Inspiration and Art Direction

   As of last week, we first-ies of DMUGA have been presented with a horrifying task. We are to give a presentation, following a sort of 'Pecha Kucha' way of presenting. Working to such specific time lines feels quite daunting, especially when I, at the moment, have no idea what to talk about.
   I suppose I need to think now about what interests me? What, when I look at it, sparks an intrigue in me, making me want to take a second look? What do I look at, with a growing urge to pick up a pencil and draw? The list is too great to even begin, so I suppose the problem isn't being that I can't find anything, perhaps more that I need to be more selective in my choosing.
   At the moment it seems to be one of two things, which can often intertwine. I like things that are maybe a bit unsettling, like Victorian post-mortem photographs, for one example. Well, actually, I hate them. But I am strangely drawn to them at the same time. I have no idea what that is about, it's the same impulse to watch movies that you KNOW will stop you sleeping, but you go ahead and watch anyway, because you secretly love the thrill of the uneasiness you feel. What I mean by this is that images that seem slightly spooky are very interesting to me. Not if it's in an obvious way though.

   This photograph for instance. It's haunting and beautiful and I feel like there's a story somewhere here. I don't know, it may just be a thing personal to me, but I love the unsettling feeling in this, even though there is nothing actually.. wrong here- wait! What's that shadow at the the top of the stairs? A fantastic video to maybe watch is a video by YouTube channel Vsauce. In this video, he explains about a lot of what we find creepy is because of ambiguity. Same as all of Vsauce's videos, this is very interesting, and yeah.. a bit creepy.

   On the other hand, I like history a lot. Yes, in the sense of textbook learning, I am unashamed to admit that history was one of my favourite subjects, and actually one of the things I miss the most about school. Visually though, I mean history more in the sense of decay and abandonment. This in part is actually where my fascination with the Chernobyl Disaster comes from. I love looking at photographs of long ago deserted places, places that are still littered with relics of their past. I don't know, this may be part of that uneasy feeling they cause perhaps? Pinterest is filled with fantastic examples of this.

   I absolutely love images like this because I think they have a fantastic atmosphere. They're so derelict and empty and it truly looks like it was just abandoned over night. I mean, in this case it was, but there's an eerie sense about them that truly gives the indication of a ghost town. 

   It's not just this though. Some of my favourite inspiration comes from artists that I love. Keith Thompson for instance, the subject of my previous post, has been a favourite of mine for a long time. It's a strange thing that only now do I notice I use the same key words when discussing his works. EERIE. STRANGE. UNSETTLING. Maybe I need to broaden my views.

   Other artists I love.. hmm. Well, a lot of my favourite art is from games. I LOVE the art in a game by Arcane Studios called Dishonored. I think the whole game is beautiful too, but the concept art is especially brilliant. I think, actually, that I like pretty much all the design elements of this game. Even down to small elements of the game, like in game posters and portraits, are just so beautiful in their own right. 

   There are more Dishonored works here : http://www.videogamesartwork.com/games/dishonored

   These are some of the character pieces for the game, and what I love about them is that they're a little bit stylized. This caricature kind of style is something that is carried through into the game and I think it makes it more intriguing. 

A good example here with the 'Outsider'. The model even seems to carry across the same painting-like quality that the concept images have.

The poster art is beautiful throughout too. I think I like the posters so much because they remind me of vintage advertisement posters, which in my opinion are way more pleasing to the eye than today's advertisements.

   See what I mean? They have a more illustrative quality that really appeals to me. They're dreary, but written with the same sort of upbeat, urgent kind of advertisement. Now! Do this now! You need this now! Compared to the style of the adverts of now, they're way more visually appealing. Of course, it may be because they have that kind of vintage look of old fashioned posters, which makes sense because for some reason or another, vintage INSTANTLY seems to be quite attractive. Maybe because around the 50s, culture was becoming more adventurous and sex was becoming fashionable. Back to Dishonored though.

Art Direction Task

   How would I write about this game, or even start to present it? I should try and understand WHY it has appeal and to do this, I need to consider composition, shape and form, colour, lighting, mood, personal appeal, etc. 

   This is an environmental piece for Dishonored, showing The Golden Cat, which is a pleasure house in the game. This bit is actually quite grim, as the back rooms, where the girls live, are dingy and dirty. The composition of this piece is quite subtle. It vaguely uses the rule of thirds, which is good because it means that it's not central and symmetrical. If it were, our eye would be drawing straight to the centre, and probably wouldn't stray around too much. This is only really good if you want your audience's eye to be drawn straight to the centre, if that is your obvious subject. The balcony section curves round, which takes our visual field across the whole of the image. A lot of the other shapes in this are curved or circular, the seats being in a cylindrical fashion. The colours are in parts quite rich with reds, golds and greens, but also a little dark and dull. I think that this reflects well the nature of the place, because it's made to look quite grand and luxurious, however a lot of dark deeds go on here. The lamps are the brightest section of the image, so our eyes are drawn to that. They illuminate the plants below, but cast the figures in shadow. The other point of light in the image comes from the woman standing against the wall on the far side, where the light hits her. The mood is calm, but as I said previously, the darkness in the image indicates the dreariness and depravity in which these girls live, and the other dark happenings that take place. It seems to be a way of saying, on the surface, all is good. It appeals to me for these reasons, and I just love the lighting and subtle detail in this piece. It achieves a lot of complexity with less marks and shapes than it would actually first appear.

   

Inspiration: Keith Thompson

   I'd like to make a record of some of the artists or resources that inspire me, and I thought I'd start with one of my favourite artists, whom artwork I have loved for a very long time. His work has always been a source of great interest and inspiration to me, because of its illustrative nature. Here is a link to his blog!

http://blog.keiththompsonart.com/

   Keith Thompson is a freelance artist, who has worked on films, games, and produced beautiful book illustrations. He drew all of the illustrations for Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan trilogy, one of which I have read. I have yet to read the others, even though I really enjoyed the first.

   These are some illustrations Keith Thompson did for the book 'Drakia'. I think they're fantastic, I absolutely love the atmosphere he achieves in his work. Especially in the bottom image, I love scanning over the picture and seeing what creepy additions can be seen in the scene. That's actually another thing I've always loved about Keith Thompson's work, it is so detailed and I enjoy looking closely at his work to see if there is something I didn't notice the first time. I could seriously just sit and look at his work for ages.

    These are some of my favourite pieces by him, because they have a dark but still quite beautiful nature about them. The Urban Faun, for instance, is eerie and haunting but still soft and gorgeous. I think this feeling is achieved by it being black and white, with the mood being achieved with the tonal qualities. The character is very much the subject of the piece, with the background being subtly hinted at in the background.

   Ooh! Something I didn't know that I only found out the other day, Keith Thompson created the creepy creatures in a film called 'Don't be afraid of the Dark'. I haven't actually seen this, but I've seen an advert for it, I THINK on the trailers on the Chernobyl Diaries DVD. I will have to cover THAT another time because, how interesting I find the Chernobyl disaster is a whole separate issue.

   Anyway, these things are horrible. But I can totally see elements of Keith Thompson's style in there. This illustration for the movie that goes alongside these is so creepy, but beautifully drawn.

  

 It made me really happy actually to find that a 3D character artist called Alex Stratulat, who has made a model inspired by the above piece by Keith Thompson called 'The Thief'. You can look at his other works here; http://alexstratulat.com/

   This model is very beautifully made and very detailed. Alex Stratulat uses a vast range of tools and programs to create models such as this, like 3D Studio Max, Softimage XSI, Maya, ZBrush, Mudbox, Unfold 3D, V-Ray, Mental Ray, KeyShot, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effect,  Corel Draw, Corel Photopaint. This makes me realise the competition that is out there, and that I must strive for every bit of knowledge I can, and learn all the time, wherever and whenever possible!