My University Projects
This submission goes over three of my favourite projects from my time on the Comic and Concept Art course at Leeds Arts University. I consider them some of the strongest work while I was there, and while I have advanced and learned more since these projects, they represent pivotal moments for my education.
For my entry, I'll be submitting my favourite work done during my time on the Comic and Concept Art course at Leeds Arts University! While some of my projects also involved 3D work, I feel that my 2D projects were my strongest.
The first project I'd like to share involved creating a narrative without the use of words, relying only on visuals. Below are the scenes in order, from top to bottom.
Before creating the scenes, I went through different designs for the characters. The characters being knights and cladin armour meant I couldn't rely on facial expressions to tell a story and only had body language to use.
I decided on a rusty red colour scheme so that the characters looking more visually appealing as opposed to simple metal, and it implies that they mindlessly march along without looking after their gear!
The main character takes a lot of the same elements from the other designs but has more of a focus on asymmetric features to make them stand out, while still looking like they are part of the group.
Next, I practiced with some small prop and environment designs. The setting is a destroyed village, so I wanted to figure out what the general look was going to be before moving on.
Once I was happy with the characters and the look of the environment, I started creating the scenes. Again, these are all meant to tell a story without words. The action scenes made use of harsh reds with black shadows to make them appear more violent, whereas the calmer scenes use more reduced colours as contrast.
To finish off with this project, below are some process views just to show how I went about creating the scenes!
My next project was based around sustainability and I could choose a topic to tackle within the subject. I went with 'eco-perfectionism', and set about designing a character to represent it!
I intended to play with the shapes of the character more during the sketching stage, but I really enjoyed the bowling pin shape and ran with that instead! The character was also going to have clothes, but I felt that the character's simple design and facial expressions spoke for themselves without the need for any additional details.
Because the design was so simple, I could very easily play with the shapes and exaggerate the features. I also made sure the human characters were in line with the style of the main character design.
The simple design also allowed for quick iterations, so I was able to make multiple variants very efficiently!
It was at this point that a name was decided for the character; the Scold!
The project was a short but sweet experience, and a breath of fresh air after the darker previous project.
Finally, the next project consisted of designing a male and female orc, but making sure to emphasize the female orc's shapes just as much as the male's. I noticed that the female form in fantasy is often defaulted to a standard silhouette with very little exaggeration, whilst the male form is not.
To start, I played with silhouette shapes. I wanted to experiment with how the female form's shapes can be pushed and exaggerated.
Next, I applied the exaggerated shapes to sketches of orcs. I didn't want to re-invent what an orc is and just stuck with the monstrous humanoid archetype they usually are, instead focusing purely on the shape design.
I liked the stocky male, lean female dynamic and took that further. Below are the initial iterations, but I didn't like the outcome. They felt far too stiff and rigid, and the thick black outlines appeared too messy to me.
The second time around, I made sure to completely loosen up my sketches and rendering. I focused more on softer shapes and tones, getting rid of the thick outlines and over-exaggerated musculature.
FInally, I created a simple character sheet just to provide some context to the designs.
That concludes my submission! Thanks for taking the time to take a look!
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