Reflective Journal

Week 1

To start of this project I have decided to indulge into iron age Britain and researching about the era, as I originally knew pretty much nothing about the iron age other than the time period I had a lot of research to do. I started off with a general search of the era and discovered a few things, for example what they looked like, what they did and how they lived.

After reviewing my first set of research I decided to refine it in relation to the tinderbox. I started that off by looking at warriors and soldiers. I then soon discovered Boudicca who was the leader of the Icini tribe and how she tried to go against the roman invasion. This had me very interested and immediately wanted to do a native female warrior inspired by Boudicca.

Week 2

This week I decided to start on my silhouettes. I started doing these by giving myself 10 – 20 seconds each. After I had done half a dozen I realised they were looking too much like ‘people’ so I then shortened the time period for each and progressively they started to end up looking like scribbles. Which I thought is a good thing, this means that the ideas that I would get from them would be less generic and more interesting. I have now finished all of my silhouettes and you can quite clearly see the progression as they are done in multiple different styles, brushes and how long I spent on each.

Week 3

This week I really needed to catch up and so I looked at all of my silhouettes and picked 4 that I liked, from these I did paint over to try and make them look like something. From the 4 I had I really liked one of them and so I started to develop it, still keeping in mind my female warrior I created a line drawing, keeping to my research on clothing and the aesthetics of the people. From this I started to develop it further and add value to it. So from this point I now have a character idea! I am now much happier with my progression.

Week 4

So continuing on from last week’s crit session I have now started to do my iterations and start to bring my character to life a bit. I started off by doing a variety of different clothes and costumes for my character. With the clothing now chosen I am now moving onto weapons and assets, accessories and all that. First of all I needed her to be armed, started off with axes, clubs and a shield as they were popular weapons of that era. Furthermore long bows and spears were also used. So through the creation of multiple different types of iterations for her weapons I have decided on giving her a spear and a shield, but I am not quite sure on whether to give her a bow and or dagger yet.

Week 5

So this week I have finally started working on my final character piece and her model and character sheet. My character has started to come to life and I am very happy with how it looks, with Lothar’s help and advice from last week’s group crit my character is now done. From using my final as a reference I started and finished my model sheet and have now started her character sheet, I have created her movements for using her bow and throwing the spear. Furthermore I have been advised to start my line drawings for my environments.

Week 6

My character sheet, model sheet and final character are all now complete so I can now start to focus on the environment pieces and their finals. Furthermore we have now been set our essay for CS ‘meaning of play’ so this is going to be a very busy weeks up until deadline!

End of final week

Everything is now done and finished ready for submission tomorrow!