Due Wednesday, Feb 20th:
For Wednesday, you should have a grayscale version of your chosen shot from one of the value studies of your environment that you have decided to work with. In that image, you should begin to refine it by adding general areas of light, shadow, indications of surfaces that are different values (local values), and have started to define any important details. You will soon be developing this image into a finished vector drawing.
In-Class Wednesday, Feb 20th:
At the beginning of class Wednesday, we will watch Feng Zhu’s perspective and shot design demo. Afterward, I will go over converting your Photoshop sketches to vector artwork. You should have all of your initial thumbnails/value studies finished (that is a hard deadline since they were actually due Monday).
Due Monday, Feb 25th:
You should be more than halfway done with the vector versions of your environment and ready to show them in class. You should also be prepared for the in-class pitch for your narrative as described below.
In-Class Monday, Feb 25th:
On Monday, each of you will give a short pitch (3-5 minutes) about the fairy tale that you have chosen and your take on it. You should describe the original story briefly, along with any changes that you are planning to make to the characters, time, place, or story line. Also, describe the visual style or feel of the environment. You can still make changes afterward but your talk should outline your general direction. The presentation will be brief, so please prepare for it and be concise in your descriptions. Be prepared to talk about your work but also give visual examples that you have found elsewhere and that you have generated. Also document, idea your idea with a written paragraph. (MS Word or Text Edit Files are fine.)
During that same talk you will show the current vector versions of the environments that you are working on. This will be a soft crit. Simply talk about your progress.
Wednesday, Feb 27th:
Wednesday, will be a hard crit on the vector versions of your environment drawings with some time for final tweaks. Afterwards, we will be moving on to another part of the project. Over the weekend, you will have a reading assignment and a character assignment (TBA).
We are beginning a project in which we will be developing the concept design and a series of images for a narrative that is based on a fairy tale that you will choose to work with. Examples might be Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel, The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks, and Jack and the Beanstalk. You will use the story line as the basis for your narrative and images, however, your final work should be a personal reinterpretation of the original story. For instance, the three little pigs don’t need to be pigs, Little Red Riding Hood may be set in another environment besides a forest, Rumpelstiltskin may be set in a different time. Invent or reinvent, the characters, time, place, and even the essential relationships between the characters. As with many of our projects, the story-line and characters will evolve through both planning and through the process of making. Your drawings and digital paintings, should be exploratory. Even though you may be making finished drawings. Use that process to generate and refine your ideas.
The first part of the project involves creating an environment for your characters to exist. Use 1-Point perspective to create value sketches that describe your environment. Make sure that you have a clear foreground, middle-ground and background in your scene. Value and silhouettes should be emphasized instead of line as objects in the environment recede. Work small so that you are looking at the overall compositions and essential shape relationships. In some cases you may need to do separate drawings of the objects in your environment to develop features and clarify their silhouettes.
By Monday, February 18th you should have 5-10 value sketches of the environment (feel free to do more). If the drawings are more refined and complex, then 5 images are fine. Create 10 images for average studies, and 20 or more for simpler studies. See the examples in the link below to get a sense of what I mean by drawings with “average involvement”.
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=107208
You may also find several other tutorials on examples on digital painting throughout this site. This is one site of many that I am suggesting as a great resource for digital painting and concept design.