Study Task 2 - Environmental Storytelling - Church - initial sketches

when I went away to london, I came across a church. I decided to use this place as one of my envrironments for this project.

I chose this place because of how dark and gloomy the place was, and how interesting the surrounding woodland area is. I also felt like I could explore perspective well because of the surrounding woodland area and gravestones in the distance.

I kept in mind the cinematic standard of the rule of thirds when looking for angles to draw from. I feel as though I successfully applied the rule of thirds into my thumbnail sketches, however, development is needed in order for me to create substantial backgrounds.

When I was there, I made some notes on the environment, and made them into bullet points.

• Quiet
• Mild weather
• Dull sky
• Empty
• Overgrown
• Old

I will refer to these key words in order to successfully capture the atmosphere of the environment, as quick initial sketches can often lose the essence of the environment.

Because time was limited, my initial thumbnails were very sketchy and quick in order to get down the initial shapes and shades for me to work from later when creating my final designs.

This was a sketch of the back of the church, looking onto the graveyard in the distance. I used pencil for these sketches so I could create gradient and tone quickly and efficiently. The weather was mild and grey, which enforced the idea to work in pencil. I feel as if I captured the gloomy weather well by keeping the sky clear, and the surroundings sketchy and tonal. I decided to take my time with this sketch because I feel as though it's a strong composition because of how the edge of the church is in the first third, and the tree in the last third of the thumbnail.  The composition could use some further development, because it feels as though the church wall is fighting against the large tree for the focus. I feel as though this image could be used in an animation, if a character walked through the gap between the buildings and tree. There could be a shot moving through the environment, between the tree and the church, into the graveyard into the distance.

The texture of the tree is something I will hopefully explore. Depending on what style I decide on for my drawings, I could stick with the sketchy, abstract textures or go in the complete opposite direction and create really detailed textures and shadows.

This was a 1 minute sketch of the front of the church. It was difficult for me to create the perspective from where I was standing because of how large the building was, and my aim was to capture the whole building as well as the pathway leading up to it, hence why the pathway is a lot darker than the rest of the thumbnail. I took a picture of this angle, and I will probably create detailed, and clear sketches in order to create room for development. I would definitely want to develop the placement of the surroundings of the church such as the tree in the middle of the sketch. I feel like it should be pushed to .......This image, with further development would be a good establishing shot of a scene. Because I want to stick to this image being a background for a scene, I will focus mostly on the overall perspective, as well as the pathway leading up to the church. Because the steeple was quite tall, I could exaggerate the height and add clouds swirling around.

The was the back of the church facing the building. I feel as though this sketch is quite flat and unattractive because of the lack of negative space and dimension to the building. I chose this angle because of how well everything seemed to fit together in this composition, however, looking at the church straight on made creating depth and weight to the building difficult. The building, little gravestones and the tree on the far right seem to equal each other out, creating a decent set up for a background. I think this thumbnail has the potential to be a good background with the correct development of the dimensions and details. I feel as though with further development and reference to the rule of thirds, this image could become a nice, clear background. A scene that this image could be used in could be of a characters walking into, or out of the church.

Overall, I feel as though this environment could be interpreted and fit any genre of animation depending on what style the background is drawn in. My next step is to create larger drawings with more detail, in different mediums in order to decide which shots, medium and style I want to develop them in. Because of the dull, overgrown and grey atmosphere of the environment, I will probably stick to more tonal and dark shades.