Week 10 Progress

I've been focusing more on my research proposal this week. Although I did like the idea of using the draft to gather quotes and ideas, I ended up saying too much than necessary. I sent a copy of a draft to a member from the academic support at the library. He provided me with some helpful feedback.  The content was well written and had a good narrative but some sections needed further structure and tweaks to fit the formal tone of the paper.

Dave Lyons Meeting 11/11/15

I decided to meet David Lyons on the Wednesday to discuss what I am needing to do for my concept development document and Pre-production portfolio. I showed him the amount of work I have made to my portfolio and asked what sort of things are required for the portfolio. He said I should basically placed everything in the document. I explained my approach and he liked the visual approach. I tried asking what other student have done but he said that the document will be explained in more detail at the next lecture. He explained that the pre-production portfolio should contain my work and anything which I think is relevant to the project and research. He said my work was more than enough. I explained to David my project's subject, the themes of H.P. Lovecraft's work and how his work has become its own genre known as "Lovecraftian".
He informed me that next week, I will be given a supervisor and that it will be his opinion in which I will format the tone of my concept document.
He liked the depiction of the Chinese dragon and I refereed to Dracopedia and how the artist reinterprets Chinese dragons based off the European dragon style of anatomy. I also told him that I had considered using printing services to provide a physical copy of the comic while providing a digital copy that could be presented at teh showcase. He asked if the final artifact would be bound and fleshed out as a digital version.
After I mentioned that I was not confident with printing services, he showed me some examples from Blurb.com and how books can be printed in different ways and formats. He's not worried about me and I've done what I should be doing and exploring areas and sketches and initial paintings. I asked if rough drawings are acceptable. He suggests that I could just show each individual drawing rather than five on a page. When it came to the concept document, I asked David if it just a collection of blogs? He suggested that I can start there but its does not have to be only on the blogs.
I have :

• Previous artwork inspired by Lovecraft's short story, 
• Analytical breakdown of Comics
• Spanish comics,
• Mood boards,
• Sketches and inspirations from own style.

All these can go into the concept developmental document. David told me that the lecturers want is to see what I have been looking at and why. He told me that references are required and there still needs to be some form of academic format. If I was looking at comics and images for references then they will need to do is know where the images are from and when. When I get my supervisor next week, I will double check with him and discuss how thorough the concept document should be. In short, the meeting went well and David gave me some very nice feedback about my work.

Evaluation Case Study Notes

I plan to carry out a formal art critique on my cases in my dissertation. Here is a video that discuss about how texts can help in composition.

http://www.ctrlpaint.com/videos/using-text-in-a-composition

http://www.ctrlpaint.com/videos/principles-of-design-balance

http://www.slideshare.net/artladysteffl/how-to-formally-critique-art

Weekend Development

During this weekend, I managed to have enough time to work on a few development documents for my story. I focused on designing my Dagon character.  My main inspiration for the monster was from the depiction of Dagon, the fish God which in turn inspired HP Lovecraft's Dagon. I also decided to take some inspiration from the portrayal of sea serpents from the 18th century to connect with the idea of the unknown and to use my design to help bridge a possible explanation for the sea serpent myth. 

 Head iterations for Father Dagon.

 The last two head iterations look more Lovecraftian as they feel familiar but are absolutely abnormal. The reason I chose for the mouth to appear on the head is that it is to suggests that although it is a living creature its appearance into that of this earth.

I liked the pose of the creature in this picture. I took some inspiration from the Naga in World of Warcraft. 

Nagas (Blizzard 2007)

I bulked up the upper torso of the creature and references some body tips from a creative masterclass magazine on anatomy.

In addition, I made a few environments silhouettes for the black mire environment in the  story.  The black and white style worked really well to illustrate the lifelessness of the scene.

These environment concepts were created using Alchemy.

Reference 

Lemen, R. 2011. Part Five Drawing the Torso. Anatomy Essentials, pp.50-54.

Blizzard, 2007. Nagas. [image] Available at: http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/wowwiki/images/2/2c/Nagas.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20070826213305 [Accessed 9 Nov. 2015].

Ten Minute Drawings

Here I made a ten minute drawing while listening to the theme of Swan Lake. The light and perspective in the picture needs further refining.

With that said, I am quite happy with how i included the Swan Lake influences with the figure showing a resemblance to a ballerina and a female figure. I like the inclusion I made with the small boat to give an impression of scale in the picture. During the production of this illustration, I was listening to this track from the ballet .

Swan Lake Theme

Another quick painting I made was a art piece based of the Island of the Dead.

When thinking of the Island of the Dead painting,I was reminded of the tower of the gods dungeon in the Legend of Zelda:The Wind Waker, where link and his boat travel inside it. What I found eerie form both that level and the original painting was that there no slopes or gradual buildup for a natural beach or shore. It would be the unnatural element which helps add some eeriness to the environment.

Island of the Dead Music

Inktober Week 2

Inktober Week 2

Here are the inked drawings I made during the second week of October.

Day 12

Day 13

Day 14

Day 15

Day 16

Day 17 

Day 18

Day 19

Day 20

Day 21

Day 22

Progress Presentation

The presentation today went okay. Although to criticize myself that I should have not stuttered as much. if l that I had repeated myself once or twice and had a few pause to recollect my steps. There was On the other hand, the lecturers were happy with my presentation and their feedback was helpful.
She liked the idea of how I was investigating foreign comics in order to see if the visuals can tell the story even if the language isn't in English.

Brian's Feedback

Brian liked my presentation. He asked me if I was looking at film language cinematography
forms of animation visuals can be helpful in storytelling in mediums.

David's Feedback

Dave compliments on my star wars work. He liked the way I clearly showed the dead relatives and said ti was a terrific interpretation. very cool a visual learner, art forming know everything in my head. He went on to say that there's is a famous animal behaviourist in America called Temple Grandon who solves some interesting problems because she was a visual thinker and approached things in a visual way and said that her findings may be interesting. He suggested that I have a look at her work.

Lynn's Feedback

Lynn showed what I've been up to do this. She was interested  in my idea of how I was to evaluate a foreign comic and see if the story can be told without reading the dialogue and would be helpful it for me to learn other ways to get a story across with dialogue. She suggested that I experiment with the styles and see how it can relate to the content. She pointed out that although she liked the Star wars picture of Luke finding his aunt and uncle killed, she said that Luke looked stylized and out of place. Star Wars the character Luke was more stylized and she suggest that it would be more ideal to look at a different visual style so that it fits in more appropriately. To justified my choice of style, I refereed to a story where the cartoon style applied enhanced the critical story points. In exploration of various styles could occur.

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.