The final interior

And here we have the final, finished interior. Goodness were to start....

Well first off we see the white tea set on the tray with the bible. I spout is pointed outward towards the room so our eyes are brought up and through the spot lights of the windows. We are brought up the the mantle shelf with the very important painting mantioned in the story. I decided to light it up to make it even more impressive. The wooden beams and huge and stretch diagonally across the roof, giving it a unique charm, which is what the book said it has... lots of charm They reflect the lovely yellow glow from the windows giving it a very warm and cosy feel. Little colourful pictures reflect the light too, giving the room even more light. Little boxes are places neatly, which serve as chairs of course. This also gives it charm and character. I didn't want to loose the industrial look though. Which is why the door is as it was before hand, with a metal step and circular window. The rugs are green to give it that 'classic cabin' feel. I edited the whole thing when i had finished, to look warm. I adjusted the colour balance to give it more power to the golden glow it has. I personally think it looks very cosy in here, despite its large open plan design.

Perspective and contents.

Here i am, working out the perspective and contents. Flipping the canvas horizontally helps me see if the perspective is right.

Sketch version.

A rough shading of the objects and the light beams coming in through the window.

The line version

And a more completed shading job shown here.

I found and made some colour palettes to refer back to. Colour is a major weak point for me so i needed to give myself all the help i could get! I lovely warm, cabin feel should do the trick.

The boat ideas.

To create the interior of the boat described i decided to go ahead and draw up what it would look like on the outside so i could get a nice idea of scale and theme. Above i noted down the key aspects of what I had to bear in mind.

The passage mentions a barge, yet it mentions this boat was never meant to be lived in so i decided to stay away from that design. After drawing up a few sketches of the same shape i decided this design wasn't industrial enough. I needed something fresh and something you wouldn't expect to people to live in.

And so i drew up a strange water wheel powered boat design. After i did a quick sketch of the shape it seemed to just click into place. I really like the huge nose of the ship, balanced out against the huge water wheel at the back. The water wheel idea came to me after thinking about how the boat was meant to be old and absolute. A water wheel powered ship could be old technology for the time period, plus it gives it plenty of charm and character. The cabins ontop were tricky to balance out. I had to think of where people were going to walk and how the inside would work.

He is the original industrial design of the boat! Rather dinky yet robust.

And here is the 'now' version of the boat. Its beaten, battered and fully customized! The washing lines from the chimney to the cabin shows its inhabited now. lots of patch work has been done too, especially on the wheel guard and chimney. I had this fun little idea of a second stream of smoke leaking out from the chimney. Little charms, tassels and flags are floating about on the railings and ropes, this shows memories and the passing of time. Three new windows have emerged and are rather roughly fitted on with a new shade of metal holding them in place, like a big patch work. I really love this design... and now the interior!

I had SO MUCH trouble figuring out the inside perspective as the room comes to a point, and i want to be facing into the point or out from it. Finally though i settled for the one shown below.

Final render

For the final render I came up with a little scenario. He has just been asked if he wants to play another game of whist, which he always won. He turns to check his pocket watch, then turns back and says, 'One more game!' And that is when this picture is drawn, at the moment. I started with the sketch and refined it down to a basic shape and shaded it on roughly. The arrows showing where the light source is coming from, it helps me render it properly.

More shading, here and alot more time put into it this time. Taking a lot of care to blend in the strokes.

I'm so proud of the black and white version. The raised eyebrow look really quite crafty, cheeky and confident. Which is of course what he is at this moment, he is going to win yet another game of whist so he should be feeling rather good at this moment. His stance is strong and dramatic, to match his flamboyant clothing and mannerisms.

And here is the finished version. I'm still learning in photoshop so the colour didn't quite come up with what i hoped. I tries many different techniques of shading it in, and the different layer mode too but i'm sure its due to lack of practice. Yet im still pretty pleased with how it all came out. I tried to capture the simplicity of the trianlgles and circles with the way i rendered it 

Overall im very pleased with how my character developed, I now have a very deep and developed character. So much so i can imagine how he would react to different situations, how he would move and speak. My Plileas Fogg character is ready to animate i'm sure!

Turn around

I decided to thin out his legs quite a bit as i felt they distracted the attention and emphasis from the top half. There's no need to the legs to be flared out at the bottom that much anyway. The high neck again, it shows class, plus it emphasizes the thin forms of his neck and head.

To give him that really flamboyant look i decided to go all out and make his outfit purple, gold and green. The green emerald matches his eye and with it being such a stand out piece, creates that mystery factor about him.  Keeping it as simple as i can i added some stripes on the shoulder pads for that added style, it also draws out the shoulders more without them being really wide. I left the blouse underneath white as it reminds me of a labcoat. That reminds me of intelligence which is of course, essential to the character. His hands are very angular with triangle claws, along with his triangle feet paws. The golden neck piece is of course to show wealth and style, but it also matches his golden pocket watch which he always carries with him. It seems logical that he would always be checking the time therefore I knew he must have one.
To round off, his ears are tipped black for a neat finish to his face, and it outlines the triangular shape of his head.

Body and clothing

To start the body planning I first edited the original silhouette i liked. This time i really pushed the triangles, to give him to good shoulders for a strong look.

For clothing I surfed the internet for clothing ideas i liked, from the 1800-today, Of gentleman's outfits. 

I drew up many designs i liked for him and put them all on different layers, so I could literally mix and match! Trying out which shoulder pads work on which coat.

I went for the most triangular set of cloths. I'm not sure what century it's from but its definitely rather flamboyant and outlandish! The diagonal blouse adds a touch of originality and creativity to him. The neck... thing, im not sure what it is but they used to wear them. It exaggerates his thin neck and i really like how that looks, it shows class too. And of course every gentleman needs a top hat.

Here i demonstrate how the whole outfit is made out of triangles. Even the way the shoulder pads taper up the the high neck line, its all one big triangle mash up. This makes him look very immaculate and maybe even a little unapproachable. But this is what i want as he is a man who keeps to himself.

Head turn around

It took me a while to figure out the shape of the head, as its so simple but getting the eyes in the right place is a real pain. I still tryed to keep to the basic shapes of the triangle, with the rounder shapes inbetween to really exaggerate the angles.

Then i worked out the facial colours and markings. I wanted to keep it simple and rather traditional with a twist. The different coloured eyes represent 2 things to me, the green being the wealth, upper glass and his way of life. And the blue being his kindness and overall good nature. I scraped the white eyebrows.

Head planning

As you can see with this picture i found, Siamese cats have an uncanny resemblance to a human face, which i found very helpful!

I was really going wrong here in these sketches, I just couldnt seem to get the shapes right. My usual style is very complicated and i was finding it difficult to break out of that. The designs here are really just terrible, nothing really character building here.

So i decided to give myself a template and start over, with the shape im basing the character off. Playing around with the anatomy and basic shapes i came up with e design i really liked!

Silhouettes

I experiments with the combination of the basic shapes and sizes i could do, also trying out the different anatomy i could have. I found myself loving the top middle pose, made up out of triangles. It looks rather evil in this stage but i think it does suit the character im going for. Round definitely would not have worked, he needs to be angular and straight, to match his mechanical nature

Phileas fog ideas.

To start off, i mind mapped out the key features of his character which I felt were important to his development. Things like his hobbies, kind acts and routine, made it a lot easier to get a good picture of what he is like. Below is a picture of the mind map I drew up.

I eventually had a good well developed personality in my mind.

• Kind hearted yet strict and rather unforgiving in some cases.
• Very mechanical in his way of life, always on time and won't take kindly if you are late for him.
• Upper class, enjoys the wealth but doesn't feel as though thats all he wants in life. Puts his money to good use.
• Extremely swarve and holds himself high.
• Seems as though he doesnt fit into society, he probably wears outlandish clothing. He isnt afraid to stand out, yet doesn't do it to attract attention either.
• He is willing to talk, but likes to get straight to the point. Idle chat wastes his time.

With all this is mind i couldn't help but think this extreme personality couldn't be portrayed better than an animal. I went through a couple of animals in my head, owls, tiger,cat, dingo.... But i decided on a Siamese cat.

The features of the Siamese cat are very refined and stern looking, like i would imagine him to be. A Siamese is often looked at as an outcast breed, an out of the ordinary cat to see. Which also fits him perfectly. Plus this cat is very sleek and considered quite mysterious, just like Phileas is nobody knows much about him! These were some sketches of the different cat breeds i went through, and a skull drawing to get an idea of anatomy.