Our first mini brief

'Insects' (and my phobia of their faces)


In our first briefing of third year we were informed about what we were expected to produce over the course of the next year, which, besides from our research report and studio work project, now includes completely mini projects every week or so. This is something I am a little apprehensive about as I know it is going to be a lot of extra work to get done each day but at the same time I know It is going to be really good practice for handling a lot of tasks at once and getting work done speedily which is something I am certainly hoping to improve on this term.

Although we all thought we were all going to receive a written brief on what our first mini project was going to be, all we actually go was the word 'Insect' and absolutely nothing else. Our tutor explained that this brief is completely about your own creativity and you can do pretty much anything you want but it HAS to related to the word Insect. It is only a week long week and we have no specifications of how much work we are meant to produce but I assume it is up to us produce as much as we possibly can before our deadline on the 2nd of October.

When we were first told our one word brief, I had a idea immediately pop into my head of a character design I could possibly produce for this theme. My initial idea was of a character who has been accidentally shrunken down and now had to try and survive in the world of the insects. During gameplay, as the character travelled throughout the level and killed off any insects they encountered they would collected a part of that bug that they could craft into a item they could wear so for example, fruit fly goggles so that they could see better or dragonfly wings so that they could fly. Overall I thought I was an okay idea but it also sounded incredibly familiar somehow, it was only after a little bit of thought that I realised it was very similar concept to the 2006 animated move 'The Ant Bully' as well the Marvel super hero, 'Ant Man'.

I knew that I could still take inspiration from these two films to help with my design ideas but I would also need to steer clear of anything that was too similar to them and to try make my concept different somehow. I then decided that I needed to actually have a look at some photographs of insects to try and help my thought process and come up with a interesting idea but I knew I was going to hit a wall with this part of the mini brief as  I have a huge phobia of micro photography of insects faces. They really give me the creeps and I can't physically look at them, so I knew all my image research would have to be quite far away shots of insects in order for me to get anything done. One insect that I knew would be a fairly safe one for me to look at was different varieties of beetles and so I had a browse on Google for a little bit of inspiration and I ended up finding one photograph that really inspired me. The said image can be seen below and it is of a rainbow stag beetle.

 As I was looking at the photograph one of my fellow students casually mentioned that the rainbow stag beetle looked like it has been covered in oil and this comment park a concept sparked a character design idea in my head that I actually really liked and decided I wanted to work on. Going back to my original concept which focused on someone who had been shrunken down, I thought about slightly changing this idea so instead I would be designing a tiny fantasy creature that has been living at peace with nature since the beginning of time. But since man evolved and started to take over the earth, producing dangerous oil and harmful gases along the way, they have managed to enrage the insects of the planet. Slowly these man made products are poisoning the insects minds, making them lose all sense and judgement and are slowly turning them into dangerous enemies for the the tiny creatures to face.  The soft delicate creatures, in order to survive this now cruel and dangerous world, have had to dramatically change and toughen themselves up. They now craft protective armour out of the shells and skins of dangerous insects they have had to kill and put out of their misery and overall have had to become a much tougher race.   

Once I had decided that this was the design idea I really wanted to have a go at doing, I started to do a little image research into what these creatures could look like in order to give myself a good base to go off of when it came to my research. I knew that there are very delicate looking floral based imps and sprites in the 2008 film 'The Spiderwick Chronicles' so I decided to look up some of the concept art that is shown in the 'field guide' which features in the film. An example of some of the films creature designs can be seen below. I think these are absolutely beautiful and I often use them for artistic inspiration if I am doing a floral or nature inspired piece. 

I think the delicate design of these sprites is something I would like to aim for the main look of my tiny creatures but I don't want them to look so much like flowers or plants as these deep forest sprites do. Most of their soft looking appearance is going to be hidden under tough looking clothing anyway and this clothing is going to be made from a mixture of all different types of insects they have had to kill which is actually quite a gruesome concept overall so I don't want them to look too sweet and innocent when they actually aren't. Now that I have a solid concept and story sorted out, I will now be able to do as much image research as I can manage, without getting to creeped out, so that I can make a start on coming up with some quick character designs. I think overall I will keep my work load to a minimum so that I don't give myself too much to do as I would like to create a final colour piece by the end of next week in order to present to the class.