'The Shunned House': Playing with Levels

This image is more or less the original with the colours amplified moderately. I like the vibrancy of this image, especially the light falling across the rooftops of the houses on the right.

This image shows the green levels more prominently. I really like the tone displayed in this image. It retains the original boldness but shifts the tone entirely.

The levels in this image make the reds and blues more vibrant, applying a somewhat sinister tone overall. As effective as this image may be, its a bit too 'loud', even with an image as bold as the original. The clear separation of the white fence posts and the rest of the scene work brilliantly, though. Very 'Monkey Island'.

This image is similar to the image above, but with the greens made a little more vivid and the blues a little more suppressed.

I decided out of pure curiosity to see how it looked in simple black and white (with a blue filter) and I'm pleasantly surprised. I seems to address the tone perfectly. The lonesome, yet endearing house on the hill, the lighting during the focus to the house in the centre, with the light rolling across the tree limbs. I love it!

'The Shunned House' Progress

Just a little progress on the image from when I returned from work this evening. I've played around with lighting the scene (quite obscurely) using the red sky as my light source. I think it plays to the existing vivid colour palette well and kind of makes the scene that little bit more lively. I need to figure out a way of making the light pouring from the basement seem more like light and less like a beige pavement. There are many small details yet to be added and many things to be altered, but overall I feel the image is coming together nicely.

'The Shunned House' Progress

Just a quick bit of work to the image before I head off to work. It seems to be coming together nicely now and I think for the first time this unit, I'm genuinely quite happy with the progress of this piece. hurrah! Of course, there is so much more to be done to it, but the house is already starting to take shape rather nicely, so hopefully this may be finished by around midnight on sunday (I really, really hope so!).

Just a small update regarding colour and style experiments

Thumbnails and Experimenting with... Stuff for The Shunned House

"Stuff"? Yep, stuff. Not too sure how I can categorise a lot of this, as its all a bit muddled up bits from testing colours, to methods of illustrating, to composition. I'll explain as I go along.

Fig One- This was a quick experiment with one of the colour palettes I put together. I didn't dwell on detail, simply how colours would react with one another. I quite like the obscure partnership of colours and I'll probably carry these through to my final image.

Fig Two- In this thumbnail I played around with using symmetry to construct the building more accurately. I love how this turned out, both structurally and tonally, but unless the building is head on, this method doesn't really work so well.

Fig Three- In this thumbnail, I attempted to block out shapes with blobs of value instead of using line. I've tried this technique countless amounts of times, but I find it incredibly difficult to visualise my scene this way. I will incorporate this technique in some way (to suggest a distant landscape, for example) but I'll be using line to fabricate my final image, simply because I feel I have more control that way.

Fig Four- This was a very quick thumbnail just establishing potential foreground elements and general composition. This idea was carried over to the next image.

Fig Five- This is probably going to be my final painting for The Shunned House as it is the first idea I've had that I genuinely believe could translate into a pretty impressive image. The warped structure works well with the content of the story, as well as reflecting my own, slightly askew drawing style. There are some elements that I will reconsider adding in the final image (such as the gravestones, the high hill area behind the house etc), but in terms of style and composition, I am very happy with this idea.

I've got to find the rest of my thumbnails for The Masque of the Red Death and The Shunned House, which I shall hopefully upload tomorrow, along with the progress of my Maya work. 

Colours of 'The Shunned House'

Using the 'Colour Of' website suggested by Phil, I've began putting together some colour palettes for my images. Starting with 'The Shunned House', I began by jotting down words that I associated with the story as soon as they appeared in my head. I then entered these words into TheColourOf.com and saved the resulting images.

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!

Structure Influence Map for 'The Shunned House'

This is an influence map for the exterior appearance of the titular house in 'The Shunned House'. I've gathered images of elements mentioned within the text,

"broken fanlight, rotting ionic pilasters and wormy triangular pilament"


The building is of a similar construction to an Eighteenth century farmhouse, with various Georgian stylistic elements. The Georgian elements could also be translated to the design of the palace in 'The Masque of the Red Death', being set in a similar period. I've also put together some loose colour swatches, dabbing a bit of colour here and there just to see how they behave together, as well as setting the uneasy, gloomy tone and aesthetic of the story (quite halloween-y, but hopefully that will shift and change as the image takes shape.)

Initial Influence Map for 'The Shunned House'

This is the initial influence map for 'The Shunned House'. Going by the description in the excerpt, I've put together a few images of dilapidated Georgian-period houses, as well as elements of building degradation and the actual inspiration for the titular house.
Its an obvious place to start, but its early days (although I know how fast crit day will come!) and my ideas will (hopefully) take a more creative and adventurous turn soon enough.