Making moodboards for my projects

 Characteristically to every start of a project is figuring out the concepts themselves. I already had a rough idea surrounding what I wanted to do, but looking for references and inspiration has tied everything together quite nicely. Learning from my past mistakes, I am moving quite fastly through this process, trying to not overthink every single aspect of the design. The projects need to be done in a relatively small period of time, and at the highest possible standard. This year is crucial.

For my captain, I knew from the get-go that I didn't want to go the traditional route, so no pirate or anything similar. In order to help me figure out the route that I wanted to approach, I needed to understand what this captain could actually be. Captain of a vehicle of some sort, captain of a group of people?

 Then I started to research interesting vehicles and universes I could approach. After some digging on Pinterest, I found the idea of a captain of an airship to be the one that I liked and enjoyed the most. So something in the SteamPunk universe would be the most appropriate for this concept. After I had that settled, I started looking for actual character concepts that would fit this theme, and thankfully I found more than enough references, so I started picking and choosing what I liked and assembling my mood board.

I really loved the concept in the left-down corner, but I do not want to make it entirely the same, so I started to extract some elements from different places as well. I want him to look villainous, tough, and mysterious. And what better way to translate that than with some victorian style clothing?

I searched for some material references as well, just to help me along the modeling process. I will also need to add some storytelling elements, to make him feel believable and recognizable even if he is observed outside of his environment.

For my Jacket project, the first thought that came to my mind when I saw the glowing bits requirements was cyberpunk. Unfortunately, this is a theme and subject that is currently being overly used and approached, even by some of my peers that also chose this particular project. 

After some conversations and feedback with my professor Will, I decided to approach the fantasy theme. At the end of the day, magic can also glow, so I don't necessarily have to go the technology route. Happily, I was able to find many references and concepts on the Internet, mainly related to elves. 

At this stage, I am not really sure how I want the jacket to look, but what I do know is that I want to have a variety of different materials to showcase my understanding of surface properties and also my texturing skills, which I need to improve thinking and analyzing my previous projects.

For a more interesting silhouette, I will be using some layering of different bits and materials. Since this concept is still a bit blurry, I will be doing some iterations next and will start working on my mannequin at the same time in order to save some time.