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Final Reflection and Evaluation - Assignment 1.A

I am really happy with my progress on this assignment as I felt I was organised enough to give myself adequate time to complete all the tasks to the best of my ability. I found that the drawing activities and the procedural planning of each element before completing the final drawing, really helped me to think out my concepts so that they were complex and thoughtful rather than just being flat and one dimensional. At the start of this assignment, I was doubting my drawing abilities but I feel much more confident after knowing I have completed so many different drawings now. I found the feedback in my tutorial particularly encouraging, as it really gave me more confidence and clarity in what I was doing and what was expected of the task. Overall, I am really happy with my progress and the outcome of my final environment and final prop, as I think they are both visually appealing and will look interesting on screen.

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Final Prop Angles and Detail

I drew the prop digitally again, from a front, 3/4 and back angle to capture the overall look of the cane. I was initially going to also include a side view of the walking stick, but after completing these three views I thought it rather unnecessary because I had already established what the cane looked like from all angles. I then drew an additional close up shot of the detail so that the viewer could get a good sense of what the embossing on the handle looked like. I actually found the detail to be the easiest part of the cane as it was the most familiar element to me, based on my past artworks. I found the 3/4 angle to be the most challenging as it was slightly foreshortened at the top and I wanted to capture this perspective accurately, so it took a bit more time than the other two. Overall, I am really happy with how my prop turned out as I put a lot of work into it and I’m really looking forward to matching it up to my character designs in the future.

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Final Prop Concept and Structure

I decided to go for a classic, but ornate, walking stick design as my final prop. I drew out a rough sketch of the concept and structure, based on the above reference image, before I began to draw it in more detail. I think that this cane really fits with the Victorian theme I want to go for and will definitely add a lot of interest to my cinematic due to its level of detail. I’m not currently worried about drawing such high levels of detail and tone, as I find that is generally my strong point when I paint, so it shouldn’t prove to be too challenging.

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20 Prop Silhouettes

After learning that the prop had to be one from the original movie, as Patrick mentioned, I decided to sketch out the props from the movie (as seen on the top of the page). I chose to pursue the concept of the walking stick that the scarecrow uses, but in sticking with the possible Victorian theme, I wanted to experiment with different types of ornate walking canes. I also went for some classic branch style ideas just to get a wide variety of choice for my final prop concept.  

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Discarded Prop Roughs

Upon completion of my environment drawing, I decided to begin work on my 20 prop silhouettes. I completed the following before my tutorial, where Patrick explained that the props had to be an existing prop from the movie that had been reinvented, making these prop roughs irrelevant. I didn’t mind because it was good drawing practice and gave me a good idea for how variety can be achieved in props. My concept for these props was initially to redesign Dorothy’s basket, but after finding that too boring, I was going to have Dorothy carrying a Victorian dagger because I wanted to chose something really pretty and ornate. I like the idea of possibly having my scene set in the Victorian era, and that is something I will expand on in my character design.

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Final Environment 

I made the changes that Patrick suggested to my environment, and also darkened the colours on a few of the trees slightly. I also decided to get rid of some of the sap because I found it a bit too excessive on my draft environment. Overall, I’m really happy with how my environment turned out and I like even though it was outside my artistic comfort zone, I learnt a lot of new techniques in drawing this. I particularly like the fact that this environment will work well with whatever props and characters that I choose to design in the future as well.

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Final Environment - Draft

After blocking in my environment digitally, I continued to work on my drawing by adding new layers for each extra element of detail that I added. I spent a long time working on this image as I tried to capture the tone as best as I could, whilst still maintaining the fog in the background. At first, I really struggled with making the floor look tonal, but after adding lots of varying shades of grey I think I achieved this. I was initially planning on having bones littering the entire forest floor, but after completing much of my drawing, I realised this would be far too time consuming as bones are very small and detailed in comparison to the trees. Instead, I decided to add a row of skulls on either side of the path to make it extra creepy. To draw the skulls, I used the above reference image and drew one original skull and then copied and pasted it along the path, changing the sizes as I went along. Once all of the skulls for one side were in position I copied the layer and mirrored it to make the opposite row of skulls. I then went back in with my airbrush pen and softened the ones closer to the fog so they would blend with the environment better. I also added slight cracks, different angles, and varied shadows so that all the skulls would look as if they were inside the environment rather than just on top of it. The final thing I did was add the sap to the trees by using the paintbrush tool and reducing the opacity a lot so that it would look as if it was sitting on the trees. I used the above reference image and varied the shapes and drops of the sap to look more realistic.

After having an conference session with Patrick in my tutorial, he advised that I add a slight bit more contrast to the trees, particularly in the background, and that I also added a big branch in the foreground to give the composition more variety. He said he liked my composition but it was too neat at present. I’m going to go back and make these amendments and then upload my final environment.

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Blocked in Final Environment

Using my reference image I found for my thumbnail refinement, I sketched this environment digitally using my Wacom Intuos drawing tablet and Sketchbook Express (a simpler version of Sketchbook Pro). I made the canvas 16x9″ and started by simply making some outlines an filling them in with various shades of grey. To distinguish the floor from the trees better, I filled it in with a brown for the time being, although this will eventually also become grey. The original reference image I used was a lot narrower in width to my canvas size, so I had to alter the distance between the trees when I drew it on. Although this drawing was only a very rough blocked in version of my final environment, I really liked the look of it from this sketch and continued to refine it.

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Reference Images - Environment Thumbnail Refinement

These photos are the reference images that I used to gain more accurate perspectives and tone in my environment thumbnail refinement. 

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Rough Establishing Shots and Environment Thumbnail Refinement

After sketching out my previous environment thumbnails, I still wasn’t overly satisfied with any of my ideas until I had the idea to create a really misty, hazy forest where the trees weeped a sort of red sap that gave the appearance of blood. I drew a rough sketch (top of page) and I was instantly happy with the idea because I thought it was suited to the task of a haunted forest, whilst still remaining interesting. I also wanted to add a path of bones to give it an extra element of unique detail. After deciding on my concept, I decided to play around with a few different compositions, adding some tone to give these sketches more depth and value. I found I didn’t like the composition where I had a tree in the middle (bottom left) because I think the tree really splits the composition in two (as Sorin mentioned in the lecture). I really liked the look of the top left composition and the bottom right one, however my favourite was the top right sketch. I liked that the path was wide enough to make the bone path detailed and I also liked that the positioning of the trees really gave it a sense of depth and creepyness. I’m going to do a rough environment shot of this one digitally and test if I like it before I proceed to do my final environment drawing.

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Rough Establishing Shots - Environment

These shots were some very rough sketches that I completed in order to get a feel for what I wanted my final environment to be like. I experimented with different ideas and different compositions, most of which I really liked the concept but I had trouble executing. I chose not to place much emphasis on perspective, tone or detail in any of these as they were more for documenting my rough thoughts than being nice to look at. I didn’t use any reference images for these thumbnails as I didn’t want to be distracted by other concepts while I was drawing my ideas.

(In order from left to right, up to down)

Tall creepy trees forest - I initially really liked this idea, however after drawing a few other forests I found it to be really bland and uninteresting. I feel like I would have to expand on this concept if I wanted it to be really unique and exciting.

Giant mushroom forest - I loved this concept because it was unique and would have been really visually appealing if done with proper detail, etc. I liked the idea of it being really disgusting big, colourful, wild mushrooms with lots of decaying mushroom chunks on the floor of the forest. Patrick suggested I did some research on fruit in the Victorian era to get some ideas about rotting mushrooms.

Flower forest -  I liked the idea of having a giant flower forest kind of like in the old animated Disney version of Alice in Wonderland. After sketching this concept out, I still enjoyed it but it just wasn’t my favourite.

Screaming tree forest - I really liked the idea of having screaming trees in my haunted forest because it was something I hadn’t really seen before. After I drew this concept, I thought my trees looked too sad and not creepy enough so I decided not to pursue it.

Forest of flames - I thought this idea was really unique and would have been very visually appealing, however it would have taken a lot of hard work to execute the flames in the realistic way I wanted them to look, especially if I will need to do more than one angle of the environment later. 

Glass tree forest - I absolutely loved this idea of having the trees in the forest made of glass, so they almost look like eerie icicle trees with pointy branches. But again, with this concept I know I would have gotten really bogged down perfecting the detailed glass, so I chose to not pursue it.

Yellow brick trees - I thought that this idea would be a clever take on the original ‘yellow brick road’ from the Wizard of Oz. After I sketched out the concept it just wasn’t my favourite and I didn’t find it very visually appealing.

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Blind Contour Drawings

In my first tutorial, Patrick made everyone in the class rotate around and draw each other without looking at the page. This is just one of the many pages that I drew on this day. The focus was not on creating incredible artwork, but more about loosening up and getting into the swing of drawing. I have completed this exercise before but it was still a very rewarding warm-up activity and I’m very happy with the line quality and variation that I achieved in my drawings.

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Drawing Exercises - Perspective

Before going into this unit, I had some previous experience of perspective exercises such as foreshortening and simply drawing from photos with a warped perspective, however I had not actively completed a perspective exercise before. I found this to be very interesting and although none of them are perfect, as they are first attempts, I really learnt a lot using lines as guidance for drawing perspective artworks, which I will most likely apply to future environment drawings. 

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Assignment 1.A

The purpose of this assignment is to mainly improve my drawing skills as well as to be introduced to various elements of drawing, traditional and digital, to be used for animating purposes. Previously, I have had no experience in the animation field or drawing for purposes for animation. I come from more of a fine arts background, studying visual art while I was in high school, and having a very photo-realistic approach to my art. I’m a painter (generally in oil) and my talent in painting seems to lie in my want to perfect everything so it looks identical to my reference images. Despite my past history in painting, I don’t have a lot of experience in drawing and I don’t consider myself a particularly good draw-er thus I’ve never particularly pursued it. This unit is going to be challenging for me but I am looking forward to challenging myself and increasing my skill base. I also really want to focus on not making my art perfect for this unit and embracing a slightly more messy style rather than to be realistic.