This week, we had to study backgrounds from 3 different media properties and identify the perspective lines within the landscapes.
We also had to create 12 thumbnail sketches for the group project we are working on, which consists of creating a detailed and thought out world premise and engaging story that will take place in said world.
For my background studies, I chose backgrounds from Arriety, Howl’s Moving Castle and Steven Universe.
For the thumbnail sketches, we had to focus specifically on creating a sense of perspective within the images, while also keeping the composition in mind.![](https://blogs.ulster.ac.uk/jennifercaptain/files/2020/10/composition-thumbnails.png)
Our world is one of nuclear post-apocalyptic origins, where humans flee the Earth after their advancements in technology and energy get out of hand. This fall out results in drastic mutations of all life on the planet, allowing plants and creature alike to glow in the dark of night.
In the backdrop of this bioluminescent world, after an unidentified amount of time, an alien is sent down to Earth to analyse is habitability, and comes to find that some Humans had never left the planet and yet were still surviving on the toxic planet’s surface. Once the alien relays just how serious the pollution of the world is, they team up with a ragtag group of humans and robots to bring the Earth back to the way it was before.
Before this concept was solidified, our group hadn’t clearly decided on the main characters of the story, to which I created my own ‘human & dog duo’ for the sake of the thumbnails.
In particular for thumbnails 7 and 8, I took reference from traditional Japanese architecture, as that was one of the many ideas we were toying with at the time.
I am very happy with how these thumbnails turned out, and I received a lot of positive feedback during the next class. Concepts such as the android cities and traditional Japanese architecture are no longer a part of the final world concept, but were still very enjoyable to create for this task at the time.
I made sure to put down a 3×3 grid for all the thumbnails so that I could make informed compositional choices. I also made extra sure that I was pushing myself to create original and intriguing perspective shots. Overall, this task was a very informative experience, and I believe that I understand how to create landscapes with composition and perspective just a little bit more now.