The Koi

To say I love the Koi is an understatement. As a child I used to spend time in the pet store looking at the hamsters, gerbals and fish. There was this enormous giant pond with only Koi and I'd spend absoloutly ages with them. Something was just so magnificent about them.
Perhaps it's their colours, their size or their anatomy. But something attracted me to them, something graceful.

 http://yuumei.deviantart.com/

I never thought much about them after the pet store closed down, nor did I know their name. Until I found the digital artist Yuumei (who has since won awards and the DeviantArt artist of the year award). She focused a lot on Koi's a lot, which symbol love and friendship in Japan.

The Koi is a coldwater fish that in winters hardly ever eats. It's variant colours have made them good for collecting and decoration in ponds. Many will pay large sums of money for one specially coloured Koi. Another special fact about a Koi that was 225 years old, which Koi's die around their 50's, owned by several owners. It goes by the name of Hanako.

The Koi has been selectivaly bred for a thousand years and thus created the goldfish. It was to small, lack of colour and different shaped to be called a Koi anymore. Plus the golfish can't breed with the Koi, as it now a different form of carp.

The Leviathan

              Leviathan

It's like an alien artifact staring right at you from the back of a woman. The light shines so dangerously bright.
This is my human version of the Leviathan. I'd add Japanese fish's fins to it but I think the simplicity stands out on it's own.

Progression of the Leviathan

This was a difficult process. Originally I was going to have hooks coming from the Leviathan woman with fish attached, but I couldn't find any secondary photo's on the internet suitable enough. So I changed my mind and decided to have these patterns shining light from her and changing her skin blue. Actually trying to transform her into a human Leviathan instead of just sharing my concept of one.

Using the pen tool I put dots from her face down to her body. I put a light glow of yellow and added  a lateral line which is what fish have to sense things in the water.

I tried adding faint purple patterns, orange lights and a motion blur to create the effect. The colors are stronger here but this is utter garbage. It doesn't look real and it the colors just don't work well enough.

Now this is where everything gets better. I use a radial blur on each now-white spot and I carefully designed the faint purple pattern. This looks realistic.

 I love all three of these outcomes because the lighting is just so pretty and intense. This was the first test with Exposer, in which I blacked the colours and intensified the blue.

The used the lighting filter here to create a strong light effect. It's like the back is staring at you, showering in strong lights. I love the intensity.

This is a more subtle but beautiful effect. It has the drama of the Equalized version but instead it has been filtered with a lens flare. This is my favorite.

Illustrator pen tool

I experimented with the pen tool, both curves and straight lines. I used the color swatch, fill and strokes to change the colours. I could change the size of the lines and patterns of the shapes. It took a bit to get the handle of the curve tool but I managed in the end.

Illustrator and Shapes

I tested out the pen tool, shape tool and dialogue box (where I just edit a shape) and colored them all in with the filter tool.  The shift key keeps the adjustments all equal, and the polygon tool allows me to type in the amount of points of the shape and automatically gives me the shape.

Film cameras

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Camera lens

Film processing

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