504 - Documentary Initial Style Tests

After creating the moodboard, I found that I liked the idea of both lineart styles and more messy non-lineart styles, therefore I did a BG test of just a simple branch to give me an idea of the process as well as the outcome:

(BG is a photograph of New Guinea that I blurred) 

After showing this to Ducky, we both decided that we think the non-lineart style may work slightly better, however they both work well. I found that the process of the lineart version was a lot quicker and I could get better results more easily, however the lineart could be too much. One idea is to combine these and have only the focal elements of the BG be lined.

I decided to paint a full scene to get more of an idea of the style with other elements, as well as the process of it. Again, I used a blurred photograph as BG foliage, however I painted over it a bit to make it fit with the main painting. In addition, I added one of Olivia's character designs onto it to see how it would look with the bird:

(Olivia's bird character design)

I quite like how this looks but I want to try out some other styles first before committing to this. I really like the roughness of it, and that could be something I experiment with more. Although the saturation of the colours is quite high - which goes against my original more muted colour palette I had in mind - I feel it actually works quite well and doesn't steal the spotlight from the bird.

However currently I think it looks a bit too digital for my liking, which could also be because of the use of the blurred photo.