JAY TARRANT
VISUAL DEVELOPMENT | CONCEPT ARTIST
PRODUCTION ARTS PATHWAY
UNIT 8 -
PRODUCTION ARTS - TV SHOW ROOM CONCEPT ART
Having watched 'Lost' countless amount of times previously, but only ever bothering to finish it once, I favour the first half of the show, because I've seen so much of it.
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I didn't really have anything that drew me towards choosing 'Lost', I've been frequenting the cinema recently, so I had a lot of inspiration from other media that I'm sure could have been much more interesting. However when Unreal Engine was mentioned, and the opportunity to create a interactive environment. I felt compelled to create a memoir of a fan- favourite piece of media.
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As previously mentioned, I am lazy, I have only watched 'Lost' all the way through once. However, in the earlier seasons, we are introduced to 'The Hatch' found by John, which once opened, the survivors discover Desmond (and ultimately his history and importance to the island) and 'The Swan'.
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I thought this could be quite an iconic environment to work with, due to the high amount of content available within it, and also being that 'The Swan' is the connecting point to the survivors and the island, with the string of numbers '4,8,15,16,23,42' being in its greatest use here.
BREAKDOWN OF THE COMPUTER ROOM
Currently in time, I am only planning on making the computer room explorable, or viewable, whatever, the other two rooms that connect to the computer room will be partially seen, unless I zoom through my initial idea, and push myself to make one or both of the other rooms explorable. (I did.)
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The first two floorplans above are fan-made floorplans I found online, these are much more detailed than the production ones, with the one on the right hand side also including the tiling patterns seen on the floor of The Swan.
(https://lostpedia.fandom.com/wiki/The_Swan)
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Below are two of the production floorplans from the show, one pre-explosion in the swan (this was sold afterwards on a 'Lost' collectibles website, and the other I found online from the Production team information.
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Finding these floorplans was extremely helpful, we are frequently looking at the room from behind the computer, seeing the machinery and equipment, and the computer obviously.
We don't regularly see it from the odder angles, so working out the placement of objects in the room was becoming quite difficult, however this now gives me a roughly exact look of the placing and whereabouts of all of the items found in the Computer room.
(and also the floor tiles, which honestly I wouldn't have even known were different colours in certain places if I hadn't found these floorplans.)
ROUGH PHOTOBASHING
I had played around with the 360 concept art a little bit, before deciding to create this (questionable) photo-bash, of all the images I could find from the Swan. I was struggling to understand the depth in the room, and I realised that smashing the photos I already had together, I could create a a very rough 360 panoramic of the room, in photo form, that I could reference while drawing. This did actually come in handy (for the short time I used it) as it was much quicker to alter the photos and scale, than it was to continue to redraw and redraw, when I didn't actually know what I was drawing in the first place. Obviously there is improvement to be made with my photo-bashing skills, however for something I threw together very quickly, in a state of confused annoyance, it served its purpose.
360 CONCEPT ART - PRE-KNOWLEDGE
example of a 360 panoramic drawing
https://renderstuff.com/tools/360-panorama-web-viewer/
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I found a website online that allowed me to view them in a VR format, I had to test quite a lot of different methods, as all of the 360 panoramic drawings/photos I had seen, had been in fully outdoor spaces, or rooms with straight walls.
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I was doing neither.
Common sense would make you think that if this image was going to be 360 degrees, a straight line would create a circular space.... right?..... sort of. It creates a very small circular space, with the camera centred in the exact centre of the room, which isn't an awful outcome. However. trying to show depth and object size, in a small room with a camera bang in the middle, is not very easy.
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The videos above you can see a collection of videos I took of these panoramic drawings in their 360 environments. After watching, and then looking back at the original drawings, I'm sure you will understand the struggle I was having trying to determine depth and scale in my drawings, because there was not really any leeway (or so it seemed) with the 'horizon line' and having a normal sized object, vs a tiny/ massive object.
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A DIFFERENT TECHNIQUE
Adding a slight curve to the room, allowed me to have some depth to play around with, and pushed the camera into the edge of the room.
This made the floorspace look much bigger.
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However, it meant I was now having to draw certain objects at a very AGGRESIVE perspective, because they were so close to the 'Camera'. Specifically the sofa, which looking at my drawings, you'll see it goes through stages of being overly sqaure, and completely rounded. This was in an attempt to stop it travelling into the 'abyss' of the 360 panorama.
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With this re-try I also realised that the roof cannot just all be joined by the top of the 'page' as the top of the page, is technically all the same space.
As usual, with my majority of the work I do, I don't research properly. I find one method of doing something, like the method I've been using above, and stick to it. Because why research more to find an easier way.... if I have already found a way to do it? I spent a good part of 3 days focusing on this ABSURDLY difficult method of 360 perspective drawing, only for Paul and Molly to show us in 5 minutes how to use photoshop as a 3D Painter.
Fuming.
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That's what I get though. Common sense would make you believe that I would learn from these experiences and events. But no I never have.
However, something positive to come out of all of this pain and suffering in drawing. I essentially studied every corner of this room to a 'T'. I'm not saying I could draw it with my eyes shut, however I am now capable of drawing the layout of this room quite impressively quickly.
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Win some, Lose some.
360 CONCEPT ART
19-02 THE CORRECT WAY
For something so awfully confusing looking, I had never had so much enjoyment doing this experimentation.
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I found drawing on the 3D layout quite easy, surprisingly. It was really nice to work with, having an 'infinite' canvas meant there was no struggling to fit everything into a 'flat' canvas like usual.
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I drew from the perspective of the player, because that would be what the player would be seeing while 'sitting' depending on how I approach the gameplay section.
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I've had a continuous struggle drawing the glass dome the room is in, in pretty much any occasion I had to draw it. Its a very geometrical design, (Now I know this is called a Geodesic Dome) and so it is quite difficult to draw this symmetrically, as you can notice from my initial attempt to draw it.
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Because of this, I decided that I would try and use photos to create some more detail and colour in this test. It worked quite well, however the only downside of Photoshops 3D feature is that I cannot move an object out of my view, while moving around the 3D scene, so creating the ceiling ended up with a slightly wonky layout. As I was trying to create such a large area of the roof in 1 perspective without moving the camera. So some areas look quite weirdly flat, and not as curved as you'd expect them to look.
26-02 CONCEPT ART LESSON
This exercise was relatively stressful. Painting in class wasn't something we'd really done before. I have had my own process for concept painting, as most people do. Having other people see my process for painting was a bit nerve-wracking. The task itself was really quite fun, it was nice to paint something new, and actually real. Using different brushes definitely took some getting used to, especially with how big and chunky they were.
Figuring out how to get the shading and blending to do what I wanted was quite tough, the brushes used almost resembled an oil paint brush, and 'blending' two colours was more smudging them. It gave a really nice effect in the end, and had a really nice way of blending colours.
After this lesson, I continued to use these brushes, as I actually found them really nice to work with by the end of the class.
I spent most of the lesson trying to teach myself out of fine detail drawing, which is my biggest issue when creating concept art. I have a tendency to focus on details instead of shape and flow. I sort of got there by the end of this class. The flowers and windmill ended up receiving a lot of attention, but I managed to not render the sky and bushes too much.
CONCEPT ART COMTEMPLATION
Creating concept art for my idea, was both slightly easy, and incredibly difficult. I wasn't /creating/ anything. My entire VR experience is based off of the Hatch from Lost. It already has an entire floorplan, design, ambience and its own concept art. I struggled for a long while figuring out how to make something 'original and interesting' especially as while drawing it felt like I was almost copying a selection of images (I wasn't, but doing concept art for something that already 'exists' was giving me a bit of a crisis).
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As I had less 'control' over the actual design of the The Swan and I already had my research fully fledged for modelling, I decided that my concept art would be focused more on key shots in my experience. It gave me opportunity to focus on colour palettes and aesthetics for my environment.
I knew I wanted to have a similar environment seen in the show, an unkempt, neglected, dark space. I wanted to focus on the colours blue and green for ambience. These colours create both a cold and disturbing environment.
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I made a mood board to give me an idea of the type of colour palette and design I wanted to aim towards modelling and drawing. There are different varieties of lighting and light levels inside of my environment, but the overall tone I wanted to display is similar to the ones seen below.
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SCRAPPED IDEAS
All of these sketches ended up getting scrapped in the end. I had tried to half use the 360 drawing technique and normal concept art, thinking that I could create a really interesting fish eye looking piece. After experimenting further, I started looking at the perspective on them, and realised it was really way off. I started comparing the perspective to that of the 0.5 zoom on my phone. It didn't look right at all, even trying to justify it as the fish eye perspective.
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If I didn't like how they looked in a sketch, I knew at heart I wouldn't like how they looked as a painting. I knew I could create much better paintings in a method I preferred, and love the outcome.
FIRST TEST
Outside of the 360 perspective, this was the first piece of concept art I produced.
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At this point I wasn't trying to replicate realism (although I did have later plans to). This drawing in particular included all of the hardest parts of my scene to model and draw. I wanted to test out what difficulties I would have while drawing and painting, as well as use this as a quick opportunity to use my desired colour palette.
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After drawing the initial sketch, I understood that drawing all of the machinery was extremely tedious, before I had even began colouring. I knew this would be the exact same issue while modelling.
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In an attempt to make my life easier, before starting to model, I wanted to test out how easily I could layer mask the machinery details, as I would also be able to do this for the texturing/modelling process if it worked successfully. There are unfortunately not very many high quality images of the SAGE machine online, that are taken at the exact angle I needed.
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This test helped me realise a lot of things, I loved the colour palette I had chosen, even with a rough painting it looks the way I intended, and gave me enough concern about the machinery to keep looking for solutions.
This painting was the turning point for me moving to more blocky/ realism based painting.
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I started this assuming the same colour style I was doing previously. Then I had a light epiphany, realised it looked terrible, and decided to just 'go with' the blocky painting. The worst thing I could produce would be bad. It would be a learning point that's all.
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I actually surprised myself with this painting, especially as I had low hopes about how it would turn out. Out of all the paintings I did, I think this one is my favourite. The loose bulky brush strokes. It appears really harsh, but I think it works really well.
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I realised that not caring, in the best worst way possible, is the key to creating concept art. It gives me the ability to be loose, and follow colours and textures. Instead of shape. Which is my biggest problem while painting. I end up being so influenced by the shapes I'm trying to produce that I lose a lot of that natural flow in painting.
I attempted to follow the same loose panting style with this piece. I think it actually gives a bit more depth to the painting. Without everything being perfectly smoothed, It makes everything look rougher, and actually more realistic. The glass dome both drawing and modelling was the hardest part to figure out, while drawing, it required me to measure and keep count of everything, to make sure it looked right, as well as looked natural.
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This painting also became my inspiration when creating the smudges and stains on the glass of my 3D Environment.
I wanted to experiment with something really different here. I had realised that using looser strokes helped me make much better paintings. So I tried this. I didn't use a sketch, I went straight to painting. But on top of that, I decided to try something similar to what painters do physically, mimicking underpainting. My goal was to see if starting off with different colours, but reflecting the tone I was trying to follow, would help create different atmospheres.
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I also used layer masks in this painting. My main goal for this painting was giving myself a time limit. I wanted to experiment with how well I could create a piece of concept art under 'pressure'. Not really under pressure.... more taking into account that on a good day I could easily spend 6-8 hours on one painting. I know this isn't something that will be reflected when I have an industry job. Hence my test with this piece, seeing how well I can portray a design in a certain time frame.
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I don't love this piece, I was pressuring myself, so there will always be things I will change, but I'm really happy with the layer masks and the way I managed to portray depth and perspective in this piece. I would definitely go back and work further in the shadows, specifically around the barrels, concrete and wood planks, I could have executed them much better.
At this stage, I had already begun modelling this portion of my 3D Environment. I used the untextured environment as a base for my painting. It meant my painting was already fleshed out, both perspective and design wise. It gave me a chance to just focus on my colour scheme and painting techniques. I could experiment with textures and ambience without also having to worry about the shapes I was trying to produce.
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This space was going to be one of the brightest spaces in my experience, as it had the most lights in the room. However I still wanted it to be quite naturally dark in there. I struggled to portray this in painting and it took many layers and attempts to get this across, as it meant there were multiple light sources coming into the painting, creating multiple shadows in different directions.
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I definitely could have worked further into the highlights and lighting in this painting. I feel as though the shadows and depth is good, but the white points in the painting definitely have opportunity to stand out more.
