Assignment Evaluation

A wise man once said to not judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree and I have struggled many times to remember that saying through out this module. I am not the artiest of people nor do I have much natural ability when it comes to traditional art, there is a reason why I took graphic design as an A-level rather than generic art, and as a result I found this module to be particularly difficult. With respect to the quote I am far more assured in my ability once a computer is put in front of me, so I have tried to remember that just because I may not feel as though I am particularly gifted at traditional art, it doesn't mean that I have no artistic ability whatsoever, and I believe that the work I have produced for the module shows that, I believe the digital art made in Photoshop is far and away greater than any of my life drawing art or any traditional art I have thus produced. That being said I have enjoyed the creative freedom that this module allowed, while daunting at first, the ability to create practically whatever my heart desired was a breath of fresh air when compared to the other two modules.

Initially I found it difficult to get traction when producing my artwork though I attribute that partly to my inexperience with Photoshop, I found the multitude of options and tools a mite confusing and I didn't initially understand many of their purposes or their true ability to assist in the creation of quality art work. However once I gained experience, and with the help of many of my peers, I have come to respect Photoshop as a powerful creative tool despite some continued apprehension towards the more complex systems and tools.

In regards to the artwork itself I feel that once I had gotten to grips with Photoshop I was able to more quickly and more efficiently work through my pieces, getting them to an acceptable standard, I never felt that I had to compromise my vision for what the end results should be and I was more or less able to realise them in an acceptable manner. Perhaps if in the future I were given more time, or perhaps if I had better managed my own time, I may have been able to produce additional works that would fully display the variety of poses, props and environments that my character could enable. I however feel that at the present time my work is to an acceptable standard and, while not entirely happy with the limited diversity, I am content that they accurately show my ability and understanding of artistic techniques such as colour, shadow and texture, as well as more complex principles like proportion, perspective and three dimensional depth.

Character Model Sheet

The model sheet for my character took suprisingly shorter than expected, I firstly used guidlines from my existing character pose to detail the relative locations of specific joints such as the elbows and knees and drew them in, I then proceeded to add shading and texture to each angle, using the same techniques in the initial model. I used the clone stamp tool to copy the textures from the boots and hat across to their angled counter parts.

Character Expression sheet

This is my characters expression sheet, it was made by copying the head from my beauty shot before re positioning crucial facial features such as eyebrows, eye lids and the mouth, or more specifically the facial hair surrounding the mouth. I have found that these are the the most prominent features that detail an expression. After moving the features accordingly I then went in closer and touched up the edged to make sure the colours flowed evenly and blended well.

Environment Development IV

Finally I gave the islands a bit of work in terms of shading and depth with the shades of green, as well as some more added detail such as the barrels , bucket and ropes.

Environment Design III

I have added some further detail to give the image a bit more noise, such as cannons and rigging and nets, added some basic island shapes ad gave them texture with a combination of blur and noise filters finished of the low opacity brush shading

The foliage was actually making use of a brush pack I found online which give basic leave shapes, I then made my own brushes from these into sort of tree top shapes and started painting them over the top of the island

Many thanks to this link: http://dierat.deviantart.com/art/Foliage-Brush-Set-159781059 for the leaf brushes.

Further shading and proportions

This piece is experimenting further with shading and proportions, the second piece in particular makes use of single colours to create shadows where as the top piece makes good use of lighter colours to show of highlights, in reality it makes the piece look far too shiny but it is still a good proof of concept.

Environment Development II

To further develop the environment I began to shade the deck as well as add a few minor details such as bolts in the timbers and rivets in the metal. I also added a sea and sky to the canvas. The sky is made fairly simply using a custom created cloud brush and using varying opacities and shades of grey to build up a believable cloud layer. The sea is made up entirely of filters and uses the perspective transformation tool to give its 3D depth.

Many thanks to this tutorial: http://www.webdesign.org/photoshop/special-effects/ocean-photoshop-tutorial.6966.html for the sea design

Environment Development I

This is the first step on the creation of my environment, I have decided upon the deck of a ship for my piece as it presents a lot of opportunity for additional props as well as more interesting and crowded image without steering too far off course from an accurate portrayal of a ships deck... Ship puns ahoy!

Varying angles and subjects

These pieces were an attempt to provide us with some alternative differing subjects to draw, as well as putting out understanding of drawing proportions to the test. Sarah presented us with a series of photos which we had to sketch, the above two sketches are, in my opinion, the best that I was able to achieve on the day. If I were to be critical of myself, I would say that the second piece is a a little out of proportion and the hands need a lot of work.

Prop Development II

This the final version of my prop, as I posted previously I used a series of blur and noise filters to achieve a realistic wood texture and with a series of large, low opacity brushes I was able to create highlights and shadows that gave the prop some much needed depth. The metal parts of the pistol were fairly simple. Again I used block colour and a series of low opacity brushes to create effective highlights and shading to give a 3D appearance as well as a shine. The text on the stock is a simple rasterized text layer with a negative emboss filter, making it look as though it has been engraved into the wood of the stock.

Wooden texture in photoshop

http://www.graphics.com/article-old/fundamentals-creating-wood-textures-photoshop

This link proved invaluable in the quick creation of a realistic looking wooden texture using mostly filters in Photoshop, it helped me greatly when looking for a way to paint the stock of my pistol prop.

Prop Development I

This is my prop, or rather the basic outline of it, learning from my mistakes with the character I started out with a background and am only using the outline as a starting point rather than a feature, after this point I will be using only blended colour rather than hard outlines.

Colour Development III

This is the final beauty shot for my character, in the piece I have neatened up the shading as well as put some much needed texture on certain parts, such as the boots and the hat. I primarily focused on the facial hair and feather for the texture as they felt a bit flat without it.

Colour Development II

This may seem like a bit of a jump up from the last Colour Development post, and that is because it is, a lot happened in a short space of time. The initial plan with the colouring and shading of my character was to use the pre-established outline as a sort of border for the shading, however purely by chance I turned the outline off and I thought that what remained, though a bit rough around the edges looked far and away superior. I then set to work fixing the edges and shading in areas that required it in order to distinguish between certain areas and to give the image its depth. I gave the image a background simply to help the colour and the figure stand out more, a plain white background made the image feel to harsh where as this background makes it look slightly more washed out and softer, which was my aim.

Give in to your anger...

Please forgive the title, I couldn't help myself. During this life drawing session we looked at texture and the use of either single or multiple colours to give depth and texture to certain materials. In the above piece I think I have grasped the concept, if a bit haphazardly in certain places. I think I manage to accurately portray the creases and organic nature of the cloak.

Colour development I

This is my first attempt at colouring my character, as you can see I have used only basic block colour to get a general feel for what the colours should be. I have been sure to keep the outline colour similar to the primary colour of each respective block of colour as to not clash too much.

John 'Admiral' Wallace II

This is the latest in the development of my character, as you can see his is not fully clothed with a jacked as well as two belts, one across his waist and the other from his left shoulder to his right ribs. The underlying layers were all rubbed away as to remain hidden under the surface detail.

Halloween Life Drawing session

This piece emerged as a result of the Life drawing session that happened to coincide with Halloween, many members of the group dressed up which was a joy to see and it presented some interesting opportunities for prop related sketches. One such event was when our life model donned a horse head mask and wielded a pair of daggers... Thanks for that Gordon, its not like I wanted to sleep that night or anything. In all seriousness though it was an enjoyable session and this piece in particular highlights how much work I need to do when it comes of animal anatomy, horses are however notoriously difficult to get right so I am not too put off by this.