The Gloaming

-Images of books sculpted and then photographed and enhanced with Photoshop realism.

Article
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/capital-life/9051930/From-school-to-Weta-Workshop

Images of work
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/d0vYA

Notes
-The world of the gloaming is a very primitive and hostile place
-The characters convey a sense of homelessness and constant wandering

-Consider all the elements of their daily life as every little detail adds up to the consistency and realism of the big picture
-fabric in the Gloaming is rare, characters wear little material
-Everything around the characters feed in to their character and appearance
-The stitching and patchwork repairs of the clothing help set up the idea that the characters in the Gloaming cannot easily replace their limited clothing as there are no shops or stores. The mend as they go.
-Characters as creatures no humanoid through use of odd scale, bulges and distorting etc.

-Composition of this illustration has also been carefully designed to add to the character.

-adds to the enchantment and hint at a sense of music.

-He uses a spiral template, leading the viewer’s eyes and attention

-A general rule to follow with any concept design or illustration is splitting the image into:

#  darker foreground

# medium dark mid ground

# lighter background

-The thing you want the viewer’s eye to focus on should obviously always be in the most focused.

-If the image was more brightly lit so you could make out all the details, it would lose its depth, warmth and sense of mystery, all those things are as important, often more important, than small details of character and setting.

-Avoid beauty, steering clear of the conventional beauty

-Examples of main hero characters in another worldly fantasy setting that are good looking so that the audience can easily accept them are:

Luke skywalker/ Starwars

Gen and Kira the Gelflings /the Dark Crystal

Frodo Baggins/Lord of the rings

Arrietty/the borrowers

-beautiful characters in fantasy very boring.

-Orks rather than Elves in regards to middle earth.

-Luke skywalker is nowhere near as interesting as Yoda or Bib Fortuna

-"Having decided that my main character would not be conventionally beautiful, I began the design process.  With her lack of beauty she would need to be very endearing.  To me, the most endearing creature I can think of is also one of the ugliest, a Pug. Though i did not want to directly emulate a pug when designing Wosel, I did want to capture the elements that made it so wonderfully fully of ugly yet endearing character."

-Fur was avoided as she finds animals from our world in the story and has never seen anything like them. She herself should not look like a rabbit or dog.

-"It’s a skin colour that immediately sets a fantasy vibe for a humanoid character, and in the case of Wosel, anchors her firmly into the forest dense world of the Gloaming which she inhabits."

-She is a Woodwose. In ancient Eurocentric mythology, Woodwose was a term for the mysterious forest dwelling creatures that grew into the myth of the Greenman

-Her eyecolour is orange iris on a yellow sclera

-lighter more familiar shades like blue made her look like she was pandering to the audience, becoming to Disney like and darker too much like an animal.

-Expression in a permanent state of nervousness

-She is never completely at ease

-Clothes evoke the sense of homelessness, wandering and lack of resource that play a key role in the setting of the story

-The element of craft through the weaving of patterns in garments show a level of cleverness that visually heightens her intelligence over the other characters we see and meet on the journey.

-Square edged bobble of her hat and the loop like rounded edges of her undershirt.

-Large woven back pack instantly evokes the idea of travel and adventure

-Introduce the audience into the Faerie world of the Gloaming. A harsh and hostile world where days are spent foraging for enough food before night falls

-post-apocalyptic world- like mad max world

-Recourses are few and you can trust no one, only in this case the world is still very green and beautiful.  -Characters have no knowledge of agriculture so don’t produce food in abundance, and their world is shared by hostile factions that wish to feed themselves and look out for their own.

-Only the creatures are more conscious and have language and culture up to a point.
-homeless vagabonds
-has strange wondrous species in the Gloaming

-"In the beginning story of the Gloaming, Wosel captures and sells off many different types of creatures from our own world. Later throughout her journey she comes back into contact with the characters that bought them and discovers how they have used the animals to best serve their purposes in the hostile environment of the Gloaming."

-Only use Eurocentric woodland animals, placing the strange origins of the tunnel in any number of countries such as England, Ireland, Scotland, Russia, Asia Scandinavia and even America.

-Draws on , origins in original mythology 

-animals and folk that would benefit from riding them.

-"The Gloaming hosts a large and diverse range of Faeries that each align to one of four groups. The Air Folk have the ability to fly and make their nests in the high treetops, the Water folk dwell in the deep lakes and running rivers where they nest along the banks, while the Fire folk dwell in the hot, barren mountains known as the Dragon lands and can endure and in some cases, produce flame. The Earth folk on the other hand are no more likely to fly than they are to brave the waters and go for a swim, and though contact with fire is a rear occurrence for them, they fear it above all else. This leaves them land locked and earth bound, which is just as well since their main attribute is to dig."

-Aim is to design a creature with intelligence from an existing myth/folklore and animal/s.
-dwell in the trees and often resemble the trees themselves