Introduction to Final Major Project E1!
With my 3×3 completed over the summer, my next aim was to work on researching the idea that I had chosen. For Final Major Project, I have decided to persue Idea 2: Rooted Army, as I ultimately decided that I didn’t want to focus on environments for the year, considering a massive portion of year 2 was dedicated to Visual Immersion so I feel quite burnt-out of environments, whilst characters are ok.
Alongside this, I felt whilst going for the studies would’ve been the most productive use of my time, it would’ve been incredibly hard to stay consistant with my progress and uploads on work, considering I wanted a weekly update with more progress on my studies, and missing a singular week could backlog me.
Final Major Project: Grimoire of the Rooted
To initiate my research, I needed to start navigating through my list of plant species of which my previous lecturer Peter had provided me. I managed to sufficiently find secondary research sources (photos) for 19 of the species on my list, out of 20. [WRITE NAME CHANGE EXPLANATION]
Following this list, I subsequently gathered my research and references for all the species with a tick next to them, resulting a mass amount of moodboards.
Alongside my secondary research, I went and visited the Barbican Conservatory to see if I could recognise any of the plants I had researched through my lecturers suggestions and from what I had seen on Pinterest.
Barbican Conservatory Visit!
This was quite a pleasant and helpful visit! It was great to actually see some of the plants of which I had been research up close in person, and it did also help to give me perspective on how to study and draw plants, especially with angled perspectives, so when it comes to me drawing my dynamic pose for my chosen characters, i feel I will have a much easier time deciphering how to draw it.
Project Proposal Pitch & Documentation!
Following this, I had to pitch my concept to my lecturers, so that felt on-board and understood where I was at, as well as understanding my circumstances, including risks, processes, inspirations and references.
I also had to consider a S.W.O.T analysis for my project, to see where my Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats are within my production. Alongside this I had to decide on an asset list for my production pipeline in order to understand what I needed to work on at any given time.
Chosen Plant Species!
After approval, I needed to pick the plant species my characters would be! I decided that with my characters being ancient plant warriors, I would need to split my character designs into the 3 main archetypes for that category. Warrior, Tank and Support. Having these 3 clear goals allows for me to decide through my research what type of plant would be the most suitable for the role of each class.
In order to justify my decisions, I wrote a research paper regarding the 3 species of plant I took the most interest in, researched their origins, features, as well as historical heritage so that when it came to thumbnailing them, I had justifications as to why I made specific design choices. The 3 species of plant I chose were the Monstera (deliciosa), Aeonium and Aglaonema Pink Star.
This is my dictionary for this project, it allows me to immediately cross-examine my design choices to see if they correlate with my research and desires for the designs of my characters. I am incredibly glad I wrote this, it is going to help me extensively throughout the design process and thumbnailing stages. Also here are the studies that I created for the differing title segments!
Historical Cultural Fashion & Research!
From my research paper, I went on to find secondary research and sources of the 3 different cultural themes I had discussed in my research paper; Aztec, Egyptian & Modern North African and Buddhist Monks. Using Pinterest I managed to gather sources of which would help me when designing my characters during thumbnailing!
Alongside these, I also did more indepth research on pottery from those 3 cultures, so that I could incorporate my original idea of using plant-pots as armor.
With the combination of my research on pottery and fashion/clothing from these culutural backgrounds, it will really assist in the thumbnailing process of my project, as typically I can get stuck figuring out where to take a design, and with the amount of reference I have at this stage, small and big changes feel much more achievable. Hope that as a result I end up with my perfect character concept.
Artbook & Grimoire Research!
With my research for my character designs ready and prepared, I now need to focus on looking into assorted artbooks and figuring out a base idea of how a Grimoire would look for my Artbook. From what I have found searching through Pinterest and Dictionaries, a Grimoire is a textbook of sorcery and magic (Dictionary.com, 2016). It was also relevant that witches were also using Grimoires.
Through my research, I compiled these images regarding to Grimoires, and found out a slither of knowledge regarding Wiccan Wisdom, which could be useful for me when designing my cover and pages, however I will need to make sure that the references I use are accurate.
Following on from this, I will be heading into the design process for my characters. WIth all my research in order, it should make the thumbnailing process quite smooth!