Myst Story Art

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="620" caption="Anna shows Atrus a D'ni book for the first time"][/caption]

In the Myst script that I'm writing, Anna first exposes Atrus to the D'ni when he shows her an unusual rock that he's found. She hesitates, then decides to show him a big D'ni volume on geology. This book ignites his interest in the D'ni, and goes with him to D'ni when he finally travels there many years later ...

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="prep work for above painting"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="prep work for above painting"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="620" caption="Anna"][/caption]

Myst - Book of Atrus - Visual Development

SOMEDAY, I'd like to make, Myst the Book of Atrus, into film. That's one of my many goals. ^__^

I've been feeling very optimistic about things in general the past few weeks. I decided to work on some drawings of the Myst characters for fun:

Character design work from Stripes

Here are some more concept drawings from the Stripes animated short I'm making. I was working on the designs for the main characters. Instead of having one solid, unchanging design, Japanese character designs often straddle between realism and caricature even within the same film. I really like this approach and want to do something similar with Stripes.

Toward the bottom are drawings of kids based on pictures a friend of mine took in Kenya.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="612" caption="Concept art for Stripes"][/caption]

Painting Backgrounds – Rainforests

Drawing Backgrounds – Rainforests

Source

I used pictures of rainforests I took in Panama. I did one drawing almost every day for about two weeks. Each picture took about 20-40 minutes to draw. (regular 0.5 mechanical pencil.)

Lessons Learned

-The drawings are arranged in the order in which I drew them. And I'm happy to say that the newer ones are bigger, more detailed and generally look nicer than the first few. It's nice to see the direct effects of practice!
-Forests are intimidating because of the formless masses of foliage. Rather than trying to worry about overlapping foliage, work from from front to back. Do the foreground leaves, trees and such first and then gradually add more forms behind it. The greenery in the far distance will have the least detail.
-There are so many plant types! But, really, the same ones came up over and over, and practicing them has been very fruitful.
-The dark and light tones will do more for setting the scene than the actual drawings of leaves. The picture should be studied carefully for the light/shadow information.