Creating the Librarian Character - Part 1 - Research

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 Fulani braids to refer back to.

Next I saved just some general concept art by other artists, something to look back to for presenting my work well. Though I also follow concept artists in industry on ArtStation who I can always look to as well.

Myself and my partner were discussing Bioshock the other day and I wanted to see if the concept artist that worked on the series had his portfolio online, and he did! So I had a look through and thought I would write briefly about it here as I really love his work. I have also included a link to his portfolio below and some of his work:









Robb Waters created work for Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite, I really love how loose some of his work is, but he still gets the concept across clearly. The Handyman character definitely has more detail, but Waters doesn’t waste time on the back of the character as the details would be largely the same, instead he includes a small rough painting of what the back of the character looks like.

I still definitely struggle with sketching and keeping things loose, I think moving from illustrating characters is definitely proving a challenge as it definitely seems you work in an opposite way. Being accurate and detailed with concept art definitely isn’t as important as getting the ideas across - but while I know this it definitely will take lots more practice to get out of old habits!

Next I used ArtStation to gather a collection of concept art, while looking through Pinterest was helpful, I wanted to create a collection I could easily refer back to in future - and this way I also am following the artists so can see new work they do and contact them easily. I have included a link to the ArtStation collection below, and some screenshots to give an idea of the kind of work I have included:




As I find new concept art I like I will add into this collection, then I can have a constantly building folder to look to. Next I will work on sketching up concepts for what my librarian character could look like. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Getting Back Into Painting - Part 2

Image
Continuing on from my last post, I spent a few hours today experimenting on Procreate to play around with brushes, layer types and just generally get back into painting again.  I definitely wasn’t as loose as I would have liked, but I tried a lot of different things and I am happy with the outcome. I started by looking at a reference image for inspiration and began sketching from there, I think overall this piece took me about an hour and a half. I also was able to get a timelapse of my process, I have included screenshots and the timelapse. 2 and a half minute timelapse showing the process of creating the piece. The outline for this piece I wanted to keep quite loose, I knew my end result I wanted to look quite abstract, so I didn’t want to spend too long on the outline stage as I wouldn’t get a lot of use from it. I stuck to using two hues next to each other on the colour wheel to paint this, and unlike in my previous piece, I just painted with colour rather than grayscale then gradi
Read more

Digital Sketchbook Update - Part 1

Image
Similar to my update on my sketchbook outside of University work, I wanted to do a digital sketchbook summary of any bits I have done, especially as I have been unwell, these odd bits of sketching have definitely helped me get back into painting again. I will include images and the 30 second timelapse’s for each, then I have everything in one place! Having a mental disorder is tricky, because while I love art and creating, when a spell hits of feeling particularly unwell, I stop doing everything I enjoy. So I am happy that I have been able to have these moments of sketching and experimenting - hopefully I will be able to do another blog post with more of these sketches in future! A duck! I wanted to experiment with a more sketchy style, like it was drawn on paper with pencils and crayons. I think I did this one with the hopes of making it a sticker. I was inspired by artist “a.does.art.22”, their art is really fun to look at and very sketchy and colourful. I have included a link here: 
Read more

Choosing a Theme for My Concepts

Image
After looking through ArtStation at what other concept artists are doing in their prop designs, I wanted to try to settle on a theme for my own set of props. So I went on Pinterest to begin doing research and seeing where I ended up, below are some screenshots of things I saved along with my thought process and a link to the Pinterest board. https://www.pinterest.co.uk/kitbyrnegd/xb4406-games-design-advanced-practice/ Starting off I just saved some general prop concepts to get a feel for how they are laid out on paper and how they are designed. Next I started to try to look for a retro feel but set in space, I came across the term Retrofuturism which helped in my search. I looked at products and advertisements from the 40's and 50's, a big focus in the late 40's going into the 50's was put into consumerism due to the second world war ending. So I saved a lot of products for the home that were around this time. Fallout 4 has some really nice concept art which falls under
Read more