My third extract is about the Room of Roots, which I will abbreviate as RoR. Here are my influences for how I will plan out the space and some visual style inspirations. I'll explain my reasoning behind each picture from the top (left to right).
Environment Plans:
1. Tree roots over building: I randomly came across this picture when browsing and found it interesting. I dont know how this has happened but it looks like the tree has just been plonked ontop of the house. The location of this building is Ta Prohm Temple, Angkor, Cambodia. What i find intersting about it is how the roots have grown around the stone without completely destroying the structure.I can use this concept as an idea to build on my room of roots interpretation, how the tree and roots will be incorporated into the design etc.
2. Elephant Graveyard- Lion King: When thinking about how I wanted my roots to be I remembered how the Elephant Graveyard in Lion King was. Theres a specific scene, where Simba and Nala are running away from the hyena's, which shows the mass jungle of bones scattered about the graveyard but I couldn't find an actual picture of that. The bones that stood out most were the elephant ribcages that the cubs slide down the hill through. The shape and orientation of an elephants ribcage is kind of how I want to make my room of roots. The spine would be replaced by the floor, the roots would then rise upwards instead of down and would make a cage-like room, the same way the ribcage incases the heart and vital organs. they would finally intertwine in places at the tips. Its probably pretty hard for others to visualise now but I will try my best to get a self explanatory drawing up.
3. Tree Cave: A picture of a cave made from the roots of the tree. The base of the tree is raised out of the ground from the roots, which makes the cave. This was another little idea of how i would mould my room.
4. Onion: Your probably wondering what the onion is all about. This onion is my main source of ideas for layout planning of the RoR, the reason being is its structure. The onion has roots at both sides and the middle is the actual onion. One side are roots which go down into the ground, the other side is where long leaves sprout upwards from the onion. The main focus of the onion is the middle. I was looking at onions, and also garlic and daffodils, and the direction the skin on an onion goes. The lines and skin of the onion go from root to root around the onion and it does this from the core to the outside. Now, if you imagine yourself being inside the onion looking at the walls you will see this direction of the skin, striping up and down from root to root, This is how I imagine my room being. The middle would be where the room is, the top is the tree and the bottom will be the tree roots. It would work in a similar way to how the tree cave is so there will be gaps in the walls for where light will shine through.
5. Codename Kids Next Door: Another cartoon I used to watch. I didnt really look at this much, I looked at this simply because the tree has a number of rooms in the tree.
6. Millenium Dome: I look at the Millenium Dome similarly to the tree cave in this case, only it is a lot bigger and is man made. The dome and yellow antenna things being the tree, while the gaps along the bottom could be entrances for people and light.
7. Onion shaped tree house: After doing drawings demonstrating my onion idea I finally found this image of a tree house, which looks like an onion, and put it here to show exactly what i'm talking about. As you can see the structure has slits along its exterior which let in light and fresh air, this is how i plan my roots to be. The structure is ofcourse on a tree which runs down the middle and is holding it up. My room will be on the ground so there will be no need for the tree in the middle, this is where I blend this structure and the tree cave idea together to make the Room of Roots.
Visual Style Infuences:
For my RoR interpretation I want to try a more painterly approach. I would say im more of a linier artist, but I would like to explore other ways of drawing while doing the RoR. With that out of the way, here are some visual style influences I have gathered, with explaination of why I chose each.
1. Forest Painting: I have forgotten where I found this but what I like about it is the colour used, speficically in the light. The light is the main influence of colour in this piece and the lights and dark shades on the trees and leaves are done very nicely. Also the rosey highlights give us an idea of the time of day and month this painting is set in. I will be looking at this for colours when doing the RoR.
2. The Jungle Book: I was trying to think of an early screen production that was set in a green area and Jungle Book sprung to mind. After looking into it more to refresh the memory I realised it was a bit like what I had in mind, again for the colours. Jungle Book is quite different in its visual style to other productions in that it keeps its liveliness. Usually with handpainted productions you notice that, if they are not vivid enough, they lose that stand out feature you get with some of todays cartoons and feature films. Jungle Book has managed to hold onto its vibrant look while still having hand painted art in it, this is because they have used cel shading and brighter colours on the characters and important features.
Examples of this:
I plan to try a similar colour technique in my interpretation, and also look at the way the trees and green are drawn and painted.
3. The Lion King: I have been looking to Lion King a lot for this extract and would say it is the most influential. Lion King is a great influence for its style and colours because it covers a lot of different environments. It is also an original classic story. I already explained that the Elephant Graveyard is a source for the planning out of the RoR, but also the colour scheme in that scene and others like the desert are suitable to take note of.
4. Bambi: I looked at Bambi for the same reasons I looked at Jungle Book for. They have a similar setting and are both very vibrant productions.
5. The Tree, by Stan Hamilton: This is an Acrylic painting of a tree done on a wooden panel. what really captures my attention is the ultraviolet-like colour scheme used. These colours make the painting look really new age, Hamilton uses these bright colours in most of his painting. I will try to use Hamiltons painting as inspiration in my work.
6. Lion King The Musical: After looking at the Lion King film I then remembered the musical based at the Lyceum Theatre, London. I had worked there for a period of time doing several jobs, one of my jobs was to look over the puppets and stage props and fix them if they were broken. When watching the show you dont really get to see the level of detail the puppets have been painted with. Close up you can see the intricate blending of colour and shading which I really like. This is why I have decided to use memories and pictures of the stage show, aswell as the Lion King film artwork as influence for my RoR designs, layouts and colour plans.
