MA Game Design

During this project, I feel as though my work has improved immensely since the first project, mainly due to my way of working. 

This has improved in regards to my speed at creating designs, as since I started incorporating the use of 3D and photobashing while creating concepts, it has made it quicker and easier for me to create characters this way, however I am still able to hand draw thumbnails and variations of the characters, which is the most enjoyable stage for me in designing. 

I feel as though my progress in actual designing has focused less on just costumes and clothing and developed to be thinking about the entire character and the subject as a whole, as well as how they would fit in their environment, which is making my characters a lot more cohesive and interesting, as well as giving the character more personality.

For my first character, The Clockmaker, I went with designing how I normally would, by drawing out basic ideas and developing them from there, concentrating on his prosthetics because they were the most important part for me to get right. The final design was created by hand drawing the base image and creating the line art, and then introducing photobashing after colouring the image with flat colour.

This allowed me to really learn how to efficiently use photos to create more details within my design, as well as how to make the image more dynamic with colours and real life influences, in this case, using cogs and mechanical objects to create the prosthetics.

The Crone character design was, in my own opinion, the best design I have created to date. This is because of the absence of the limitations I normally put upon myself and working on planning the design but not overthinking it. The design itself was based on some black and grey silhouettes I had made, a simple colour palette, and a group of photos I used for photobashing, and the only hand drawn pieces on the design were most of the hair and the pose. This made it so much quicker to work, averaging out the full render time to about 20 hours, give or take, rather than the week and a half it took to create The Clockmaker. 

When working, I tend to have one of a few things playing in the background; podcasts or music, gameplay videos I’ve watched a thousand times, or something like the videos from Adam Duff at LUCIDPIXUL. 

Adam Duff’s videos over on Youtube are some of the most interesting videos I have come across in the art genre. He mainly talks about issues within the gaming industry or struggles artists have, while being very open and honest with his own experiences, such as being fired from jobs or coping with loneliness and mental health challenges, all while he has speedpaints of his gorgeous concepts playing in the background. 

His most recent video, as of the current date, about these issues is called Toxic Overthinking. In this video Duff explains about the issues with comparing yourself and your work to others, as well as the harm that you can cause to yourself while working, sometimes without you even noticing. People working in creative fields were found to be more likely to be diagnosed with mental health disorders and conditions than those working in fields such as business and social work, with “72% of professional artists [being] affected by mental illness in their lifetime.” (Zoghbi, et al. 2021). This is down to many issues, as technology is progressing at such speeds, designing and rendering is becoming more and more realistic and, for some, more difficult to complete or for their work to seem impressive.

The competitiveness of the art industry has always been present, with limited work opportunities, and more skills needed to even be considered for paying jobs, it is more difficult than ever to succeed.

The importance of videos like Adam’s is something that is unmatched, especially for artists trying to get their foot in the door to the creative industry, as he says it how it is, and explains that to be successful in this industry, you need to have thick skin and to work through the hard times as much as you work through the good. 

Adam’s videos continue to inspire me, even after 2 years of watching his content, especially with this current project. His way of motivating in a calm and direct way, while not sugar coating the problems you will face, keeps me from giving up completely, and knowing that this industry is difficult but knowing how to overcome the issues is very important for me as someone who is yet to get their foot in the door.

References

Zoghbi, S. Roberts, P. Pollock, M. & Steen, L. (2021) Activity Groups as Mental Health Interventions for Creative Arts Professionals, Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, DOI: 10.1080/15401383.2021.1989353 

Major Project - The Crone // Final Render

If I’m going to be honest, this is probably one of the best renders and final designs I have done so far.

Instead of spending a week worrying about art styles and trying to hand paint everything, I drew out the line art to give myself a guide and started simply photobashing. 

This took so much pressure and stress off of me as rendering has never been my strong suit, and keeping any ideas open with the design allowed me to make quick changes as and when I needed to.

While creating concept art and looking at various styles, I realised that their are many big changes on what concept art means now vs in the 90′s / 2000′s. 

Their is a video in which Trent Kaniuga, one of my favourite artists who creates videos focusing on concept art, speaks about the art of Metal Gear Solid and the character design for the game. 

Metal Gear Solid (1998) is an older yet iconic game, but the concept art would not be used now as concept art. The image below was used as a marketing piece, but the style was carried through all of the concept pieces by head concept artist Yoji Shinkawa.

In Kaniuga’s video he states that if this style were to be used for concept art now, “you would not get the job” as the design itself is very difficult to covey to an artist or a modeller. The colours make no hint to what the fabrics on the costume are and there are no details on that are able to translate well.

This isn’t to say this isn’t good art, however it would be difficult to give a piece like this to a modeller and for the modeller to be able to create the character from this drawing alone. 

The opposite is to be said about the concept below created by Michael Ancel for Beyond Good and Evil (2003). 

This is a piece that could be given to a 3D artist and be created with this image alone. 

The fabrics can be seen properly, the textures are realistic, and overall it is easier to make out what each detail is.

This style is what we see more nowadays, a more realistic and easy to view image which conveys the emotions that the game or project wants the audience to feel.

This way of working is achieved by a lot of concept artists using a technique called photobashing, where the designer will take reference images and alter them within the artwork to make the image more realistic and detailed.

I have used this technique in my own work, as it makes the render time a lot less than what it would be if I were to hand draw everything, and allows for quick changes and scrapping ideas less of a chore.

I used video tutorials to learn more about photobashing, and how to convey my ideas easier and quicker, the main one being linked HERE by Imad Awan, in which he explains the importance of using real life objects and images to improve your work and to show exactly what you want to show in your designs.

As an example of my own work, I rerendered my own character quickly from 2018, a version of Caliban from The Tempest. 

This isn’t finished but it’s an example of not only my own development but the ways in which it is easier to tell what part of the creature is what, there isn’t much confusion of textures or the details, and, with a final render of course, it could be passed over to be modelled. 

The Crone is a character inspired by the Old Chained Oak in Alton, UK, and so I wanted her to be a lot older to match the age of the tree, and to have rough skin and lots of accessories such as smudge sticks and twig bundles.

The faces I chose for her were all from different ethnicities and countries so I could get the right feel for how she would appear in the world.

Creating some silhouettes and very basic thumbnails, I decided I wanted her to have very bad posture or to even have a severe hunchback to show age, and so I added a stick or crutch to her design, which later I had it made from one of the chained branches off of the original Old Oak. 

With these developments, the issues came up when figuring out what kind of clothing I would want her to wear, and what would make sense not only with the inspiration, but in the world of Ironbreach itself.

Over the past couple of years, I have seen more and more cute and simple games appearing all over Steam and Game Pass, specifically during Summer Game Fest 2022.

The popularity of games such as Frog Detective (Worm Bucket, 2018), Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo, 2020), Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley (Hyper Games, release date: 2023) ect, seemed to have come from nowhere, however these types of games gained popularity during and after the pandemic as a way for players to distract and entertain themselves from boredom.

The commonality with these cute games is the childlike art style, their low-poly assets, and nostalgic aesthetics. These components are what draws audiences in, also that these games are not made for children, they are relatable to people of any ages.

Although these kinds of games are what draw me in the most, design-wise, they are not what I tend to focus on. I enjoy creating concepts which focus on details and story, whereas games like Frog Detective are story driven but are more fun to look at. 

References

Chan, K.H. The rise of impossibly cute and wholesome games (2020). Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/10/21172972/games-wholesome-themes-uwu-frog-detective-wattam-sokpop-keita-takahashi (Accessed: 28 June 2022).

Adey, O. 12 chill and cute games to remember from Summer Game Fest (2022). Available at: https://gettotext.com/12-chill-and-cute-games-to-remember-from-summer-game-fest/ (Accessed: 28 June 2022).

Major Project - The Duchess // Final Design

This is the final render I created for the Duchess.

I made her pose seem as though she were to be propped up if I were to put her in a scene, and more dancer-like to make her seem to be more innocent and possibly a bit more creepy.

When creating the ideas for her outfit/s,I couldn’t decide on what age range to create The Duchess in.

To make her a child ( younger than 15 ) had limitations, as there aren’t many resources showing real life clothing from the 18th Century, and making her an adult ( ages 21+ ) would counteract the innocence and doll-like stature I had created with the face designs. 

With this in mind, I imagined a young person between the ages of 13 to 16, which at the time I didn’t realise was even more limited on research as teenagers didn’t seem to be a thing back in the 1700′s, and so I just took silhouettes and details from adult and childrens clothing and merged them.

The designs above felt as though they were too adult. The large skirts reminded me of ballgowns and seemed too eccentric for what I was trying to convey, but the design in the middle on the last row was almost exactly what I was looking to create, and so I took this silhouette forward in my design developments.

I chose to try and design the body at the same time as the costume, because I wanted it to merge and have it look as though the Duchess’ costume is made attached to her.

I felt as though the large gowns were still too “grown up” and made her look a lot older than I wanted, and so shortening the skirt but keeping the ~poofiness~ made me think more of ballet tutus and what you would imagine a child to wear.

This character is a robot who is supposed to be a somewhat daughter figure to the Clockmaker, which he has created from metals and fabrics.

Her image is based on 18th Century clothing and French royalty to contrast with the other characters, and inspired by the Black Prince’s Diamond currently housed at the Tower of London.

For this character, I imagined her to have a damaged face and body but with obvious “fixes” and a handmade look.

These concepts are exactly what I thrive in, creating multiple variations of a character to try and convey a backstory and emotion.

The damage was highly influenced by metal corrosion and water damaged metals, but I also had a few ideas with marble statues, gold, and wooden puppets.

Merging my favourites of these ideas I eventually decided on two final ideas below which I used to create the rest of the character.

The gaming industry has boomed due to the need of entertainment over the last few years. With the developments in the gaming industry throughout the recent pandemics, it is easier than ever for ordinary people to create games and bring their ideas to life.

Throughout the years there has been many free programs and software available to allow for people to create anything they desire, such as UE5 and Unity, it has become a sort of race to create the best games possible with the least amount of money, and this is where indie developers come in.

You don’t have to work with a huge well known company to release a game; “Titles such as Death’s Door, Stardew Valley, Celeste, and Among Us have helped amplify the indie genre in recent years.” (Bruce, G. 2022) Games like these, more often than not, bring together players, creating close knit communities which allowed the games explode in popularity, and continue to be enjoyed today. 

The reason that I am intrigued by indie games is because I wholeheartedly believe that indie games, for the most part, can be and are better than “AAA” games. While playing these games, you can feel the love in the project, and that the team creating the game were passionate about what they were making, however when playing titles such as Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt Red, 2020), and especially titles like Grand Theft Auto (Rockstar Games, 1997 - present) and Call of Duty (Activision et al. 2003 - present) there seems to be absolutely no heart and they are, quite frankly, so boring. 

With my current project, I have directed my style more towards more thinking of styles used by Arkane Studios, however the designs themselves would more likely be seen in an indie setting.

My love for indie games comes from the fact that the developers aren’t afraid to take risks, they aren’t neccissarily in it for the money, rather to create something they are passionate about, and that’s my mentality towards this and all of my projects.

References

Bruce, G. US: Charting the rise of indie video games (2022). Available at: https://business.yougov.com/content/41600-us-charting-rise-indie-video-games (Accessed: 19 June 2022).

Lien, T. How indie games went mainstream (2013). Available at: https://www.polygon.com/2013/10/4/4768148/the-next-generation-of-indies (Accessed: 19 June 2022).

Major Project - The Clockmaker // Final Image

The first two images are when I thought that this render was finished, however after leaving this piece for a while due to burn out, I came back and completed it with photobashing, which I wish I had done from the beginning rather than stressing about hand painting everything.

These designs were what I created for my final design. 

Going with the distressed clothing was definitely something that worked, but along the knee of the prosthetic rather than the entire suit, and changing the blazer to be just a waistcoat with the prosthetic over the top was more practical if it were to be worn in real life.

I went with a more stylised option for the character, as I was getting too caught up with how other people create their concepts, and simply allowing myself to start from the beginning and work with my own style definitely helped me speed up the process. 

This also ties in to my research on my career options and what games I am inspired by, such as OverWatch, Resident Evil, Bioshock, Dishonored, and even Planet Coaster, which all have their own styles and ways of rendering their characters. 

The arm went through a number of different variations before I picked the final one, and these are the scrapped ideas, as the first one was way too normal and there was only going to be a visible gold hand under the blazer cuff.

The second was too clunky and straight. It didn’t make sense to have a hand crank to fire the weapon with, but was simple.

This idea made me realise that I had to go back to the drawing board and start from scratch, as I was losing a lot of the silhouette I wanted him to have, and so I came up with the ideas below and moved on to the third design.

The third is the one that is most like the final design I created, apart from the hand. This idea was playing more off the theme of DIY and that the character had made the arm himself out of odd parts.

The weapon was based off of a Sextant, a tool used for navigation, as I used parts of it to make it look more like a gun. 

To make the character feel as though he has more of a backstory, I decided to change a few details on his costume, starting with the suit.

I made this [ below ] dressing guide as a way for me to make sense of how he would attach his arm in place and how the clothing would work around it.

This hasn’t stayed as a final idea but it helped to visualise the clothing a bit better.

The next thing was to try out different ways of distressing the clothing.

I went through some iterations of gradual distressing while also remembering that the reason for this is to show of those gold limbs.

This also didn’t stay completely but again it was a good way of developing these ideas.

Moving forward, I realised I had done as much as I could with the costume, and moved on to the prosthesics designs.

I took inspiration from existing designs and also real life anatomy and limb replacements to make sure I was getting the right parts of the arm in the right place.

I created a moodboard for what my main style references were, and also looked at weapons and how I could incorporate them into the limb design.

These are all going to be displayed in my final artbook to show my own way of developing and reusing ideas to create new ones.

When creating my characters, something I wanted them to each have unique designs and have them be my best designs yet, and this lead me to a video called Good vs Bad Character Design by BaM Animations, in which the two creators take viewers designs and, in their words, make them better. What BaM does is actually take the viewers work and show through the designs how to make them more eyecatching and dynamic through colour and pose. Their videos focus mainly on 2D designs for animation, but their lessons are very relevant to most art fields such as perspective, lighting, costume, and something that helped me the most in my current project, sihouettes.

Good vs Bad Character Design is more of a tutorial on how shape language and silhouette affects the characters you create, and why some characters may look stiff or squashed without any clear reason why. The examples they give for good designs feature three sections:

When you have an identifiable character design, the character can translate to any art style and have it still be clear on what and who the character is. 

This isn’t just for cartoon characters though, realism and 3D work also use this principle, for example:

The large identifiable shapes here with these characters is Idiana Jones’ whip and hat, The Doctor’s hat and scarf, and Mary Poppins’ umbrella, but their poses are simple yet convey the characters personalities and parts of their stories.

“Hands look wack? Improve the silhouette. Pose looks wack? Improve the silhouette.“ - BaM Animations (2020)

In my character designs, I tried to push the poses to show the personalities through the design by altering the poses and simplifying the colour schemes, also with the NPC’s I wanted to push my silhouettes to be dynamic and threatening, as they are a mob of sorts, and below are a few examples.

Using items such as weapons and hats allowed me to create more interesting designs and allowed me to not focus too heavily on the details, as the viewer can still tell that these characters are meant to be fighters, but are down on their luck due to the missing limbs and walking aids.

“The real trick to character design is to go with a simple idea and execute it well.“ - BaM Animations (2020)

References

While looking through my main inspirations of what is featured in concept art books,The Skillful Huntsman (2005) and Breaking The Mould - The Art of Bioshock (2007) being some big inspirations, there are many quick sketches which focus more on shapes rather than details, and I feel like I was getting too caught up in the details of the character before getting an overall feel of what I wanted him to be.

To fix this and to get on track with my time schedule, I spent an afternoon messing about with silhouettes and poses, as well as limiting my colour palette to just yellow, blue, and red, to try and stop overthinking.

I started with some silhouettes and poses which definitely helped with getting back into the swing of Just Sketching. Going back to basics is sometimes something I need to do as I get so caught up with trying to make my work look perfect and being concerned with how other people are going to see my work. 

Using inks and simply just drawing the loose shapes and limiting the details honestly made me remember that I really enjoy creating this type of work, as there is no pressure to be anatomically correct, or create every detail, and I can get all my ideas out on paper and get messy with my designs. 

I will be using these in my final product as I believe it is important to show even the most basic of designs when creating concept art, and I will be using this technique for the other characters too, not just to create work for the final product, but to give myself somewhat of a break and being more free with how I work. 

FOLLOW UP

Starting with the costumes, following on from the ink sketches, the designs I decided to take forward were 2,3, 4, and 6.

These designs fit best with the eras I am taking reference from, and also I have a good starting point with any developments.

One of the artists I have used as a large amount of inspiration for this project is Cedric Peyravernay, a concept artist from Lyon, who has worked on projects such as Dishonored and Love, Death, and Robots. 

His work inspires me due to his unique and interesting style, and how he creates textures through his brush strokes.

Peyravernay focuses on character design, however delves into illustration as well, creating scenes for his characters to live in, and I really like how he does this because there is so much life in his work, and the work makes the viewer feel as though they are in the image as well, or that the characters are looking directly at the viewer. 

The piece above is one of my favourites as it shows how he creates his portraits. Peyravernay uses traditional painting techniques of blocking out with large shapes first, before focusing his attention onto the details, “Before turning to digital, Cèdric studied classical painting a lot, thanks to which he learned to develop a greater sensitivity and helped him in the approach to digital tools.” (Nuts Computer Graphics, 2022) I wanted to use these techniques in my work also, however it is a lot more difficult than imagined, and I need a LOT of practice before I get even close to comfortable with this way of working digitally, when using it traditionally for so long.

I find his way of capturing characters fascinating, along with his use of dramatic lighting and shadow. Peyravernay creates a story just by looking at a characters face, and this is what I strive to achieve as well.

References

(2022) Cdnb.artstation.com. Available at: https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/021/789/175/large/cedric-peyravernay-thom01.jpg?1572958113 (Accessed: 28 May 2022).

(2022) Cdna.artstation.com. Available at: https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/002/709/298/large/cedric-peyravernay-dishonored2.jpg?1464818177 (Accessed: 28 May 2022).

(2022) Cdna.artstation.com. Available at: https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/001/103/088/large/cedric-peyravernay-starchild-wip05.jpg?1443928043 (Accessed: 28 May 2022).

I needed to get a final design of a face completed, and once I had all the faces drawn out, I merged two of my favourite designs to create the first sketch below without any hair or facial hair, but keeping with the scars and small details I want him to have.

Here I did some research on how men, wore their facial hair in the 1900′s up til 1920, and as I knew I wanted him to have a moustache of some sort, chosing which style was quite difficult. 

Number 2 I felt made him look more villainous than I meant to, the moustache is too pointed and the beard makes his face look longer and I didn’t like this. 

Number 3 looks a bit too much like a cowboy, or too much like he belongs in the Wild West. While this does fit the type of characteristics I want The Clockmaker to have, it doesn’t fit the settings or the era I wish to portray. 

Number 4 is more of what I want, dark stubble and a large unkempt moustache. I feel as though he needs some hair, purely to even out the details and to bring focus more on the facial features.