My evaluation of my final project
So this is probably the last ever blog post I am going to write here which honestly feels a little bit weird to say as I am so used to just jotting down my creative ideas here and writing way too much about what I have planned. I am going to miss it. My time at university has really just flown past and a lot of my previous projects seemed to have all blurred together into one but in all honesty I have to say BA3b has probably been my favourite one so far. I learned a lot of new things through researching different subject areas and practising different artistic techniques in this project which I was able to apply to my work and make it that little bit stronger as well as applying all the other techniques, tips and tricks I have learnt throughout my years at university. The anatomy model making classes we received this term have also been incredibly helpful when it comes to my character art as well.
I also learnt not to give myself too much to do and that sometimes simple is best so instead of creating a huge digital art book of stuff like I was planning to do I now have a small collection of work that I am very happy with. Honestly this project made me fall in love with drawing again. I am pleased with all of the work I have produced for this term as I feel like it is some of the strongest stuff I have drawn in a long time, both personal pieces and university work stuff, especially my final piece which I am really proud of. I am happy that I spent so long on it and I feel like all that environment and character work from the previous years really paid off as I think it's one of the best things I have drawn in a long time. I feel that creating all my project work for BA3b digitally has helped improved my skills in that area and helped to make me feel more confident about what I am working on. It will also help me improve with speeding up my sketch work which is something I am still determined to improve.
I really don't have anything negative to say this time around as I am just feeling a lot more comfortable with what I have done this time around. I was able to improve my time keeping from my previous year two projects which were a bit of a disaster and have been able to work at a comfortable pace. I think what really helped me to keep working and stay motivated was that I adore my character designs. I am so invested in them that I was determined to make every piece of work with them in good. I just wanted to keep on working and drawing so that I could bring each of them to life and I am really looking forward to keeping on drawing them in the future. Honestly I think this project has been my best so far for me and was a great one to end my university course on.
Thursday 28 April 2016
Wednesday 27 April 2016
Wrapping up my candy character project
Creating my final piece
Now that I have pretty much finished all my design work and have churned out some rough thumbnails for what my final piece could possibly look like it was time for me to move on and create my last bit of university work ever which was honestly kind of a sad and scary thought. Not only is this piece a culmination of everything I have learnt over my three years of university it is also a piece that is going to be put up on exhibition and viewed by the general public and members of the games industry. This meant that I was going to have to work really hard on this piece and make it the best it could be but because I am so wrapped up and excited by my project and characters I didn't find it difficult to gain motivation to work hard as I was really eager to make this a piece I was proud of.
Thinking about the environment
So because I had already chosen which sketch I was going to work on from my thumbnails and build up into my final piece, which was the selfie sketch, I had a good idea of what my characters would be doing and could picture in my head what sort of setting they were going to be in but I decided not to just dive straight into it. The one thing I wanted to get down first so I wasn't working it around the characters was the candy environment. Usually I honestly try and avoid drawing environments If I can because I find them difficult but I was determined to draw something good this time and so I decided to to a little bit of research before I started drawing. I looked back over the mood board I made in BA3a that featured looks of different 'candyland' concepts so that I could get some visual inspiration and also just looked up lots and lots of photographs of sweets. Then, as I looked at these bits and pieces of references I started to sketch out some rough environment ideas which can be seen below.
After doing this little bit of extra design work It was time for me to move on and incorporate what I had practised into my piece. I knew that I just wanted to go for something colourful and fun and happy that just shows the audience what my characters are like and the world they live in. I really wanted that to be the focal point of my piece, doing something expressive and cheery so, with this idea in mind I just started to get to work on my piece. So I started off with my basic thumbnail sketch from before and initially noticed that I was very constricted and that I should open up the image a little more to add a less of a narrowed view so that I was getting a good amount in the piece. So I made the canvas that bit bigger and added in some extra bits and pieces like a concept of what the environment would and the bits of the characters body that were cropped off before and I think making this little tweak helped a lot as it allowed me to better visual what I was working with.
Then, with my rough sketch done I had to have a think about what sort of style I was going for with my piece. I had originally thought of doing it in a way that I had done a previous digital piece, my fan art of disgust, were I had no outlines at all and simple gradient shading but honestly that just wasn't something I wanted for my final piece. I knew I wanted to add outlines as I, personally, just think its a better suited style to what I am aiming for as well as the fact that I am far more comfortable with drawing this way and I thought this was really important otherwise for my to stick too otherwise my work probably wouldn't end up being as good as I would be doubting how the piece looked, so I just stuck to what I do best and started working on the outlines. Whether they would remain solid black or I would change them to coloured outlines, which is something I have never done for one of my pieces before, would be decided after I had completed the shading as it was too early to judge at the beginning. Making my line art essentially meant I was neatening up the position and expressions of my characters to make sure they were exactly how I wanted them to look and adding in what the environment was going to look like based off of the sketches I did earlier. I always enjoy this part of the process as It allows me to release my inner perfectionist and make sure all my lines are neat and tidy.
Now that I have pretty much finished all my design work and have churned out some rough thumbnails for what my final piece could possibly look like it was time for me to move on and create my last bit of university work ever which was honestly kind of a sad and scary thought. Not only is this piece a culmination of everything I have learnt over my three years of university it is also a piece that is going to be put up on exhibition and viewed by the general public and members of the games industry. This meant that I was going to have to work really hard on this piece and make it the best it could be but because I am so wrapped up and excited by my project and characters I didn't find it difficult to gain motivation to work hard as I was really eager to make this a piece I was proud of.
Thinking about the environment
So because I had already chosen which sketch I was going to work on from my thumbnails and build up into my final piece, which was the selfie sketch, I had a good idea of what my characters would be doing and could picture in my head what sort of setting they were going to be in but I decided not to just dive straight into it. The one thing I wanted to get down first so I wasn't working it around the characters was the candy environment. Usually I honestly try and avoid drawing environments If I can because I find them difficult but I was determined to draw something good this time and so I decided to to a little bit of research before I started drawing. I looked back over the mood board I made in BA3a that featured looks of different 'candyland' concepts so that I could get some visual inspiration and also just looked up lots and lots of photographs of sweets. Then, as I looked at these bits and pieces of references I started to sketch out some rough environment ideas which can be seen below.
Some candy environment sketches
These obviously aren't anything polished but I just wanted to make sure I was getting some good ideas down of what I wanted the candy environment to look like before hand so I wasn't scrabbling for ideas half way through the piece. I just pretty much drew whatever I thought looked right and fond these little sketches kinda fun to do. Also they were a good way for my to practice being rougher and quicker with my drawing which is something I am still tying to improve on. As well as these sketches I also did some research into the look of 2D candy and sweets, there are some visual examples of these below, just to get some references on shine and colouring and just to see what kinda of methods I could try incorporate into my own work to make it stronger.
Examples of 2D coloured candy designs
The progression of my final piece
After doing this little bit of extra design work It was time for me to move on and incorporate what I had practised into my piece. I knew that I just wanted to go for something colourful and fun and happy that just shows the audience what my characters are like and the world they live in. I really wanted that to be the focal point of my piece, doing something expressive and cheery so, with this idea in mind I just started to get to work on my piece. So I started off with my basic thumbnail sketch from before and initially noticed that I was very constricted and that I should open up the image a little more to add a less of a narrowed view so that I was getting a good amount in the piece. So I made the canvas that bit bigger and added in some extra bits and pieces like a concept of what the environment would and the bits of the characters body that were cropped off before and I think making this little tweak helped a lot as it allowed me to better visual what I was working with.
Then, with my rough sketch done I had to have a think about what sort of style I was going for with my piece. I had originally thought of doing it in a way that I had done a previous digital piece, my fan art of disgust, were I had no outlines at all and simple gradient shading but honestly that just wasn't something I wanted for my final piece. I knew I wanted to add outlines as I, personally, just think its a better suited style to what I am aiming for as well as the fact that I am far more comfortable with drawing this way and I thought this was really important otherwise for my to stick too otherwise my work probably wouldn't end up being as good as I would be doubting how the piece looked, so I just stuck to what I do best and started working on the outlines. Whether they would remain solid black or I would change them to coloured outlines, which is something I have never done for one of my pieces before, would be decided after I had completed the shading as it was too early to judge at the beginning. Making my line art essentially meant I was neatening up the position and expressions of my characters to make sure they were exactly how I wanted them to look and adding in what the environment was going to look like based off of the sketches I did earlier. I always enjoy this part of the process as It allows me to release my inner perfectionist and make sure all my lines are neat and tidy.
Once the line art was done and I was happy with how it looked I had the fairly quick and job of filling in the colours of my piece. As I already had set colour schemes and palettes of my characters I needed to make sure that the environment colours complimented the one I had already chosen because even if I wanted my piece to be bright and colourful I didn't want it to become a bit of a mess to look at. So I made sure I was happy with the colours I had picked before I even went anywhere near the shading process and had look at the references of sweet food and candy I had collected to make sure the palettes I had chosen were correct.
When this was done I then moved onto getting the shading done which I always enjoy doing as I really think it helps to bring my characters to life. Now more recently for my character pieces I have been really enjoying using cel shading as I think it just gives them a really nice effect but I didn't think this sort of shading would look like on the environment. The environment needed something softer, not big chunks of shading and so I thought using my old method of using gradients and a big air brush to shade would help make it look less rigid and a little more soft so this was something I was up for trying. And, so that my piece would tie in nicely together, I decided to try out using a combination of both gradients and block shading everywhere on my piece, on the characters and the background, just wherever I thought it felt right. I hadn't actually tried using these methods to shade my work together before so this a bit of experimentation on my part that I was willing to test out and If I didn't think it looked right I would try again.
Luckily for me I think this shading technique actually worked really nicely together and managed to give my depth and a nice soft look to it which is what I really wanted and quite honestly I probably could have left my piece like this but I did want to have a little experiment to see what my piece would look like with coloured outlines instead of plain black before I finalised anything. Pretty much as soon as I had changed the outlines to different colours there was no going back, I really loved the soft effect it gave my piece and just made everything look that little bit more natural which was just fantastic. So once I had done this and given my piece one last look over I could officially say I was finished. My final coloured candy selfie piece can be seen in the image below.
Honestly I am unbelievably happy with how this has turned out as I think it is one of my best pieces yet and I worked really hard on it which I think had paid off. I feel like my digital work and use with Photoshop has improved massively since the beginning of university and I am finally starting to make art work I am really pleased and confident with.
My final piece
Saturday 23 April 2016
Planning out my final piece
Doing a few rough thumbnails
Once I had finished working on my characters model sheets I got straight on with thinking up some ideas of what my final piece could be. I didn't really have any strong ideas right away which made things a little difficult, all I knew it that I wanted my piece to be able to show the expressiveness of my characters as a way to sort of summarise my project. So with a vague idea in mind I decided to go back and look through all the work I had produced to try and get a bit of inspirations for what I could possibly design. I had a look at all my moodboards from BA3a and BA3b for possible ideas and as I re looked at all of this I started to sketch out some really rough thumbnails for what my final piece could possibly look like. As I began drawing I gave myself four different possible design ideas to work off of so that I had some sort of basic plan for what each sketch was going to be so that my drawing had some direction. These were:
Once I had finished working on my characters model sheets I got straight on with thinking up some ideas of what my final piece could be. I didn't really have any strong ideas right away which made things a little difficult, all I knew it that I wanted my piece to be able to show the expressiveness of my characters as a way to sort of summarise my project. So with a vague idea in mind I decided to go back and look through all the work I had produced to try and get a bit of inspirations for what I could possibly design. I had a look at all my moodboards from BA3a and BA3b for possible ideas and as I re looked at all of this I started to sketch out some really rough thumbnails for what my final piece could possibly look like. As I began drawing I gave myself four different possible design ideas to work off of so that I had some sort of basic plan for what each sketch was going to be so that my drawing had some direction. These were:
1. Possible game poster
2. Environment design
3.Individual character promo art
4. Group character promo art
I did this so that my thumbnails would have bit of variety too them instead of doing similar sketches over and over again and, one they were finished, it was very much a case of picking and choosing which one I wanted to do. Honestly out of all the designs I sketches my favourite was the group character promo art thumbnails as It was exactly the sort of thing I was aiming for, interaction between my three designed characters and I just didn't feel like the others were as strong so this is that one I am deciding to go with. Also the idea of having my characters take a selfie together is just something I knew i'd like to draw as it's just cute and fun and I thought that just summed up my project pretty well. I think I am going to have a lot of fun creating this piece and I am excited to start working on it now.
Wednesday 20 April 2016
Doing some extra design work
Thinking up some possible weapon designs
So after I completed working out the visual look and design aspects of each of my characters and summarised them in a few model sheets I thought it would be a nice idea, just to take a break from the actual character design to have a go at drawing a few weapons. Now this is something that I haven't actually done in quite some time and even though my project in very character based and is focused on showing expression and playing around with colour I thought that doing some weapon design might make a nice change of pace before I have to focus on my final piece.
I was basically just having a think about the type of game my characters would appear in and how potentially the gameplay would work and what kinda of weapons they would use so, if I did want to include some action poses in my final piece I would have some pre drawn out ideas. I am not going to babble on about this too much as I don't think it is really necessary but essentially all of the characters have different abilities that are specific to interacting with certain parts of the environment. So essentially their will be things that only certain characters can do but others cant which means the player will need to switch and play as other characters in the group, not just sticking with one.
As well as this characters can use all the same weapons, so they are not specific to certain ones, but I do want each individual character to have their own special weapon that only they can use which will be coloured coded to them and will suit their personality. So down below I have popped a few sketched examples of the type of misc weapons that could be found in the game that all the characters can use as well as, in the top left hand corner, an example of a characters special weapon. I have also listed the characters possible special weapons below as well. These are just ideas really but I thought I should post about them.
So after I completed working out the visual look and design aspects of each of my characters and summarised them in a few model sheets I thought it would be a nice idea, just to take a break from the actual character design to have a go at drawing a few weapons. Now this is something that I haven't actually done in quite some time and even though my project in very character based and is focused on showing expression and playing around with colour I thought that doing some weapon design might make a nice change of pace before I have to focus on my final piece.
I was basically just having a think about the type of game my characters would appear in and how potentially the gameplay would work and what kinda of weapons they would use so, if I did want to include some action poses in my final piece I would have some pre drawn out ideas. I am not going to babble on about this too much as I don't think it is really necessary but essentially all of the characters have different abilities that are specific to interacting with certain parts of the environment. So essentially their will be things that only certain characters can do but others cant which means the player will need to switch and play as other characters in the group, not just sticking with one.
As well as this characters can use all the same weapons, so they are not specific to certain ones, but I do want each individual character to have their own special weapon that only they can use which will be coloured coded to them and will suit their personality. So down below I have popped a few sketched examples of the type of misc weapons that could be found in the game that all the characters can use as well as, in the top left hand corner, an example of a characters special weapon. I have also listed the characters possible special weapons below as well. These are just ideas really but I thought I should post about them.
Bubblelina - gun
Lemona - rocket launcher
Leequorice - bat
PC - bombs
Chocolette - sword
Mintim - bow and arrow
Marshamallow - padded two handed club
Tuesday 19 April 2016
Bringing all my design work together
Creating a few model sheets
After I had gotten all my feedback on the my different character clothing styles, hairstyle variations and colour palettes it was time for me to take all that information on board and move onto making my model sheets. This was a part of the project I was excited to work on as I was looking forward to get to draw the different angles of my candy characters characters and finally start to finalise their individual looks. I had each of the most popular variations chosen by my peers and family written down so that I could create my characters model to those chosen specifications and just decided crack on with it.
As I had done everything digitally previously it made this part of the process fairly simple and a lot quicker than it would have been if I had done it traditionally which was great so I was able to start producing the side, front and back views of my characters fairly easily. I went over all the different model sheets I had looked at previously as reference to make sure that my own model sheets were to a similar sort of style and just kept on working but I did eventually come up against a bit of a block. I actually a unhappy with how one of my characters was looking as I just didn't feel like he looked right somehow and so, knowing that It would bug my if I didn't do something I decided to tweak his design a little.
The image above is of what Leequorice looked like before I decided to tweak him as this was the combination of all the most popular variations of his design. So I went back through what I had drawn to see if I could mix and match or swap out anything that would change his look and, after having a fiddle about in Photoshop, I realised that it was his hair that was the issue, and that he actually looked a lot better with one of the other hairstyles I had drawn so I decided to edit this part of the design and change it around a bit. I know in the industry that artists aren't really supposed to tweak decided designs but honestly this is my project after all and I really love these characters and I just felt like I had to change this little bit of the design for my own state of mind more than anyone elses as I just didn't think it suited his character and so that's why I did it.
So once I had got that issue sorted and out of the way I was able to continue working on my model sheets and get them finalised. Honestly I am really pleased with how they have turned out as all the chosen variations seem to have worked well together and I feel my character personalities are really showing through even through just a still pose which is what I really wanted to try and capture so I am happy with that. I have popped the final model sheets for my characters down below and now that I have finished this I need to get on with working on my final piece.
After I had gotten all my feedback on the my different character clothing styles, hairstyle variations and colour palettes it was time for me to take all that information on board and move onto making my model sheets. This was a part of the project I was excited to work on as I was looking forward to get to draw the different angles of my candy characters characters and finally start to finalise their individual looks. I had each of the most popular variations chosen by my peers and family written down so that I could create my characters model to those chosen specifications and just decided crack on with it.
As I had done everything digitally previously it made this part of the process fairly simple and a lot quicker than it would have been if I had done it traditionally which was great so I was able to start producing the side, front and back views of my characters fairly easily. I went over all the different model sheets I had looked at previously as reference to make sure that my own model sheets were to a similar sort of style and just kept on working but I did eventually come up against a bit of a block. I actually a unhappy with how one of my characters was looking as I just didn't feel like he looked right somehow and so, knowing that It would bug my if I didn't do something I decided to tweak his design a little.
Original Leequorice design idea
The image above is of what Leequorice looked like before I decided to tweak him as this was the combination of all the most popular variations of his design. So I went back through what I had drawn to see if I could mix and match or swap out anything that would change his look and, after having a fiddle about in Photoshop, I realised that it was his hair that was the issue, and that he actually looked a lot better with one of the other hairstyles I had drawn so I decided to edit this part of the design and change it around a bit. I know in the industry that artists aren't really supposed to tweak decided designs but honestly this is my project after all and I really love these characters and I just felt like I had to change this little bit of the design for my own state of mind more than anyone elses as I just didn't think it suited his character and so that's why I did it.
Saturday 16 April 2016
Our most recent anatomy class
Starting on the upper half of the body
This is an update to say that now we are comfortably back after the Easter break and it's coming up to our project deadline it has been decided that our anatomy sculpture workshops on the Fridays will now last for the whole day instead of just the morning. This is because we need to be able to get out anatomical figures done before we leave university and at the pace we were working at that just wasn't going to happen and so we are now spending some more time working on them each week which I am really pleased about as I love these classes. Hopefully there will be a few more scheduled in for after deadline as well so that we are able to get a big chunk done each week and have it closer to being finished.
This week, in our first full day session, Ron had a few things that he wanted us to work on which was finishing off the outer muscles on the back of the shin so that we had that section complete and then, finally, we were going to be moving on to the upper half of the body. This is something that the class had been looking forward to pressing on with for a while now so it was great to hear that is what we would be working on. So the new areas we were focusing on sculpting was the full length of the spine, making sure we were getting in all the dips and curves in the right place and we also had a go at making the basic shape of the rib cage as well so we were getting some big pieces of the upper body done which was great. I have, as per usual, popped some visual examples of the area we were modelling down below for reference and have also added my up to date photographs of my mode. Unfortunately I completely forgot to photograph my process as we went along so I have got a selection of what it looked like at the end of the say instead just to show what I had been up to.
This is an update to say that now we are comfortably back after the Easter break and it's coming up to our project deadline it has been decided that our anatomy sculpture workshops on the Fridays will now last for the whole day instead of just the morning. This is because we need to be able to get out anatomical figures done before we leave university and at the pace we were working at that just wasn't going to happen and so we are now spending some more time working on them each week which I am really pleased about as I love these classes. Hopefully there will be a few more scheduled in for after deadline as well so that we are able to get a big chunk done each week and have it closer to being finished.
This week, in our first full day session, Ron had a few things that he wanted us to work on which was finishing off the outer muscles on the back of the shin so that we had that section complete and then, finally, we were going to be moving on to the upper half of the body. This is something that the class had been looking forward to pressing on with for a while now so it was great to hear that is what we would be working on. So the new areas we were focusing on sculpting was the full length of the spine, making sure we were getting in all the dips and curves in the right place and we also had a go at making the basic shape of the rib cage as well so we were getting some big pieces of the upper body done which was great. I have, as per usual, popped some visual examples of the area we were modelling down below for reference and have also added my up to date photographs of my mode. Unfortunately I completely forgot to photograph my process as we went along so I have got a selection of what it looked like at the end of the say instead just to show what I had been up to.
Examples of the new areas we focused on
What my model looked like by the end of the lesson
Monday 11 April 2016
Continuing with the clothing
Making some final colour variations
This is just another quick blog post to talk about the next step I took in the character design process and as it takes a very similar format to the hairstyle variations and clothing variations I wrote about previously I wont talk about it too much. So once had finished getting some feedback on my final clothing designs for each of my characters and choosing which outfit was the most popular I got straight on with experimenting with some different colour variations for the most popular clothing choices. Essentially this was a really quick little thing I needed to do to make sure I wasn't just sticking with the same colour scheme I had chosen for the outfit originally as different colour combinations could potentially work better so I decided to give this a go. I made sure I was looking at the colour palettes I had made for each of my candy characters back in BA3A as well as images of each characters chosen sweet so that I was using the right colours. The reason I have chosen to do that is because, as I mentioned previously, even though I have looked at the use colour theory, I am not going to actually use it in my project as I feel like if I was matching my characters personalities to colours then they wouldn't look like their chosen sweets any more. So that's why I didn't incorporate colour theory and decided to go with subtle shape theory instead.
I decided to stick to using 4 basic colours for each characters so that each design didn't become over run with different shades and tones so that the clothing remained cartoon looking as I am not aiming for realistic stuff with these designs. So my final colour variations can be seen in the images below and even though they were quick to do I really quite like them.
So, once again, I did exactly the same thing in the ways of feedback, posting stuff on the games art page and asking family members for their opinions as this seemed to be a system that was working and I was getting some good feedback. Actually even though I havent had many responses in the past, this time around people seemed a lot more eager to tell me what they thought of the colour variations I had chosen which was wonderful to hear. Not only was I told what their favourite design was but I was also getting some feedback on stuff that I could change on my Lemona piece which was great as what they pointed out was something I hadn't even noticed before which is one of the reasons I like getting other peoples opinions on my work. I have popped screenshots of the posts I added to the group down below so you can see the feedback I was given by my fellow peers, who were all very helpful, and below that I have also put which were the post popular colour combination options.
This is just another quick blog post to talk about the next step I took in the character design process and as it takes a very similar format to the hairstyle variations and clothing variations I wrote about previously I wont talk about it too much. So once had finished getting some feedback on my final clothing designs for each of my characters and choosing which outfit was the most popular I got straight on with experimenting with some different colour variations for the most popular clothing choices. Essentially this was a really quick little thing I needed to do to make sure I wasn't just sticking with the same colour scheme I had chosen for the outfit originally as different colour combinations could potentially work better so I decided to give this a go. I made sure I was looking at the colour palettes I had made for each of my candy characters back in BA3A as well as images of each characters chosen sweet so that I was using the right colours. The reason I have chosen to do that is because, as I mentioned previously, even though I have looked at the use colour theory, I am not going to actually use it in my project as I feel like if I was matching my characters personalities to colours then they wouldn't look like their chosen sweets any more. So that's why I didn't incorporate colour theory and decided to go with subtle shape theory instead.
I decided to stick to using 4 basic colours for each characters so that each design didn't become over run with different shades and tones so that the clothing remained cartoon looking as I am not aiming for realistic stuff with these designs. So my final colour variations can be seen in the images below and even though they were quick to do I really quite like them.
So, once again, I did exactly the same thing in the ways of feedback, posting stuff on the games art page and asking family members for their opinions as this seemed to be a system that was working and I was getting some good feedback. Actually even though I havent had many responses in the past, this time around people seemed a lot more eager to tell me what they thought of the colour variations I had chosen which was wonderful to hear. Not only was I told what their favourite design was but I was also getting some feedback on stuff that I could change on my Lemona piece which was great as what they pointed out was something I hadn't even noticed before which is one of the reasons I like getting other peoples opinions on my work. I have popped screenshots of the posts I added to the group down below so you can see the feedback I was given by my fellow peers, who were all very helpful, and below that I have also put which were the post popular colour combination options.
Bubblelina - 3
Leequorice - 2
Lemona - 3
Now that I have gotten all my feedback that I needed for my different design variations and am really happy with what has been chosen and know what I need to tweak I can finally move onto combining all of these design factors together to create my three model sheets for my characters which I am looking forward to doing as I think it will make them look more final. I am also interested to see how the hairstyle, clothing and colour scheme will all work together, it might need a little tweaking here and there which I am sure I can do but I imagine it is going to work quite nicely. I think I will be making my model sheets digitally as It just makes everything easier to do but first I need to go over the different model sheets I collected as reference at the beginning of the new term so I know what sort of thing I am aiming for. I am hoping to do a front, side and back facing pose so we will see how that works out as I progress on.
Saturday 9 April 2016
Working on my characters clothing
Doing some outfit variations and getting some feedback
After I had finished working on and getting some feedback on my hairstyle variations I completed I thought the best thing to do would be to just keep the ball rolling on and get on with drawing out my three characters different clothing possibilities. This is always a part of the character design process that I really enjoy as a think even something as simple as an outfit can really shape how you want that character to look and what sort of vibe you want them to give off. So I drew out a few bases so that I would have a body shape to sketch on top of and decided to stick with four designs per character as then there wasn't too much to choose from but still a good variety of options and I kept everything digital so that it would be easier to tweak and colour later on. As I drew the clothing designs I made sure that I kept in mind my characters personality and their chosen shapes as well as having a look some photographs of the sweets they are based on and the mood board of clothing references I had made previously so that I was combining all of this information together to, hopefully, create some good solid designs.
Overall I am honestly quite happy with how my designs came out for each of my candy characters as I was able to capture pretty much exactly how I wanted each one to look. I chose clothing that, personally, I think compliments their personalities so I am happy with how they look. I have popped my final clothing variations down below.
After I had finished working on and getting some feedback on my hairstyle variations I completed I thought the best thing to do would be to just keep the ball rolling on and get on with drawing out my three characters different clothing possibilities. This is always a part of the character design process that I really enjoy as a think even something as simple as an outfit can really shape how you want that character to look and what sort of vibe you want them to give off. So I drew out a few bases so that I would have a body shape to sketch on top of and decided to stick with four designs per character as then there wasn't too much to choose from but still a good variety of options and I kept everything digital so that it would be easier to tweak and colour later on. As I drew the clothing designs I made sure that I kept in mind my characters personality and their chosen shapes as well as having a look some photographs of the sweets they are based on and the mood board of clothing references I had made previously so that I was combining all of this information together to, hopefully, create some good solid designs.
Overall I am honestly quite happy with how my designs came out for each of my candy characters as I was able to capture pretty much exactly how I wanted each one to look. I chose clothing that, personally, I think compliments their personalities so I am happy with how they look. I have popped my final clothing variations down below.
Once I had finished of clothing variation pages for each of my characters I got on with, the same as I did with the hairstyle options, posting them on the games art and design Facebook page for a little bit of feedback and, again, showed the options to my family as well for some extra opinions. I feel like hearing other peoples opinions on my work can be really useful as sometimes I get so wrapped up in it that I cant see any major flaws until it's too late to tweak it so hearing what other people think about it is always helpful early on in the process. Once again the group was kinda quite quiet when it came to giving some feedback which was a real shame but the few recurring members of my class who did answer were really helpful and I was able to narrow down which options I wanted to go for with their and my families opinions.
Bubblelina - 2
Leequorice - 3
Lemona - 3
Again, similar to the hairstyle variations I drew, the most popular designs chosen for each of my characters weren't necessarily my favourites but I appreciate everyone's feedback on the different options I drew and now that I have gotten this part of the process done and I know which outfits I am working on I can move onto the next stage which is colour variations. This honestly shouldn't take too long to do as I will just be swapping a few colours around and playing with each characters chosen colour palette so hopefully I will be able to post about my progress again soon.
Sunday 3 April 2016
Having a rethink about the gameplay
Abandoning the concept of a fighting game
Previously I have been told by my tutors that I, as a character artists, I shouldn't be focusing too much on the actual plot or chosen gameplay of the 'game' that I am making my characters for and should be focusing on the actual design elements instead. The plot should essentially just be a very briefly stated and then moved on from because if we spend too much time working on it we lose track of what is really important and that is the actual art work. But although in my design document and learning agreement I stated that the premise of my project is that I will be solely focusing on making a group of characters that are expressive and have a strong use of colour, I have felt like right from that start that I needed to give my designs a bit of a back bone and purpose in a sense. I didn't want to just have a group of candy characters with no real premise to them so I thought coming up with a type of gameplay would allow me to give my designs a little more direction. I chose to focus on making my characters for a 3D fighting game where they would be chosen by the player to fight against one another, similar to that of 'Super Smash Bros' or 'Tekken', and that would be it but, however, now that I have actually drawn my characters out I just can't picture them in this type of game at all or even fighting each other.
Not having a particular plot or gameplay style for my characters wasn't a huge issue that I needed to worry about but I didn't just want to leave this gap empty as otherwise my characters would end up a little purposeless. I decided to have a bit of a brain storm about what the game could be about if it wasn't going to be about them fighting each other. After having a bit of a think about it I was finally able to come up with a plot that I liked which was:
A alien race with a insatiable appetite lands on a sugar based planet, just outside of the town of pick and mix, and immediately begin to consume and gorge on its delicious tasting environment as well as kidnapping a handful of the residents to snack on later. It is up to a brave and mixed group of sweeties to band together, despite their differences, and fight back against these gluttonous aliens and save their town.
I thought with this plot I could delve into a genre that was something more like a 3D action adventure game where my characters run around and explore areas, help residents, make weapons, collect items ect and would be fighting a common enemy instead of each other. So as far as game play style goes I would say it would be kind of similar to that of either the upcoming video game 'Indivisible', the 2015 Lego video game 'Jurassic World' or the 2014 role playing video game 'Dragon Age Inquisition' and the reason for this is because in all of these games the player is able to explore the world around them and, in some way, are able to switch which character there are playing as. I have popped a few visual examples and you tube videos of gameplay of these three video games down below just to give an idea of what I am talking about.
Previously I have been told by my tutors that I, as a character artists, I shouldn't be focusing too much on the actual plot or chosen gameplay of the 'game' that I am making my characters for and should be focusing on the actual design elements instead. The plot should essentially just be a very briefly stated and then moved on from because if we spend too much time working on it we lose track of what is really important and that is the actual art work. But although in my design document and learning agreement I stated that the premise of my project is that I will be solely focusing on making a group of characters that are expressive and have a strong use of colour, I have felt like right from that start that I needed to give my designs a bit of a back bone and purpose in a sense. I didn't want to just have a group of candy characters with no real premise to them so I thought coming up with a type of gameplay would allow me to give my designs a little more direction. I chose to focus on making my characters for a 3D fighting game where they would be chosen by the player to fight against one another, similar to that of 'Super Smash Bros' or 'Tekken', and that would be it but, however, now that I have actually drawn my characters out I just can't picture them in this type of game at all or even fighting each other.
Not having a particular plot or gameplay style for my characters wasn't a huge issue that I needed to worry about but I didn't just want to leave this gap empty as otherwise my characters would end up a little purposeless. I decided to have a bit of a brain storm about what the game could be about if it wasn't going to be about them fighting each other. After having a bit of a think about it I was finally able to come up with a plot that I liked which was:
A alien race with a insatiable appetite lands on a sugar based planet, just outside of the town of pick and mix, and immediately begin to consume and gorge on its delicious tasting environment as well as kidnapping a handful of the residents to snack on later. It is up to a brave and mixed group of sweeties to band together, despite their differences, and fight back against these gluttonous aliens and save their town.
I thought with this plot I could delve into a genre that was something more like a 3D action adventure game where my characters run around and explore areas, help residents, make weapons, collect items ect and would be fighting a common enemy instead of each other. So as far as game play style goes I would say it would be kind of similar to that of either the upcoming video game 'Indivisible', the 2015 Lego video game 'Jurassic World' or the 2014 role playing video game 'Dragon Age Inquisition' and the reason for this is because in all of these games the player is able to explore the world around them and, in some way, are able to switch which character there are playing as. I have popped a few visual examples and you tube videos of gameplay of these three video games down below just to give an idea of what I am talking about.
Indivisible
Lego Jurassic World
Dragon age Inquistion
So essentially, similar to that in 'Dragon Age Inquisition', one character will be manipulated by the player whilst the others follow along behind and, if the player wants, they can switch to another character in the group and play as them instead. I feel that this would allow the player to get to know each of the characters a little better and possibly even feel more connected to them. I also think this type of gameplay would really allow the characters personalities and interactions to be a lot stronger and a a lot more expressive than if they were simply fighting one another. It would enable the playable characters to be able to to interact and talk with one another during the game and this will allow their personalities to bounce of each other which is what I really want. I want my candy characters to be able to interact with each other and bond.
I feel lot more confident in my concept now that I have tweaked the gameplay a little as, to me, it makes a more sense than it did before and I can now visually picture characters in this style of game which is good. I think it was important for my to clarify, even if it was just to myself, what game my characters would feature in as I feel it just makes my idea stronger. So now that I have done this I can keep pushing forward with my project and get some more design work done.
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