Story Selection and Primary Source
On Friday evening last I was doing some more digging into Irish mythology stories when I discovered on Spotify there is a narrated playlist of Irish Myths & Legends voiced by Ronnie Drew from the Dubliners. Drew covers 6 different popular Irish mythological stories and it is a very interesting listen.
In my search of stories, I also reached out to an Irish TikToker RóisÃn (@roro_the_terrible) that I follow who talks about Irish mythology, folklore, and cultural stories. I wanted to get her insight as someone who would have a much larger knowledge of Irish mythology than I would. I was interested in finding out what stories she would suggest outside of the standard Irish myths, as I have found out from my research these are already being taught to my target audience. RóisÃn recommended the following stories and also gave me a number of valuable resources. I intend on exploring these stories to see if I can include any of these stories and/or characters in my final output.
Story Recommendations:
Dream of Aengus - the story of the god Aengus and his pursuit of a beautiful woman that he only sees in his dreams
Second battle of Maigh Tuireadh - a great battle between the gods the Tuatha de Danann and the Fomorians
Legend of the disappearing island of Hy Brasil - the island is said to appear every 7 years off the coast of Ireland and its inhabited by giant bunnies
Cú Chulainn and the Isle of Skye - the story is of Cú Chulainn going to the Isle of Skye to prove his worth to Fergal Monach, father of Eimear. He trains as this great warrior under the Scáthach, a famous warrior woman, who he then helps in defeating her evil sister (alleged evil twin) AÃfe.
Primary Research Feedback
Over the week, I started receiving feedback from my children's questionnaire that was sent out last week. Responses have been slow to come in over the week and at the minute I have 6 responses. I expect there will not be many more and so am planning on doing a review of results at the end of the week. This will be to analyse the views and opinions of my topic. I also expect that this help in informing and refining my illustrations and subject matter for my output.
Gradient and Colour Exploration
With my development of illustrations, I thought that it would be a good time to revisit potential colour palettes for my project. I decided to look at current trends in the industry so I explored the Adobe Colour website to understand what were the popular palettes for graphic design and illustration. Below are some of the colour groups that I particularly liked. As you can see I feel the inclusion of at least one green shade is a priority and very important considering my topic and its context.
Based on some of these colours, I felt it would be helpful to see how all of the colours would interact with each other. With this in mind I created a number of gradients to test out different colour combinations. Below are a couple of the ones I think were most effective. I was hoping I would be able to use these as a potential new cover image for my blog, which is why some of the designs include the Celtic rope design from my previous project design.
However, through creating these gradients, I realised I may have been jumping the gun slightly. Even though it was an informative exercise, I think that it would be best to focus on my illustrations at the minute so I will have a better idea of if there are specific colours I will need to include based on the characters I will be including in my output.
Typography Development
Over the week, I reviewed a number of typefaces that have a more modern Irish style. From this exercise I have decided that I will not be utilising a very older stylised Irish type for my project. I think instead I will be leaning towards a very modern playful typeface. potentially a sans serif. However, at the moment my main focus for the project has been on developing the character illustrations. Once these have been further advanced I will have a more concrete idea on how the typeface will fit in to my project.
Illustration Style and Costume Design
The main goal of my week has been to explore and develop a illustrative style for my project. I did this by selecting the Queen Medb character and iterating a number of different illustrative styles of this character. I feel I am very close to figuring out this style and am going to try and develop a number of other characters to test it. I also plan on researching the different types of clothes worn from this time period so that the costumes I design for my characters remain authentic.
Output Exploration and Testing
Yesterday, I had my final tutorial with one of my lectures before Easter. I presented a number of thumbnail and rough sketches on my illustration style to get critiques on my work. My main objective for the meeting however was to consult my lecturer on which output would be most effective. After explaining both of my ideas for outputs, my lecturer recommended that I should test out my 2 game ideas. This will be to test out game mechanics and playability and overall to determine which game is most effective. My lecturer suggested that I do up very simple versions of the games. I will then be enlisting my roommates to test out the games and get feedback on their experience with playing them.