Semester 2 Project: An Introduction

For Semester 2 I will be using ‘Idea 2’ from the set of idea drafts I developed at the beginning of Semester 1. 

Idea 2

Look at how concept art depicts both known and unknown folk tales / fairy tales and use this as influence for creating concept art for a video game based on a known or unknown folk tale / fairy tale - possibly interpret it in a way that would suit a video game.

By searching for media that depicts known and unknown folk tales / fairy tales; i will research the history behind these tales so I can analyse how they have been depicted and why they have been depicted in this particular way - is the depiction influenced by imagery we are familiar with?, where has this imagery come from? Has the creator made something new and their own unique take on it and if so why? Is the creator trying to contextualise a different aspect of folk tale / fairy tale? 

I have reflected on what sort of concept artist I want to be and I wish to take the direction of my concept art into defining myself as a concept artist who produces charming 2D art and I will be using this idea to show that. 

During this project I intend to develop a methodology for myself and my style of concept art. I want to identify what makes my concept art the way it is and look at how this could be a pipeline that others who wish to create the same sort of ideas and style of art can follow.

I will need to put myself in the mindset of both a concept artist and game designer; as i will be creating concept art for a video game based on a folk tale or fairy tale i will first need to determine what tale i will be choosing - this will affect what type of genre/platform the game will be along with what concept art i will be creating such as characters, creatures, location, environments, interiors, exteriors and in-game items.

One example of a fairy tale’s visual depiction being changed with concept art is one of my favourite and the first film adaption of the fairy tale ‘Beauty and the Beast’ or in this context ‘La Belle et la Bête’ by French artist Jean Cocteau. 

La Belle et la Bête film screenshots, Jean Cocteau, 1946

The story of beauty and the beast exists in a variation of ways- collected by folklorists across the world, each country having in some way it’s own version of the fairy tale. The version we know was written and published in 1756 by french author Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont  which in itself was adapted from an earlier version of the story published in 1740 by french author Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. Beaumont kept many aspects of the original story the same but with some alterations by cutting out subplots and characters she rewrote the lengthy story to be more suitable for children. 

In many early illustrative renditions of the fairy tale the beast is often designed as an elegantly  dressed boar-like creature, the earliest iteration of this design I could find was by the prolific  illustrator Walter Crane; I found this interesting as it differs so greatly from the design we are familiar with. 

Beauty and the Beast, Walter Crane, 1874

Beauty and the Beast, Peter G. Thomson, 1885 

Beauty and the Beast, Warwick Goble, 1913

In both Villeneuve and Beaumont’s versions of the tale there is no distinct description of what the beast looks like besides ‘frightening’ ‘hideous’ and ‘monstrous’- with a particular emphasis on the beast's stupidity and boorish behaviour, this is due to the french definition of ‘beast’ meaning both a large creature/animal and someone who is foolish/stupid. 

“So I am,” said the monster, “but then, besides my ugliness, I have no sense; I know very well, that I am a poor, silly, stupid creature.”

La Belle et la Bête, Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, 1756 

Walter Crane’s art popularised and redefined the idea of visual literacy for children by improving the standard of ‘Toy Books’ - children's picture books that were produced during the victorian era; they featured nursery rhymes, fairy tales and other stories. With so much freedom of creativity for an illustrator to design the beast as they please it is uncertain why Walter Crane designed the beast as a boar; it could be that a the image of a boar contrasted so heavily with his beautifully detailed and decorative art style or it is believed when planning and creating his illustrations that he would spend his time considering the perspective of a child so perhaps a large, hairy, tusked boar would be considered a scary and ugly monster to a child. 

Unlike these earlier renditions of the beast Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film took the design in a different direction by making the beast more lion like as Cocteau wanted to evoke both fear and sympathy; one of the earliest ideas was for the beast to have a stag head however this was scrapped as it was too similar to the Cernunnos, the Celtic stag-headed god of the woods. 

 

Film poster for Jean Cocteau’s ‘La Belle et la Bête’, illustrated by Jean-Denis Malcles, 1946

‘La Belle et la Bête’ film poster and ilm poster initial sketch, illustrated by Jean-Denis Malcles, 1945

"My aim was to make the Beast so human, so superior to men, that his transformation into Prince Charming would come as a terrible blow to Beauty, condemning her to a humdrum marriage and future; it would expose the naivete of the old fairy tale that conventional good looks are ideal".

Jean Cocteau, Press book for US premier of ‘La Belle et la Bête’, 1947

As a surrealist artist Jean Cocteau re-invented ‘La Belle et la Bête’ by changing aspects of the story; adding magic mirrors and living statues he created a fanciful black and white film that turned the beast's castle into a realm outside of reality with the use of long dark halls lit by candle light and diamond tears to create haunting, dream-esque scenes - we can see these sort of visuals being conveyed in Christian Bérard’s concept art. 

   

Concept art of costumes and sets for Jean Cocteau’s ‘La Belle et la Bête’, Christian Bérard, 1946

Cocteau In a similar fashion to Walter Crane wanted to convey the perspective of children - so much so that when opening the film he asks his audience to suspend disbelief in the same way a child would when listening to a fairy tale.

“Children believe what we tell them. They have complete faith in us. They believe that a rose plucked from a garden can plunge a family into conflict. They believe that the hands of a human beast will smoke when he slays a victim, and that this will cause him shame when a young maiden takes up residence in his home. 

They believe a thousand other simple things. I ask of you a little of this childlike sympathy and, to bring us luck, let me speak four truly magic words, childhood’s “Open Sesame”: 

Once upon a time…”

Jean Cocteau, opening credits of ‘La Belle et la Bête’, 1946

Jean Cocteau’s iteration of the fairy tale still remains the most visually influential and we can even see this influence in the concept art and visual direction of Disney’s 1991 animated film.

Beauty and the Beast concept art, Andreas Deja, Disney, 1991

Research Reference: 

https://www.pookpress.co.uk/7-variants-of-beauty-and-the-beast/

https://www.pookpress.co.uk/project/beauty-and-the-beast-history/ 

https://www.pookpress.co.uk/beaumont-beauty-beast/ 

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/french-english/bete 

https://www.illustrationhistory.org/illustrations/beauty-and-the-beast 

https://nydamprintsblackandwhite.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-beast.html 

http://booksforkeeps.co.uk/issue/185/childrens-books/articles/other-articles/walter-crane-a-revolution-in-nursery-picture-books 

https://filmschoolrejects.com/jean-cocteau-la-belle-et-la-bete-retrospective-f08cbd27a96f/

https://www.gwarlingo.com/2012/jean-cocteau-beauty-and-the-beast/ 

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/250-once-upon-a-time-french-poet-explains-his-filming-of-fairy-tale

Semester 1: Reflection

What did I take from Semester 1?

• How different departments of a video game studio can play a role in concept art

• How to develop concept art for a character around a particular mechanic, idea or theme; for Moss this was creating a character for a VR video game that required the player to develop a bond with the character in a story book-esque world

• The functionality of concept art - every aspect of the concept art must be questioned in relation to games design - does this work? more so than - does this look nice?

• Concept art is about 

• Following a series of stages or methods for the fundamentals of concept art; this is to establish the pipeline of the concept art process. Although they may differ between artists these methods usually involve some form of brief or direction from an art director, research, reference collecting, sketching, thumbnailing, colour exploration and a finalised concept 

• Having an idea and being able to use communication through visuals or annotations to explain that idea

• Using stages of the concept art to refine an idea, re-visit an idea or scrap an idea altogether depending on the feedback of the art director 

What do I want to bring from Semester 1 into Semester 2?

• A functioning concept art pipeline that is driven by research 

• Working from a brief - as my starting point for what to do with my concept art research

• Transcribing ideas inspired by folkish culture into concepts

• Looking into how other concept artists have interpreted a character, story etc. so i can review and reflect on their methods to understand how and why they came to the decisions they made with their concept art and if this affected the development of the project e.g tv,film,animation,video game

To improve my work for Semester 2 I will need to work faster and more efficiently on the concept art I create to keep up with industry standard timescales. 

What I wanted to use Semester 1 for was to understand what concept art is and what concept art is for - going beyond its definition I wanted to learn about how concept art is made. I feel I have expanded my knowledge of concept art by delving into the early history of concept art, deconstructing different concept artists methods and questioning the perception of concept art between the industry vs the public and how this can affect concept artists. What I intend to do is work more on showing my research and new found knowledge through my art. 

Semester 1 Project: Quill Concept Art, Final Concept

Quill Final Concept

Semester 1 Project: Quill Concept Art, Colour Blocking Exploration

Colour Blocking Exploration 1

To start I used different shades of red, these were sampled from palettes inspired by photos of mushrooms. With this idea of mushroom inspired colours I attempted to apply this to the colour scheme of the outfit in another way by having the hat and cloak different colours.

Image References:

Colour Blocking Exploration 3

I took the idea of the hat and cloak colour being different from each other and explored that more, first with cool colours and then with warm colours.

Colour Blocking Exploration 4

My final part of this colour exploration I wanted to look further into the colour of fur I wanted Quill to have as i was not particularly satisfied with the colour she currently had at this stage and i knew i needed to explore this further, this involved researching and collecting colour samples from different types of rats and mice. 

Semester 1 Project: Quill Concept Art, Hat Concepts

Hat Set 1:

Hat Set 2:

Hat Set 3:

Semester 1 Project: Quill Concept Art, Initial Concepts 2

Sketch 1:

Sketch 2:

Sketch 3: 

Quill Initial Concept 2

Research: 

Image References:

Semester 1 Project: Quill Concept Art, Initial Concepts 1

Sketch 1: This sketch follows more closely to the prompt with the sewing kit concept, the world I envisioned for Quill in this concept was one that focused on the leftover items from humans and the mice using them with large pieces of fabric fashioned into clothes and scissors made into swords. If i had explored this further i would have created concepts of swords and armour made from pocket watches and tea sets. 

Sketch 2: This sketch is the more folkish and fairy tale-esque of the concepts, my idea was that as Quill lives in a woodland village i could apply that to her design with mushrooms by having them as part of her home and her clothing/weapon with gold prints of mushrooms decorating her dress and even having real mushrooms tied to her sleeves. While developing this idea with mushrooms I decided to look at different images of mushrooms, I came across an image of mushrooms growing on a branch and this gave the idea to have Quill’s sword made of wood so that mushrooms could grow from and be used as a function to blind, stun or poison the enemy. I based the design of the wooden sword off viking swords because when looking up sword designs i came across a fact about how vikings believed eating hallucinogenic mushrooms gave them strength to battle so they would design the handles of their swords to resemble these mushrooms.  

Sketch 3: My idea for sketch 3 was to look at how Quill and the members of her village would utilise the woodland around them by collecting, weaving and carving branches into tools.

Quill Initial Concept 1

Research: I first started my research for this initial concept by looking more into hand-crafted mice figurines and ornaments to give me ideas on how to approach the design, what i found useful about this research was how to look at making such a small character as I found numerous types of mice that were unique and full of personality in their use of materials like wool, fabric and buttons for clothing and poses that would lead you to think they were alive. 

Image References:

Project: Quill Concept Art, A Concept Prompt

To start this concept art in a similar way to Claire Hummel I looked for a prompt to give me inspiration; as I regularly collect images to use for later reference I went into looking through my file of images and came across this image of hand sewn felt mouse ornaments - from this image i created a quick sketch. What came to mind when making this sketch was the idea of smallness of the character compared to human sized items like sewing kits (as we know humans possibly existed in the world of ‘Moss’). I incorporated how the mice would use these leftover items to build things, make their clothes or even as weapons.

Concept Art prompt sketch

One of the things that interested me the most about the ornaments was their hats, i researched into the style of hat to find they are called ‘Pixie Caps’, usually made from felt these hats are often worn by young children - the design inspires a fairy tale look and feel to the character’s design, which is something the developers wanted to show in their game and that i wanted to explore more as i moved onto the initial concepts.

Felt Mouse Ornaments

Semester 1 Project: Claire Hummel Concept Art Methodology Summary

For my first iteration of my ‘Moss’ concept art I will be looking at the methods used by Claire Hummel.

Concept Art Methodology 

This is the workflow i have formulated following the research i have gathered about Claire Hummel and her process of creating concept art

• Look for the intent or purpose of the character design; Who is this character? What sort of world/genre is this character from? What is the Art Director looking for in this design? 

• Create raw sketches and ideas - brainstorm these ideas or any ideas onto paper

• Start collecting research and references that i feel will be useful 

• Beginning the initial concept stage create several sketches (3-4 sketches)

• Pick a design that i like and develop more initial concepts - explore new ways you can make the sketch you have chosen even better or you held back on applying to the original sketch (4-5 sketches)

• Pick a design from the second set of initial sketches, refine some of the details to create the final design

• Moving onto colour blocking create a flat digital painting render of the concept and sample different colour palettes (6-7 colour variations)

• With the colour palette decided create a final concept - fully detailed turnaround (front/back)

Semester 1 Project: Concept Art Methodology, Claire Hummel

While we can look at a concept art book to see hundreds of pages detailing the overall production of a game I feel standalone concept artists get lost amongst the pages and possibly we don’t even get to see any of the concepts they created for the sake of being scrapped in early concept development or for the book layout. However now with online portfolios we get better insight of their personal methodologies.

The example I feel strongly shows this is from the concept artist Clair Hummel.  

In this interview i found with Claire Hummel, one of the questions the interviewer asks is about her process of creating concept art - i found this information useful as it coincides with the post i found of her concept art and is the artist herself describing her methods from start to finish - my plan with this information is to note down her methods in order to formulate a pipeline for myself to use so i can review and reflect on this example of an industry level method and if i feel it could work for me.

Process always starts with an idea or prompt she wants to work with; this could be brought on by a reference she has stumbled across but usually she wants some intent or purpose to motivate her character design - who is this character? What’s their role, social standing, personality, career, genre and universe? 

At this stage she asks herself “What do i want to get out of this piece?”

From that prompt she will jump into loose sketches and brainstorming; she notes the value of getting a raw idea for a character onto paper, whether it’s in a sketchbook or on a napkin. “Trust your instincts, or atleast get them down on paper to refer back to. Sometimes there’s some weird genius hidden in there that you would have over thought.” 

Once having some sketches down she moves into more in-depth research and referencing; gathering images and reading books is a huge part of her process and the larger the body of reference is the better and more plausible the work is going to be. 

Clair brings up two facts i believe are important to referencing -

Not everything needs to be a mirror of something that already exists as it would defeat the purpose of character design but knowing what she is drawing and knowing when to deviate from the source material will make for better, more unique character designs.

When working from a reference you’ve never used it is best to try and do some quick studies of the reference, this study can lead to discovering things about the concept art subject matter that you wouldn’t have otherwise with just a glance.

From that point Claire starts integrating the references into her initial concepts which allows her to tighten up the structure, design elements, details and take into account things like shape language and silhouette. 

At her industry job she will produce several variations on any given idea and in order to get so many initial concepts created Claire will work in black and white - this is a method used for the sake of speed and value “no amount of good colour can save bad design or bad value structure”; leaving the colours to a later stage helps her focus more on the design so when finally reaching the stage of initial colours and colour blocking she can pick a colour scheme that reads clearly and reflects the character. 

After settling on the final design and colour scheme Claire moves on to the final stage of her design being the final concept - for her job in the game industry this means a painted trunable art piece that will be then passed off to a 3D modeler.  

As an example of this process put into practice I went to one of her online portfolios and found concept art of young Elizabeth from the game Bioshock Infinite. In this portfolio Claire Hummel breaks down her methods and the process of designing the young version of Elizabeth. 

She details how the Art Director was looking for a design that reflected the characters bright-eyed and youthful demeanour that we see at the beginning of the game when we as the player first meet her; as part of her concept they wanted a historically inspired design with an appealing and modern silhouette - we can see that these concept methods where used to communicate an idea by an outside source, which is what i have found as a common description of concept art and its role in the industry.

In Claire’s notes she researched into types of schoolwear/ uniforms that would be worn by girls in the 1910’s as the game uses this time period for its aesthetics. “While school uniforms weren't nearly as prevalent during the Edwardian era as they are today, we ended up zeroing in on a blouse-and-skirt ensemble that echoed that theme and communicated her youth to the audience.”

Initial Concepts: In her initial concepts stage Claire has created four rough sketches of Elizabeth’s design - the sketches are quick, fluid and coloured in greyscale. The sketches are also annotated with details about the fabric materials and inspiration of each concept, these details serve as a way to show functionality of the concepts and are useful to the different departments of the development team e.g 3D modelling, texturing, lighting and animators; which will come into use later for when the character is rendered into the game.

It can be seen in the second part of her initial concepts that a design has been chosen by the art director and so Claire is tasked with developing the chosen design further along with experimenting with different hairstyles - in these five concepts we can see how Claire is trying to bring out the character’s personality through how Elizabeth wears her uniform. Claire has also shown the details and functionality of these clothes in her initial concepts; these details are to be quick, readable and although it seems to be sketched in passing these sort of details are important to other members of the development team e.g ‘sketch 1’ shows the bottom of the skirt folded over, showing the under layer petticoat; without seeing this the 3D modelers, animators etc. would not know this needs to be added to her in-game render.  

Colour Blocking Exploration: We can see in this stage of concept art that a design from the previous initial concepts has been chosen; which Claire has tweaked and refined as she moves onto creating a colour scheme for Elizabeth - the concept art has now transitioned from pencil sketches to flat digital paintings, this is so she can quickly swap out colours in order to experiment and create a visually pleasing palette.

As part of her concept art methodology Claire has created a process in which she takes the same sketch, duplicates it and redraws over it to create a new piece of concept art. 

Damage States: This is a more specific piece of concept art for the game due to a story feature where Elizabeth’s attire will gradually become more torn. 

Final Concept: The final concept shows a front and back pose. 

On reflection and what i’ve taken from this research is that i’ve learned a lot about concept art methods into practice; i feel her method utilises efficiency and visual communication while still maintaining her unique art style. 

Research Reference :

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/XbEoa 

http://claire-hummel-interview.blogspot.com/2013/12/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html