Underworld - Medusa Redesign...

Gorgon - daughter redesign. Pushed the style & the shapes slightly more, trying to make the character appear less generic... let me know if it worked...?

Underworld Characters - The Father!!

Initial sketches & ideas for the character of the father, based on Charon - the guy who ferries dead people across the River Styx...

Trying to base the head shape on a skull, giving him an aged & demon like appearance. However I need to steer away from the slightly terrorist look they seem to carry... I think it's the beard...

Pushing The Style... Underworld Characters.

Still need to push the character style further! So trying to push the proportions & body shapes more, looking more at distances in between features. Also attempting to make her look more other worldly, demonesque, & well slight uglier... She is a Gorgon after all.

Deep - Store Room Details.

Store room design on isometric paper to gain better sense of the perspective...

Underworld Initial Character Designs.

Initial complete character designs for the Underworld sitcom concept!

Went for a long limbed style, with exaggeration of feature such as the waist, forearms & hip size, with slightly pointy, sharp details such as the elbows & calves. 

The daughter, a Gorgon (above) is a seductive, character who thinks a lot of herself. Somewhat of a narcissist with power issues due to her ability to turn people to stone at her will...

A slightly troublesome, goth teen with too much power in her hands...

The mother, a siren (below) although sexual in her occupation, confident & seductive when luring men onto the rocks... She is motherly & sweet, enjoying bringing home a fresh seaman's arm or leg for her children's dinner, although often comes of as glazed toward her husband. Although sweet, her motherly nature also comes in the form of reprimanding her kids, sometimes snapping at their bad behaviour.

Though in moments of anger & in patience her fins splay out uncontrollably.

Deep - Corridor Line Art.

One of the shots in the 101 Dalmations inspired Deep scene I'm working on is the character's walking, with the camera capturing a mid shot with the left wall behind them.

So here is the basic layout of the left wall.

Pre Production - Underworld Character Development.

For my Underworld character's I felt I really need to push the style, steering away from the more realistic style. Which hasn't really worked for me so far...

So I looked at a variety of character designs & artists, creating body shapes of the female Gorgon based & inspired on these artist's.

I knew some of them worked better than other's for me as I was able to get a stronger sense of the pose!

So I need to keep pushing the style & working on it further...

Underworld Characters - Initial Siren & Gorgon Ideas.

Some of my initial ideas & designs for the mother & daughter in my Underworld sitcom for pre production.

The siren and the gorgon.

Started using images from Pinterest - character designers & illustrations - as inspiration & a basis & developed these further...

The daughter - the Gorgon.

The mother - the siren.

Pre Production - Brain Storming & Building Characters.

A massive part of the pre production process is brain storming in an attempt to develop narratives & characters & plot lines.

Here is basically a look at my current process of brainstorming my ideas.

I am pretty certain I will develop the Underworld sitcom process further, so have begun developing the characters in more depth. Trying to decide their motives, characteristics, desires & contrasts/interactions between the characters.

John Gosler - Background Artist.

We recently had a highly interesting, inspiring & informative lecture & masterclass with the background  artist John Gosler.

I found his work incredible due to the use of lighting & the amount of detail used in his work. & the fact we were able to learn the process in which he works regarding digital painting was invaluable & also taught me more details of Photoshop.

Brett Bean!!

Brett Bean is a character designer who's work I love! 

There are so many variations in his character's, whether animal or human, with such strength in the sense of personality in the characters.

He has been my main inspiration for my Underworld characters in my pre production project.

I also love his background designs due to his use of textures & patterns in the visuals.

Backgrounds.

Another fiddle in Photoshop playing with techniques for more simplistic backgrounds...

Practice makes proficient & all.

Based on Toronto skyline from Pinterest. 

Backgrounds Design.

Experimenting with a technique shown to us my John Gosler! 

Simply using the lasso tool to create shapes, need to work on the clouds & adding further texture... but I am very fond of the effect & would definitely work in this way. Also need to work out to create a more water style appearance...

The image is based on Patagonia, Argentina from my Pinterest.

Photography Taster - The Studio.

The second part of the photography taster was working within the studio.

Learning how to light the form in different ways to create different atmospheres, styles & backgrounds.

I personally found this area less fun, but highly informative & helpful regarding understanding lighting.

Photography Taster - The Dark Room!

I have been MIA recently due to many a reason, so I apologise for my absence! (to the many people I'm sure missed my presence...)

Part of that is due to me participating in a photography taster week!

I studied photography at A Level & was incredibly passionate about it, but recently I seemed to have lost my connection with it... & also lack in the time.

So I signed up to improve my initial skills & get myself back into it, as well as doing something a little differently creative in a hope to gain some inspiration & motivation.

I adore the dark room & using film cameras, watching your own image appear in front of you is an amazing experience!

The film brief was to look at architecture & textures within Falmouth, which was generally interesting just to explore Falmouth in a different way.

Then the process of developing the film, test strips, contact sheets, choosing images, test strips & a final image occurs.

One of the images I chose was particularly interesting to produce as for some reason the shift of focus (& the depth of field) within the photograph was able to be changed using the enlarger - not something that usually happens - so I was able to play around with this!

Crocodile Tears - Deadlines...

Some of the shots I completed were finished before the deadlines, which were normally a week.

However in some cases this meant I would be given an an additional shot... this was a learning curve regarding deadlines & shot completion!

I was essentially given this shot on the monday to complete by 5pm on the following day... which led me to panic! Mainly as there were two characters involved & I had yet to clean up & colour two characters! Especially the character of Katherine which led to a lot more checking of the guidelines etc.

However it was completed on time after several solid hours of working...

Personal Work - Watercolours.

A few more 'experimental' watercolours... i.e. things have gone wrong & I've tried to save it in one way or another...

Personal Work - Sketches.

A few more brown paper experiments & profile sketches, references on Pinterest.

Pre Concepts - Underworld.

Another concept for pre production was of a dark sitcom based in the underworld...

The four main characters are intended to be;

- the father; carries the dead across the river Styx.

- the mother; a sweet, charming Siren.

- the older daughter; a Gorgon, turning people to stone.

- the younger son; a minion, set to do Hades bidding.

Oh & their three headed pet bunny...

The character's need to be developed further & a storyline or two, but I think this idea could be super interesting & funny.

Sketches of possible siren concepts from references I have found on Pinterest.

Deep - Coloured Store Room Design.

Watercolour painted version of the storeroom based on colours of 101 Dalmations, with pencil crayon & ink over the top.

& below a digitally manipulated version of the painting...

More Hand Drawn Lettering...

Rough hand drawn lettering of Immortal Technique's 'Dance With The Devil' lyrics.

To vectorize & clean up.

Pre Concepts - Tooth Fairies.

One of my pre production ideas was based on the idea of 'evil' tooth fairies. Possibly after an eventful afternoon watching Hellboy...

I pitched this idea very briefly in a pre production seminar - possibly stupidly may I add, as it is was the most undeveloped & obscure idea...

Anyway, my 'brief' idea was that in an alternative reality parent's left their children's teeth under their pillows in order to keep the fairies at bay on a more permanent basis... to stave of the fairies' hunger...

For human bones. More specifically children's bones due to the more tender & tasteful nature...

So I created a quick sketch of an image in my head based on this idea & very much inspired by Regina Pessoa's 'Kali the Little Vampire'.