We're in Amsterdam now, it's 9am and it's quite chilly and rainy outside. I just woke up, and before we run off to do the usual things you do when you explore a new city, I thought it's a good time to post the works and studies I've done so far for Nathan Fowkes's Environment Design class. It has been wonderful 6 weeks, and I have 3 more to go to develop a final piece starting from value comps and going through colour comps into final, which I will start planning and executing on Monday.
Since I started my journey to becoming a concept artist 1,5 years ago, environments have always been hard for me. Maybe it's because I've never drawn them for fun when I was little (can't say that about people!), and have almost zero experience with planning out places on paper, but I am determined to push myself to get better at it. As I already mentioned before here, and in private conversations with some people curious about the courses I'm taking online, I absolutely loved Nathan's Colour and Light and Composition classes on Schoolism. And as in those classes, in Environment Design, he introduces some very helpful ideas and interesting twists to something you even might have already known. Here, most of the assignments have been labeled with an emotional quality, as in this class the focus is on designing experiences rather than just designing places. Now, to some quick descriptions of the pieces.
This piece is week6 assignment on architecture design. I've gone a bit further than the homework outlines suggested, because I got really inspired with the theme. I really like history, and folklore is something that makes my imagination flourish, and here I wanted to design a sanctuary of a slavic pagan water spirit that would look like it came from a fairy-tale. I enjoyed doing this so much, listening to the Russian folk-band while drawing, and seems Nathan also appreciated it quite a bit. I've got the best critique on this assignment I've received from him so far, and it makes me motivated to keep going, and, well, a little bit proud :)
This here is a series of 2 weeks worth of assignments - first, doing value comps for a particular emotional label (top to bottom: inviting, uneasy, questionable, sacred, eerie), and then roughing out props for each of them that would convey the emotional quality in itself (meaning, looking only at the prop you should get the feeling you were going for in an environment). The second week was about exploring the chosen comp and prop, and developing them further. The funny thing I noted doing this one is that people seem to perceive environments differently depending on what they had around all their lives - Nathan didn't particularly feel that the winter comp is warm or inviting (he suggested it would be easier to convey the feeling using colour, but was quite surprised I went with winter thinking of warmth at all). I've checked this with some people growing up in places with rougher climates (like, well, Siberia), and they all seemed to get what I was going for - the warmth of the houses, the freshness of the air, a very nice, inviting atmosphere. So yes, think about your TA when you design your environments!
And here are some usual studies - 3 value composition studies as well as colour studies from the works of artists that I admire. The 3 value comps definitely turned out more successful than the last time I was doing them, and I think I finally got the gist of this exercise - designing shapes and values rather than roughly copying the value structure you see. Colour reversing objects, changing shapes and leaving things completely out can be helpful.
There were a couple of works I did for this class I didn't post here, but that's because I want to work on them a little more and bring them to a desirable finish.
Thanks for checking in, and have a wonderful weekend ahead everyone!
