Artist research: Simon Stalenhag

As this semester draws closer to finishing I’m starting to think about what I want to focus on next semester for my final project. I want to split next semester up into two projects in order to have the most fun and creativity. The first semester I focused on one main project and found it hard to keep constant motivation to get it done and often thought about other pieces I could be painting. This semester to counter that I decided to give myself complete freedom and let myself paint whatever I wanted to. However, this led to a lack of structure in my work. That’s why I’ve decided to focus on two contrasting projects during my third semester so that I don’t get bored, but I can still have direction in what I need to paint.

With that in mind I wanted to start testing the waters of potential new projects, so I could hit the ground running by the time third semester starts to get the most out of each project. My first idea is to do with this painting. I wanted to make a game more focus on game play and show that in my concepts. I had the idea for a futuristic racing game where the players vehicle gets faster with each lap by hitting more boost pads that give them a permanent boost, meaning by the final lap harder to control and players would be bouncing off sides and skidding through the map making it more intense.

I wanted to take inspiration from classic cars and turn them into scifi looking speeders but not have them be shiny. I wanted the design to look like it could take a hit and be driven recklessly considering the nature of the game. I took a trip to a motor museum in order to gather some reference images and see what these cars looked like up close. I’m not much of a car enthusiast so I have little knowledge on the subject. This is why I felt like I needed to take this extra step on the off chance I decide this will be one of my projects next semester. The visit helped me a lot to see how unique and odd some car shapes could be. Especially when compared to today's. I wanted to use and manipulate some of these shapes into my speeder design. Like the front for example, it’s inspired by the front of an old motor but I removed the grated parts at the front and changed it to look more like a plane turbine engine but kept a similar shape to the front of the car.    

While walking around I was generally just looking at the details of the car as well so that I could add it into my own designs to give the believability that it could be a real vehicle. Details such as the curves and lines in the sides of these vehicles. I also looked at classic motor bikes with exposed tubing while I was there as well.

When it came to actually painting and designing this racing vehicle I wanted to be tighter with the design as I wanted the finishing image to look like it could be modeled. I haven't had much experience with painting vehicles before so I looked at an artist I knew could help. Scott Robertson. I flicked through his 'how to draw' book and discovered a clever method of turning 2D side on thumbnails into a finished two point perspective painting.

   Once I had filled a sheet of basic thumbnails I went over a few of the ones I felt could potentially work with a second value to help indicate the basic shape more. I then chose a design and drew a grid over the top that would split the image up into different sections that were all the same square size. This meant that when I draw a box in 2p perspective all I would need to do was split it up into the same amount of square sections and then I could use the grid and refer back to the thumbnail as to what should go where. This helped to make the whole process alot easier and less confusing when it came to proportions. The perspective is a little off but as a first attempt of using this method and painting this subject I felt it went well and the test allowed me to see that this would be a viable option for a third semester project if I decide to choose it.