First week on Inuit Folklore
- amandabruce49
- Feb 28, 2016
- 4 min read
The first important milestone has been reached for our FMP. That of course is the 5 week cut off point for the Japanese section of the project.
Looking back on how the first 5 weeks have gone I can say that we've got a hell of a lot of work done in that small amount of time, especially compared to the Style Matrix projects at the start of the year. Both Georgia and I managed to reach our goal target of concepting at least 10 characters and 1 or more environments. Personally I struggled a bit when trying to manage my time as this was the first part of our Final Major Project, I didn't really know what to expect. I did, however manage to concept all the creatures and characters that I was assigned which I'm pretty happy with. Overall I think maybe less characters is a better idea as then we can focus more on the designs we have and revisit and refine them if necessary.
So now it's the start of the next 5 week segment of FMP I want to use the first 5 weeks to manage my time better and create some more refined concepts. Inuit culture is our topic for the next 5 weeks and this is the first week of that, so I had better get cracking.
Monday was busy but I was excited to get started on something new. First things first though, Me and Georgia had to review our second test print. We are both much happier with the results of this test print when compared to the first. This time we chose a larger book size, and a shiny pretty dust jacket as well. I realised straight away that compared to the first book the images came out a lot nicer in this size book, and there also wasn't much difference in the colours unlike the first test book. We tried a few different styles of layout and font types so we can choose which fonts to use throughout the book and which layouts work best. We took a lot of inspiration from other art books like Disney's Brave for the layout design. We have both agreed that this test print had a much better outcome and we're more confident in designing the final book as we have a clear picture of what we want it to look like now.
Here are some images of the second test print:
On Monday I had to make my timeplan for the new project, Inuit folklore. This time I tried to set it out differently so I could have a more detailed time plan and I wouldn't get confused like last time.
Finally after all that admin stuff; ew, I managed to actually get started on some drawing for the first creature I had to design. This was a creature called an Akhlut. This is an orca which can tranform into a wolf on land making it a deadly predator not only in the water but also on land. As an orca has a very distinctive head shape I tried to find a similar match in a dog breed. One I found, which I also think is super cute and I want one, is the British Bull Terrier. With it's angular head and snout I thought it was perfect for the weird creature I'm designing. So naturally I started off with some bull terrier studies as I wanted to make sure I had the anatomy and structure of the creature down before working on anything else.
On Tuesday I moved onto my next character, or should I say characters. As there was a LOT. My next mini project was the designs of the Adlet. This is an overall term for the creatures which were created when a woman mated with a giant red dog. Basically I wanted to design the Adlet as human/dog hybrids but in more of a cute way, as in traditional Inuit folktales Adlet are seen to be monsterous and are said to have savaged the Inuit people.
I started by designing the mother first, the woman who mated with the giant dog. I found that designed her first made it way easier to design the 5 Adlet children.
I began focusing on the face of the mother, and I went for a more mean and weathered look as it relates to the character a lot more. After that I had to move on to clothing designs and colours. I got through the process fairly quickly as I had only given myself 1 day to get the mother completed.
When designing the offspring of this woman I drew up some little designs I had done on paper. I then went right into iterating each of the children using value studies and then colour studies to refine the designs down to the final thing.
After refining the designs down I then got to work painting a final with the mother and offspring altogether. I struggled a bit and I don't think it's the best of my work however I do quite like the ideas behind it.
The final painting also took longer than I really wanted but I did get started on my next creature design at the end of the week and I did some sketches to revisit a previous design. That was all for this week but I'll be back next week with more on Inuit folklore and lots more work.