We had our crit today, having to show our final three concepts to our classmates, and tutors: Phil Gomm and Phil Hoskins. I more or less bombed. I showed my three final concepts, and none of them were received very well by the tutors. I was criticised for my design of mushroom, which looking back on, was a massive downfall in that concept, I seemed to research everything in all the images; Lava, Rock, Trees, Sky, Lightining, Water, Grass etc. which I thought all came out rather well on the result, but the mushrooms I overlooked, resulting in them making my 3rd scene into a sort of fairy-tale scene. Putting these mushrooms aside, my Lava Cavern was criticised for the perspective of it, the tutors suggested it would be better to have it at a more human angle or show where the view was looking from. This was something I knew I could of included, but thought that it would detract from the design of the cave (The spralling walkways) I didn't receive any criticism on my shoreline image.
Overall, I'm dissapointed. I probably put 6 hours or so technical drawing into each image and countless more on research, sketches and experimenting with the digital tablet, and it looks like none of this time has paid off ( but we'll see when the results come around). Phil advised he wanted something striking and bold from me this project, I thought I delivered, but I clearly didn't. I'm not going to dwell on this, I'm not going to say I'll put more effort into the next unit, because I put as much as I thought needed into this one, hopefully Unit Three: Enviroment, will offer me a better opportunity to improve again.
Probably wasn't bad as you make it out to be...
On an unrelated note, Bearded Phil tells me you like some of the 'finer' aspects of cinema, we should talk. :)
Hi Sam,
I won't go into too much detail here, as I'll condense my thoughts for your formal feedback - BUT, I have to admit that it worries me a bit that our reaction surprised you; of course, on a personal development level, you've got more experience with graphic tablets and photoshop than ever before - which is a plus - but what concerns me is that there is a big gap between what you say you want an image to accomplish and how you go about doing it; the mushroom factor is representative of something more generally 'weak' about your compositions; the mushrooms had no place in your world; they were badly drawn, under-researched, 'off-the-peg' and totally two dimensional - couldn't you see that for yourself? How could you have put them into your drawing in the first place - when they were so obviously 'wrong'? You are a visual creative individual, a person who makes aesthetic choices - this 'oversight' rather brings into question your judgement and your understanding of the skill level and sophistication increasingly required of you. Don't misunderstand me - you were hardly alone in this strangely 'casual' relationship to your own decision making - there were many other examples of scenes with no rationale for their content, or little or no sensitivity for the 'world' of which they were part.
What I suggest you do is now look at more concept art/digital painting and start to take it apart with your eyes to undertstand its conventions; you also need to improve upon your understanding of perspective (look up the 'rules of perspective' - simple time-honoured techniques for creating the illusion of space). Go visit Jolanta's blog, as there is a post there all about making strong compositions; you need to enrich your aesthetic sensitivities and sharpen your judgement; Unit 3 is going to need all of these skills and more!
Thanks for the clarification Phil. After working on some of the images for so long, I didn't criticise them enough to make changes, this is where I failed, I didn't realise how wrong they were in the scene.
I'm going to put much more attention to detail in my next scenes. See you on monday.