Fauna is the creatures and animals that have developed and inhabited certain worlds. As these animals evolve, they can adapt to their environments, so it is important for artists to have their own animal designs reflect the nature that they exist in. This means there are many possibilities when designing realised fauna.
Through the creation of my own fauna, I want to communicate the effects of civilisations on creatures and animals, the variety of natural life on planets, and its symbiotic relationship with flora. I aim to make these creatures immersive by adapting some of the techniques used in existing examples of real life architecture into my own designs.
Many examples of immersive fauna come from Animal drawing by Charles R. Knight. (1) The illustrations in this book show how to draw many types of animals and are graphic in style. I believe this fauna to be immersive because the creatures and animals are presented in a photo-realistic style, and the artist has incorporated as much detail as possible to render them realistically and true to form.
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| Animal drawings (Knight, 1982) (2) |
By reproducing the detail and realism of these examples of fauna, I have been able to understand how artists take into account more than the appearance of the creature. Many elements of an animal must be considered while producing a faithful representation of them - including things that are unseen, such as the psychology of the animal. This helped me to comprehend the complexity and craftsmanship of a graphic illustration, and how to better render fauna using this understanding.
The first series of mini-experiments was looking at location, and how fauna would be perceived in different habitats. Firstly, I drew a dolphin and schools of fish swimming in the air, high above the Earth. This is a major juxtaposition to what we would normally see of fish, and this results in an interesting image.
Next, I drew birds of prey inhabiting mountaintops, which gave me an opportunity to present these fauna in different stances and off different shapes. There is a sense of depth here with the mountains reaching into the distance with birds flying around the peak.
I believe these were effective experiments because they show fauna in locations that are not their own, and this clearly results in a change to how we perceive these animals.
The next mini-experiment was based on weather, and how it affects fauna. For this experiment, I recreated a classic image of buzzards circling above a cracked, dry ground. This is meant to represent a drought that has dried up the land, and these birds of prey are waiting to pick off the weakened surviving creatures.
I believe this was an effective experiment because it is simple and iconic, and is imagery that a lot of people are familiar with. This makes it easier to see this scenario happening in real life.
The final mini-experiment was into light and how switching the colours of animals can alter how we percieve them. For this experiment, I used darker colours for the naturally brighter animals, and lighter colours for naturally darker animals. This resulted in a confusing mix of fauna that lose their personal identities.
I believe this was an effective experiment because it helped me to see how far I could experiment with the colours of fauna until they lost a clearly communicated narrative that the individual animals are usually known for.
From these experiments, I have managed to identify the characteristics of real life fauna, which will assist me in designing my own vehicles that effectively communicate a narrative. These characteristics are detail, form and identity. With these aspects in mind, I created an experimental response that relates to one of the fictional worlds from my Final Major Project.
This response is in the form of a chaotic landscape with creatures from my FMP. I have used characteristics of fauna and adapted them to show a variety of natural life on the planet, the effects that civilisation has on nature, and the symbiotic relationship between flora and fauna. This resulted in a merging of creatures with plants and foliage to create a chaotic nexus of life.
To summarise, this experiment inspired me to explore immersion through fauna using examples of real-life species, as well as how representations of creatures and animals can present a narrative that is communicated through the visual language of these types of fauna.
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(1) Knight, C. (1982). Animal drawing. 1st ed. New York: Dover.
(2) Knight, C. (1982). Animal drawing. 1st ed. New York: Dover, pp.24, 58, 88. 98.
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