Avians Project Concept

 The Idea:

I noticed while looking through a bunch of digital art I never finished, that I like to draw people flying a lot, in particular I've started (but not finished) quite a few of people with wings. I'm not sure what that says about my personality, probably some angsty crap about breaking free. I don't really care about that but I have been thinking I should come up with some kind of extended project to get me motivated to do more paintings, and this seems like the perfect subject. And so I present the Avians Project! (Title is subject to change.)

I think it should be a lot of fun, though I'm not entirely sure where it's gonna go. It could be fun to try and flesh out a world and maybe even create a story of some kind. But for now I'm just looking to create some really cool images.

I should mention I don't have the best of imaginations, maybe I was never meant to pursue art but it's a bit late now. So rather than imagine everything myself I have to go ahead and look at a bunch of inspiring words and pictures.

So what better way to start out a project than research???

Research:

First off I figured I'd look up some stuff about people with wings. Thank the good Lord for Wikipidia. So I found a few mythological and folklorish things I could get inspiration from. First there's Norse mythology with their Valkyries. Valkyries choose who lives and who dies in a battle and then they select from the dead who will be taken to Valhalla. They also have the Fylgja. These are supernatural creatures that are tied to individual people by fate. Seeing your fylgja is a sign of your impending death. They can also act as guardians for the one whom they're tied to. Both of these also seem to match up with themes related to angels, for instance guardian angels and angels of death or war. I think these could be some really cool sources of inspiration. One difference is that the Fylgja don't usually appear as a human with wings, though they can appear as a human woman or as an animal. Since I'm only using them for inspiration I don't really mind that much.

 I've also looked at a few examples from other cultures like the Russian Gamayun and the Japanese Tengu. What I'm mostly finding is that winged human characters tend to be spiritual in nature and are very rarely considered natural creatures. They seem to usually be a kind of prophetic sign of war or a bringer of war, otherwise they may be a guardian and often encompass ideas of fate and destiny. Again this may say something about people and how they perceive fate but I'm not here to make deep discussion, I'm here to make cool art (even if it ends up being kinda deep.) As far as the look, I'm finding a lot of really dramatic lighting and silhouetting of the wings, which I like. You can get some pretty badass images with this subject. So as far as the subjects that I address in the images it looks like I'll be depicting war and human struggle, and I'll try to incorporate fate and destiny (very ambiguous I know.)

There are quite a few specifics that I'll have to get into to figure out the look I want. There's clothing,  setting, subject, style, etc. I'll have to look at pictures of the sky and clouds and wings and all sorts of stuff to get more ideas. I'm thinking by the end that this visual research could get quite extensive. But I hope that over time I should start to build up a kind of look which will remain fairly constant throughout the images I create. It'll almost develop it's own culture. On the topic of culture, since I've already been looking at quite a few cultures' mythology, I think that I'll probably draw from a few different cultures for the look. I don't want to reference any individual culture too directly but just take bits and pieces and weave them together to create something new that feels large and fleshed out. I want it to feel somewhat grounded and gritty but also have an air of fantasy.

I'm going to have to figure out some kind of time period as well. I quite like the idea of doing it in the modern day or even the future. I also would still like elements of an older time, part of this may just come down to the look of the art. I really like romantic paintings. That's the art movement, not the genre. A lot of the old romantic style is reflected in modern digital art so it should all fit quite nicely. The main thing to consider with time period is how it affects things like clothing and setting. I want everything to fit together and not be out of place. I'm considering creating some kind of hybrid time period where I make my own rules. Another possiblility is a post apocalyptic setting, where modern technology exists but everything is destroyed so I can create more old-world settings as well. Yet another possibility is that I create the images at different times in history but they all weave together into one timeline.

As you can see I've put a decent amount of thought into this but I haven't made many final decisions. But that's okay. I think that as I keep researching and painting it should start to develop.

Well there's the idea anyways. We'll see if it goes anywhere.

And to sign off, a short poem,

Fleas

Adam
Had'em

StoryBoards

Oooh goody. Storyboard time. 

Well this is it. "What that's all I get???" you may ask. Yes, yes it is. This is only meant to be a six second animation after all. The opening and ending shots are extra so they'll probably boost the animation to more like 10 seconds. But yea that's the first version at least. Liable to change. You may notice that there is a granny named Llucia. I still haven't put her design on here, or the stage design. I should get on that.

TTFN. Ta ta for now. Wooohoohoohooo!!

Colour Concepts

Finally got some colour concepts finished. Yay me. There's some texture ideas too. Such effort. Very work.

Wow.

Character Development

So here's the next work dump. There's not loads here but there's more to come I swear! But basically I did a character profile, then some silhouettes and a quick idea for his body, then I went ahead and turned that into a turnaround, I also did a quick pose sheet to figure out how he's going to move. There should probably have been more stages of development but honestly I quite like it as it is. I can always change it later on and do a new turnaround if need be. We won't be modeling the characters for a while after all. 

Bish bash bosh.

Daily Portraits

So there's an event coming up later this year, the organizers of which have contacted our school in search of artists who are willing to draw portraits of people in return for free comics. I thought that this sounded awesome and put my name down. I then realised that I will need to be able to draw a convincing portrait of a person in between 10 and 15 minutes. Thusly I decided that maybe I should get to practicing.

And here is the result of said decision. At least two quick portraits per day (give or take) of either a static Google image or a live subject. So far it's going okay but I still need to get my drawing time to be faster and make the drawings a little more accurate. But I think I'm getting there.

 

Cool cool.

3D Concept Creation

Finally time to start uploading my work.

For this assessment we were asked to create a 6 second animation in which we re-imagine a popular movie scene in another genre. First of all I brain stormed a few ideas.

I settled on the idea to turn the "I am your father" scene from star wars episode V as a Spanish soap opera.

After thinking about the idea I realised that it would require quite a bit of lip syncing (a daunting task for a first time 3D animator) so I created a workaround by changing all of the characters to marionette puppets. Thus the final concept is Star Wars as a Spanish soap opera/puppet theater. Quite a concept.

Next up was visual research.

I didn't do a ton of reasearch because I had a fairly solid idea of what I wanted in my head already. I looked up Antonio Banderas as well as Spanish soap operas and marionette puppets. Even though there isn't a ton of research here I can always look up more if I feel I need more inspiration.

Next up was character ideas. This is just the very beginning of character creation with some rough concepts just to get ideas down on the page. I have my Darth Vader character - Diego Varela, and my Luke character - Llucia. The next thing I'll have to do is more in depth character concepts and then I can begin development.