Technical Design Document

PRE PRODUCTION

ALIEN INSPIRATION

Growing up, I watched sci-fi films aplenty. When trying to decide how to do our alien I dove into the recesses of my memory, and, after talking with Alex and Luis we decided to go for an alien [whom we dubbed The Engineer] akin to the one from Alien (1979). However, we thought this was too creature-like by itself, so we drew inspiration from Plavalaguna, the blue alien opera singer, in The Fifth Element (1997) and her more human-like features which added an intellectual element to our alien.

TANK INSPIRATION

CONCEPT

We are currently in Week 6 of the Tech Design process - Brainstorming, Backstory, Colour Scheme, Concept Sketches, Moodboards and all other pre-production tasks are complete. so far we are following the Gantt Chart perfectly and are all on top of our work.

This week's task is to create and refine our initial sketches for our assigned roles in the digital environment. I will be drawing my sketches out first and then transferring the Alien and Human Tank [seen in the images below] to PhotoShop to work on.

Concept Sketches:

INITIAL DESIGNS

I have created my initial sketch, as you can see below, and will now begin to transfer it to digital. As I do not have much experience in drawing creatures and the like, I struggled to accurately lay down proportions; that is why I decided to use a reference image [well, a few, really] from my moodboard - and this certainly helped me a lot.

Moodboard and References:

Initial Sketch:

DIGITAL CONVERSION

Here is the completed digital initial sketch. I faced some issues whilst trying to convert it, namely that it wasn't something I could do at home. As I do not have a Wacom or other tablet, I struggled to work on my laptop - the repetitive hand-gestures being both time-consuming and painful because of repetitive movement stress. Knowing I would face this problem I made time to do some of the work at university; where I could utilise SAE's technology and facilities.

For the tank, I used the outline of a reference image and digitally traced it. In the below gallery you will see the rough outline, refined outline and final outline aka initial sketch for the alien, as well as the finished trace for the tank and human specimen within.

Digital Initial Sketch Conversion:

Rough Outline

Refined Outline

Final Outline

For reference, we are now in week 9. I was hesitant to continue working until we had learnt more during class about art in PhotoShop, but now I feel more prepared. I also took the liberty of buying a graphic tablet so as not to fall behind.

Now that the outline of the alien was complete, I could start adding colour to the work. For this, I had already devised a colour palette with my group, which can be seen in previous images of the work in PhotoShop.

Colour Scheme:

From here, for more of the practical project, please see my next blog post titled Alien Engineering Project.