Phase 4 - Colour Composition and experimentation

At this point of the project, after spending most of the beginning designing and drawing out the characters and rough scenes for the environments, is to begin the composition ideas for the artworks. The plan is to create full artworks of characters in an environment, though I would like to experiment with how I can compose my illustrations within a given space. To explore this, I will attempt to use large brush strokes (random strokes that are uncontrollable) in Photoshop to create some empty blank space, where the artworks will be placed in. The experiments are to see any potential ideas that would enable me to be playful and to be creative with the space created by these random brush strokes. This will also allow me to shift the artwork around within the empty space where I can rearrange the artwork until it matches well with the brush composition.

Later on in this stage, I will place the colour compositions within the blank space (created by the brush strokes) to see the outcomes and to evaluate whether this idea of using space for the illustrations would be better than creating a full artwork. 

Examples of random brush strokes. The black stroke is the space where the artwork would fit in.

Quick colour compositions using the initial sketches of the environments and adding in colours. 

Combining the colour compositions with the space of the brush strokes to experiment the overall composition of potential artworks. The ones that are crossed out are unusable as they do not work 

After testing and experimenting the combinations of the brush stroke ‘space’ with the quick colour compositions the results are ok, though to be honest the randomness of the brush space can heavily interrupt the colour comps in terms of space and composition, resulting some to not fit very well. I have come to the conclusion that the brush space would probably need some control in terms of where the space would be, so it will fit better with the colour comps. I feel that the space will need to be pre-planned with the artwork that is going to go with in order to achieve the right balance between the layout, space and composition. The randomness of the brush space can help find potential ideas for visual presentation of the artwork, however the reliability of using them without putting in the thought of how the artwork’s composition would tie in with it could result in an unbalanced, cluttered composition.