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Showing posts from October, 2020

28/10/20 update

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     I've done a small experiment.      I found a couple of pre-made poses and drew them at different angles to see how the camera angle changes how the pose is read in terms of it's personality and emotion. References Pose 1 Pose 2 - I edited the leg position but the top half is the same Pose 3

25/10/20 update

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    I've had some technical issues in the past week. My tablet pen broke so I needed to get a new one. Also, I was struggling a bit with what I should do next but I got an idea once my new pen came in.     Basically, what I've done is drawn a couple of my flower characters in poses with a particular emotion expressed. I then used gradient maps to change the colour palette to see how colour effects how the emotion is read. Pose 1: Clover and chamomile (Happiness/Joy) Pose 2: Asphodel (Sadness/Remorse)       My main take away from this experiment is that colour does little to effect the emotion of the image in of itself. Firstly, there's things like saturation and brightness. For example, red is typically associated with intense emotions but I can adjust how intense it feels though saturation levels. Also, I need to take into account context of the image. Colours are strongly symbolic of certain emotions but what symbolism you want is largely based on context. Like green is c

18/10/20 update

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 I've done a couple more of the single figure illustrations. Firstly, I did one for a clover:     Since four-leaf clovers mean good luck, I wanted to draw a gambler. I tried to make her a bit of a femme fetale.     I also continued with the asphodel flower design I made before: References For the clover drawing I posed a model like I've done with a couple of my other drawings.     For the asphodel drawing, I combined two reference images to get the pose I wanted:  Image 1 and Image 2

16/10/20 update

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 So, I did some drawing. First:     Here I left the flower language stuff to the side and did some face drawings of different emotions. I kinda improvised the facial features and hair styles and I found that for the sterner expressions I defaulted to longer and sharper features.     Then I went back to the flowers and made a couple illustrations of my chamomile, larkspur and clematis designs:     Like with the daisy drawing I did before, I focused on the personality and emotion. I also made adjustments to the clematis and larkspur designs since I felt that they looked to modern. I while ago I downloaded a brush set meant to replicate alcohol markers and I hadn't really played with them that much so I took the time to practice with them here. I've found that I like working with them. References      I posed the default female CLIP STUDIO 3D model that comes with the software for the chamomile and larkspur drawings.     Reference image used for the clematis drawing from SenshiSto

Project outcome thoughts

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      I was kinda stuck on what to do so I drew something quick and light.     It's the personification of a daisy: meaning purity, childhood and innocence.     I was more concerned about getting the personality and emotion of the flower rather than the character design for this one. And it got me thinking about what my project may end up as.     Up till now, I've been talking about the idea of a world building project centred around characters based around flower language. I think I may change my aim to an illustration project with a focus on communication emotion through personifications of flowers.          In Victorian times, flower language became popular because it was a way to communicate intense emotions in a socially acceptable way, particularity for women. Like you could tell someone that you hated then but it wouldn't come across as strong if you did it through a flower bouquet. And that's what flower language is all about: communication of emotions.         

12/10/20 update

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      I had trouble getting to sleep last night so I painted something pretty quickly that vaguely relates to my project.     I don't have a whole lot to say about it, it's just a vaguely magical nature environment. Nothing particularly unique.     I have continued with the my research as well. I feel like I have found all the relevant floriography / flower language papers that I can from what the uni lets me access. It's a smallish handful but the citations from the papers should give me an idea of where to look next.  I am struggling to try and find thesis of my project and how I need to centre my practical work around my theory.      Also I find reading on my laptop to be a bit difficult so I tried using a text to speech while reading along myself. I think I'll keep doing it.

10/10/20 update

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       So, I remembered seeing a post on twitter showing the work of a concept artist who used a symmetry ruler to make character designs. I didn't bookmark the post or anything so I don't know who it was but I wanted to give it a shot.        The first two are just the chamomile and amaryllis design ideas but refined. Chamomile definitely looks more like a nurse now.       The third one is based of off an asphodel flower which means " my regrets follow you to the grave ". Additionally, " Homer's Odyssey shaped the idea of the asphodel as a flower of regret, referring to the Asphodel Meadows as a section of the underworld...a type of ghostly purgatory ". I connected this to the concept of an elder that wanders the streets aimlessly. I was inspired by the costume design for Grizabella from the musical Cats and went for someone that looks ragged and small but not unfriendly.     The forth one is based on the clematis flower which means " Ingenuity &qu

06/10/20 update

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I've continued on from last week's face experiment and finished it up. As I noted in an annotation, the idea for the flower petal eyelashes comes from the design for Lillia in League of Legends:          Her design is all about showing how she is one with nature. In particular, there's the flower that grows from her head and the glow from the flower is seen in her hair, back and staff. The energy from nature is quite literally flowing through her. She has also clothed herself in what looks like tree bark. I think it looks too precisely tailored to her body and armour-like to feel natural  but the idea is there. Additionally, I wish her face was more deer-like with a long nose and face. Her face feels somewhat disconnected from her body, like they just slapped on their typical League woman face and called it a day. League has a problem with the lack of face variety in their woman character designs and Lillia is little different.      After I finished up the face study, I too