Essence

Zoo, for me, can be stripped down to just a few words out of the list I posted before in "Distill."  In its essence, it is sensory--textures, sounds, colours, patterns, smells.  The zoo is a place where many different things become part of a whole.  It's an epitome of diversity, where the senses are truly rewarded.  In essence, I think less about animals, and more about the things that make them up, distinguish them, and make them similar.  I tried to breathe that sense into my concept sketches, and I'm quite happy with some of them!

I think my favourites have to be the snake and the quilt.  Both convey the sense of the gorgeous patchwork that the zoo is to me, like a miniature version of the cosmos with all its curiosities and sights and sounds and experiences.  They also require a bit more of a blending type of Photoshopping than something like the tails or the city/junglescape, which are more about cutting things out and pasting them onto a common background.  I'm more interested in making things mesh together, rather than just plain collaging, so either will more interesting and challenging for me to work with, from a technical standpoint.