Week 15 marks the second to last week on Greek mythology, it’s been pretty fun and I think that is mainly down to how the Greek creatures are mainly hybrids and are open to a lot of interpretation. Speaking of which the first creature I worked on this week was the Chimera, this creature was a fire breathing monster derived from a lion, a snake and a goat. Many artist’s depictions have the Chimera as a lion with a goats head on its back, ending with a snakes head on its tail.
For a change I started with silhouettes for this character. Sometimes when I’m struggling with ideas seeing what is already out there and then reference images of the actual animals it’s made up from help a hell of a lot. So once I’d done that I drew up some rough silhouettes.
Some of the silhouettes just were not interesting enough to make people interested, like the bottom right. After discussing the silhouettes me and Georgia decided that the top left was the most interesting and unique looking silhouette.
Moving on from silhouettes I drew the creature in profile for iterations as that’s generally kind of easier for me. I experimented with different types of horns, teeth and tears in the flesh of the creature. Overall me and Georgia both preferred the bottom right design this time, as the skulls are a different take on this creature.
Before moving onto further iterations I asked Georgia how could I improve the design and we figured adding more skeleton elements like bones sticking through and the snakes skeleton reaching further up the tail and last of all we thought about adding some armour so that’s what I did next!
The colour palette designs for the Chimera are fairly plain and simple however it does easily represent the colours for each iteration. After working on these designs I preferred the top left and bottom right as the colours don’t contrast too much, however I didn’t think the purple worked very well with the bottom right design. In the end I picked that one and decided to pick a more complementary colour for the final.
I'm fairly pleased with the final design of the Chimera, as skulls are one of my most favourite things to draw and paint. After changing the purple accent colours to red I felt a lot better about the colour palette in the end. For the Chimera final I started with a grey scale painting then painted over the top of that with an overlay layer which definitely helped me maintain lighting information. I've been trying to use this process of painting after talking to my mentor Will, who gave me some great advice on using this process.
In the middle of the week I moved onto designing the creatures Laelaps and the Tuemessian fox. The Tuemessian fox was a gigantic fox that was destined never to be caught, however Laelaps, a magical dog, who was destined to catch everything it chased. Due to the paradoxical nature of these two creatures Zeus turned the two beasts into stone and cast them into the stars where they remain as Canis Major and Canis Minor.
I wanted these two creature to be somewhat contrasting with the other creatures Greek mythology as many are giant and evil creatures which prey on innocent people.
When considering how I was to go about designing these two creatures I did some studies from reference images I found but I just wasn’t feeling it and the idea kind of died. However I then turned to doing some small studies of more stylised and cartoon-like animals, these kept my attention much more and I ended up really enjoying drawing out these characters.
For Laelaps I experimented with kind of half stylised and the moving onto completed stylised and cute dogs. Pleased with how Laelaps was going I did the same for the Tuemessian fox, the famous Disney style was definitely a hard style to replicate so I didn’t linger very long on that idea, I moved onto more cute designs like large eyed foxes with expressive faces.
Once I had chosen the kind of style I wanted to paint each creature with I came up with a composition and got on with the painting. At the same time Georgia had decided to experiment with a styles and painted the final for Artemis in a more Art Nouveau and Mucha style. For this design I chose to try and do the same, it probably wasn’t as successful as Georgia’s however I’m happy with the final outcome.
By Thursday I had to get designing the Stymphalian bird. These are long beaked birds like that of an ibis or crane which could pierce the armour of bronze or iron that the men who came to hunt them wore. Based on the description I decided to design the Stymphalian bird after an Ibis. After researching some Ibis species I was most intrigued by the Northern Bald Ibis, which had bright red faces and legs and spiky feathers which protruded from its head.
To being with I did some quick grey scale studies of the Northern Bald Ibis. I knew from the beginning these birds were going to wear armour so after that I moved onto some iterations on armour for the face of the bird. All the designs were rather different but we decided to go for the top right design in the end and have matching armour on the rest of the body.
Finally I painted some orthographics to showcase the final design of the Stymphalian bird. I chose golden armour as the brightness contrasts with the black feathers of the Ibis.
Finally on Friday I was onto concepting environments for the Underworld. I decided to pick some more well known parts of the Underworld like the Gates of Hell and the River Styx. To begin on concepts for the Gates of Hell I spent some time using 3ds Max to blockout some simple shaped gates which I could then paintover. For the Gates I chose to make them look intimating by using lighting and regal looking columns.
After picking some of the best renders I painted over each of them to portray different moods across. I really liked the green tinged design and the bright red fire consumed design as well. In the end I chose the green design as it portrays the dead sort of feel and it makes it seem very isolated and dark.
Finally I worked on the final concept for the Gates of Hell, this was a matte painting which I find my easier when it comes to designing environments, especially on a large scale. I tried to make the Gates of Hell look dramatic and intimidating with that sickly green tinge.
Pop back next week when I'll be on the last week of Greek mythology and almost finished with FMP!