Creative decision making :
Gothic Fantasy Art has many contributing artists to the genre, an example is Joseph Vargo (Link to Joseph Vargo - accessed 11/10/2014), who produced artwork pieces towards The Beauty and the Beast novel, so avoiding copying the portrayed characters in the images was a major priority when creating my project, whilst still keeping to the novel narrative. Tim Horton is also well known for his dark art pictures and films that contribute to the gothic genre whose artwork that inspired the picture that I have created. Choosing the colour schemes for each of the characters provided a challenge as I had to create a colour palette that linked the characters together yet kept the overall scene dark and Gothic. To link the father and Belle characters to each other I made some of their clothing similar or close to the same shade of purple with a floral patterning, whilst the rest of the clothing follows a black or monotone colour scheme with bright white highlights to give the fabric life and movement. For the Beast I used a monochrome colour scheme, making it a very powerful persona with soft hint of yellow/orange in the lion head mane to hint at the subtle beast-like rage and ferocity that may lie within.
Ancient Chinese art has been around since the 6th Millennium BCE with the Neolithic pottery, and passes through Early Imperial China (221BCE – 220 CE), and Late Imperial China (1368 – 1911). My first priority was to pick an era during the Chinese art history on which to base this project element, I researched the paintings created during the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907 CE) where the primary subject matter was landscape paintings knows as Shan shui (mountain water). The style of these paintings essentially involved the same techniques as Chinese calligraphy, where a brush was dipped in black or coloured ink. Therefore I decided to replicate a brush and ink feel when using the digital medium of my project, using a digital brush that gave the same look and feel of Chinese calligraphy, where the thickness of the line created would vary in thickness as it moved around the page dependent upon the pressure applied by the artist. Tang Dynasty paintings, much like their calligraphy, were produced on paper or silk then incorporated into scrolls so they could be rolled up or hung, giving the image a sepia look, which can be easily created in digital mediums. The major decision making for this style was the types of brush marks that I was going to use, long flowing brush strokes or small sharp strokes, and would I create a texture in the image. The colour palette was another important decision to make there was a choice of either making the image completely out of bright saturated colours or soft subtle hints of colour.
The Sci-fi genre has multiple forms and environments, they may be clean and futuristic looking with designs that are crisp, clean and straight edged. Or architectural designs that are futuristic and do not conform to a contemporary visual appearance, they may also be dilapidated and similar to modern day but with futuristic influences, such as a type of door or door function, or a particular piece of engineering equipment, tool and gadgets that are beyond current technology. Deciding which of these paths to choose was the initial challenge. I focused my research on a clean futuristic looking environment to help tell the story of Belle meeting the beast and a grotty dark hallway where the Beast resides would be more accurate to how the original novel portrays the narrative. Exploring these two path ways led me to further research into the sci-fi genre portrayed in games and films; Destiny, Mass Effect, Halo, Blade Runner, Star Wars, iRobot, District 9, Elysium. From here I was inspired by various elements of these films and games and adapted them into my own designs for the corridor that Belle walks along. I chose the grungy deteriorating look as I felt that it was a closer relationship to the woods that Belle and her father had to travel through in the original novel narrative, I made the scene eerie and run down by the use of graffiti, water staining and rust and also using sci-fi architectural designs for doorways, details on the characters and the use of a floating hologram to consolidate this futuristic scene.
New learning over the project:
Over the course of the project I have learnt about how to effectively create different art styles.
Gothic Fantasy art, with relationships to Tim Burton artwork (http://www.timburton.com – accessed 11/10/2014) and films; Corpse Bride (2005), Dark Shadows (2012), was an art style I had not yet before attempted to recreate and had rarely looked at. The main difficulty in achieving the Gothic art style was learning and understanding the key aspects of Gothic art, what they were and how these aspects were portrayed in art works, then adapting them by slightly altering these aspects to enhance a mood or emotion for the general audience.
Ancient Chinese art, with influences from Gu Kaizhi (born c. 344-406 CE), Wuxi, Jiangsu province, China, during the Period of Division (220 – 581 CE), this was a difficult art style to achieve successfully. I had to research various Ancient Chinese art pieces and analyse how they created the brush strokes and mark making with the various brushes of the period, then recreating similar mark making techniques using digital mediums and brushes. A common theme that most of the paintings that were studied all used single sweeping strokes, creating a smooth flowing image.
The process during the creation of the Sci-fi scene was challenging, as the result could easily look very 2D, with a direct comparison to Doom 1 visual environments. I gave depth to a hand painted wall with the simple use of a bump map, which is just a black and white version of the colour image, to which I then applied the texture node in Autodesk Maya to imitate a 3D effect. The image had to be increased in resolution to produce a higher quality bump map, thus avoiding sharp obvious pixilation in the texturing, which would lower the quality of the overall scene by making the scene obvious that it was hand painted. I gave the characters emotions that were visually obvious and non-rigid walking poses, representing movement of the character in animation was a challenge in itself, and after a lot of trial and error sketching, it was solved by the use of four high quality poses with one being a strong shocked expression.
Gothic Fantasy Art has many contributing artists to the genre, an example is Joseph Vargo (Link to Joseph Vargo - accessed 11/10/2014), who produced artwork pieces towards The Beauty and the Beast novel, so avoiding copying the portrayed characters in the images was a major priority when creating my project, whilst still keeping to the novel narrative. Tim Horton is also well known for his dark art pictures and films that contribute to the gothic genre whose artwork that inspired the picture that I have created. Choosing the colour schemes for each of the characters provided a challenge as I had to create a colour palette that linked the characters together yet kept the overall scene dark and Gothic. To link the father and Belle characters to each other I made some of their clothing similar or close to the same shade of purple with a floral patterning, whilst the rest of the clothing follows a black or monotone colour scheme with bright white highlights to give the fabric life and movement. For the Beast I used a monochrome colour scheme, making it a very powerful persona with soft hint of yellow/orange in the lion head mane to hint at the subtle beast-like rage and ferocity that may lie within.
Ancient Chinese art has been around since the 6th Millennium BCE with the Neolithic pottery, and passes through Early Imperial China (221BCE – 220 CE), and Late Imperial China (1368 – 1911). My first priority was to pick an era during the Chinese art history on which to base this project element, I researched the paintings created during the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907 CE) where the primary subject matter was landscape paintings knows as Shan shui (mountain water). The style of these paintings essentially involved the same techniques as Chinese calligraphy, where a brush was dipped in black or coloured ink. Therefore I decided to replicate a brush and ink feel when using the digital medium of my project, using a digital brush that gave the same look and feel of Chinese calligraphy, where the thickness of the line created would vary in thickness as it moved around the page dependent upon the pressure applied by the artist. Tang Dynasty paintings, much like their calligraphy, were produced on paper or silk then incorporated into scrolls so they could be rolled up or hung, giving the image a sepia look, which can be easily created in digital mediums. The major decision making for this style was the types of brush marks that I was going to use, long flowing brush strokes or small sharp strokes, and would I create a texture in the image. The colour palette was another important decision to make there was a choice of either making the image completely out of bright saturated colours or soft subtle hints of colour.
The Sci-fi genre has multiple forms and environments, they may be clean and futuristic looking with designs that are crisp, clean and straight edged. Or architectural designs that are futuristic and do not conform to a contemporary visual appearance, they may also be dilapidated and similar to modern day but with futuristic influences, such as a type of door or door function, or a particular piece of engineering equipment, tool and gadgets that are beyond current technology. Deciding which of these paths to choose was the initial challenge. I focused my research on a clean futuristic looking environment to help tell the story of Belle meeting the beast and a grotty dark hallway where the Beast resides would be more accurate to how the original novel portrays the narrative. Exploring these two path ways led me to further research into the sci-fi genre portrayed in games and films; Destiny, Mass Effect, Halo, Blade Runner, Star Wars, iRobot, District 9, Elysium. From here I was inspired by various elements of these films and games and adapted them into my own designs for the corridor that Belle walks along. I chose the grungy deteriorating look as I felt that it was a closer relationship to the woods that Belle and her father had to travel through in the original novel narrative, I made the scene eerie and run down by the use of graffiti, water staining and rust and also using sci-fi architectural designs for doorways, details on the characters and the use of a floating hologram to consolidate this futuristic scene.
New learning over the project:
Over the course of the project I have learnt about how to effectively create different art styles.
Gothic Fantasy art, with relationships to Tim Burton artwork (http://www.timburton.com – accessed 11/10/2014) and films; Corpse Bride (2005), Dark Shadows (2012), was an art style I had not yet before attempted to recreate and had rarely looked at. The main difficulty in achieving the Gothic art style was learning and understanding the key aspects of Gothic art, what they were and how these aspects were portrayed in art works, then adapting them by slightly altering these aspects to enhance a mood or emotion for the general audience.
Ancient Chinese art, with influences from Gu Kaizhi (born c. 344-406 CE), Wuxi, Jiangsu province, China, during the Period of Division (220 – 581 CE), this was a difficult art style to achieve successfully. I had to research various Ancient Chinese art pieces and analyse how they created the brush strokes and mark making with the various brushes of the period, then recreating similar mark making techniques using digital mediums and brushes. A common theme that most of the paintings that were studied all used single sweeping strokes, creating a smooth flowing image.
The process during the creation of the Sci-fi scene was challenging, as the result could easily look very 2D, with a direct comparison to Doom 1 visual environments. I gave depth to a hand painted wall with the simple use of a bump map, which is just a black and white version of the colour image, to which I then applied the texture node in Autodesk Maya to imitate a 3D effect. The image had to be increased in resolution to produce a higher quality bump map, thus avoiding sharp obvious pixilation in the texturing, which would lower the quality of the overall scene by making the scene obvious that it was hand painted. I gave the characters emotions that were visually obvious and non-rigid walking poses, representing movement of the character in animation was a challenge in itself, and after a lot of trial and error sketching, it was solved by the use of four high quality poses with one being a strong shocked expression.
