Title: The Survivor
Size: Medium: Digital Illustration Date of completion: July 2023 The Survivor is an exploration of storytelling through art and visual indicators. Created during an illustration course at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design summer pre-college in 2023, the piece was created to explore how objects and figures can be utilized in a plain environment to tell a story that wouldn't otherwise be obvious. In particular, it tells a vague fictional story of a town that fell victim to a smallpox outbreak and the life of its last resident.
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Artistic Inspiration
This piece was loosely inspired by working concept artists and illustrators such as Jorge Jacinto and Jordan Grimmer. Both artists focus heavily on environmental and storytelling based pieces that are used for concept and cover art for video games, music albums, books, and more.
Jordan GrimmerJordan Grimmer is a working concept artist and illustrator currently based in London, UK. He is known for his work on various video games as well as his art focused YouTube channel with almost two hundred thousand subscribers. His digital art process as shown in his YouTube videos have inspired me in the past and aided me in my own digital art journey. Some of his works that Inspire me include his Grove and Green Mountain.
Grove by Jordan Grimmer (above)
Green Mountain by Jordan Grimmer (above)
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Jorge JacintoJorge Jacinto is a Portugal based digital artist who primarily focuses on concept art and illustrations. His work generally trends towards a fantasy or sci-fi based theme and has appeared in games, on CD covers, books, and marketing. His limited focus in terms of fantasy and sci-fi have applications in many varying pieces of media. I was inspired by mainly by his environment work such as his Cozy Little Place and Forgotten Lands.
Cozy Little Place by Jorge Jacinto (above)
Forgotten Land by Jorge Jacinto (Above)
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Planning
This piece was created as part of an assignment for the 2023 Illustration Course of the MIAD Pre-College program. Our professor instructed us to create a very simple landscape sketch, with not too many defining features but still unique enough. With that we were tasked with adding around ten objects to the scene in order to tell a story. I thought about possible stories I could tell and settled on some sort of abandoned town theme. I didn't immediately construct a full list of objects but immediately started by planning out a few abandoned buildings, placing one in the background of my sketch and the other closer to the foreground. I found visualizing perspective of three-dimensional structures in such a varied and natural scene difficult but was able to remedy it by placing the objects far from each other and in no sort of alignment to one another. I also added several derelict fences to the foreground to further show how this area was once built up in the past but has since fallen into disrepair. A major turning point in my story and theme was when we were instructed to add some sort of figure to our composition. I immediately thought of creating a character inspired by the old west, which helped me further develop my ideas for a coherent story for my piece. From that line of thought I developed the rest of my objects trying to create an explanation to the viewer for what may have happened here.
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ProcessOnce I had finished my planning, laying out the objects in sketch and thumbnail, I brought the entire composition to tight pencil. This was an important phase because it was where I made all of my important decision making in terms of details, shading, and finalizing composition. The goal was to fully develop the image without worrying about color or cleanliness in a rough familiar medium. Once I was happy with my composition and had finalized all of the details, such as the text on the quarantine sign, I scanned my image into a digital format. With the image digitized I could now work over it in digital programs as my method of finalizing the piece. I decided to work in procreate, as that was what I was most familiar with in terms of digital illustration. I worked this stage using an IPad Air and Apple Pencil.
The digital phase began with picking a color palette and blocking out large areas of background color and base tones. The benefit of working digitally here was I could really play around with giving the scene a natural color, reminiscent of a real forest area. I was also able to utilize the opacity features of Procreate to view my base image while still being able to paint over it. I then began adding shapes and details, able to very carefully edit them due to the nature of working in a digital program. I realized at this point that one of the most challenging aspects of this piece was going to be the grass and leaves of the environment. In my sketch, both had been simply areas of shape and shadow, but with this clean finalized digital image, I would have to find some way to realistically give the impression of trees and grass. The solution I found to this problem was Procreates built in leaf and grass brushes which after some testing (see Experimentation) I was able to use them effectively. I found the most success with the trees which after a lot of editing I was very satisfied with. One thing I did change in this stage was I changed the text on the sign to actual computer text because I realized it looked a lot cleaner and I could play around with fonts and sizing a lot more. |
Peer Critique & DisplayWith the completion of this piece, the rest of my class and I conducted a peer review or critique of each others work. We displayed each of our pieces along a wall and moved between each one discussing what we thought of it. My feedback was mostly positive, with compliments towards my use of texture and shadow in the leaves of the trees being a highlight. Some expressed concern with contrast, saying the hard lines and edges in much of the piece did not help with cohesiveness. This piece was then printed, mounted to foam core board, and displayed alongside others in the lower level galleries at MIAD for a weekend. ExperimentationThroughout this process I primarily experimented with the features and uses of the Procreate application on the IPad. I am still relatively new to this program and am unfamiliar with many of its more complex and powerful features. Many of the features I experimented with included brushes, layers, and other tools that affect the way layers act. I was able to use these to quickly change shading and contrast as well as saturation and color of specific areas, this was useful in creating a realistic looking setting in terms of color and shadow.
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Critique (Comparison to Inspiration)
ReflectionI believe I developed greatly throughout this process. Specifically, I saw a lot of growth in terms of creating realistic looking natural environments including trees and plant-life in a digital medium. This was something I was relatively unfamiliar with before starting this piece as I had not explored the creation of natural environments much before. This was also an area I felt incredibly successful in, not just through growth, but I was very happy with the actual results as well. One thing I did struggle with was texturing the grass, no matter what I did it always seemed over textured or flat. It took a lot of tweaking and experimentation to bring the grass to a place that I thought looked accurate.
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ACT Connections
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
The primary way the inspiration works affected the creation of my final piece was through lighting and shadow as well as the color palettes used to create a realistic feeling natural environment.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
Both of the inspiring artists have created their work in differing ways. This reflects their intended purpose, Grove by Jordan Grimmer is very different than his other featured work Green Mountain. Grove clearly has more detail and is more finalized than Green Mountain which is likely meant to simply lay out the scene or experiment with terrain rather than have a detailed cleanly rendered image.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I was satisfied with being able to further explore concept art and concept artists as both a visual art form and a career. It is a unique way in which fine arts skills can be applied to a real-world field, in this case entertainment including cinema, music, video games or literature.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The main idea is purpose and form, I looked into specifically artists working in the same medium and with similar focus on narrative elements. In the artists case their work often is early designs for future works that will appear throughout varying pieces of media.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
Since the artist's work professionally as designers rather than classic fine artists, they write very little about the backstory or purpose behind each of their specific works leaving me needing to make inferences regarding their artistic choices in regard to each of their pieces.
The primary way the inspiration works affected the creation of my final piece was through lighting and shadow as well as the color palettes used to create a realistic feeling natural environment.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
Both of the inspiring artists have created their work in differing ways. This reflects their intended purpose, Grove by Jordan Grimmer is very different than his other featured work Green Mountain. Grove clearly has more detail and is more finalized than Green Mountain which is likely meant to simply lay out the scene or experiment with terrain rather than have a detailed cleanly rendered image.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I was satisfied with being able to further explore concept art and concept artists as both a visual art form and a career. It is a unique way in which fine arts skills can be applied to a real-world field, in this case entertainment including cinema, music, video games or literature.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The main idea is purpose and form, I looked into specifically artists working in the same medium and with similar focus on narrative elements. In the artists case their work often is early designs for future works that will appear throughout varying pieces of media.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
Since the artist's work professionally as designers rather than classic fine artists, they write very little about the backstory or purpose behind each of their specific works leaving me needing to make inferences regarding their artistic choices in regard to each of their pieces.
Citations
“About.” Jorge Jacinto, www.jorgejacinto.com/about. Accessed 11 Sept. 2023.
“Album Artwork.” Jordan Grimmer, www.jordangrimmer.co.uk/album-artwork. Accessed 11 Sept. 2023.
“Pin On Environment Concept Art.” Pinterest, 14 May 2017, www.pinterest.com/pin/562809284673260210/.
“Album Artwork.” Jordan Grimmer, www.jordangrimmer.co.uk/album-artwork. Accessed 11 Sept. 2023.
“Pin On Environment Concept Art.” Pinterest, 14 May 2017, www.pinterest.com/pin/562809284673260210/.