Progress.1: Rough Sketches

This week, I've gotten done the rough sketches of the three gods: Anubis, Osiris, and Thoth, and applied a rough color scheme.

I have also added the main shapes to the background. Withing these images, I'm going to include symbols and motifs that reflect Ancient Egypt while still trying to keep with the art nouveau style.

Anubis

Osiris

Thoth

I've gone against my original idea of putting them in the order you see them in the Egyptian Book of the Dead; Weighing of the Heart, t now they are in the underworld order of who "serves" who. 

Osiris is in the middle because he is the god of the dead. Anubis and Thoth flank him because in the scene I am using, they are the other main gods that are under him.

Anubis : Osiris : Thoth

With the final piece, I will create the pieces so they can either stand on their own or be put together in a Triptych form.

Since I have yet to put in the motifs and symbols, I will show a reference images that I have had on my computer for ages:

 All Egyptian references in motifs and designs, the credits go to an an 19th century arhitect names Owen Jones. If you want to learn more about him, check his wiki page.

Music Video Storyboard Page

Just thought I'd post a page from my music video I made for Storyboarding.

I really pushed this one and refined the shapes and made everything a lot clearer than my other pages.

Storyboard done to the song "Labyrinth" by Oomph!.

The original song is in German but I decided to put the English lyrics since I don't have a very good handle on the German language.

Egyptian Book Of The Dead (Art Nouveau)

What I want to do for my final Design4Media project is to create a set of three digital, art nouveau inspired posters. These posters would feature three Egyptian gods: Osiris, Anubis, and Thoth. I have picked these three gods because they are all part of the ancient Egyptian funerary texts, the ‘Book of the Dead’. To be more specific, it would be illustrating the ‘Weighing of the Heart’ ritual.

To describe this ritual, the ‘Weighing of the Heart’ is a final test the dead must go to, to move unto the fields of the afterlife. In this final judgment, the heart of the deceased is weighed against Maat, represented as a feather, which symbolizes truth and justice. If the heart balanced with on the scales, the deceased would continue into the afterlife. However, if they scales did not balance with Maat, the heart would be eaten by a beast called Ammit, or the Devourer.

'Weighing of the Heart' ritual.

If the heart was eaten, the deceased would not proceed. If their heart was not eaten, Anubis brought them to stand before Osiris, the God of the Dead.

Osiris, God of the Dead.

All through this ritual, Thoth, the God of Knowledge, would be writing the procedures on a scroll of papyrus (See Image 1).

Now that the story is told behind the 'Weighing of the Heart' ritual, we can get unto the project. As I've said before, I will be making three art nouveau inspired posters of Anubis, Thoth, and Osiris. These posters will be flat in color and have the gods represented symbols in the background.

If you're not sure exactly what the art nouveau style is, here are example of posters of one of my favorite artists, Alphonse Mucha:

Poster. Reverie, 1898. (codex99.com)

Posters. Moët; Chandon, 1899. (codex99.com)

Panel. Les Saisons, 1896 (codex99.com)

Target Dates:
Week 1-Nov. 12: Sketches of the three posters done. Put into Illustrator and the paths begins!

Week 2-Nov. 18: Continue working in Illustrator. Have color scheme thought out. Around 25% complete.

Week 3-Nov. 26: Continue working. Should be over 50% to 75% complete.

Week 4-Dec. 3: Get critique and then work from their. Should be ~90% complete.

Week 5-Dec. 10: Get another critique. ~100% complete but open to adjustments.

December 13th: Completed posters!

CRUNCH TIEM!

WE'VE ENTERED CRUNCH TIME!

And to tell exactly what I mean, the group project, The Lost Files, is due THURSDAY.
Holey Moley...

Now, with the panic over, let's get unto what problems, achievements, and what I have done to contribute to the project.

To start off, the problems that the documentary crew faced this week was the absence of our editor. Since I hadn't seen anything for the documentary before that, the crew and I were coming up with a back-up plan. The back-up plan was to take on the editing ourselves for the documentary. The amount of stress that was brought unto us was phenomenal Suddenly, in a week, we all had to put together a documentary! (We were not expecting that at all.) But in the midst of our panic, our editor appeared and a veil of relief was laid upon our minds.

Since the problem that was encountered this week has been told, let us move unto achievements. This week, we were able to contact the editor to our relief, a video of all of the crew saying, "The Lost Files" was shot, and the heads were re-interviewed.
The video of the crew saying, "The Lost Files" is for the documentaries ending. In the plan for the documentary, the documentary crew and I thought that would be a good way to end it.
Even though the heads had been interviewed once, it had to be done again. It was our mistake that we didn't check the sound, composition, or the lighting while shooting. With the interview done again, we have corrected out mistake and the interviews are looking swimmingly.

Okay, with that said, let me get to what I've done. This week I created the credits for the documentary, colored three scenes for the project, and had  to troubleshoot the problems that the visual crew were having with ToonBoom Harmony.
Currently, the credits for the documentary can't be completed since I do not have the music rights and cannot yet give the artists credit. Hopefully, I will get those soon to work on.
With the credits, I went a different direction from the main projects credits since: 1. They are shorter, and 2. I had to think of Baldessari's documentary.
So, even though I do not work in the visual side of the crew, I had enough time to take on the task of coloring three scenes for the project. I took this on because I am pretty comfortable with using ToonBoom and coloring in it. I was able to completely color the scenes in a day and have them uploaded to our dropbox.
Next, if you have ever worked in ToonBoom (specifically Harmony), you know how tricky it can be sometimes. At least with these problems, I was able to successfully fix them and then teach the crew how to properly export files into ToonBoom and add already made palettes to the files so coloring would remain consistent throughout.


Next time you see a post pertaining to the project, It will a celebration post of it's completion.
See ya then. c: