Because I have finished my target audience research I am now ready to present and choose from two ideas I have come from.
Idea 1: Cacti valley:
What specialism will I use?:
I will be doing 2D art for this cacti diorama. This is for both the design process and final piece.
What will my diorama include:
This diorama will include a plain of desert and will feature various cacti with flowers (along with some additional shrubs and plants) during a soft pink and purple sunset. (To get the colour palette girls like). The cacti will be a range of types like rabbit cacti, barrel cacti and saguaro cacti. Some will have red, yellow and orange cacti. The ground will be formed sand and rock formations. The stand out and in detail assets will be cacti variations.
Here are two mood boards of the types of things I would need asset wise.
What style will I use?:
For my diorama I have decided I will use my painted illustration style I use in my environment work. This style is the reason I have chosen 4-8 year old girls as my demographic as it reminds me of the illustrations you would find in a children’s picture book. My environment style does not feature line art Of course the diorama will be a closed off environment and won’t be a landscape. As well as this the colours will be a soft pink and purple sunset covering the scene. The shapes will be softly drawn and won’t be sharp and intense.
These are some examples of the style I was talking about.
How will it meet my audience’s needs?:
The way I will cater towards my audience will be through style, colour and shape language.
Like my research said, pink and purple colouring attract a lot of girls to the products attached to them, I can fit this colour in with a sunset. While cacti are spiky I will be giving them rounded qualities with small spikes to give the environment a soft and cute look. Like I said with style wise it will be rather painted like an illustration in a picture book.
Idea 2: Sparkle mine:
What specialism will I use?:
I will be doing 2D art for this mine diorama. This is for both the design process and final piece.
What will my diorama include:
My diorama will include a cute little mine cart on a simple track going through a cave. The cave will be filled with cute gems that sparkle, the mine cart will have a lantern attached to it, resulting as the gems being illuminated and reflecting coloured light with a warm hue to it. There will be some wooden structure around the mine to hold it up. Along with this there will be boxes of gems around with pick axes to show gems are being picked.
Here are some images of mines to show what the structure could look like.
What style will I use?:
For my diorama I have decided I will use my painted illustration style I use in my environment work. This style is the reason I have chosen 4-8 year old girls as my demographic as it reminds me of the illustrations you would find in a children’s picture book. I think I would really be able to capture the rock and gem formations in brush strokes. Colour wise the gems will give the dull scene sparkly and coloured lighting as girls won’t like the dull scene otherwise, the gems will give the scene a soft coloured hue. The scene will have a tiny bit of edge in the shapes to define the scene against the lighting and shadow. Like I said earlier I will be using my own painted style for the diorama, like this one.
How will it meet my audience’s needs?:
My diorama will feature soft lighting off of the gems and from the scene, the gems will be sparkly (something 4-8 year old girls like in their products) The gems I could include could range from blues, pinks and purples. The mine cart and track have an element of adventure and a journey element to them, something young girls love in the media they consume. The art style as well will be something out of a picture book so it can be appealing to young girls.
Final idea: Cacti valley:
In the end I have decided to go with idea one (Cacti valley) I have made this decision because the colour ideas and themes seemed like they would appeal to young girls much more than a gem mine with limited lighting and overall dull colours.
Diorama outline:
Cacti valley will be a diorama featuring rounded types of cacti (barrel cacti, rabbit ear cacti and saguaro cacti), some shrubs, smaller plants and flowers growing from the cacti. The ground will feature sand and rock formations that plants can grow from.
How will the design and art style art style meet the needs of your audience?:
The art style will be a painted illustration style, something like what you would find in a children’s illustration book. Over the summer I have developed a much more painted illustration style and because it is something I can achieve well I have chosen the style specifically. This is an example of what I could achieve with this style.
After doing colour research I have come to a decision to make the colour pallet underneath normal yet bright colours, however because the light will be a sunset it will cast a pink and purple hue over the scene. In my audience research on colour in products many products catered to girls through the colours pink and purple, research has also backed up that young girls (from children to young teens) gravitate towards pinks and purples.
You may think that cacti would be unappealing to girls as they are spiky, sharp and are often seen as dangerous in nature, however I have a way around this. A design choice I have chosen will be to choose rounded types of cacti that often sprout flowers. I made this quick mood board of some examples of rounded cacti. The three cacti I will be using are:
- Rabbit cacti
- Barrel cacti
- Saguaro cacti
- Cacti with flowers
The rounded shapes will contribute towards a softer look in the scene and the flowers will make the cacti seem much more inviting and less threatening.
What is my colour scheme?:
Like I said earlier I will be going for brighter colours, to make the scene work I will be laying down the normal colours you would see in the diorama first. After this I will add the necessary pink and purple hues, lighting and shading. Because the light will be a sunset it will cast a pink and purple hue over the scene. The colour research i did backs up that girls gravitate towards pinks and purples (Although girls have been proven to like a larger range of colours than boys, such a greens, oranges, reds and yellows) bit pink and purple are considered to be the best two colours for young girls.
This is a quick colour pallet board I made to demonstrate some of the potential colours I could use in the diorama.
Specifics – What assets do I plan to create and put into the scene?:
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Cacti
The main asset I would like to use is of course rounded cacti (It’s in the name “cacti valley”) with some of the sprouting flowers. These cacti types include:
- Rabbit cacti.
- Barrel cacti.
- Saguaro cacti.
- Cacti with flowers.
I have included two mood boards I have already made (One from my initial Summer research and a quick mood board I made to demonstrate “rounded” cacti).
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Little plants and shrubs
While cacti are the stars of the diorama it would seem a bit empty and repetitive if it was just rounded cacti. After looking at images of cacti I saw there were often much smaller plants and shrubs around the cacti.
Shrubs are woody plants that can be seen often in deserts. As well as the shrubs there seems to be some sort of leaf like plant. (My best guess would be succulents).
I made another quick mood board to show the types of smaller plants I mean.
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Sand and rock formations
There will also be some rock formations in the diorama as western deserts aren’t just sand. This is another quick mood board I made to show some examples of how rock formations (big rocks or small stones) can fill up a scene and how they look. I could experiment with how I could place them in a scene (Whether I use them to enclose the scene etc).
Final idea research:
Assets:
Cacti:
Cacti were the first subject I did research into (Specifically rounded cacti). Like I said earlier the main three I considered were saguaro cacti, rabbit cacti and barrel cacti as they have rounder appearances and they often sprout colourful flowers. The natural colour pallets already are appealing to young girls (Going off my research) as they have greens, reds, yellows, oranges, purples and pinks.
Barrel cacti are the roundest type as they are literally ball shapes, their spikes travel horizontally down the outer pointing rim of the cacti in an even formation. Typically the flowers they can grow come out from the very middle of the top of the cactus.
Rabbit cacti are round, flat and circular in structure and have various parts branching off from them. The spikes themselves are very short and aren’t that sharp (They don’t look as aggressive or dangerous as other cacti so I don’t need to tone down spikes for young girls. The flowers actually spout all over the plant and isn’t limited to certain areas!
Saguaro cacti are the most well known cacti in general due to the size and iconic “arms” that they can grow. The spikes are small but sharp (Hence why we can’t see them in the photos on the mood board) They grow in a horizontal way and go across the main body and arms evenly. The flowers can grow from the top of the arms usually.
Shrubs and small plants:
Shrubs are woody plants that can be seen often in deserts. As well as the shrubs there seems to be some sort of leaf like plant. (My best guess would be succulents). They often grow around large gatherings of cacti, this could be due to a water supply somewhere underneath. Often times the shrubs are just bare with no leaves attached to them, the grow on cliffs and rocks quite a bit, if I have a rocky formation I could put the shrub(s) onto the rocks. The succulent like plants that grow around the cacti are very small and don’t need a lot of space like cacti. As well as these succulents there seems to be some thin bushes with leaves that could be scattered around.
Sand and rock formations:
Rocks and sand will make up a portion of the land mass and assets in my scene. Around cacti and plant formations you can find small sized rocks among them, Larger rock formations could be used to close off the scene, making it into a diorama. The rock formations have rather rounded qualities to them, making them easy to fit into the scene if I chose to have them.
Scene presentation:
Layout of the scene:
There are many ways I could make a diorama, they can be displayed as floating islands that look like they are suspended, smaller parts of a scene can be drawn and designed on their own (Like the mine opening designs). Many dioramas offer a scene breakdown of the various assets that make up the scene. Our assignment states that we need to have one main asset in the scene we can show in detail (Turnaround, variations etc). As well as this angles vary. Some are at an angled birds eye view in order to get a better view of the overall scene. Rooms are closed off by walls in order to turn them into a diorama, many of them have multiple floors. There are a lot of options for me when it comes to how I would like my diorama to be presented, I feel that an angled upper view would be best for my cacti diorama but we will have to see.
Art style:
In order to explain the art style I have chosen and developed over the summer I will need to start off with my 2019 FMP. I was aiming for a traditional Disney cel with the art style, similar to the snow white and sleeping beauty background art. To understand where I was coming from, here is the cel board I made as research (This is not a board for my cacti valley research).
This is my final product.
While it doesn’t look exactly like a cel it introduced me to more illustrative work and lineless work.
After creating this piece I moved onto using brushes for all of the lighting, shading and colouring. I used more painting techniques here with the leaves and shading, as well as this I used the smudge tool to a certain extent to merge the light and shadow and to create more values. I continued to explore this art style as much as I could over the Summer, I have become used to and comfortable with the style so I feel like I could achieve it. I have aimed my work towards a much more painted style that could be catered towards younger children.
I made this illustration style mood board to also show things that inspire me now that I have settled on this style of painting for now (And incase I want to change anything) Films like brother bear and children’s illustration books continue to inspire me with their art styles.
Colour ideas:
My demographic is young girls, because of this I will need nice and bright colours to attract them to my product (Mainly pinks and purples although girls are open to other colours).
Many of the girl products I have looked into have pinks, purples and blues (And others, like I said earlier). On my demographic mood board the predominate colours are pink, blue, purple and greens. These colours are the main colours that girls are drawn to (or a combination of both). So I know that I have a little bit of lee way with colour (and not just pinks and purples).
Texture ideas:
Despite the fact my style is somewhat flat with texturing I have created this mood board in case I decide to add some more texturing, I personally don’t think I will however it is there just in case. I have collected texturing for rocks, bark, flowers, cacti and other plants so I can get an idea of how to communicate different textures successfully.
The colours will be a lot more vibrant than what you may see in this board, really it is just about the texture here. I could use this to create a more stylized way of displaying the textures in the final art.
Primary research:
As well as my secondary research (mood boards) I have also taken reference material and have done life drawing of my cacti, all of my cacti are rounded like the ones I want to design in my diorama. Because I have these guys in person it’s very easy to understand the structure and textures found on the plants.
Roxanne's Development Blog (Second year) 