Below are some notes I made for myself during the thinking process.
Final Project: Start today 11/21, final due, full color, 12/16 (last day of finals)
-personal project
-created in photoshop
-can be linked to 3ds max, maya
-this means textures for stuff
-brainstorming today
-color animation
-21-25 hours of work minimum
remember process:
Idea
-what will be deliverable?
-concept, setting, character, story, composition
research
pose
crit
thumbs
crit
value
crit
color comps
crit
What do I like? What do I love? What inspired me to be an animator when I was so young? What turned that love of animation and art into the desire to work in video games?
It started with cartoons when I was younger. All of the cheesy action cartoons of the early 90’s, TMNT, Biker Mice from Mars, Xmen, Spiderman, Batman, Gargoyles. Even beyond the action shows I loved everything that spielberg directed Warner Bros was doing: Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Freakazoid and Tiny Toons... I was, and am still, obsessed with cartoons. I always played video games, they were playable cartoons essentially... but none of them captured my attention like Blizzard did starting with Warcraft 2.
I got into it a little late, I had played casually with friends and family. It was when I got the battle.net edition that I became a man entranced. From that point forth I was hooked on everything Blizzard. I spent countless hours in each of Diablo, Warcraft 2, Starcraft, Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft (though I cut that addiction out early on), and Starcraft 2. The one game, more than all the others, that has, from day one, captured my heart and soul is Diablo 2. I may very well have put more time into that one game than all other games I’ve played combined...maybe, I might be selling myself short here. Really most of my time since junior high has been spent video gaming.... The moral of the story is: Diablo 2 is my favorite game, hands down (until D3 comes out, we’ll see what happens then). I have always been able to go back to that game and sink way too much time into it, over and over again.
Now I am going to school to eventually work for Blizzard and some of the artists that inspired me (hours poured into looking at all the art in the manuals, copying and studying it helped get me where I am today).... it’s only fitting that I do something from that world that has driven me so much.
How do I make it interesting? Diablo 2 is an action-horror RPG.... well, the music that I love goes right along with it. Why not a Metal album art style Diablo 2 illustration?
now for inspiration:
research: album art
-ed repka http://www.humandeath.de/Repka_Arts.htm
-dan seagrave http://beinart.org/artists/dan-seagrave/gallery/paintings/
-travis smith http://www.seempieces.com/
-necrolord http://rateyourmusic.com/list/nospaulatu/album_art_by_kristian_wahlin__aka_necrolord_
-hr. giger http://www.hrgiger.com/
-eliran kantor http://www.elirankantor.com/
-par oloffson http://www.parolofsson.se/
-james jean
-david salle
come up with album title and have that direct theme
does it need to be diablo? could be inspired by other things I like: books and junk and stuff
Metal album art:
Normal with a touch of hell
-strong surrealism influence
-find surrealist artists
- color studies
-strong monochromatic (very cold, or very warm)
-or ‘bi’chromatic (dominant color with splash of contrasting color...lots of warm with harsh cold)
surrealism
-how do I control that chaos? Everything has its place, nothing is extraneous
-stream of consciuosness type painting
-break it down into it’s individual parts:
-symbolism as representationalism
-what defines the thing?
-deconstruct
-specific compositional devices, themes and choices of bits depicted
-does not have to be oversaturated with that stuff
-keep it simple stupid
-beyond that, keep it personal.
how to personalize this?
I want to make an awesome tribute to diablo2 and reference from metal (certainly an inspiration for the D2 team as well).
- I want to show that I can do awesome work
what made the game special?
-theme?
-setting
-story?
-music
I like drawing big ridiculous warrior guys and big monster demony things (that can’t be a direct relationship to the fact that a lot of my young artistic influence came directly from blizzard...)
-I like fighting... not winning, but fighting. Focus on the action, not the result
-figure out a title that works with fighting a physical embodiment of evil
-read up some d2 lore for reference
Break it down
-setting
hellish
-gothic cathedral in states of disrepair in a chaotic mass of fire and
abyss
- may be the church is too easy
-abstract the idea?
- see par olaffson/ eliran kantor
- characters
- barbarian
-diablo
-colors: Warm for hell and diablo
-cold for barbarian (looking like he came from snowy mountain highlands)
-more par olafsson for reference, look at Immortal album art.
-because they are fucking awesome
-diablo
-because he can look all hella badass and bullshit
11/28/11
Don’t be tied to the square composition
It got to a point that using my brain like this was going nowhere and I just needed to draw.
These are some of the thumbs that I did. Really this is just thought vomit, trying to transcribe all the research I did into picture.
This is the one that I like the most and decided to use it as a foundation for the finished piece.
Next it was taken into PS to start refining the drawing and composition.
The original was scanned and drawn over to help refine some edges and get the overall feel working. The sillhouette is used to help cement the image, if it reads as a sillhouette it should read as a full painting.
I lost it here. It just wasn't working, the sense of struggle and power was lost. It also didn't feel like it would be a proper Metal Album Cover. My instructor came with a helping hand and smacked me in the back of the head. Keep it simple stupid. The 3/4 turn wasn't working, it didn't lend anything to the drawing. I turned the figures toward the viewer and everything was working much better.
I was done beating my head against this drawing, if I took it too far as a drawing it might not work as a painting. There was a solid foundation, so it was time to start painting.
As it is it's still really rough. Having a vague approximation of lighting helped to show what was and wasn't working with the structure of the figures and the composition of the painting.
These early steps I am spending a looooooong time on. The more tender love and care I give in the beginning the easier it will be in the end. I get to solve all of my problems early and ultimately avoid the dreaded "polished turd."
The proper playlist really helps with this kind of arting. Miseration, Decapitated, Strapping Young Lad, Obscura, Yyrkoon, Lair of the Minotaur, Zonaria, Slayer, Dark Funeral, Behemoth, Belphegor..... The list is long. For as much time as I am putting into this I am Happy I have days and days worth of Metal to work with.
