Light~

"Piazza D Italia" - Giorgio de Chirico

 This painting by Chirico relies on lighting to bring the whole piece together. There seems to be little dynamic occlusion in this image; Chirico has kept the intensity of the shadows rather consistent and sharp, which gives the effect that the light source is closer than it probably is intended to be. There is little bounced light as well and in a similar fashion is kept consistent and sharp. This creates a feeling of abstraction and surrealism due to the flat colours.

"Soft Construction With Boiled Beans" - Salvador Dali

The painting above by Dali follows a similar direction to Chirico's, albeit much more realistically. Bounced light is used in various parts of the painting to render some of the surrealistic flesh, however, as the shadows are sharp in this image also, I feel like it is less intentional. Some sub surface scattering is evident here, mainly around the areas of warm tone on the flesh.  Dynamic occlusion is also much more prevalent in this painting.

Composition~

"Untitled" - Zdzislaw Beksinski.

"Plague's end" - Runescape

Here I looked at the composition of two paintings in both traditional and digital format.

The first, by Zdzislaw Beksinksi seems to take an "L" format for the composition. The outer "frame" supports the inner section through flow, direction and alteration of tone and colour. Beksinksi used this to draw the viewers eye towards the centremost section and focal point of the painting.

The second image is a concept piece for the game Runescape. The composition in this image leans more toward a usage of thirds instead of a "L" composition. Each focal point, (where the diagonal lines meet), is used to produce a much more aesthetically pleasing image overall. The angle of the plague doctor's masks also follow these lines.

Sketches and stuff

Here are some quick sketches of my insect to go alongside the previous development sheet. I indicated several functions of the insect such as the proboscis and the ball and socket joints. This should help build a little more realism and will help me during the production of the final concept piece.

Final silhouette development!

Here is another developed silhouette that I feel turned out rather well. I used rough sketches to figure out how the insect would strike its prey which in turn has led me to think about other parts of the insect and their functions. How will the insect eat its prey? How do the legs move? Will the insect have good vision/sense movements in the air?

I should explore these possibilities through some more iterations and sketches. Afterwards, I will prepare for the final concept piece.

Developing more silhouettes!

More silhouette development from two designs I felt resembled insects a little more, without being too obvious. I enjoy the second variant of the first silhouette more due to the idea of camouflage. A few designs seem to be revolving around opportunistic collection rather than selection which is cool I guess.

I don't really like these designs all that much either, unfortunately.  :(

Development dilemma!

From the previous designs, I decided to develop the silhouette I found effective more to help it resemble more of an insect through cutting and slicing different silhouettes. Unfortunately, I felt like the design was not getting anywhere and that I should explore some alternatives.

It was pretty cute, though. 

Developing silhouettes!

From my silhouettes, I selected two designs that I thought were quite effective in displaying character and form without being too obvious. I worked directly onto the silhouette with textured brushes and refined them into quick and varied designs (although the second concept was more oriented around colour as i found the silhouette rather abstract in comparison to the first).

I do like the idea of exploring ways of how an insect design would operate, much like the "fly trap" idea above.

As much as I enjoyed the third and fourth variation of the first design, I feel like it focuses more on character and less on resembling an insect...

Alchemy silhouettes 2!

More silhouettes created using alchemy. I tried to be a bit more adventurous with my shapes and overall design, however I feel like some of these silhouettes are rather unappealing because of the lack of form and transparency of the tool I used. 

Alchemy silhouettes!

For these silhouettes I experimented with an alternate program: Alchemy. This program allows for seemingly random and hard to control shape generation that can lead to much more varied and interesting shapes.

This program is going to be the death of me. 

Insect design silhouettes!

Here are my initial silhouette sketches for the insect design.
I experimented with a range of textured brushes and shapes to vary the overall design and flow of each silhouette. I also played with negative space and using an eraser to refine certain areas of interest.

From these silhouettes I shall select the most "effective" designs and create iterations of them, developing and fleshing them out into a character.