The start of my research

Who are 'Chucklefish' ?

Now that I know which Art Test I wan to focus on for the next few weeks, I knew that the first thing I would need to do is research a little into who 'Chucklefish' were as I had never heard of the company before and I wanted to find out what is it like. 

There wasn't a lot of information on the company itself but what I did manage to find out was that Chucklefish is a British indie game company that is made up of around 11 members. The team is split into four different sub groups which are coders, artists, project leader and contributors. Chucklefish is the team responsible for the development of the popular 2D exploration game 'Starbound' as well as production of other games such as 'Stardew Valley', 'Treasure Adventure World', 'Risk of Rain', and 'Wanderlust: Rebirth'. 

Here is also the link to their website: http://www.chucklefish.org/

Staring a new Art Test

Learning about the new Art Tests

So now that that the time period which we were meant to have completed our first art test is officially over, it was time for us to receive a brand new brief. I was a tad nervous about being told what the new briefs were as firstly I was still struggling a tad with finishing up what I have to complete for the first art test which is three final environments pieces and secondly, the fact that I new that these briefs would be from actual game industry. This was a little nerve racking as members of the specific industry will be looking over and critiquing the work we have produces, so I know I would have to push myself to do the best work I can create for the Art Test I choose.

On the first week of the new brief we were given a short lecture which involved showing the class what the different tests were that we could choose from and a very brief explanation on each one, telling us what we were allowed the say and post from brief as obviously the industries have a tight lock on all of their information and art. After being told what each Art Test entailed it was very easy for me to make my decision as one of the options really stood out for me as i was hoping for there to be a test like it in this section of BA5 since I forced myself to do environments for the previous assignment.




Which one I have chosen to focus on

The brief I have chosen to do has been given to us by the indie game company 'Chucklefish' and is all centred around character design which is why I instantly took a liking to it. I knew I wanted to go back to something familiar and that I knew I would enjoyed instead of pushing myself for the second time to try something different and it not going as planned. As I have to be fairly careful with how much I write about the Art Test on my blog I can very briefly explain what I will have to do and then go straight onto research. This means that throughout this test I won't be as writing in as much detail as I usually do which to be honest I think that might be a little tricky for me as I do like a good babble.

Essentially the Chucklefish art test comes in two parts. The first section we have to complete involves us looking at and researching into their most popular game 'Starbound'. After we have a solid idea of what the game is and what it involves we have to then narrow down our research and start focusing on the different races which can be found in game. From this will we have found examples of the different pixel characters in the game and then we move onto the design side of the art test where we have to redesign these characters through our own interpretation. Completing this part of the brief will then help when it comes to the second part which is where we have to create a piece of promo art based of the ones that already exist for Starbound, using our interpretation designs.

So far I am really excited to start working on this art test as all the information and images we have seen of the game all have a cartoonish style which means my art style will work really well for this brief. Starbound itself looks like a really fun little pixel game with a hell of a lot of variety packed into it so I am interested to research into it and find out more about is game play and interactions for players. Next stage for me is to get some initial research done to make sure I start on the right path. I am feeling really positive about this brief so I can't wait to get started.

Moving on and working on a new brief

The studio given art tests 

Nearing the end of the design process

Completing my colour studies 


So after completing a little further image research and creating a collection of different usable gradients based of photographs of different environments and lighting, I felt confident enough to move onto working on my colour studies. I was previously shown a technique I could use by one of my fellow students who has spoken to my tutor Nigel about how to go about creating these studies. The idea was to grab one of the previous value studies we had produced for this Art Test and then over lay one of the gradients on top of our chosen thumbnail. This would allow us to pick out colours from the gradients we created to add different lighting to a final pieces we had to produce to help create a image that had more feeling and a scenic setting to it.

Baring this in mind I picked out a mixture of the different gradients and value studies I had completed and mashed them together, making sure it was thinking about the lighting and composition of the image. I also make sure I picked a variety of different lighting so that I could have a few images based at night and in the day. Below are the five different colour studies that I completed. Overall I think that my candidates for the three final designs are the top left thumbnail, the middle right thumbnail and the top right thumbnail. This way I will have a variety of location and and lighting in my scenes and this will hopefully allow me to create far more visually interesting final pieces.

Thinking about my colour studies

Creating gradients 

Once I had moved away from my value studies and had done a little bit of image research to help me feel inspired for citadel I would be designing, I started to think about what I would have to do to create my colour studies. I knew that they were going to be based off of the value studies I had completed recently but as I want so keen on these thumbnail designs I knew I had to think of a way to make then far more interesting and creative when I added colour. There was also something else I knew I had to bare in mind whilst creating these pieces and that is that a big chunk of this Art Test revolves around the feel and mood that the final pieces captures and also having to consider factors such as what time of year or day the 'screenshot' is from. 

I knew that light, composition and mood of the final pieces were all really important things that I had to to include in the design process so I had to make sure that I had variety in each image which meant including a different time of day and possibly season to make each environment stand out and not look to similar to the last. I was just about ready to start working on my colour studies when one of my fellow students, Grace, showed me a technique that our tutor had showed her in one of her lessons. It was a technique we could use to help us breakdown and understand the colours used in a scene and a way to get a far more interesting colour palette to work from. Basically the idea was that you grabbed a photo of google images with interesting lighting or colour and then made a gradient of it. This was done by using the gradient tool in Photoshop and then fiddling around with the colour wheel and sliders provided to match up the colours with the ones in the photo you had selected. I have to say that I actually really enjoyed doing this process as I was allowed to take a break from working in a rough style and do something detailed and accurate. 

Below are examples of the different gradients I used whilst using photographs of different lighting and environments for reference. Now that the gradient studies have been produce I can move onto creating a few colour studies using these new colour palettes to help created different moods for each image.

Stumbling upon perfect image references

Bonifacio in Corsica

I am now at the stage of the Art Test where I should starting to focus on creating my colour studies by working off of the value studies and thumbnails that I had created previously but I ended up coming to a little bit of a creative stand still. I knew exactly what was being asked off me for this next stage of the project but my work had seemed to have lost any design inspiration that I had thought of in the beginning of the process. The really rough value studies I ha produced didn't give a clear idea of what sort of environment I wanted to create as of my studies made the city I was designing look dull and moody where I actually wanted it to be far more colourful and vibrant. This was beginning to irritate me and I knew I needed to get a bit of inspiration back so I decided to do some brief image research into different cities layouts and architecture to hopefully help bring something more to my design ideas before I had to create my three final pieces. 

I knew exactly what type of design and setting I wanted to produce for the Fable inspired citadel and that was one which was located on a large sea cliff that lead down to harbours and beaches where the cities main trade took place. As this is the type of environment I was aiming to recreate I started to scroll through google images to see what sort of photos I could find of this type of scene. After a lot of scrolling I stumbled across an image of a small town that was crammed onto the side of a tall steep cliff face, buildings nearly toppling over the edge. This nearly mirrored the type of environment design I had in mine so I followed a trail of links to find out what the name of this place was and try to see more photos of it. I soon found out the town was called Bonifacio and was located in Corsica which is small island just off of Italy and is in the Corse-du-Sud department of France. Below is a mood board of the town and it's fantastic coast line and structure. I found these photos really inspiring as it is such a beautiful place with really lovely views and layout and I think that looking at this images will help me picture how I want to layout my final designs and get a better idea of perspective for this type of environment. 

Moving on with the design process

Completing my value studies 


After talking to my tutor recently about the technique I had been using previously, which consist of a cartoon style and bold outlines, he and I discussed what I would need to change it to be able to create rougher and sketchier value studies. This was needed to be done so that I would be able to get more ideas from just one image and come up with more creative designs and hopefully spend less time stressing over my pieces and trying to make them look perfect. Previously I created four value studies trying to stick to the technique that my tutor Nigel taught me which all seemed to turn out okay although I spent more time on them then I should of.

Baring this in mind I decided to produce eight more value studies, trying to keep the style used in the previous four but this time working on how quickly I drew them out. I made sure to work quickly when producing these value studies so I made sure that I only took 5 minutes on each one before moving onto the next panel and then not going back to edit them as I really wanted to keep these sketches as rough and imperfect as my Tutor had suggested. Honestly I am not to keen on how they turned out or look stylistically but I stuck to what my tutor told me to do and now I am can onto the next stage of the process which is colour studies.