Link to my website

I am posting this here because the original post is so far down. Website for task 5.

http://hazelshive.wix.com/hazelpageart

Self Evaluation, My very last uni blog post.

So, this is the final entry of this university blog, its all bitter-sweet, as I spent so much time hating writing down my progress and my feelings, but now I look at it, I will miss it. My journey at NUA has come to an end and all there is now is to graduate.

This journey has been one of the hardest things I've had to travel, but I wouldn't have changed it for the world. I've drawn things I never thought I would have drawn, played with software I never would have contemplated and best of all, discovered friendships to inspire my development that I will treasure for life.

I feel the biggest thing I’ve learnt from this project is just to be myself, my final pieces really look great because it is what I wanted to do and in a style that represents who I am. I’ve really begun to understand what works best for me art wise, this doesn’t mean I won’t stop learning but I can add what I learn to what I already know works for me. I’ve learnt so much from the scheduled Anatomy lessons which really helped a lot with the final pieces I created, in particular the Rat Torture piece, before I didn’t understand how the spine moved in a body but having that hands of experience with a knowledgeable tutor really made the different in my learning and what I am producing. I look forward to using what I have learnt to further my skills in concept art.

One thing I would have done looking back is to not be guided by my depression and self-doubt with my abilities, to be stronger with my resolve and not let my worries about my work get me down. I spent so long wishing I was something I wasn't and it nearly ended up being my downfall. But in the end I stuck with my strengths and it all worked out.

No matter what happens, after hand in, after graduation I can hold my head up high, say I done it and value everything that I learnt.

This may be the last blog post for my university blog, but this isn't the end of my journey. I leave the safety net, and go into the world looking for my place in the world of concept art!

Final Pieces.

Here are the results of all my hard work, all the sweat and torment I am so proud of what I have achieved with these pieces. I have seen a massive improvement in my skills since beginning my time at NUA. I have had a lot of fun with these designs and it was a big challenge to make them safe for a public viewing, in my head I could have seen them being a bit more gory but they look perfect either way! One thing I noticed is I managed to redraw these characters with very little change to the concept pieces I created, I normally end up tweaking bits here and there which makes the final outcome somewhat different to the concept designs. keeping that similarity and also creating these three different pieces is one of the biggest lessons I learnt.

For the exhibition I have to choose only one design, throughout this project one lady stuck out to me the most, and that lady is the Pear of Anguish, Anjou. I feel I had the most fun with her so I want her to be the piece that represents me at the graduation show.

Here are the Final Pieces, with progression shots as I went along.

And these are the cards that will be with my piece at the show.

Playing with composition.

I want these pieces to look dramatic, so to get that effect I want to play around with how the characters are posed in the frame. I've never really done anything like this because I normally just go by what my eye finds attractive but I thought I'd make the effort to plan this a bit more seeing as it's the most important piece of work I will do. I felt the best guides to use where the rule of thirds and the golden ratio grids.

First of all starting with the Iron Maiden, I think the key part here will be the face, because that is where you see the eyes behind the mask and the emotion that I will work into them, the feeling of claustrophobia has to come out here but I want the viewer to follow up to the face. Here is the iteration and the feedback with it

For me I think that 1 and 3 work best, with 1 being my favourite, people who replied to my feedback request also said 1 the most. I think 1 works best because it looks like the character is fighting within the image with the sides of the page, it really plays off the claustrophobic feeling of the character nicely.

Next is the Pear of Anguish composition and feedback.

3 cropped up the most, again this is mostly about the face, where the torture happens, emphasis will be on the ripped mouth and the look of pain on the face. The bent over position might make the anorexic physique of the character more prominent with the proper lighting. I might try extending the arms outward a little bit so the face isn't too blocked off. ((EDIT)) I ended up going with 4 instead, I tried very hard to make 3 work but I was getting too frustrated with the way it was ending up so 4 as the next mentioned one was the one I chose.

And lastly Rat Torture composition and feedback

This one was pretty unanimous, 4 was the most selected, I really like all of the poses but the most powerful one is 4, I'm thinking lighting coming from the top opposite side will really work best with this. The focus of this character will be the head and stomach, I'll need to alter it in the final piece so the stomach hole its the centre of the page.

Last stage will be playing around with lighting and then onto the final work!

Character Model Sheets and explaining the characters.

With all the costumes sorted I can move onto my model sheets, I wrote in my learning agreement that I wanted to do character/model sheets I put character because I couldn't remember the difference between them, looking back I only needed to write model sheets.

So here are my model sheets showing the front and back view of the characters with a full explanations as to why they are wearing what they are wearing and why they look the way they look.

Iron Maiden:

• To achieve the shape of the Iron Maiden but still keep a feminine shape I decided to give her a full length cape. With an all over similar colour with the outfit it blurs the form and gives an illusion of being a huge intimidating figure especially from the back view, if viewed from the back it is hard to distinguish what gender the character is and if they are human at all. The cape is also a prominent piece of clothing from the Middle Ages where people would wear them to keep warm and to show status.

• The headpiece is a standard detail with the Iron Maiden device, I added the red cowl based off of a similar design I found in my Middle Age research, again this was added to bulk out the figure, it hides the neck and adds to the feeling of claustrophobia by having the figure hidden by several items of clothing.

• I wanted the character to have a tunic which was often worn by Middle Age time women, this was often held at the waist by a belt. I chose to make the dress a solid metal part of the body, this gives the illusion of being trapped inside with no way out. The belt along with the headpiece and cape give a bit of movement to the solid figure.

• I gave the character exposed eye-holes allowing to see a figure hidden inside of the Iron Maiden, this adds to the claustrophobic feeling and adds a touch of human nature to the device. Where the character has moving parts I added blood to give the illusion that the body underneath has been pierced by the Iron Maiden's spikes and is leaking out. The spikes on the shoulder show what is hidden inside the body.

Pear of Anguish:

• With the character being based visually on Steam punk to help play off the fear of machines I added pipes and metal hands to give the illusion of the character not being alive/human. The character features lots of cogs and metal objects all over to add to this fear of machines.

•  I used the petals of the pear of anguish device with the panniers to create a similar style of dress as worn by women Steam punk fans, attached to the panniers the petals can swing around, this adds to the fear of pain and sharp objects, the sharp ends of the petals hurt the characters legs when she moves, thus why she wears knee high boots to resist the effects of the petals, The characters dress is ripped because of the sharp parts of her metal hands, The long nails of the hands elongates the fingers to add to the creepy look overall and add to the fear of sharp objects.

• For this character I used lots of brass and copper coloured items and clothing, I chose a brass shade for the pear petals based on variants of the torture device being made of this colour, it also works with the fear of machines and is a colour often used in Steam Punk 

• Despite being very mechanic looking I wanted to show the characters feminine side, I went with the traditional era style make up, I chose the heart on the lips because as she was a French prostitute when human, I wanted her to have a flirtatious side, the traditional French beauty spots are specifically chosen to go with a secret sexual language, the ones I chose were "beside the mouth = likes to kiss" and "corner of the eye = passionate". Given the characters history I felt that these were the best ones to have and matched her personality. The character also uses the heavily featured white make-up to hide her skin and wounds caused by being tortured.

• The character is very thin, due to the nature of her injuries she can't eat and her body mass therefore decreased, she uses the panniers and pear of anguish petals as counter balance weights to hold her body up, the bodice as well as accentuating the thin physique, supports the characters spine and prevents her from slumping. Panniers were used by French period women as a fashion accessory to make the waist look thinner. The overall outfit bulks the character up in an attempt to make herself look less thin than she is.

Rat Torture:

• I took the cage that held the rat that ate her body and added it to her head, I done this as if the character had done this to try and prevent the rat doing more damage to her face, this also acts as a way to try and hide her mutated face as she would have been ashamed of what she had become. Given her past as a Lady-In-Waiting she would have been quite vain.

• I went for ropes instead of belts to play on the fear of being bound/tied up these would have been more to hand and a general item in this era.

• I gave the character a plain chemise, the character has been stripped of her rich clothing and is being left with nothing but plain clothing to humiliate her, the only item that shows her previous life are the pearls in her hair, her hair is also partially held up with curls which was a popular hairstyle in the Royal Court. Some of her hair is falling out so her trying to keep her hair neat subtly reveals the characters previous vanity. I had some of the hair falling out to add to the image of being bitten and ripped up by the rats.

• The character features a large hole in her stomach, this is where the rat ate its way out of her body due to the nature of the torture. The character itself is quite simple so this not only gives a bit of story to her but creates something visual that draws peoples eye.

• Her body is covered in buboes and sores, this plays to the phobia of holes. Normally buboes would be not so widespread as they come from the lymph nodes, I wanted to accentuate these both to play up to the gross factor and to amplify the fear of holes.

Pear and Rat Clothing Iteration and Feedback

With the head and hair design and colours sorted it's time to work on the clothing. Working from the images I gathered during the research period I experimented on four different styles each for the characters. Starting with the Pear of Anguish.

With these I was looking to incorporate three different things:

1: The leaves/petals of the actual torture device
2: Mechanical looking items/colours to work on the fear of machines and a steam-punk theme.
3: French style clothing from the chosen era.

Here is the feedback.

A few people chose 3, I really wasn't feeling the look of 3 too much as I felt it looked a little plain and not as steampunkish as the rest, I loved the shoulders from it so I went a little bit more with my own feelings on this character. 1 was mentioned a couple of time so I combined 1 and 4 with the shoulders of three. Here is the final result. I'm really feeling this character and can't wait to begin work on the final piece!

Now too the rat! With this character I was looking to use, again three things.

1: The bucket that held the rat (rat included)
2: The buboes and rat bites to trigger off tryphophobia
3: Robes and bindings to play off Merinthophobia

The clothing itself I ended up just using the chemise and worked on degrading that down as shown, as I was working I was finding that adding the rich style clothing wasn't working so I just left the hair as the implied posh past life.

this was really challenging because to show the buboes I have to have the clothing ripped up to a certain point, however buboes appear on the neck and in the groin area, this isn't going to work from an exhibition standpoint because of obvious reasons, I can't display a female characters genitals in an exhibition where families and young children could see it (having an eaten open chest is fine though). With 3 and 4 I worked around this by having huge bubo clusters that cover everything up.

I was struggling with making the ropes look good in these shots, mainly because I wanted that pose but in the final piece the ropes would be tight, holding the arms and legs together mostly. Here is the feedback I got with these designs

Mostly people chose 2, personally I really love the bucket on the head rather than being over the stomach, I wanted to make it look like she had taken the bucket from the stomach and used it as a shield over her head, to hide the bites and damage to her face and hair, it makes her look really surreal which adds to the viewers discomfort.

I did feel it looked a little blander however than the others, mainly because the lack of ropes on the lower half. I took the ropes from 3 and added a few more buboes, originally I wanted to give her a bucket as a weapon but I'm really not feeling giving any of the ladies weapons. I will have to learn how to draw animals now because she is going to be accompanied by a rat! A nice big rat!

Now all my characters have been created from head to toe I can begin planning out how the final pieces will look!

Pear and Rat Hair Colour Iteration and Feedback.

After getting done with choosing a hairstyle I wanted to experiment with hair colours. As I mentioned in my previous post I wanted hair colours that would have been around at the time the characters are supposed to be from, and hair colours that would work with the theme and phobias.

For the Pear I looked online to find out what colours would have been available and found this info

I was quite surprised by this as I didn't realise they had access to so many different colours, I guess the wig makers would get plants and other such materials to create the odd colours. I used this information to create my colour iteration and looked for feedback.

two out of the three people chose 2, I was really keen on the pink hair but I don't think it would have worked as well as, I was happy with the choosing of 2 though as the pale blue was one of the colours I had selected with my colour palette, it also looks good against the coppers and yellows of the cogs and clock-pieces. So the final image of the head looks like this.

And now for the Rat hair. As I said in the previous post, I wanted colours that both represented the Elizabethan fashion for red hair and the colours of rat fur. I also went with a greyed one as if the stress of the torture made her hair turn grey.

Again two of the three people chose 2, this works for me because its sort of a mix of the base and four, it also doesn't wash out the buboes too much, I think having the red hair wouldn't have worked as well because it would have been too much red and the buboes just kind of merge in with the hair colour. This is the final head of the Rat Torture lady.

I really love how all the heads came out, even though the time periods are quite near to each other, all three look entirely different, one of my biggest concerns was that I would end up with three characters who looked similar. Now onto the clothing!