In hindsight I feel that the contextual research I was able to implement into my project was restricted by my choice to go down a much more fantasy and mythological route. I was given the time period 'Iron Age Britain'. My first thoughts were 'but what is an Iron Age Britain?' and so I began frantically researching the era. Staring at the overdue library book that I've read but a fraction of titled 'Celtic Connections' it is safe to say I struggled to connect with my time period but I DID find out some cool stuff.
After looking at hill forts and mud huts I decided that I didn't really want to go down a realistic route recreating what I consider to be a relatively dull period. I attempted to paint a typical Iron Age village and just looked in despair at the mess I created. I needed a niche. I went to the library and grabbed 'Celtic Connections'. After a brief flick through I thought there was no hope until I stumbled across druids and pretty trees. It was at this point I decided that I would take a more mythological approach to Iron Age Britain.
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| Iron Age Hill Fort Illustration, Google Images |
When I started developing my silhouettes I was producing lots of druid inspired humanoids, hunched over witches and some ents for good measure. There was one silhouette that I fell in love with instantly and even more so after I began iteration. Inspired by the Celtic carvings and the Green Man mask I produced a malformed humanoid wearing a mask. In the beginning I imagined my deformed witch to be mostly human which had adapted to a darker environment. I could imagine the way she would crawl around and loved the idea of a gollumesque character.
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| Rendering multiple textures required multiple image references all found via Google |
Upon further iteration I broke down the key characteristics of my character into categories of which I would further iterate. These included skin colour, skin texture, mask style, malformations and growths. For the growths I looked at a new concept to me, cordyceps - a type of fungi that attacks mainly insects and arthropods invading and eventually replacing soft tissue creating over 400 types of fungus to grow out of the body. I found it extremely uncomfortable to look at but found the concept fascinating. I played around with a few fungus themed iterations which worked well for my character. I also researched tumours and did 6 iterations of possible tumour formations on my characters back. The process was grim to say the least and I ended up using an image of a mucinous borderline ovarian tumour for reference (and learned some fancy words too). I did lots of research into Celtic illustrations to use for reference to develop my mask. I also looked at the legend of the green man and created a mask based on that character. After being inspired by the 'Sea of Stars' I started research into bioluminescence. I loved the idea that something natural could glow. I did some iterations where I played around with glowing cysts on the back of my witch character. The bioluminescence has been a present staple throughout the rest of my work, creating multiple light sources and dramatic atmosphere. The most relevant research I did for my environments was looking at lots of different trees which grew during the Iron Age. I looked closely at trees such as the Magog and Ashbrittle which are present in all of my environments. To make my environments more authentic and believable I researched caves and forests a lot, as well as referring constantly to notes on a composition lecture we received during the course of the project.
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| Sea of Stars |
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| Magog Oak Tree |
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