Inktober Send off

Last night I attended the Inktober Send off hosted by one of my lecturers in uni; I had a good time with my friends and fellow artists creating and trying to fill our sketchbook with as much ink as possible.

Below are the pages I filled during the Inktober send off.

Breaking blue ballpoint pens made the pages that have the blue ink in them, the ink was very thick and difficult to control so I’ll not be using them again. I also covered a page in water and gently stroked some acrylic paint over which created some good affects which I want to experiment with further using colour. The rest of the pages were doodles/warm ups but I’m excited to see what I create using the new method of using acrylics. Hopefully it’ll help me with creating fur/skin patterns and colour schemes.  

Progress Presentations

Today I had my first progress presentation in front of my peers and lecturers; I feel that it went well and the main comment about my progress is that I need more context to help drive my project forwards. They liked my project as a whole and the artwork that I have created so far, calling it my playful stage. I was suggested to create more experiments with texture and colour just like I have done with my ink drawings, so I intend to do that as soon as possible.

Overall, they liked my project and found my ideas and methods interesting, I feel motivated to do some more experiments and research into different fields to help develop a better context for my project to help drive it forward.    

My current to do list is as follows: (this list could change depending on how my project is developing)

• Texture and colour work/experiments
• More film case studies
• The jungle book, rango, fantastic mr fox, Star Wars. (Creature limitations)
• Research Terryl Whitlatch
• Mindmap of research questions, what I’ve found out and what my questions are now
• Research Proposal 

Ink Experiments Part 3

Here is some more ink experiments like I did before. I created a blob of ink on a sketchbook, split it in half and mirrored it to get this creature portrait that I wanted. Again as I said before I intend on taking my favorite ones and rendering them out and developing it further from there. 

Creature Limitations

I’m starting to think about what kind of limitations – if any – my creature designs will have. Will they be able to talk? Will they be highly intelligent? Will they all be apart of the same world/universe? I looked into some films that have aliens or animals in them and wrote down some notes on each of their limitations and some on the film in general. Below are the bullet points on each film:

Jungle Book (2016)

• Live action
• Animal characters are CG, the child and some other animals in shot are real
• Anatomy of the animals look correct apart from their huge size (possibly for plot/story progression)
• They can talk

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

• Stop motion
• Actors played out some scenes while recording
• Animals can talk and wear human style clothes all while living in the same world as humans
• They can drive and have fully furnished homes.
• Animals associated with humans (dogs) don’t talk/wear clothes.

Rango (2011)

• Creatures can talk, wear clothes, have fully furnished homes/bars, can play instruments etc
• All in the same world as humans
• Entire film is shot live action and then used the voices recorded for the final film.

Star Wars (1977-2005)

• There are both domesticated creatures and highly intelligent alien races
• Some are designed by Terryl Whitlatch
• Alien species have their own planets, governments, languages and technology.
• Star wars uses creatures for both plot line and to fulfill the environment/universe.

District 9 (2009)

• Within the same world as humans
• Different reproductive system
• Intelligent, have their own technology and language
• Aliens can understand human language,
• Very facial expressive (for audience) human like expressions
• Humans can become infected and turn into the same alien species

As I’m starting to create my own creature designs, I’ll be thinking of what limitations to give them, each design could have different limitations but I intend to create a handful and see what I create and move on from there.

Below are the links to the trailers for each of these films:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82s9atP0teY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dnzf-GMZhio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-OOfW6wWyQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2igjYFojUo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdgQWQAzbOY

Ink Experiments Part 2

Here is some more ink experiments, first I wanted to create some more textures for me to use later on in my project. I hope to use them as skin textures in my concepts and just do some more experimenting with them just to see what could happen.

I then did some more drawings by putting a puddle of ink in the center of the page and using a straw to push the ink around the page. I got some interesting markings so I decided to scan them all into photoshop, cut them in half and mirror them to see what would be created. Also it was extremely fun to do!

Below is the final outcome of mirroring the split ink drawings and I’m really pleased with how they have come out. I find each and every one of them so interesting and unique to each other in terms of shapes and texture. Some of them look like they have faces and others look like insects; I intend to take some of the ones that I like the best and render them out into head shots of creatures and develop them from there. Using this ink technique has been really fun and came out with some really good results; I really want to use it again in the near future.

Ink Experiments

Considering it’s Inktober, I decided to experiment with using ink. I bought some pen refills and opened them and mixed them with water. They turned out in a really nice green colour, which was a surprise as the pen refills were meant to be black ink. I first did some messing about with the inks, trying to create forms with using S shapes and basically filling the page up. It didn’t work too well but I could use these pages later on as textures for example; it was also a good warm up for me. I also drew some animals with the ink as you can see and tried to make it as messy as possible. Basically I’m getting comfortable with using these inks before I try to create any creatures.   

For my next attempt, I then tried using a straw to push the ink across the page to get more tighter and defined lines. This was really fun and as the ink dried, it created different colours and gradients, which added more definition to the page. I tried to visualise shapes within the ink, to see if I could create any creatures from it. One of the pages looked remarkably like a bird when the page was flipped on its side. I decided to develop this image further to see what kind of creature I could create with it.

As you can see from the images I drew over the ink in photoshop and rendered the image out. I also created a mood board of the animals that the ink drawing reminded me of as I was painting it. Obviously the main animal I thought the ink looked like was a bird, it also looked like it had both frog legs and bird claws. As I was painting the creature it also began to look like a lionfish. All of this was unintentional but a lot of fun.

For the creature itself, I decided that it could be an amphibian, mostly living in water using its wing like fins to move around as they constantly grow because they are so delicate and tear easily. Using their frog legs in water also helps them boost their speed and using their bird claws to catch small prey such as insects and small fish. On land they like soft watery ground such as swamps, riverbeds or beaches; they use their legs and body to move through the wet ground looking for worms to eat. I intend to develop this creature further to see how it can be altered for the better in terms of design. With using the ink technique, I believe that this image was a fluke to be honest as they other drawings are very difficult to image anything from. I want to continue on with experimenting with using ink to see if I could find a technique that is good for quick creature design.

Overall, I quite like the creature I created, as I’ve said before I want to develop its design further, figure out its anatomy and play about with its colour scheme.