scale and leading the eye

 

                                    

This semester I knew I wanted to create concepts that would challenge me in various ways. Such as perspective design and colour. Last semester I focused mainly on colour and pushing it further so I aimed to push more elements in my work this time.

This led me to my first concept above. I remember always trying to create forced perspective drawing when I was younger and never having mush luck with it so I wanted to prove myself in some way.

I wanted to think about the design as well as the perspective in this piece. I wanted a fantasy setting but didn't want it to be typical fantasy. When someone mentions fantasy environments to me I instantly think green fields, castles and dragons. I wanted to avoid this and create something that was still clearly fantasy but didn't follow what has been done before.

When trying to come up with new ideas I normally look at my collection of references that I gather and add to over time. I found a sub folder of historic eastern armor and was interested in seeing all the differences between western and eastern styles of armor and weaponry. Even though they were different in styles and shapes they were still clear as to what they were. I like of the world I'm painting even if I'm just painting one picture for that concept so the idea of having a world where everything looks and feels different but still familiar and intuitive felt like a strong concept idea.

When it came To starting the painting I had a few things I knew I needed to be able to check off my list for it to have the effective I wanted.
1. After re reading James Gurney's book I knew going in to remember atmospheric perspective. It's normally a realisation half way through a painting for me that I then have to go in and change. However to keep a looser style in my painting and not make it look stiff and dead remembering this early on helped.

2. I needed to lead the eye through my painting. I was aware that having alot going on in this painting could lead the viewer to get lost in what to look at right away so I had to make a clear path for the viewer to look at. I also didn't want this path for the viewers eye to bee obvious (like a path). This is where the design for the giant came from and evolved. I had the idea for the giant originally as it felt like a good alternative fantasy enemy instead of a generic dragon but would still feel like a familiar enemy to fight in some sense because of the scale. Originally the giant was going to just use throwing axes that would then need to be picked up. That was a problem in terms of design and how the enemy would play. However when painting the idea to have the giant as a four armed creature that throws two axes and uses the other two arms to pull chains that the axes were attached to fixed my character design and also found the solution in leading the viewers eye through the painting.

3. scale. In order to have something looking big I needed elements to compare in size. At first I thought this would be tricky to do considering the setting of a barren looking desert. However I managed to change the environment slightly after looking at images of cultures that lived in these environments and decided upon ancient statues that would help frame my image aswell as providing some scale. The statutes weren't enough to give a clear sense of readable scale straight away so the axes and chains also had to be placed in different locations to be able to see the size difference between the foreground and the back ground. I posed the giant ready to throw his next axe while the first axe was still in the foreground next to the soldiers. This helps give a sense of scale once the viewer has followed the axe and chain up to the giant and then seeing the second axe for scale.