Reflection of Game art, week Seven

The beginning of week seven, our new project of the village project has been introduced. We have two weeks to use the skills we have learnt throughout the course to design a medieval village building. we are working in groups of ten and each have a different building to work on, which I am working on a medieval tavern. The design has to be to a specific brief and a style guide, to be able to fit in with the village surroundings and the collective groups buildings. My design has to be a medieval, hand-made, chunky style village tavern, which once designed has to be modelled and imported into an engine. The previous rock rock project also has to fit within a similar style, therefore I have made changes, such as the colour palette is lighter, which achieves a brighter positive asset. 

This is the First final textured model of the rock project. This texture was  too bright and the lights that I added did not work. Although the glow effect looks nice, the glow from the lights overpower the texture, so that the texture is barely visible.



In this new version of the rock, I have worked on the textures so that there is more contrast between the values and have added light moss to the top and back.I also deleted the lights from the model, so the texture is visible. I might add lights to the model later to add glow to the crystals, but I will ask for assistant.

 To begin the village project I need to research into medieval taverns and create a mood board from my research, so that I can start generating ideas into silhouettes.

The first stage of the design process is research and creating mood boards. From my research I have made a collection of various aspects I liked from images of medieval taverns, such as the doors, an arch the shape of the roof etc.

The digital painting lesson this week taught me a lot. I learnt about silhouette and photo bashing to create thumbnails. I used photos from the internet to create a Lego kit of windows, doors, beams etc to make a building. I then took this further and painted over them, then started to warp and pull them out of proportions to exaggerate the chunky style.

Once the most of the design process was complete I created a basic model of my design, so that I could take a render of this and paint over the top in Photoshop to make changes. I continued my design process this way so that I could add more details at an earlier stage in the design process, developing my ideas from 2D to 3D and reversed, therefore making it easier to decide where to take my design further.

Sixth week of Game art

This week was employ-ability week, so we had reviews of our progressions so far over the course. Visual design is going fine, I previously had a few projects to catch up on, which already have and they can see I have no problems with my drawings. I admitted that I had been a bit lazy with game production, because I already know what I am doing in 3ds Max and feel like I am waiting for the main projects to start. They advised me that I should show some more work for this, as it is good to keep practicing skills and get ahead of the first years. As I am a first year repeat I should be nailing all the tasks, which I agree with and will aim to complete all tasks that I have not done yet with in this week, such as the si fi crate and stylized rock.

I have begun the rock project, I already started the research in week two, when I looked at the projects in the university's folders and have made mood boards.

Mood Board one rock project

Mood Board two

I then started silhouetting some ideas, then moved onto idea generations and refining my ideas. I finally decided on a idea of a rock that has crystals on the top and continued with colour variations.

Silhouettes, silhouettes with values and slight colour variations. first I narrowed down my choice out of the group on the top right to numbers two, three and four.

silhouettes with values and colour variations. I then decided on my final design, I thought the rock shape was good and wouldn't be difficult to model in the tri limit, also the crystals make an interesting design, which i could add opacity and light glows.

I narrowed down my colour choices and duplicated them below to make slight colour and glow changes.

I finally decided the darkest green colour on the crystal would look the best. and now started on colour variations for the rock.

once I had finished on a final idea I started concepting and produced value studies, which then moved onto orthographic turn around and final concept colour studies. After the design process, I need to model and texture my concept.

Sketch then colour concepts of the rock, plus colour studies of crystals.

Orthographic turnaround of the rock design.

Final concept design.

After I had finished my final design, I went back over my drawings and changed the lighting to be brighter, to match the mood of the new village project.

After finishing the concept, my rock needed to be modeled, unwrapped and textured.

Life drawing task to draw Ten figures, which I chose to draw from life. I decided to focus on proportions and perspective in shorter amounts of time, rather than using values and rendering in a longer drawing.

In these two drawings, I gave myself a time limit of two minute, which I found difficult drawing clothed figures as it harder to draw to shape, weight and determine the anatomy of the figure when you cant see it very well. Also as there was more to draw this time, most of my drawings did not have the full figure as I ran out of time trying to capture the shapes of the clothing.

In these drawings I also gave myself a time limit of two minutes, which I also found difficult and ran out of time to fit the full figures in.

In this larger A3 size drawing, I gave myself a longer time limit of Five minutes and feel I achieve better proportions and foreshortening.

In these two drawings I allowed myself a time limit of Five minutes for the first and two minutes for the second. I feel I achieved good foreshortening in the first drawing, however the second drawings were slightly incorrect.

In this drawing I gave myself I time limit of Five minutes, I feel I achieved the perspective and foreshortening, however I ran out of time to fit in the full figure.

In this drawing I allowed myself a time limit of Fifteen minutes, Which gave myself enough time to achieve correct proportions, perspective and foreshortening, I feel this was an overall successful drawing. 

Fifth week of Game art

This week in visual design we had a trip to guild hall, to continue our lessons on perspective and values. I drew some thumbnails of inside the hall, where there is exposed beams and stone, to capture the style of the building. I drew the exterior too, to capture the old style building, I also took this opportunity to photograph some textures for further projects. The life drawing task this week is to draw 10 figures, which I will complete at home. 

Week five Guild hall thumbnail sketches.

Guild hall thumbnail sketches.

Guild hall thumbnail sketches.

Reviews of our drawing work progress, took place during our trip out to guild hall, there was no problems with my work, apart from keeping up to date with a few things, which I think I will have no problem catching up with. I have two tasks to complete, the two point perspective of Leicester and the 10 figures, I have already started on them and will not take long to complete.

Critical studies, last week I received my assessment for my presentation of 60%, which I think is fairly good. I know where I need to improve and how to. I know I should talk to my audience more rather than the computer screen. Howevr , I thought I timed myself well, spoke clearly and I talked about some interesting ponits about character design.

Forth week of Game art

This week of visual design, my life drawing tutor was away, so it was left to the students to draw each other. This time I got to draw clothed figures, which I enjoyed as drawing clothes is more of a challenge. 

Life drawing week four,
five minute seated drawing.

Life drawing,
each five minute drawings.

Life drawing,
each five minute drawings.

In digital painting this week, we were taught silhouette bashing and how to carve, add to silhouettes. A task was also given during class to draw a squiggle on a post it note, then try to turn it into something, also random objects were combined for us to quickly draw, such as a Caterpillar bus. The purpose of these tasks were to get us think less about what our drawings look like, so that we can get our ideas out and drawn fast. The idea is to be able to produce lots of sketch drawing first, so that the best ones are chosen to be developed and funneled down the concept art process, so more mistakes can be make early on farther than towards the finalizing stages. 

Also in visual design this week we started looking at value range and we set tasks of drawing values of objects.

Week four, Value range sketches.

 

Third week of Game art

In visual design, after leaning the techniques of one and two point perspective, were had to go off in our own time to draw two point perspective around Leicester. I had about an hour before my coach back to Nottingham, so I walked around Leicester taking photos of two point perspective buildings, I did not have time to sit and draw as it was raining quite heavy. So far visual design is going well, I am keeping up with tasks and understanding the required techniques.

Week three two point perspective Leicester city thumbnails.

Top drawings: two minute continuous line drawings.
Bottom drawings: two minute opposite hand
continuous line drawings.

Life drawing, each five minute seated drawings.

Life drawing, five minute seated drawing with
some fore-shortening.

Life drawing, fifteen minute seated drawing.

Digital painting this week, were set the super hero cubeecraft project, which I enjoyed. This task had to be finished for Tuesdays game production lesson and printed out on card. For this task I designed a fox super woman, kind of like cat woman, but a fox.

Cubbeecraft digital painting texture mesh.

Cubbeecraft Fox woman assembled. I didn't attach the extra
hair piece, as I had no glue to do so.

 




Game production this week I spent the lesson cutting out the cubeecraft super hero and had time to work on my presentation about my favourite character. Was disappointed that I actually had no real game production lesson this week, even though I already know what I am doing with 3ds msx , it is unfair for the people who don't.

In critical studies I completed my presentation. My presentation was about Alice Liddell from the Alice madness game and makes her character design, good. Overall I thought I did well, I got my work on the k drive before it was asked of. I introduced myself, kept my talking within the slide transitions of 18 seconds and had some interesting and relevant points to say about Alice's character design. The only negative I would say, is I was obviously nervous, which I didn't look at my audience. I need to learn to act more confident and turn my presentations into a performance for my audience.

Alice Liddell presentation slides.