LEEANDMAGENTA
For my VAM Independent Project, I really wanted to push myself. This is because I plan to attend university for art in the future, and I wanted to prepare myself for a large workload. I have some experience with university scale workloads, during a program I attended last year. During this program, we completed assignments with minimums such as thirty thumbnails, completed within the same day. Through my VAM independent project, I wanted to further prepare myself for those expectations and requirements.
When I set out this project, I planned to go into design. In my chosen university’s design course, there is a heavy emphasis on one's process work, regardless of the final result. Although you are also marked on the completed work, you are also marked on your process and experimentation. This is why I set myself a goal of one hundred and twenty preliminary character sketches. I wanted these to be a show of my process and I wanted to have room to try out any ideas I had. I also created many background sketches, as I wanted room to really play with environments and spaces. To me, I think the main idea of this project was preparation: it works as a preparation of character and backgrounds, but also as a preparation for the future, for me and my own artistic growth. Something that worked really well was the room I gave myself to experiment. For example, I was able to try out different perspectives and methods of drawing things, without worrying about if they were successful or not. I also pushed myself to do pieces in mediums I was not wholly familiar with before this, such as watercolours and gouache. I had a lot of fun painting with gouache in particular. A challenge in this project was definitely time management. It was very easy to get caught up in the excitement of drawing backgrounds and painting, and fall behind in schedule. However, I think it was a good experience to have, as now I not only know how long it takes for me to work, but I also know to avoid falling behind in the future! In my project’s background scenes, I wanted the backgrounds to be warm and feel a bit cosy! I wanted them to feel like a place that was lived in. I mostly used inorganic shapes in these, in order to give them better perspective and depth, however, I frequently used freehand lines in spots in order to better effect the feeling of cosiness, as when I used sharper lines for everything, the rooms tended to look colder and uninviting. I utilised line weight as well, thicker lines on objects closer to the viewer, in order to better create perspective. I frequently used asymmetrical balance on these backgrounds, in order to draw the eye naturally from one point to another. I selected warmer and brighter colours, such as yellow, brown and light green, in order to keep the backgrounds from appearing too dark and oppressive, or too light and too clean. I also used analogous colour combinations such as green, yellow, and orange. For my project’s character scenes, I wanted each to have character and a unique look from each other. I did this by utilising a variety of poses and colour schemes, in order to create variety between them. Some use asymmetrical balance, with a character filling up one side and holding an object on the other, while others use symmetrical balance, by having equal amounts of design elements on each side. Although the layout of these symmetrically balanced ones are equal, they still have variations in pose, such as a tilt of the shoulder, in order to keep the character’s posing from being too rigid. I used contrast in my composition by utilising lighting, keeping the brightest contained to areas I wanted to draw the eye to. I also used different line weights for subjects closer or further away from the viewer. Contrasting colour was also employed, in order to create more visual interest. This project has been a fantastic opportunity. VAM 30 has been a very interesting and enjoyable experience. I was able to gain experience being a self-driven learner and artist, setting my own goals and holding myself to them. I also learned about invaluable skills such as time management and self-assessment. This project has been a marvellous chance to grow as an artist, and I am very glad to have taken it. |
Some of my character sketches
Some of my background sketches
My character semi-finals
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My background finals
My character finals