Having created a variety of designs for the clothes, I moved on to the staff to create something that reflects the twisted characteristics of the witch. While these designs are simple silhouettes, I don't need that much information from them to see what I want to create.

      After completing the character prop, I began on the face of the character. What I wanted to try and achieve was something distorted and unbelievable, akin to the nurses in silent hill, whose faces have been twisted into something else. There are aspects from a couple of these designs that I quite like, and I'll incorporate them into the final design of the character.

      Having chosen my silhouette, I went into a series of iterations, looking at various aspects of the character, stating with the clothes - I had the silhouette, but the style of clothing helps me to get to know the character more, revealing personality traits that you can't glean from the shapes in the silhouette.

      I also played around with the colour of some of the designs that I liked, as colour also gives an idea as to what kind of traits the character has. For example; warm colours such as red signify aggression, while cooler colours such as deep blues signify things like submission, which is why those opposites are used in video games to highlight both enemies and friendlies.

      Onto week 5 now, and the third task has been given. I wasn't quite sure what to do with the era that I was given at first (Georgian Europe), but after reading the short story, 'The Tinderbox', I decided that the character that would give me the most artistic freedom was the witch. I chose the witch because people were still very religious and superstitious during the Georgian Era, and so anything described as a witch would most likely be something hideous and fantastical because of folk tales, rumour and superstition.

      Found a couple of artists who I'd quite like to emulate in this project as they have a nice painterly style to them, while maintaining a degree of realism in their macabre images.

      The brief gave me a selection of character profiles to choose from, and I had to design them with the Georgian era in mind. The types of characters we could design were based in a short story titled 'the Tinderbox', and I chose the witch of the story as I felt that it would allow me to have a lot more creative freedom when designing the character.

      My initial silhouettes are very ranged, from haggard and crooked characters to more war-like, battlemage type characters. In the end, I chose a mid ground between the two as that lets me design someone more youthful and magical, without the character being necessarily deformed or inherently 'evil'.

      Having done my silhouettes, I did a fair bit of research, looking at Georgian era clothes, props and people, to get an idea of how my own work should look and feel like. Initially, I looked to artworks of people and images of military and industrial equipment so that I could figure out how my character would interact with those different types of item and the characters that would utilise them.

      For the final render of my object I wanted to give it an air of mystery, and I decided on the cave/temple/pedestal idea, with a light from the top shining down onto it and illuminating the cave. The light took on a very blue hue, so as to simulate the moonlight, and that meant that the piece was dominated by cool colours, with warmer colours lining the edge and highlighting the timepiece.

      I think that this week (and the project in general) have gone really well. The model sheet was a little bit of a pain, but once that was finished I began to play around with how I could present my timepiece, and the quick, really loose compositional drawings were quite fun to do, imagining how the object would interact with the world and how it could be used. 

      In the end I decided that I would present it as something forgotten, hidden in a cave and waiting to be found by an adventurous person as I think that presenting it in this way gave me the best opportunity to show its mysticism, and create an ethereal atmosphere around it.

      Found more artists that I like this week, they caught my eye because of the mood that they create in their pieces, something which I undoubtedly need to learn how to do and improve so that I can influence my viewers in the way that I want to.

      For this project, before I start to paint the final render, I wanted to play around with how I should present the timepiece. Because it's a swordstaff, it could be wielded by a mage-like character or a more aggressive warrior type. Alternatively, I could present it as something forgotten, wrapped up in vines, or something revered, placed upon a pedestal in a temple.

      The model sheet for my timepiece was fairly easy and comparatively quick to make, because I only need three different angles to make the design workable, those being front, side and 3/4 views. If I was doing a model sheet for a building, or asymmetric object, then I would need to do an additional view, and if I were doing this for a character, then it would be useful to get top-down and bottom-up so that the character model can be created accurately.

      The iteration stage for this design is where I really altered and fleshed out what I wanted the design to be. I'd chosen the staff as my concept, and I began to play around with the two main areas of the design, changing the head and any decorations, before focusing on what the main part of the staff would be like.

      I settled for a bident-like swordstaff, with the center of the bident acting like an hourglass, as sand continuously falls from a micro singularity, while the main part of the staff is further divided into three sections, a pyramid which spreads out into a hand guard for the user, and finally ending in the blade of the staff.

      The third week has brought the start of a new project, and although I didn't really think much of the title to the project, I found myself enjoying using alchemy to create random images that let me see shapes relating to the title of 'timepiece', and giving me inspiration to design something interesting.

      One of the first standalone ideas that I had for this project is something that I would quite like to complete as a small personal project in the future, where a nebula is getting sucked into a black hole, and a thin contrail is being ejected out the other side, like some sort of cosmic hourglass.

      The research for my timepiece varied greatly, at the time, I wasn't sure of what I really wanted to convey, did the object have gears, or a natural substance to indicate the passing of time? Was it a weapon, or a purely magical or mechanical item? I tried to address these things while I did my research to let the designs I'd made fully realise in my head.

      During the early stage of this second project, I wasn't entirely sure of what I wanted to create. I had a couple of ideas that seemed like they could work in theory, but when it came down to getting the paint on the canvas I realised that they weren't quite feasible to work as timepieces. Nevertheless, they appeared in the early stages of my designs, and new ideas came from them, so they were put to use and influenced my design choices.

      'Victory' by Kipine makes very good use of light in his images, which is no less prevalent in this painting. There is a fair amount of bounce light on the side of the creature's neck, illuminating the downy texture in a very soft light, when compared to the more intense light that falls on the other side of the creature. There is also a little subsurface scattering of light in the eye, causing it to appear almost luminous due to how the light has interacted with the different part of the animal.

      'Glacier' by Sahir Khan is very interesting because of the amount of reflection and refraction seen in the piece. The green colour of the ice adds interest to the piece as well, highlight the subsurface scattering in the areas of what would be thinner ice, due to the desaturation of colour and an increase in value. The piece is also interesting because there aren't really any shadows, as the entire piece is either lit by direct or bounce light.

      'Follow the Light' by Łukasz Wiktorzak uses an "L" frame composition, seen by the foremost tree, which branches up and over the focal points in the piece. This piece could also be drafted into the divine proportions or golden spiral method of composing an image, as the eyes are drawn to the warm, orange light in the lower, mid-left section of the painting, and are led up and around the piece by the diagonals of the boatman's oar and the crocodile's mouth.

      'Panda' by Mazert Young uses a nice compostion, although it is quite hard to discern which category it falls into. I would say that this piece either uses an Iconic style of composition, or the technique called 'the cross'. I think it could be put into the cross because of the way that the piece is split, with dark being painted on light on the right and light being put on dark on the left of the piece. This could also be an iconic composition because of the dynamic upfront positioning of the character in the image. 

      The final render of the insect took quite a long time due to the number of different parts on the insect, but I feel like the slight off-centre composition and high contrast add mood to the painting, and the angle of the insect allows for narrative as the creature could be feeding or stalking its prey.

      This page details the movements of the creature, looking at each of the different aspects of it so that 3D modellers and animators know how the joints in the creature work, which will speed up the workflow of the design team.

      Character sheets like this are really easy to create and they help a lot when it comes to rigging a skeleton for the character/creature in the later stages of production.

      The second week went pretty quickly, but I feel like it's gone well. The insect's character sheet could probably have been more dynamic, instead of just a fake anatomy lesson, but that's something that I can improve upon in future projects. I'm also really pleased with the final render of my insect. that is one of my first completed digital paintings, and I feel like although I have got a lot to learn in terms of software and its capabilities, I'm making progress in transferring my traditional fine art skills into digital media.

      Found a few artists that I like as well, some of the have a very realistic style, while others are much more expressive. I think that I prefer the expressive style of most artists because it feels like the paintings have more energy in them, which is something that I would like to achieve in my own works.

      This stage took didn't take that long, but I feel like I have resolved the silhouette completely into an actual concept for an insect.

      In the end I took parts and inspiration from the other silhouette designs that I had made and combined the best parts of a select few to create the final concept, developing the various parts of the creature throughout the process.