I normally begin ideating in my sketchbooks. Digital art allows constant refinement the lack of refinement in sketchbooks encourages me to be free with my creative ideas.
I’m very inspired by the texture and shapes used to colour the Steven Universe backgrounds, as well as the ruff texture of the line art. I used photoshops textured pen brush to achieve a similar look.
For a while now I have wanted to try digital painting in photoshop so I used this assignment as an opportunity to experiment with textured brushes. I used Kyles Real oils for the gritty texture on the rocks, A Rough brush for the sand and a soft brush to add shine to the ice arc. This project has made me excited to study textures to help my illustrations come to life. If I were to revisit this piece I would try and create more contrast in tones for a greater sense of depth.
My new teammates and I greatly expanded on the previous groups work. Instead of a girl meeting various spirit fish that represent the stages of grief we made the representations take the form of different arctic animals this aloud for visual exploration of a diversity of biomes and the spirit realm acted as a goal. After losing her parents the main character (from a village that worships sky fish) meets a baby spirit whale who needs to find its way back to the spirit realm.The main character helps the whale in the hopes that she will find her parents in the spirit realm.
I enjoyed stylising the arctic fox and giving him a little artic Voll frained to scheme with. The girl’s design is made to reflect a fish with sleeves that fall like flippers and braided hair that ends like a tail. We decided that the people of this world worship spiritual fish, I drew seashell accessories to act as a cultural motif.
