The Minotaur Project

I suppose this counts as a past project, but it was such a huge endeavor that I thought it deserved its own page. It was a semester long project in one of my classes, Creative Interpretation, and I also used the artwork for my final project in Mythology class. (I love being able to combine two projects into one- it saves SO much time.)
For this project I thought I'd put up some of the process work. ^_^ Not for all of the pieces though, since there was four in total and the process was basically the same for each.

We were required to start off doing a brainstorm, either as a list or a pictogram or any other method we chose. Personally, I didn't find it all that helpful, since I did most of my real thinking while doing the thumbnails and roughs. All I got out of the brainstorms were a couple of side projects, which I'll be sure to put up here. XD

And then we were required to look up reference pictures. TONS of reference pictures. A great majority of which came off the wonderful world wide web. But I did get a lot of pictures of the old frescoes and ruins of the Minoan civilization, which is where the Minotaur supposedly originated from. The myth is Greek, but most of the story takes place on Crete.
Don't get me wrong- I didn't copy any of the pictures outright. I simply used them for inspiration- especially for the clothing of the characters and the color palette. I did borrow the image of the bull jumping fresco on one, though.

There was also a lot of research involved- pages and pages and pages of research. I found it interesting though, since I've always loved ancient history. The Minoans were the most powerful sea-faring nation in the Mediterranean during they're time- and also the most advanced. Besides the Egyptians (with whom they regularly traded) they had some of the most intricate architecture, skilled artists/craftsman and advanced technology in the region- which included flushing toilets! (Not quite in the same way as ours, but still...).
Honestly, I think the Greeks were just jealous. XD

Anyway, after all that, came the thumbnails and the roughs- some real creative work. For the first piece I ended up doing 24 thumbnails- after that I narrowed it down to just 18. I think on the first piece I didn't know what direction to go in, so I tried everything.

I experimented with different scenes from the opening portion of the story, trying to play it out as a movie in my head. I wondered if I should get Poseidon involved, since he was the one who sent the white bull to Minos. (For those of you who know the story.)

Then I wondered if it might be interesting (and adorable) to include a baby Asterion (the Minotaur). I imagined that Pasiphae (the Minotaur's mother) would have snuck away to give birth in the pasture, near the father bull.

I also played with some dramatic (and campy) cliff-ocean scenes with moons and bulls.

Lastly, I thought about doing a scene inside the eyes or eye of the white bull. I took the idea to rough, but it seemed overused.

So, these are the roughs I ended up with:  A dramatic, (yet slightly familiar) scene of Pasiphae locked up in dungeon with Minos' shadow looming over them, Pasiphae, Asterion and the Bull out in the pasture with again, Minos looming over them, the scene in a bulls eye, and a version of the first rough at a different angle.

I couldn't really decide between the dramatic dungeon scene and the pasture scene. After asking for the opinions of various family members (since non-artists can sometimes be the most observant) I settled on the pasture scene, with a few minor tweaks to the positioning and the camera angle.

From there, I took some pictures of my sister standing/sitting in the character's positions for reference, and got started in a 11x14 sketchbook. I inked the final result with pen and brush pen:

Ta-Da!

After scanning it in with one of the magnificently huge scanners at the downtown campus, I took it into Adobe Illustrator and used the live trace tool, to clean up the line work.

I guess you can't tell much of a difference...

Then, I brought that into Photoshop and began coloring away. It took a lot of return visits to the downtown lab, but I finally emerged with this:

Yay-ness! ^_^

It was presented/critiqued in class, after which we were required to at least make a few changes to it between that time, and basically the end of the semester. There were a lot of suggestions. Some people thought Asterion looked too human-like, and I was told that the lighting situation didn't make sense (I'm still not quite seeing it... but I understand their point.) So, with some more revisions (and a slightly bruised ego) I came up with this:

The final version.

And so, the process repeated itself three more times to complete the project, and tell the story. The second and third pieces were the ones that gave me the most trouble- one compositional-wise, and the other... well, altogether. I'm still not happy with the third installment... I'm considering returning to it and just making something completely different. (unintentional Monty Python reference... XD)

Piece #2, depicting the death of Minos' son at the games in Athens, which jump started a war, and eventually led to the feeding of victims to the Minotaur. Finding good reference pictures of blood for this was pretty tough. I basically had to look at puddles of water instead and extrapolate. I consider the first version of this piece to be a failure, since NO one understood the message, or even the image itself. I'm glad it's done, but, I still hold a lot of negative feelings about it- it kind of skews my perception of the thing.



Piece #3 represents the arrival of Theseus in Crete and the events proceeding the locking of the victims in the labyrinth. Oddly enough, the class really liked this one, despite my own personal thoughts. I like the idea of the string moving the viewer's eye though the piece, but I'm not happy with the drawings of the characters or the overused "fade from one scene to another" scenario. I really have to re-do this one.

#4, the Death of the Minotaur. This, and the first one are the only two that I'm actually happy with. Emotional-wise. This one didn't get any revisions, since it was the last one. I should really think about doing some though before the critique suggestions disappear from my mind.

As for extra projects inspired by the brainstorming (you thought I forgot didn't you?) they include these two:

A James Bond Minotaur and the Minotaur as Jareth from the move Labyrinth. XD 

Minotaur Jareth seems an obvious one, but James Bond is a bit of a stretch... See during a brainstorming session, the movie For Your Eyes Only came to mind, since James was in the Mediterranean with some Greek woman. The creative ball got rolling from there. XD