Idea for Concept Art

This sketch is an idea for the layout of part of my city, I have scanned it in and started colouring it in with the help of the lasso tool as well and my biggest problem is that three people had a look at it and the first response was "cute" .... I will upload the coloured design when it has more to it than three buildings! But may have to overthink stuffs if it keeps getting called cute.

But I think the scene would work as the foreground is water which runs under the bridge (not defined yet) and there is a hill in the background which holds a big part of the city and conceals the rest. As hills and rivers are featured in many of Kandinsky's environment paintings I feel that he would build his city around those two factors.

What If Metropolis Review 1

Kandinsky's What if Metropolis Review 1

About Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky

Kandinsky (1866, Moscow - 1944, Paris) was a pioneer of the abstract. He used mainly oil on canvas, paint on glass, watercolours and woodcuts to express his art. Even though he was born in Russia he spend most of his life in Germany, but also lived in Russia and France.

His auntie made him take music and art lessons from a young age and he studied Law and Economy at university and later painting. His artistic beginnings were mainly landscapes where he looked closely at nature and Germanic- Slavic folk art and fairy tales which inspired him to his woodcuts. Being born in Moscow, many elements of his inspiration still stem from Russia and are carried into his works.

His road down to the abstract is a slow and consistent one as Kandinsky starts with studies of how nature looks like but he never seems to want to actually replicate it, he takes the shapes and colours and forms them into a painting which resembles nature in some ways, but doesn’t look like it. Over the run of the years his paintings move further away from the original scenes and he takes the shapes but puts them together in a completely different order, adds colour a bit more sparingly and lets the background colour of the canvas shine through a lot.

When he joins the Bauhaus, which mainly concentrates on architecture and objects that have multiple uses or at least have their usefulness maximised, he pushes his style further towards rigid forms with colours assigned to forms, and they hardly ever mix or go over the lines.

A theme that is presented throughout his life is his desire to draw music, which he achieves by using wavy and smooth lines for calm music and rigid straight lines with pointy corners for blasty, loud and sudden parts of a piece.

In 1911 he founds a group called “Blaue Reiter” with Franz Marc and he is the first artist to have a one – man exhibition which takes place in Munich. He is a professor at the Bauhaus (the higher school of construction and art designing) in Berlin and later Dessau after it has to move because of the Nazi movement.

Being a theorist as well as professor and artist he writes the pieces “Concerning the Spiritual in Art” (Über das Geistige in der Kunst, 1910) and “Point and Lane to Plane” (Punkt und Linie zu Flaeche, 1926), both originals are written in German.

His late works mostly consist of precise, geometrical forms inspired by Bauhaus and in 1933 he moves to Paris, where he lives until his death in 1944.

Thumbnails to Kandinsky

These are my first 16 thumbnails exploring Kandinsky, I am concentrating mostly on forms and colours while trying to imitate oil painting in Photoshop.

Invisible Cities: Argia. Exterior establishing shot, lower exterior shot and interior shot.

 exterior establishing shot

lower exterior shot

 

 interior shot

 

 

I have chosen these as my final shots as they portray the mood of Argia very well and show how the people live underground. All of these shots were first drawings from my sketchbook which I scanned in and painted over to keep the perspective and shapes and sizes as close to my imagination as possible.



@ Jordan: Exterior shots

For a quick look to see how both exterior shots go together; I think the contrast between light and dark is nice in both of them and even though the colours in the low angle shot are very different from the establishing shot it all can be explained by how colours change over distance.

Please have a look and comment if anything seems amiss! I already blurred the stairs after Emma pointed out that they are the only thing that has sharp edges, now it all fits together much better :)

Exterior low angle shot

My exterior low angle shot is getting there, I know the perspective in a few places is a bit off but quickly learning it is not as easy as it sounds :p I like the colours, they feel cosy and inviting but it looks more like a comic book at the moment, definitely needs improvement! Will work on this again this afternoon.

Saturation, burn and dodge tool on exterior establishing shot

Does the lighting look alright? Or is the background too shiny? I reckon the really light bit is where the sun shines through a bit, or at least where daylight seeps in.
I am very happy about the progress I made with the burn and dodge tool, at first it didn't work until I clicked the right layer, now I'm really happy with both tools! I also played around with the colours:

Exterior Establishing Shot

This is the first exterior establishing shot draft I'm happy with, it's not perfect yet and I haven't checked the colours but want to work on the next one in the meantime. Any thoughts?

Interesting

I just selected my thumbnail with the marquee tool and copy-pasted it onto a bigger canvas and half the picture vanished! It only shows on here what I did yesterday and today, nothing else. Odd. Will try and upload all my images properly!

Life Drawing Homework

I think we were supposed to draw from a photo so that we can tell the difference between big life drawing and small sketchbook drawing. I also didn't work with charcoal because of my new beige carpet... so pencil it is! My bigger drawings from the last lesson worked much better with perspective, on this one I can just see so many places where it's just off. This is why I didn't add the strings because they can't go into the same places as they are on the photo! But altogether I think it looks much better than I would have expected and it was fun to draw.

More thumbnails for Argia!

These are more drawing on how I imagine Argia and daily life. The first picture is a shot from the top straight down and shows the lay out of the main cave of the city with the lake in the middle, the bridge leading over it and all the "houses" sitting along the walls to the top. My wide angle exterior shot will look a bit like this but with more perspective and not just like a picture taken flat from the top.
The second shot is very similar to the one I posted earlier but I only just had the chance to scan the picture. It shows the cracks in the walls that make proper air circulation possible and it also shows that the homes reach up into the top of the cave and it hints towards the tunnels that are everywhere and occupied like everything else.
The third shot was the most fun because I actually had to look up squirrels and what they really look like - my first version was way to skinny but now it looks really cute and even recognizable! This shot stresses the daily dangers of guarding the insect farms as giant squirrels regularly attack them and try to steal the insects. This might turn into my low angle exterior shot.
The last picture shows a typical house front of a loved home with plants (mushrooms or other cave plants, will look them up) on the window sills, a water can and curtains. I think these details will be part of my interior shot as I plan on having the door wide open so that I can add details to the inside of the house and the house front, it will have a two point, possibly three point perspective. 

one, two and three point perspective drawings

These are my perspective drawings with one, two and three point perspectives. They are very simple and basic but I do understand the concept much better now than before and will try and implement the right perspective into my drawings whenever possible.

Small changes to my mission statement about Argia

After having a think about the criticism I received for my ogr I decided to make a few changes in the logic to make my city more believable and complete.

So first I went away from the idea of having lots of little tunnels only and turned the whole city more into a cave with tunnels that lead away from  it, possibly to other inhabited caves. For caves, it is also easier to explain the air supply as a few simple cracks in the surface are bringing down enough fresh air for everyone to prosper.

My exterior wide angle shot will be of the biggest cave, my point of view will be from somewhere very high up and it will show the lake at the bottom of the cave which is also the water supply, it will show all the doors and windows to everyones houses (apart from the doors, windows, plants, smoke pipes and front lights there is no exterior of the house, you can only guess the shape and size to the back), the stairs and lifts that help out everyday live and allow the Argians to live on the lowest as well as on the highest floors of the caves without problems. It will show a little boat or two riding the gentle waves and the bridge that spans over the lake to make getting around so much easier.

Other changes include the giant insect farms (the insects are giant, not the farms) and a well known predator to all Argians: the giant squirrel population which also occupy the tunnels and is a big threat to the people as they love attacking the insect farms at random.

Instead of having all the walls and everything emit light all the time I thought it would be good to have a specific gem that shines like a normal candle and can be mined a few tunnels along. It is believed that it is this discovery that made the Argians leave their old homes and move underground permanently as the gems work similar to sunlight and give everything a positive attitude. It also means that there is less smoke as no torches and candles are needed and the gems seem to emit light for generations without ever running out.

I also thought it would be nice if every household has got a few plants in their windows, likely miniature trees or ivy which will rank up into the neighbours pot and have a chance to give up some oxygen into the caves and tunnels. The plants are held in a very pale green colour as the light from the gems is giving them enough energy to not go pale but not enough to keep their original bright green.

For the low angle exterior shot I might show a fight with a squirrel that is attacking the insect farms, I already drew a thumbnail with that topic so it would be great fun.

For the interior shot I want to "zoom in" into a house with the door wide open so we can see some of the interior and some of the outside like plants and windows while the inside will show daily pottery that is being used as well as children's toys lying around on the floor and many details out of the daily life.

Argia: Explaining the air supply and transport methods

Unfortunately when opening the file I forgot to select transparent background so I simply turned down the fill to 56% and started drawing the colours onto the underlying layer, taken from my colour palette, which gives this picture a bit of a washed out look.
This picture explains where the fresh air gets in as the Argians simply rely on the caves and tunnels to sort themselves out. These are just small crack in the surface that let air in, but not rain for example as that would likely flood the whole city. There is always some draft coming through and the stormy season can be quite rough underground, as your drying clothes might fly away if not secured properly.
The transport systems exists in stairs and mechanical lifts for goods which is difficult to handle by one person only but it can carry a great load. The stairs are present on any floor and represented by the diagonal lines going up and down. They are nice and broad and not too steep and some have even pretty decorations.

This picture shows the original colours I was using, without the fine lines. I just really like the look of it, as it is bright and happy and you can still see all the important patterns and what's going on.

Colour palette for Argia (first try)

These are the different colours I will be using for my city, on the left side is more the colours of the walls and the clothes and on the right it's plants and water. I am trying to use as many autumn colours as possible, but the green of the plants is very light because they have been under the earth for so long. The water comes in 3 shades because of the difference in colour when it comes to depth, as there is quite a deep lake in the middle of the city I will try and distinguish between very shallow, normal and deep water.
All the colours might change if I don't find them suitable, but it's a start!

Mailin's Online Green Light review for Invisible Cities!

Mailin Berg, Invisible Cities, 8/10/2014

Sorry it's just a link for now but this is my work! Will try and make it into a proper pretty scrolly pdf later but need to go.

Thumbnails for Anastasia, Argia, Despina, Dominia and Ersillia!

These are my hand drawn thumbnails for the cities Anastasia, Argia, Despina, Dominia and Ersillia, I still have the last 4 left to draw and will do that when I published these! All of them are just quick ideas and things that pop into my mind when I read the description and I will also work hard on my perspective. It needs lots of improvement. Also, after talking to Jordan last week he pointed out that I should make my sketches widescreen instead of square, I am still adjusting to that but getting better!

Some Maya and thumbnail talk

After having some problems in accessing the Maya tutorials I have now made it 45 minutes into the character creation tutorial and can proudly present my progress on my pencil character, there is more to come! I just can't get anymore Maya in my head right now so will try again later... But I made my first gif based on Simon's instructions.


Also, I have done a lot of thumbnails in my sketchbook and am only missing 6 cities which is easily manageable to finish by Tuesday but since I lost the wire that connects my phone to the pc I thought I'll wait until tomorrow and scan the thumbnails during my lunch break. The library seems to have scanners in E Zone 2 so that should work!

Thumbnail Exersize no 4!

This one was hard..ish, how to draw houses that are not there was fun!