BA3a - Tasks -

The first task we were given was 'Insects' and we had to take that word and do something with it.

The idea of doing an alien based off an alien popped straight into my head, much like how many of the species in Mass Effect are based off real life creatures and show aspects of them but are essentially quite different.

First I looked around at many insects to see which caught my eye - below is a mood board of them all -

This gave me a base to go off, I then went into Alchemy to create some silhouettes to stop me fussing about the minute detail and think about the whole character -

I also did a set of vehicle silhouettes mainly for fun but they also were a back up just in case nothing I liked came out of these silhouettes

But there was on character silhouette that stood out to me in particular as I thought it resembled one of the caterpillars in my mood board as well as a cocoon

I then took this silhouette into Photoshop to try and make some sense out of it by doing a value study

This is what came out to start with, to me it still seemed odd and I wasn't getting what I wanted, so I tweaked some areas to make the torso more distinguishable, added a poncho and some other tweaks that you'll see in the next picture

This value study showed a much more clear concept of a character, but I was struggling with his attire, whilst watching the documentary Life they mentioned the fact that most insects have six legs and are covered in armor so with that in mind I came up with this.

Once I had this design down all that was left was applying colour, as originally I was inspired by the catapillar and a cocoon I thought it would be fitting to base each colour variant on a different Butterfly life cycle - I narrowed my choice down to North America as my character is wearing a poncho which was common there - 

Variant 1 - influenced from the Guava Skipper - 

Variant 2 - influenced from the Zebra Swallowtail - 

Variant 3 - influenced from the Malachite - 

Variant 4 - influenced from the Colorado Hairstreak - 

Variant 5 - influenced from the Mexican Bluewing - 

Variant 6 - influenced from the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail - 

After I made the variants I asked for some feedback from my peers to see which ones they liked the most and to see if there was one that was chosen the most

Once I got the feedback I chose a variant to take and just neaten it up and present it well for a final concept image:

Glaucus - Final Concept - 

Task 2 - Orrery - 

 The task this time was to design an Orrery and to submit iteration / development as well as a model sheet with material analysis and photographic reference.

 

After looking at Orrerys I saw how vastly different they can be from one another and just got this feeling that they looked like ancient alien technilogy from a civilization long before ours

 

I wanted my piece to has some semblance of a story to it, so I wanted an explorer who was traversing caverns and stumbled upon this alien technology. All of these caverns are located throughout South America mainly Venezuela. 

As I'm not that confident in creating environment pieces, I looked to the artist Sparth as his work is incredibly inspiring to me and his style really resonates with me, everything thing from the composition, the lighting and the colours are just superb

I decided to make an environment piece as I'm not as confident with creating environments and thought this was a good opportunity to push myself. The environment would feature some ancient alien technology (the orrery) showing a map of an unknown system. I started off with some quick thumbnails to get a basic idea of the composition.

I then took most of these thumbnails an added some value to it to get an idea of the lighting.

Once I added the value I got some feedback from my peers to see which ones they liked the most out of them all:

I then did a couple colour variants of the thumbnails that were most popular on average

I then chose the one I wanted to do, that being number 6. I used a different method to painting environments this time around as I primarily used the lasso tool. Below is a visual process from start to final piece.

 Final Piece

After feedback with my tutor where we discussed giving further depth to my piece as well as trying to tie everything together I went back to this piece and tried to edit it for the better:

Material analysis:

Task 3 - Treehouse - 

For this task we are required to make a model sheet of a treehouse giving thought to style, location and context. I have two ideas I may go with; the first is a cursed treehouse and the second is a tree creature whom is a roaming merchant that carries a market on itself.

- Inspirational Moodboard -

 - Treehouse Silhouettes -

The tree I was using as my main influence / reference was the Giant Sequoias and Redwood trees, due to there amazing colour and the fact that they are giant lends itself to my roaming tree merchant

Task 4 - Prosthesis -

The next task we have been giving revolves around creating an articulated prosthetic for any part of the human body. 

The focus is on practical design. You must communicate functionality exclusively though illustration / presentation of the final model; i.e. no text to explain how things work. Consider how you will use

this as a portfolio piece to impress potential employers.

For my prosthetic I want it to be somewhat linked to my studio work, in that it will look as though it was created in the 1930s / 40s but in an alternate reality where technology has advanced extremely fast. Below are moodboards showing the references I will be using:

 I want it to look very functional, that why I have looked at engine parts and gears as I feel it will give that feeling of functionality.

I went on to create some silhouettes to start blocking out a design for the arm

Once I got the silhouettes done I decided on number 6 as the one to continue with as I wanted the art deco vibe to come through my prosthetic. I then started the final arm painting

I was pretty happy with everything apart from the hand as I couldnt render it correctly and I felt the cut out design seemed out of place

I changed the hand to look more skeleton like which I felt was much more effective. All that was left was to make the skin feel more involved with the prosthetic.

This is the final outcome, to make the skin feel more in place I improved the lighting on it as well as adding a bruise / rash to show that this prosthetic is quite  mix of primal and futuristic technology.

This image shows some close ups of the joints in the prosthetic giving an idea on how they work: