Reflecting on my first term of my concept art Masters Degree

So, you may or may not be asking. Sarah,,, Where the hell have you been since last August?! And to that I can't explain... Or maybe I can. I first started by finding myself this awesome thing called part time work! I thought it would be efficient choosing work that started at 4am and ended up 8am, ready for me to start the day at uni! But in fact, I found myself exhausted all the time. So my answer to that? Quitting and working part time on some awesome indie video game- which was an awesome move on my behalf and I am having a smash hit of a time. I don't really feel qualified to be working but I am having so much fun getting to work in a small team. 
While all of this work has been going on I have also been doing something else, University!! I chair a society for digital artists and I am doing my concept art Masters Degree. It is so much more heavy and a lot more work then my BA, but I am having fun. I feel like I have a lot more structure and I enjoy having short 2 week mini deadlines. There has also been a lot of emphasis on doing studies from life, Which I have put as the images above this bit of text. Its good to see just how the things that surround you can really influence your design, there's a lot of beauty in the mundane things that are around you. 

Here is the work that was inspired by my surroundings and the stuff around me. I really enjoyed making the props and I think they look pretty cool. It makes me want to wrap things up in leafs like a zongzi. 
These are from the most recent module I have completed, and since the next few modules I will discus youll see my presentation goes a little down the toilet, this is because I wasn't confident in my presentation skills until I had a lecture showing and explaining good presentational skills.. 

 A lot of the briefs this term have been character design, but this character design I had the most control. The brief for this one was to use your own influences and artist inspirations to design a character. So I chose to look at Maple town. I looked at tonko house too, my final piece was this character painted in Tonk house style. I really want to  get into Vis dev for animation. But I feel like my work is stylised enough nor do I understand it enough. This is why I chose to do this. I feel like over the past few months of being on my MA I have focused more on the stylised aspect of concept art instead of going straight into trying to make everything realistic or art station front page worthy. 

It was fun mixing the two together and painting this character. I will post studies for this at the bottom of the blog post! 

This was a horror brief! And ill be completely honest, I cant stomach horror at all. But I like the kind of horror where its a cat and mouse chase, A threat that isn't really a violent or a bloody one. I wanted to link these two characters together so I chose the Yorkshire rose. 
The premise of the story is: A grandma who loves to craft and create suddenly passes away leaving behind all her crafts. The grandmas son, wants the house she used to live in... but NOT the crafts. This craft isnt finished yet and has to find its face before escaping. 

I tried using shape language to show the difference between the two. I hope you can tell who is the good guy and who is the bad guy! 

A creature design! This was a fun one! We had to mix two animals to make a fantasy character design. I first started by researching, listening to a lot of science podcasts. I then started listening to one about evolution and hibernation. Which is really interesting and its cool to see no matter what the earth throws at up, Earth life survives! And adapts..So I looked at two animals which have two really crazy hibernation habits and then studied them.

I wanted to mix this lemur and this salamander. One can survive really hot weather and one can survive really cold weather. I also wanted it to be able to sit in dark caves (Or maybe it was an excuse to give it huge cute eyes) 

We had to chose a character from a list and give them a disability, without the disability being disruptive to the story. I think this was a risky brief to do within 2 weeks, a lot of disability is misunderstood and usually under researched especially in the media. I also think that saying it shouldn't disrupt the story or be an issue is a little weird, as someone with a disability coming from a family with people with disabilities they can sometimes disrupt your day, that's not a bad thing at all. I chose diabetes because my mother has type1, I have grown up as her carer and I am really familiar with what is needed and how to care. So I put my knowledge together with a fun, fresh, and funky 80's aesthetic. 

Ever heard of captain planet? Neither did I! Until this project at least. We had to redesign captain planet and have 6 solid ideas, so here are mine! I think personally my favourite one is the monkey one.. 

Another creature design, this one is very specific, which I like.. To design a creature that lives in the desert which is fast and able to run with a human on it. I really liked the idea of a human sitting in a kangaroo pouch

A 16th century character design. where I tried to push the shapes to make a unique character 

An elf! 

STUDY SPAM!!!