Follow your bliss... my new primary project.

 

Mythologist Joseph Campbell once wrote 'Follow your bliss'...

With this in mind and as mentioned in the last post I've fallen out of love with my original idea which was to animate a two-minute piece of motion graphics inspired by one of my poems. I started story boarding rough ideas but found a lack of flow and interest in developing it and when I started researching styles and look for the design I found I was more drawn to the illustration and design process, rather than how I was going to animate.



I came across this style of work on a psychology website called '16 Personalities' and was instantly captivated by it. Then I discovered an online tutorial teaching particular workflow using Illustrator and that has influenced the direction I now want to go.

Also, considering the original idea of fusing the art movement of Futurism into my animation I've decided it was a little too experimental and my time would be better spent playing to my strengths such as drawing while learning software such as Illustrator and Photoshop with the intention of working in pre-production.

So, I now plan to create a new portfolio of concept art and illustrations inspired by Joseph Campbell's work 'The Hero's Journey' and also other myths and legends.



The Hero's Journey is a set of observed patterns found in myriads of narratives around the world. Some narratives may not adhere precisely to the pattern but it is typical that the structure and nuances of many stories follow the arc of The Hero's Journey.

There are many archetypes strewn throughout The Hero's Journey, these recurrent symbols and motifs are found throughout the history of humanity in the myths and legends of every civilization and this is what I'm interested in exploring.

I plan to start with the archetype of the hero also known as the warrior archetype. My aim is to look at a number of different cultures and how the warrior was portrayed in them and use these as starting points for character designs and concepts of weapons, armor etc

Here are some examples of different cultures I'll be looking at...



 

  1. The Knights of the Round Table and the Arthurian Legends.
  2. Ragna Lothbrok and the journeying Vikings.
  3. The warriors of Sparta.
  4. Ninja warriors and the Samurai of Japan.
I also want to explore and create designs of Egyptian Gods...


...and monsters/creatures.



But to start with I'll be designing and illustrating a sword, more on that in a later post....


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