Initial Planning

 To Do List:

After emailing with Bernie, we've decided on an infographic on the opalised Plesiosaur fossil found in The Australian outback (White Cliffs region). 

The infographic will detail three main points:

  • How opal is formed and how it can come into formation around a fossil (describing the chemical details)
  • How this opalising process then affected the White Cliffs Plesiosaur
  • Why there are opalised fossils in the outback - a look at the Eromanga Sea which covered a majority of what we now consider the outback, almost a hundred million years ago. This sea was the habitat for these aquatic dinosaurs and is why so many fossils are found around places such as White Cliffs, Lightning Ridge, Coober Pedy, etc. 

I've now been instructed to create some mood boards and find inspiration from other infographics on the style I want to create in my own artwork. 

Alongside this I'm aiming to conduct personal research to gain a better understanding on the topic. My following questions are:

  • What is the chemical process of opal formation? I need a thorough level of understanding to be able to explain it succinctly (The target audience of this infographic is the general public)
  • How does opal 'fill in the gaps' in a fossil? Still unsure on how the chemical nature of opals can do this in a liquid form
  • What are some other opalised fossils that I could reference? Are there any other majorly significant opal fossils even if they are not dinosaurs?
  • How did the Eromanga Sea form? Was it due to continental drift, tectonic shifting, or ice age melts which triggered this influx and recession of water?
  • The context of opal fossils - how does it economically effect industry in the outback? How are researchers/museums/miners associations dealing with this?

Comments

New comments are not allowed.

Popular posts from this blog

Finished Plesiosaur + Opal Pineapples

Image
I've finished the Plesiosaur, and worked on incorporating it into the water in the background. Full time-lapse of illustration below: Light and shadow play a keep part in how believable the Plesiosaurs integration is into the habitat. It took a little bit of experimenting with different brush presets in Procreate to create those thin bands of light. In the end I resorted to the standard airbrush I had been using for everything prior. I think it needs some refining around the neck and those two bright spots on the underside of the belly. The neck needs some softer reflective light, as the contract between the ray highlights and shadow is very stark - (the light doesn't follow the contour lines of the neck). The sharp light under the belly also doesn't make sense, will need to soften, and smudge out the ends of the rays. From here the next things to do are populating the sea floor with rocks, coral, seaweeds, and opal pineapples. (Could also add some smaller fish/sea creature
Read more

Background pt 2

  Continuing on from the background I was drawing last night. (Time lapse is split into two videos as I had to create a new canvas to continue working on the drawing. Pro-create has a limited number of layers which makes it difficult, as I don't like to compress the layers as I go in case I want to make changes. Creating a new canvas with the same drawing allows me to keep working on it and preserve all the previous layers.) I'm not really happy with how the background is going, I feel as though the perspective of the ice layer is off, which I will need to try fixing tomorrow (The top may need a thick band of ice for it to make sense?? like a cut-away perspective. Need to experiment). I think once I add some more texture it will also help pull it all together. I've based the colour palette around some underwater reference images of arctic waters. They all have the same green/blue colours to the ice and a deep green water which fades off into black. I'll need to keep thi
Read more

Detailing

Image
 The next stage in the Plesiosaur Illustration is focussing on the face: specifically adding in the eyes, teeth, nostrils, and some wrinkles. I used a reference of shark and seal eyes as inspiration for these eyes. Most aquatic creatures have large, dark eyes to help allow the maximum amount of life to pass through, giving them an advantage as a predator in low-light or pitch-black environments. With the coverage of ice on the surface of the water, I thought this might be a possible option for their eye design as light would be limited. I then added in some wrinkles around the eye and nose, pulling colours I'd already used in the skin. Adding some more depth around the wrinkles and bottom of the jaw. I also started adding in some texture around the top of the nose to make the head a point of interest. I'll also need to fix up some of the spots and their colouring on the bottom of the jaw to give them dimension. At the moment they look very flat and don't wrap around the sha
Read more