The Strange Woods

Inspiration & gallery

Our constraints for this project was that it had to involve a handdrawn scene, with Processing as our main tool for making the image come to life. Adobe Photoshop was allowed, but only to a minimum degree. The poster also had to mimic the style of Ukiyo-e paintings to an extent.

I've always been interested in stories of worlds that hover just beyond our reach. As such, my initial sketches below emulate this, from hidden monsters in woods, to floating islands in the sky. The first image was heavily inspired by my favourite children's book, The Little Prince. A small boy, in a baobab tree, reading a book on his floating island. This then transformed into an entire castle—much like Studio Ghibli's Laputa - Castle in the Sky (also another favourite). My third sketch probably took inspiration from Wild Things, though I have always had quite the love for magical creatures living in our midst. The fourth came from a story I've always wanted to write—a story about people who lived in the skies and took care of the stars. The fifth one is another re-imagining of that, this time the girl traversing Earth itself and manually sending the stars into the sky. For my sixth (and final) iteration, I combined the previous two and the third one, deciding to bring that girl into the mystical realm of a creature.

Process

I did the chosen concept’s line-art in Photoshop, and created a woods-texture from Processing, only warping it in Photoshop to create the creature's opening. These were my main iterations, where I once more played with colour, the placements of the girl and flowers (and fish!). Besides the warping of the woods, Photoshop was only used in adding the glows and changing the curves of the final image. Every single texture was made in Processing.

The Strange Woods was displayed in the university's End-of-Year Exhibition 2012.