Induction project: Concept Art

After coming back from the summer holidays; we've been given an induction project to start off our second year on the NextGen course. This induction project is the concept of art based on inspiration from a trending Netflix series: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.

We used our search engines and searched: David Froud. Who was the character designer for Labyrinth and Dark Crystal I typed in keywords such as 'Dark Crystal' 'Age of Resistance'. After doing some research I looked at the design that I was aiming for my rough sketches of the concept art. On our second lesson (02/09/2019), we all went outside for over an hour to create some drawings and take inspiration on the design from the Dark Crystal series. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my sketchbook and pencils so I had to rely on the college equipment. Took photos of the materials and drew approximately 7-9 pieces of drawings based on objects or animals.

(Insert photo of character sheet concept board here)

The next step was that we had to create a character based on the concepts, objects we've gathered however you could expand your horizons based on your own imagery. I brainstormed any idea I could into my head. A few ideas I wasn't fond of and doesn't look well or stand out at all so I rubbed it out. The rough sketch I created was a rabbit in which has some bizarre, odd, and quirky features. For example; On the top of the rabbits back, the rabbit has a stone shell occupying a tree with some small prickly thorns on top of it. From there I scanned out my rough sketch. I got the file with my USB from another computer and opened up photoshop and the rough sketch file itself. I started to darken the lines and I disliked the fact at how inaccurate it became on the darkened lines. Had I brought my graphics tablet it would've been convenient.

Once that college day finished I got home and signed up for Padlet. That way I've reminded myself that I signed up for one. On the 04/09/2019, I continued to produce the dark edges and lines from my rough sketch. I made it easier for myself this time by using my graphics tablet. I should have done this beforehand with Padlet however, I created a canvas based on inspirations and ideas for my character design. From there I've added on materials, designs from concept art pieces and official designs, etc. Here is the canvas I created:

After darkening the lines, I created a few layers those being: Light, Shadow, Texture, Main Body. I unlocked the background before creating the layers. One mistake that occurred was that my (locked) background layer had the darkened lines. Luca helped me out by going to Select > Color Range > 200 and used the eyedropper a few times to get as many lines as Luca could. From there he painted the lines onto another layer. Afterward, it was necessary for me to clean up the rough sketches and prevent them from touching the black lines.

I've done some erasing on the lines so far. Having done some clean up from the rough sketch I was advised by Sam that I could do the clean up at any time. With that being said I moved on to obtaining the textures. I would've had my textures finished in time had it not been due to time restrictions, being stuck on the task, and my time management on the textures.

The first step I did was crop extend the image with the crop tool. The second step I did was go onto Google and gather some textured images. I saved the texture images into their perspective folders, then gathered the images and placed them onto my concept art textures layer. From there I selected the leaf layer by using the clone stamp tool with alt. With the leaves textures I placed it on the ears and main body.

One problem I had with texturing was that with the clone stamp tool it went out of the boundaries from the texture image to the body parts itself. For example I wanted to put the stone texture on the center back thigh of the rabbit itself. What I did was with the clone stamp tool was to stamp it from a different part of the picture itself. Sometimes it might sometimes it won;'t. Again, it all comes down to the placement of the stamped hue(s) of the picture itself in contrast to where you want to stamp in the area itself.

Another issue I had at hand was file names and thumbnails. When you load or bring in new images you won't see the thumbnail of the image. To do this right-click on the layer and do 'Rasterize Layer' this will expose the images thumbnail layer and makes things convenient and prevents confusion in which this makes the work process less time-consuming.. Once I had gotten up to finishing my concept art textures. I did Layer > Flatten Image. And then saved it as a PNG file. Here is my work in progress design and concept art so far (06/09/2019):

After the textures we're supposed to shade these. Unfortunately I couldn't get around to that in the first week. When I was submitting it wouldn't let me submit two files due to file restrictions. So what I did was I compressed the files into one folder. That way it would get the files in without bypassing restrictions. The second week in and we had to present our concept art/character sheets. At first I was nervous about doing it because it was a work in progress character concept art. I went over that when I presented and implied that the blog and concept art wasn't finished however they were very much there.

Personally when I presented this I performed better than I thought I would and my classmates thought it was cool, neat, and good overall. On top of that I received some feedback. Izzy mentioned to de-saturate the colors/leaves from the body/torso itself. Sam mentioned implementing shading in the character model itself. But to respond to Sam's comment I was aware of implement shading beforehand. It's just that I've been rather behind. The character model sheet will be shown later on in this blog. So as I was working on my character concept art. I managed to finish my cleanups. Whilst I was in the middle of that I added some shading into the shadow layer. Afterward, I asked Izzy and David if they got around to the light layer for the concept of art. Izzy helped me out by giving me advice and drew some shading and light into their appropriate areas. I told Izzy for the light that the lighting was coming from the top right of the drawing itself.

I didn't get many screenshots this time around because I was focusing on another piece of work fro another project and at the same time I wanted to get my concept art done as soon as I could. After the cleanup, shading, and lighting were done I flattened the entire image and cropped out the textures images With that pout of the way here is my final concept art piece.

Overall, I'd say I'm please with how these turns. This bizarre, odd, and fantastical creature is something by wonders! I liked the shading and light aspects the most because it gets the feel of a 3D art piece rather than a flat 2D generic art piece.