Brief
Mogwai are the group that bring out the most emotion when I listen to them. I get visions of the sun rising on a new day over a natural landscape. The phrase, nature will win and images of areas reclaimed by nature come to mind. It always sounds really piece full to me but like there was some powerful clashes before the piece. I'm imaging the aftermath of a war between society and nature and Mogwai are the victory music when nature has taken everything back.

Inspiration
I love these photos of nature reclaiming spaces. I have chosen the three pictures that stand out to me most

Mogwai - Earth Division - image 1 - student project
I love the colour contrasts, the depth, the textures. But mostly I love the wave of sand, it looks so still and piecefull but has a feeling of movement and destruction.

Mogwai - Earth Division - image 2 - student project
I love the skeleton of a roof. The feeling of what a fun place this must have once been, I can almost see the children who once played here.

I love the scale of this. It's a whole train depot and it hasn't been tidied up or used for anything else. Just abandoned. Everything is left where it was.

Moodboard
I chose some illustration designs simply because they gave me a similar feeling as listening to the album I have chose. Which I think is the best way to choose!

Mogwai - Earth Division - image 4 - student project

Concepts
These are my favorite from the original lot of sketches I did with comments why I liked them.

Mogwai - Earth Division - image 5 - student project

Left - I liked the scale of an airport, with the focus on a personal item that everyone can relate to. I dismissed it really because I was worried it might look a bit 'The Day After Tomorrow' which would give a really tacky feel to quite sophisticated music
Right - I liked the idea of a city taken over by waves of sand. Like the first one this focuses on a personal image. I didn't like the idea of any people or animals in the picture, gives me a feeling of movement which I wanted to move away from and feels like it's less personal as there not people we know!
Cent re - I felt like this has the scale of the airport as books are one of the most powerful creations of culture but is still very personal and can be illustrated with a lot of focus. It also made me think of propaganda posters and so brought back the idea of a conflict between nature and culture and nature wining.

These are the second set of sketches with comments

Mogwai - Earth Division - image 6 - student project

Left - I liked the idea of bringing the wave back in. With a large tree growing out of it. But was put off with the amount of the image that would be coming off the page.
Middle - The wave has a series of smaller plants coming off, or could even have on. I think it still takes focus away from the fact that nature is piercing the book tho.
Right - The original concept but with a plant that fits on the page... looses the feeling of power that the tree had. I'll be using the original tree through the book but will reduce it's size for the final sketch.

Final Sketch
This is the sketch that I have scanned in (with an app on my pad) and will be tracing to move onto the next stage.

Mogwai - Earth Division - image 7 - student project

Basic Illustration (no shadding or texture)
I still haven't really picked the colours and it was hard to be happy with this before I've gor that shadding / texture on it.

Mogwai - Earth Division - image 8 - student project

Colour Illustration
I've chosen some colours from my mood board that I think work well. I chose some typography as well that I feel work with the design and the music. I added a blood puddle around the burst in the book to help show that the book is sybolising culture but also to bring the image together more by reusing the red which is otherwise just used in the overlay.

Mogwai - Earth Division - image 9 - student project

Basic Textures
I added some basic shadding and texture to the illustration before I take it into photoshop for the main event.

Mogwai - Earth Division - image 10 - student project

Photoshop first round
I loved the misty feal of the fairground on the first shots (I know there is no actual mist) it has an eary feel to it so I got some texture on and started puting some mist around it. I feel like this needs a lot of work still. But you have to make some mistakes to find what you should do I guess. I think using the cloud brush was a little tacky but I'm liking the fadded gradients and the textures. I wanna get something more going on in the background too, even if it's just more texture, I don't want to move away from the feel on my moodboards so I'll keep the background cleaner than it is at the moment. Mogwai - Earth Division - image 11 - student project

detailed shots

Mogwai - Earth Division - image 13 - student project

Mogwai - Earth Division - image 14 - student project

Almost there
I did some work on the tree leaves and tried to get some more depth in the green. I faded out the background more and now I could do with some feedback. Any tips please? I uploaded a large version this time so click to enlarge and you'll see it all. Mogwai - Earth Division - image 15 - student project

Rob Sutcliffe

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