William Olney

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Creature and Environment Concept Artist

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Final Major Project: Existential Creatures initial ideas ~ Clay Model ~ February 2024

After doing a series of basic sketches and some developmental shape play to figure out the forms I wanted to use for these creatures, I decided to test the head designs I had created to see if they would still work in 3D.

Using Chavant medium clay and Super Sculpey oven-dry white clay for smaller details, the three heads were built on a scrap wood tree so that more of the model could be seen in a more secure and compact way.

My main focus was getting down the bulky forms not focusing on too much detail, at least initially. Using a core of foil so that I could minimise the amount of clay used, these experiments worked fantastically to help visualise the ideas I had created and helped to flag up some problems and visual inconsistencies as well as testing the viewer reactions and affects that the creatures had in order to see if they lined up with the intended effects I wanted them to have. Due to these tests, the design ended up changing a considerable amount.

Creatures of The Orchestra: Strings ~ 3D Model ~ December 2023

This is the continuation of my first project of my final year on my illustration course, a self directed project in which I decided to craete a series of creatures inspired by the 4 different sections of an orchestra and finalise the creature designs in a print form

In this continuation I wanted to follow on from the 3D sculpting I have been doing recently and push myself to recreate the bust of one of the creatures from this series in a way that could be 3D printed as a sculpture or desk ornament. Taking inspiration and borrowing techniqies i learned from my Greed inspired project, this piece pushed my sculpting abilities within blender to make an outcome which I felt resembles the source material really nicely.

This workflow of concept work to 3D work is not currently inspiring my final year 3 project.

Year 2: Final project - "Greed" Part 1 ~ The Model ~ June 2023

This is part 1 of my final project of year 2, this project was totally free in what we could do as long as we pushed the limits of what illustration can be classed as. we were encouraged to try different mediums, and technologies as much as wel could to see where these illustrative boundaries were.

This project was a spin on "Art Toys" in which the overall piece is split up into three sections of different ‘rarities’. The high rarity of the head comments of the ammount of theorhetical money one would spend to complete the sculpture. Using visual language from asian Yōkai, I put a focus on wealth and money combining it with certain colours symbolic of these aspects as well. The final collected piece was then 3D modelled and printed in resin to create a smooth, high quality model that could then be primed and painted taking this from a theorhetical idea to an actual realised piece.

The piece itself depicts a creature of smoke designed roughly around lion dances flowing from a pipe with heads of different currancies contained and controlled within the smoke and under the teeth of the creature.

Year 2: Final project - "Greed" Part 2 ~ Packaging And AR ~ June 2023

This is part 1 of my final project of year 2, this project was totally free in what we could do as long as we pushed the limits of what illustration can be classed as. we were encouraged to try different mediums, and technologies as much as wel could to see where these illustrative boundaries were.

Following on from the 3D piece, I also wanted to design out the packaging for the product to really draw all of the ideas of the project together. The design of the packaging was inspired by the model itself through the depiction of the creatured head consuming all sides of the design.

To push the boundaries of illustration even further, I wanted to play with the ideas of an AR aspect. using the front face of the box as the origin of the animation, I ended up motiontraching a hand drawn smoke animation onto this face within blender to create the illusion of a proper AR interaction.

Year 2: Final Project - Introduction into Blender Sculpting ~ June 2023

Part of my final project for year 2 of my illustation course, this piece was practice for sculpting on blender using a pen tablet.

“Dude they let you add a clock???? Hahahahah sick”