Category: Part 2

The category containing all posts for part 2.

Exercise: Making a Moodboard. Part one: Field trip.

joshrobbinsocaLeave a comment

I’m going to be completely honest. I hate collage. I wasn’t looking forward to doing this exercise at all, but I tried to come at it with an open mind and commit to giving it my all.

I chose destruction as the word for my moodboard. I brainstormed and immediately thought of things like explosions, lightning, fire, storms. I thought of using different methods to destroy bits of craft material and stick them to my board.

After sitting on my ideas for a while I thought of going a different direction. I felt like my first ideas were a bit literal and I wanted to go for something more indirect. I thought that if I were in a professional situation and I was really trying to create a moodboard to help me think creatively about destruction, grenades and explosions wouldn’t help me create the kind of art I want to make.

I decided on using photographs from the surrounding countryside to make my moodboard. I wanted to do something new and challenging. I thought of all the weathered, collapsed ruins scattered around the landscape, and fell in love with the idea of doing this kind of organic research. I got in my car and went looking for things around me that I felt represented destruction. I tried to keep in mind to look not just for interesting views, but also textures and colours. I left in the morning and kept a travel diary of my day. I’ve transcribed it here, embellishing on my shorthand here and there.

______________________________________________

Field Trip!

12:09 – Drove out to Kilinaboy. I climbed up the mound to the collapsed church and the fallen round tower. There were some American tourists there admiring the age of the gravestones around the sight. Some were dated to 1700. I initially mistook the round tower for a mound, because it had collapsed in on itself, forming a kind of dome.

12:49 – Arrived at Dysart Castle. The gate leading to it was closed, with a simple laminated sheet which had blown over on itself stating that it was closed for the season. Lovely. I was cautious about leaving my car here given that there was no parking, but seeing nobody around, I left it at the cul de sac and wandered around the seasonally abandoned archeology trail. I found another old ruined church and another round tower. This one had collapsed in an interesting diagonal way. I hadn’t realised how common it was to see these partnered buildings, chapels and towers. Driving on the way back out of Dysart, a man in a van beckoned me to pull over and tried to sell me a mattress. I told him I already had one.

13:17 – Found old manor in very bad disrepair. Possibly what’s left of an old Protestant landowner’s estate. Seems inaccessible. There was no place to park but I did try to pull in to take some photos. Turned about at a very bad time and disrupted some traffic. Oops.

Note: Did some research afterwards. As it turns out, the manor was built in the 17th century on the remains of an older castle which belonged to one of Brian Boru’s descendants, and the last King of Thomond. The Manor was built by a prominent Irish folk heroine, Máire Rúa, who fought with her husband on the side of the Royalists against the English settlers during the Cromwellian conquest. It would be nice to see it opened up as a tourist destination, as at the moment it’s in dreadful ruin and is on private land.

13:33 – Kilfenora. I explored the ruined church in the village, this one containing some very old tombs and a well preserved high cross. I entered the vistor’s centre and spent some time studying the map. I think I will head out to Lahinch and look at the ocean. It’s a pity the day is so wet and rainy, or I would do some outdoor drawing.

14:10 – Lahinch. There was much traffic in Ennistimon. I’m going to have a walk about and risk a drawing of the ocean. If it gets destroyed in the rain then I suppose it will be poetic! I’m going to head west and see if I can find another ruined church that I saw on the map I studied earlier.

15:45 – Took a good long walk along the beach. Lots of nice pictures. I did find the ruins, but once again they were on private land. Pity. Managed to attempt a drawing, not at all happy with the result. Doesn’t fit the theme.

16:32 – Went for some food. Really tasty. Got a few more decent pictures around the beach. Gonna call it a day. Had a nice field trip, good experience.

__________________________________________

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Next I’m going to get these photos printed and start contructing my moodboard.

Exercise: Turning words into pictures.

joshrobbinsocaLeave a comment

When I first saw this exercise I was initially pretty excited. Doing this sort of quick, imaginitive visual shorthand is something I’ve been idly filling the margins of all my notebooks with since I was a child. I decided to challenge myself and pick one of the adjective words, going with wild.

I have to say, I found it pretty difficult. Initially I just drew some random images that came to my head when thinking of wild.

wtp

Actually, I feel like trying to use different mediums was a bit of a hindrance. It made everything lack continuity and feel disjointed. It also broke my rhythm, like “oh I’m enjoying this inking process but I guess now I should pick up a crayon and use that for a while”. It left me in a situation where I either try and more accurately meet the brief of the exercise, or try and commit to a process that felt more natural and stick to my pencils and pens. In general I just felt like the whole thing felt very uncoordinated and didn’t proffer a very satisfying result.

The next page didn’t feel much better, overcompensating in another direction.

wtp2

I ended up doing a loose drawing I thought was nice, but then feeling like I wanted to use a reference to fully realise the sketch. I searched on the web for sketches by some of my favourite artists, and spent some time looking at the work of Frank Frazetta (http://frankfrazetta.org/). I ended up with a few studies that were quite well realised drawings. I have to say, I quite like this page, but feel like it wasn’t at all meeting the brief. This was really just doing some nice sketch practise and not challenging myself to get the intended meaning of the exercise. I wrote some notes about my feelings on the exercise, wondering how to do something spontaneous and visually explorative, relying only on my imagination without devolving into jumbled mess.

I re-read the exercise and focused on one section. The wording specifies that if the word conjures a scene, imagine you are moving around the scene with a camera and recording each element to create a visual checklist, a catalogue of images. I did the exercise one more time, this time trying to imagine a scene that I could move around and explore.

wtp3

I feel much happier with this result, and it matches up better with what I think my creative process might be like in the future as a working illustrator. I tried to picture a weird little vignette to take snapshots of, and let myself fill in the blanks with my drawings. The quality of the drawings are not the best, but I’ve made something fun that I would enjoy going back and developing with more detailed drawings.

On reflecting on the exercise I think my mood had a lot to do with the results. I had had some prior commitments during the day I first attempted it, and was pretty tired and disinterested by the time I got around to it. I’m glad I spent the time necessary to get the most out of the exercise.

Exercise: Spider Diagrams

joshrobbinsocaLeave a comment

This exercise called for me to make a number of spider-diagrams around four predetermined words. I then had to get another person to repeat the exercise, and compare the results.

I had fun doing this exercise. I often do similar word association exercises during my normal creative process, so I didn’t have very much trouble working on my diagrams. What I do have trouble with, is legibility! On top of my, uh, unique hadwriting, I was working on a sketch in markers on the reverse of the page and didn’t notice it bleeding through to my diagrams. So it’s a mess. I decided to recreate them digitally. I also took the opportunity to introduce some colours and textures.

I got my girlfriend to do the exercise, and added in her words to my diagrams in a different colour. I tried to create different styles for the different words. We actually had more words in common than I thought.

The most difficult word for me was probably childhood. Which I found pretty interesting. The words for childhood that me and my girlfriend came up with were both a little bleak. I didn’t have the happiest of childhoods, and that was probably reflected in the words I did come up with. I suppose I could have tapped into that and come up with more and more words along those lines, but I guess I had some anxiety about making things very specific and personal in an exercise that I would be sharing publicly.

In contrast to some of the other students’ exercises that I looked at when browsing other blogs, I found angry quite easy. Being an emotion, it was very open-ended and allowed me to just freely associate things and come up with a lot of words quickly. Actually trying to tie emotions into my creative process helped me to come up with more words, and importantly, more interesting words. When doing festival, it helped to think of being anxious or excited and see what words came out of those feelings.

This is something I will try to do more of in the future.

ex2-4ex2-3ex2ex2-2

Exercise: Writing a brief.

joshrobbinsocaLeave a comment

For this exercise I need to find an existing illustration that resonates with me, and retroactively write a brief for the creation of that illustration.

When considering an illustration for this exercise, I immediately thought of an art book I recently purchased Final Fantasy: Ultimania Archive. It includes many illustrations from one of my favourite concept artists, Yoshitaka Amano. I spent some time looking through the book for pleasure, and settled on this beautiful character artwork for the character Edgar, from Final Fantasy VI. I always liked that character when I played through the game as a child, and I think this artwork captures him so well, I chose it for this exercise.

The artwork can be seen here: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/a/a8/Ff6_edgar.jpg

Here is the brief I came up with:

Brief

Character artwork for upcoming Final Fantasy VI: we want you to continue your character design work bringing to life the character of Edgar Roni Figaro. He is male, age 27, and king of Figaro Castle. He is a very regal figure, and this should be reflected in the artwork. Tall and proud, he is emits an air of pomp and circumstance. However he is also playful and quick-witted, and a notorious womaniser, something used for comic effect throughout the story. His combat class is one of machinist and his penchant for invention should manifest visually in eccentricity. He is noble, strong, and cunning.

Crucial to the portrayal of Edgar is his underlying complexity. He assumed the throne not through ambition, but duty. While outwardly allied with The Empire, he is in fact cooperating with a subversive rebel group, The Returners. We need to believe that underneath his confidence he hides his insecurities, his self-doubt.

In terms of attire, his native land is surrounded by desert, so perhaps billowing fabrics should be used. They should be dyed in various strong, regal colours. The surrounding world is one of fantasy and future. There are powerful technologies and advanced machines, but also magic and adventure. Their landscape is filled with strange, alien creatures.

The purpose of the illustration is to assist our team in developing the look and feel of the character, designing the spritemaps around the image, and basing the in-game portrait around his appearance. While this image itself will not appear in the game due to technical limitations, it will be included in the manual and in various promotional materials.

The game’s audience is primarily male youths, but the FF series has broader cross-gender appeal than many other successful video games, so perhaps this can be reflected in the world design. We would like you to work consistent with your previous work on the series, expressive ink line work and bright water-based paints.

________________________________________________

Reflection

I found this exercise to be an interesting challenge. To consider approaching an illustration from the perspective of a commissioner is something I’ve never done before. I tend to develop my ideas quite visually, with sketches and doodles. So to really think it out and write a piece of text was a different experience. To have to write out what I want instead of just scribbling it. I did enjoy pretending to be an art director on one of my favourite games though!

Ref

Final Fantasy Ultimania Archive: Volume 1. Dark Horse, 2018.