The Gatherer: long way from idea to implementation

 

 

Hi everyone 👋

I thought for a long time about where to start my first publication. Maybe with a long story about my life, studies, and dozens of attempts to break into the world of professional art? Or with a meaningful lecture about concept art and its differences from illustration? Or, maybe, with a joke about a 2D and 3D artist who decided to go to a bar one evening? I believe that any of these introductions could be interesting in their own way. But do friends start their conversation over a cup of tea with this? Hardly.

I want this blog to become a small table in a cozy kitchen where you can listen to the thoughts of your artist friend. Understand how he looks at the world. Without cold officialism, complex formulations, and detailed biographies.

So, to everyone reading this, it's great to see you at Concept Artist Thoughts. Let's go 😊

Do you have a drawing or something that you started and will "definitely finish. Soon. Well, definitely tomorrow..."? And this "soon" has been dragging for weeks on end? I have a lot of such drawings. Maybe, too much. But not so long ago one of these drawings finally reached its "tomorrow". It was a character concept I came up with three years ago for an ArtStation contest but quickly scrapped due to a lack of time and experience. I came across it by chance while looking through my folders and got fired up with the idea of finishing what I started. However, it quickly became clear that these three years were not in vain for me. My skills have improved. I gained new experiences. And what once looked like a "masterpiece of genius" has now turned into "Oh God, what is this abomination!?" 😅 In other words, I had to start over.

The first rule of a concept artist (as I see it) - an interesting idea is worthless if you can't convey it. The idea for the character was as follows: The Gatherer is an underwater nanny who collects spawn, cares for it, and protects it. She keeps fry in a special bubble on her head until they mature enough and then releases the next generation into the ocean. Thus, the fry is a metaphor for the ideas that we all nurture and develop before releasing them into the world.

On paper sounds just great. But the character itself looked more reminiscent of a monster from the depths, looking for dinner ingredients 😁

That's why I decided to completely redo the design.

To begin with, I had to change the silhouette based on my new style and basic concepting rules (like interesting shapes, clear pose, etc). I still liked the old silhouette, which I once chose as the most successful, but it had one significant problem. It was too stiff and contained too many small details. The Gatherer is an underwater creature similar to an octopus or a jellyfish, so I needed to make it as flexible and "flowing" as possible. As she has no solid support under her feet (and, well, no feet at all 😄), she had to give the impression of lightness, and ease. Also, the bottom and top should be balanced, not "overweight" each other.

At the same time as the silhouette, I began to change the lineart. There was especially a lot of work with her head.

I immediately gave up on the idea of putting on top of her an assistant octopus as he resembled too much some kind of predator-brain eater 😨 After some thought, I decided to borrow Medusa Gorgon's "hairstyle" and turned the octopus tentacles into a kind of "hair" that the Gatherer can manipulate like extra hands.

The face changed from threatening to nice-ish (big round eyes, small mouth). All forms now have minimum sharp angles and straight lines. As my boyfriend says, even the monsters I draw turn into cuties 😅

The next step is color. I've always had a hard time with this, but lose only those who give up 💪 So I started my reference search. I was interested in colorful corals, jellyfish, deep sea fish (mostly how their eyes looked like), and other underwater creatures. The most important thing I wanted to avoid was too bright, "poisonous" colors, which in nature usually signal danger. Or shades of gray that resemble the seabed and rocks.

In the end, I chose blue as the main color, and pink as an additional one. In my opinion, these colors are generally a very good combination. And in this case, they fit great 🙂

Now all that remained was to finalize the concept. My style these days is similar to a comic book one. With clearly visible lines and light shadows. And this drawing was no exception.

Maybe in another three years, I'll be horrified by this concept and will bury it somewhere deep in the woods. But today I really like the result. After all the redraws and reflecting in the process on the philosophical question "Why in the world did I even start this?", I see before me a wonderful image of an underwater nanny and protector. A character that conveys the initial idea well and reminds me of the long way I have not walked in vain.