Creative Research

Foreword: Due to disliking the way in which the blog orders posts (newest first, meaning that my process is not able to be viewed properly), I have decided to merge my old Creative Research posts, along with newer ones into one big post.

The project:
For the 3rd year module Creative Research, the brief we have been given is:

The aim of this module is to provide the students with the ability to undertake a research project driven by the student’s choice of subject specialisation.

This coursework is designed to develop student research practice through exploration of research methods and methodologies (processes) across digital media sectors. Student will identify and propose an area of specialisation within which they will present sustained research activity. The student will demonstrate contextual awareness, subject specialist knowledge and critical ability in their exploration of a digital media research project. Students will be required to select research practices appropriate to the proposed project. Communication and dissemination through exposition is an integral part of the project.

Semester 1 Overview:

The student will choose an area of enquiry that inspires and motivates them. The nature and level of

enquiry is expected to evolve throughout the course of the academic year in response to critical

self-reflection as well as staff and peer feedback.

Semester one emphasises the need for strong process and its correlation to high quality fully realised project outcomes. By the end of semester one the student will be able to discuss the position and direction of enquiry and formulate a clear vision statement. This will be based on the emergent logic of the students own practice. A large body of work must be developed reflecting extensive practice based enquiry and/or mode of study appropriate to the discipline. The construction, deconstruction and critique of material are required throughout the semester in order to create a well-founded project.

The work should inform and develop the students practice. The student will develop knowledge of the context in which their work sits and use this to inform their work and practice. The chosen subject matter should engage with high level ideas and themes. The questions raised through enquiry should demonstrate a critical awareness of complex and contradictory issues or arguments in the field of study. The work should reflect the students’ position and arguments in relation to these contextual views.

Semester 2 Overview:

The nature and level of enquiry is expected to evolve throughout the course of the academic year in

response to critical self reflection as well as staff and peer feedback.

A large body of work must be developed reflecting extensive enquiry. The work should inform and develop the students practice in relation to supporting theory. The student will further develop their contextual awareness. The work should reflect the students’ developing position and arguments in relation to the context within which the work sits. The students’ will defend their work through visual and written language appropriate to the chosen field. The student will be able to discuss the position and direction of enquiry that responds to their vision statement. This will continue to develop based on the emergent logic of the students own practice. The construction, deconstruction and critique of material are required throughout the semester in order to develop a well-founded project.

The work will demonstrate evocative, expressive and professional response(s) to the high level ideas and themes addressed by the project. The response to questions raised through enquiry should demonstrate a critical awareness of complex and contradictory issues or arguments in the field of study. The student will develop and discuss a range of conclusions in visual and written form. The final design solution should be intellectually challenging and/or provocative demonstrating the student practitioners own style and voice.

My Response:
From my understanding of the brief, I believe the key points to be:
- conduct a self-driven research project
- produce media outcomes informed by an exploratory journey of enquirey
- open brief - choose subject matter
- create work, analyse it, improve it
- make informed descisions
- create a vision statement - not a goal as such, more of a changing idea.

The basic goal of this project will be to enhance upon and diversify my digital painting methods and techniques with the aim of being able to get into some sort of art related industry; looking at the role of a concept artist or even to work as a free-lance artist, producing work for companies and clients such as bands, authors etc. The reason for this choice of topic is so as to raise existing digital painting skills and hopefully come closer to being up to industry standard.

Firstly, I will create a list of links to artists websites with the intention that it will give the viewer an idea as to what inspires me:

Adrian Smith - http://www.adriansmith.co.uk/

Mark Wilkinson - http://www.the-masque.com/

Derek Riggs - http://derek.server311.com/

Raymond Swanland - http://www.raymondswanland.com/

RJ Palmer - http://rjpalmer.darkfolio.com/

Terryl Whitlatch - http://talesofamalthea.com/

Gerald Scarfe - http://www.geraldscarfe.com/

Clint Langley - http://www.clintlangley.com/

Frank Frazetta - http://frankfrazetta.net/

Neil Roberts - http://www.skinnyelbows.com/

Ed Repka - http://edrepka.daportfolio.com/

Paul Kidby - http://www.paulkidby.net/

H.R. Giger - http://www.hrgiger.com/

Graven Tung - http://www.artofgt.com/

Mr Jack (Luke Mancini) - http://mr--jack.deviantart.com/

Peter Howson - http://www.peterhowson.co.uk/

Before I began exploring ideas of how to improve my work, I took to doing a fan art piece combining the 2 bands Alestorm and Gloryhammer. The reason for this was so as to try out new painting techniques and use a variety of brushes, as oppossed to my usual one brush work. It was also so that I could gauge my skill level at this point in time. Here are the work in progress images and the final result:

Gloryhammer and Alestorm Fan Art

I am very pleased with the result, as I feel I have managed to evoke the warm and smoky, yet cut-throat atmosphere of a tavern, along with learning about the benefits of using different brushes for different materials, such as hard edged for the sword and soft for the clothing. My main problem with the piece is that it is very dark, though initially intentional, I feel it has led to areas being almost void of detail. The other potential problem is that it did take me at least 10 hours to complete, which showed me that it is indeed a good idea to find a way of speeding up my painting.

Thus it is that for this project, the method of painting quickly shall be explored. Known informally as ‘spit-painting’, the technique involves setting a specific time-limit in the regions of half an hour to an hour and using a named topic to come up with a piece. In my case I plan for my images to have the limit of half an hour, with the potential for half an hour for sketching and research before-hand. I would however, like to practice drawing straight to the screen with the tablet, so may avoid the previous stages and get straight in the proverbial deep end.

Creature of the Void

For this piece, I had the idea of being void of humanity; lost and alone. In my mind I had a sort of Gollum figure. I'm quite happy with the atmosphere I have created, though I found it difficult to get accuracy when just painting straight without having a sketch underneath as a base.

Fox and the Hound

Whilst I had the initial thought of the Disney film, I decided I wanted something that wasn't immediately the actual animals. Thus I came up with a hunter figure (fox) and his trusty shotgun (hound). I find that I really like these paintings for quickly generating ideas, as this is a character I would possibly like to take on into properly designing.

Red Pand Village

I knew I wanted this piece to be an environment, which from the offset was a challenge. Environments are one of my weakest points in my opinion, so producing one in half an hour was very difficult. Again however, I feel that I have managed to come up with a reasonable concept that could potentially be taken forward if I wanted it to be.

Sick Creature

Another example of struggling without a base sketch, but I feel like I'm getting ever so slightly better. I think this is simply a case of practice makes perfect and that I need to keep going with it, as it could be very advantageous if a scanner is not at hand for instance.

Many-Armed Robot

Like environments, I also find mechanical things difficult to draw or paint off the top of my head and even with reference imagery, so this piece was a bit of a struggle. I am quite happy with the lighting however, as well as getting across the idea of a hazy, sandy environment.

Persian Prince

I struggled quite a bit with this piece, again due to not having drawn out the image first using a pencil and paper, so my anatomy is somewhat off. I also spent far too long on the details of the image as well, so ran out of time. It made for a good lesson however, to make sure I get down all the basics first before going further.

Hitman

I decided for this painting that I wanted to do more of a character silhouette, which I feel was quite successful. I'm more used to producing multiple silhouettes before coming to a final desicion, but I think this would be quite a good base to work from to produce a finalised character design.

Stardrive Maintenance

I got far too caught up in the details of this piece and spent more time on the 'cool' effects of the Stardrive and the beam fired by the engineering weapon. I did find this one fun to paint however and would like to take it on further, developing the character and the scene.

Mermaid Mutant

I am very pleased with this piece, as though it is still simple, I feel I have managed to evoke the fear of the victim in the image, making him seem lost, alone and doomed to a watery grave. I completely forget to give the mermaid mutant hair though, as was my initial plan, but I am still happy with how it turned out.

Burning River

I really wish I had had more time on this piece as I really enjoyed painting it and wanted to make the lava look as good as possible, but the half hour restricted me somewhat. I am still pleased with how it turned out though and learned that it might be worth spending more time on learning how to paint certain things so that when it comes to painting them again, or for one of these spit-paints, I will be significantly faster at it.

Bloodlust

I did this as a quick fan-art piece for the world of Warhammer 40,000. It's a painting depicting a Space Marine Terminator fighting Tyranid Genestealers aboard a Space Hulk. I found this very difficult to accomplish in the 30 minutes, as there is a lot of detail to cover and find that such pieces that are very much in my comfort zone, should be left for longer sessions where I can get right into the detail.

Homeless Man and His Friend

With this image, I had the intention to take the concept and add a twist of humour to it. Thus it was decided that I would have a homeless man in New York with one of the alleged alligators that apparently reside in the sewers. I'm pleased with the grim murkyness of the piece and I feel the blue tones I added have made a big impact. I also like that the alligator definitely seems more friendly than looking for food!

Black Blood

In this piece, I had the inital idea of some sort of vampire or demon, wiping blood from his lips, but as it developed and I added details such as the bruise under his eye, I decided he was more of a boxer or brawler character. Again, I'm pleased with the grittyness of the image and find it reminicent of one of my favourite traditional painters, Peter Howson.

Though being forced to paint so quickly was at first somewhat demoralizing, due to the results being less than expected, it was never-the-less a useful technique that enabled ideas to be churned out at a decent rate. This is a technique that I believe can be applied to many uses, such as character design, compositional experiments and the like.

I decided that I would combine 2 of my spit-paints into a longer painting session, but still with a reasonably short time limit. I chose Burning River and Mermaid Mutant as the inspiration for this piece and gave myself 3 hours to complete it.

Burning Mermaid

I am very pleased with how some of it turned out, especially the roiling ocean, which I find to look very classically painted in it's style, along with the burning glow from the burning mermaid's mouth and left hand. I think the weak parts of the piece would be the ship, though I am happy with the colours I chose, and the flames which just aren't up to the same quality as the sea. I enjoyed painting this piece and feel that 3 hours still offers a suitable challenge, meaning I don't footer about, but doesn't take up all my day as well, so means I have time to do other work.

Every year, the band Megadeth hold a Christmas card competition and so this year I thought I would set myself the challenge of completing it in the afternoon of the midnight deadline. Any style was allowed for this, but it was decided that painting in the most natural and personal way would be the best way forward. This would allow for the opportunity to improve on my already established style and meant using an already established character as part of the piece; that of Vic Rattlehead, created by American artist Edward Repka. This should be a beneficial experience in theory, as it may be practice in a company to take an existing entity and reuse it, staying as close to the design as possible, deviating where necessary or where it is wanted by the client. After a couple of preliminary sketches, I roughed out the image in a more detailed state, as I knew my free-hand painting skills weren't up to scratch yet, so wanted to give myself the best chance possible. I decided to base the background on the 'Super Collider' album cover. I created a moodboard to refer to whilst I was painting and to act as a source of inspiration.

Megadeth Christmas Card Moodboard

Megadeth Christmas Card

I am fairly pleased with the outcome of the piece, though there are a few things I would change about it, I simply ran out of time. I feel that more time and effort needs to be spent on Vic Rattlehead's suit in particular, as there is just something that doesn't sit quite right with my eyes. I believe that the whole image needs to look more crisp in general however, so more contrast in areas that I would want to bring attention to, such as Vic's face.

For this module, I wanted to do small projects within the big project so that I can deal with the desire to explore different styles. The main ‘mini-project’ I have planned is one in which the franchise ‘Monster Hunter’ will to be combined with that of ‘How to Train Your Dragon’. In this project, the brief I am giving myself is to use the style of ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ and apply it to the creatures featured in ‘Monster Hunter’. Without further ado, onto the images:

Dragon to Monster Comparison

The first creature I have decided to tackle is that of Lagiacrus, a water-dwelling leviathan with the ability to generate large charges of electricity through the spines on it's back.

Lagiacrus Moodboard

Lagiacrus

From Lagiacrus I will move on to Barioth; a large saber-tooth cat like wyvern found in snowy mountainous regions.

Barioth in Monster Hunter

Barioth

Rather pleased with how Barioth turned out, I shall move on to one of my favourite monsters, Uragaan. This is a creature of incredible toughness, it's skin covered in rock, it uses it's massive chin and immense weight to crush opponents. It can also roll into a ball and thunder along the ground like a cartwheel.

Uragaan in Monster Hunter

Uragaan

I am very pleased with the way in which I have designed Uragaan. I feel as though I am getting more proficient at the style I am aiming for. The next monster I wish to do is that of Zaboazagiru, a new creature not released in the West yet, as it has only been recently released in Monster Hunter 4. A massive land shark is the best way to describe Zaboazagiru; literally a shark . . . with legs!

Zaboazagiru toy (best image I could find)

Zaboazagiru

I think that my rendition of Zaboazagiru is the best I have done so far in my series of monsters. I feel that it is still instantly recognizable as the original creature, but it definitely emulates the How to Train Your Dragon style I am aiming for. The next monster is that of Diablos; a desert-dwelling wyvern with an ear-splitting roar and a charge akin to a bull . . . a very very angry bull that can burrow underground.

Diablos in Monster Hunter

Diablos

I am really pleased with how Diablos' head cam out in this one, as well as his body and tail. I think the wings and legs could do with a bit more work however. The final monster I want to work on before I move on to a new project is that of Brachydios. Brachydios has an insect-like shiny carapace and uses the massive fists and horn on it's head to pulverize opponents. Also, it's saliva explodes.

Brachydios Moodboard

Brachydios

I decided to take my final monster into a digital painting just to try and emulate the style I was aiming for a bit better. I am pleased with the results and think my redesign of Brachydios is in keeping with my aims.

I found this mini-project proved to be a difficult task, given that the style being emulated is a tricky one; simplified, curvaceous shapes with high texture detail. This became a fairly successful exploration though as it showed that, while it is possible to emulate certain styles, they may not best suit your work style. Work was very slow during the mini-project due to unfamiliarity with the methods being used as well as the fact that it was an effort trying to emulate a 3D style into 2D.

Continuing with the theme of trying different styles, I decided that I would like to revamp a couple of really old sketches that I have and turn them into fully-fledged digital paintings. My reason for doing this relates back to the point of having to reuse old characters and ideas and bring a new light to them whilst retaining a semblance of the original concept. The first of which is a classic monster battle scene, featuring a mechanical hydra, a yeti-like creature and a sort of sky-dragon.

Battling Titans Original Sketch

Battling Titans Revamp

I am fairly pleased with the way in which the idea has progressed. However, my initial plan was to create a sort of children's book aesthetic to the piece, but I got far too carried away with effects and lighting. If anything, I gained some more experience with source lighting and reflections.

The second piece that I want to revamp is that of an assassin character. This character is not related to Assassin's Creed in any way (the game didn't exist when I drew the original sketch), rather, he is a gruesome creation; a man carved, twisted and molded into becoming a killing machine.

Assassin Character Original Sketch

Unfortunately, this is not the original sketch of the assassin, as the first version of him has disappeared through the years. I took this version however, and revamped him into this sketch:

Assassin Character Revamped Sketch

And from this sketch I can take him on into a digital painting.

Assassin Character

At this point, I decided that I wanted to try my character in a different style, that of a vector art style, as something completely different to what I usually work with. I believe that the results are suitably awesome. To me, it's the kind of thing you may see on a tshirt or album cover. I have grown incredibly fond of this vector art style and wish to explore it further into my own time.

Assassin Character - Vector

The idea of trying new styles was also being assisted in other modules. For Professional Project, the brief given meant that the team’s artists had to work closely to the style of the client, Futurlab. The vector art style was a new experience for me that lead to much practice of the technique over the course of the entire project. It was also utilised for my Assassin character as shown above. Plenty more practice could be put into the method to improve it considerably, but delving into it has expanded my already existing knowledge and opened up a new interest in the art form.

Professional Project - vector character art

For the both the Spatial Constructs and Computer Arts Practice modules, the technique of digital painting using photo textures was explored in relative depth. I found it to be a useful technique that, though difficult and little explored in the grand scheme of things, made for some interesting art. It did have its drawbacks however; mainly that of taking a considerable amount of time to complete. This again refers back to the idea of needing to be up to the speed of ‘industry standards’. A technique that takes a large amount of time to utilise effectively is probably best left out, unless an equal amount of personal time is put in to enhancing the technique and speeding the process up; otherwise the problem will arise of giving any potential employers false hope that this is the way I work and can consistently produce such pieces at a proficient rate.

Computer Arts Practice - painting with textures

Spatial Constructs - painting with textures

A second competition has come to my attention that is run by the games company Capcom for their upcoming game title ‘Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate’; the next instalment in a long line of prestigious games. The brief they have given is to create a new weapon for the game, choosing from their 14 existing weapon types, with the requirements that it should be original, creative and humorous. Again, as with the Megadeth Christmas card, any style is valid. The benefits of doing these competitions means being given extra briefs as it were, with clients providing set specifications. Even if the specifications are very open and allow for much experimentation, it still makes sense to try to stick to a similar style to that already established by the previous works of the client. It could be seen that these existing works would be the ‘industry standard’, and entrants should seek to aspire for their work to be of a similar quality of workmanship.

I have already decided that I want to design a weapon based on the new weapon to Monster Hunter 4; the Insect Glaive. My plan is to use the brief's recommendation of the design being humorous and so I am going to use the game series' cute little pig known as Poogie as inspiration for my design. I also already know that I want my weapon to be known as the Poogienator. A strangely oxymoronic name, combining a cute little pig with a mechanical death machine from the future!

Monster Hunter Weapon Design - Poogienator

In the end, I didn't give myself enough time to complete my design to the standard I wanted to. The idea is still there however, so I will just have to wait and see how the competition pans out. At any rate I would like to see other entrant's work as if nothing, they will be inspiring. This has however, brought me to my next mini project, which is to create more Monster Hunter weapon designs. I have decided that I want these to be designed as if they were actually just parts of the monsters, as oppossed to being crafted using elements from them. I feel this should be a rewarding experience, as weapon design is not something I am particularly familiar with and is something I would be keen to improve upon.

Monster Hunter Weapon Design - hammer

Monster Hunter Weapon Design - dual blades

Monster Hunter Weapon Design - lance/gunlance

Monster Hunter Weapon Design - sword and shield

Monster Hunter Weapon Design - great sword

From these sketches, I have gone on to creating rough templates for the weapon designs that I wish to take on. For this, I am going to layout paper, so that I don't have to try to replicate the templates, I can just trace them through the page.

Monster Hunter Weapon Design - dual blades template

Monster Hunter Weapon Design - lance template

Monster Hunter Weapon Design - sword and shield template

With the templates comleter, I can now move on to designing my 3 chosen weapons.
For Dual Blades: Arzuros Claws
For Lance: Jho's Tail
For Sword and Shield: Gobul Wand

Monster Hunter Weapon Design - dual blades rough

Monster Hunter Weapon Design - dual blades clean

Monster Hunter Weapon Design - dual blades final

Monster Hunter Weapon Design - lance rough

Monster Hunter Weapon Design - lance clean

Monster Hunter Weapon Design - lance final

Monster Hunter Weapon Design - sword and shield rough

Monster Hunter Weapon Design - sword and shield clean

Monster Hunter Weapon Design - sword and shield final

These weapon designs have turned out really well in my opinion. I opted for a more cell-shaded approach to the way I worked, to both speed up the process and make the image extra crisp and clear. My personal favourite are the Arzuros Claws, and these have been given the most praise from anyone who has seen the weapon designs. I found this to be a valuable experience, as, like I have said, weapon design is not my forte, but I gave it a good go and I certainly believe that it is something I could get good at given the time and effort to practice. I guess that's what the summer is for!

To conclude then. I wish I had more time to work on this project, but what with 3 other projects on the go, one of which being a massive group project, I just didn't have the time to complete everything that I would have liked to. I feel as though I have gained some useful ideas and ways of working from this module however and I shall indeed be continuing on with some of the ideas I didn't get the chance to expand or explore more in depth over the summer.

Thursday 15 May 2014

Creative Research