Some (Kind of) Iterations.

I took one of my silhouettes and from that I created a few ideas of the head and head-wear would look in more detail, also starting to look at colour.

In the first two, although I kind of wanted him to have a mysterious look to him, I think he looks a bit too 'silent' most likely due to his mouth being completely covered (I don't really like '2' at all actually), I tried another variation, staying true to the silhouette but having his entire face visible.

At the moment I'm kind of working in a simple line-arty art-style  just to get the general idea of how he will look, as I feel more comfortable playing around and changing things using lines rather than painting, once I have a more clear idea, I will probably create a more detailed painting.

Analysing the Lighting in Two Paintings.

 Thomas Eakins - The Gross Clinic 

Source:

http://www.newyorkartworld.com/images-reviews/aeakins/TheGrossClinic-329x400.jpg

This is a painting titled The Gross Clinic by the artist Thomas Eakins, he uses light to successfully create a very intense atmosphere, by placing the surgeons in a spotlight and having very little light around the rest of the room, the light seems to be coming from multiple directions but all directed at the surgeons, this seems to be the case because the standing man has a highlight on his forehead, meaning there is definitely some light coming from the top left of the composition, but the man on man on the right's jacket is also fairly well lit from the back, which would indicate multiple light sources.

The audience seem to be unaffected by the multiple spot lights that light the surgeons, I say this because the entire crowd are being lit from the viewers left and the light diffuses the further to the right of the painting, I would say that this is caused by a window letting in a very small amount of light or dim light on the wall to the left.

Hsin-Yao Tseng - San Francisco

Source:

http://funstuffcafe.com/img/creative-art/hsin/hsin02.jpg  

This painting is a painting named San Francisco by Hsin-Yao Tseng. In this painting while it is still quite a dark scene, there is clear natural sun but the light is a lot more diffused. the ground however, because it is wet, is highly reflective and is reflecting light clearly and almost mirror-like, there is quite a bit of atmospheric diffusion in the sky caused by fog, the buildings in the distance are very unclear, because the light is being diffused and scattered by the fog, as a result, by the time the light reaches the 'lens' it looks very blurry and desaturated.

The buildings are fairly well lit most likely by bounded sun light affected by dynamic occlusion, this is most clearly evident on the building closest on the right of the image, it get a lot darker towards the bottom of the wall, and the lighting on the street, the car lights and street lights for example. Since the surface of the road isn't completely flat, the reflection of the lights in the water seems stretched out [1]. The buildings don't reflect a lot of light, so despite the wet road's reflective properties, they still create a dark shadow.

[1] Diagram of the reflection of the car lights on the roads uneven surface.

Sheet Nine

These are my final 3 silhouettes, of the three, the third is definitely my favourite, I kind of like the first but it looks too much like the guards from Aladdin, the middle one just looks like a wizard or something, and is generally pretty boring.

I'm going to start iterations now, I'll chose about 3 of my favourite silhouettes and start adding details and colour.

Barbary Pirate Reference

Source:

1 http://jumamshabazi.webs.com/mulai%20ismaiel%20moorish%20king%20were%20muliano%20(moo-lee)%20comes%20from.jpg

2 http://www.cindyvallar.com/Barbarycorsair.jpg

3 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Barbarossa_Hayreddin_Pasha.jpg

4 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Mola_Pirata.jpg

5 http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/a-barbary-pirate-captain-ca-1800-everett.jpg

6 http://www.veltd.net/valmin/imgvalmin_10/images/9886.jpg

Source:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Eug%C3%A8ne_Ferdinand_Victor_Delacroix_033.jpg

This was just a painting I found on the Wikipedia page that I liked, it could be helpful, I like the clothing of the people in this painting and the colours, I like how the reds and light blues could contrast with the Battle of Trafalgar paintings that I found, in a video game setting this would be great and player character would really stand out.

Considering a Setting and Synopsis

While doing some research on pirates in the early 19th century, I was pretty pleased to find that there were Pirates who operated in North Africa, dubbed 'Barbary Pirates', I was happy to find this, since I didn't want to have my Soldier be a typical western idea of a Pirate: Jolly roger, Pirate hat and a parrot on his shoulder, now that I am going to soon start moving on from the silhouette stage it's important that I have a more specific idea of how the pirate will look, so I will specifically be looking at the aesthetics of the Barbary Pirates.

Funny coincidence, one of the reference images I mentioned seeing of pirates in turbans, happens to be from the Barbary Pirates Wikipedia page, it's the image that initially inspired me to give the pirate a turban.

Source:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/BainbridgeTribute.jpg

It seems that around the time of the Battle of Trafalgar, there was some sort of peace treaty in place to stop the Pirates attacking boats from certain countries, I think Britain may have been among them, and the Pirates did operate mainly along the Mediterranean as far as I can tell, so maybe the Battle of Trafalgar could act as a sort of distraction for the Barbary's to perform some kind of heist unnoticed, the story could take place just after the events and the Barbary Soldier is on his way back from the heist.

Sheets Seven & Eight

This sheet is kind of just a collection of miscellaneous silhouettes with no theme or connection, I was kind of just getting down some generic pirate shapes, nothing particularly inspirational to me.

I ended up getting a lot of silhouettes out of this base, explored quite a few ideas and I think I have come closer to reaching a final design, I think I am going to take inspiration from the Silhouettes in Sheets Three & Six and this one, to create 3 more, slightly more detailed silhouettes to then move on to my iterations, that works out nicely as it brings me to 100 silhouettes as well.

I was trying to not go with the cliché idea of adding a parrot to the pirates shoulder, but in the end I liked the versions with a rat on his shoulder, somewhat of a cliché still, but I like it.

In one of my reference images I used, There was an image with some guys with turbans, I thought it would be an interesting variation from the typical pirate hat, as I felt it was a bit corny maybe, and I thought simply a bandanna was a bit boring, I tried out some of the other hats that I have been using in the past already, like the top-hat and the bowler hat, I kind of liked them but I do really like the turban, in interesting, and kind of mysterious  which was something that I mentioned that I would like the capture in the soldiers character before.

Sheets Five & Six

Now that I have decided to continue in the pirate direction, I started getting a bit rough with the silhouettes, I kind of started giving him a sort of poncho like thing, and I liked that, It's quite an American western/South American thing, but I think it could still work, it could look nice anyway, I started trying around some variations of a poncho wearing pirate, and I do like it so far, it's a nice change from the long coats that most of the variations have been wearing so far. I tried out a variation, wear the poncho was simply an item of clothing and didn't cover the soldiers arms, but I felt that when it covers his arms, it makes him look quite menacing and mysterious, kind of what I am going for.

These are some more variations, I was mixing in some elements of some of the older silhouettes, like the top hat for example, but he doesn't really look like a pirate any more, I was also experimenting with some peg-legs. The guy on the left is a kind of Jack Sparrow character, the head at least, I like the idea of the pirate hat over the bandanna, and kind of dreadlocks with accessories in them, but he still has the poncho.

Bonus: just added a hood to the Sparrow guy while I was writing this, I thought it looked quite nice.

Sheet Four

This is a quick update of a few silhouettes that I actually completed about a week ago, wasn't particularly pleased with them, although I do quite like the two in the top left, I think at this point I want to abandon the idea of making the Soldier an actual soldier, and continue in the pirate direction.

Sheet Three

I decided to take my favourite silhouette so far, and modify it slightly and add some details in the clothing. I also started playing around with hats again, I'm beginning to feel like Gabe Newell.

It is still quite stylised and the proportions are off, but I think for the purpose they do the job. in the original version of this silhouette I of added some lines just for effect, not really knowing what they would be, and I kind of did that again with a couple of these, I just feel that they add a bit of character, and do sort of imply texture, movement and additional clothing or accessories.

Heads

A few silhouettes of heads, I felt like in a lot of my silhouettes I was just kind of changing the hat or something , so I thought I might as well do some dedicated head silhouettes since that way I could actually go into some detail.

Sheet Two

My first set of silhouettes were quite stiff and clean, I though that maybe it was hindering my creativity, so I decided for this sheet to use slightly more abstract and inaccurate proportions, this was really a mix between intentional abstraction and stylisation, and a lack of effort to making the proportions make sense, so I could focus more on other details.

The two outlined silhouettes are my favourite of this batch, I still prefer the 'Pirate' guy from before, but I think I'm making progress. By using a more rough and stylised approach this time, the silhouettes have a bit more character, which is good; simply having character gives an impression of  how The Soldier might look, or his facial expression or the patterns on his clothes etc.

Battle of Trafalgar

I got some images of paintings of the Battle of Trafalgar from google, I took my favourite three to give myself an impression of the kind of setting that the character will be operating in, this will probably come more in handy when I start doing some more detailed colour designs, but it's still good to get an image of the setting early on.

Source: 

1 http://www.shafe.co.uk/crystal/images/lshafe/Stanfield_Sketch_for_The_Battle_of_Trafalgar_1833.jpg

2 http://www.directart.co.uk/mall/images/dhm1112.jpg
3 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Joseph_Mallord_William_Turner_027.jpg/300px-Joseph_Mallord_William_Turner_027.jpg

Reference

Here are some reference Images I collected from google:

Source:

1 http://www.pastpatterns.com/moreimages/040color.jpg

2 http://i.piccy.info/i4/6d/13/7b8f2f211d777bb52d9bfdd8eade.jpeg

3 http://www.napoleonguide.com/images/napgal_battle.jpg

The first group of images above, are all soldier uniforms, as of course, The Soldier, is a soldier, I created a few silhouettes using this template, but I considered that the solider is probably not in full uniform, maybe he's is in a scruffy uniform with a casual hat, or vice versa (although that might look a bit strange.) So I wanted to give the solider either full casual clothing, or a mixture of his solider uniform and casual clothing as I mentioned.

Source:

1 http://lovinglifeandbeingabitch.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/x.jpg?w=545&h=662

2 http://media-cache-lt0.pinterest.com/upload/109775309637830445_mMJJx17r_b.jpg

3 http://www3.fitnyc.edu/museum/tailorsart/images/SUIT-19TH-CENTURY-thumb.jpg

4 https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/362587/standard/1942_86%2B250x300.jpg

5 https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXyAiDZzuwX4Cu52htphIyqnJeBTyPL8wTLiV4nISsm6PN1bLigZnOzrbKjduDUQyabBJz9EG8HzEoAS0esbqWwzS-ql3MOmbyGjBlIJ5tpKztz7JRw58QpAAO_fuK8qGBmkKPVuVG9hY/s400/3110152632_e67cf22c91.jpg

I got some images 19th Century French fashion, the most abundant supply of reference was of women's clothing, predictable I guess, but I collected them as well I they could still inspire male clothing aesthetics.

I took some drawings of clearly upper class French men, but the story indicates that the soldier is scruffy and poor looking when he enters the town at first, enough that people don't believe that he could possibly be wealthy, so I took some images of 19th century French lower class (I wasn't being particular to the Napoleonic Era at this point since I figured that Fashion didn't change all that much within the century, especially amongst the poor.)

Sheet One

Just finally got around to creating this Blog today so I will have a few days worth of work to upload right now.

This is the first set of Silhouettes I created for the Soldier character in a re imagining of the fairy tale 'The Tinderbox' Set in The Napoleonic Period.

I wasn't particularly happy with any of them apart from the one I clearly and obnoxiously accentuated in the sheet, which I will explain a bit more in a moment.

I have had a bit of difficulty actually differentiating each silhouette from the last, most of the reference material that I have collected, which mostly consists of internet research, shows that a lot of the Napoleonic Era fashion, was very very similar: Top Hats, long coats, tight trousers and boots, most images show men wearing almost identical attire, even the soldiers uniforms are very similar in silhouette form, I feel like I'm travelling in circles with the revisions with each new silhouette.

The accentuated silhouette shown in the sheet was my favourite by far, it kind of reminds me of a pirate, which at this point I haven't decided whether is a good thing or a bad thing, I have considered setting my version of the story at some point after the Battle of Trafalgar on a ship (an idea I got from someone else) so a pirate-y attire might be fitting, it gives the main character a sort of scruffy and dishonest look as well, which is important foreshadowing at the first act of the tale (the meeting with the witch.)