MPG Brief - Moodboards & Observational sketches [Week 1]

Mood boards:

Using the suggestions my peers and tutor gave me, I put together a mood board of all the visual references i want to incorporate into my design. I really like the concept of the princess being one with the woods around her, tangling into a mess of limbs, bark and roots. With this in mind, I looked at a variety of topics from real life woods and forests, the famous chained trees of the Major Oak and the Alton towers tree [the chains on this tree in particular are a big inspiration to me], as well as zombies, depictions of tree spirits and some similar creatures within video games. I also annotated my mood board with some ideas i had in mind when gathering my images.

Annotated mood board

Gathering visual references:

To help build my visual library further, I decided to go out and get some photos of the woodlands around where i live, there are three trees in particular near where i live that i wanted to look at, they both have a lot of different textures on them as well as twisting branches and mushrooms that i thought were interesting to look at. I also included some photos from my trip to Elvaston Castle in Debyshire last year, I went with a group of people who brought their Krampus costumes with them, so i also included a photo with one of them in as I considered the Krampus as in inspiration for my character. I hope to also go to the Major oak at some point to get some photos there, If i do, i will add them to this post. 

Using these images, I will create some observational sketches looking at how the trunks of the trees branch out into their many limbs, how to replicate a bark like texture, and also look at mushrooms and lichen that grow on the trees. 

I also hope to get some photos of mushrooms as they start popping up around the woodlands, i think adding them to my design will help give off a more wild and creepy feel to my character design.

Observational sketches:

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/the-anatomy-of-the-human-skull-baf6ac7b781a46218dca2b59dee58817

Here are some of my observational sketches, my first set are looking into the shapes of the trees, trunks and branches within my reference images as well as a small sketch of a mushroom. [I intend to draw more mushrooms soon, i think they will be a good point of reference for not only their form but the textures present on the mushrooms too]. I think the most important thing within these sketches is to get a good feel for how wood warps and twists to get those patterns you see on the trunk and roots, my idea is that these shapes will wrap around my character creating a sort of wooden prison around her.

I then had  a look at some skulls using the sketchfab link as a reference, I decided to use a 3D model as my reference as i could rotate it and draw the skull from some angles i havent worked from before. I made a few notes on my sketches to justify my reasoning of looking at skulls, as I want my character to be quite gaunt and almost corpse like, i thought wrapping skin directly on top of bone and disregarding muscle mass would help me achieve this very gangly and withered look. If i were to combine this with the bark like textures of the wood I think that would also be quite interesting, so I think what I will do next is look at some wood textures and try to replicate them digitally [as i will be working digitally for the more finished concept work, learning how to replicate what i see within my drawing software will be very important].