For my personal project I decided to choose concept art as it’s something I’ve always wanted to improve and thought this would be the best opportunity to push myself. I am using the personal project to explore an area within animation that I really want to learn more about and ‘get good’ at. I started by planning what I wanted to do:
I looked in games a lot for reference as I love the ideation and work behind the scenes. A lot of my favourite games are very scenic. But one of my favourite games is Uncharted, so that is were I would get a lot of my inspiration. I also own artbooks for this series of games and read them inside out for this project.
I think my initial worry for this project would be my unfamiliarity with painting scenery. For this I looked up many tutorials on YouTube and Pinterest to give me guidance. I am very unfamiliar with panting in Photoshop as I am used to using a free program called Medibang Paint. So I’m hoping this project will push me to learn more about Photoshop:
I tried to speed paint some misc. scenes first to get used to the painterly style. I found this a new experience and very time consuming for a ‘speed paint’
IDEA:Â Â
I really wanted to create a robot character for this project as I’ve never really drawn technology based characters or objects before, but love their designs so much. I decided on a loose story line to help with my concepts for this project. I really liked the idea of neon lights and colourful, glowing elements in a dull environment. I originally was thinking of having the environment very high tech in a big, rundown city. But thought it could be more interesting to have a robot in a more earthy environment. This lead to me looking at cave structures and mountainous areas as well as the game Shadow of the Colossus.
I also looked into the latest Blade Runner film as I loved the colours and atmosphere. Other research included: Horizon Zero Dawn, Big Hero 6, Ready Player One & Tron.
I imagined two characters, a 12 year old girl travelling with a robot companion. The world is overcome in darkness and shadows lurk, hunting with the aim to eliminate all lifeforms on the planet. The two protagonists journey to find the main source of the evil to destroy it and return life and light back to their planet. I liked the idea of focusing in the robot character as I wanted to try drawing something out of my comfort zone.
P.I.P:
These are quick sketches I did for ideas on shape an personality:
I looked into Jake Parker’s work and his traditional work on robots. I really liked his variation of shape and designs of robots, and used his work to inspire my own.
ENVIRONMENT CONCEPTS:
CHARACTER CONCEPTS:
Overall I feel like my personal work and looking into concept art as definitely opened my mind to so many areas within concept art. And now that the new year has started, I’m taking it as my opportunity to start fresh and improve my drawing and concept ability major.
I hope to continue developing my skills and work harder to improve. And by this time next year I would like to be confident to show my art.
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