Image research for the mini brief

Getting some design inspiration 



So after I had a think about what kind of character creation I wanted to make for our Insect mini brief, I started to quickly move onto collecting some image research so that I could get a little bit of design inspiration before hand instead of just going off of the top of my head with ideas as I only had a limit amount of time to produce something. Unfortunately I wasn't able to go into as much image research as I would of liked to when it came to actually finding photography online because of my ridiculous insect face phobia but I did make sure to find as many images that I could actually bare to look at to make sure I had some solid image references and popped them into a college. As well as this I decided to also look at the different types of things that would be found on the woodland floor, such as mushrooms, nuts and weeds. as the creatures I am designing wouldn't just wear the shells of insects as protective clothing, they would also take whatever they could lying around the forest and craft it into something. I made sure when looking into insects and woodland life that I was finding things that looked quite tough and not very soft so that my creatures would have a strong look to their armour.

As I was looking through the collection of research images I had compiled into mood boards I was thinking about how the different insects and plant life would build up and add into character creation. I decided to make a small list from just looking at the image I had collected and think of possible ways I could use these things in my design.  

• Snail shell back pack.
• Stag beetle armour.
• Silk worm clothing
• Wings worn on back to disguise self from predators up above. 
• Subtle earth colours like greens and browns in order to blend in.
• Poisonous berries used as weapons. 
• Insect head used as a helmet.  
• Mushroom top used as a shield.
• Insect legs used as a staff? or weapon? 
• Insect shells used as protection. 
• Wasps or Bees stinger as darts. 

Once I had come up with a short list of design ideas for my creature, I thought it was about time that I actually got onto drawing some stuff down. Instead of just doing some pencil sketches like I usually would do, this time around I wanted to just create some silhouettes of possibly character design. This would allow me to have a little more imagination in my design process as it would give my the opportunity to work from a black slightly structured black base image and then just add ideas and designs from there. I programme I decided that I wanted to use to create my silhouettes was 'Alchemy' as I have really enjoyed using it in the past for different university project and I personally think it creates really interesting designs that I may not of thought of drawing before.

I decided to keep the amount of silhouettes I produced to a minimum as I didn't want to get a little too wrapped up in the creation process and realise that I didn't have any time to create a final coloured piece. The silhouettes I produced can be seen in the image below and incorporate different ideas from the list I wrote down up above. As I was fairly pleased with how these silhouettes had turned out as they have given me a good starting point and base to begin working on my final piece.

The beginning of the studio work project

Still stuck in the idea generation stage


We are now in the stage of BA7a where we should have a good concept of what our project is going to be for our Studio Work this year but unfortunately right now I am really struggling to think of anything. As this is such a huge project that spans over the course of a year I need to make sure I am picking something that I will be interested in enough to really want to work on each and every day, as well put a lot of effort into, and something that is going to make a fantastic final piece of work. But baring all of this in mind there is just nothing that I can think of that really springs out at me as a fantastic idea.

As I am really struggling for ideas I decided to speak to my Tutor Nigel in our most recent group session so that I could get a little feedback from him and see if he had any ideas that might steer me in the right direction. We had a little chat about where about my work was up to now and what had a look at what I had done over the summer. I showed him my experimentation work I did in Photoshop and the painting of 'Disgust' I was working on which he was really pleased with. He then suggested that I should stick with the same art style I used in my 'Disgust' piece and continuing creating work in that style for my studio project as he believed it looked really simple and effective and would create a good results.

Once we had the ideal art style idea sorted, we then both then had a bit of a brain storm about how this style could form into a theme and what this possible theme could be. The list below is of the ideas we were able to come up with in class.


Possible Ideas 

• Vector art - 'Flat Art', 'Tokidoki', Mika's music video 'Lollipop' 
• Re drawing 3D games as 2D games 
• Focusing on how colour schemes can give a character a certain mood and feeling 
• create an art book of character concept art and promo art 
• choose 3 random ideas and design characters based off of each idea. 

After throwing some possible concepts around for a little while I felt like I had enough ideas to get me started and to try and help me refine what my possible studio work project could be. I decided it would be a good idea to look at some image research relating to these proposed ideas so that I could try and piece things together and see if I liked the result. I have posted some of the image I looked at below.

Flat art 

Mika's music video for his song 'Lollipop'

Tokidoki

A page from the 'Tangled' art book

An example of character colour coding 

Out of all the possible ideas I looked at only a couple seemed to shine through to me as ones I would actually be interested in working on. One of these was the concept of looking at how using a certain colour for character can give them a particular feel and mood. I reason I have taken a liking to this idea is because I really like character designs that are very expression and portray great emotion and colour and I this is something that I always try and incorporate into my own work. I believe that if it is a personal like of mine and a goal I want to achieve in my own designs then it will be something I will be motivated to work on.  As well as this concept I really liked the idea of creating my own art book. I have a collection of film and game art books at home, which is still growing, as I love seeing the development process that the environments, props, characters and story have gone through to get to the final result. I think making an art book will allow me to produce some really great iteration work as well as final designs that I will be be able to produce in a neat and professional looking manor so I am really keen on this idea. 

Although I have two ideas that I can now combine to make one final product I am still completely lost on what my actual theme of my character designs is going to be. This means now I will need to go off and do some further research into my chosen ideas to try and see if I can come up with a meaningful theme that I am going to look forward to produce and put a lot of effort into. 

A few summer drawings

Practising with Photoshop 

This is just a really quick blog post just to say that these are few pieces of art work I started over the summer period that I really want to get finished but I just haven't found the time to. The elven girl is just a sketch I did one day when I was inspired and I want to try and paint it digitally so I have been having a bit of an experiment with Photoshop to see what I can do. I have been using it so far to digitally paint my Disgust pencil drawing that I did as I am trying to work without the use of bold outlines to see what kind of effect it gives. I think it is going really well and hopefully I will be able to finish it soon and given my eleven girl drawing a crack but we shall have to see how that goes now that I have a truck load of university work to do, I have a feeling I won't have a lot of time to do my own personal drawings which is a shame but there isn't a lot I can do about that. 

Our first mini brief

'Insects' (and my phobia of their faces)


In our first briefing of third year we were informed about what we were expected to produce over the course of the next year, which, besides from our research report and studio work project, now includes completely mini projects every week or so. This is something I am a little apprehensive about as I know it is going to be a lot of extra work to get done each day but at the same time I know It is going to be really good practice for handling a lot of tasks at once and getting work done speedily which is something I am certainly hoping to improve on this term.

Although we all thought we were all going to receive a written brief on what our first mini project was going to be, all we actually go was the word 'Insect' and absolutely nothing else. Our tutor explained that this brief is completely about your own creativity and you can do pretty much anything you want but it HAS to related to the word Insect. It is only a week long week and we have no specifications of how much work we are meant to produce but I assume it is up to us produce as much as we possibly can before our deadline on the 2nd of October.

When we were first told our one word brief, I had a idea immediately pop into my head of a character design I could possibly produce for this theme. My initial idea was of a character who has been accidentally shrunken down and now had to try and survive in the world of the insects. During gameplay, as the character travelled throughout the level and killed off any insects they encountered they would collected a part of that bug that they could craft into a item they could wear so for example, fruit fly goggles so that they could see better or dragonfly wings so that they could fly. Overall I thought I was an okay idea but it also sounded incredibly familiar somehow, it was only after a little bit of thought that I realised it was very similar concept to the 2006 animated move 'The Ant Bully' as well the Marvel super hero, 'Ant Man'.

I knew that I could still take inspiration from these two films to help with my design ideas but I would also need to steer clear of anything that was too similar to them and to try make my concept different somehow. I then decided that I needed to actually have a look at some photographs of insects to try and help my thought process and come up with a interesting idea but I knew I was going to hit a wall with this part of the mini brief as  I have a huge phobia of micro photography of insects faces. They really give me the creeps and I can't physically look at them, so I knew all my image research would have to be quite far away shots of insects in order for me to get anything done. One insect that I knew would be a fairly safe one for me to look at was different varieties of beetles and so I had a browse on Google for a little bit of inspiration and I ended up finding one photograph that really inspired me. The said image can be seen below and it is of a rainbow stag beetle.

 As I was looking at the photograph one of my fellow students casually mentioned that the rainbow stag beetle looked like it has been covered in oil and this comment park a concept sparked a character design idea in my head that I actually really liked and decided I wanted to work on. Going back to my original concept which focused on someone who had been shrunken down, I thought about slightly changing this idea so instead I would be designing a tiny fantasy creature that has been living at peace with nature since the beginning of time. But since man evolved and started to take over the earth, producing dangerous oil and harmful gases along the way, they have managed to enrage the insects of the planet. Slowly these man made products are poisoning the insects minds, making them lose all sense and judgement and are slowly turning them into dangerous enemies for the the tiny creatures to face.  The soft delicate creatures, in order to survive this now cruel and dangerous world, have had to dramatically change and toughen themselves up. They now craft protective armour out of the shells and skins of dangerous insects they have had to kill and put out of their misery and overall have had to become a much tougher race.   

Once I had decided that this was the design idea I really wanted to have a go at doing, I started to do a little image research into what these creatures could look like in order to give myself a good base to go off of when it came to my research. I knew that there are very delicate looking floral based imps and sprites in the 2008 film 'The Spiderwick Chronicles' so I decided to look up some of the concept art that is shown in the 'field guide' which features in the film. An example of some of the films creature designs can be seen below. I think these are absolutely beautiful and I often use them for artistic inspiration if I am doing a floral or nature inspired piece. 

I think the delicate design of these sprites is something I would like to aim for the main look of my tiny creatures but I don't want them to look so much like flowers or plants as these deep forest sprites do. Most of their soft looking appearance is going to be hidden under tough looking clothing anyway and this clothing is going to be made from a mixture of all different types of insects they have had to kill which is actually quite a gruesome concept overall so I don't want them to look too sweet and innocent when they actually aren't. Now that I have a solid concept and story sorted out, I will now be able to do as much image research as I can manage, without getting to creeped out, so that I can make a start on coming up with some quick character designs. I think overall I will keep my work load to a minimum so that I don't give myself too much to do as I would like to create a final colour piece by the end of next week in order to present to the class.

Looking at the Year 3 briefs

What work I will need to produce over the course of a year


On Wednesday the 23rd the whole of year third games art and designs were given a lecture which was essentially a welcome back talk mixed in with our new project briefing. We all had a rather mixed and vague idea of what we would be expected to produce this year from what we had been told in our previous year so this lecture was essentially about bringing us all back up to date and letting us know exactly what we will be doing. The most talked about part of the briefing was to do with studio work and we were actually going to be doing a lot more than we had originally thought.



Studio work 

This final year is completely focused on subject specialism which means each student is allowed to work on and produce a final project that is completely created by themselves and will be composed of whatever their specialism or strength is, in my case this is 2D character designs. This part of our work we had already been informed about before we all broke up for the summer holidays as it is the part of our project that will most likely need to largest amount of work and personal input to go into it.

What was a new concept to us was the fact that we were going to have mini briefs running along side our studio work and research reports. These mini briefs are essentially little assignments that will vary in length (for example one could last for a one week whilst another could last for three) and have been added to our work load in order for us to practice working quickly on various different projects at once and to help us speed up how quickly we work. These mini briefs will also allow us to have content at the end of our final year that we will be able to put in our portfolio. Although they may causing us to have a tonne of new work to do along side our main project work and it will probably end up being quite stressful, in the end run they are there as industry practice and will be extremely useful for us to do.

I have posted both of the Studio Work briefs we were given below so that I can easily find them if I need to check through anything as they provide us with everything we need to know. I will make a separate blog post for the Research Report brief and what ideas I have had for that.

After reading through the briefs we have been given to make sure I was completely one hundred percent sure of what we would be expected to produce over the next year I feel a little bit overwhelmed but at the same time, pretty excited to get started and working on my ideas. I feel like we have a truck load of work to do right from the get go and it is only going to get harder as we progress through the weeks but as I am determined to do better then I did in BA5 and BA6, I am willing to work hard and to try and make this my best project yet.   

The next stage for me is to start sorting out what ideas I have for both my studio work and research support so far and make sure that I know exactly what I want to be working on throughout the rest of year as soon as possible, hopefully by the end of the week so that I don't fall behind and can quickly start progressing with my work.  

The beginning of Year 3

How am I feeling about my final year?


I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous about entering my final year at NUA. It is going to be an incredibly busy year for every single third year student who are all going to be pushed to try and find their artistic potential and will be expected to be working to the best of their abilities in order to produce a fantastic research report and studio work project. It is a huge amount of pressure and stress to be dealing with over the period of a year and is surely going to have it's ups and downs but that doesn't mean I am not excited about this year either.

I have really enjoyed my previous two years at University. All of the six briefs we have been set previously were a challenge that allowed me to test my abilities and allowed me to find what my strengths were. I feel that my time at University has fully helped to prepare me for my final year and I feel confident that with a hell of a lot of hard work and motivation, I will be able to produce a final project which I will be proud of.

Moving into my third and final year of University ...