Hamster Evaluation

Evaluation

Old Version

New Version

Aim

The aim with this project was to improve my hamsters, and give each of them their own characteristics, so that they don't all look the same.

Another aim at the beginning of this project were to make these hamsters better portfolio pieces. 

Result?

After looking at the older version I feel that I have succeeded in giving the new hamsters characteristics and making them better portfolio pieces then their previous predecessors. I feel the aims I set out at the beginning of the project have all been completed and met with a good standard.

Whats great about these hamsters is individually they look different, and that each one visually shows what character personality is just by looking at them.

Another good thing that came from this side of the project, was the fact that I was allowed to continue working in character development , which is an area I feel that I am quite strong in and wish to go into after I finish education, especially if I want to go into children book publishing, which is heavily evolved around character development.

If I had more time to do this project I would have seriously considered creating more hamsters, as a set I feel these hamsters work very well together.

I may print this as a A2 poster and showcase it at my summer show.

Hamster 5 - The Leader

And finally hamster no.5 is the last edition to my Horde Of Hamsters. This character will be the leader of the group, the Thorin of the dwarf party, Captain America to the Avengers, Marcus Fenix of Gears Of War, these characters will be key influences in creating the leader of the group.

The appearance of the leader  always appears to be better equipped, armoured and clothed then the rest of his company, and generally stands out more then the rest of his party members.

The aim for this character is to make him look grand, royal, so bright colours will be used here, and he'll look a lot cleaner and sharper then the rest of the party members, even his weapon will look a lot better in condition wise then his members, even his beard will look more majestic.

I chose to use red and yellow colour choice for the leaders cape. I always look upon red and yellow to be more of a grander colour mix, which is usually the case with the royal family, with the Queens cloak  coloured red and gold.whats good about the cloaks appearance, it looks a lot cleaner and better condition then those of his peers and his armour is in a better condition then the warrior of the group.

I'm very happy at how this hamster has turned out, he is the leader I've been looking to add to my horde. 

Hamster 4 - Dim & Shy

Hamster no.4 will be the quiet/shy character of the group, that prefers to hide away and prefers not to be the centre of attention. The character I'll be using as a key reference for this hamster is the dwarf Ori from the Hobbit, Ori's appearance comes across that he's dim, shy and quiet compared to the other boisterous dwarf members of the party. 

The innocent appearance is what I want to achieve with this character. On the film poster, Ori appears to be wearing a hood, this gives off the indication that he prefers to be away from the centre of attention and prefers his own company while writing in his journal. The advantages of using a hood is you can give this character 2 different types of appearances: 

No.1 - The character is a recluse and likes to hide away.

No.2 - Quite a secretive character that has either a hidden pass or doesn't like to confront those who mean harm to him or his friends.

Hamster Three - The Warrior

The third hamster will be the brute enforcer of the party, the one who's quick to anger, and won't say no to a fight. For this character I wanted to base him of other characters from groups who appear to be the fighter of the group, so for example Dwalin from the Hobbit, Daryl Dixon from The Walking Dead. All these characters appear very formidable & badass, so when you first set eyes upon you know straight away what role these guys will play in the group.

The most common features of these characters that they all seem to be carrying a weapon of sort (Dwalin, knives, axes, Daryl carrying his trust crossbow) and appear to be rugged and rough while sporting either a variety of tattoo's or numerous amounts of scars that they have sustained from numerous fights in which they've anticipated.

This hamster is the one I would say I had a lot of fun drawing. The fact that I'm drawing a well weathered hamster warrior in itself is just brilliant, and how his ears have been slightly damaged in battled, with the numerous scars across his face and carrying the hefty axe on his shoulders.

Hamster Two - Wise One

After completing the first hamster, I wanted to create a wiser more older character then the previous entry. This character would be based upon the wise and old members of a group of characters (for example Balin the dwarf in the hobbit, Gandalf etc.) 

The aim for this hamster was to give the character the chance to look old and wise, for some reason looking older is generally the one who is the wisest of the group, due to life long experience and generally being alive longer then the rest of the group.

Along with the fact this character will be old and wise, I wanted to give him a a staff, that he uses as a walking stick and as a weapon, which helps give of the sense of the wisdom and the fact he travels a lot and that he has a lot of wisdom to spread.

Monster Book Final & Evaluation

http://www.lulu.com/shop/kyle-finnerty/monsters-in-our-world/paperback/product-21017436.html

After finally outlining my mock up books, spelling checks, layout editing, and getting the nod from my tutors, I finally sent off my book to be printed by the online site "Lulu." I have used this site once before to create a book for my final project from last year (Dragon book), I was pretty happy with the printing quality and the over-all look and quality of the outcome so was happy to use this service again.

But after receiving my book, there were a couple of problems that had cropped up with this book. The main problem being that they had cut the paper too close to the top which resulted in the loss of a couple of sketches on certain pages, and what was the original bleed, has some what not been cut properly, this could be a mistake on my part or the company's machines, after chatting to my tutor I decided to re-do the book, but due to time restraints I don't believe I will have enough time to receive the book, so the one I have at the moment will be used as a mock example.


Apart from the original printing problems, I have learnt a lot about creating and editing pages for books (with gutters etc), and how even just having a simple layout can be more effective then going for a complicated text layout.
I think the fact I experimented early on during the project with how the pages work together and how they layout has helped me massively this time round, where I struggled with last year, this year I feel I have improved massively, especially with the text, which is what I struggled with last year which I must admit I did since it was the first time I ever done something like this and due to lack of practice and experimentation, I felt I was under-prepared. But thanks to constant tutorials with my tutors and experimenting with layout's I feel that this book is a vast improvement on the one I had created last year. 

Hamster One - Fond Food Lover

The original concept for this hamster, the main character had a stack of food behind him, and after gathering feedback from tutors and peers alike, I came to the conclusion that maybe the food was not needed and that the hamster himself should be more visually characteristic, so the hamster himself should be big and fat, this gives off the sense that the character enjoys eating, and that food is his main love in life.

After watching the hobbit, I instantly thought that Bombur the dwarf, due to his large appearance already told you the story of him being the chef in the group and the dwarf that loves his food more then any others of the party.

Monster Seven - Kraken

The Kraken is a renowned monster is sea lore, and over the years has been used in a fair few films, with many versions being used for example the Kraken from the Pirates of the caribbean films was based on a giant octopus, the one used in the clash of the titans, was a giant behemoth with the uper body of a demon, with the lower half being tentacles. I decided to go with the normal version of the Kraken, but give him so shell like armour to help give the kraken the excuse of being hard to kill and a terrible foe to deal with while on the sea's.

Monster six - Sea Slugs

After researching the Nembrotha Cristota I created a series of monster designs and I found it tricky just to use one and pick one, so instead of using one design I decided to use all of the outcomes in my Monster book. I feel the diversity among the slug like beings help strenghten my decision to use all 4 final outcomes, and that as a set work well.

The Hobbit Dwarves

Main inspiration for the continuation of the Horde Of Hamsters, was the dwarves from the film "The Hobbit". Each dwarf is a different character and has his own characteristics, for example the dwarf Bombur visually is a very over-weight dwarf which suggests that he is a fond lover of food - which is true, as he is also the party's Chef, but anger him or make him late for lunch and you will have a very formidable foe on your hands. 

Among Bombur you have several characters that visually show off what character they are portraying in the film these characters being: 

Dwalin - is the party's natural fighter, and the quickest to become bad tempered. 

Balin - Is the wisest of the group who's had life long experience in both war and life.

Ori - Appears dim witted, slow, shy and quiet.

Bofur - The cheeky chap of the group who'll speak without thinking about what he is saying.

Thorin - The party leader and who the group look to for inspiration.

The dwarves that I will be using to inspire my hamsters are: Bombur, Dwalin, Balin, Ori, and Thorin.

Each character shows the characteristics that I want to portray in my Horde members and I feel among the dwarves they have the stronger personalities and stand out amongst the other members of the group.

Monster Five - Dragon

Dragons are - and always will be my favourite mythological monster, and it's one monster that I can happily draw at will. Seeing as Dragons are such a popular monster, esp now with the growth and improvement of technology, I decided that the dragons should make an appearance in my book.
Unlike the rest of the monsters, I didn't base this creature on any real life creature, instead I went straight on to create a dragon from scratch, the book working with dragons helped me massively by giving me idea's on what certain features I should add/remove, such as the arms.

Above are two page spread examples of the dragons input in my book, the experiments were needed to see which versions would work, and in my eyes I find that the second example works better, the text looks cleaner and smarter, and the name of the creature on top of the text works so much better then having the name with the image, in a sense I have based my page layouts very much like No Brow: Bestiary, which I find that layout works well with the tea stained background as well.  

Templar Publishing

Templar publishing is a leading figure head in the publishing industry, more renowned for its 'Ology' series,( dragonology, mythology, oceanology etc) which have become massive hits all across the world, and the one reason why Templar publishing caught my attention, thanks to how well these books stood out amongst it's other competitors and how diverse and different they were to other books, for example in the dragonology books you will have 5 pages dedicated to stickers, and ten during the book you will have envelopes that contain maps and other little goodies for the reader.

The images below are screen shots of how to contact Templar for publishing books and sending in artwork.

To send in any artwork, they prefer electronically sent in examples of work the address is below

Artwork Submissions

• Please send electronic samples of your work tosubmissions@templarco.co.uk

• Compile your samples into one PDF file. Separate image files may not be reviewed.

• We prefer art submissions by email, but if you need to send a hard copy, please use the following address and mark your submission 'ARTWORK SUBMISSION':

The Submissions Team,
The Templar Company Ltd,
Deepdene Lodge, Deepdene Avenue
Dorking, Surrey, RH5 4AT

The following pictures below are photo's of the book titled "Working With Dragons" which is part of the Dragonology series that Templar Publishing is well known for. 

Along with the book, there are several pull out maps, pocket maps, stickers etc. This diversity and difference in books is a great help in referencing my book, as I would like to create a series of stickers for my book.

Curious Creatures of the world

I started to research curious creatures around the world, and I stumbled across a couple of Sea slug species called Glaucus Atlanticus & Nembrotha Cristata. Both very strange creatures appearance wise, and have great bio's about them. The creature that I find the most curious is the Nembrotha Cristata, this colourful sea slug lives among the coral reefs of the world, which it feasts on, and most noticeably is the coral like growth on its back, which it uses to breath in the air particles of the water, this fantastic creature will be used as a main reference to my sea slug monster series, the diversity of these creatures is brilliant and will help me create some weird and whacky creatures.

Along with the sea slugs I came across the Leafy Seahorse, this marvellous creature is fantastic, and shows the wonders of evolution at work.  This creature again is very curious especially by its appearance and how its evolved to blend in with its background by resembling a floating seaweed, so it can hide away from would-be predators. I won't be using this creature as a reference but will be used to show why I've done certain additional features on the Monsters that make an appearance in my book.

Monster four - Battius Hare

Along with the Bear, I had fun drawing the Battius Hare, mainly because of how I turned a innocent sweet little bunny into a big bat eared creature with tentacle for whiskers, and bat like wings between the arms. The idea for the monster came about when I was at a pet centre and was instantly drawn to a Lop-Eared Giant. 

The ears on this rabbit were HUGE, so big in fact that you got the impression that it could happily fly away in the wind because of the sheer size of these ears.

Monster three - Fungius Bear

This creature seems to have been the most positively received monster of my creation. Had quite a lot of fun creating this monster, especially when it came to adding on bits of fungi and tree branch growing from the skin of the bear-like monster. 

Monster Two - The Basilisk

Quite a popular monster, with a few renditions being created along the way (most notably the version used in Harry Potter) I wanted to create the Basilisk, as it has been described since the beginning of this mythological creature, which was to create a chicken/lizard hybrid, which I feel I have achieved quite well with the final piece. The process on creating the Basilisk was a simple one. I started of drawing a chicken, and practicing how the feathers and body form work together, and then slowly add lizard features, such as the frilly neck features from the Frilly Lizard, and a random lizard like tail sprouting from behind.

Monster one - The Long Leafed Frog

The first addition to my monster book, is the Long Leafed Toad. Very heavily based on the Toads of our world, I edited this creature a few times before I was happy with the final piece. After I was happy with the finished piece, I began to see what colour would work well on the toad in my eyes I preferred the light brown toad, as you can see the green and brown mixing together as well as the leaves standing out.

After coming up with the correct colour mix, I then began to see what colour toad would work well on the tea stained paper that I was going to use as my background in the books, and what text would work as well as.