A look at concept art...

Welcome to part 1 of

'Earls concept art research... thing'

Part one is...

Games:

Grand Theft Auto:

I love Grand Theft Auto. Is it the murder? Maybe. Murdering a prostitute for my money? Maybe. The Comedy? yes. The deep story with characters that are always developing? Oh yes.

What I have noticed between all the GTA 4 concept art is it all has a very distinct art style. Also the majority is of characters interacting with one another or the the enviroment. The images are striking and contain atmosphere as well as having that GTA 'style'.

Fallout 3:

Just like GTA it features its own unique style, but with the enviroment shots its INCREDIBLY detailed. Not sure if I can match that but they inject there own humour into the scenery making it 'Fallouty'

To becontinued with

Movies!!!!!

'The Forest' Concept progression

The development of my 'Forest' concept art. As some can proberly tell there are chuncks of the process missing, especially near the beginning.

For some reason blogger refuses to open them and Photoshop says 'Unknown jpeg marker found' so I can't open them. Any help would be appreciated

Sketchs for Concept Art

Here are the three sketchs that I will base my Finals on: (keep in mind I'm not a good drawer)

The Forest:

I have already started this (uploaded later) and I feel it coming along, well OK, if I'm honest. But the sketch does look abit cluttered but I think the colour will fix that. But the most important thing is that thats what I want. It should look cluttered and full, it is a forest.

The Libary:

The image above is not a representation of what my final image will look like. Its parts of the image, like how I want the bookcases to weave around the wall and how the chairs will be placed. I also drew the table that will be situated in the middle of the room. The door gives it scale. I'll splice the image together later in photoshop for a final looking result.

The Saloon/Museum:

Not sure why I put this here as its not a final sketch at all. Its basic and ugly I thought I would put my whole creative process down in the blog.

Life Drawings

This is just a post with a collection of life drawing I haven't posted yet... until now:

These images were created with a collection of techniques including 'Negative space' and 'tone' Not sure how well I did on the toning but I was told that my negative spacing was 'coming along nicely'. The focused images are just that. Warm up lessons and time to try enhancing things.

House with/out UV texturing

Quick Post:

The Night of the Hunter

This film, in my opinion is the best we have seen so far. I'm not attacking Metropolis or Caligari because I understand the influence they had but this was film was just 'better'. Maybe I'm biased to sound?

What was this film meant to be classified? I get that some parts where meant to be horror (The priest raising from the bottom, him flailing in the water after the boat) but there were comic moments. So how should this be catagorised? I think Phil was right about this being a 'fairytale'. The imagery of the animals, the children traveling on the boat, the location of the family house and the boat house. Some would say its a bit too 'mature' for a fairytale, but really? How many fairytales are about murder and children being threatened or hurt. One thing that stood out to me throught out this was Powell always wore black. This stood out in the picnic scene where all the other characters were in white while he wore black. Was this coincidence or something more?

So yeah, it was good


for a black and white film :)

20,000 legues under the sea review 2

Chapter XVII (17)

A submarine forest:

(wow that title sounds ominous)

It is stated that the characters are standing on the edge of forest looking in. The forest consists of 'treelike' plants and underneath the canvas of leaves, the branches grew in 'strange' way. Maybe entangling themselves or growing in strange angles?
Answered in the next line:
All the plants on the floor nor the branches grew in normal ways. They all grew up. The plants and branches were rigid and faced straight up. When moved aside they quickly regain there previous position. It is described as 'the land of the vertical'. The soil of the forest was strewn with sharp rocks that were hard to miss. This either means that the rocks are large or numerous. The plants and trees do not require any roots as they require no nutrient's from the soil. They only require support. This makes me believe that the smaller plants are self dependent while the larger ones make be grouped closer together for support. The leafs are described more as 'blades' with colours limited pink, carmine, green, olive, fawn and brown. In the shadows of the larger trees are 'normal' bushes with real flowers, 'zebra like' fruit. There were also small 'fish flies' going in between the plants and fruit.
Hiding in the undergrowth is a 'sea spider'. The ground continued to slope downwards, which tell me the cast started at the highest point and going down. There is a narrow valley in the distance from the resting point of the party. Light is nearly non existent in this part of the forest as the sun cannot penetrate the sea.
At the end of the expedition they come across a giant wall of rocks.

So there you have it, but I do have a question. As this chapter is a journey am I right in assuming that I pick a point to do the concept art for? Or is it a collection of all the chapter?

20,000 leagues under the sea reviews

Chapter XI (11)
The Nautilus
The Library:
The library description starts at the very beginning and instantly makes you visualize a grand room filled with books and shelves.
The way the book describes the bookshelves as extending around makes me imagine as room that is more circular then square. It mentions Divans (research needed to know what they are) are lined along the walls where the lower shelf's end, making me imagine small leather seats basically underneath the bookshelf's. In front of these divans are small book rests that can move. Maybe there would be small inlays in the floor to show the extent of movement towards and away. In the center (the main focus in my opinion) is a large table covered in old newspapers and pamphlets. This implies to me that only portions of the table are barely visible as the papers are strewn across it. The room is lit by 4 globes, that are half sunk into the ceiling. As they have been given the name 'globe' as opposed to 'semi-circle', it makes me believe that the rest is partially visible. Maybe a small gap around the globes? Door on opposite end of room leads to saloon.

The Saloon:
The entrance is opposite of the library entrance. The shape is described as vast meaning it is much larger then the library. The room is shaped like a 'canted quadrilateral' (research again). It also gives me the measurements of 30x18x15, meaning I can portray the scale much better. The ceiling is adorned with light arabesques (?) which sheds a bright light on all the items in the room. It is described as a museum, which makes me think it has a clinical cleanness to it and are placed with precision, as opposed to the library table. The Walls are plastered with patterns on them hang about 30 pictures each with trophies in between them. Small reproductions of statues, in marble and bronze, stood on pedestals in the corners of the room. The statues are described as admirable, which implies to me that the statues are only small in comparison to there real life counterparts. Maybe these statues are rather large in the room? Despite I said it feels like it could have a cleanness to it, Captain Nemo apologies for the untidiness of the room. This makes me feel that the art and portraits are maybe placed randomly on the walls. They also mention a large organ in the corner of the room (this surprised me as it was never really described) which has old music scores atop it. The room also has a 'valuable' Mosaic table. In a permanent place next to the art were 'Natural Rarities'. They mention plants, shells and other products of the ocean. In the middle of the saloon was a jet of water shooting up and being caught again in half a clam shell.
Around the shell fountain was glass cases with specimens from the ocean. they were all classified and labeled. Pearls were placed in 'special' cases.

Well that's my rambling for first chapter. Congratulations for reading all of it.

Lets ROLL

Lets get this concept art ball rolling.

My work from phils first lesson are up and I won't move them since they have no relevence to my unit and merely practices. (Appreciate the feedback Simon Holland)

I have never used a graphics tablet before and was REALLY apprehensive about this unit but I actually found my self enjoying it. I really believed this would be a struggle but I enjoyed it.

So lets get going:

Tommorow I'm gonna post my thoughts on my excerpts (20,000 leagues under the sea) as I analyse them in depth for descriptive value. I'll then be doing some quick sketches to get my points across. They won't be good but there just my references.

But now some research into concept art.

Brutal Legend:

With a release of a recent game comes alot of production articles:

This piece shows the paralel of the character. The right is the characters 'good' side while the left is her fall to the 'dark side'. The thing I like about this concept art is that both pieces are so drastic changes in appereance. To the 'uneducated' you wouldn't know that they are the same person. You can also see the similarity in there facial structure.

As you can proberly tell this is of the steriotypical 'Goth'. I don't think that the character has the same level of polish as the others do which is a bit of a let down. It doesn't have any characteristics define to this game.

But enough of the characters as we are doing space and vistas. I wanted to see how these characters would then fit into the enviroment:

This image has everything Phil mentioned in the workshop. The Sky has an ominous glow that looks cool but doesn't draw your attention. It also gives the feeling of conflict. You have mountains as shadows in the background to give it a level of depth, the car in the foreground along with the skulls add to this. The midground is the structure that draws your attention and this also shows scale in approximation to the car.

Next Game:

Uncharted 2:

(Favourite game of the PS3 and at the moment)

Anyone that has seen this game knows the stunning graphics and animation but without an immersval world it means nothing. So lets delve into the minds of the designers over at 'Naughty Dog':

I love this image, and clearly Sony does too as it was used for the cover art of the game. This is the ultimate concept art in my opinion. Not only does it show the character in all his glory but the detail of the enviroment is still high quility. The scale is undeniable as the look is, instead of across, is down. It gives a sense of peril as well as the location.

This could easily be analysed as portrait as well as a piece of concept art. The pose shows vunrebility but there is the presence of the gun that is slightly conceiled, giving the impression of maybe a false personality.

The background is of a war-torn location maybe meaning something of her past?

But now the enviroments, which this company really excel at.

Everything about them is perfect. The scale, depth and detail are all present but more importantlly there relevant to the story. For example, the structure in the third pic are relevant to story. You will need to climb and traverse the buildings. The same with the dangling train scene. It all adds to the story as opposed to 'just looking good'. If you've played the game then you would know that all these enviroments fit into the story in key points.

dumping ground 2

I'll sort these out over the weekend