Aaron Ward - Year 0 Games Art and Design

[Research and Development 2 - Characters] This is the final illustration of my character/creature design. There are a lot of things to talk about and discuss with this post and I will start with the process;

1) I chose the thumbnail with the slanted ground as this stuck out from the rest I realised in the thumbnailing process. For colours the sky was initially a light blue and the ground was a brighter shade of orange, later I found that the contrast between the blues/oranges and the creatures colour were not working so I shifted the blue sky into a light subtle yellow to correspond to the desert theme I was going for.

2) I made this grid to ensure I always follow the composition guide I was going for; leading the viewers eye from the left to the right. In addition to this, this helped me keep the perspective in certain parts of the painting correct.

3) The creature took a long time to paint, I kept removing pieces and in some cases I completely restarted the creature. Perspective in this situation was vital and as someone who isn’t too confident when it comes to imaginative painting this was difficult but at the same time of course so much fun. I felt challenge when attempting this and (to my current skill level) I felt the creature came out somewhat well. If I could do this again I would have looked up more reference on materials and creatures similar. 

4) I gave the creature a little more perspective and a body behind the shoulders. I also added some dust to enforce the idea that this creature just erupted from the ground.

5) After leaving the painting for a while I came back to it and saw how plain the fore/background looked so I added some blurred rocks in the foreground and a planet in the background. I’m happy with the rocks but the planet in hindsight is a little strange as it really has no correlation to the overall image and the creature itself. This does enforce composition however as it ensures the viewer will look at the left of the image first and then the right.

6) I go back and clean up some of the image such as adding more sand particles in the air, making the planet a lot darker and adding some desert grass to make the image feel more alive. 

Reflection on work is quite important as sometimes that involves coming back to the piece a couple days later as the eye and brain throughout a painting adjust to seeing the same scene for a long period of time; because of this I can see now the planet in the background is quite detailed and although that isn’t a bad thing it leads the viewers eyes away from the main piece of my picture - the monster. Another piece of reflection is the lack of detail on said creature. It is something I haven’t properly studied before and as previously mentioned this was an amazing exercise and will benefit me and my future research.

[Research and Development 2 - Characters] At this point I was happy with where the creature was and decided to take it to the colouring stage which is arguably my biggest weakness when it comes to the process of creation; I didn’t want the creature to be “wacky” looking with a lot of colour dotted everyone. The creature is a hunter and should be muted and in a game/movie scenario unnoticeable. As you can see from the image above I went through the hue slider and played around with different tones of the first iteration but ultimately decided that black/red is the most menacing/threatening looking. 

When I finished with that I had to now decide what I wanted to do with this creature; a simple character sheet? An illustration? I chose the illustration for a number of reasons:

My process when it comes to painting is a little lackluster and something that needs to improve and this would help. Also imaginative paintings aren’t my strongest point either so this was a skill I had to develop further. 

[Research and Development 2 - Characters] From this point forward I still didn’t have an end goal; It was to simply develop this character to a finished state which I wasn’t too keen on but I fix this at a later point. As you can see I took the initial Mantis creature to an entirely new concept which at first I was pleased with but then realised how generic this could be; a stealthy creature with claws. After doing some exploration on websites such as pinterest and artstation I discovered new concepts which got me really excited to try and draw. 

The next iteration is the same creature but It either flies or burrows through the ground. At the time I didn’t know what it would do but I decided to make the creature burrow through the ground. Finally for this part of the project I decided to do some shape exploration for the head of the creature; this began with following the theme of a “corrupt” creature and adding spikes. This is quite amateurish so I played around with the idea a little more and (after receiving feedback from friends again) went with the 4th head concept. This lead to the final design of my Ripper Demon creature concept. 

Throughout the process of this entire project I realized (and was told) I have a style to my work which is something strange to me as I simply draw and whatever is produced is produced. Style is something you develop naturally and typically can’t force. Below I will list some of the artists that really inspire me as well as inspire how I draw and create:

Feng Zhu, Ahmed Aldoori, Sinix, Sycra, Conor Burke, Su Jian and many other smaller known artists. 

[Research and Development 2 - Characters] As you can see I took 4 of the initial thumbnails I really liked and then developed them into characters that represented their respective verbs; To dig, To tear, To mark and To hook. As this was early on in the process still the sketches aren’t as detailed and some places on them are merely scribbles to get across a point (The hands for example) 

While working on each of these different characters I brought up a number of references to work from; An example of this would be the “Ripper Demon.” I had no idea how to draw a mantis’ head so i simply looked it up on Google and this allowed me to create that character. While learning how to draw I’ve learnt a lot of new things which have added to my visual library which is why the reference sheet is not as full as it could be; I simply draw most of this from memory. Drawing from reference is still important however as the look of a character or creature is not the most important part; It also matters how the creature will function and how it acts in a gaming situation. While searching up references for the Mantis creature I learnt the fact that they do not have an iris; it is simply an optical illusion which gives a more realistic feel to the character if mentioned. 

Upon receiving feedback I chose the Mantis “Ripper Demon” creature. I did this for two reasons; the idea of a corrupt Mantis creature is very cool, and because I’ve mainly studied human anatomy as my time as an artist and I thought going out of my comfort zone would be extremely helpful to my journey as I know I won’t always be drawing/painting simply humans. 

[Research and Development 2 - Characters] During the first week we had a group critique in which we discussed in a small group our ideas for the task. I presented a few of my beginning thumbnails and my tutor was really intrigued by how fast I could produce these as well as the energy that went into them. This then led into my tutor wanting me to animate one of these thumbnails in a similar fashion to my original thumbnail which as you can see above I attempted. This was my first animation so a lot of struggle went into this but I was still very contempt with the outcome; If I were to do this again I would spent more time on keeping the character the same size throughout which is something I didn’t notice at first and when I did I realized it was too late unless I restarted the entire thing. 

Beginning of the [Research and Development 2 - Character/Creature design]

When we were first given this task my mind was racing with different ideas but the biggest influencing me was to create a set of different characters based on the verbs we were given. To begin this task I went through the list randomly at first and creating different thumbnails based on the verbs I chose; 

As you can see I created a number of these and when making them I simply drew what came to my mind as soon as I saw the verb as fast as I could. This was a good exercise to loosen my mind and grip on things im familiar with. I realized on some however I did spend too long on them debating and this is something I want to work on in the future. 

[Research and Development 1 - Collage + Plus one collage] This is my final image for the collage workshop we took; the premise for this piece is that Norwich is still an area I haven’t fully explored yet I have lived in the area for all of my life, so Norwich is representing a jungle/an unexplored area that I plan to take part it in for the years I’m still here after university. I chose black and white for this to emphasize that unexplored/mysterious feel. 

The pictures used for this were taken/edited by myself. 

For my plus one I decided to do another digital collage as I really prefer the fact I can adjust so much to do with the original image within Photoshop; For this image I took 4 old portraits of women and planned on making their faces completely white and then putting a image in the white space. This changed however when I accidentally selected the brush tool and created texture on the face + other parts of the body which I found really appealing. I replicated this 4 times while trying new brushes and adjusting the overall saturation levels. You can tell this from the bottom right image and how it has a tinge of purple to it. Collages are as Karl taught us about happy accidents and I believe this is now the case as I experienced it firsthand. 

All portraits came from - http://home.europa.com/~telscope/portraits.htm [Accessed 16th November 2017]

I thought it would be easier to simply link a folder containing all of my reflective sheets to my workshop projects here on the blog rather than physical copies;

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gNtZhqvcAksM84sGD7VRMkmOXr07tZGz

[Research and Development 1 - Pay attention] I went through two main ideas for this task: at first I was going to take pictures of areas in Norwich and paint/draw them in ink. The spin however was going to be the amount of detail put into the most “minimal” parts of the image. An example of this would be a picture of the castle and instead of drawing that in great detail it could simply be a few rough lines. 

Instead however I went back through the workshop lesson and found Karsten Bott and his “inventory” which i thoroughly enjoyed and decided to take my own spin on it. What you can see above is essentially my morning routine in an estimated order which I have decided to photograph with my phone.

Bott. K. (2017) Available at: http://www.karstenbott.de/en/Index.html (Accessed: 26 October 2017)

[Research and Development 1 - Mapping and Storyboard] For the mapping task I took a stroll around Norwich for around 30 minutes and tried to memorize as much as I could. After this I then did an initial sketch of what I would want my map to look like which is in my sketchbook. Nextly I took this to photoshop to draft another idea of what I want the map to look like. I still thought it looked extremely plain however so I sat down and made a map of the University area in the same style as the piece of contextual research I found (Helsinki) Not only does this map look much cleaner than my previous two, but it is also more clear on where the viewer of map is.

L. Linko and P. Posti (Unknown) Street Art Tour of Helsinki (Digital 2D) Available at: http://belong.hotelindigo.com/helsinki-art/ (Accessed 10th November 2017)

On the storyboard side of things I did a similar approach to where I did a base sketch of what I wanted my idea to be (A 12 panel storyboard completely from imagination using as many new camera techniques as possible) After finalizing this piece I believed it turned out very well and I worked out kinks such as some panels not being clear to the viewer of the work.

[Research and Development 1 - Character Design] The first of many projects on this course; we were told to make a character from scratch using the techniques we learnt in our workshop. I decided to start with the thumbnail process of different shapes/heights and statures for the character and then followed that up with two designs; the second of which I decided to keep iterating to my liking.

As you can see I included some contextual research into how metal reflects, how cloth folds on a person etc. to make my design more realistic and to prove that im using reference for my artwork and not blindly drawing.