Ed Week 3: Freder

In terms of weeks, this has been a week of set-backs. Though we have sent off for our book from one company we sent off from a second for the sake of a comparison and the process of getting that book printed and sorted out has taken a very long time. Now it is finally complete however and it's such a big relief to know that I don't have to worry about it any more. It's taken up a fair portion of my week just getting that complete, but this week I've also finished off Freder and his upper-class clothing as well as beginning to put together the final book layout and actually start to include our work as opposed to placeholder images.



In the end, in the process of producing Freder's facial features I produced nearly 140 headshots.

I went back to sketching Freder after trying to use photo bashing to define his facial features. though I won't say no to using this method in the future and it did help me define his features better for these second lot of sketches, I found the process of finding relevant references for it time consuming and difficult, it was also very easy to become side tracked whilst looking. In the end it became a relevant step but a short one in the design process.

 

Over the course of designing him I did find myself becoming very fond of him, to me Freder is a character who's lack of responsibility and genuine power has left him insecure about himself despite the bluster that his sense of entitlement and the power of his father have left him with. 

Hopefully now that the setbacks of this week are done, I can get more produced next week when I should be producing my first setting for the book, either the pleasure garden or the city's cathedral.

Lucy: Week 1

12/1/2015 – Day 1: Maria photo-bashing

My first task is to design Maria, one of the protagonists of the story. After reading the summery of the story and watching some of the original film Metropolis. I felt like I had a good grasp of what the character Maria should be in terms of her character. He clothing should reflect her purpose and general character portrayed in the film. With this in mind, I began to gather reference imagery. Just to help place my initial ideas and also help me to create new ones. I gathered a range of images onto a Pinterest board. (http://uk.pinterest.com/lucytstm/fmpmet-maria/) Once I had what I felt like were enough images to work from, I started to photo-bash them together.

I created a range of designs using existing imagery, to create a signature look for Maria. Because she is seen as some sort of an advocate for the workers’ rights, she has slight authority and a presence amongst the worker. However she still needs to appear as one of them in order to have and gain their trust when fighting the workers cause. I’m using a lot of ‘power piece’ clothing. Clothes with strong structure to create a bold silhouette looks quite interesting and can say a lot about the character. From early on I really liked the idea of the hood. It almost reminded me of a nun, and I felt this suited her character. She only wants to do good for the people less fortunate than her and for it to be completely selfless and no way give her any personal gain other than for the workers and elites to live in harmony and have mutual respect for one another. Below are the photo-bashes I came up with.

13/1/2015 – Day2: Maria silhouettes

I took the photo-bashed design ans silhouetted them to see how each design read and which to me, stood out and felt like ‘Maria’.  I wanted to look warn and ragged but still regal in order to maintain the presence she has over the other workers, that gain her the respect she has for being so helpful to the workers cause. I picked my favourite silhouettes and iterated on them further. I them picked from those and started to break up the silhouette just to see how they may work as clothes.

After doing this I felt like I was beginning to lose the original essence of the character, so I decided to go back into some of my favourite silhouettes and began to draw in the detail. I did this by doing some basic line art over the silhouette and continued to do so for several of the silhouettes.

14/1/2015 – Day 3: Maria, line art

I finished the line art today and realized the complexities of the clothing I was trying to design for Maria. I decided to do a breakdown of the things I liked about my favourite silhouettes. For example, I loved to hood and long, trench coat, but when drawing it out I felt Marias figure was lost and that ruined the silhouette. This made me realise, that I really want Maria to have a hood and big coat; but I desperately needed to design what was underneath that to understand the clothes better.

15/1/2015 – Day 4: Maria, under clothes designs

After further exploration for the clothing underneath the coat I came to a final design and decided it was time to go in depth with the face deign for Maria. I thought of Marias age to be late 20's possibly early 30’s, so her face needs to show that life experience. As she's a worker, I feel her face should look warn and damaged due to her hard life; I also want her to have a hopeful glow, a look of determination that she will not be beaten down and fight for what she believes is right.

I also went on to look into potential hair designs. Again, because she’s a worker it needs to be practical. I really do like the original hair I gave her but I felt exploring the hair was necessary in order to add extra to the character.

15/1/2015 – Day 5: Maria final design and colour

Today as a team me and Ed decided on a final design for Maria. She had the desired look I sought out to create, but now it was time for colour. This, for me, is the hardest part of the design process. Especially when a lot of the reference imagery was grey and very dark, muted colours. I think I shall be working on this through the weekend but this character is on track with our timeline I would say. Also over the weekend, I hope to begin the final, full, colour concept art piece for Maria.

Maria final design

Colour

Final concept sneak peak

Ed Week 2: Freder

This week I began on an actual named character. Where week one had focussed on producing a mass style that could be adapted to fit an entire population, week two was about narrowing that style into a personal image, changing it so that it would fit a single personality.

 

The character I’ve been designing this week is Freder; the son of the master of Metropolis and therefore one of the wealthiest people in the city and also one of the most idle. Though later on in the story he realises that his way of life has consequences, at the stage I've been designing he's firm in his belief that he's entitled to everything he has. He's a product of his society and his clothing reflects the wealth he has.

Practicality was of a minimal concern to this character design and instead I focussed on creating a silhouette that showed just how much the character meant in terms of his status in the city but also to himself. Growing up at the pinnacle of entitlement his self-assurance is a key part of his image He knows he’s wealthy and he knows he’s important. A good portion of his power may be derived from his father’s position but that’s not something he wants to admit and with this in mind I chose a traditionally regal silhouette of the flowing cloak.

 

The large amounts of heavy fabric in the tunic, coat and cloak give the character an imposing weight that perhaps he wishes he had a little more of. When he strips down to the workers clothes later on I wanted to make it feel like he really had lost a lot of that entitled bluster that he displays in the earlier parts of the story and I aim to show this in the physical appearance of his clothes; in the beginning his silhouette is solid and with it's triangular shape it's rooted and confident. The colours are rich and it reflects his self assurance. Later on I want to unbalance the silhouette as the character himself is shaken, making the silhouette of his working clothes more top heavy.

 

What ended up taking the most time this week was his face, starting off with sketches and moving onto photobashing before returning to the sketches helped, but it took me a long time to get anywhere. I'm still not finished with the face and some of that will be. I'll be spending some time next week finishing it off.

 

 

This week I put together a test book containing a selection of images and text. The purpose of the book is to test out how our images will look once they’ve been printed so the book actually consists of many variants of an image in order to test out Brightness, Contrast and Saturation, In order to test out how it will look in the book compared to on the computer screen.

Despite a few false starts with PDF creating and getting payment to the site that will print the book we’re expecting the copy to come through in the middle of next week.

A Culture in the Clothes: Worldbuilding

In week one I spent my time designing the clothes worn by the upper class. With no particular character in mind I wanted to create a base range of clothes that could be adapted to fit a variety of characters.



Initial designs were very distinctive

 


Later I put more emphasis on creating variations within a more standard theme.



Once thing I was particularly conscious about was showing the status of the characters and the values of the world through the clothing - These are the upper class citizens and particularly the idle elite who can be found lounging about in the pleasure gardens of the upper city. I wanted to show this.

Initially, creating the clothing of the upper class citizens was an exercise in avoiding function. I collected together a lot of reference of bulky or obstructive clothing, made with improbable materials or intense details. A sense of the world they were created in was supposed to come through in these clothes and I aimed to design them to instantly represent the values of the people who wore them. These people are the idle elite of the world, and what better way to show you have no need of doing work than to wear clothes that make working almost impossible.

However as the design process went on I turned away from this over the top philosophy for more understated wealth. There are still examples of impractical forms; the coats are loose and billowing, trapping arms or legs and capes are a genuine choice.

Speaking as someone who wears cloaks on a regular basis, they're not an ideal clothing choice if you're looking to move around indoors without sweeping a good portion of the objects on tables off onto the floor

 

One of the main reasons I turned away from the frivolous clothing to a more regimented standard cut to the clothes was to illustrate the conformity that is insisted upon in the metropolis society; in order to fuel their decadent lifestyle the elites prey upon the lower class as veritable slaves however the upper-class are still not free to do as they please. They're separated from the lower classes and encouraged to maintain the status quo of the city, they are in a cage, though it may be a luxurious, gilded one. There is little room or tolerance for deviation away from the standard of the civilization and this is reflected in the clothing that actively encourages people to fit in.

 

The clothing that you wear has a big effect on your psychology, it can boost your confidence or put you in a terrible mood for the day. On a subtler level your clothes can alienate you or amalgamate you into your surrounding society. The costumes I've designed are a uniform provided for the upper class, it's a very nice uniform made with beautiful fabrics and embellishments, but it's a uniform none the less and the wearing of it will inevitably have an effect on the psychology of the wearer, encouraging conformity and obedience by making them subconsciously think of themselves more like one of many than an individual.

A major part of illustrating this wealth is the materials used. The deep colours suggest a lot of effort has to go into making and maintaining the deep shades of red, navy and teal and the fabrics themselves are a key indicator of the wealth of the wearer – for the upper class citizens I imagine garments made of velvets and satins, anything luxurious.

The embellishments themselves are mostly metal, be they woven braids or metal filigree. It’s here that rank can be shown to its full degree in an understated and tasteful manner (even within the upper class there is varying levels of wealth after all) based on what level of craftsmanship you can afford, what metal you can afford, or indeed how much of it you can afford.

Ed Week 1: Metropolis Citizens

As the project begins, we’ve started on our first pieces of artwork as well as our initial plans and layouts of the book.

I personally worked on the upper class citizens of metropolis, creating a range of androgynous clothing with variations on a theme and style rather than one final image that can be used to create a varied range of background characters who all look like they’ve come from the same environment.

I used my usual method of working for this; starting with basic silhouettes before taking the ones we liked and developing them into variations and sketches using blocks of grayscale colour. After this I move on to photo bashing the outfits to get more of an idea of colour and texture and do even more variations.

 

One of the two sheets of silhouettes




Developing silhouettes into block sketches (This is silhouette 19 from the picture above)




Moving on to photo bashing

Because there's no 'final' hero image to this part of the project, these final coloured images created through a combination of painting and photo bashing are the examples of the range of clothing worn by our upper class citizens 
 

I’ve also created a range of page layouts that will be used to format the finished book, they’re created with placeholder images and text but they’re examples of how the pages will look once the book is complete. I created layouts for square pages as well as landscape because we’re not certain which type of book we want and we expect them to change.

 



Layout for a Landscape A4 page

 



A layout for a squarer page

 

 I'm happy with the amount of work I produced this week. As the project starts I'm really excited about the opportunity to create the feel of a wider world in the clothing of the people.

-Ed

Introduction

Welcome! We're Ed and Lucy, two third year students of Game Art and Design at DeMontfort University. This blog is a record of our work in our Final major project.

For our project we're taking a concept art focused look at Fritz Lang's 1927 film metropolis, We're concentrating on creating a range of interesting characters and building a world around them and creating a modernised look at the film whilst still maintaining the setting and feel of the plot. At the end of the project we hope to produce a book of concept art containing a record of our processes as well as our more finished final pieces.

Here we'll post weekly updates on our progress, pictures and plans. We'll be talking a little about our processes and problems as we progress through the project, please enjoy!

-Ed and Lucy.