The pros and cons of BA5

My personal evaluation of how the project went for me


This blog post is just a little summary to round everything off briefly for how I felt BA5 went for me. This includes things that I know I need to improve on and things that I believe I did fairly well with. I wont babble on like I did in my previous post where I spoke about the areas I struggled with as I know I also need to try and focus on the positives on this project and try not to get to bogged down with all the areas where it went wrong.

Overall to be brutally honest I am not too pleased with how I produced the work needed for this project, stress and worry aside my time management and the actual process I took seem to effect my work the most which is irritating because for all the other projects I haven't had an issue with this. Although this is a negative thing which took up pretty much all of BA5 for me, it almost means that I now know a lot of new areas which I need to focus and re improve on so I can get back to my normal speed and make sure I am sticking to deadlines like I have previously. I also believe that through this process I have made small improvements in certain areas such as painting without using bold outlines and trying out different character designs instead of just drawing humans which I thought was a lot of fun to practice. So all in all it wasn't all negative but I know now that I have a lot to work on before BA6.

Finishing the first art test

Completing my 3 final environment pieces 


After receiving my week long extension on Friday the 20th of February I knew that I now had extra yet limited time to complete any work that I wasn't able to finish by my original hand in date. I knew beforehand that there were a few parts of my work that would have been missing if I had handed in my project when I did. One of the main parts of this was the 3 environments pieces which I was supposed to have completed for the concept pre-visualisation art test earlier on in the process.

Unfortunately for the first chunk of BA5 I have much of a love hate relationship with the first art test I choose. As I was pushed to try something different and not to choose the character design one I felt pretty uncomfortable throughout the course of the brief. I didn't and still don't feel very comfortable with drawing environment art and I was always highly critical of the work I did produce as I wasn't confident that it was good enough. This is feeling that I hoped would have changed once I finally came back to this art test after completing the brief set by Chucklefish but frankly that wasn't the case.

I started off by picking three out of the five colour studies that I had completed previously which I liked the most and though I could get the best image out of. After this I made sure I dedicated enough time to creating each final piece before I moved onto the next one so that I felt satisfied that I have worked enough to produce each image. Although I spent a considerable amount of time on each environment piece and tried to make them as good as I could without going into unnecessary amounts of detail I am still not very pleased with them. If I had the choice I would spend days on each piece just trying to get it perfect but I still remember my tutor Nigel telling me not to make them so neat and to just go a bit wild with my painting which is what I tried to achieve with these three pieces but I don't the end result is what he will want to see. Although I don't really like these pieces, I think my environment work has improved from BA1 which is the last time we had to do a similar final piece, which is something I suppose. Overall I am pleased that I now have actually have 3 final pieces to hand in so I am really grateful for the extra time I have been given, it has certainly helped relieve some of the stress.

Being able to receive an extension on the BA5 project

A week to finish everything off 


Since the last post I wrote on my blog explaining how I have been struggling throughout the course of this project and how there were certain pieces of work I was unable to finish, my application for a extension has been processed and approved. This means that I know have another week for my to finish of my work and then it will need to be handed in on the 22nd of February which is this Friday.

Knowing that has already managed to remove a bit of the stress that I have been feeling as I know now that I have a few more days to tweak and few bits and pieces and finish any work that I didn't managed to get to in time.

Why I have struggled this term

Dealing with stress and not being able to meet the deadline


I think that it is important for me to write this post as we are assessed on writing about and clearly showing the progress we have made throughout of project brief. This means that I should write about the areas I have struggled with or found difficult to complete as it is also part of the creative process. I have decided to wait until the project is near it's end for me to write about this as the days before and in are the most stressful part of the process and also this way I could write about everything that has happened throughout the term in a whole instead of adding little chunks in each post. This is basically just a blog post that will be explaining how I have felt throughout the process of BA5 and the areas that I have struggled with.

It is nearing the end of BA5 now and I feel like for a large amount of the project I have felt very mentally and emotionally drained by everything I have had to do. Since being ill on the first work managed to put me behind on work from the get go I feel like it has been a completed madness trying to juggle between the work I needed to catch up on and everything else that needed to be done. As time progressed and I found myself slipping behind on project work I became extremely stressed out about University work, even starting to doubt my own art abilities and fretting about what I could possibly do in the industry. I basically just managed to paint myself into a negative corner which started to affect me emotionally and start to show through in my work. I started to rush things, or not produce pieces to the best of my ability as I felt like everything I was doing wasn't good enough. This was especially the case when it came to the first art test we completed. I just wasn't happy with anything I was creating and this lead my to spend way to much time on everything and not leave enough time for me to finish my 3 environment art pieces which I now have no way of finishing before the deadline tomorrow.

Not leaving myself enough time to do everything is a big problem I faced this term as it has gotten to the night before deadline and I know that there is no way that I can submit everything as I still haven't done large amounts of it which is a horrible thing to admit but it is true. I have had to leave certain things out due to the fact that I know if I spend time working on them now then I will never get anything else done. Certain things I have had to leave are things like creating 2 more race re designs, coming up with more creative promo art than the quick one I put together earlier. Things that I should really have paid more attention to earlier on in the process. I think I added far too much pressure on myself from he beginning of my new term which may have helped to cause my stress breakdown. After reviving a high grade last term I think i had unintentional nagging thoughts in the back of my head that I MUST get the same grade as last time which probably didn't help my confidence at all and just added more un needed stress.

Overall I think I am just disappointed that I allowed myself to get into this anxiety filled state and fall so behind on work. I should have spaced things out and tried to focus a little better on what I was trying to do. But for now, I will just have to keep working towards submission and hope for the best.

The final part of the art test

Creating the promo art piece

After completing as many pixel character re designs that I could manage to do in the time given I knew it was time that I started focusing on the second part of the studio given art test. This part of the art test is essentially the main focus of what we have to do for the brief and that is to create a piece of promo art that could be used for the game Starbound. Unfortunately I am not able to post any of the promo art that was sent to us by the games company Chucklefish as it is all confidential art work and information so it is safer for me not to mention too much about it. Essentially we just had to create a final piece that could be found on either a visual advertisement or poster.   

Now for this piece I was planning to complete a detailed digitally painted piece with new background concepts and also re drawings on the designs I had created earlier in the project so that they would fit into the scene. Unfortunately due to me running out of time to work on different concept and layouts from my promo art, as well as creating the piece I had to cut down on a lot of the design ideas that I had in mind and go for something simpler. I knew it would be easier with the time constraints I had on me to just re use the characters I had drawn previously as they were all fully coloured and could work in a piece if I placed from properly. I had a peak at the original art work and noticed and title screens of the games and I noticed that a look of it is usually a star filled sky or galaxy as the background with a image in front and the text which is simple but works really effectively. 

I decided to use this theme as the basis of my promo art piece and found a good and clear background image which I could use in my composition. After this I was able to add all the different elements together in Photoshop and tweak bits and pieces here and there to try and get a good layout. The first image below it the piece of promo art I was able to create. Granted it is not incredibly impressive compared to what I could have created if I had more time but I am still quite pleased with it as it looks neat and I think the colours work well. Below this image is a second piece of promo art that I created as a just a little test really to see what a longer image piece would look like if it was for a poster design or something like that.  

Final piece 

Extra design

Completing the first part of the art test

Redesigning characters from the original pixel art 

After completing the necessary research I needed to complete in order to understand the company Chucklefish, the game Starbound and the different characters that help to build up the game, it was time for me to move onto and start focusing on the first element of the studio given art test. The first task given to us for this art test was to interpret and redesign the original pixel art sprites which could be found within game. This basically means that what we need to do is look at the images of the pixel characters from starbound, study their appearance and clothing and then re draw what we think they would look like although, there is no specific style given. This means that we could make them really realistic looking or stick to the already running theme of pixel art, the choice is completely ours as it is our interpretation.   

Baring this concept in mind I decided to start getting some design work. To get the ball rolling I started by looking over the images of the pixel characters that Chucklefish provided to us along with the brief. I think it is safer that I don't post them on my blog just in case they aren't meant to be seen by anyone but our class but in any case they are just examples of what the different sprites for each race look like in game.  Being able to use these as a reference was really useful as it was able to give me a clear understanding of the different design elements that went into each race, as each one had it's own clothing style and set of appearance limitations. As well as doing this I also made sure that I had a look at the different weapons that were used by the characters in game in case I wanted to add and props to my redesigns. Some examples of the weapons found in Starbound can be seen in the image below. 

After looking at some image research I felt confident enough to start working on my redesigns as I knew I had plenty of reference images to work from to help inspire my work. Although the brief didn't specify exactly how many re designs we were supposed to complete for this art test, for all we knew it could have been just the one, I decided that I wanted to do one final polish design for each race. This was to allow me to try and draw some different type of character designs to what I usually come up with and would also help my to try and work more quickly when it came to completing final pieces. This was the plan anyway. I also decided to set myself a little process to help my keep producing work at a good pace and this was to complete a drawing a day, that way my brain was working on a new concept each time around and I would be able to keep up my productivity. 

I started off the design process by sketching out each race redesign in my sketchbook as this is the method I am most comfortable with when it comes to creating concept work and I wanted to make sure I was producing the best designs I could so this is the method I stuck with. Then from there on I

scanned in my work and imported it into Manga studio. This is the programmed I used to complete my line art as I was trying to keep it as neat as possible to make my work look crispy and tidy and I just didn't think that Photoshop would give a good enough effect for this. After completing the line art I looked through all of the image references of the pixel art races and make sure I was choosing a colour scheme that was similar to the ones used in the original art work. Once I had a selection of colours schemes liked I would send my colour variation images to other members of my class and ask their opinions of which ones they preferred instead of just picking one out myself on personal preference. Once the colour variations had been through the peer selection process I was able to work on the preferred image to create a final colour and shaded design. 

Below are of all the different race designs I was able to complete. These include Avian, Hylotl, Florian, Novakid and Human. Unfortunately due to time constraints I was not able to complete designs for the Apex or Glitch which I am really disappointed with. 

I am really pleased with how each of these turned out as they look neat and do look a little similar to the original Starbound promo art I have seen. Obviously I do prefer some of the designs over others and I feel like as each day I made progression with my work I started to lose motivation with some of my concepts which was a little disappointing but overall I don't think they are too bad.

The redesigns I completed

The races of Starbound 

For the next stage of my research, as I have now learnt the basis and different elements that build up the game Starbound I decide to move on and focus in more detail on the different races and character customisation that can be found within the game. This element is one of the main focuses for our promo art art test so I knew it would be important for me to research in great detail.

At the very beginning of the Starbound the player is introduced to a options screen which allowed them to choose a character they will be playing as for the entirety of the game. There are several different options to interact with to be able to customise the pixel character given to you to make them more personal to the player which is always a important feature in a role playing game. Essentially there are two options that the player can choose from when it comes to the character creation process. Option one is randomise what your character will look like if you don't want to take the time to personally tweak for sprites design or would rather not think of a design yourself. Option two however involves going through the different tabs provided to change your character yourself to suit what you want them to look like. There are lots of different options antithetical options such as changing the colour of your characters hair or the clothings colour and design but one of the most interesting options is changing which race you want your character to be.

In Starbound there are six different available races for the player to choose from, Human, Avian, Apex, Floran, Hylotl and Glitch. Each race has their own detailed back story and stereotype personality which the player will learn about as they progress through the game back in the character creation process it is a bit of a mystery and you just have to go with one that appeal to you.

I decided as one of our tasks for our promo art art test is to redesign each race from the original pixel art it would be important for me to read up on the back story and traits for each of the races as it could lead to and help me come up with some interesting design concepts. All the information below has been copied and pasted from the Starbound Wikipedia page as it I wanted accurate information on the different back stories and it was easier for me to post everything I needed for research in a blog post instead of just flicking back and forth from the wiki page.


The link to the Wikipedia page: http://starbound.gamepedia.com/Starbound_Wiki

~

Information and back stories of the different Starbound races 

Apex 

The Apex were close to human in appearance until a breakthrough in research into accelerated evolution led to the creation of the “Vestigi-Evo Process” (VEP). The VEP allowed the Apex to trade physical devolution for intellectual evolution. The Apex operate under a collectivist regime controlled by the MiniKnog (The Ministry of Scientific Progression). Each Apex dedicates his/her life to the survival and progression of the Apex as a whole. The nature of this regime allowed the VEP to be administered species-wide in less than 10 years. The most honored members of Apex society are those chosen by the MiniKnog to donate their bodies to furthering the VEP. Those chosen for the experimentation process are rarely seen again, but their names are said to be inscribed on the wall of the chosen which sits deep within the Ministry. For a time, the MiniKnog received criticism from several prominent Apex for what appeared to be a bias towards selecting only the poorest in society to be members of the chosen. However, this criticism was silenced when the critics themselves were selected. There are whispers of a rebel group ready to denounce the MiniKnog and lead the Apex into revolution...but in Apex society even discussion of dissension is punishable by death

Apex are mammals similar both to humans and the "great apes" commonly found on Earth. Before the introduction of the VEP, it is likely they resembled humans even more closely than they currently do, with the "devolution" effect of the VEP causing their more ape-like features (I.E. greater body hair, monochromatic eyes). Distinguishing features of the species include their body hair, absent mostly on their faces, palms and likely the bottoms of their feet and stomachs. They have large ears and distinguished facial hair (often females will also have facial hair), and particularly monochromatic eyes, taking on a glossy black color. Apex society seems to be based around a technocratic totalitarian regime which prioritises the advancement of their species through a highly scientific governmentality. 

It appears that this regime has held power since before the Apex began experimenting with VEP, which is the primary reason the species was so quickly and so uniformly altered by the process. At the center of this power structure is the Ministry of Scientific Progression (Miniknog). The main drive of Miniknog is to ensure the ever-escalating socio-scientific development of the race, evolving to become ever more intelligent and technologically advanced. This motivation can be seen both in the systematic efficiency of the species-wide implementation of VEP over only a few short generations, as well as in the technology and architecture of Apex star vessels and planetside facilities, all of which share a uniform ultramodern design which is both highly utilitarian and futuristic.Apex recorded history only extends backwards a few hundred years, earlier records apparently having been deliberately destroyed by the regime in order to deracinate modern Apex society from any sense of loyalty to or investment in their presumably premodern ancestors. 

Like other races in Starbound, Apex towns can be found throughout the cosmos. They tend to consist primarily of large buildings with a large number of metallic parts, posters which often honor Big Ape and dispense information, televisions, and security cameras. Like Avian villages, none of the local Apex are automatically hostile to the player, making them a welcome find for new players; in addition, their enclosed nature gives players a good deal of protection from any local hostile creatures. However, Apex guards are quite sparse compared to their Avian counterparts, so they will not be of much help in the event of a fight: in addition, Apex villages tend to be vulnerable to armed takeovers for the same reason.
An Interrogation Table is located in some Apex facilities, it has a light color scheme and has saws and drills above. Despite the name it has one of the highest health regeneration rates of all beds. 

Human 

Very little information has been given about the human race. Though a few wallpapers have been released that feature humans, more information was recently discovered from the open beta about the humans. All info here should be regarded as a Work in Progress. Humans are a technologically advanced and intelligent species, rapidly advancing technologically and socially. They were the first species to research and engage in space travel for science and entertainment. Humanity began to explore the stars, however a certain currently-unspecified "limitation" constrained their colonization efforts to their own solar system.  

With resources rapidly depleting on Earth, humanity turned to war as the major Earth Superpowers fought over the limited resources in the solar system. During a lengthy conflict over the planet Mars an unknown and huge tentacle-like entity attacked and lay waste to earth, destroying the single unified nations of Earth and casting the few survivors into the galaxy. The player is one of the few survivors of the Earth massacre, your crewmates having recently being slaughtered by a smaller tentacle entity you brought onboard. It should be noted that the WIP human intro video portrays humanity as a single unified and peaceful empire instead of a more modern day representation of separate nation-states.  

Glitch 

The Glitch were part of a program invented and built by an unknown race of enormous intelligence as a means of simulating the social and technological progress of a non-human civilization. These experiments took place in a vast number of regions across the universe. Despite changing a plethora of variables, each civilization eventually destroyed itself when its technological progression began to overtake its social progression. The only exception was the Glitch. For reasons unknown a fault caused the Glitch to become stuck early in the simulation, where they now remain. The experiment long abandoned, the Glitch are unable to shake their medieval values and beliefs. They're entirely unaware of their origin and are built to experience feelings and desires, like all other sentient organisms.

Aside from their role as playable characters, the Glitch can be encountered both in towns - similarly to other races - and in castles reminiscent of those from the medieval period. Glitch villages are quite useful to players early in the game, but the castles frequently have a large number of guards that tend to attack immediately if the player gets too close to the castle, meaning that Glitch castles are less useful for early players than are some other villages. The Glitch civilians, however, behave similarly to any other sentient race encountered in the game, and some Glitch will even trade with the player for pixels.Most large castles also have a single Glitch king, adorned in gold with a crown: like his soldiers, he is hostile on sight and will try to strike down even the most peaceful of visitors, and he will drop his crown upon death. Notably, the Glitch King is often the only occupant of the smaller castles; some of these smaller castles can also house a single wizard instead, who will sell the player stim packs. According to Tiy's description of the race, the Glitch apparently reproduce when a pair of Glitch literally construct a new Glitch from scratch. Occasionally, however, errors emerge in the process, and this results in Glitches who are fully self-aware and freed of their medieval programming. These Glitch (often called "outcasts") are hunted down mercilessly by their own kind, who deem them as being insane: some, however, escape, forming villages across the cosmos.

Avian 

Avian culture revolves around the worship of Kluex, the winged god of the Aether. Kluex was originally a prominent judge and ruler of the Avians who played a critical role in the Avian's advancement into the space age: some years after his death, he was deified by his people.
Avians have since separated into two factions; the Stargazers, who believe in and worship Kluex, and the Grounded, who reject Kluex and often deny his very existence. Stargazers believe they were stripped of their wings as punishment for entering the mortal world and will only regain their wings in the afterlife should they achieve absolution through worship. Throughout their history Avians have always been a primitive race, making little scientific progress. Avian numbers were beginning to dwindle when a superior race took pity and bestowed the gift of advanced technology upon them. This new found tech allowed the Avians to flourish and spread across the universe, building temples of worship as they went.

Though rarer, Avians have been known to stray from their religious culture. Dubbed the Grounded, these Avians became outcasts and find solace amongst other races. Avian soldiers are trained from birth to be fierce warriors and will protect their settlements at any cost. Avian weaponry may look primitive at first glance, but the incorporation of advanced technology makes them particularly formidable. Avian generals forge wings for themselves that function much like jetpacks.

Hylotl 

Not much is known about the Hylotl. They appear to have "fins", as shown by the character creation screen. They slightly resemble the Mexican Axolotl; the inspiration seeming more apparent in the suffix of the name. It is also demonstrated that the Hylotl are inspired by East Asian culture. Their starter clothing options include a Kimono which could be a reference to Japanese culture as well.

Through reading the codex logs, it can be found that the Hylotl are a peaceful and empathic race. They concern themselves with beauty, perfection, and culture, and have a strong urge to share this with other organisms. They are pacifists and herbivores.
Unfortunately, despite their noble ideals, the Hylotl's kind nature has regularly put them on the receiving end of another race's weapons Just prior to the game's events, the Hylotl were evicted from their planet by the Floran this is the event that leads to the player's flight on his/her spaceship that leads to the start of the game. It is also revealed in the codexes that the Avian regularly use Hylotl as sacrifices.  When a Hylotl player encounters Floran, they may mention their fondness for eating Hylotl flesh.

Floran 

One would expect a race of sentient humanoid plants to be peaceful, nature-loving environmentalists – that presumption is what allows this hyper-aggressive tribal civilization to thrive. Unwitting explorers are prey of choice to the carnivorous Florans, who frequently salvage or reverse engineer the technology they bring to enable their colonization of the stars. Introducing space travel to the primitive Florans had the undesired effect of Floran colonies spanning across star systems, each with their own customs and levels of aggression. Despite this, individual Florans have been known to split apart from their society to lead their own lives in isolation or in the solace of other races, at the cost of being cut off from the collective and considered enemies of all flora for good.

Though a unisex race, Floran culture values survival through reproduction and expansion over environmentalism or any perceived bond to Mother Nature. Funeral rituals and wars with rival factions are commonplace, though it remains unclear whether it’s out of conservation or simple tradition. Their aggressive nature appears to be borne from a lack of a concept of non-plant life as opposed to outright contempt. Owing to their relatively young age as a species, this tenet dominates their culture and justifies their treatment of visiting races, though there are signs of some beginning to question this, implying that Floran individuals may not be inherently “evil” as previously thought, but that they are able to make peaceful societies that are able to live in harmony with the other non-plant races.

Novakid 

Forged eons ago in the fusion furnaces of a now-dead star, the Novakid are a perfect example of nature’s emergent beauty. These creatures, described by a human astronomer as “interstellar gas-bag people”, have no known single origin point: that information is long lost, as the Novakid have little to no desire to record their history, or even pass it on to their offspring. Though they are (generally) more intelligent and intuitive than the “fleshy” races, their attention spans are lacking. This does not make them any less effective in combat, but has the effect of restricting their technology research (and any groundbreaking research is Just build good enough before they lose interest in it ).
The force that drives the Novakid is contained within the brand on their faces. Charged with huge amounts of energy, these pieces of metal generate the hard plasma “shells” which stop their constituent gases from leaking – if a Novakid is depleted of his or her vital gases, the energy contained within their brand is instantly vented into the very fabric of spacetime, leaving only a twisted metal symbol and a nearly undetectable warping of light around the area of death.

Since the Novakid have a short attention span, diplomatic relations can be strained at times. Because of their completely different composition to other lifeforms, Novakid are sometimes unable to grasp the nuances of interracial social interactions, and have thus attained a slightly dubious reputation amongst other races. In particular, an Avian diplomat reportedly described a Novakid he met as “dense”, and elaborated upon his statement by mentioning that the Novakid in question had cheerily asked him if his god, Kluex, was real. Novakids could have some major aspects in common with Sun/Stars, an example being that the colour of their " gas " may show their current lifespan, and how long they have left ( White, Blue, Yellow, Red ), this is all speculation, though

The game 'Starbound' 

After researching into the indie game company Chucklefish I continued on with my research to find out more about the game we would be focusing on for our promo art art test. The game we are focusing on is the two dimensional, pixel style exploration game Starbound. It began as a 'Kickstarter' project in early 2012 and was available for pre order in April 2013 and within the first 24 hours of the pre order release over 10,000 people contributed to backed the game, raising a grand total of $230,000 which went towards the games development. The finished game was released on December 4th, 2013 for beta testing on via the pc. It now has a wide range of different 'PlayStation' platforms which it can be played on for example the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation vita although it hasn't spread to any other consoles so far. A while after is was released the game won two different awards which were the 'Most anticipated game of 2013' and the 'No.1 of indie of the year 2013'.

Starbound is a adventure, role playing video game which can be played either by a solo player or with multiple players. The game allows the player to do similar things to what you would find in a much larger three dimensional game. The player can explore the games environments and discover items such as weapons, armour or miscellaneous items. What's different about this game is that is all done completely via pixel are and side scrolling so it has a very simplistic cartoon feel to it which gives the game some edge compared to many other role playing games. The player can also pick and choose from seven different variety races to play as throughout the process of the game with a randomised customisation feature to give your character more of a personal flair.

The plot of Starbound shifts slightly as to which race you choose but overall the beginning structure of the story line is the same. You start your journey as your chosen character travelling in a spaceship as the flee their home world. As your ship has no navigation systems you end up being hurtled into the depth of space and become hopefully lost. With pure luck on your side the space shuttle crashes down onto a planet which is habited by a vast array of creatures. As your character discovers this new unknown world you stumble across both quests and story driven missions which help to progress the story and gameplay of Starbound.

Throughout the game there were be a variety of different planets for the player to explore which are procedurally generated which you can get to with a brand new ship customisable ship.  Each planet has its own unique features, terrain, foliage, weather, day/night, gravity, levels and enemy appearances. This gives the player a large variety of environments to explore, keeping gameplay interesting and ever progressing.

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