Finishing the fourth brief

Coming up with a articulated prosthetic leg design


Once I had finished my Japanese inspired tree house model sheet I got straight onto finishing off my articulated prosthetic design for our final mini brief. I had previously already made a mood board of both sci-fi and realistic prosthetics a little while ago so I had a look over my collected images for a little inspiration before I started designing anything. I had already decided that I wanted to go with designing a leg, just because I wanted to, and so I drew myself out a base silhouette of a leg on Photoshop that I could easily draw over and erase to create an articulated prosthetic design. This was actually quite fun to do as I had a good collection of images to look at for inspiration and I just started chopping and changing the base leg in order to get a few designs. I am really pleased with how they turned out and I think using a grey scale colour scheme made them look quite neat and professional. My finished leg prosthetic designs can be seen in the image below.

So after I had got my four designs done I sent the image above to a few of my fellow peers and also showed it to my family members to get their verdict on which prosthetic leg design they liked the most. Overall number three was the most popular as people said it stood out the most amongst the others and looked interesting so I decided to go with their verdict and pick this design for my final. For our final piece it was specified that we did not mention in anyway how the articulated prosthetic worked, it just needed to be a piece that explains itself and this was something I was a little perplexed about how I was going to achieve this. It took me a little while to come up with the layout that I created for my final piece as I was struggling to try and think of a way of displaying my design but I think what I choose was a good decision as it helped to explain how my prosthetic leg worked in a simplistic way. My final piece can be seen in the image below.

I wanted to keep my final piece simplistic and have as much focus on the prosthetic limb as possible but in a way that actually had some more going on in the image instead of just have the leg there and nothing else. So I decided to make my final piece look like a poster advertising the the prosthetic so that it had a little more context and something else to it which I think ended up looking quite effective. I also kept with the grey scale theme for my design as I think it just made my final piece look more neat and futuristic looking. I am really quite pleased with the final image as I think it came together nicely and ended up looking almost professional in a sense, It was a good end to all the mini briefs.

Finishing the third brief

My completed tree house model sheet 


After I finished the sketch page of my Japanese inspired tree house and I had a good idea of what I wanted it to look like, I decided to just get straight on with making my tree houses model sheet. I was actually sort of dreading having to do this as it involves environment art with technical thinking and perspective which are a few things that I am not exactly fantastic at doing but as I started to sketch out my design, it actually started to turn out a lot better than I thought it would. I think since I had a very strong idea of what I wanted my design to look like I was easily able to draw it out in a front, side and back view, as well as quickly adding some colour to it without too much complication and to be honest I am quite happy with how it turned out. My finished model sheet can be seen below.

Then once I had finished my Japanese spirit tree house design I knew I had to add some material references which had been specified by the brief so I had a look online to see if I could find a few examples that would help a 3D modeller if they were going to look over this model sheet. I decided not to add any examples of any seamless textures and instead just put little images of different parts of my design would look like and were I got my inspiration from. This has actually been one of my favourite mini briefs to complete as I think it turned out quite nicely and that I am improving with drawing environment art.

Continuing with the third mini brief

Figuring out what type of tree house I want to design


So now that I have completed a good chunk of my studio work I have decided that I need to get back into the swing of finishing off any outstanding mini briefs that I may still have to be completed. Technically based on the time table I made earlier on the year I am still on track as I am in the stage where I should be finishing up any work that needs to be done, which is alright, however I do have quite a bit to do as I wasn't able to complete some of the given mini briefs by the date they were set to finish. This is a bit of a pain but I am determined if I work hard I can get them completed and out of the way.

So after I made my tree house mood boards I had to have a good think as to what kind of design I wanted to create for this mini brief as there really were a lot of different options to go with. However it was actually when I was watching an anime called 'Kamisama Hajimemashita' and wasn't really thinking about the mini brief that a design idea dawned on me. I decided that I wanted to have a go a creating a Japanese style tree house that looks similar to that of a ancient Japanese temple which has been built in a cherry blossom tree. I thought stylistically this would look quite athletically beautiful and would allow me to get some nice colour and cultural design into my work. So with an idea In mind I decided to expand my image research a little and collect some pictures of both in bloom blossom trees and some ancient temples that reside in Japan so that I had some solid images references for when I decided to design the tree house. The mood board I created consisting of my collected research images can be seen below.

Now that I had some strong images I could use for design references I immediately got to work on getting down a few initial sketch ideas of what the tree house could possibly look like in order for me to be able to make a model sheet later on. A few weeks ago I had really struggled with just getting a simple tree house sketch down on paper as I was just finding the technicality of it, like the perspective and scale, quite tricky as environment art really isn't my strong point, however, this time around I actually found drawing out some ideas much easier. I think the first time around I wasn't one hundred percent certain what my idea was going to be but now I had some creative influence getting an idea down on paper was much simpler. I decided that as cherry blossom trees tend not to grow very tall, the tree-house would be a home to small Japanese spirits instead of regular sized humans so I just popped a few sketches down of this idea and what I drew can be seen below.

I am actually really quite pleased with how this turned out as I usually struggle with drawing buildings and it was the first time ever that I had done something as simple as drawing a tree but I think it turned out alright to be honest. It is still something that I could certainly improve on though. So now I have a fairly good idea of what to produce for my model sheet. Then I just need to find a few textures that match what can be found on a cherry blossom tree and a Japanese temple and then my tree house mini brief will be good to go.

Finding some time to do my own artwork

Finishing my Disgust piece 



So finally I have been able to find some to finish of some of my own personal art work. I have felt so weighed down by my university projects at the moment that I haven't been able to justify doing any of my own art work or sketches as I felt like it would distract me from my graded assignments and that is really the last thing I wanted. But thankfully after completing both my extended essay and a good deal of my studio work I was able to dedicate a little time to finish some digital painting I had started at the beginning of the year which I have been really keen to complete since I started it.

I have been trying to practice with using Photoshop as I am still fairly new to the programme and I am still getting to grips with how it works, because I want to have a go at doing some character art work that doesn't include outlines just to expand the different types of art I can produce. I started a digital piece a few months ago which was a fan art drawing of Disgust from Disney Pixars 'Inside Out' and now, with a bit of spare time and more practice with using Photoshop, was able to finish it. Overall I am really happy with how it has turned out as I think it has good depth and shading which is something I have been working on so I am pleased with that. Hopefully now with one finished piece like this under my belt I can go onto make some more.

The possibility of creating environment art

Looking at visual examples of different Candylands



So now that I know what kind of video game I want my candy based characters to appear in, which is a side view 3D fighting game, I thought it might be a nice idea to have a think about what the game levels may actually look. Although I am focusing on character concept art and I haven't one hundred percent decided weather or not I am going to actually produce any environment art for my art book or not, there is still a possibility that I may do some rough level designs later on so I thought I should do a little image research now just to get the ball rolling and, seeing as I have envisioned the video game levels to take place in some sort of candyland, this image research could also help me with my colour scheming and the art style for my characters too.

I have thought about the different possible levels that I could create with the theme of sweet food and I thought it would be nice idea, if I did do some environment art, that it would mostly consist of foods such as cake, biscuits, ice cream and different types of candies so that my character wouldn't get too lost in the background and it would add some visual variety to the game. So I set about gathering some image research of different types of 'candylands' as I knew that these would be good visual representations of the type of thing I would be aiming for in my environment art and would also allow me to see the types of colour schemes that were used for this type of environment. I found bits of pieces from photography to concept art and popped it all in the mood board below.

So apart from making me incredibly hungry this mood board has some really nice visual inspirations I can use for design references later on in the creative process. Most of the colours used in these images are very bright and bold so if I did create some environment art I may have to tone down the saturation a bit to allow the characters to be the centre of attention. As well as making the image reference mood board I also decided to have a look at some videos that featured specific 'Candylands' that I already knew of such as the candy room in 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' and the video game Sugar Rush found in 'Wreck it Ralph'  just for a little more creative influence. I have popped all of these clips below so that I can refer back to them in the future if I do decided to create a level design after all. But now that I have done a little possible level design research and can now move on and continue working on my concept art work and developing the design document.

The fourth mini brief

'Articulated Prosthetic' 



So just over a week ago we were told what our new mini brief was going to be which unfortunately I hadn't got around to starting right away due to the fact that I was getting a little worried about how much work  I was going to have to complete before January and was starting to feel more than a little anxious about not getting it done, but with my tutor Marks recommendation, he told me to leave the mini briefs for a little while so that I could spend my time focusing on my research report and studio work. So this is what I have been doing as of recently but I constantly feel like when I am trying to complete all my actual project work, I still have the thought of needing to finish the mini briefs in the back of my mind and it was stressing me out so now that I have done a good amount of studio work I have decided to have a crack at the newest brief we were given. I was going to continue with the third brief which was to do with tree houses but I am actually really struggling with the technical side of this one at the moment so I am going to leave that one for now.



So below are the details of our new brief that was emailed to us by our tutor. I have cut it down a little from what it was so that there are only the points that relate to concept artists:



Concept Art

• Source/design/adapt and articulated prosthetic. 
• Arm(s), leg(s), finger(s), toe(s), it is up to you. 
• The focus is on practical design. 
• You must communicate functionality exclusively through illustration/ presentation of the final model: i.e. no text to explain how things work.
• Consider how you will use this as portfolio piece to impress potential employers. 

So essentially I need to be getting a few sketches down of possible different functioning articulated prosthetic limbs and then draw out a final product that has absolutely no details around the design to explain how it works. Now this may sound rather easy but I imagine when it actually comes to working on the designs It is going to become quite difficult due to the fact that we can't write about how any of it works so our design work is going to have to be very strong. So, the best place to start really is to get down some good image research to help with the design process and to try and make my ideas as realistic and strong as possible. Funnily enough in BA6 I actually did a bit of research into the use of prosthetic limbs when I was looking at making a cyborg design and had actually already compiled a mood board of photographic images on this subject which I have decided to post below as it can easily be reused for this mini brief, but I have also made a new mood board as well to go alongside it so I have done some new research.

I think these are a really nice broad range of photographs and concepts that will hopefully help to influence my design work and ideas. I also thought, as well as gathering image research that I should also do little bit of reading into the topic of prosthetic limbs so that I can learn some basic information about them instead of just basing my designs purely off of images. So I had a look on wikipedia to see what their was written about this topic and after a few paragraphs it started getting a little too technical for me as well as starting to get in-depth about the actual human body and I can get easily woozy from hearing about that sort of thing so I didn't do too much reading research although I did find something really interesting in the article which I have just popped below.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosthesis

"A person's prosthesis should be designed and assembled according to the patient's appearance and functional needs. For instance, a patient may need a transradial prosthesis, but need to choose between an aesthetic functional device, a myoelectric device, a body-powered device, or an activity specific device. The patient's future goals and economical capabilities may help them choose between one or more devices."

So essentially this means that when I start designing and sketching on my different prosthetic limb ideas I will really have focus on the fictional person that this aid would be made for and also must consider all the different functions it has and for what purpose have they have been created for. It isn't going to be a case of designing something simply because it is aesthetically pleasing or looks like something from a sci-fi movie, it needs to be both practical and realistic. So, baring this in mind, what I need to move onto now is actually getting some design work done.

Starting getting some designs done

Experimenting with art styles 

Now that I have done a little research into shape and colour theory as well  as having a look at a few art books I decided that I should have a little go at getting some art style sketches down. I made a plan at the beginning of the year that a large amount of BA3a would be dedicated to research that I can put into my design document as well as doing a few bits of design work here and there, where as BA3b would be focusing way more on the actual art work side of my project and layout of my art book pages. As I have done a considerable amount of work for my candy based project and I knew that my design document couldn't be all research I decided that I would get some art style sketches done so that I could add them in there and have a good place to go from after Christmas.

So I put my research on hold for a while and decided to just get down a pages of sketches of possible different art styles that my game could use. I was going to have a little look into different anime and cartoons for influence but I thought it might be best just to get some designs done that have come right off the top of my head first so I have a starting point to go from. I have popped below the design page I have done.

I tried to get a good variety of different possible styles whilst trying to stick to a more cartoon/anime looking art style as this is the general feel I want to give them game. As I am aiming to make my characters quite expressive, my favourite style at the moment is the one I used for the 3 faces down in the bottom right as I think they very clearly each emotion I have chosen for them and could allow me to get some really nice character designs from them but this could change after a little experimentation.

Experimenting with art programmes

Just bought the Paintstorm studio software 



This is just a super quick little post about a new software that I have just bought. I am always more than happy to try out different art programmes to see what kind of effects they have and to see if I prefer any over the others I already have and, luckily this evening one of my fellow students mentioned that the art programme 'Paintstorm studio' was on offer today for £10 due to it being Black Friday. He also posted a video below of all the different bits and pieces the software could do and needless to say I was pretty impressed. The video can be seen below along with a demo animation created in Paintstorm studio.

So after I had bought the software and had a little look at what it was capable of doing either by watching some tutorial videos or madly just going through all the brushes and squiggling lines on the blank canvas I decided it might be fun to try and draw out a character sketch to see if I could do a simple piece of line art in this software. As I am trying to get faster at my digital drawing it was nice to have a little practice with the Paintstorm studio software to see how quickly I could get a simple drawing down and what it looks like when complete. Like Photoshop this artistic programme has loads of different setting and tools to play around with so it took me a little while to find something I was comfortable with but in the end I ended up drawing what can be seen in the image below. I am actually really happy with how this little sketch turned out as I was having a practice of a possible art style I could use for my studio work and I think it looks quite nice. If I have any spare time I might have a go with a couple more warm up sketches in this programme as well as a little practice with some environment art but that all depends if I actually have time to or not.

Thinking about the actual gameplay

What is the setting for my candy based characters? 

For our studio work project, if you were someone who has chosen to do character design, we were told that the most important thing to focus on is the actual characters and we don't have to worry too much about what kind of game that they will be featured in. However I feel that this aspect is actually quite important as otherwise you are making character with no real purpose or direction and the type of game will actually greatly effect the design process and what you need to be drawing. So I decided, before I got any big design work down that I should have a little think about what sort of game I want my candy based characters to feature in and if there are existing games similar to what I come up with to do some research on.

So originally I had thought about possibly having my game as a 3D animated third person shooter similar to that of the existing video game 'Team Fortress 2' but as I started to progress through my project I really started to go off of the idea of making this sort of game as I was uncertain on how it was going to work or fit my theme. After a little while of trying to think up new and different type of gameplay that would suit my characters I sort of hit a brick wall as I just couldn't think of anything that would work nicely or wouldn't be to overly complicated. It was only when I was speaking to one of my fellow students about it that I came up with an idea I actually really liked the sound of and got excited about the thought of working on.




A 3D fighting game


My fellow student suggested that she would love to see my characters in the style of a fighting game and to be honest I couldn't agree more with her. As soon as she mentioned the concept I started to feel excited about creating characters for this sort of gameplay and knew that this the idea that I was going to stick with and work on. The reason I really warmed to the idea of a 3D fighting game was for a multitude of different reasons which I have listed below:

• This type of game will allow each character to fully express their set mood via their movements, fighting style, speech and expressions. 
• The players will be able to pick and choose which characters they want to play as which makes the name 'Pick & Mix' work perfectly. 
• I am not fantastic at environment art but with this type of game, which will most likely be a side scrolling 3D game, I can at least get some level design art work done.  
• Less of my time will be taken up due to the fact that I won't have to be designing different weapons as I would of have to have done with a third person shooter.
• There are lots of different existing games out there I can look at briefly for research and I have also already played a few fighting games before so I have first hand experience with them.

I just feel like a 3D fighter would be the best type of game for my character ideas and I think I could get some really nice designs done with this gameplay theme in mind. So now that I have a good idea of what kind of gameplay I want I decided that It would be a good idea to have a little look at some existing fighter games for a bit of inspiration. As our tutors said, the actual game creation isn't the important part of this project seeing as I am focusing on character design work, so I have decided not to do too much research otherwise I will go off on a tangent but just enough so I can get a good idea of what I need to be drawing later on.

I already know of quite a few fighting games so I thought it would be good idea to pick two different games, one I haven't played and one I have, so that I could get a good variety of research and influence. The first game I chose was the 2D side scroller fighting game 'Skullgirls' and this was due to the fact that this game is clearly inspired by anime and cartoons which is something I want to incorporate into my own character designs so I thought it would be a good one to look at. This game was independently developed by Reverge Labs and co-published by Autumn Games and Konami and was released on multiple different platforms on April 10th 2012. 'Skullgirls' is a video game where player can engage in combat against each other using teams of one, two or even three character and the goal is to either completely knock out your opponents characters or have the must amount of health when the timer runs out. This game uses many different game mechanics such as tag team-based combat, character assists, snapbacks, and delayed hyper combos as well as different modes such as story mode, arcade mode, versus mode, training room, tutorial mode, and online play. The characters in 'Skullgirls' are nearly all female and have been quite criticised by the players and fans as being overly sexualised.

There are elements of this game that I would like to incorporate into my own gameplay if possible as they are really just the basics of a good fighter game such as character assists, combos, verses modes ect as well as things like the use on an expressive and anime like art style which are all things that I will need to consider when doing my design work. But overall, this is a 2D video game when what I actually want to be creating is a 2D art book for a 3D side scrolling fighter so what I really needed to look at was a fighter that is similar to my desired concept and the first one that came to mind was 'Super Smash Bros' for the Wii U.

'Super Smash Bros' is a series of fighter games that features the main characters for a variety of different videos games series such as 'Super Mario', 'Sonic the hedgehog' and 'The legend of Zelda' and allows the player to pick and choose which characters they want to fight against each other. It is published by Nintendo and the first original 'Super Smash Bros' was released on January 21st 1999 and the most recent game in the series came out in November of 2014. The game is a little different to regular fighters however as instead of winning the round by depleting an opponent's life bar, to win the player needs to launch their opponents off of the stage and out of the map. All of the 'Super Smash Bros' have very simple controls compared to a lot of different fighting games and a huge amount of character combinations and battle items which the players can use to aid their character and help them win the fight. Every single 'Super Smash Bros' game has been well received by critics and has now spawned a large competitive community and has even been featured in a handful of high profile gaming tournaments.

Both of these fighter style games are going to be really good to look back at for some inspiration when it comes to the design part of my project as they both have shared elements that I would to try and incorporate into my own project. I didn't want to go into too much detail with researching them as our tutor did say we should be mainly focusing on the character and not so much of the actual gameplay so I thank I have got enough basic information down to help influence my work. So now that I have done some research into the type of game that my candy based characters are going to be featured In I can now continue with my sketch work and start getting some more solid designs done.

Practising with character design

Having a little experiment with shape theory 

So after I did some simple research into what colour, shape and light theory was as well as looking into the psychology of how different colours portray certain moods, I thought it would be a good idea to now try and apply some of this knew knowledge into my design work. I couldn't really touch on the use of light and colour theory just yet as I am still in the sketching and jotting down ideas design stage of my project so I couldn't experiment with these just yet, however I could practice a little with the use of shape theory when it comes to designing characters.

Shape theory isn't something that I want to base my whole project around however, it would be quite nice to try and use some of it's methods to help my characters portray their certain moods in some way. So from what I have learnt from this theory is that there are three main types of shapes that are sometimes used to help create characters to help give them a certain feel and these may be very subtly incorporated into the design or actually be the main base for that design. The three shapes that are used are a circle, square and triangle and each of them help give a character design a certain feel. So for example:

                    CIRCLE - Soft                            

                            SQUARE - Stong                                

TRIANGLE - Sharp

These shapes are commonly used in the character design process used for creating cartoons as creating characters incorporating the use of these three shapes helps to make them more expressive and easier to understand. It's a method essentially used to help strengthen a characters design so for example if you were going to have a happy, friendly character they would most likely have circular smooth shapes in their design but if you were making a character who was supposed to be bitter and evil then they would most likely have sharper more structured shapes added to their design. I have popped some visual representations I found on Google of how shape theory is used in character design below as it is easier to show examples then to try and explain it all in writing.

I thought it would be, to start of my design process, a nice idea to have a little go at just drawing out some very rough 'character designs' that use different types of shapes as their bases myself. As I am still practising with trying to speed up the rate in which I work and making sure I am not spending far too much time on my pencil sketches I made sure to draw at a quick pace when it came to doing these designs. Overall I drew out a page of shape based character sketches super quickly, it took me less than fifteen minutes, just so that I could have a little practice with the basics of uses shapes in my designs and to see what the outcome was. I tried to have a quick go at both anatomy and facial designs and my sketch page can be seen below. 

I tried to have a little experiment with just putting different shapes together to see what types of character bodies I could create and I am sure there are hundreds of different combinations that I could have sketched out but I wanted to limit it to only few as I was just experimenting with this theory and didn't want to spend to long on it as it is only a practice study. I also thought as well as having a go at making some figures using shapes, I thought I should also experiment with drawing head shapes too using the circle, triangle and square as influences to see what they would look like. I think that these actually worked a lot stronger than the character figures did just due to the fact that I can instantly tell what short of mood each character is meant to portray just by looking at the shape of the faces. You can easily see that the circular face is meant to be a much softer character than both the triangular and square faces.

Seeing as the use of shapes to create designs seemed to have worked out quite nicely in my opinion, especially with the faces, I think I might try and incorporate this technique into my more official character design sketches which is the part of the process that I need to move onto next. 

Further image research

Thinking about my characters



So now that I have a fairly strong idea about what kind of characters I want to be designing for my candy based studio work project and I have only done a little bit of image research into different types of candies I thought it would be good for me to collect some photographs of the sweets that link to the different characters I have thought up so that I have visual references when it comes to me actually doing some design work. This will also help me make sure that each characters colour palette will fit the mood I have chosen for each. I thought that making mood boards for each character maybe a little excessive so I decided just to pick out 5 main images for each that I thought I could get some good design ideas from and I have posted these below. As well as this I thought it would be a good idea to pick out some colours from each of the images to make myself a few colour palettes which will come in handy when it comes to the design process and I will have a good basis selection of shades to choose from. So now that I have gotten a good variety in my images that I can use for reference work I can happily move into the design process.

Relaxed, smooth and calm

Soft, gentle and kind

Bitter, sour and rude

Moody, negative, quiet

Bubbly, friendly and positive

Smart, neat and sensible

Hyperactive, energetic and outspoken