Hello and welcome to this short post describing the steps I took in preparation for the End of Year Show.

I was responsible for a large portion of the concept art for this project. During my time as a student at Ulster, and especially during our game development collaboration project last year, I found that I gravitated towards environmental and concept art. As a result, I was happy to commit myself to filling out entries for our Art Book, among other things.

Though we had strong ideas for our environment and house from the early days of the project (those being a barren wasteland and the house from Courage the Cowardly Dog), it was vital for us, as all artists do, to expand on them and experiment with numerous combinations.

Environment

Starting with the environment, the key aspect we agreed to retain was a sense of seclusion and harsh life conditions. This left me with a decent range of options, including Badlands, sandy deserts, stony/rocky deserts, shrublands or bald mountains.

First, I created a very quick and plain example of a bald mountain. This environment ticked all of our boxes, being mostly void of life and including a mountain for the spaceship to crash into. The main reason we didn’t proceed any further with this concept was due to it feeling quite disconnected from the alien theme. The majority of alien stories we have examined simply don’t take place in such environments, and it was imperative for us that our viewers retain these connections.

Reference

Next, I researched semi-arid deserts, sometimes known as semi-deserts or shrublands. This type of biome retains a balance much friendlier to both fauna and flora, often rich in patches of shrubs and occasional trees. Offering a careful balance between good visuals and a sense of isolation, this environment was a strong contender for our project. The issue arose while discussing the technical aspects, where we considered the potentially devastating drawbacks to our render times. Furthermore, experimenting with the creation and placement of these assets would take up a significant chunk of production time, especially considering the substantial size of the environment we were planning to create.

Reference

Finally, I arrived at the Badlands and the deserts. These biomes radiated the themes of seclusion and uninhibitedness (Try saying that 5 times). Having such a sturdy connection to our core themes and no apparent setbacks, they rapidly ascended to being our main choice.

I was quite happy to return to this environment as it reminded me of our project from first year, during which I met and worked alongside George and Dillon.

Though at first glance these environments may seem somewhat lazy and uninspired, I found that their general emptiness offers an ocean of possibilities for artistic expression and visual narrative.

From unique rock formations, through patches of vibrant greenery, to protruding bone formations and half-buried signs of civilization, the potential held within barren wastelands should not be ignored.

Reference

Houses

Moving on, I’d like to discuss our options for residence.

Wishing to retain a lot of resemblance to the house from ‘Courage the Cowardly Dog’, I narrowed my research to American-style ranch farms from the 19^th and 20^th century. As many of these farms have been abandoned or simply deteriorated with time, gathering reference images of creepy wooden houses like the one from Courage was a straightforward and painless task.

As with the environments, we identified key aspects to look out for. These include: an old house made out of wood, a wind turbine, no neighbouring residences.

I decided to include a wind turbine with each house, whether their reference images contained them or not. At this point, George had already made one, thus it felt natural to have them in all of the drawings for a better comparison.

Equally, I kept the surrounding areas equally plain, making sure the viewer’s attention is fully directed towards the house, creating a setting highly reminiscent of the one found in Courage.

Reference

Coming from an era where functionality ruled over external appearances, many of these houses or structures resembled one another. Where some may have found this frustrating and problematic, we found a perfect workaround.

Identifying the patterns and staying true to them allowed us to create and expand our own version of a ranch farmhouse without losing sight of its integral parts – thus expanding on its functionality with no additional cost to its themes and overall atmosphere. Through this, we were able to add a rather beat-up shed as well as an entire living room extension to the house.

 

Spaceships

Heading towards the sky, way past the planet’s orbit, I’d like to switch the focus to aliens, or more specifically their mode of transport.

Something I have already discussed in my previous post for the Major Project submission was the unanticipated difficulty that came with developing extraterrestrial assets for the spaceship. To no surprise, it was equally difficult to land on the right design for a spaceship, something that I’m sure George would agree with.

As the sci-fi genre grew and developed in rapid succession over the years, topics such as space vessels became far broader. Growing up, I remember many forms of media already having their own, unique takes on extra-terrestrial life and their vehicles, though many of them borrowed from each other in some ways. Today, it appears that there is no right or wrong way of depicting spaceships.

One might think that this is an equally unique opportunity as the one I discussed earlier with the untapped potential of desert landscapes. There’s one word that comes to my mind when trying to describe the difference – anchor. A desert is anchored, in that there are rules and aspects of it which remain true no matter what: high temperatures, scarce water, sand/rocks. Yet there is no real anchor to be found in sci-fi.

As a result, finding references and designing the perfect spaceship came as a staggering challenge. George, who was in charge of the 3D model of the ship, re-made that thing four times, from scratch, following feedback.

Though I haven’t designed the concept art for each one of these attempts, I will include the ones that I have.

Reference

Art Book Cover

Moving onto the penultimate topic, I set out to create concept art for the art book cover.

A common trope which you’ll be able to notice immediately is the use of the cosmos and character silhouettes. I focused on this with the intention of staying true to the theme of mystery and space, which are predominantly present at the start of the movie.

I became inspired by some online artwork and photography and firmly believed that this would be the best approach for our project.

Reference

Reference

I took note of the key aspects of these images, and in turn created a quick few concepts for the group to discuss.

The first concept in my mind had the most potential. The use of smoke to highlight character silhouettes on a starry background seemed like a great idea. It made a clear reference to the movie while retaining some mystery. Unfortunately, a crashed ship in the bottom left was perhaps a bit of a spoiler, thus I moved on.

The next two covers are very similar to the point where I’ll save us some time and discuss them together. Wanting to commit to the reference material, I decided to combine the images and then reverse the effect. The first concept has blurry silhouettes on a clear background while the second has the opposite.

While the first result appeared to stray from our desired effect, the second embraced it quite well. I was quite happy with it and curious to hear feedback from my teammates.

Ultimately, we decided to make our front cover in Blender using a combination of assets and environments from the project.

C.V.

Finally, I set out to update my C.V. which went through a few changes.

I opted for a similar template as the one I used for last year’s assignment, though I removed some colours and my photo, aiming for a clean, professional appearance.

I also made a list of projects I took part in during my time as a student, including the most recent Major Project.

Finally, my ‘Summary’ and ‘Strengths’ tabs received a much-needed update, both in terms of structure and context.

 

This concludes my post. I hope you, the reader, enjoyed my insight and journey throughout the Creative Futures assignment. I’d like to take this chance to wish you a great day!

Thanks for reading!