I almost thought that I would never finish this assignment. There have been a number of times when I felt that this section might make me quit my degree altogether. I certainly wanted to, many times.
It's not that this section has been complicated. There are a number of things at play, I think: First is my ongoing disruption to having to do most of my work digitally, split between my work office and home. When I am at home, there still isn't a quiet designated place to work; all of my materials are strewn across different parts of the house where we can fit them. While we go through repair and renovations I am stuck with this. While I am adapting better, it has significantly reduced the time I can do productive work in the evenings, which used to be when I made most of my progress.
There always seems to be something that disrupts and interrupts. I think that the interruptions are the most debilitating. These impediments slowly drain me, like death from a thousand cuts. It's hard enough to deal with constant task switching for most people, but when you have ADHD it's like kryptonite.
I had many false starts with this assignment. I had initially intended to select the option to create an animation for the work. I struggled with how to incorporate movement other than the obvious animation itself. I started by using my sketchbook to brainstorm ideas. At the end of June, I had been to the Isle of Wight festival, which then proved to be a very fertile source of inspiration for my ideas.
I continued to use my sketchbook to refine the festival concept. I came up with three animation ideas, which I then showed to fellow students and my wife for feedback. In the end, I opted to attempt the top idea. The principle was to be able to show things moving at different speeds, while the perspective allowed me to also play with the ideas of big and small.
For previous animation work, I have used the built-in functionality of Procreate. However, as I attempted this work I realised that mapping out the different rates of change for each of the moving elements was incredibly difficult with just the simple timeline the app provides. Then to add on the actual work of creating good-looking imagery (multiple times!) and I quickly felt overwhelmed with the project. I abandoned the work.
I felt a keen sense of depression at this point. It had taken me so long to even get to the assignment, let alone work out what to do with it. I spent many weeks avoiding all creative work - I felt completely stuck. Eventually, I realised that I couldn't avoid the challenge. Just getting something done was more important to me in the big scheme of my degree. I was tired, and demotivated - but I was also resolute.
First, I decided to switch to the option of three character illustrations. I was a little stuck on how to best incorporate movement into the work. I worry that sometimes my work can get a little stiff and wooden; it would be a challenge to put movement into the pieces. Reading the brief again, I saw that movement could be incorporated via the method of creation and not just the subject matter.
My mantra at this stage was "perfect is the enemy of done". So I let my instincts take over a bit and let them speak to me on how to build momentum. One of my favourite methods to help me relax and warm up is to practice Hirameki. Literally "flash of inspiration" in Japanese, it is the practice of taking random splodges of colour and using your imagination to turn them into something else.
I do these both digitally and in my sketchbook, and I usually turn them into faces as a way of training my brain to be comfortable with exaggeration and not be slaved to always creating a "Loomis head". I also have a book on my desk at work of pre-made splodges that let me quickly doodle.
I decided to lean into this. Thinking back to my work exploring pareidolia in the Illustration Sketchbooks module and abstract illustrations in Key Steps, I decided to create some abstract shapes, and then seek to see characters within. This is where I first added movement into the creative process. I used my A3 sketchbook and grabbed a handful of different pens on my desk. Sometimes holding multiple pens at once, I closed my eyes. Listening to music, I let my instincts decide where and how I was going to move my arm around the page. I ended up with the following five pages of doodles:
I scanned in the images and then imported them onto my computer. I reduced the opacity of the doodles, and then let my eyes soften. I tried my best to relax into the soft focus and let my mind see the patterns, finding the characters within:
I completed three characters for each doodle. Here are the 15 sketches that emerged:
I had to then choose three of these sketches to turn into character illustrations. Given the focus on movement, I wanted to choose characters that were gestural, and full of energy in the way that gestural life drawing captures the essence of movement.
Character 1
For my first character, I picked my favourite sketch. I love how the figure seems to be launching themself, and I really liked the angular stylistic elements. It reminded me of the Rolls Royce "Spirit of Ecstacy" and Art Deco statues. So I initially explored how to turn the figure into an Art Deco-style poster image.
While at this stage, the 2022 Commonwealth games were happening, and I had been watching events avidly with my family. Coming back to the figure, it struck me how much the figure also looked like a gymnast. My son and I had recently watched the rhythmic gymnastics and were awestruck by the athletes using the hoops. My mind started to think if this could work for the illustration, so I adjust the composition to include a hoop.
To emphasise the geometric qualities of the original sketch, I decided early on that this image would be created as a vector illustration. I started to block out the main shapes, separating different elements into their own shapes so that I could use them to add depth through shading and colour.
Next, I started to block in the shapes, adjusting the shapes where it was necessary to help everything read visually and gel together. Having things blocked out let me get a sense of mass in the figure for the first time.
I then played around with the values of the shapes in order to achieve a silhouette that would read well from a distance. I moved the figure's left arm at this point to make it seem more connected to her shoulder. I am still not sure if I made the right choice - but the good thing about creating a vector illustration is that if I change my mind in the future I can change it relatively easily!
At this point, I wondered if I could actually use the Commonwealth games as inspiration for the final rendering process. I actually managed to find the official Commonwealth Games brand guide. Using this guide I was able to adopt certain constraints and focus the work as if it was an actual brief. This allowed me to make specific choices around colour, typography and layout considerations. Whilst not using photography, I did make the figure essentially monochrome, only picking out the red leotard of the Great British team as a contrast.
I was also able to add in some of my own stylistic choices, choosing some ink and screen print effects alongside some urban-looking arrows in the background and foreground respectively.
For the typography, I played with a number of different phrases, before settling on "It's a Brum thing" inspired by the theme tune the BBC used in its coverage.
I am really pleased with my experimentation here, and the way that the idea and image gradually evolved over time. I think that the figure still has a great deal of movement. I purposefully placed the triangles to add artificial perspective, and the arrows all point to the top right, which I hoped would draw the eye through the image. I like the way that the hoop almost seems like a portal that the gymnast is launching towards. Even the hair has a subtle 45° line halftone that points to that corner.
Character 2
To start this character, I initially started off with the dumpy character who looked like he was tip-toeing around. I liked the contradiction of someone so rotund being quiet and agile - the archetype of stealthy characters is usually a lithe, poised and nimble character. In my sketch, I noticed that I had drawn his eyes pointing down. So I moved him to the corner of the page as an experiment. I wondered what he could be looking at. It was at this point that the idea of him being a thief came to me and that he was somehow in an elevated position. I thought of different things that could be on the ground, like a guard dog, or a trap. Then I thought that maybe it could be a guard-like figure. I then got the idea to use another character from my doodles and slotted it into the page to get a balanced initial composition.
I usually struggle with seeing things in my mind's eye, but I quickly started to see a picture form of an art thief, aloft on some kind of platform trying to steal a painting. The thing I wasn't sure about was what kind of setting would this be in. I toyed with a number of ideas, but I found that I tended to get drawn to stereotypes and clichés. So I asked myself, what kind of setting or time period is rarely explored in popular culture? I settled on a 17th-century Jacobean/English Civil War setting. I researched the clothing and interior design of that period, and the room started to resolve in my mind's eye.
I found the particular angle I was seeing a little difficult to draw from scratch, so I imported my layout into Clip Studio Paint. I used its perspective rulers tool to set a horizon line and then worked out the vanishing points. Using the ruler as a guide, I then blocked out the rough shapes for the room.
Using this as a guide alongside the sketches, I then created a digital pencil sketch of the scene. I really liked the tension the scene had, and it still came with a sense of movement, albeit one that was painstakingly slow!
I then created some more refined linework by digitally 'inking' over the pencilwork. I realise in retrospect that at this point I messed up the perspective of the mantlepiece, too many redraws shifted and obscured the scaffolding. This is something I can learn from - I think it would be better to give my work some checks before moving to the next stage of my process to make sure I don't miss simple mistakes like this.
To render this character illustration, I decided to experiment with taking a watercolour approach, using only digital tools. Working on my iPad, I layered in colour. I decided to take this approach, as I saw it as quite a dark scene, and I wanted to experiment with the challenge of making a dark image using a layered additive approach. You can see the working process in the video below:
And here is the final image:
In the end, I did add rim lights and specular lighting on top of the layers. With practice, I expect that I could identify where to keep things light, but in reality, I would likely have used gouache for those highlights if doing this traditionally. Overall I think that the image is quite successful, and I learned a lot about light and perspective. It really was a challenge, but one I actually enjoyed in the end.
It's not quite the traditional concept art style I might have liked to have produced, but I learned a lot about the process and staying closer to my competence levels allowed me to finish the work, which was the real priority.
Character 3
For the final character illustration, I chose the figure who was turning into some kind of gas/smoke.
My initial thought was to do something in 'watercolour' again, but take a more whimsical storybook style to the image. As I started to sketch over the doodle, and no matter how many times I attempted to redraw, the figure ended up being a student from Hogwarts. Part of my thought about leaning into this, and doing some kind of fan art. But fan art wasn't going to push me to experiment.
So instead I started to redraw the figure as a more mature woman rather than a child, to get away from the pull of the Wizarding World. I redrew the image, I started to get imagery in my head of Halloween. It's getting closer to October, and my wife is already excited! So I started to think of pulp horror publications. I wondered how to incorporate the cloak aspect into the character's attire whilst still keeping the silhouette close to the original doodle. Doing some research, I discovered cape dresses, which seemed to fit the bill of feeling spooky but also elegant, staying away from the cliché territory of making the character look like Elvira!
I added a small bottle to the scene to infer that her transformation is due to her drinking the magical liquid. I tried to get as much movement into different aspects of the image. Once I was happy, I then moved to refine the lineart.
I finished this stage right before the weekend, which gave me time to get feedback from fellow students and my wife. The main thing I could see once I had shown my work was how horizontal the smoke seemed to be. Whilst it aligned with the original doodle, in the context of the emerging illustration, it felt flat. So when I got back to the office, I decided to redraw that component completely. This is the sketch with the revised smoke:
I was a lot happier with this, and it seemed to have much more life and a sense of movement. I re-did the line art for the smoke to finish this stage of the process. During this re-inking process, I added a sense of magical energy around her hands and moved the small bottle closer to her hand.
When it came to adding colour, I stuck a palette of colours that represented the limited colours available to pulp printers. Tried to keep to colours that would add to the pulp horror and Halloween theme. In retrospect, I have realised how influenced I have been by the old Hanna Barbera Scooby-Doo cartoons I watched (and still do, with my son) as a child! During this stage of adding colour, something still felt flat. I attempted to address this by adding depth and texture to the ink layer using halftones and a dry ink brush.
Reviewing this stage, I noticed that I had accidentally coloured in the gaps in the smoke (it made me realise how easy it was to make mistakes like that, which gave me some small insight into the printing mistakes I would see in comics as a child. I fixed this mistake and proceeded to add a series of effects to make the image feel like it had been part of a traditional pulp printing process.
I wasn't sure what to do for the background, my instinct said that adding in too much detail would make it too busy and would negatively impact the energy of the image. I also didn't want to do some kind of comic background (I think I could definitely turn this into a pulp horror cover in the future, however). Instead, I opted to take some of the grungey graphical screen print ideas from Character 1, and bring them to this image. The objective would be to have a sense of contrast and energy in keeping with the theme and colour palette I had chosen. I also added a paper texture effect to the whole image to give the impression of it being printed on pulp paper.
Overall, I am really pleased with the image. It has the movement and energy I wanted, and I really like the combination of vintage and more modern graphical elements.
Mostly, I am glad that this section is completed. It almost completely broke my will to study, so I am glad that I was able to use elements that I have learned to find a way to adapt my process in order to persevere and complete the assignment. I'll reflect more on this in a future post.
References
Creative Arts at The Grange, 2022. Hirameki. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO0T-OqCHro [Accessed 31 August 2022].
Marketing Department, 2021. Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games Brand Guidelines. [ebook] Birmingham. Available at: https://resources.cwg-qbr.pulselive.com/qbr-commonwealth-games/document/2022/02/17/bfcf87c7-85c6-4681-b91c-6b5a93397656/B2022-Brand-Guidelines-October-2021.pdf [Accessed 31 August 2022].
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