Work: Narnia- Floating Cogs/Creation scene

New visual for Narnia- I realised I'd done lots of concepts for plants but hadn’t done any of rock formations or natural landscape designs, so I created this image. It shows Aslan in the bottom right hand corner singing (as described in the book), but I have added cogs to the scene as if they are forming from his words, and the floating away to their destination.

I printed this image on the Uni printers and it came out really well, almost perfectly matching the on screen colours so I'm quite pleased. We have started laying out the book this week and this image will be in as a large fold out page for maximum impact.

Work: Narnia- Gate into the Garden

One of the scenes I am designing for is The Garden. This is where the tree from my previous blog post is situated and where Digory plucks a magic apple for Aslan. The Gate has a fairly basic description in the book, just as being Gold, with silver writing on it and surrounded by a wall made of turf. This Concept visual is to represent that gate.

Work: Narnia- Tree in the Garden

This is a rendering of the Tree in the Garden where Polly and Digory have to go and collect a magic apple for Aslan. In the book the description of this tree is quite basic so it left me quite a lot design space to play with. The book does describe the other trees in the garden as being “not only green but also blue and silver”, so I adapted this for the central tree and made it purple, green and silver- this makes it stand out a bit more showing it to be more important.

Expo Invitation

This is our invitation for the Expo- keeping with the Cog theme we tried to make it look like an old Victorian ticket.

Inspiration: Bastion

Bastion, in the words of its creators Supergiant Games, is “an original action role-playing game set in a lush imaginative world” (http://supergiantgames.com/?page_id=242)

I really like the visual look of this game; it’s like a moving digital painting. I can see a similar style of illustration in some of my own renderings. The use of colour in the game is effective also to enhance the fantasy element. I like the use of the isometric style view point- this would be a good way of drawing our map for the Magicians Nephew- the simplified perspective makes it easier to draw and easier to read.

I think it would be a good Idea for myself and Hannah to incorporate some bolder character and set combination illustrations as at the moment they two aspects are quite separate in our designs, some beautifully visualised imagery of a character in an environment might help us tie the two aspects together.

I particularly like this image as it seems to bring elements from all the environments within the game into a single representational image- at a glance it shows all the environments. Id quite like to produce something like this but it will have to wait till the end, as I still haven’t designed all the environments yet.

All images from  http://supergiantgames.com/?page_id=242

Work: Wood between the Worlds SECOND render

Render number two, this is slightly more what I envisioned in my head but I still don’t think its right- yes it shows the look but it doesn’t quite feel like it’s giving enough information. I might do some tree concepts to try and explain the Idea a bit more; this would help give a wider picture of the whole design...I’m conscious that I'm running out of time though so it may have to do.

Work: Wood between the Worlds render

I’ve finally started designing the Wood between the Worlds... only slightly behind schedule. I started by sketching the design out then running it through Photoshop. It proved very difficult to render and I got quite frustrated with it, and almost gave in to despair! But then I tried a different rendering style using a little bit of photo collage to create a different look, resulting in this...

It’s not really what I want but as an image I think it looks quite nice and dynamic so I’ve kept it as some development work. Now I have to try and render it how I want it to look...however that may be.

Work: Laser Cutting

I went to the laser cutter the other day to get my model bits cut for the Great Hall of Charn, and here is the evidence. Unfortunately the laser cutter had a problem so I’ve not been able to cut the long walls, so for now the bits are sat under my desk waiting to be assembled.

I had leftover space on my sheets so decided to have the bits cut for a model of the magical bell plinth that sits in the middle of the hall. I forgot to take into consideration the thickness of the wood so I had to assemble it a little differently then I planned but I think it still gets the design across.

Work: Charn- Window of the Gods NEW render

I previously uploaded a render of “the window of the gods” showing the stained glass detail. Now I’ve done a complete rendering of the whole wall that runs the length of the Great Hall. On this version of it I’ve overlaid the brick pattern and CAD brickwork to show greater detail. I think it works quite well to get across a basic understanding of the style and atmosphere.

Work: Charn- CAD for laser cutting

These are the CAD files I had to make for laser cutting my model of Charn’s Great Hall. I’m going to go see the technician shortly to check the files are correct and then fingers crossed start cutting. I rekindled my relationship with AutoCAD to produce the files, and past experience taught me that curves are evil so thankfully a lot of the design was strait lines and repeated patterns.

I hope it looks good once made.

Work: Charn- Window of the gods

I’ve been working the design for the Great Hall of Charn up in CAD...its proving most difficult! This has defiantly been the most stressful bit of design so far. Trying to get all the arches, pillars, windows, Hammer beams, Doorways etc to line up and look good almost defeated me but its nearly finished now so the end is in sight.

Along the outer walls of the Great Hall are 13 colossal windows, 21meters high by 4 meters wide. Here is a visualisation of the stained glass within the windows. They represent god-like women of Charn (possibly Jadis herself). Again I have kept with the colour scheme of Charn and have over stylised the gods into twisted representations of people. Scary but beautiful is the tagline for Charn.

Work: Charn- Stained Glass Windows

Here are some of the designs I’m working on at the moment. The Charn Great hall needs to be vast in size and epically lit, therefore I decided to incorporate a huge Stained Glass window on the back wall, enabling me to play with light and shadows throughout the room.

This is a quick render of the central clock motif. The rose in the centre represents Charn’s hatred and fear of nature and the organic. Clockwork has almost completely taken over in this world so the rose imprisoned in the glass is trying to represent this.

This is one of the smaller windows to the side of the central rose window. The bound hands represent the cruel nature of Charn and their use of slaves and hostages. The colours that run through Charn are reds, blacks and greys.

This is a half rendered visual of the back wall in its entirety. The size of the door indicates the scale. The broken clockwork on the wall represents the clockwork nature of the world and becomes a common motif throughout the Great Halls design.

More visuals of the great hall itself to come.