Environment Finals

Colour Studies

My four colour studies.

Values

The four value studies for the landscapes. I chose the last two for my finals.

Thumbnails

The next assignment we had was to create landscapes. Each stage had to be recorded, 4 thumbnails, 4 value studies, 4 colour studies and 2 finals.

Final Piece

Final piece with a wallpaper.

Character Sheet

No facial hair or finishing touches, just the different emotions.

Model Sheet

This is the complete first model sheet. I decided to do a coloured one as well as a regular outline as I wanted to express the block colours I'll be using.

Colour Studies

In this post I will begin posting some progression of my colour study. I've gone with one value study and one positioning for this as I like where it's going.

He's looking a little surprised at the moment I just wanted to begin playing around with a bit of detail as I have a fairly certain colour palette in mind.

These were some quick colour thumbnails, playing around with a few different variations.

Value Studies

This was a first attempt at a value study.

The first is just the shading used, the second is with the outline that I was working to.

This is my final value study, I chose the same position as the one above but without the coat, without the coat I can get more texture and shape in.

Silhouettes

Here are my silhouettes, most of them are orientated around the Georgian military soldier, but towards the end I started to go to any kind of soldier that could've been around during that time, so pirates and mercenaries. That's where I will be taking my character, I did a quick value study at the end to show the direction these will be going for my values.
I kept all of my silhouettes very loose, tightening up a few as I got towards the end. This was because I was starting to get a feel for the kind of positioning I wanted. As I mentioned in a previous post, the soldier is a great character to choose as he does a lot throughout the story and you can really start to imagine what kind of person he is and start portraying that throughout the silhouettes.

Research

I chose the soldier as my character to draw, as I felt I could have a lot of fun with this character, in terms of his stance and his clothing, maybe his weaponry too. He is a character that is very active throughout the story as it's mainly focused on him, because of this, whilst you're reading the story, you can imagine him in lots of different positions and start giving him a personality through those movements and stances.

The first thing I used for my research was the film 'Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides', as the beginning of this film is set in the 1700's which is when the Georgian period was coming to it's end.
I took a few screenshots from the film, the main purpose of which was for reference, they are some large, detailed and well coloured images of some Georgian military uniforms, which is perfect for some of my silhouettes.

I then began to shift over to the idea of this soldier not being a military soldier as such, because he's never described that way, he's just portrayed as a solider, so I began looking at pirates and mercenaries from that period. (1714-1830)

Bibliography

http://amhistory.si.edu/onthewater/exhibition/1_5.html
http://thepirateempire.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/pirate-clothes.html
http://www.gentlemenoffortune.com/arms.htm
http://pirateattack.co.uk/history/pirate-women

Synopsis - The Tinderbox

The story begins with a soldier coming home from the war, on his way he meets an old witch, who tells him about some untold riches, all he has to do is climb down a tree.
She then goes on to tell him about three dogs which sit upon large chests in three separate rooms, each of the chests contain coins of different metals, in the first; bronze, second; silver and third; gold. Just before he enters she asks him to retrieve an old tinderbox for her.
He climbs down and sure enough he opens the first door and there is the dog on the first chest containing the bronze coins, he proceeds to fill his pockets. He then goes to the second room and once again, there is the dog, slightly larger this time, sitting on the second chest. He empties his pockets of all the bronze and fills them with silver. 
Finally he moves onto the last room, in which there is a much larger dog sitting on the final chest, he moves it aside as he did with the others and, once again, empties his pockets and re fills them with the more valuable coins.
He retrieves the tinderbox and goes back up the rope. He asks the old witch what the tinderbox is or what it does, she refuses to tell him so he threatens to cut her head off if she doesn't tell him. She doesn't tell him so sure enough, he cuts her head off.
He proceeds into town as a wealthy man, pockets flowing with gold. He turned himself into a gentleman and began hearing stories about a young princess, now this young, rich man obviously wanted to hear more about this beautiful princess.
He ended up spending all his money and needed more, this is when he remembers the tinderbox, he lights it and the dog from the first room appears, he strikes in twice and the second dog turns up, he strikes it three times and the third dog turns up, each dog is carrying a bagful of coins from the chest they were sitting on in their mouth.
He returns to his former wealth, talking to old 'friends' and wearing his fancy clothes.
The soldier wished to see the princess so he called upon the dog to fetch her for him, just so he could see her, he gave her a kiss and she was returned before morning. The princess told her mother and father, the kind and queen, about this 'dream' she had had. That night the queen sat by the princess' bed and sure enough the dog turned up and whisked her away, the queen ran after them and found the house that she had been being taken to, she drew a large chalk X on the door so she could find it the next day. 
The soldier saw this X the next day and proceeded to draw lots of X's all over town on lots of different houses, so when the king and queen accompanied by many officers and guards went looking for the house  sure enough they stumbled across many houses with a large chalk X on the door, so they gave up the search.
The next night the queen attached a small bag of flour to the princess' neck and when she was whisked away there was a long trail of flour leading to the soldiers house. The next morning the soldier was captured and thrown in prison. Whilst in prison the shoemakers boy comes by and the soldier asks him to go and retrieve the tinderbox for the soldier, he returns with the tinderbox for the promise of four shillings.
Later that day when the soldier was to be hung, the king asked if the soldier had any last requests, the soldier asks to have one last cigar, the king does not refuse and allows him to strike the tinderbox three times. The dogs appear and the soldier commands them to kill almost everyone, including the king and queen, after the deed is done he tells the princess that she is to be queen and they have a large celebratory feast.

Introduction Project

The first project we were assigned with during our introduction week was the perfect thing to ease us into the start of the year. I thoroughly enjoyed this project, it was a lot of fun. We were assigned the task of life drawing and within that, people and animals. Our group was doing animals, we had to then think of a theme for this, we weren't going to just be drawing an animal, we decided on mixing and matching animals, giving them a purpose, such as a fighter, and getting different bits of animals based on that.
This gives the explanation for the work below, I chose a fighter type creature, something that would be at the top of the food chain.

Then here is the final product.