BA3b Creative Practice

Week 3 - Environment Composition - Baba Yaga's House

- Professional Practice

Baba Yaga's House

Composition

To begin with, I wasn't sure how I would tackle this environment as I am not very confident with them - even with the studies I have been doing I still have a lot to learn. These were the first composition sketches I drew and I can't say I'm particularly fond of them as they are very messy and it's difficult to see what's going on in most of them except a few. The one I really like the most is the third in the second row though, as I think it reads really well with the skull house, sky backdrop and wasteland type terrain.

Initial House Sketches

Because I wasn't so confident with designing an environment as a whole, I decided that it may be best to focus on parts of it instead. This is why I decided to start sketching some ideas of what Baba Yaga's home would actually look like, which already look much clearer than what I was trying to communicate with the set of landscape sketches I first completed. I experimented with trees, the skull which I was fond of from the other set and also a medieval type wooden house (with an additional barn for the horses she kept - one of the noticeable parts of the original Koschei story). My favourite out of these was definitely the half skull/half medieval house, as I thought this looked visually quite interesting and was quite a cool idea - much more appealing and different than just a magical tree or quirky medieval house.

House Sketches

Further Skull Iteration

After deciding upon the skull I wanted to push this idea further and experimented with the horn shapes and style for the roof of the house. I always wanted the roof to be thatched because my version of Baba Yaga was meant to be very traditional, which is why I didn't want to add tiles as it seems of out context for her character and the early medieval setting. The one I liked the most was definitely the left one on the fourth row, as I am still fond of the ram horns I originally made in addition to the house without the wooden planks at the front - as it would seem to busy with them in my opinion.

Process

This was how I created my final building design, which was making the opacity of the sketch fairly grey and then drawing the tones on top of it, making it darker and darker as I continued. I also changed the shape of the skulls eye and went more with a human-like skull approach than the circular animal type one. I improved upon the horns a lot within this drawing as well, as to begin with they looked a bit like a croissant until I kept altering the curves to be smaller and wind around the horn effectively. I enjoy tonal drawing a lot and this was definitely fun for me to work on!

Colouring Iterations

I did experiment with some coloured iterations which were much more difficult than I anticipated to look correct. I used the Multiply and Overlay blending modes, which can be a problem when colouring a black and white image as there's the issue that it can be saturated too much or look too dull - which is what is shown in my iterations. However, if I were to pick favourites it would be the left ones on the first and second row. I like the black, brown and red colour combinations the most as it is similar to Baba Yaga's character colour palette and reflects the colours of danger and something sinister - which would work well since Baba Yaga is an evil character.

Final Piece

I am going to make an exception with this and keep this final piece/outcome as a standalone image of the building. I really love this concept and how it has come together, so I would rather experiment with a full composition in my other two environments and leave this one how it is to present. I also decided to keep it in black and white as I'm really pleased with how my tones look in this and would love to use it as a final outcome. The way I see it is it's still part of an environment piece, I'm just using a different method to display it - which I may experiment with in my other images as well.

Professional Practice

At the end of each week I will be looking at job opportunities in my chosen specialism, relating to the role of a Concept Artist and/or Illustrator to further my knowledge of what it takes to be hired within the industry and what employers are looking for. These will include unrealistic expectations that I don't meet as of yet, but I feel that it's good to be aware of them.

Important: Some links may be available at the time of submission if the job has been filled, which is why I have written the date accessed and have presented screenshots.

Company: Demiurge Job Title: 2D Concept Artist Intern Link to Job Page (Accessed 16th February 2017)