Environments and Artistic Styles

I have recently been making a mood board which will be a major inspiration on the artistic style in my trailer.


I searched the internet and magazines for images that I thought would suit the style of the trailer I am going to make. So the main style of imaes I gathered were of horror, monsters and gore as they seemed the most iconic and influential for what I wanted.

The next part of my task was to take one of the images from my mood board but it had to be of an environmnent. However most of the environment images on the mood board were of confined spaces - corridors, rooms etc. Not suited for what the task would be. Eventually I was forced to look again online to add another picture to the mood board that was a better environment. I came up with this -


This image struck me as being very gothic and dark - suited to my own tastes and styles for my trailer. The showing of old and twisted trees ina graveyard veiled with mist makes for an almost ideal scene for a horror movie or even a horror game. The usage of earthly colours - browns, greys, blacks and lighter colours for the sky add to the mood/feel of the scene.

It was then my task to print this image out and draw it as best as I could.


After I has drawn that image on an A3 sized sheet of paper, I split the image into 4 corners. Each of those sections would then be coloured in a different style. This was to experiment with colours, colouring styles and how each one effects the image. As you can see in the image above, I started using coloured pencils to colour the tree. The whole section would be coloured in a similar colour scheme before I moved on to the next section. The other sections would be coloured in using only standard pencils and shading, felt tip pens and the final section would be coloured with pastels.


In doing the four different colouring styles, I felt that colouring pencils and normal pencils were the most boring of the 4 styles to do. I didn't like doing the felt tip pens as it was difficult to actually colour in without running out of in or making it look bad, so I resorted to using a series of scribbles and lines to colour in the spaces. That in my opinion made it look quite bad and didn't fit in at all with the theme I wanted to convey. The final section of the drawing was done in pastel and I think it was by far the best sectiono f thre four as I felt I conveyed the moonlit night sky quite well and it wolud easily fit in with a gothic scene. I think that if I had done the whole picture in pastels, it would look very good and suit the mood and image well.

In doing this task I have learnt how using different colouring styles and methods to do images effects how they look and change the mood of the image - using lighter/bright and happy colours in a graveyard wouldn't suite my style and needs for what it would covey in my trailer. However if I use dark, earthly colours, the mood of the graveyard would seem dark and gothic - much better in my opinion.

I will take what I have learnt throughout the task and impliment it into the design of my level, both on the level physically and artistically.