Hi I'm Hamish. This is a documentation of my wonderful adventures as I make my way from a flailing animation student, to a powerful and successful art ninja (I hope.)
I'll be posting my work from Animation College NZ fairly regularly (at least that's the plan) as well as my own personal work. So hold onto your socks or they may get blown off. If you like what you see, good for you. Hopefully there'll be more soon enough.

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Thursday 30 July 2015

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

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