Next month I will be starting another course teaching the SDGs to high school students. One of the critical topics in the SDGs is backcasting, and backcasting inevitably involves visioning - imagining the future you want and then working towards it.
Creating a vision is not an easy task. It is the result of experiencing life itself, and it is not something that can be done in a few hours. I've been thinking a lot lately about backcasting and how to give students the experience of creating a vision.
Then I saw a video on one of the art channels I subscribe to about the six steps to creating concept art. Concept art is similar to forming a vision because you imagine something that doesn't exist and create it.
If you watch the video, it's similar to backcasting.
The six steps to creating concept art described in this video and the corresponding five vision steps are as follows.
A) Structuring
[Concept Art] Create the simplest possible structure with a box, sphere or cylinder.
[Backcasting] Step 1: Create a simple vision as a direction.
B) Manipulation
[Concept Art] Tinker with the simple structure to make it a bit more interesting and realistic.
[Backcasting] Step 2: From the vision of the direction, create the first possible goal.
C) Observation
[Concept Art] Observe a real object.
Backcasting] Step 3: Observe the current situation.
D) Education (learning from theory)
[Concept Art] Learn from theories such as the anatomy of art.
[Backcasting] Step 4: Find problems from theoretical analysis.
E) Imitating (learning from examples)
[Concept Art] Identify mistakes in other artists' work.
[Backcasting] Step 4: Find mistakes in previous projects and businesses.
F) Imagination
[Concept Art] Propose a solution to the need for concept art based on the previous processes.
[Backcasting] Step 5: Propose a solution to the problem that has been identified.
Concept art is not created entirely by imagination. Unless the art is very avant-garde, it needs to have some existing reference. If the concept art is entirely devoid of nature, the characters and machines created cannot be believed to be real. Therefore, the six steps of this concept art start with a simple structure, a figment of the imagination, and from C to E they refer to something that exists or has existed in the past.
As Jeffery Watts is quoted as saying in this video, you should analyse your references and use them in your own imagination and not let references dictate what you create.
Try to manipulate your reference and not be manipulated by the reference
Jeffery Watts
I've made a test case, which I'll write tomorrow.