Tonal, framing and perspective studies

Panels

I tried this tonal exercise that Conann showed us. By scribbling in black and white on the background and then framing six areas and trying to see an image in each panel. I guess maybe it’s because I was watching this

while drawing that I saw organic creatures and landscapes while drawing.

1. A weird below angle of an eel swimming across the surface of a pond or river. with some weeds growing from the riverbed.

2. A close up of a dinosaur or dragon’s eye.

3. A shot of a river with a tree or old castle on the left

4. A dramatic shot of an owl flying.

5. A large marine predator like a liophleurodon or mesosaur

6. Someone reaching into a dimly lit pool of water.

References

These pages are all from the book “The Ultimate Drawing Workbook” by Barrington Barber and Peter Grey.

They provided some really helpful tips on how to use tone in a drawing as well and using perspective.

How to make an image look interesting

PERSPECTIVE, FRAMING, COMPOSITION, TONE

The Rule of Thirds:

The rule of thirds is applied by aligning a subject with the guide lines and their intersection points, placing the horizon on the top or bottom line, or allowing linear features in the image to flow from section to section. [citation, from Wikipedia]

Generally we find that aligning the focus/important subjects of an image to the meeting points of the lines make the final image appear a lot more interesting a pleasing to the eye. Below are some of my drawings from the project:

This drawing was made before I learned the Rule of Thirds and as you can see it does not line up to the grid points and is therefore a rather uninteresting image.

This example, though still poor, was a little better. The Creature lines up with the right 1/3rd line but the wave/mountain to the left does not.

This image, however, is a very good example of the application of the Rule of Thirds. The Black Hole and the Che-Rah’s head (which is what we ended up naming the aliens) align nicely to the convergence points on the grid and make the image very appealing to look at.

Framing:

The bottom image shows the concept of having a frame-within-a-frame, in this case being the table. Other examples of a frame-within-a-frame could be rocks, trees, buildings or any other object that could heighten the illusion of the viewer peering into the scene.

Perspective:

The angle of the shot will always intensify the drama of a scene. The chair when viewed from below looks imposing and powerful while the bottle when viewed from above appears weak and tiny. When comparing those to extremes to the top image of a bottle viewed head-on it appears rather dull and mundane.

The second image introduces us to the application of tone with perspective. The darker shades indicate that the object is close to us while the softer and lighter greys make the object appear further away.

Panels and finalised story

These are some concept drawings of the aliens who live around the Black Hole, nicknamed Scavengers or Scavs until further notice. They are super intelligent beings and the last known sentient race in the universe. They live around the Black Hole harvesting its gravitational energy to power their space station. They travel across the Event Horizon to explore Utopia and find a new place to live before the universe collapses entirely.

Inspirations

INSPIRATIONS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vxOhd4qlnA

Trailer for the Christopher Nolan movie Interstellar (2014)

This made us think about another civilisation outside of the Black Hole (so there’s two worlds beside and beyond the event horizon). The civilisation would be the last in the universe and the only way to power their space station is to harness the gravitational energy created by the Black Hole. These creatures are in search of a Utopia and decide to send scouting missions beyond the event horizon to see if there is a change of finding a new home beyond the universe.

The Doctor Who episodes “The Impossible Planet” and “The Doctor’s Wife” also influenced our idea.

Screenshot from “Doctor Who: The Impossible Planet”

Screenshot from “Doctor Who: The Doctor’s Wife”

“The Impossible Planet” is an episode that takes place on a dwarf planet that is strangely orbiting a Black Hole without falling into it’s gravitational pull (this was actually caused by Satan doing some weird space shit but we’ll ignore that). This made us think about how the civilians living in the Space Station around the Black Hole would survive. They could maybe have super powerful engines on their spacecraft that can withstand the pull of the event horizon.

“The Doctor’s Wife” takes place on a planet outside the universe and is essentially a giant dumping ground for any space junk floating around the place. The planet is made of giant derelict spacecraft, bits of old machinery and tonnes and tonnes of dead organic matter. The inhabitants of the planet (as seen in the picture above) are made out of “space parts”. They replace any part of them that falls ill with anything they can find. This was the inspiration for the mash-up of creatures on Utopia (which is what we’ve named the world beyond the event horizon).

BLACK HOLE WORLD / UTOPIA

THE BLACK HOLE WORLD: BEYOND THE EVENT HORIZON

Trying to stay true to the first team’s garbage world we tried to think of many ways to carry on the theme of an intergalactic dump without being too pedestrian. I came up with the idea of using a Black Hole as the focal point of our world, as Black Holes are essentially an extremely dense mash-up of everything and anything that gets pulled into it. As we have no idea and have no way of finding out what happens once everything gets pulled into a Black Hole, we invented a scenario whereby when everything that gets sucked into the Event Horizon (the black circular bit of the black hole, if you will) merges into the point of singularity (when all the matter is compressed into one super-dense volume) it is merged together into the oddest combinations. The part we invented was what happens next: when all the matter that falls and is compressed in the black hole expands again on the other side, Beyond the Event Horizon.

Everything that falls into the Black Hole – planets, suns, life – merges into strange combinations of the lot, creating mountains of foam and spaceships, leopards made of fire and bicycles, skyscrapers made from a turtle and bats wings. Everything odd and wonderful.

Farewell to the Human Beans

We were split up after the first week. Team Human Beans was no more. Myself and two other Human Beans were joined with three members of a different team and were given the task of picking up from where the previous team left off (we were moved to a different table.)

The previous team left us with a bit of a problem. Their idea was described as being over-used and unoriginal, so we basically had to start over using elements from the previous team’s idea.

The previous idea was a dumping-ground world, much like Wall-E, where Earth or another planet similar has been abandoned by all sentient beings and is only used as a place to dump waste. Over time the smaller, more resilient creatures and plant life combine with the junk and form a new super-species of cyborg/animal/plant creatures.

That time when we came up with a bunch of ideas but never settled for anything

“Create a World”

That was our briefing. We have to create a fully functioning, habitable (by anything; machines, aliens, creatures, plants, bacteria etc) world that could fit inside a coffee cup or stretch out across galaxies. Our team for the first week, The Human Beans as we called ourselves, started off by brainstorming what a world is.

We narrowed the concept of a world down to two main factors: Literal and Perceived, the literal world being an ecosystem or environment and the perceived world being one inside your head. This project could have gone in either of the two directions. We each came up with a few ideas and shared them with the group.

Some of the ideas included:

• Existential Nightmare World – A man is trapped inside his own little “box”. He believes he is the only thing that really exists and everything else is just in his head. Nothing is real.
• Coffee Cup World – The coffee is the universe. The “big bang” is when the water meets the granules and the end is when the last drop has been drunk. Civilisations and class-systems are formed by the Human Beans who live in the coffee.
• Traffic Light World – A world inside the traffic lights. The Red, Amber and Green lamp people live to warn the humans of the dangerous vehicles.
• Alternate History – The meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs never struck Earth. Dinosaur keep on evolving into super predators and even dragons. The rest of life on Earth adapts with the dragons to form bigger, stronger and stranger to harmonise with the new sentient beings.
• Sock Drawer World – Dust Mites living in the sock drawer who eat socks. This is why you always lose one of your socks.
• Stove World – A never-ending war between the Fire People and the Coal People.
• Yellowstone World – The Yellowstone super-volcano erupts and wipes out humankind. The rats and corvids mutate and take over the world.
• Inverted World – Everyone lives on the hollow interior of the planet and adapts to this weird, dark environment.
• Meteor World – Life on a meteor flying through space. Most meteorites are made from amino acids, so the creatures/plants/formations would all be made out of proteins.

We never got a chance to fully settle on one particular idea before we switched tables.