Innovations

After much deliberation on my list of project ideas, I've decided to take a different turn. Continuing on my ideas for wanting to model or sculpt, I've chosen to push this slightly further. Modelling a character ready for rigging was an innovative idea for me, however in relation to the bigger picture (outside world) I still wanted to do something that has been left largely untouched or something I've seen very little of.

I've seen an array of very pretty 2D illustrations and concepts, these below are the kind of thing that always inspire me to keep working away, hopefully becoming talented enough like this one day.

There are a plentiful supply of this kind of style, quick speed-paints and concepts artists typically do for personal benefit or work, but there are very few that take this into the 3D environment. From the images above, there is a good sense of depth, and particularly with Rodney Funtebella's (the two top right images) work depth enough to decipher how that object/environment would appear if it were real. It's easy enough to create. With Goro Fujita's work (top and bottom left and mid top) there is still depth and could still be modelled, but on a lesser scale, less 'concept art for purpose' and more 'concept art as an illustration,' and this is the area I would like to work on. Building upon the concept art for illustration and delving further to create a flatter image.

Below I have created my own illustrations exploring this idea of stylistic concept art concentrating more on the style and being illustrative and less on realism and having a real depth.

Below I have a couple of images from my sketchbook, that were made for the initial concepts of The Last Trophy plants. Just flicked through to remind myself of the sketches and the kind of style I did it in seeing how flat or full of depth the sketches got. (They didn't get too full of depth) I shall take these kinds of ideas and do a few more sketches to combine these ideas together and create something new, incorporating the idea of creating 'flatness.'

Below are some of my ideas, taking elements from my initial illustrations (above) that provide depth and pushing these ideas further to create a very flat image.

I've also been looking for some 3D work to aspire to, and give me some indication of where my illustrations can take me. Unfortunately, it's not that easy to find 3D work that looks like it has that element of illustration incorporated into the models. The bottom 3 are the closest I could get:

So for the innovations project here's my abstract:

For the innovations project I will be focussing on turning my stylised 2D illustrations into various 3D models. Using Maya to construct a base mesh, I will transfer this across into a sculpting software, either zbrush or mudbox, to refine the models and bring in the style as drawn in the 2D illustration. This will be a highly experimental project that will encompass taking my original sketches (that contain a some sense of depth) and re-creating them as flat (without depth) as possible which become highly stylised 2D illustrations. Taking these images, I want to see how well you can integrate the same style in 3D space.