I then took the recurring hues of pink, purple, green, blue and orange and made swatches from them using ColourSchemeDesigner.com (another 'Phil-suggested' site), so that I could later incorporate them in my images.
The first three colour palettes are tetradic colour schemes, the fourth is triadic and the fifth is complimentary.
The colours are very vibrant, which reflects my own personal preference and style of using bold colours in contrast with dark, black tonal work to develop somewhat of a visual harmony. This is a very 'comic book' approach, and is probably the most familiar to myself, but it may not be suitable for concept paintings.
This is where I need some help. Do I sacrifice personal style choices in order to create, what I feel may be a slightly more generic, less interesting image, or do I work in a more comfortable way, developing the image how I envision it in my head with my own stylistic preferences, but risk coming out with (in the words of 'Photoshop' Phil) a more 'childish' image?
Please, give me advice! I'm a little stuck here! Thank you!
My advice is this: remember, you're being asked to generate concept art for a cg animated version of your three books - not concept art for a film, or necessarily for photorealistic animation. You need to make sure your work has a visual concept driving it - a justification (as opposed to style-creep or comfort zone) - let the visual concept dictate, Steve - not your habits. It seems to me that you're already subscribing to a boundaried logic here - these colours, for example, are not 'favourites' of yours - but rather generated from a creative method arising from the text itself (it's not like you're saying, "ooh, I always work in pink and yellow, so this painting is going to be pink and yellow too...". I think the issue for you now might be 'where do my shapes/forms/geometry come from?' - as this will surely dictate how 'childlike' or stylised or detailed everything is going to be. For example, if you decided you were going to adopt a more 'expressionist' approach, you'd use colour and shape to heightened and to agitate.
ReplyDeleteSimple answer - derive everything from your visual concept, not from an existing habit. Obviously, in technical terms, the perspective etc. should be accurate and these paintings should work as spaces - but there spaces in an animation universe - not a realistic one. Personally, I'd spend some time going for an extreme version of the idea in your head - you can always dial the style back if it doesn't work. Discover by doing, Steve.