The idea my group has settled on is the Insect stand-off via nature documentary. I’m very excited for this idea and I see a lot of potential. I really enjoy the aesthetics and imagery of the American West and its associated genres so I’ll certainly have fun coming up with designs and ideas.
I started with some character concepts, thinking of how insects could be designed to pay homage to the Western Genre. For reference I used a lot of mid-century western illustrations which are always inspirational to me regardless of this assignment. I looked at the colours and accessories in particular for these two.
Retrospectively I failed to take into consideration the ‘no legs’ policy for character designs in this assignment, but going forward I’ll keep that in mind and try to work with it.
From my red bug design above came our working title ‘Red Bug Redemption’.
Now initially we had thought this could be set on some coastal area of western America, but ideating further as a group we discovered it might be best to abandon that. There would be too much to consider beyond the characters with the sea, the sand, trees and greenery etc- it felt as though we were headed towards too expansive an environment that would end up being impractical for this assignment.
We settled instead on a more iconic western setting amidst the lines of Monument Valley on the Arizona-Utah border where many notable western films were shot; Stagecoach (1939) for example, one of the most influential westerns of all time.
Besides the previously shown ‘Insect Stand off’ Pinterest board of mine, I had a Western board already under my belt that I’ve been using for reference and tailoring more so towards this assignment:
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/JoshG762/western/
As well as another which isn’t exclusively western themed but that I’ve been looking to for inspiration regardless:
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/JoshG762/illustration/