard and scarf. I really love how the first two came out I think that by breaking up the stark black and white with some grey tones I was able to capture the likeness of both people much better. I think that I captured the likeness of all three, the first two obviously being a much more realistic approach and the third being a cute illustrative version of the man. I used a photoshop style application to draw out all three and I think I made the right decision with my software as it turned out how I would have liked it to.

 

Character Design Sheet-

Before deciding if my character’s face was done I tried out a few different options and that allowed me to come up with the final design. I played around with some different emotions too as I didn’t know which expression would suit her the best, although after playing around a little I decided on pretty neutral expressions as I thought that they worked the best.

 

My Character (Final designs)-

When I was designing my character I knew that I wanted to have a Japanese animated style, however I still wanted to create a character that would be individual and stand out from the conventional animation. I began to think what kind of character she would be and I came up with a back story equally as original as the character design. She is a space alien who took an interest with Earth, however she realised she has a strong hatred for men and wants to make Earth a woman only planet. In order to bled in with the humans she took on her human like form, although she did get confused with the male and female anatomy and she ended up with a male torso and female legs. I gave her a huge (but adorable) blade in order to take down all her foe.

The colour palette was super easy to decide on, I chose blue and pink as she is half man half woman in appearance and I thought that these gender stereotyped colours would help to convey that. They also give her another worldly feel as they are massively contrasting. I went for a space armor type shirt for her not only to relate back to the fact that she is an alien but also to show off her manly toned chest. I also gave her spacy type boots but made them feel super feminine with the heel. The bikini bottoms and thigh highs not only show off her feminine beauty but also act as a mean to allure men so they are distracted by her for long enough to strike them down. The headphones were an afterthought as I thought her head looked a little empty but I tried to make them look as intergalactic as possible.

The character design was an easy process after deciding on the backstory and I was able to outline her in one go without many decision changes. The only thing I changed were the tone of pink for the space suit top as I thought that the bright pink needed to be more spaced out so the baby pink helped a lot with that. I used a photoshop style application to draw her in as it for me was the easiest software to use and also the one I was most comfortable with.

After making the character I thought that it would be cool if she had some sort of power or finishing move to relate to her being from another world. I decided that she should eat her prey but I thought that in order to eat a human quickly a larger mouth would be needed. So I gave her the ability to open her stomach to reveal a huge monstrous mouth that can quickly eat up her prey. I wanted the mouth to combat her sweet appearance so I used a wolves mouth for reference when I was drawing it out. I love this addition to the drawing as I think it makes her character even more unique and special. With the addition of the mouth her name came easily to me “Monstrous Venus”. Venus is the planet associated with femininity therefore I think it relates well to the character and monstrous due to her huge mouth concealed under her manly toned abs.


Nov
2020

Graphic Design and Illustration

categories: AAD010

When considering the designs for my illustrations I wanted to keep both a consistent colour palette and a theme, of course the theme had to lapse in some places as it would have been difficult to incorporate anatomy in every sketch but I did where I could. The palette I landed on was a simple blue, red and grey selection, however after doing a few illustrations I found myself wanting to reach for black in place of the grey therefore I knew that replacing the grey with black when coming to my digital versions would have been a good choice. I spent longer on some of my sketches than others as I liked the word prompt better an example of this would be with the word rhythm where I did a surrealistic 70’s style illustration.

I created 12 digital variations of my initial sketches, I chose the sketches that I enjoyed the most as I felt that the more complex designs created would not only translate better but would be more enjoyable. I used a photoshop style application to create these digital renditions of my initial sketches. I changed the grey in my colour palette to black and refined all of the images so they would translate a lot more. Compared to other styles of illustration I am more interested by more detailed styles rather than that of bold typography and shapes, i much prefer a hand drawn approach to get a message across. Some of the most effective designs in my opinion would be Balance and Shape where I chose a less literal interpretation and focused on the idea of Ying and Yang and anatomy.

I made a simple video with inshot to display my digital images in a slideshow style. This was very simple to make and very effective for showing the images in a larger format.

Paper Versions of Illustrations-

I created paper versions of my illustrations with coloured sugar paper cut into the shapes that mimicked the digital designs. I had to simplify the designs and colour palette so I could make the designs readable and easy to recreate. I enjoy the colour palette simplified to just blue and red. I used a white card background to contrast the bright colours of the shapes. I think that the simplified shapes turned out well and look similar to the digital renditions. I really enjoy how the “shape” and “proportion” designs translated into the paper shapes.

Artist research (Pauline’s Class)-

Erin Aniker

Erin Aniker is an Illustrator and Designer based in London, UK who draws inspiration from her dual Turkish and British heritage, her love of Islamic art and patterns and the inclusive community she has grown up with in London. Her main focus in illustration is to portray community based art and art that showcases all types of women from different ethnic backgrounds. She draws much inspiration from 60s and 70s style posters and advertisements. Her work explores ideas around identity and community informed by her experiences of different communities, bolstered by her mixed parentage. Her work proudly speaks to a new generation who seek positive change for all. she states that “Though I had a creative upbringing, I had no direct links or connections to the art world or creative industries, at all. So, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I could find a job and create a career as an illustrator.” I really like her work for both its feminist message but also for its colour palette reminiscent of the 60s.

Marylou Faure

Specialising in character design, bold colours and graphic compositions, French Illustrator and Artist Marylou Faure aspires to create artwork that invokes joy with her cheeky and playful style. Her playful work is often recognised by a vibrant colour palette and quirky style. Since her move to London, she has since collaborated with global brands and agencies, providing illustration for a broad range of digital and print projects. Her character design, bold colours and hand-written typography are what give her the edge that allows her to have worked with brands such as Nike. Marylou aspires to create artwork that invokes joy with her cheeky and playful style. She expresses herself best when representing the female form and advocates equal rights for all. Above all, Marylou believes in using her skills for good and enjoys working on projects for a strong social or ethical cause. I really love the message of her art and the incorporation of the female form, her work is very pretty and feminine to me due to the use of colour and lack of harsh lines.

Video Research-

Izzy Wheels

Izzy wheels created by Ailbhe Keane is a range of interchangeable wheelchair wheel coverings designed by artists to help give people confined to a wheel chair a confidence boost and a sense of style and personalization over their wheelchair. Ailbhe thinks that it is important for wheel chair users to be able to change the way people perceive their wheel chair and how it should make it look more like a life changing and helpful lifeline rather than something associated with illness and old age. They target their designs too children, accident victims and sports players primarily and have even worked with the Paralympics. She wants to change how people see these in wheel chairs and thinks that having a more fashionable accessory and customizable wheel chair it will show it in a more fashionable light and help those with disabilities have more representation in mainstream media. she was inspired by her sister who used to struggle with the appearance of her wheelchair and wanted to have something that stood out just as much as what an outfit would. This is where the company began and it has grown to include thousands of designers and a wide clientele. I really love the work that she has done for the large community of wheelchair users, I think that showing less able bodied people in the mainstream media is of paramount importance so people can begin to associate wheelchairs with everyone and not see it as a negative or taboo subject, I think that having beautifully designed wheels for a chair would not only make the transition between being able bodied and wheelchair bound easier for some people I think that it would be something that would make the lifetime users feel like they can stand out as much as anyone else.

Punk Album Research-

I knew that I wanted to draw inspiration from arguably the post famous punk band in the world. They were some of the front liners in the anarchist movement. A lot of their style is based on a pop art and colourful approach to design. Their simple colour schemes and bold ransom note style lettering is something that I find visually striking. The sex pistols often adorned band members face with political statements and lyrics from their songs. Their unique style of albums is something that I wanted to recreate but with a non-punk song. It was Jamie Reid that created the iconic image for the sex pistols, he added ransom note lettering to Queen Elizabeth II also adding a safety pin through her nose and swastikas to her eyes. This was later deemed to be the most iconic image of the punk era yet the most controversial due to its anti-monarchist stance.

Album Cover (Initial ideas)-

when considering what kind of punk style album cover I wanted to create I decided upon making a non-punk song into something that had a punk aesthetic. I chose to do a single of one of my favorite songs from Bon Jovi “Runaway”. This song is heavily associated with the Netflix series Stranger Things which is why I chose the face of Eleven from the show to be on the front cover of this LP. I was looking at bands such as the sex pistols and The Clash fir inspiration for the album covers. The sex pistols used a lot of ransom style lettering especially over the faces of band members and political figures. I have always enjoyed the Punk style especially surrounding the music culture and I thought that it was something I wanted to convey well in my album. I noticed that the posters for the sex pistols had a very heavy pop art feel which is why I decided to go digital with my designs first so I could achieve something that resembled that pop feel. As you can see I spent a long time changing my designs in photoshop and playing around with the different colours and effects until I settled on the green, purple and blue colour scheme. I really love how it looks and couldn’t wait to draw it out including different techniques.

Paper Version-

These are my final versions of my album cover. I included the front, back and center image to show what it would look like on all sides. I drew out my final design and used a mixture of techniques and medias. I used markers and watercolour as a base layer and added coloured pencils over the top to try and capture the likeness of the character and the image that I had created. I also cut and tore pieces of paper and placed them along the eyes and negative space of the album cover. For me this was the element that would make it look the most like a punk album cover. For the back I applied similar techniques as the front to make it look consistent. I wanted to keep the album cover pretty plain as that is what a lot of punk album covers seemed to go for. For the center image I used the same design as the front cover but cropped it to just the face and the letters “Runaway” to keep the colour and design theme. I really enjoy how this turned out and I think I was able to achieve a punk style image out of a classic rock song.

 

Classical Painting research-

Frederick Sandys, was an English painter, illustrator and draughtsman, associated with the Pre-Raphaelites. He was known for his paintings of half-length figures of malicious sexually predatory women. In real life, as will be seen above although he did not seem to be in any awe of women. Sandys was a painstaking perfectionist in the execution of his oil paintings although he painted much less in oil as time progressed and tended to produce portraits in coloured chalks. This move was less of a loss than it seems, as many of the coloured chalk portraits are beautifully done. Whatever Sandys did, artistically he did well. I really admire his work for his unique representation of women and how he steers away from images of fragility when painting women. I can only assume that his art work would have caused controversy due to the female subjects looking so angered and powerful.

Photography Task-

I was looking at different classical paintings However I was drawn to the birth of Venus. I thought that she stood out among other paintings of her era and I wanted to recreate the pose representing feminine beauty and fragility. I wanted to focus primarily on her face as I had limited resources and people to work with. I wanted to recreate the goddess of love’s position and facial expression but with a modern appearance. Obviously my makeup and piercings bring this image to a modern era but I really enjoy that about it. The fact that creating a similar position, mood and setting as this painting allowed me to bring it into a modern viewing by just looking like myself. Of course beauty is ever changing this is why I wanted to reimagine this painting in a modern setting showing how far the beauty standards and trends have taken us both artistically and visually. I tried to recreate the curls in the picture and I think that my golden blonde hair makes for a good match for hers.

The second image that I wanted to recreate was Love’s shadow by Frederick Sandys which was modelled for him by him wife. The artists main feature of his paintings were both female sexuality and hair. He admired the beauty of long female hair particularly that of red and golden hues, this being a reason I wanted to use this painting as I feel that I have big enough hair to mimic that of the women in the painting. This one was fun to recreate as I took the images in a video biting the roses and trying to look aggressive yet keep my face as pretty as possible while doing so, I ca imagine that this is how it was modelled for him and therefore I felt that taking a video would have been easier than taking individual images. I took this still from the image as I felt that this was the best replica for the painting. I think that I was able to bring a modern adaptation to the image, once again my appearance will look more modern than that of the painting due to my piercings but I think that I like it even more this way.

With the third image I wanted to recreate The Lovers II painting which shows two lovers kissing through veils. The image is really pretty to me and I asked my parents to recreate it. I put a black and white filter over the image to try and replicate the colours. I used pillow cases to black out the faces and replicate the material look of the original. This painting translates quite well as its hard to put a time to it like the others so getting a similar look was pretty effortless.

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