Starting the final piece.

I looked through my research images and chose out those which inspired me the most.

These are the types of clothing, poses and references that have guided me through the painting process. This is the first time I've drawn properly and I can tell I am rusty, I really have to get painting everyday especially on skin tone.

This is also one of the few times I have drawn my base idea in Photoshop, I normally tend to draw on paper and then scan and clean up the image ... but with the time running out I decided to give drawing using a tablet a go, I still tend to draw really tentatively so I always end up with several lines in the same spot. Getting the colour down was easy enough, just the shading that bothers me.

This is the final image. I am rather pleased with it. I can easily recognise the species of insect and what name it goes by, by the use of colour and imagery. My favourite part I have to say in the cloak, whilst I was painting it I though it looks terrible, but as I added more details and took parts out to look tatty, then I really loved it! Originally there was not going to be a cape but it looks rather bare, and I didn't feel it had enough of the Death's-Head Moth in the image. I didn't add any of the magical vapours around the hand because I really felt like it would ruin the final image, I wanted it to look like it could be real ... If a human witch doctor thing with a floating skull for a head could be real.

Creating a Silhouette.

After gaining some knowledge of how the death's-head moth is looked upon I have created several silhouettes in both Photoshop and Alchemy which I have been determined to learn. As a massive struggler with 'letting loose' and 'painting freely' I feel I have learnt something with this selection

I really love the surprise Shia LaBeouf head in the middle of my silhouette (thanks Shia LaBrush) and it gave me an idea, the skull is mentioned as the reason that the moth was supposed to be the bringer of misfortune. So first I had a couple of quick warm up sketches in my notebook

This idea really strikes me as something that looks like it'll bring misfortune! I decided to go with the female form so it could be a femme evil witch, also African female clothing struck me more than the male because there was more jewellery and colours.

I Then I took that idea from the notebook and from my Photoshop work to Alchemy to do more skully things. I think you can see how I was slowly making progression with this program the more I used it I created more colourful and pretty images.

This was one of the final images I done, I am so happy with this piece, it looks scary, threatening but also in a way beautiful! I was playing around with the same colours that feature mostly on the moth. I wanted to add some sort of magic element to this, I'm not sure if I'll keep that idea as I go through to the final image but it looks really nice here.

From all these Silhouettes these are the few that stuck out the most to me.

They have a very defined shape, they all look humanoid and they seem to have a feminine shape to them. if I had more time I would definitely work more into them but given the time we have I am simply going to draw from that shape and from references that I can find that are similar.

Shaping the character.

To get a sense of how to create the character I will have to look into how Death's-head Moths are treated and looked upon by the areas they live. I already gathered that they mainly live in Africa and that they are looked upon as bringers of misfortune and death due to the skull on their backs.

I had a look into African superstitions and found this website that listed a few http://www.superstitionsof.com/african-superstitions.htm.

This quote from the website states that ...

"African people are very superstitious, so the superstitions in Africa, usually, is a part of everyday life. First African superstition is related to witches. For witchcraft in Africa, often accuse women and even children. It is believed that the witches have night meetings in the forests and seas. Then they agree on how to hurt people. Moreover, many nocturnal animals, especially birds, are suspected as witches. Throughout the history of the village in Africa, witches were blamed for the strong winds, drought, infertility, illness, hunger, misery and all other disasters."

Witches it seems are a problem for African people, so I will probably turn the moth into a witch type character, possibly even some kind of Shaman. Next step for me is to make Silhouettes to see how I can make this baby look!

Beginning research for the 1st task.

I've decided my insect of choice, the only thing we were told regarding this project was insects so we have free reign as far as with what direction we will take. As I am choosing to specialise in 2D character concept for my main project work I will be going in this direction with these tasks.

What I will be doing is what we learned in Year 1 to create this character, to get ideas for the character I will be ...

• Creating Mood-Boards.
• Doing Silhouettes to garner a shape to the character. (probably around 25).
• Creating a final piece (will hope to make it polished).

I've decided to trim the fat so to speak with the process for this task. I skipped doing values and different outfits because we don't have too much time to get this done. Normally I would create numerous outfits but I think I will just choose from outfits I found in my research to guide what I end up drawing.

First things first, a little information on said Moth ... I am going to be focusing on the Acherontia species as this one is the most recognised, and the skull is most prominent.

My favourite information from this is

"In spite of the fact that Acherontia atropos is perfectly harmless except as a minor pest to crops and to beehives, the fancied skull pattern has burdened the moth with a negative reputation, such as associations with the supernatural and evil. There are numerous superstitions to the effect that the moth brings bad luck to the house into which it flies, and that death or grave misfortune may be expected to follow. More prosaically, in South Africa at least, uninformed people have claimed that the moth has a poisonous, often fatal, sting (possibly referring mainly to the proboscis, but sometimes to the horn on the posterior of the larva)."

I feel this will affect how I create the character, I want it to be a reflection of this superstition. I can also take from this how I want the character to look, as it mainly resides in Africa I feel this will take a African twist, I have never looked into Africa from an artistic viewpoint so this will be a nice refreshing start to my projects.

Even though they are supposed to be all scary and evil .... they squeak .... so cute!

And now for mood-boards ... I have gathered here a collection of ...

• Images of the moth itself.
• Artists that I feel will inspire me and make me think of the moth.
• Images of clothing (mostly items from Alexander McQueen's collection) that remind me of the moth
• Images of regional clothing related to where the Moth lives.

These mood-boards have given me a lot of inspiration and will hopefully guide me into the silhouette phase of the task. In the next post I do I will start work on researching more into African culture and begin work on the silhouettes.

Tackling the very first task.

Seeing as I have a vague idea on what  I want my studio work to be about I thought I would have a little go at the very first task that is INSECTS to get my creative juices flowing. Now I'll be straight with you all, I hate anything creepy, anything crawly and would rather do anything than look at insects, but it's a project and in the industry I don't think any dev or boss would appreciate a person who doesn't want to do the work because 'ew icky gross insects scare the heck out of me!'.

I had a little think about what I wanted to study without feeling to scared. Now I'm a fan of the creepy and the weird and one little creature that has always stuck with me in my mind is the 'Deaths-Head Hawk-Moth'.

The first time I encountered this Moth was when little me was in a tent in my nan's garden, reading my smuggled in copy of 'The Silence of the Lambs' for the first time with my flash-light, the moth stuck in my mind since then, which is weird because I am terrified of Moths the most!

First thing I did when we got the brief was 'DEATHS HEAD MOTH!' I can think of some creepy things to do with this beastie!

First session back!

Today we had our first taught session, and it was a go around the room style session where everyone opened up and discussed what we were planning to do for both our CS and our studio work, mainly the studio work was mentioned though.

It was really good to hear what everyone was planning to do, I've really missed these kind of open sessions as you hear everyone's unique ideas and everyone gives ideas to people that you wouldn't normally have thought of yourself!

When it came to my turn I kind of got a bit nervous, even though I knew most of the people there, there were a few people (thanks to group reshuffles) that I had never seen before. So talking about my weird ideas, I worry that I am too weird. Thanks social anxiety! Two ideas that have been floating around in my head are ...

• The Death Knell (the tolling of a bell to mark someone's death.)
• Ancient World Torture Devices (turning these items into humanised game bosses)

I talked about my plans to do my work based on the Death Knell and about humanising torture devises.

As expected there were a few concerns that my work would end up being not suitable for the final end show as it would be open to members of the public and this means children and teenagers. This kind of puts a halt to a few of the ideas I had featuring certain torture object such as Impaling. This means I just have to get creative with what I am doing.

I was advised by our tutor Mark to keep everything PG and to stay away from styles like Hellraiser and possibly Silent Hill as these have been done numerous times, I am a bit disappointed by the Silent Hill mention because I really wanted to make it in a similar style as it's a style I am massively in to. At this point I am a little flustered, but I will just have to add everything I am currently inspired by and go from that point, such as looking at the inspirations that went into creating these already done styles. I will probably end up looking at more psychological torture or something .... These are the notes I made during the session, excuse the randomness of the writing.

Key sentences I noted during this session where

• Look outside the obvious!
• Tasteful Torture!
• Look at making it subtle!
• BE INNOVATIVE.

Mark liked the idea of the Death Knell and said I could probably get more out of it so I'll have a little more of a look at it alongside the torture research. I was advised by a fellow classmate Joe to look up an artist called Mark Ryden that another classmate Jenny had studied. He does art that is both cute, but has a darker side to it. I really like this style, it reminds me of an artist I used to be obsessed with called Chiho Aoshima.

(insert research slides here)

So ... .first session back has given me a lot to think about!

Back to uni, Third Year begins now!

Today our year returned to NUA for our project brief, as Year 3's. It feels like a very long journey in a short space of time! Who would have thought 2 years would pass so quickly!

On Tuesday we, along with the Year 2's had a Welcome Back speech which brought everything snap back into reality, it's all going to end next year and in a way I don't want to leave! A lot has changed with our course projects, I was preparing for BA 7 and 8, the projects are now labelled BA3a (which is Research and Development) and BA3b (Resolution and Innovation). This is the brief for BA3a.

We are going to be furthering our speciality this year, for me, as last time I spent so much time trying 3D I think its going to be a bit hard as I have to re-learn all the 2D tricks I learnt last time and then keep progressing from there, I will be going down the concept art route as I feel this is where my strength is (I will also talk more to my tutors about this and see if they can see something I am missing with my current path)

During today's lecture Mark and Marie-Claire took us through what would be expected of us during this time, and had a look through our timetables, we would also be getting mini briefs as working on a project for months would probably get us all in a creative slump, so to keep us active and to give us some experience in working to a specific time, we will be doing 5 tasks

• Task One [Week 01 – 02] 
• Task Two [Week 03 – 04] 
• Task Three [Week 06 – 08] 
• Task Four [Week 10 – 13] 
• Task Five [Week 14 – 15] 

We were given the word 'INSECT' for our first task, as I am going down the concept art route I feel I will be creating some form of character within this word.

~*~

To get me going after taking in all this information I downloaded the timetables and like last year I have sectioned off different times for different activities. Because we have to hand our dissertation by the beginning of January I will be devoting more time than I normally do to CS as I really want to do well on it this time, we were advised to do 500 words a week to get the backbone of the work written down as a draft piece which will help when we need advice from the CS lectures.

Overall I am slightly overwhelmed by the prospect of this year, but I am rather excited as well. I have a fair idea of what I would like to research for both my studio work and my CS work.