Call me a Colour Sith Lord: Dath Vader
So the dreaded colour week is finally upon us and the teams have been shifted. I’m now on Plant World and on a team with Darcy, Beata, Clare and Siobhan. It’s interesting being on this world since I was in the group that came up with the initial idea in the first week. I was in love with some of the designs that the following group came up with when designing the sentient plant-creatures that inhabited this leafy landscape.
The first thing I wanted to tackle with our new team was cementing a solid idea of what we wanted this world to feel like. Did we want life or death? Feast or famine? Warmth or cold? Also, how familiar is this world going to look? Surely we want to ‘Pandora the bajeezus out of it’ like in James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’? Well, to a degree yes. This is a fantasy world, we should play around and have fun with it. I’ve always struggled with drawing things that don’t have (flesh-based) organic bodies so I was stepping out of my comfort zone a little here.
Darcy linked a beautiful painting by Maxim Revin of a rocky terrain with a porous surface with light spilling in. I really liked this painting’s monochromatic colour scheme and sense of scale and was inspired to create a more organic version.
Maxim Revin’s concept Art.
I had suggested we had giant wooden tree structures supporting the outer shell of the planet that dotted the landscape. When designing these I was immediately inspired by the development blog of a jolly old treant by the name of Ivern from ‘League of Legends’. The 3D Celtic Cross design that his right arm and horns adapted looked fascinating to me, and so I adapted them when sketching out our landscape.
‘Ivern’ from ‘League of Legends’
More at the Development Blog for Ivern:
*Note to Self: Remember to check out Ivern’s Walk cycle animations for next year!*
I’m still trying to settle on a process when it comes to this kind of art. Honestly I think the way I chose was too precise and I should have been doing something along the lines of the previous week, which I think I will revisit this project with. Below is the step by step of the first piece I painted for the world:
I even shambled together a physical prototype of the structure out of my gummy rubber whilst fidgeting in class (Which Alistair squashed):
After this I wanted to create a painting with a little bit of narrative. I wanted a low-angle shot to showcase a point of view from the ground and had initially wanted to include the large rhino-type creature designed by the previous group, but instead opted for the simpler little acorn guy. I added a random plant-bird going in for an attack on the unsuspecting little guy to add some element of narrative to the painting.
Locko 