BA3b - Week 13 Summary

This week is the final one before submission on Friday. I had no time to waste, so I continued to work on my cat princes room, and felt confident as I was nearing finishing it.

Below is the final concept piece lineart for the cats room. I added water lilies to the lake area, which I think helps the overall aesthetic of the room, and also helps with understanding that that area is water. I also gave the cat a large scratching post, as there was empty space and I thought having something cat related would be cute to add, and helps show that this is definitely a cats space. I had to adjust some sizes for furniture such as the seats in the left corner, as they were far too big before and made the room look smaller than it is. I found making all the furniture the correct sizes, and just the general perspective a challenge, but I have definitely learnt what and what not to do for the future, and will make more use of perspective grids and the sizing of my character.

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Below is the final piece for the cat princes room. Even though the decision was mostly due to lack of time, I think using greys helps with the mood of the scene, and allowed me to focus entirely on the lighting and not worry about colour composition and themes, as I found it hard to find a suitable one for his room. Overall I am very pleased with how it looks, although I wish I had given myself more time for the environments so that I could have spent more time on details. However as someone who had little to no experience with environments and interior design prior to this, I am immensely pleased with how far I have come and how much I have improved.

After feeling happy with how the cats environment looked, I set to work on the mouses room. I knew, as it was a small room, that it wouldn't take nearly as much time to make, so I wasn't too worried about the time constraints, though would have liked to have more. I made sure that my work was immediately neat, as I already had a very good base to work off of with the 3D model I had made.

The area I started with was the bed, as I had some ideas about how I wanted it to look. My first idea was to have a bed with bars, similar to a mouse cage, and have hay and blankets inside similar to the kind of bed a real mouse would have. 

I decided I didn't like the idea of having a barred bed, and it would look out of place with the wooden and homely aesthetic I wanted for the room. I also, after some research, found that often mice and rats beds are often something that they can get into, or cover themselves, or they have hammocks to lie in. Also with pet rodents etc, you would get soft shredded paper or other materials to sleep in, so I decided to have a wooden bed, with walled sides and overlapping soft blankets to burrow under, and also shredded paper in the bed. I also added bite marks on the bed posts, as she would probably need to chew things and keep her teeth sharp and short, as a mouse would. Below is the lineart over the 3D model of the room. 

Below is the final lineart for the room on its own. I wanted to make the room be easily seen as the opposite of the cats room, as it is small and windowless, but contains a lot more love and warmth. Rugs overlapping on the floor and a welcome mat were added as I thought they would help make the room feel homely and welcoming, and feel lived in. Also opposite to the cat, her room contains messy plants and instead of water and natural lighting, she only has light from her candles. Her furniture is far less extravagant than the cats, as she wouldn't have the sheer amount of money he has. Its functional furniture, it works. With her seat in front of the dresser, I wanted to make sure it was something she could use due to her big lower half, so made it rounded and have dips for her bottom. 

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As her room has no natural lighting, it was more of a challenge to figure where shadows and highlights would be. Below is the final result, also using only greys. I am pleased with the results, as it feels cute and warm, and due to the smaller size I found it more enjoyable than the cats room, as his room was a lot bigger and harder to add details too. Overall I wish I had given myself more time again to do this piece, mostly for little details, but I am very pleased with how far I have come and what I have achieved, especially with the short amount of time I allowed myself with this particular piece.

I am very pleased with myself, as I was starting to worry that I would have to drop the environment work due to time and how long the characters took, but I finished them both and even with the shorter time given for them, I am immensely pleased with how they look and feel like I have improved vastly in a short amount of time. Its unfortunate that I did have to leave the idea of having 'special items' for each character, but focusing on the larger elements of the project was something I needed to do. Environments and interior design have been something I wanted to try for a long time, and I'm glad I finally got the courage to do it. Hopefully it is something I will continue to do in the future too.

I also cleaned up my characters model sheets to prepare for submission.

I think all the pieces are complete, and I would say I am very proud of myself and with the work I have done in these 13 weeks. I feel like I've improved drastically in both my character designs and environments, and am pleased I managed to do almost everything I set out to.