Week summary - 7

The final week for this project, I have also included some work from earlier in the unit that I had not posted yet.

Zbrush Work

Some screenshots of experiments made in Zbrush during workshop sessions. I'm still trying to get to grips with the programme, having only used Blender and Maya in the past, but I can already see how useful it could potentially be once I know my way around it.

Here I tried my hand at modelling my bug character from the first project.

Life Drawings

These drawings are from the two life drawing sessions we had during this unit. I've missed sessions like these immensely and I think I'm a little rusty, but slowly building myself back up. Life drawing is incredibly helpful to me in terms of understanding human anatomy and developing techniques, so I want to take advantage of these sessions as much as possible.

 First session:

Second session:

Tinderbox Project

The final parts of putting together the witch character for the tinderbox project. I finished up my iteration process with some sleeve designs, and then moved on to the model sheet.

Because the character's design is distinctly asymmetrical, I made sure to include multiple face views. As well as this I put a lot of effort into making the fabric look stressed, tattered and dirty, which I think ended up being very effective and really showed off what I was aiming for with this character.

Next came the thumbnails for the concept piece. I think it is much easier to make the character sheet before this because I then have something to reference. When sketching these thumbnails I tried to emphasise her vulnerability and sadness, and I wanted to make sure to include the komainu figure to firmly place the scene in Edo Japan, and decided to have it dominate the image, pushing the witch into the corner even though she is still the focus. Lighting, or lack of it, became a major consideration, and I used surrounding darkness in the final composition to show her loneliness and isolation.

Here is a process gif of the final painting. I started off in black and white to ensure a good range of values before painting over in colour. Initially, I only included one light source, but added a secondary one to pick out the detail on the far side of the statue. I made a few further changes after a tutorial, where it was pointed out that the overall tone of the image was very grey. In light of this, I coloured the light sources (firelight in this case) to bring in some warm tones. I think it really helped to bring the elements into a cohesive whole and soften the image.

This painting also brought home to me the importance of perspective grids, as in some areas I felt that the elements were not quite aligned with each other, as shown below. I like to make a lot of notes on my images as I work on them to remind me of things I need to change and improve, and this has worked very well for me so far. The red boxes in this case show where I felt the perspective was out of alignment; the face was much more square to the 'camera' than the rest of the body.

Below is the final painting, I'm very happy with overall the atmosphere and feel of it.

Finally, the character sheet. I pictured this character as being very reserved and aloof around people, but capable of a lot of anger. Inwardly, she is a very lonely character, and spends a lot of her time in sad contemplation. I tried to convey this through her body language, keeping it very defensive and introverted.

Overall I'm very happy with the work I've produced for this project and I'm starting to see improvement in my designs. I do think I could have gone into a lot more detail in places, such as accessories or fabric design, so this is something I can work towards in the next project.