In BA3b, I wanted to push myself to do environment work, something I was not familiar with at all and found vastly intimidating. Especially, as someone who finds it difficult to not rush work and try to finish as quickly as I can, environments meant small details and fine lines and things that I just could never quite grasp. I however have always looked up to artists who can create these beautiful fantasy and sci-fi paintings of environments that aren't real, but they feel so alive and feel as if you could simply stroll into this futuristic world.
I had tried before to do environment design with the last project, but quickly felt too overwhelmed by having to learn entirely new ways to work in order to produce what I wanted, and was still very much in denial about having to use 3D in my work. For this project, after seeing others work on environments and their impressive improvement, I decided to bite the bullet. The main part of the project still remained as character design, something I am familiar with and know I want to continue with in the future as a specialism for jobs.
The characters were created first, and I made sure that I really put my own love and passion into them, instead of making them because I have to, something that I can often accidentally default to when thinking of project themes. Making sure that I was making the characters for myself really helped me enjoy creating them and designing personalities and rooms for them both, and I think that more love is shown in both my character and my environment designs because of that.
For this project, I wanted to make sure that I put a lot of research into each element of my designs, as often in the past I have overlooked a lot of the research I could do to help my art, and its impacted my work as a whole. Due to choosing a specific theme, French 18th Century Rococo style, I found it a lot easier to find reference images and information that would help me with my work. I am very pleased with the amount of research I did, as I think it shows in my work and I also learnt a great deal in the process.
For the environments, I knew that doing 3D and then drawing over the blocked shapes is a good idea to get a good grasp on elements such as the perspectives and sizes of objects, so I decided to experiment trying out Sketchup, a software I had heard is good for interior design. I found it difficult trying to learn an entirely new software, especially with the time I had to do it in, and it didn't feel right for me. I think I decided to try Sketchup because I was scared I had forgotten how to use Maya, but in the end I got the courage to pick it back up again and after a little while of vague confusion, I had remembered most of what I had been taught and quickly got up a simple blocked environment. It felt far more natural to use Maya to me, and I started to enjoy making the 3D environment. I'm glad in the end I picked up Maya again as its something that I will probably be using in the future for jobs, so its good to know that I hadn't forgotten much of how to use it. I also decided, as I had recently gotten an iPad Pro, that I would use it for most of my 2D work this term so that I could get more comfortable using it for the future. I would still be using Photoshop too, as well as other software, but I mostly used Procreate on my iPad for the concept pieces. I think it has helped me feel a lot happier working with it, and I look forward to continuing to draw with my tablet in the future.
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