12 // Exterior Environment - The Land of Smoking Skies

Here's the final paintover of the greyscale environment I had previously selected to represent the Land of Smoking Skies environment.

Unfortunately, I was unable to get anywhere near as much time as I would have liked to have spent studying the necessary techniques to produce a high-level, detailed illustration, so I opted to resort to what techniques I knew in order to get this piece to some kind of completion.

I'm not entirely happy with the end result, but it will have to do for now.

11 // Interior Set Design

For the second part of the project assignment - interior set design - I planned on producing a design for the bath house scene, where the character Robin is washed by her captors.

The bath house is located within Bahaara's Temple of Dreams, the location of the bad guy's stronghold.

In the Death Dealer book there isn't too much of a description for this environment, so I figured I had a bit of free reign here. My initial research came from a quick Google search of temples and church interiors. After a glimpse of some of the resulting images, I set to designing my own environment, choosing to not rely on reference for this one. Rather, I tried to let my visual memory guide my design.

Although the brief states that this part of the project should be a line drawing, I decided to go ahead and use Google SketchUp to produce this image. In hindsight, this may have been the wrong choice to make as I might be marked down for not following the brief accurately. On the other hand, time was a deciding factor on my decision; although I could have drawn an image such as this - with some difficulty - I wanted to present as detailed a design as possible with the resources and time available to me. 

My focus was on creating a relatively simple design for the set, focusing on bold shapes and atmospheric lighting potential.

After rendering out the final image, I sketched in the 3 characters who would be present within the scene, to show their general placement on set.

10 // Camera Pan

Skipping ahead to part 3 of the project brief - "Design a scene which changes over three frames. This can be an arbitrary movement, a dramatic or action orientated scene, a camera movement, a mood change, etc." - I've chosen to present a 3-stage shot focusing on Gath (Death Dealer) stalking through his homeland, The Shades; a densely overgrown, dark forest full of danger and threat.

It was my intent to have the camera initially situated high in the trees, spotting Gath as he walks through the forest, partially masked by overhanging vines and leaves in the FG. From there, the camera will swoop down from the tree and skim along the forest floor before coming to rest at Gath's feet, looking up at him, silhouetted by the moonlight streaming in through the branches behind and overhead.

I chose to use plenty of strong foreground elements as silhouettes throughout each stage so as to emphasise the busy feel of this setting, both on the ground and within the treeline. I think I was fairly successful in this approach, and I feel it helps to add a claustrophobic, oppressive atmosphere.

I chose this kind of shot as a way to bring the viewer into the setting, presenting the environment and the character in one swoop. 

The perspective of each shot is important to achieve this effect; the first shot is 3-point perspective, with focus on catching a glimpse of Gath from above, with just a tease of the environment; the 2nd shot opens up the area for the viewer to see the depth of the forest by pulling them from the high tree and pulling them into the undergrowth, to sit level with the floor and see Gath a little closer in 1-point perspective; shot 3 is the final stage of the transition, by which point the camera has ended its swoop along the forest floor and now looks up to Gath's silhouette, slightly backlit for imposing purposes. The 3-point perspective of the 3rd shot mirrors that of the first in that the camera now looks up rather than down; this variation allows the viewer to see the forest from yet another angle - for variety - and also lets them know that Gath is a powerful figure.

My colour palette for this stage is relatively simple as it is a night-time scene, so plenty of blues are used for the cold shadows, with some green lights bringing a little colour variation.

It's worth noting that my inspiration for this shot came from a mood/inspiration/reference board I compiled, full of screengrabs from the original Predator movie.

09 // Back on the Wagon - part 2

Here are the final three thumbnails I'll be producing for the first illustration.

I feel I've captured the essence of each location well enough that whichever one I choose to go forward with, it shouldn't require too much extra effort to take it through the colouring stage into completion.

Within each of these I've tried to focus on getting the scale of the location to read as being massive and imposing, while also controlling the lighting in such a way that it adds to the drama of each shot. I've presented a different style of scenery for each, by altering the appearance of rocks and terrain, but when it comes to finalising one of the compositions, a little extra variety might be required here or there.

At this stage, I'm thinking the bottom option is the one I'll go through with, mainly for it having that little bit of added interest in the jutting rocks. 

After previously having had a brief study of lava-formed terrain, when it comes to rendering out each of the surfaces I'll make sure to include all the details of hardened lava throughout. I'll also be adding the towering volcano-home of Cobra to the far distant BG, further increasing the sense of depth and adding even more visual interest to the piece.

For colour palette choice, I intend to make it very dark across the rocks and mountains - grey-blues throughout - with accents of glowing orange-red mamga emanating from the cracks and holes in the ground. Dark smoke will also be added to the scene, to fit the author's description of the environment.

08 // Back on the Wagon - part 1

After a period of self analysis and relentless study, I've attacked this project with renewed vigour and have made major progress in the digital painting side of things.

For the first part of the project - to produce a piece of artwork that will portray an outdoor environment from the Death Dealer novel - I chose to focus on the area referred to as "The land of Smoking Skies". Cheesy.

So this place is described as being a land of active volcanoes from which black smoke arises, to hang in the air. James Silke scarcely describes the environment, but does make mention of black lava staircases leading into the largest of the volcanoes (the home of Cobra, the Queen of Serpents).

With this information, I set to sketching out some black and white thumbnails to get some kind of an idea for which direction I should steer this first illustration. 

My initial intent is to make good use of the widescreen format of feature films to present a grand-scale establishing shot, which will include barren landscapes interspersed with mountainous terrain. Due to the nature of the black and white imagery, I discovered that it can be quite difficult to portray lava oozing from the mountains without them looking like snow-covered crags, therefore the magma side of things will be left until the colouring stage.

My first greyscales are thus:

In order to produce these 6 images, I'd pretty much been studying environment art from scratch. I was still getting used to digital painting, finding myself becoming confused by the variety of techniques to improve workflow and efficiency. At first, I thought these 6 were decent enough to be taken further, though something bothered me about them and I couldn't quite put my finger on what the problem was.

After taking a day's break from the thumbs, I returned with fresh eyes. This time, I figured that two things were wrong with most of them: a) my technique sucked, and b) none of them really captured the sense of scale and depth which I was aiming for. Back to the drawing board.

After a longer break from Uni work than I would've liked, I focused on getting my technique established before returning to thumbnailing. I'm not especially great at digital painting, so in between lots of study of environment artwork and trying to get a grasp of the fundamentals, I set about getting more experience with the Wacom, and really streamlined my workflow. Increasing the efficiency of my process allowed me to learn faster than before.

Here are a few of the sketches I produced during that time. These show studies of rock formation, lighting, and general painting styles that I hope to utilise for the foreseeable future.

With my improved technique, I was now happy that I'd levelled up enough to go another round with the greyscale thumbnails.

07 // Environment Speedpainting Techniques

Over the past week or so, I've found a little bit of time between other projects to further enhance my environment speedpainting skills. Sticking to fundamentals, I generally focus on producing these paintings in black and white, limiting myself to 1 hour on each. I'm still finding that my skills are lacking, but I know the areas in which I need further study - mainly understanding the nuances of lighting, and rendering out materials enough that they read correctly.

Here are a few that I cooked up, with more images and details of my development process to follow soon.

Also, I'll be focusing on getting stuck into the initial thumbnailing process for the project very soon, so a few of those images will likely appear in a future post.

06 // Environment Illustration Analysis

I've selected three illustrations which I intend to analyse in order to better understand some of the thought processes and techniques that, when understood and applied, should allow me to produce better environment designs of my own. Some of these I already know, but from this recent study I've been made aware of several techniques that can help to steer the viewer from one part of an image to another, while providing a narrative that supports and enhances the illustration as a whole.

For the most part - at this stage - I've chosen to focus on videogame-related artwork. This shouldn't be detrimental to my choice of film design as a project category though, as the artwork generated for both fields are so similar in style, execution and grandeur as to be one and the same (especially for the Fantasy genre). If anything, I would say that focusing my attention towards game artwork would actually yield greater rewards, with the game industry definitely taking charge of the genre at this point in time.

In a later post I will turn my attention to artwork created specifically for the movie industry, but in the meantime, here are my studies of a few of my favourite pieces of environment artwork of late.

First up is an image by Juhani Jokinen, a concept artist working for RedLynx. This piece is a photo-bash environment that utilises several important fundamental skills for arranging the composition and leading the viewer through the design.

Next is a piece of concept artwork for Dragon Age: Inquisition. Similar to the last piece, the artist who created this image has a superb grasp of the fundamentals, yet pushes the piece even further, creating a narrative that flows throughout the scene. The image as a whole is rich in details, with a sense of grandeur that compels the viewer to spend a long time studying it.

Finally for this post, I have a piece of Sci-Fi concept artwork by the artist Stefan Morell. Despite being of a different genre than my intended focus, I've included this piece as it uses techniques that will benefit me in my creation of Fantasy environments; using 3-point perspective, he creates huge architectural designs whose scale are further emphasised by the use of atmospheric perspective. This in itself is a valuable lesson to learn. By applying this to my own scenes, I should be able to produce larger-than-life, epic structures within my own illustrations.

05 // Selecting a brief: Scene Design for Film - Death Dealer

It took a while, but I've finally decided upon the brief that I will tackle for this part of the course. After being stuck between choosing from so many exciting briefs, I eventually settled with "Concept Design 1; Scene Design for Film", my focus directed toward the Death Dealer series of books by James Silke.

The reason that this brief stood out to me is that as a kid, I was brought up on the Arnold Schwarzenegger Conan movies, so the fantasy genre has always been quite dear to my heart. In some ways, while the genre has blossomed in many different directions of late, I kinda miss the old ways - movies like Krull, Clash of the Titans, Sinbad, etc all had a real nice grasp of fantasy as being simply fantasy. Nowadays however, there's a need for fantasy storytelling to be grounded in some kind of reality - alternate or not. Things have to make sense and be explainable/believable for the audience to like it and/or agree with it. I get it, but I don't like that approach. I miss the old ways, where stuff just happened, regardless of it making much sense or being physically possible.

And so, upon hearing of the Death Dealer series, I knew this would be the right choice for me. Combined with environment design, I figure this brief will supply me with plenty of opportunity to enhance my skills in set design and digital painting, based around a subject that is sure to inspire me immensely.

My first task was to pick up a copy of the book. Through Amazon I managed to source out the first two novels; Prisoner of the Horned Helmet and Lords of Destruction. On my daily commute to Abertay, I'll read through both of these and pick out some key scenes that I think will be worth portraying.

As well as these books, my preliminary research will also include looking at shots from the Game of Thrones show and the more recent Conan movie.

Recommended by another tutor, I picked up a copy of Setting the Scene, a book that goes into great detail about the techniques and thought processes behind scene-building for animation, film and games. This could prove to be an invaluable resource when combined with all the other resources I have amassed of late. Oh, and not forgetting the art book for Naughty Dog's Uncharted 2 game, which has a heap of incredible concept and production images of environments that will provide serious inspiration for my own project.

Finally - for this segment - I will shortly be placing my order for some of Gnomon Workshop's educational videos. Most notable are a series of videos by Feng Zhu, which focus on his techniques for producing environment drawings and paintings for film and game production. I selected his videos over all the others as lately my style of artwork has tended towards linework driven, high detail, dynamic compositions, which is also a favored approach by Feng. It is an industry-recognised style that I intend to pursue for the foreseeable future, therefore it made sense for me to apply it to this project too.

04 // Live Drawing

This weeks task was something I definitely do not do enough of, but will be doing a lot more of in future. It may not be the easiest thing to head out and do; it can be a bit nerve-racking, leaving the comfort zone and drawing in public - especially whilst being scrutinized by passers-by - but it's pretty beneficial in that people when out in public tend to make some odd poses that you might never consider using when figure drawing. Therefore the study of hoomans in their natural habit can yield some pretty nice results. Plus it's good practice, which is never a bad thing.

So the first port of call was the exterior of the University building, where a throng of people gathered, milled about, wandered etc, making this a good spot to warm up with a few sketches/scribbles.

My choice of medium for this installment was a black ink brush pen. My reasoning for this choice was that I figured having the option to easily produce thin and broad strokes with a single implement would allow me to produce more variety in my mark-making, thus enhancing my ability to get more details down on paper in half the time. While the brush pen was definitely effective in achieving this, the nature of the pen makes it very difficult to control skinny lines, particularly when outside and trying to work effectively at speed.

Here are my first few efforts, including a couple from the interior of the library rotunda area.

All in all, not a bad first effort, give or take a few silly mistakes, and poor representations of the subject matter. Despite this, I definitely learned a thing or two from the exercise.

Following on from some post-sketching analysis, I decided that the brush pen was my main problem; its a tool I'm not entirely comfortable with at the moment, having not really put enough practice into yet. From what I've gathered, it excels in producing measured strokes, when time is plentiful enough to spare on ensuring that each mark is controlled enough to produce the desired results. In this case though, it resulted in too many accidents for me. 

Considering which approach to take on my next endeavour, I returned to using my fave pens: a 01 fineliner for rough layout, form seperation and tonal work, followed by a slightly thicker fineliner for silhouette linework. Happy days!! The speed was increased exponentially just by using my two favourite pens! Without having fear of uncontrollable lines, I was able to get shapes down quicker and more confidently, producing far better results than before.

Fuelled by this new-found confidence - and having a comfy seat within Dundee train station - I was able to quickly get a few sketches out within 10 mins. There is definitely improvement within this second pass...

03 // Tone and Shade

With this weeks assignment being to study an object and present an accurate depiction of its tone and shade, I set about with ballpoint pen and invested some time into discovering how successful I might be in applying the medium to this task. As is likely to be a running theme for some of this module, I fear that to a degree I was unsuccessful in my first attempt, though have leveled up a little in the time since.

Here's a snap-shot of the 2 objects I chose to draw in class; the vase presenting lighter tones, and the crumpled cone presenting a darker range.

My first sketches looked thus...

After spending a bit of time considering my self-critique and berating myself for making schoolboy errors, I came back for more punishment and produced this...

...but who was I kidding?? If anything, this was even further off the mark, soooooo after a swift crash-course in the technicalities of cross hatching, I got my ass in gear and knuckled down to produce a better result - albeit slightly watered down in terms of details.