Hallucination Moodboard

"It is at night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning, that I see the thing."

(Lovecraft 1919 p.23-29)

I was wanting to have these visions of the creature to be abstract yet show some sense of an eerie presence. I looked at a few examples that I saw from games and comics which used hallucinations but in the form of silhouettes. I also looked at some clips of Dead Space 2 which has a strong theme of madness and mental instability. 

Hallucination Mood Board

References

Deadspace 2 Opening

http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/493027-dead-space-2-windows-screenshot-thankfully-for-isaac-this.jpg

Fable 3 Darkness

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/AyuFU16l8CQ/maxresdefault.jpg

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/fable/images/9/93/Fable3-Aurora-walter-consumedbydarkness.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20101112170559

Mass Effect Inky Shadows

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga8ois7MyFndjnLJL6B4NWBEnLi0vTdDxjJiRtE04Dbib3gmRixBGR2NhOVb3xEdnw2L9tH3OaX4xW_Uo_nXeXe1gV7dpcfteZE4Trtx4gcUIF7JmwCMAMPH9NXjyTtU_lUn3NrOHgJww/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-04-16+at+3.44.26+PM.png

Death Knight page : Koltira's hallucinations

Jolley, D. and Zucchi, R. 2009. World of Warcraft. Los Angeles, Calif.: Tokyopop.


Miyazaki's Spirited Away Screenshot

http://wallpapershacker.com/wallpaper_mirror/spirited_away_ghosts_studio_ghibli_hd-wallpaper-2786968.jpg

Dagon Quote

The Vagrant, No. 11 (November 1919), 23–29.

Semester 2 Week 1- First Day Back

It was great to catch up with my fellow fourth years as well as speak with my supervisor after the holidays. I asked him a few things about the project such as how I could rearrange the dissertation's structure and if I should consider following the structure of my research proposal. The good thing is I have made good progress over the holidays but not as much as I hoped. After my talk with Brian, I began making simple 3D objects that I could use in my comic as background objects. While I am not happy with the way the 3D sticks out and that I am only using these assets as a way to be more efficient in the comic production pipeline. I took some photos of the 3D assets, went into the render settings and applied an edge line to the renders via the Maya vector engine.
I used the reference material I gathered for the moodboards to help with getting the right shapes for the models. The visual documents I produced also helped with the construction of the models.

Screenshots of Low Poly 3D Environment

Here is another tutorial that I found which allows for line art but in a different way.

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/JunxueLi/20130902/199419/2D_Art_Quick_Manual_for_rendering_line_art_in_Maya.php

German Sea Raider Research and Development

To add a level of authenticity, I decided to look at a few sources to get an idea of the type of uniforms worn by German naval officers and sea men.

http://www.militaryfactory.com/smallarms/by-country.asp?Country=Germany

http://www.militaryfactory.com/imageviewer/sa/pic-detail.asp?smallarms_id=455&sCurrentPic=pic1

http://www.ww1medals.net/WW1%20IMPERIAL%20GERMAN%20NAVAL%20BADGES%202.html

http://german-navy.tripod.com/sms_paint-overview.htm

I was wanting the German soldiers to be wielding weapons that they would be using during that time period. Based on some images of German colonial uniforms, they were a contrast to the American navy blue uniform. Therefore I thought it would be ideal to use the light uniform which with the dark blue uniforms of the protagonist's affiliated faction.
The big problem in the short story is that the character has no name, no nationality, no definite character description. However, since this was H.P. Lovecraft's earliest work, it could be argued that it was aimed at the inhabitants of America.  Fortunately these details can actually help make him more identifiable to allow readers to project themselves onto him.

German Sea Raiders Mood Board

Here are a series of drawings I made to visualize the German raiders and their equipment.

German Sea Raiders Iterations

German Ship Iterations

German Weapons

The following images are screenshots of a boat I created in Maya.These will be used a s reference material when drawing teh boat in a particular perspective.

Semester 1: Front Cover and Main Comic Thumbnails

Dagon Adaptation Front Cover Mood Board

To begin with, made some quick front cover iterations to explore what elements that the front cover should include. Some iterations were minimum whereas others were just aspects of locations.

Dagon Front Cover Ideas

I really liked this thumbnail I made of Father Dagon under the waves of the ocean while a ship passes over it and using the idea of depth and scale contrast to highlight an eerie effect to suggest that something of this size lurks within the depths of the sea. After all the seafloor still remains unexplored. I was inspired by his piece to develop this idea for the Dagon story. 

http://shadow-net.deviantart.com/art/Cthulhu-93988981

This is a photograph that I took on my train trip from Dundee one night. I found its composition and lighting to be inspirational for the front cover as a thumbnail idea. My plan for the next semester is that I will be using these thumbnails as a starting point. I will also make amendments and iterations based on them for the final comic pages. Once I have achieved this stage, I will consider to add additional detail unless I become restricted by time constraints. At one point, he photo itself was considered as the front cover.

Progress 

As my project is focusing on how visuals can tell a story. I decided to begin production on s. I used the original source materials as the "Screenplay" for the story as it helped build enough ground for me to begin  developing ideas. I also considered how some of the environments was described in the book. These designs that are shown in the following thumbnails will not the final designs. Furthermore, I have not fully developed the main character and the monolith.

Comic Thumbnails

Page 1

Page 2 Version 1

Page 2 Version 2

Page 3

Page 4

Page 5

Page 6

Page 7

Page 8

Page 9

Page 10

Page 11

Page 12

Page 13

Page 14

Page 15

Page 16

Page 17

Page 18

Page 19

As a means of improving clarity of the thumbnails, these will be reiterated based on feedback from my peers.

Reference

Front cover Mood board Accessed on the 5th of November

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/0/787/478350-132511_20080605061330_large.jpg
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--Cp_1oujN--/18m5hnv1c94zjjpg.jpg
https://beastrabban.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/tintin-dunwich-horror.jpg
http://i2.cdnds.net/11/46/618_comics_infestation_2.jpg
https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/projects/32369/photo-original.jpg?v=1397762907&w=1536&h=1152&fit=crop&auto=format&q=92&s=fe543d482c504665d8dfca2ae159b7a8
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WA-NQoDnN2I/UhvDS5DuNcI/AAAAAAAAXpI/4mAToGn97MQ/s1600/affiche.jpg
http://images.bigcartel.com/bigcartel/product_images/156294316/max_h-300+max_w-300/dagon.jpg
https://d2a2wjuuf1c30f.cloudfront.net/product_photos/14151070/1COVER_DAGON_original.jpg
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/lovecraft/images/c/ca/Dagon_Cover.PNG/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/330?cb=20111127235415
http://orig15.deviantart.net/a6f9/f/2013/033/6/0/hpl_s_dagon__for_beginning_readers____cover_by_drfaustusau-d5tkk2h.png

Skochev, N. 2008. Cthulhu. [image] Available at: http://shadow-net.deviantart.com/art/Cthulhu-93988981 [Accessed 16 Nov. 2015].

Dagon Father Development

Dagon Mood board

To begin with, I looked at How at how other artists have interpreted Father Dagon, the main monster that appears in HP Lovecraft's Dagon. I made some silhouettes to get some ideas of how the monster would look like. I wanted to drift away from the examples shown in the mood-board. I liked the idea of how Dagon was based off the fish god and I had this idea of what if that god was inspired by father day. So I decided to try the idea of reverse engineering so I looked at the original design of Dagon in the illustrations.

Silhouette Development

Development Sketches

I attempted to add a worn out paper texture the drawings. I had the idea that the development process could reflect the narrator's attempts to remember what the creature looked like.