Environmental Storytelling

For our second study task, we have to consider backgrounds.
They are part of any animation, and can help make the whole image look better and even tell a story of their own!

That's why I think this task was important, because if I start considering all aspects of my animations then hopefully my storytelling will get better!

To complete the task I had to visit 3 places, a mixture of interior and exterior (two of which I'd never been before) and produce between 5 and 10 drawings considering these points:

Why have you chosen to draw there? What do you expect to see? What media are you going to use? What about light, shadow, colour, texture, shape, composition, perspective?

This task turned out to be harder then I thought it would be, I didn't realise how much there was to consider! However after thinking about it and visiting places during the Christmas holidays, I managed to get the task done.

Location 1: Inside a train

This is an internal space I'm starting to get used to since moving to Leeds, so I had a vague idea of what I might see on this journey:
Pedestrians, seats, luggage, windows, health and safety signs...
However, Once I was sat down and ready to draw, the train was almost deserted...

I also hadn't really thought about the layout of the seats or reservation tickets before, so that was my main focus for a while.
We stopped in one station - Sheffield, for a while, so I had chance to study the wall outside the window:

Once the train was moving again a few more people sat down around me; the main person I noticed was across from me, just sat in the same position staring at his phone:

This made me think a lot about how technology is slowly taking over our lives, and how this will be interpreted into animation in the future.
I wanted to use fine liner to draw these, since the train is generally quite tidy and modern, so a finer line will hopefully represent this. I used crayon to shade in certain aspects of the drawings, to show the objects/people that are riding aboard the train, which could represent them looking slightly out of place on the modernised, tidy train.

Location 2: Moor Farm

My brother goes to a place called "Moor Farm" to have football training sessions with the official Derby County football team.
I hadn't actually been to a training session before so I thought this could potentially be the ideal location for me to complete this project.
I was sat in the car for most of the time, so decided to draw my view out of each of the windows, giving the viewers an idea of what's in the space.

Marker Pens

Charcoal

I decided to keep my images monochrome, which allowed me to think more about the shades and tones of the place, since the colours were mostly green and sunset tones anyway.
It proved good practice of using different media, to see what lines I could make, how well they blend together and if it contrasts well. I think using the marker pens and charcoal worked the best (see above), because the charcoal allowed me to use every part of the media (tip, body, blending tool) to use capture different tones. The markers allowed me to practice shading and blending...
However it's an interesting location to draw, allowing me to practice the shapes of cars, and getting the proportions right.

Location 3: "The Light" Centre

When I returned to Leeds after the holidays, I went to the cinema in The Light centre. This presented an opportunity to draw an interior location that I'd never visited before.
I expected to see a few more pedestrians around, since there's so many restaurants and shops around. However this meant that I could focus more on the objects and architecture of the building:

I think on some of them I need to improve the perspective, and I should have experimented with different media, but I wanted the lines to look quite tidy considering it's a modern building.

Overall I have enjoyed doing this task, drawing something other then people! But I could have pulled it off better by experimenting with media, and framing the image right on the page.