[ID: digital fanart of Luz and Eda from the owl house set after the season 2 finale King's Tide. The image depicts a crying Luz, sat on the floor and holding an acoustic guitar as if to play it. She's looking down with a frustrated expression, and a dark shadow is cast over her. Behind Luz and faced away from the viewer is Eda playing the lute and kneeling down. She's smiling and is drawn with lighter colours and lineart. There's a soft light coming from off screen illuminating Eda and Luz. The background is white, except for a minimalistic depiction of a floor, which is done with a peach gradient. End ID]

It's not time to make a change / Just relax, take it easy / You're still young, that's your fault./ There's so much you have to know

Things she never got to teach you

based on the HC of Luz having learned guitar from her dad, and me realizing how similar it is to Eda's lute. Perfect recipe for musical angst </3

Encounters Week Three | Monday 16/3/20:

“Close Encounters” Animation Task:

To begin the new week we were told we would be doing an animation and illustration task in the morning and afternoon, after hearing the word animation I was automatically excited as it had been a while since I had done an animation for class.

The task was to create a character and then have that character mutate into an alien/creature and that we would be creating our character using an old black and white photo as a reference image.

But before that we did some artist analysis using the key points of visual language.

The key points being:

Tone

Line

Form

Texture

Shape

Colour

In groups we made a mindmap with examples of what we had to look for in a piece of art and what it could tell the audience about the work. We were shown two pieces of art and told to analyse them focusing on similarities, differences and how the time zone between the two pieces shows how illustration has evolved and taken elements from areas outside of illustration.

The two pieces were:

1. Katsushika Hokusai- Poem by Sarumaru Daiyu

2. Will Sweeney- Temptation

On our tables we analysed each piece starting with Image one by Hokusai

The points I made were that the clean lines in the piece are very fine and precise showing tranquility and innocence, the colours are very soft and true to real life and often have fine gradients to add depth to the image, the rocky areas have texture added to them instead of gradients or flat colour adding jagged depth to the piece, the characters within the piece are very innocent looking too and look cheerful but tired. This piece is a great example of illustration combining realism as the use of texture, colour and gradients shout realism to the viewer however it is still very illustrated based off of the line work and style Hokusai chose. It is also very impressive how Hokusai was able to do a piece like this using woodcuts which is quite advanced.

In image two by Illustrator Will Sweeney the colours are very Monochromatic and uses block shading in a solid black colour to add depth and perspective such as the pressure of the shading changing throughout, the block shading is very similar to the pop art movement and I am lead to believe that Sweeney took inspiration from pop artists like Andy Warhol and in particular Roy Lichtenstien who both shared a very similar way of shading images using solid black as their colour of choice.

The bright colours are very flat, and texture (unlike the first image) has not been implemented besides the jagged shapes used on the shading which gives it a comic book feel and relates back to pop art again, the choice of colour is very energetic and chaotic setting the mood for the scene possibly telling the audience it is not innocent and peaceful unlike the first image.

Characterisation has been used effectively here as the shape language in the characters shows anger and craving relating back the title of “Temptation”.

Close Encounters Animation:

After analysing the pieces we were tasked to start a new animation task split into two parts one was the illustration part, the next was animation.

We were given a pile of old photos and told to pick one and illustrate the person within stylising the person differently each time until we were left with one we liked, this was good because it helped us develop characters quickly and easily and also relates back observational drawing however we were illustrating the person rather than drawing them realistically.

After drawing our character we were told to mutate them like the art of Will Sweeney, I chose to do a scene inspired by the horror movies “Alien” and “The Thing” and have my character blow up and have a creature explode or mutate out of him, naturally i chose to mash up animals and alien elements in my creature and chose a bee’s head, a worms body, tentacles and flowers poking out

We all drew up a quick plan of our animation by drawing the extremes and then set our to add the breakdowns and tweens.

Animating this scene was very fun and easy for me to do however due to my method of working being different than I was used to I found making the animation smooth very difficult at times and making it flow by adding frames inbetween rather than frame by frame quite difficult too.

After animating the scene and cleaning up the frames I asked for some feedback from by tutor which i added in until I was finished with this animation:

Overall I am very pleased with my animation as it runs smoothly and achieved what I intended in my plan. However to improve I would practice pose to pose animation again to improve for the next time I use it in an animation.

Self Assessment

I chose Illustration based on one thing alone, it was the sole practice that I could see that clearly led on to what I wanted to pursue at University. I (as of current) wish to complete a degree in video game art and design, and to specialise in concept art in the second year of the course. When faced with the different pathway choices, after looking them all over I decided that the only one I could see that would give me a good leg up into the world I wanted to join was illustration, it was the only one that would allow me to learn new skills and develop my existing ones whilst also keeping with the subject matter I would need to be good at. Though however strong that reasoning is, it is not the only reason. The other reason I chose to pursue illustration in the pathway stage is because for as long as I can remember, I have been an illustrator. It started with drawing Beatrix Potter figurines at my grandmother’s house, I would love working in pencils and re-creating what I could see on the page , and using shading and colour (which I struggled with at the time due to my colour-blindness) to make the shapes I had outlined come to life. It evolved over the years, as I made the jump from traditional to digital art, and at the same time my development sky rocketed. Digital art allowed me to learn a lot faster, as if I made a mistake, instead of erasing it and having to complete it all over again, I was able to simply select the line I had drawn and edit the work that id drawn then and there. It allowed for me to draw a lot quicker than before, and because I was drawing faster and more frequently due to the convenience of not having to prepare (you just have to open a tab and your canvas and all your tools are there) my skills developed much quicker. And I was told as we were looking at the pathway stages, that I would be able to use the digital medium I had been using for years throughout the course, and with that I was sold.

    The first project of the pathway that challenged me was the small zine project. And this was for a number of reasons, the first of which is my own fault. When we were set the task to create this Zine I decided outright that I didn’t want to think about it, that I wanted to create a visual representation of my own train of thought. I wanted to do this because, if successful, I would do something I had never been able to do before. As a very analytical artist the idea of not thinking too hard about a piece and letting my mind just wander is rather foreign. And the idea of doing that for an entire piece is borderline blasphemy. But I wanted to prove to myself that I was adaptable and able to work well in other fields, so I challenged myself with the project and decided to just put in headphones, put on a podcast, and let my mind wander onto the page. I worked pretty fast, the canvas was small so the pieces were too, and by the end of the day I had done what I had set out to do. It was a lot more difficult to not apply ulterior motives to the task; it was stranger still to actively try not to. And I eventually had to take a break to wrap my head around it, but at the end of the day as I said, I had done what I set out to do. Looking at the zine I had created filled me with a sense of triumph, like I had defeated a part of me that had doubted I could do things other than digital illustrative analytical drawings, and that sense made me immensely proud of my creation. And I believe it is the most impactful moment I have experienced throughout this pathway stage, the thrill of working free and out of my comfort zone, and the triumph of it working out.

    I think most of the projects have influence me in some way, but none but one in any noticeable long standing way. The poster project allowed me to emulate another artists style yes, but it never stuck or resonated with me as a style I wanted to incorporate into my own. That came when i was faced with the 4 week project. The 4 week project I decided to panic mid-way through and change my subject matter, this was mainly due to me feeling discontent with my current standing work, and in response my impulsive nature shone through and I scrapped the first two weeks of the project. This threw me a bit but I found my footing when I discovered what I wanted to do after. I was in the process of playing through a game named Dragon Age Inquisition, a fantasy action role playing game that features a deck of tarot cards in its character creation screen. I saw these Tarots and their unique style and design and decided I wanted to do what the artistic team of that game had done, be it with a few tweaks for time. So I completed the cards in a geometric style of my own, with hints and influences from the cards that had inspired me, and at the end of the project I realised just how much I had enjoyed it. The initial rush of a new style paired with the anxiety one gets when changing a subject matter two weeks into a project managed to spur me to finish in time, but it was only after when I could take a step back and look at the project retrospectively that I realised just how much I had enjoyed it. And since I have used that style in my own passion projects at home, it is the only project I have completed so far that has had a lasting impression, and I sincerely hope I complete more that resonate and stay with me for just as long, and just as much as the 4 week project did.

    As far as the future goes I have some pretty clear goals to meet in mind. I want to still continue using the digital style I have cultivated my skills within all these years, but this time I want to work BIG. I’ve always worked small, as it was on small canvases that I felt safest when working in pen in the past, I had never felt like I could meaningfully fill the space on the page, so in my mind the less space the better. But now I really feel like I can do what I never have done and fully use every inch of a big canvas and feel genuinely happy that I have used it all meaningfully. I also want to work detailed, up until now I have worked sporadically and quick, spending a day on a piece at best (four or five hours). But I want to tackle a project so big that I have to spend days on one piece, I want to slave over it and create a piece that you can fully see just how much time I have sunk into it just by looking. And I want to do this all digitally. I’ve lived with the mantra that if you spend time on something people can see it, and I want to embody that in a piece of work, I don’t know what kind yet, I only know what I want it to accomplish. But it’s what I wish to do in the future weeks and months of this course and in my FMP.

    As of current though I have a ways to go before I can do what I want to do. I need to develop my dynamic posing, and my sense of scale and proportion. I need to do more life drawing to get a sense of the human figure, and draw unconventional poses rather that the ¾, side on, or front on poses I’ve become so accustomed too. I also want to try working in pens, where I have been working digitally I feel I’ve become lazy with my line making, so I will spend a bit of time refining my skills again with a permanent medium that every line matters, I feel this will help hone that sense and allow me to draw more confidently. But most of all I want to do what I love. I want to draw fantasy characters and develop my sense of creation and individuality in their designs, spending more time on outfits and environmental to create a kind of visual storytelling I just haven’t managed to create in my work so far. And I cannot wait to dive into my FMP, and put all of that talk I’ve just displayed into something meaningful, action.