Thumbnails 33-64

Here are thumbnails 33-64, for these thumbnails I wanted to try and maintain the whole idea of victim and nervousness and anxiety from the feeling of being watched. Therefore for some of these ideas I altered the movement of the furniture so that the victim, in this case Eleanor,  felt surrounded, unable to escape, a prisoner of the house. In addition I also kept to the claustrophobic idea to capitalize this feeling and emotion.

Throughout these thumbnails I also kept to my idea of the feeling of loneliness by creating a big room, so the furniture looks small and helpless as it is engulfed by its surroundings, at the same time I also played around a little more with perspective and how it can have an effect on the atmosphere of the environment.

Thumbnails 1-32

Here are my first 2 sets of thumbnails to the Haunting of Hill House, with a page dedicated to exterior thumbnail ideas and another dedicated to interior thumbnails ideas.  For my exterior thumbnails I wanted to portray a sense of darkness as well as a hint of beauty as Eleanor, the Protagonist, looks to her trip to the house as a vacation, to escape the stresses of her every day life. However at the same time there is the darker history behind the house and its power to startle Eleanor, slowly making her go mental.

For my first set of interior thumbnails I aimed for a claustrophobic, enclosed atmosphere, with the furnitures tightness to the wall as if its being corned, as though its being victimised,  because even though Hill House is a big mansion, Eleanor becomes a prisoner of the house, so much so that she wants to stay despite her claims at first for feeling uncomfortable and so I tried to create a sense of loneliness too. I also experimented with angles and perspectives to try and get an unnerving atmosphere as though someone is being watched.

Master Study - Kekai Kotaki

We were recommended to create a Master Study of an artists work, in order to help not only with our colour theory but also with testing out techniques too. For my Master Study I chose to work with a piece of artwork by concept artist Kekai Kotaki. From looking at his gallery I tried to find a more basic piece of concept art to avoid over complicating things as a Master Study is just an experiment with brushing and colour. Here is the original image: 

I started out just creating the basic foundation of colours that I could paint over and over to avoid the image looking flat, I then started to work on the foreground. As time was passing by I realised I was spending too much time on the foreground, considering this is supposed to be just an experiment not a complete mirror copy, so I tried to finish up on the foreground before I roughed out the middle ground more. From here I was just trying to get the right colours down or as close to the colours as I could get without using the eyedropper tool before finishing the base colours and defining some shapes within the image. 

1. 

2.

3.

My final outcome ended up being quite rough, with the midground and background but I believe you can get the idea of what it is supposed to be duplicating, I think the main foundation of shapes are there though my ending colour result is off, its a little light. The smoke and the mid mountains were the trickiest things to do as looking at the original artists it looks like used a uniquely textured brush meant for the clouds and the detail on the mid mountain or just applied a specific technique. I created a textured brush of my own but it did not look the same. 

Before finishing I merged the layers together, duplicating the one layer and added a surface blur and box blur, setting it to soft light on a really low opacity to try and soften the whole image. I also had a dabble in selective colour to try and get as close to the original as possible. Overall I am fairly pleased with the result. The above is my outcome.

Influence Maps 3 & 4

These are influence maps, focused more so on interior environments. One of my first thoughts after reading the book extract was that Eleanor doesn't physically visualise any ghosts, and it could be said that it is all in her mind, her imagination. Therefore I looked into abandoned mental asylums, to reflect her mental power, and sense of loneliness when she first enters, and how the longer she stays in the house the more her mental health decays, much like an abandoned mental asylum. Not only that but mental asylums alone have a tendency to be creepy and are associated with the horror genre. 

For more influence in how I could add an unsettling atmosphere within my concept paintings I looked at images of old abandoned/decaying rooms as well. Trying to keep the furniture style old fashioned as the book is set in a historical time period, possibly early to mid 1900s due to its language and fashion.

Influence Maps 1 & 2

After reading the book extract from The Haunting of Hill House I related the theme of ghosts and hauntings with symbols of death. Looking at animals and figurines such as the Grim Reaper and the raven bird, as tradition associates these with death.  Gothic statues were another aspect that I looked into for my influence maps.

In films and stories when the author or director are trying to showcase a sense of unease and nervousness, that is often associated with horror, they include unpleasant creepy statues that look as if they're watching or staring at the seemingly victimised protagonists of the story. Within the book Eleanor, the main protagonist, feels as if she is being watched or that the house itself is alive and so having these statues I believe plays some part in what I could do with the environment.

As another symbol of death and the afterlife I looked at angels of death as influence. Angels represent life and death, both of which a ghost is traditionally known to showcase these characteristics, they are dead but are still walking and inhabiting areas like they're alive.

Space & Environment: Folder 18

For my first project, Space & Environment, we had to pick a random piece of paper from the mysterious blue box which revealed our folder number. Leading to the book we have to base our environmental concept art on, I received the book "The Haunting of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson. 

I was intrigued to have received this book, because I personally, have an interest in the supernatural. However at the same time I have never produced scenic concept art, nor art with a horror aspect behind it and so I believe this will be a challenging and interesting project for me to work on.

Life Form Development

This is my life form developed design, for this I scanned a rough drawing in, then painted it digitally. I used the scissors from the list of objects that we were given to work with to create this. I made her rough and unattractive because I am used to designing pretty characters and so, wanted to do something different, plus I thought the deformity of the shape and scissors would make it interesting and I gave her an angular, pointed nose and elbows to represent the sharpness of scissors. Admittedly I didn't spend as much time on the front and back view as I did the side view.