Week 3

The third week in I continued studying the play and reached Act III. There were several important themes covered during this part of the play that I saved copies of as I was taking my notes because these were the elements I particularly wanted to convey in my design.

Othello’s confession of taking Desdemona’s life-

In this Act we see Othello tell Iago he will not doubt Desdemona’s loyalty to him until he has proof she has truly been unfaithful with another man but shortly after states if he does doubt her the only thing left for him to do would be –

to either get rid of his jealousy or his love, which meant he would take her life because he wouldn’t be able to cope with the truth if such were the circumstances she was unfaithful.

Death as a means to an inescapable end-

In another dialogue Othello openly mentions that death is an inescapable part of fate as though it is high right to bring that upon another as though he is owed a sort of twisted justice.

Othello’s hunger for revenge-

The main indicator we have to his violent instincts is when he declares he wished he could kill Cassio forty thousand times as once wouldn’t satisfy his need for revenge, this is particularly articulated in his words ‘Oh love, give way to cruel hate!’ followed by a description of his chest being swollen by the venom of poisonous snakes.

Anger like a tide-

The main inspiration for my interior location design came from this particular quote on Othello’s comparison of his anger to the icy waters of the Black sea that are so cold it is similar to his heart and his bloody thoughts, which are full of violence are compared to the current of water which flows like a tide.

And if it recedes back to the shore, to stillness it is because of love. But its only moments before the rage of the current swallows the tide up again.

Heart turned to stone-

This is another clear confession of Othello’s revenge on Desdemona where he states she will rot and perish because she will not live past that night as his heart has hardened to the point it has turned to stone.

This quote was another reason for my design choice to be within the Amer Fort as marble and sandstone are the materials used to construct the architecture of that time period and are by texture hard and cold.

rough sketches of the floorplan

I made a few rough sketches after this on my idea to give more attention to the design at this stage after gathering enough reference both from the text and my idea. For the interior I made a drawing of the plan view of ‘Zenana Mahal’ which was an octagon because of its multiple perforated stone screen windows that was the key feature of the location. I wanted my balcony which was the exterior to face the opposite direction divided by a wall and accessible through a doorway.

Character Design

outline drawing

For the final illustrations of the character design I sketched them in Procreate after observing references of my two chosen species that was the Barn Owl and the Rhesus Macaque for their structure, placement of joints on the body and overall demeanor to match the shy and quiet winged monkey I created.

rendered in procreate