Skeletal

AO2, AO3

Summary

Skeletal structure focuses on ancient fossils and bone remnants of creatures found in the Mesozoic era. Dinosaur skeletons are iconic images, instantly recognisable, even though the animals have been extinct for millions of years. The artwork consists primarily of 2D vector work using reference images I had taken on trips to local natural history museums. The aim is to create images that could be used to advertise a natural history display for my hypothetical client Exhibition Hub.

Preparation

My idea was to create 2D images, tracing 3D models of dinosaur skeletons I had recreated. My first step was to visit some museums and get reference photos. Since dinosaur skeletons are usually very complex and intricate shapes, I understood that getting closeup footage from multiple angles would be crucial to understanding and trying to recreate a skeleton in either 2D or 3D.

To begin, I visited the Oxford Natural History museum to do a photoshoot of fossils and dinosaur bones. The museum was empty and the lighting was perfect due to the high glass ceiling. As a result, my first photoshoot was very successful. My next step was to book a slot to go visit the Natural History museum in London since I knew they had a large collection of fossils and skeletal remains. However, the skeletons were mostly hanging from the ceiling, the lighting was dim and the building was extremely crowded. This made taking pictures very difficult and the results were disappointing. Despite this, I was able to still get a couple of good photographs, although those taken at the Oxford Natural History Museum will most likely be the ones I use.

Digital Drawing

With the brief focusing on experimentation and recording, we had the option to either develop an image by hand or using digital techniques. As my strong side has been Blender so far, I decided to develop my work using using digital art software once again. I wanted to use this as an advertisement for my prehistoric themed art gallery for Exhibition Hub.

The photograph I picked for my first piece was that of a Tyrannosaurus rex skull due to it's iconic appearance and instant recognition factor. To start off, I imported the picture as a reference image into Blender and outlined the bottom jaw. After getting the rough shape, I moved onto the teeth. For these, I made one model, and then pasted it around the jaw. Following that, I moved onto the upper portion of the skull where I used the boolean modifier to hollow out the eye, nose and ear sockets. After finishing the modelling, I added some simple lighting and textures that I created and chose a good angle from which to render the picture. Then in photoshop, I started by outlining the shape of the skull using the pen tool and holding shift to steady it. With the outline done, I used the magic wand tool to select the inner area and filled it in a dark brown. I then used a soft brush with a low opacity to paint and shade the skull. I added highlights and shadows using the render as a reference for the lighting. With that done, I added the Exhibition Hub logo, some borders to frame the image and and relevant text for the promotion.

The second piece was similar to the first - though instead of a skull, I picked the full skeleton of a Bambiraptor as I had some good photos with plenty of detail. I started with the skull using the same method as before. This time it was less detailed as the skull only took up a small portion of the render. I made a start on the neck and spine of the dinosaur, duplicating vertibrae along it. For the ribcage, I used the mirror modifier to speed up the process and clone the ribs to both sides. I moved on to the arms, meshing one out then duplicating it to the other side and then repeated this for the legs. With the model done, I turned the background black and added some lighting. I exported the render to a digital painting program named Krita and did the same thing as the previous piece - I outlined the render and filled it in before starting to shade and paint it. I put it in the same template I made for the first one and changed the text underneath.

Vector Art

I believe that skeletal structure pairs nicely with the concept of vector art. This is due to the fact that the silhouette of a skeleton is far better than one of the full animal which would be a singular shape and possibly unrecognisable from just the outline. Bones, however, are perfect for vectors as they display the entire animal using just outlines. Additionally, they lack any form of detail making it much easier to recreate the image in Adobe Illustrator. For this brief I decided to carry on making advertisements for my hypothetical gallery of ancient fossils and remnants hosted by Exhibition Hub.

I started off by importing one of my photographs from Oxford's Natural History museum into Adobe Illustrator. As this was my first time using Illustrator, I decided to stick with something simple and just test out the tools by outlining a couple of skeletons. Using the pen tool, I began placing anchor nodes and outlining the skull of the dinosaur, I dragged it at certain points to curve the line. I then outlined some of the openings in the skull and used the shape builder tool to erase that area and create the nose and eye cavities. I shaded some of the areas a darker white to replicate the look of a shadow. After understanding the basics of Illustrator, I was quite comfortable with the tools. I moved onto make another vector of a triceratops skull. This time I put significantly more effort into the colours and shading which I believe was worth the effort.

For my complex vector, I started off by taking one of my previous photos of a path and editing in one of my recent skeleton photographs. This then gave me a good template to trace over and a good idea of where to lay things out. My first step was drawing the Iguanodon as it was the focal point. I used the pen tool to outline the shape of its skull and spine. After that I decided to make a start on some of the trees and bushes. At this point I decided to change the colours scheme and style to mimic a vector artist I had previously looked at - Mikael Gustafsson. To give the bushes a leaf-like outline, I first drew the rough shape of the bush then once again used the curvature tool to add more anchor nodes and drag them into curves and points to make the previously flat surface more jagged. I duplicated the bushes and trees, layering them behind one another. I then changed each row's colour to become more and more red the further back the bush was in the style of Gustafsson.

Animated GIF

Like previously mentioned in the landscape and scenery section, I split my animated GIF brief across these two sub-themes of landscape and skeletal. Both were to advertise hypothetical galleries for exhibition hub. My first GIF made use of Blender to create the animated part, however here, I wanted to try and use Premiere Pro to animate some PNGs. Prior to this I had very limited knowledge of Premiere Pro but I found picking it up to be relatively simple.

To start, I traced over the T-Rex skull I had previously made for the experimentation and recording brief. I split it into two components - the upper skull and the jaw. I exported them as separate PNGs and brought them into Premiere Pro where I added an animation track for both their positions and rotations. I drew a simple claw and the end of a T-Rex spine using my reference images and added them to my Premiere Pro file. I made the skeleton follow a biting action as my plan was to have it bite out a chunk of text advertising the immersive gallery. I wrote out some text in Photoshop, rasterized it, and created two versions - one which has been split in half imitating a bite mark, and a complete one. I added them both to Premiere Pro and made the text change to the split version as the skull bites down. To finish off, I added the Exhibition Hub logo, as well as some other information about the gallery

Screen Printing

Screen printing was very different to the majority of other work I had done during my A-level course as it is a traditional and physical craft rather than digital. Overall, I enjoyed it and believe that it has taught me something new.

To start, I printed out 3 separate pages of the triceratops vector art. Each page was a separate layer that could be laid on top of each other to create the full skull. I added an 'L' shape to guide me with my placement of the paper for each print and ensure that they aligned. I traced the layers onto news-print and cut them out using a scalpel to use as my stencils. Using one of the screen printing kits, I taped my base layer to the frame and put a sheet of paper underneath onto which I would print. I mixed some acrylic paint to get a nice orange shade for my base layer and added 2 parts screen printing medium to 3 parts of my acrylic paint. I then put the paint on top of the screen printing mesh and used the squeegee to push the paint through the fine mesh. After the layer was done, I washed the kit and replaced the stencil with the next one. It was a very similar process as the first layer but this time I used a darker colour. The third layer was identical to the first two and after it had all dried I created a digital version and imported into photoshop to clean up.

Evaluation

Personally, I thought the vector art turned out to be amazing. Dinosaur skeletons are always instantly recognisable from their outline alone, so pairing them with vector art - a media that primarily uses solid coloured outlines - was a very good fit. My only problem with my work in this sub-theme would be the GIFs: not only did they turn out to be quite low quality, but I also thought that they were very simple and there was a lot more I could've done to advertise an "immersive experience".

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