Common Art HW #3 - Use of Value and Contrast

 Here's what I created for the third homework for common art.  As you can see, I've taken the provided image of a little space-suited alien, and given him some dimensionality using the techniques demonstrated in the video.  Shortly into my experimenting with the techniques, I realized I had a bit of a hard time making my shading as smooth and realistic as the professor's.  I decided to lean into it a bit, going intentionally for a little rougher style, almost reminiscent of painting, or maybe charcoal drawing.  In any case, here's what the end result wound up as:

Here is the layer setup:

Common Art Homework #2 - Use of Silhouettes

 For homework #2, I decided to create a few thumbnail re-designs of the Jersey Devil.  Being a folkloric creature, the Jersey Devil is completely public domain.  I briefly considered doing Mothman or the Flatwoods Monster, but I felt like the Jersey Devil's explicitly supernatural nature let me do more fun things with it's anatomy.  My biggest inspiration was an old illustration of the Jersey Devil, posted below - a remarkably uncanny little thing that looks equally dangerous, pitiful, and wretched.  That was design ethos I took into account when I created the rest of the drawings, and it outlined some of the features that the designs would share - goat horns, horse-like head, hoofed legs, bat wings, "demon" tail.  I also drew some inspiration from things like medieval bestiary drawings, and Hieronymus Bosch paintings when I made some of the bizarre, unnatural designs of the creature.

Common Art, Homework 1 - Use of Basic Shapes

 

Here is what I created for homework #1 for the common class.  These three creatures were created to help me experiment with the basics of shape language - from left to right, they are round, square, and triangular.  I was off to a rocky start with this one because I was initially trying to replicate the techniques shown to us with class - with the building the shape/shading up from smudges and whatnot.  I made much more headway when I decided I wasn't going to worry about that and just focused on doing my own thing.  So I went for a flatter, more stylized, almost comic-book-like sort of thing.  I still did everything that was needed for the assignment, and I had fun with it, so I think it all worked out in the end.

While this wasn't strictly required for the assignment, I came up with little backstory blurbs for these creatures.  Not at all needed, but since ghosts (these are ghosts, by the way, felt I should put that out there) tend to have stories attached to them, I felt like coming up with them.

Craterhead (left): Dr. Franklin Burke was a talented and enthusiastic astronomer who plied his trade around here many years ago.  While he was observing a meteor shower one night, he was tragically killed in a freak accident when he was hit by a larger meteor that made it to ground level.  Soon after his death, his ghost began showing up around his old university and picking up on his old habits.  Despite his twisted, disturbing appearance, Burke's ghost (nicknamed "Craterhead" by the students) is entirely non-malicious, and has never acted violently towards the living.  While little of his human intelligence remains, he still retains his affable demeanor and enthusiasm for stargazing, often trying to bring passers-by into his fun.

Dreadstone (Middle): Unlike most ghosts, the spirit known as "Dreadstone" never walked the earth as a living being.  Dreadstone originates from an abandoned, centuries-old cemetery located deep in a forest.  The land the cemetery sat on was being cleared for development, and the construction crews disturbed the graves.  This unsettled the dormant spirits there, their anger at the living quickly growing.  Eventually, this spiritual discontent gave rise to a spectral avatar of their anger, which soon rooted itself in the rubble of destroyed graves.  Once this spirit attained a physical form, Dreadstone harassed the construction crews until the project was abandoned.  Now, the stony spirit stands as a stern guard over the crumbling graves, warding away any living humans that try to disturb the grounds again.

Gnawbone (Right): Decades ago, there lived a man named Herschel Morris.  He was a fairly average fellow, with one quirk - he was completely out of his mind.  Morris was tormented by cruel voices in his head, and a nigh uncontrollable urge to eat human flesh.  After a particularly bad incident, he checked into an insane asylum, hoping for a cure.  His troubles only got worse, though, as he was cruelly mistreated by the staff - often left alone with nothing but his psychoses for company, making him grow steadily worse.  Eventually, he was abandoned altogether, left to die of neglect in the basement.  Not even death was an escape for Morris, though, as, soon after his demise, he returned as the horrifying specter now known as "Gnawbone."  Nothing of the human being that once was remains, and Gnawbone is little more than a horrifying eidolon of gibbering insanity and cannibalistic gluttony.  Gnawbone is extremely dangerous to living humans, having claimed at least five lives over the years, but thankfully seems to be limited to the ruins of the asylum... for now...

2D Art First Post

 The very first post I've created on this blog under the 2D art tab.  Here is a game cover I created in photoshop for a game development project I had in undergrad, for Honors Video Game Theory and Design.