This unit’s brief was to design a character for a specific time and place given to us. The character had to be from the story Tinderbox.

Georgian Era

Research

The Georgian Era took place from 1714 to 1830 and takes it’s name from the first four
Hanoverian Kings who were all named George. George I all the way to George IV.
The Georgian Era was a time of immense social change in Britain, such as the beginning
of the industrial revolution. Certain rural areas went through the Agricultural
Revolution which brang changes to small communities and the growth of cities. An
advanced transportation system was also developed during this revolution period, but
due to decline in these village numbers and work becoming scarce, quite a lot of these
villagers immigrated to Canada and other parts of the British Empire.
The British expansion throughout the world predominantly took place during the
Georgian Era, warfare was continuous and lasted for a long time, going on for years.
The most well known and famous wars during this era are the “American Revolution –
1775-1783”, “Irish Rebellion of 1798” and “Napoleonic Wars – 1803-1815”. The British
took part in many wars during this era and won all of them except 1; The American
Revolution. The British could not withstand the force of America, Spain, France and
The Netherlands.
The main policy imposed by Britain on it’s colonies was Mercantilism, this policies aim
was purely for political power and wealth. This was to be accomplished by the
government and merchants becoming partners, with the government offering
protection to the merchants and keeping other traders out by any means, be it
barriers or regulations. Smuggling became an issue, Favorited by the American’s to
bypass the British restrictions on trade. The goal of this Mercantilism policy was to
run trade checks, so that all gold and silver would end up in London. The government
made it’s share from duties and taxes while the merchants got the remaining leftover
funds. A huge sum of the money was spent on the Royal Navy which protected British
colonies and intimidated other empire colonies.
Britain’s end of power is said to be when they lost some of the American colonies during
the “American War of Independence”. The empires expansion during this era layed
down the groundwork for the worldwide British Empire for the following eras,
Victorian and Edwardian.

The Tinderbox is an important aspect of the story and my project. It is the main object of the story and influences the behaviour of both the witch and the soldier. I wanted to find out just what a Tinderbox is.

For my final character piece I wanted to have fire torches as my main light source since my character will be in a dark cave that wouldn’t have very much light. I had to research into fire and how it’s light interacts with the surroundings, especially in campfires and dark areas such as caves and during the night.

Character Concept Art

Silhouettes

The brief had us draw 50 silhouettes for our chosen character. I started out with the soldier, but then I changed to the witch because I felt that she had a more creative side and it posed more of a challenge because we do not know a whole lot about her, or what she is like.

These 4 Silhouettes are my favorite ones out of the 50 I drew for the witch. Each design has something unique that I really think works well for a witch character and hopefully I can try and put them all together in one character. Such as the staff and really old cape in the first design, or the book in the second, the apron in the third and the really messy and torn up robe in the last design.

However if I’m honest, I think I will settle on the first silhouette because it is the one that looks really like a witch and although her head is down, she does look quite terrifying. Perhaps I will give her a book in the final design.

Soldier

The Witch

Value Drawings

After deciding on the silhouettes that I thought had potential and caught my attention, I had to do value studies on them – Black and White drawings. This technique is purposefully done to understand how the light will hit the character and add some more depth of tone to the black silhouettes. I had 4 chosen silhouettes , and did each of them with their own value study (except one, I did this one twice because I had two ideas for her). My next step is to do a color variation on one of these designs, possibly two.

Color Drawings

I initially wanted to only do 1 color drawing for each silhouette that I chose, but for this one I ended up with 3. However, two of them are very similar. I wanted to keep the color of the clothes quite dark to represent the mysteriousness of the witch, but not too dark so that she is just hidden. Using dark colors for the clothes played out to my advantage as I was able to add potions that were very bright (almost glowing in fact) and add some more depth of tone to the character. I did t he same with the staff, to give it that magical feel. However, on the first design (far left), I felt that everything was too flat and needed more shadows and highlights so I ended up experimenting with blending modes and creating various new effects. The end result of these experiments is the last design (far right). This witch design reminds me a little bit of the Black Mage from Final Fantasy IX, the three that attempt to kill you.

The middle design was created when I used color dodge and realized I could make certain parts pop out more than others, so I decided to use this for a large majority of this piece. I felt that I should still keep the dark tone of colors going but also wanted a bright vibrant color to counter this; hence the yellow and orange. I also kept the potions but this time, I also included a book in her arsenal.

This is the second color drawing, and I have the same drawing twice, one with a background and one without. I had quite an unusual layer setup and during the final stages where I was contemplating weather or not to use a background, I tested it and what appeared was to my liking. The witch had a purple aura surrounding her which I thought was really quite good so I kept this as a separate file. Unlike the other witch, this one doesn’t have potions but I would like to include them in my final design. I did however, give her a talisman necklace because I felt she looked too plain without some sort of accessory.

These are the last of my color drawings. I tried to use different colors from the previous ones and add a lot more depth and tone in the colors, especially the 3rd design. For the 3rd design, I wanted her clothes to appear very bright, due to the light coming from behind her. I tried to keep the tones of red very similar for her clothes, since I didn’t want to use too many colors as it would get crowded and distracting.

For the 4th design, I used blue in almost every part minus the hat. I wanted to get a cold feeling for this witch but at the same time look powerful and fearful. Potions are back and on her waist, the apron is blowing in the wind and her face is covered by a mask with only her bright yellow eyes visible.

Character Sheets

My character sheets posed a slight problem because due to the design of my color study and model sheet, my character pretty much had no face (similar to Vivi from final fantasy IX), but she did have glowing eyes. So designing some facial features for my character sheet was quite a problem especially considering it was from complete imagination. I tried to portray different emotions such as happy, sad, angry, shocked and surprised. I stumbled across the big nose idea from a rough sketch and thought that it looked and worked really well for my witch so I used this concept in the rest of my sketches.

Model Sheet

I am quite pleased with my model sheet for the witch, I feel that I was able to add quite a lot more props and detail into what was quite a plain and lifeless value drawing. I really tried to capture the same colors and details for all the different views of the character, especially the back view. I wanted to add props that a witch would normally carry such as potions and a book, but I also wanted to keep the Georgian era feel so I added a glowing stone on her hat because in the Georgian era, a lot of woman had some sort of accessories in their hair or hats such as feathers or jewelery. However, I did not want to detract away from the fact that she was a witch, especially since my angle view was such a powerful pose and I tried to replicate this in all my other views. I think the idea of having all her props on her belt rather than everywhere on her robes. Women in the Georgian era often had lush and large clothes that were not covered by props. The jar of green eyes is something that I felt was needed, I wanted to make the witch look powerful, fearful and mysterious. What is she doing with these eyes? That is the question I want people to ask when they see her. I understand that my witch is almost quite the cliche and traditional type of witch, but I feel that it is necessary due to the type of witch that I in vision when I read the story. The glowing aura on her clothes give a focal point for the character.

Poses

These are some of the poses that my character could possibly be in for my final piece, or just in general. They are very rough digital sketches.

Final Piece

This is my final piece. Rather than focusing just on the character and having the background or environment as a out of focus element, I wanted to have my character in her own fully fledged out and detailed environment, as if she belongs there. I was given the Georgian era so I wanted to have my witch in a long robe like dress that covered all of her, she would also have some sort of clothing inside this robe as you can see in the final image. (The red and yellow part next to her potions on her waist). However, before you disregard my final piece as not being georgian, I have done tons of research into clothes and my witch has a very large dress which resembles this and has unique patterns on her clothes. Her scarf’s and hat are very recognisable from the georgian era. The witch’s clothes are very lush and elegant, the bottom half is very large, just like the Georgian era clothing for women. I wanted my design to resemble the lifestyle of the witch and also be possible to be part of the Georgian time period. Now since it is a cave that is quite tough to do, but I decided to add some traditional witch elements such as the cauldron, the potions and the books, they all relate to the witch. I wanted to keep the cave dark because at the end of the day it is a cave, so fire torches were my main source of light.

Environment Concept Art

Research

Thumbnails

These are my thumbnail sketches, I wanted to base my environments around a castle because this allowed me to have different compositions and design ideas such as markets, a battlefield, a town or even a far off view of the castle. I tried to keep everything a similar style so that it all fit within the time period.

Values

The value studies were quite enjoyable, using images for referance and seeing how light works, I tried to pick the best source of light for each of my images and figure out which direction the light was coming from and how it would lighten up objects and create shadows.

Colour Studies

For the colour studies, I wanted to use a similar colour palette on all the designs so that they all felt within the same time period and I could simply choose which one had the best result with these colours.

Final Images

1st Final

This is my first final piece for the environments and it has turned out quite well. I am very pleased with this as the colors worked together perfectly and the detail is very clear. I tried to bring the market street to life by including people, stalls, random dirt on the floor and various other things that help create the illusion that the place has been lived in. I did try different variations on certain aspects of the design such as the time of day, different colours for certain objects such as the buildings and roof tops but I realized that a lot of the colours were quite earthy after looking at my research and decided to settle on the oranges and yellow colours.

2nd Final

This is my 2nd final piece and I took a different approach to this design compared to my other final piece. The idea of a sewer was quite confusing at first but as I began colouring in the leakage, I suddenly thought of a great idea of how this can link to my final character piece for my witch. Naturally, I drew the sewer liquid green, and the witches cauldron in the final piece has green liquid as well. This allowed me to create the idea that the witches cave is inside this mountain and she is the reason and cause behind all of this toxic waste being flooded out of the mountain.

The sewer area is the focal point of this piece and that is why that area is heavily saturated and brighter compared to the rest of the piece. I wanted to have the time of day at night so that certain elements such as the green goo and people could be lit up and stand out with some extreme shadows, not to mention that I wanted this piece to be quite dark but at the same time very clear as to what is going on. I added a rain effect to help detail the picture as a whole and the castle in the background with fire torches lit, help balance the composition and guide the viewers eye along the perspective.

Anatomy Studies and other drawings.

Here are some various anatomy studies that I have done. I had never done any anatomy studies before so this was completely new to me and I actually learnt quite a bit from doing these studies. I focussed mainly on the faces and expressions but also did some poses for practice.