Week 6 - Thumbnailing

Thumbnailing is something I've never spent a lot of time doing so I found this week's class quite interesting. I usually do a few quick sketches based on an idea I had and use them when creating a final image. It wasn't much of  a process and I can see I wasn't particularly helping myself by sticking to it.

I had 20 minutes to create 20 different thumbnails. The idea behind these was that they were to be quick and messy in order to just generate a good number of ideas quickly on to the page. We were given a short brief to stick by when creating these, which was to illustrate an alien planet with an alien civilisation based on ancient Minoan culture. After spending a few minutes looking at some references I set a one minute timer and began to draw.

This was really challenging - I only managed to finish 17 thumbnails. Although we weren't to focus on setting up the scene and adding detail my natural instinct was to go back and add stuff on, and although I did stop myself from doing this I think it did waste time and disrupt the flow. I also found that after scribbling a few ideas down I was running out of ideas on what to do next. I found myself a few times staring at the blank box for a few seconds before making myself start drawing.

I have a few ideas for how to overcome the struggles with this task; looking at a broader range of references, training myself to start drawing without worrying about what ideas I have, stopping analysing what I draw instead of moving on. I feel like I was stuck on thinking of this as an idea-refinement process instead of an idea generating process. It is something I will have to train myself on breaking out of.

After this task I did have a go at beginning to refine a thumbnail idea. I used a different process for this one which I quite enjoyed. I started with a simple gradient, and began painting with a large block out brush on top. Using the lasso tool I began to pick out shapes that stuck out to me and add highlights and shadows to bring them out. A simple environment began to stick out to me. Again it may not be the best composed piece, but the process is all about idea generation so I'll need to get used to most of the ideas ending up in the bin!