This week in the maker space we would be continuing our work on our chosen background art themes and the scenes behind theme. Annabeth told us that we could use the adobe suite in the campus to do our computer work but she told us that we didn't need to just limit ourselves to computers as in concept art we could use any media we choose. An example of this came from what Annabeth had told us when we looked into psychogeography when the creators of the Cars films or even other Disney films used pastels in creating their concept art scenes in their storyboards and concept art. We would be following a similar principle using medias such as watercolour paints,charcoal or even the pastels then we could scan in our work and then look at it digitally be it for our blogs or even for our project.
One other element this was good for was creating elements that we otherwise couldn't digitally such as textures that we could apply to our digital pieces to create realistic elements or even add more to them together in one piece. I began to wonder the possibility of this combining sketched medias with digital illustration pieces, and perhaps this was the opportunity that I was waiting for to put this to the test. I decided to begin with a simple method of creating rock texture which I would later test against digital illustrations. From past experience in Art and Design I figured that rubbing charcoal on paper would create a simple enough rock texture, unfortunately I didn't have any art equipment on me at the time.
Thankfully though there were some supplies provided for us in the maker space so we could use art materials, so I sharpened a charcoal pencil and began creating rock texture. I started with simple light textures before going into darker shading of the charcoal the texture began to show as I coloured harder and harder and seemed to react well to the parchment paper in my journal that I was using for intro to the making of. However it lacked rock like composition so I tried to do some texture rubbings from objects in the maker space such as a piece of styrofoam which had a textured edge and so using my journal page I tried to take a rubbing sample from the styrofoam however it was rather difficult as when trying to acquire a sample the styrofoam texture didn't seem to come through I washy sure how this was possible most likely due to the composition of the material.
I looked around and saw a role or paper towel and looking at the texture I wondered how I could possibly make use of it in terms of its texture and looking closely at it, the tiny circles in my view seemed to represent that of rivets in a metal frame and so I decided to capture the texture by applying the charcoal to the paper to try and capture it for when I experiment digitally. This seemed to work well so I stuck it into my journal. Having done a rough idea of what I wanted to do for a scene yesterday I decided to do some development work on a possible final idea for the scene. I decided to work in perspective drawing but given that this scene would be floating planet fragments I would have to try different angles of drawing.
I started from above then the side to draw in perspective lines and began to draw in the planet fragments. Before proceeding further I printed off the remainder of my research boards so that I would have something to work with in terms of the developed base design. From each of my research boards I looked at some elements that I could use for my abandoned alien mining platform such as scaffolding, alien shaped structures, and even buildings I could place on the floating on the floating planet fragments. As I looked around I could see that Elena was adding rock like shading to her piece and so I decided to follow suite and see if I could apply shading and texture using my 2H mechanical pencil. I could see my exterior view taking shape nicely but I left the background blank as I would be scanning this in digitally so that I could colour and apply my nebular background effects.
For this mini project we needed to do some background concept art for the inside shot of the base and so I decided to do some work based around that.I split the next page of my journal in half in a landscape format as I decided to different sections of the base interior starting with the inside shot of the crumbling tower in the mining complex near the drill that I sketched in near the base as this was a mining base and therefore needed a drill. For the interior shot I made a simple perspective line across the centre of the page and then grid lines to show the direction the floor was pointing in. Once sketched it was a matter of skating in the alien technology that was decaying away and crumbling inside the base and even showing a the part of the tower that had broken off flying away into the coldness of space. I began sketching in more and more detail as I went along even sketching in scaffolding or structure beams inspired by the constructed alien structure illustrations in my research boards.
I was impressed by the way this was coming together and wondered how I may approach this digitally as some of my previous attempts at doing space age elements in digital painting didn't seem to fair well and perhaps this may require looking at tutorials to aid me in this matter. I then had an idea to do a hallway in the outpost deep in the planet fragments as it reached far below ground. To do this I used one point perspective to sketch out a distance from the vanishing point then using the lines I sketched out a hexagon shape into the tunnels and began incorporating pipes and cracked windows in the hall way. I was originally going to sketch in cryo stasis pods but these soon turned into pipes running through the entrance way to the hallway. I wanted to add some creative finesse and alien feel to the hallway so I began to add hexagon shaped patterns with some of them containing circles and cracks which was slightly inspired by Doctor Who and "the round things" in the Tardis.
In my work I included alien symbols and markings in the base to show that an advanced race built this base and this added to the theme very well. I wondered what else I could do whilst I was inking the piece and I then stumbled across some coloured drawing inks in the store cupboard in the colour of orange and purple so I decided to use them to see if I could create a nebula piece hand rendered as I didn't have acrylic paints with me to do the painted method I learned from video tutorials. When using inks I used separate brushes and not to contaminate the colours in the pots. I tried applying each colour and mix them whilst wet to create a bleeding effect, sadly when I tried this wasn't the effect that I'd gotten if anything it was solid colour against faded colour I would need to see if I could correct this in digital filters. Whilst working Tasha advised that I put scrap paper down as I worked to prevent a mess on the desk as I would need to clean up afterwards.
I should've remembered this but I was too wrapped up in my work to think, and would need to remember this for the future. Looking round I saw that some members of the group were working with modelling as we were told we could also make clay marquees and even working with soft pastels, and the way they were worked with intrigued me. I decided to follow a similar principle and work with chalk pastel to create a nebular background. I used colours like moss green, bright green, black and white to create the nebular and even blended the colours together and generated a lot of dust from using the pastels. I had initially started to do a background of the nebular but it soon evolved into the whole piece including the mining base and the planet fragments.I realised this would need to be sealed with a fixative so that it wouldn't smudge but I would need to do this at home as there wasn't enough time left in the session.
Reflecting back on this session I would think that I had done a lot of concept work and ideas drafting for my space themed background even considering the use of made textures and not be limited to digital texture filters in Photoshop. I feel that the use of my research was the key into the elements that was leading to the development of my ideas and may even consider practicing using pastel in concept art much like the Disney concept artists do in their scenes and storyboards. Looking at my pieces one area that I could stand to improve on would be the use of the drawing inks and possibly check the consistency before use so that the bleeding effect I was originally going for would work. In addition I would possibly consider using white oil pastels to see if I could add highlights to that particular piece.
If I could do this session again I would've tried using acrylic paints to do backgrounds and then enhanced them in Photoshop or leave it as it was and separate the layers for use in After Effects just as the original Disney animators did with the multi plane camera back in the golden years of animation. In conclusion what I've learned in this lesson today were very useful in knowing that I could consider the possibility of using drawn textures in digital media and may visit this for use in my own work development to see how it would impact my illustrations.
One other element this was good for was creating elements that we otherwise couldn't digitally such as textures that we could apply to our digital pieces to create realistic elements or even add more to them together in one piece. I began to wonder the possibility of this combining sketched medias with digital illustration pieces, and perhaps this was the opportunity that I was waiting for to put this to the test. I decided to begin with a simple method of creating rock texture which I would later test against digital illustrations. From past experience in Art and Design I figured that rubbing charcoal on paper would create a simple enough rock texture, unfortunately I didn't have any art equipment on me at the time.
Thankfully though there were some supplies provided for us in the maker space so we could use art materials, so I sharpened a charcoal pencil and began creating rock texture. I started with simple light textures before going into darker shading of the charcoal the texture began to show as I coloured harder and harder and seemed to react well to the parchment paper in my journal that I was using for intro to the making of. However it lacked rock like composition so I tried to do some texture rubbings from objects in the maker space such as a piece of styrofoam which had a textured edge and so using my journal page I tried to take a rubbing sample from the styrofoam however it was rather difficult as when trying to acquire a sample the styrofoam texture didn't seem to come through I washy sure how this was possible most likely due to the composition of the material.
I looked around and saw a role or paper towel and looking at the texture I wondered how I could possibly make use of it in terms of its texture and looking closely at it, the tiny circles in my view seemed to represent that of rivets in a metal frame and so I decided to capture the texture by applying the charcoal to the paper to try and capture it for when I experiment digitally. This seemed to work well so I stuck it into my journal. Having done a rough idea of what I wanted to do for a scene yesterday I decided to do some development work on a possible final idea for the scene. I decided to work in perspective drawing but given that this scene would be floating planet fragments I would have to try different angles of drawing.
I started from above then the side to draw in perspective lines and began to draw in the planet fragments. Before proceeding further I printed off the remainder of my research boards so that I would have something to work with in terms of the developed base design. From each of my research boards I looked at some elements that I could use for my abandoned alien mining platform such as scaffolding, alien shaped structures, and even buildings I could place on the floating on the floating planet fragments. As I looked around I could see that Elena was adding rock like shading to her piece and so I decided to follow suite and see if I could apply shading and texture using my 2H mechanical pencil. I could see my exterior view taking shape nicely but I left the background blank as I would be scanning this in digitally so that I could colour and apply my nebular background effects.
 |
| exterior shot of a mining complex on a destroyed planet. |
For this mini project we needed to do some background concept art for the inside shot of the base and so I decided to do some work based around that.I split the next page of my journal in half in a landscape format as I decided to different sections of the base interior starting with the inside shot of the crumbling tower in the mining complex near the drill that I sketched in near the base as this was a mining base and therefore needed a drill. For the interior shot I made a simple perspective line across the centre of the page and then grid lines to show the direction the floor was pointing in. Once sketched it was a matter of skating in the alien technology that was decaying away and crumbling inside the base and even showing a the part of the tower that had broken off flying away into the coldness of space. I began sketching in more and more detail as I went along even sketching in scaffolding or structure beams inspired by the constructed alien structure illustrations in my research boards.
 |
| Inside shot (oh and look the round things) |
I was impressed by the way this was coming together and wondered how I may approach this digitally as some of my previous attempts at doing space age elements in digital painting didn't seem to fair well and perhaps this may require looking at tutorials to aid me in this matter. I then had an idea to do a hallway in the outpost deep in the planet fragments as it reached far below ground. To do this I used one point perspective to sketch out a distance from the vanishing point then using the lines I sketched out a hexagon shape into the tunnels and began incorporating pipes and cracked windows in the hall way. I was originally going to sketch in cryo stasis pods but these soon turned into pipes running through the entrance way to the hallway. I wanted to add some creative finesse and alien feel to the hallway so I began to add hexagon shaped patterns with some of them containing circles and cracks which was slightly inspired by Doctor Who and "the round things" in the Tardis.
 |
| Drawing ink Nebular attempt. |
 |
| inking process 1 |
In my work I included alien symbols and markings in the base to show that an advanced race built this base and this added to the theme very well. I wondered what else I could do whilst I was inking the piece and I then stumbled across some coloured drawing inks in the store cupboard in the colour of orange and purple so I decided to use them to see if I could create a nebula piece hand rendered as I didn't have acrylic paints with me to do the painted method I learned from video tutorials. When using inks I used separate brushes and not to contaminate the colours in the pots. I tried applying each colour and mix them whilst wet to create a bleeding effect, sadly when I tried this wasn't the effect that I'd gotten if anything it was solid colour against faded colour I would need to see if I could correct this in digital filters. Whilst working Tasha advised that I put scrap paper down as I worked to prevent a mess on the desk as I would need to clean up afterwards.
 |
| Pastel drawn background. |
I should've remembered this but I was too wrapped up in my work to think, and would need to remember this for the future. Looking round I saw that some members of the group were working with modelling as we were told we could also make clay marquees and even working with soft pastels, and the way they were worked with intrigued me. I decided to follow a similar principle and work with chalk pastel to create a nebular background. I used colours like moss green, bright green, black and white to create the nebular and even blended the colours together and generated a lot of dust from using the pastels. I had initially started to do a background of the nebular but it soon evolved into the whole piece including the mining base and the planet fragments.I realised this would need to be sealed with a fixative so that it wouldn't smudge but I would need to do this at home as there wasn't enough time left in the session.
Reflecting back on this session I would think that I had done a lot of concept work and ideas drafting for my space themed background even considering the use of made textures and not be limited to digital texture filters in Photoshop. I feel that the use of my research was the key into the elements that was leading to the development of my ideas and may even consider practicing using pastel in concept art much like the Disney concept artists do in their scenes and storyboards. Looking at my pieces one area that I could stand to improve on would be the use of the drawing inks and possibly check the consistency before use so that the bleeding effect I was originally going for would work. In addition I would possibly consider using white oil pastels to see if I could add highlights to that particular piece.
If I could do this session again I would've tried using acrylic paints to do backgrounds and then enhanced them in Photoshop or leave it as it was and separate the layers for use in After Effects just as the original Disney animators did with the multi plane camera back in the golden years of animation. In conclusion what I've learned in this lesson today were very useful in knowing that I could consider the possibility of using drawn textures in digital media and may visit this for use in my own work development to see how it would impact my illustrations.
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