Since I'm lacking in uni content on here I figured now that I'm working on my next project over Christmas I can do some process updates on my personal blog.

The next uni project is the 'Dichotomous characters' project which involves us concepting two characters that (to my understanding) look well together but also look very different.

To begin the project I used a similar process to my sentry gun which was to decide on a strong definite 'theme' before I even began concepting. This means I don't need to spend ages searching for a theme through my concepts and can instead focus on my own mini brief. I decided to do a space Queen and her handmaiden with inspiration from Queen Amidala's elaborate costumes and her plain (in comparison) hand maidens.

Although I was directly taking inspiration from somebody else's idea I tried to back track and look at where the designers may have got their inspiration from.


As I was pulling up reference and inspiration I was finding that I could trace back almost the exact costume and/or headress and hair inspiration for their designs. Something that I admired in their costume design was the solid base in Historical and cultural reference; one of the costumes for example doesn't differ any further than a kimono and one hairstyle/headpiece is almost exactly the same as a Mongolian Queen's.

Since they're so similar to their reference and probably more iconic/better known than their real life counter-parts if I try to start my designs from those inspirations I will arrive at something far too similar and would just end up looking like a Star Wars rip-off no matter how hard I tried.

To counter this I tried picking out aspects of the costumes that I liked; the impractical head-pieces, the excess of fabric and the detail and overall strong impression of the costume. I started pulling up Medieval/traditional Russian clothing which I was actually quite unfamiliar with. They ticked a lot of the boxes I needed especially in terms of huge and elaborate head pieces and rich detail in their layers of fabric. I still had to include some Chinese pieces since they were so fantastic I couldn't not let them influence my own design.

Moving away from the Queen's design I knew I wanted her hand-maiden to look plain beside her while also looking sleek and elegant. I found more modern reference for this design. I also began looking at Alien faces; to further separate my designs from Star Wars' I decided I should make my characters Aliens. I thought this would be an interesting challenge and would be more fun.

I also began looking at Art Deco and geometric shapes. Of course being influenced by my last Ancient Egypt themed project I considered designing my Aliens to look like they were the ones that influenced the Egyptian's style but I knew this may be too far-fetched and would limit my possibilities of a cool design.

Knowing that Silhouettes probably weren't going to work for me I went straight into sketching. I tried to focus on shape and not get bogged down in details since I knew once I started I'd never stop. I made the decision to design the Queen first since that was going to be the strongest design and then let the handmaiden be influenced by that.

Moving on with my favourites from the last batch I was struggling to find something I 100% liked- I had aspects of each that I really liked but they wouldn't all fit together properly. I did feel like I was achieving a sense of what I set out to achieve with my concepts though.

I started to refine some of the ideas which helped me move forward with something I quite liked.

Finally I had settled on an idea give or take a few details. The large headpiece is incredibly impractical but also large and imposing. The dress is relatively plain instead of silhouette but too much may have made the design lose balance.

Something I didn't want was for the queen to look too inviting, overly feminine or sexy. I felt the bare arms made her look just a little too nice and the large sleeves blocked her out just enough to make her look solid and strong. My alien space Queen does not dress to please the male gaze!!

With a Queen design I was comfortable with it was time to move on to her handmaiden. I really struggled at first to come up with something that looked good on its own but also worked beside the Queen and didn't make her look remotely as high-rank.


Eventually I came through with some designs I liked. I came up with veiling the handmaiden which would also hint that she was not as important as her Queen.

With the designs somewhat solidified so far I knew it was important that they worked from anything other than front view. I sketched them out in slightly more lively and realistic poses to begin to visualise them further. The next stage is their Alien faces which I'm hoping to make work really well with their clothing. Once I've done this I'll probably go all out on the details and my my am I looking forward to it!

We do in fact have to keep a university blog as part of our course but this year it's required that we keep them password protected because of some university privacy reason (I don't know I just do what I'm told)

This means that I can't really share what I'm doing unless I copy it over to this blog which is a little frustrating since I enjoy sharing what I do and writing on my personal blog. Throughout the last project it hasn't really been too relevant to put on here since it was entirely 3D-based and not an awful lot of 2D art was to be found. Although this new project 'The Sentry Gun' allows us to FINALLY concept and design our own model.

Since I wanted to share my concepting process I've decided to copy over this week's uni blog post to here:

So I've been flitting about thinking what to take on as my next 'project', and there's things that I WANT to do and things that I feel like I SHOULD do. This is a mix of both!

I'm totally aware that I don't do enough environments. I think overall I'm more interested in being a character artist but the thought of being absolutely terrible at anything else keeps me up at night.

I think one of my biggest problems with environment art (at the moment at least) is 'what to draw'. I have such a large visual bank for character art but less so for environment. So I decided to come up with this project! The 'underwater city'! Or 'mermaid city', not quite sure yet. But either way, I'm challenging myself to design (primarily) a palace and some cool mermaids to inhabit the palace. This includes final illustrations in the right setting of my final concepts.

So I've kinda taken it easy for this project, especially where the environment part is concerned, but I feel it's gonna be better to build it up slowly rather than jumping in at the deep end.


So to begin with I built up a moodboard with images I gathered from pinterest. It's pretty small at the moment but I tend to build it up with more once I've got a good direction on what I'm working on.

(From the top left- clockwise) Fishies! Some good starting points for mermaids. Next up is mermaid 'looks', different clothing and cultures. I like to mix in various nationalities and time periods to try and stop my work looking too dull or white washed. I also threw in a couple of pictures of the aliens from John Carter(?) I've never seen the film but I've always liked the face shape of the aliens and I'm hoping to steer away from fully human looking mermaids.

Next is some ideas for the palace. I thought sea shell shapes could be a good starting point as well as Indian architecture which I totally adore/admire. Plus a couple of shipwrecks for good measure.

I then have some pictures of coral reefs and some other underwater 'stuff' just for different colours and shape references. I also have some art nouveau pieces because I love the shapes and styles and think its got potential to work in an underwater city!


I HAD to start with the palace because otherwise I'd just put it off forever and paint pretty mermaids all day. I knew this would kinda be hit and miss because if I didn't like the first few things I did I'd want to abandon the project altogether. I figured using seashell silhouettes to work from would give me a good start.

I drew the silhouettes and then added some architecture into it using some reference from my mood board. I was working mostly from imagination as I didn't want the palace to look too much like it would be seen above ground! I'd also considered the fact that the mermaids can swim the height of the palace so just a door on the ground floor probably wouldn't cut it.


I considered some more organic shapes along the way too, especially in place of the pillar structures. Some worked and some really didn't!


I took my three favourite and drew into them a little bit to hopefully help give a sense of scale as well as detail. While drawing I decided that the massive cavern/opening could serve as a bit of a trade center while the upper levels would be where the royals reside. This gave it some interesting function and meant I could have more freedom with the design too!

I'm now stuck between one and two. Thoughts?!

So after attempting to re-do this several times I finally did it! I'm generally really pleased with how this turned out (don't know how long that'll last though...) The entire process was actually really straightforwards and I don't think I hated it once, so I thought I'd do a breakdown of how I did it here!

After doing my Sargent studies I had decided that I wanted to paint Jadis as if I were painting her portrait in real life. I thought this would be an interesting way of capturing her personality as well as her design. I started off with some really quick sketches exploring different poses; I knew I wanted her to look powerful but still sassy as hell.

I was struggling for ideas so I turned to existing Royal portraits. I quickly noticed that the women looked reserved while the men looked a little ostentatious; "Look at me look how powerful I am!!!". While the Queens of old didn't need to do this, I felt like Jadis would act like a King, and would want to look like that in her portrait so I changed up some of my poses for her.

With the help of my trusty camera and my inner sass I took some photos of different poses which helped me visualise them a lot easier (plus I really enjoyed it but don't tell). I felt having Jadis holding some kind of weapon really helped give her a strong pose.

With the pose decided it was onto the final! I've come to realise the more I paint that I really benefit from giving myself some good lines to work from. I know some artists work better blocking in the shapes but I always find myself getting lost and frustrated without lines. This way I work out all the problems before I tackle painting.

I whack in the flat colours to give myself a good base and then go straight to the face to avoid intimidating myself (sounds silly I know, but if I try and do a bit all over I kinda get overwhelmed and give up) I noticed a lot of the royal portraits had some kind of deep red drapery or something relatively interesting in the background so I added some into the top corner.


Using my reference as I paint I usually flip my canvas quite often to check for errors.


I then work my way down the painting to block in good details and then jump around adding more where needed. I have a lot of references available, some I use more than others.


And finished! (approx 2 days on and off painting) I used a photo of a sword hilt because I was struggling with design as well as rendering to the standard I wanted as well as a texture pattern for the dress to make it look more interesting! I do feel like the Sargent studies I did helped this painting which is always a good sign!

Now that I've done the two Jadis versions to a level I'm happy with I hope to tackle more Narnia creatures and characters! What would you like to see me re-design?