A few doodles that I had forgotten to add in before the deadline, but very rough and loose to get into the swing of sketching again
Tag Archives: concept art
The Beasts
To rival our feathered fiends, Natasha has considered fish, but i went in a bit of a different direction. To contrast our slim and narrow birds, I considered a canine like beast, must like a hyena. Using strength and primitive weaponry its no wonder they lost to the birds.
Using Fran from Final Fantasy, I considered a more human shape with exaggerated canine features, but felt the shapes were similar to the Beaks, and had to rethink it.
Pinterest:
The idea is taking a bit more shape, bulking up the beasts and adding extra slopes and curves to their bodies to make them appear bigger, bulkier, and more dependent on their strength, unlike the birds whose main advantage is their magic.
Miguel Regodon:
More warrior like, more strength orientated, more primal. A bit better to rival our birds.
Our feathered friends
Natasha had first come up with ideas for a bird vs fish rivalry, and I really loved the idea for using our antagonists, the magic afflicted, as top dogs so to speak.
It gave us a lot of potential ideas for our species, and fun things to research.
Brent Hollowell:
Brent’s work gave a few ideas, meaning it could be interesting to create the species in forms of prehistoric birds
Pinterest:
Then again a cloaked/feathered, litle creature has always held the air of mystery and uncertainly, it would give the species a more mystic feeling.
Shape and silhouette is important to creating more notable characters, so for our feathered friends, the Beaks, tall, slim, best way to describe them would be unnatural.
The background
After creating the dino rider, it started me thinking of what I wanted in the concept world. I know its something i’d love to carry on even after the hand in, so it has to keep my attention long enough to carry on working on it and/or complete it.
I made a list of things I know would keep my interest and explored ways to mix them into working:
-magic?
-post apocalyptic?
-dragon riders?
-skin changing?
-rivalries?
-colours
-elves?
-Tribal?
There are a ton of possibilities, and to create a good story it meant I had to research what would make or break a story.
I found this link helpful for tips on stories, not on how to write or what to include but just to keep in mind, such as bringing out writers emotions, and not sticking to the five basic senses eg hearing, sight etc
It also calls for revisiting Vogler: A writers Journey again from first year.
What will make my hero a hero?
Will they BE a hero or an antagonist?
What will prompt the story? What will happen to make the main characters break out of their normal routine?
Who is their allies? Their enemies?
What will bring the characters to their lowest, and how will they revive themselves?
These are questions that are important and its useful to refer to the Heros Journey graph.
These links were also handy to follow for the Journey too:
Also an article by author Natasha Lester on how to create characters that are likable to the readers/viewers, something that will be important to remember if I do carry on this project a little while longer
Starting the world
I was really excited to start the concept art world, it’s something i’d love to get better at with visuals and storytelling.
I didn’t get to explore it as much as I wanted or needed unfortunately, and I want to actually continue on with the world afterwards.
I had come up with a few ideas and settled on a story I had been planning for a bit, but was stuck on how to actually get started.
While talking to Natasha Crowley about the ideas we had, she had offered to create a world together with adding our own bits and pieces. It helped me get a good idea where to start drawing for environments and creatures, and I started researching.
Natasha also added some handy links for colour and such while Molly added a really useful video on how to create rooms and such.
I also found a really nice artist, Oenon on tumblr, who uses nice colours and art for inspiration
Our rivals
Character design is something I really love doing, and I had fun drawing out the species and their differences. Again colour is always an issue with me, but I don’t think the colours on the Beaks characters are too bad, they make them stand out from their duller counterparts, the Beasts.
Beaks would have the hierarchy of matriarchs, who would follow the advice of the more magic afflicted mages who, unlike the rest of their species, had more than one element of magic.
The rest were split into various roles of trainers of beasts, court members and security.
Beasts on the other hand the workers in the society, ranging from heavy lifters, guard dogs to socially important members of the Beaks and overall common rabble.
Revolts are kept in check monitoring the beasts using their magic tainted collars, which split the creatures into their selected professions.
Blue being common workers, blue being helpers to a specific trade eg medicine, and red being guards.
Some Enviroments
Environments are something that I would like to do more of, but lighting and colour are something that needs works a lot of work on. I have sketches but will be need to really practice at figuring out light sources.
Tried out some simple perspective, I really want to get better at figuring that out as well as colour and lights.
Considered Ideas
From previous ideas before teaming up with Natasha, I had had the ideas of the species in a constant state of rivalry, not one dominating each other. The non magic species having unnatural mounts to assist them for their hunting and defending:
There was ideas that the mounts would be horse like, simple vegetarian creatures to assist in travelling
Dragon Age: Inquisition
Pinterest:
Then the idea of a companion, a partner in hunting would be better.
Like the wolves in Lord of the Rings/Hobbit
Or the Dracolisk from DA: Inquisition
For the ideas to work with Natasha however, the ideas of mounts have been put aside for the time being, but it is something that was considered quite a lot in my ideas.
Refining it and adding the portals
After playing with ideas and discussing a good plot with Natasha, we decided on a vs role, with bird like creatures reigning higher than its counterparts.
It begins with the creatures living as equals, with magic coursing through the land.
-Eventually leads to one species trying to dominate the other using magic, and the other trying to destroy the magic source, eg portals scattered across the land
-Portals are destroyed but the species are afflicted
-Gives them the advantage over the rival species and as such now rule over the rivals
We both liked the idea of portals for magic, and found several fun ideas for how they would be portrayed:
Now we’re thinking in portals
A tree from Fable seems like it would be a great idea, especially if the area will be possibly swamp based.
I like the idea of the magic emitting from rocks, such as the rock faces from Disneys Atlantis:
Or even ‘real’ portals could be something to consider, but would be a bit too into the whole magic aspect.
Enviroment
Concept art is amazing to me, and I could spend ages looking over books or pictures for concept art of any kind for the style, the loose lines and the hope I could be doing that one day.
This project meant I could pour over pictures of environments for research, and like Natasha took to Pinterest to find something to help with ideas.
Natasha had first started out with a water based world, with a bird vs fish idea. This meant a watery environment, and although interesting it got me thinking of a swamp like area? It still contained the water aspect but also gives a good chance for greens and housing. So I mixed up research between swamps, and post apocalyptic.
Looking at treehouses and such for possible tree housing: Google Images
Maybe incorporating holes like bird houses would be interesting for possible houses for the inhabitants?
Then came the fun part of figuring our the scenery: Pinterest
Exploring different aspects and colours for a possible environment as well as looking at perspective and colour:
Pelans-Feelins 