Tonal/Value and Material World (Week 4)

The tone and value lesson was probably the one I knew and learned most about within my art career, as I have always perfected creating tonal pieces of art, rather than colour. I have always just found tonal much more easier and simplistic to create and also a benefit , as I find I take a long time to create and draw work. So having to then just complete a drawing with some simple tones and value is a more favourable route for me. Although I appreciate the tonal values of my work, I have always been eager to encourage my ability within tonal art and possibly even practice my ability to create realistic representations of my subjects, which is something I have struggled to do. I am aware of popular tones and value ranges within a black and white piece and how to correctly use the darkest tone for the characters shadow and the lightest tone for the highlight and have developed this within my work with the help of a range of drawing pencils from type ‘H’ to type ‘B’.

In order to create a lighter tonal value within a piece of work using the pencil 2H can really help, as well as using pencils such as 4B to create darker tones or black. This creation of light and dark can also be achieved with the method of leaning harder on your pencil when wanting to achieve a dark colour such as black or lightly grasping your pencil for a lighter shade for highlight. Today within class we learned the two basic value bands which shows the long process of the different tonal values that can be used within art or the shorter value band that can be quicker in showing the tonal density.

As I have always been a admirer of dark and eerie animations, this meant that my visual knowledge and reference section for creators that also used dark tones and black and white within their film had also been a interest for me within itself. A animation that I liked which was created by Tim Burton’s which shows a great tonal value in black and white and is a style which many movies within the new ages don’t favour, is the stop motion movie called ‘Frankenweenie’.

‘Frankenweenie’ is a movie about a young scientist going to school that has a best dog friend called ‘Sparky’. Sparky one day passes away and a heartbroken Victor uses his scientific knowledge to resurrect his best friend Sparky. This film was shot in black and whit and when I first saw it I wasn’t a fan because I have always enjoyed the intriguing colour palette of Tim Burton’s regular movies, however upon viewing the movie I had grown to really enjoy and had even changed my judgmental approach of never giving a classic black and white movie a chance. I noticed how the tonal and directive approach of Tim Burton was very fitting for the movie, as the white tone showed a beautiful light on the art of claymation and the black tone presented an eerie feeling defining the story and was also a creative homage to the previous ‘Frankenstein’ movies from the early decades.

Week four was also the week that me and Orla who were previously within ‘Snail World’ had been chosen to move to another groups world called ‘Material World’. I was sad to leave ‘Snail World’ as I had felt like my imagination was just beginning to develop and that we were just beginning to create the new age of ‘Snail World’, inspired by the ancestry background the snails have previously lived. However I was excited to move on and begin developing ideas, creating different and new possibilities with some inspiration from the previous story and characters of snail world.

‘Material World’ included me, Orla and our two new partners Peter and Oisin, once we had all settled and got around to discussing what the world of material included, who were its characters, what world did they live in and what was the world like before today’s inhabitants. We were soon told that ‘Material World’ was fairly new and hadn’t much development only to what Peter and Oisin created together, as the previous owners didn’t quite get round to developing their world. This was both a positive and negative discovery as on one part it was almost going to be a new world to create from scratch and really develop into our own, however we were possibly going to be a bit behind our fellow students and need to quickly developed an in depth world with a history and future.

We were first added into the group chat created for ‘Material World’ were Peter and Oisin had shared the work they had previously created for Material World and what they had imagined the world to be like, how it would grow within development and then we had the task to choose one of the simple, line thumbnails either member had created and re-create them within a tonal value of black and white. I had chosen Peters thumbnail of two characters climbing across a tree and a background of some grass and a river flowing below. I choose these drawings as I thought the simple outlines of the characters were really cute and I adored the featureless,mysterious design of the two characters, running across the tree branch and it made me imagine a sweet, yet spooky game like Unravel, created by ColdWood Interactive. This was a PlayStation game I had just recently discovered and loved the art style and concept behind. The game is about two characters who were shy friends, who are escaping from the dark and have found themselves within the woods with having to climb, run and jump through the these tricky tasks to find safety. I then re-created this in a tonal range and thought it to be quite enjoyable and a good simple task to learn about our teams previous world ideas and practice creating a tonal value within any work.

The second thumbnail I had choose was again from Peters work and was again because I admired his art and the design of a cute, yet simple background and what had expressed as a well thought out world theme and layout. The thumbnail was a low view shot of a large, grand door with a matching grass high wall and some stones and vines for some creative features. This thumbnail interested me as I imagined the tale of this world to be that the large door was the passage way to a kingdom maybe that the two characters were either looking to escape or find refuge within. The grand design of the door and even the artistic angle was presenting a very powerful feel and I found it would be an interesting design to create. I decided to change up my method of creating tone in this thumbnail and instead of shading in the drawings entirely, I instead choose another method of cross-hatching the tonal colour of dark and light. This method gives a very appealing style to the drawing and creates a texture, that may be hard to include within a two toned drawing.

Within class to help us when we were to create our own examples of tonal thumbnails we were shown a range of value bands including one of eleven values and one of five values. These value bands were to show us the different depths that can be found within tone and what they may represent on a scale. I have created many pieces within tonal but have never saw the method of representing the tonal value within a value band and how there are different levels included. Value band eleven showed eight different varieties of tonal value all changing within a depth of ten increments and value band five showed the changes of a tonal range within twenty five increments. These bands both show what methods you can design your work within for either a detailed in depth tonal range or a quick and simple study. We further practiced our tones and values by creating shapes in 3D, including a circle, triangle, square and representing the value that would be with these shapes if they had light upon them. created shadows.

After we practiced our tonal range it was time to brainstorm together about what we wished to create within the world of ‘Material World’ and for the new members to learn about what the world exactly entailed. We had learned that the world was created with characters that were made from the different raw materials found within the world and were created and built by themselves using items such as rock, grass, mud, water and sand and could even be more evolved and morphed into a more powerful character if they combined materials into new powerful creations. As everyone within Material World were made from the material of their planet the world had different levels and layers that all lead to the center of the world, which all the creatures/human creations were striving to discover. The world began with the outskirts representing a island and is mostly surrounded by other islands. The world had rivers leading and twisting within the main island of Material World and as you explored past the lone islands and beach the world developed more into a array of mythical and tall trees, which created a rainforest with much to explore and towering mountains within. Throughout all the vast land and beautiful exploration at the end of the journey the characters would find the barren lands of the dessert were within the distance a dessert mountain arose from the ground and was the worlds entrance into the deep core insides for whatever was burrowed into the middle earth. This core was very important for the characters of ‘Material World’ as it was almost a unspoken race to the center of the worlds core and the characters all made from the worlds material were all gravitating to be connected once again to the core. May this be to regain strength and power which could be extracted from the core or maybe it was their pre-historic material bodies that instinctively recognised the cores energy’s. This was a creative process that was yet to be discovered.

These are my ten tonal thumbnails that I created to explain what the story and world may look like for ‘Material World’ and to explore the idea of what the characters may be designed as and how this worlds dynamics would all fall together. For a couple of the thumbnails I did a mix of the characters and their materials, the scenery within the world and then some of the characters exploring the world themselves. I really enjoyed creating this world within the tonal range as I almost felt the black and white colour scheme was fitting for the adventurism and mystery presented with the world and was a good use of dark shade and highlights to show the material of clouds and water, making the characters shine within the dark and luminous world. I included different angles of the world and those within it having a Birdseye view of what all layers of ‘Material World’ may include and also a close up shot of a leaf character from ‘Material World’, really capturing the expression on their face and having the camera angle close enough to leave the audience guessing the stories context and reasoning. I enjoyed this task as it was my first development into how I would creatively imagine and design ‘Material World’ and depict this within a articulate and story telling way.

We were then tasked to draw a more detailed drawing of our favourite thumbnail which we have created and the one I had choose was the close up angle drawing of two characters from ‘Material World’ and a background including the volcano like mountain core they are eager to explore. I developed these two characters by designing one to be made from the clouds within the sky and gave them a shape like a cloud and cloud like features. My other character was ‘Water Boy’ and was created of both the rain that fell from the clouds and the rivers intertwined within ‘Material World’. I choose to re-create this thumbnail as I thought the cute design of these two characters would be one I would want to include more detail within, to really present an idea of what’s included within ‘Material World’ and to show the characters that I could develop a story about.

A story which I could roughly create for both the water and cloud characters could be that throughout their journey of the cloud creature gathering their body material through jumping through clouds and swinging and flipping from each vine within the rainforest and the water boy gathering their body from the river streaming through the ‘Material World’ and the rain dropping from the skies. The water boy and cloud boy could both realise that they are both connected with one another, being the cloud creature creating the rain and the water creature creating themselves from this material. They could possibly hold a story of being the only two characters within the world to realise their connection and bond and instead of being one another’s competitors, they could work together in discovering the planets core, showing a more in depth side to all the characters within ‘Material World’, their stories and how they are all connected as one in more ways that they imagined.

Being moved from group to group within this task has really been a enjoyable assignment as it develops my design and creative skills and allows me to encourage and explore my ability to create different forms of art and the enjoyment of creating a story and a world along with.