New year, new blog

So this is third year and this is my new blog.

The start of the third year has been overwhelming to say the least, there's a LOT of work. However I feel a lot more comfortable with the course layout this year than in previous years, minus the loss of life drawing which we are all very sad about.

First things first I'm going to explain how this year is set out, then I'll talk about what I'm working on at the current time.

So as I said this year is a little different, instead of a fair amount of large projects over the year we have three smaller 3 week projects up to Christmas then the FMP (Final Major Project)for the remainder of the year.

The tutors have given us a range of projects all within a "Style Matirx" which covers all styles and sides to the course. It ranges from realism to highly stylised, and this isn't just 3D projects but also all 2D.

So I've chosen my three projects. The first; partially stylised character which is in the style of J C Leyendecker, which is what I'm currently working on and I'll come back to later. This is a completely 2D project, focusing on character concepts and design.

The second is the highly stylised environment project of the shop front. This is a 3D project however is has elements of 2D and design I like which is why I chose it.

The third and final of the term is the partially stylised prop brief, which is also a 2D project. I will have to design a number of "quirky" weapons with upgrades, I chose this because I love making quirky things especially for uni projects.

Back to the current project now though; as I said it's a totally 2D project to design some viking characters in the style of J C Leyendecker. It's challenging for me as I'm not super confident in my digital painting skills and as a 2D project it's all on Photoshop.

I've completed the research part of the project and I think I'm set on what I want to do now. The first thing I did was research the artist J C Leyendecker, who after looking into I love. His art style is very distinctive and expressive. Below is the moodboard I made for his work with annotations.

I also gathered a load of reference images straight off the bat so I wasn't stuck for reference or inspiration when it came to really drawing my concepts in his style.

My first step was to try get some ideas going and I did this silhouettes and this is a fairly simple and easy way to generate ideas.The character I started concepting was the villain as it's a key character that would like to polish into promotional artwork.

Here's some of the silhouettes I came up with.

I chose the top middle silhouette to take to the next stage as it was fairly interesting and mysterious which is what I want for my villain character. As i began putting more detail into the design I decided on who my villain was, what he acted like and how they should look. I decided on a mysical old man, who uses ancient Nordic runes for his magic and curses.

The first lot of iterations are below:

I'm leaning more towards the second on the top row as the patterns on his cape give him a more magical look. The next step would be to look into colour palette and refining the design of clothing and pose.

I also did some research on real life viking clothing and life. It turns out they weren't all heroic adventurers, but farmers who lived fairly simple and nice lives. I did a lot of clothing research as I didn't want my characters to be stereotypical, I plan to make some of the villagers and npc characters fairly plain and simple like real Nordic vikings. This weekend I plan to refine the main villain character and concept some of the npc characters.

I created a simple project plan to keep myself organised and manage my time well as that is a skill I am lacking.

I'm currently up to date and hopefully it will stay that way throughout the project.