Acting Class

Today in our class (after a short game of "ninja" as seen above) we were working on status, and how to portray characters of different status. This began with walking around the room, first as someone of high status and then someone of low status. We were then paired off, and given scenes to act out such as: a father telling his son he was adopted, a teacher confronting a student about some disrespectful notes, and a singer requesting her concert pianist write her new music. Each of these were acted out with one character of a higher status than the other, before the roles were switched to see how the scene would play out differently.

Adaptation B: The Lilly - Clothing Colours

For the Lilly, I want to avoid using just white, so instead I picked various colours from the palettes I posted a while ago, then played with gradients, overlays and saturation. My personal favourites are 4, 5 and 6.

Adaptation B: The Sun-flower - Clothing Colours and Patterns

Some ideas for clothing colours for the Sun-flower. Because she's older than the other goddesses, I want her clothes to be a mix and match of patterns, implying she's picked them up over the years or received them as offerings. I've chosen browns and oranges, to represent the sun and earth. 

Adaptation B: The Rose Tree - Clothing Colours

I've always pictured the Rose Tree wearing deep reds, but worry this makes her look evil or menacing. I've included pink hues in a few, I feel these give her a softer look.

Adaptation B: The Rose Tree - Arm Details

For the Rose Tree, I wanted her to have thorns protruding from the skin on her arms and legs. I recently thought it might be better to make the thorns look more like actual thorns rather than spikes, so I drew up a few ideas for what her arms could look like. Feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Adaptation B: Final Clothing Designs

After looking over my narrowed down designs and combining different features, these are the semi-final designs for each of the poems. Next I need to work on colours, patterns, and changing the style somewhat to represent William Blake's work. 

Adaptation B: Research - William Blake's Work

During the crit I was advised to take a closer look at William Blake's artwork, to make my work appear more as though I was working with the man himself. The main aspects of his work I want to look at are how he uses colour and the way he draws people, especially how he draws faces. 

Songs of Innocence Etching

William Blake used relief etching to produce most of his works, most notably his books, including Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Blake would print the pages and then hand paint them with watercolours. These pieces are called illuminations.

Examples of Blake's poetry and illuminations.

Blake's artwork reflects something of Renaissance paintings, both the way he draws bodies and how he uses colour. His choice of colour changes the feel of his work dramatically; there is a certain softness to his happier, peaceful paintings, and an aggressiveness to his darker pieces. It will be interesting trying to recreate this, both when designing the environments and when texturing one of my characters in 3D.

Examples of Blake's artwork.

Human bodies in Blake's work range from muscular to soft depending on the subject, usually with women being the ones who are soft and rounded in their depictions. Blake also seems to use a light touch of blue when shading, sometimes adding shades of red and orange to show warmer areas. Though I always planned to use blue when creating the Lilly, I may incorporate some warmer tones, and some cooler tones for the Sun-flower and the Rose Tree.

Blake commonly draws faces with large eyes, small mouths and long, wide noses. Drawn this way, the faces resemble something of Greek statues. Blake also tends to give women very rounded faces, something I'll have to work on, as I tend to draw my characters with strong, straight jawlines and defined cheekbones. 

Close-ups of faces in Blake's work.

Adaptation B: Reflection

Overall, I feel my crit went well, and I received useful feedback. I need to put some more thought into making sure the characters capture the feelings and themes of the poems, both in their final designs and the environments around them. I very much like the idea of my final piece being a turn around of the 3D model, with a voice-over reciting one of the poems as the camera focuses on certain details.

I now need to finalise my clothing designs, and work on each characters' face so I can start building one of them in Maya as soon as possible. I also need to work on environment designs in order to begin creating concept art.

Adaptation B: Presentation

Adaptation B: Finalising Clothing Designs

Acting Class

Today in our acting class, we worked on how to make sure our movement and behaviour was clear to an audience to show a certain situation. We began by pairing off and acting out our morning routine, then gave each other feedback on how to improve, or make our actions more clear, before performing our morning routine to the whole class and seeing how well they understood what was happening. Later in the class, we had one person leave the room while another was given a situation they had to act out to the other using only actions in order for them to understand. These ranged from "your cat is stuck up a tree" to "I'm the president of an acting society and need you to sign this form to join our society". Needless to say, some of these were a little difficult to convey solely through movement, but we all got there in the end. 

It was a very fun class, and the skills we learn will be very useful when animating in the future. 

Also, thanks to Thomas for letting me take pictures of him today. 

Life Drawing

Adaptation B: Clothing Sketches - The Lilly

Life Drawing

It was nice to go back to life drawing after a long time and do some relaxed drawing. I'll definitely go to a few more sessions before the year is out.

Adaptation B: Clothing Sketches - The Sunflower

Adaptation B: Clothing Sketches - The Rose Tree

Initial clothing ideas for the Rose Tree. I want to show the Rose Tree both as "pretty", but also defensive, so I feel it's important to incorporate thorns into her design.

Feedback welcome!