Concepts (Updated)

In order to be happy with a final decision I brain stormed a few idea for concepts that I would create some digital art from. This should help me with practice as well as creativity to create my final piece.

Concepts I thought of include:

A world without the technology we have to day that was created from wars such as; different aviation technology, radar technology, satellites, no NASA (operation paperclip)

Wars that are fought through rules such as current war with not lethal or fatalities.

alien abduction - I like this one as it will allow lots of creative flexibility if chosen to expand upon.

A futuristic sport athlete or a niche sport but commercialised like the popular sports of today.

I decided to first do a UFO invasion scene as I wanted to try and make a night time setting, this allows me to experiment with lights and colours that I haven't used before.

To start I sketched out how I wanted the scene to go roughly, using the brushes available on photoshop, I will use this layer to switch on and off as some quick reference.

I then used the ellipse tool to place down shapes for the key elements that would be the focal point of the scene, I can now use these to build around.

I've now used the lasso tool to build and create the structure I will be detailing from, this helps me get a basis for my perspective. I use blue as I find it easy to build over while remaining fairly neutral (the blue isn't a common colour in the woodland scene, so it shouldn't clash with any of the detail work).

The rest of the work is detailing, to do this is lock the layers so that I don't colour out of the lines when I don't need to. and go over with brushes. It took a lot of trial and error to get the trees to a point I was happy with and ended up taking me a bout 4 hours to complete them. I went through countless brushes to what ones would work for trees and settled on a mixture of 'thin fur' and 'leaves 3', I unlocked the layers and went over the edges with the fur brush to remove the jagged structure lines and give of a pine texture.

After doing all the detail and making some finishing touches I was happy with the outcome, once I had gotten past the trees the rest of the process was relatively smooth with the exception of drawing the person. I had difficulty choosing the placement and pose of the character as I wanted to challenge myself, I feel as if I did just that, with the chosen pose but it did end up costing me lots of time.

Critiques

Focus- although there is a focal point as in where things are happening in the scene. As far as use of sharpness and blur to draw the viewers attention and separate the scenery, like you would see on a picture, there is non and this is a technique I would definitely love to start using in my future pieces as it adds a whole other level of imersion and quality.

Separation- As Woodlands are very green lots of the scene blends together. I was aware of this as I was making the piece so I attempted to use different brushes and colours to separate and add depth to things like trees and bushes, this helped but didn't completely fix the issue. I think the use of sharpness and blur as I mentioned previously would also help with this issue.

Face - I struggled to decide what style of face I was going to use, as it was one of the last things I did I ended up settling with something I wasn't happy with and making small improvements as I did touch ups. I was afraid to go too cartoony but I now believe that would have been the better option as the face was too small for fine detail and cartoons can allow for easier expression.

Positives Body pose - the thing I was dreading the most about this piece was the addition of a person as I have very little experience with drawing people in a digital environment. I wanted to challenge myself with the perspective of the person and I am happy with how it turned out.

Consistency - When I decided to do this piece I had a fairly solid idea in my head that I sketched out, throughout the production I managed to stay on the path I had planned and the outcome ended up being exactly how I expected. I wouldn't say this is always a good thing, as changes and adaptation can be the best part of an art piece (to me) but this practice proved to me that I am able to stick to and execute an idea with good accuracy.

Creature concepts

Whilst brainstorming creature Ideas I wanted to create something that would fit a video game setting but still have some loose real world logic to it. I first created the beetle piece, the idea of beetles that salvage man made items and use them like hermit crabs, this would work well in a games setting as the salvaged goods would give the creature protection, making the player use tactics to combat them.

I now had the theme of nature mixing with human creations, the second piece I was going to do was hermit crabs using the skulls of sailors, but when looking for reference photos I discovered it was already a concept that had been heavily explored. sticking with the ocean I chose to do the same idea but with and octopus and a human skull.

I finished the second piece but decided I really like the first concept of the beetles. It would also be a much more practical idea to explore in the 3D environment as it would allow me to practice my Hard surface modelling. I now just need to expand upon this idea and create a story that will allow for character, this can be found on the blog "Final concept"