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Showing posts from April, 2024

Creating the Librarian Character - Part 1 - Research

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I started off by looking on Pinterest for inspiration, I have included some screenshots below explaining the type of things I saved during this process, as well as a link to the board: https://pin.it/1zvR3frQN   When I looked for just images of “librarian woman” on Pinterest a lot of images just played into the “sexy librarian” trope, so looking at that was no help. So I decided to see what other artists designed for librarian characters. Some of them were male characters but I didn’t mind as it still gave an insight into the costumes and other elements of design. Next I looked into Medieval English dresses, I definitely see the librarian in a dress but wanted to keep the medieval costume influence the other characters I drew had. So I collected some images to look back to when designing the outfit.  I think I will be making the character light/dark skinned, and definitely want her hair braided. I haven’t actually drawn braided hair before so I saved some references of Box braids and F

Setting My Next Brief

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I set a rough brief to work to for my next character concept, obviously it is all sort of first thoughts, so it may change but it gives me a bit of a guide to work towards. Next I will work on gathering images for inspiration and creating mood boards of references to look back to while designing.  Below I have included screenshots of my next brief:

Gallery Studies

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Following on from my previous blog post, I did some studies of the art that I found interesting from the galleries I visited.  I did this for a number of reasons: The various textures and colours of the artwork could inspire future work, so I want to make sure I retain what inspired me by painting To do colour studies, looking at what I see in the images and try to gauge accurately what colours and hues to use To experiment with using different brush types in Procreate and see what different effects they create Below is an image of my first attempt studying the work I saw: I hated this, I was too focused on 'being fast' and feel like I completely missed the point of why I wanted to do this exercise. Another reminder for me that setting my design goals beforehand is really important - not just for concept art. Below is my other attempt of these studies, I feel like I did a much better job here, and this is something I can actually see myself referring back to. I also included a

Visiting Art Galleries

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I decided to spend a day looking around some art galleries in Liverpool, to see if I could get some inspiration for future concepts. I tried to bear in mind that inspiration could come in many forms, so kept my eye out for anything interesting.  My first visit was to the Bluecoat to see Babak Ganjei’s exhibit “Thanks for Having Me”. I have included a link below for more information on the exhibit, and some pictures I took with my thoughts. https://www.thebluecoat.org.uk/whatson/babak-ganjei-thanks-for-having-me The exhibit was supposed to show an exploration of Ganjei’s creative journey through his life, I looked into what art he makes online after looking at the exhibit, because while the exhibit showed some insight into his creative life I couldn’t really figure out what he did. From looking through Ganjei’s website he seems to do a lot of poetry, which makes sense given a lot of the work on the walls at the exhibit. http://www.babakganjeiworks.com/ I honestly feel like this exhibit