Drawing for Games: My object art and analysis (22/11/2012)

Refined sketches:

For my refined sketch I decided to draw design number 2 as stated in my last post due to the fact that this design interested me the most. I'm also glad that I kept most of this design in tact as I feel that it has a very ultra modern smooth appearance about it that would possibly be ruined either visually or idea wise if anything else was added e.g. anything inside its hollow centre.

With my first refined sketch I originally tried to draw the ring from a different perspective using a roll of sellotape to trace around. However, due to my personal drawing abilities I was unable to get it at exactly the correct angle and therefore it just didn't look right. So instead of keeping with a design I was unsure of, I decided to give it another go with my second refined sketch. I am glad that I did this as although I had to change my original design for the ring I feel that it still turned out well even when I had to check the proportions for this one with a ruler. I was also able to draw a less bulky cockpit in my second design which I originally intended to do.

I decided to make a few changes to the original design, for example, I decided to add stars on to the wings and front of the cockpit so as to visually relate to the pilot I drew last time. I also decided to give the neck connecting the cockpit and the ring a rubbery flexible joint as I thought that if the ring could spin then why couldn't the cockpit move individually as well? Thus I was able to add an extra original feature to my design.

I imagine that the space ship's colour scheme would match my pilots, however, unlike my pilot I will not colour the majority of my space ship red as I fear if I do so then it will look more like a toy space ship than a realistic one. The inside of the ring, its engine and the stars will be gold so as to keep with the same metal colours of my last piece. Red will only be displayed on the rim of the cockpit's window and on the top of the ring. The rubbery neck will either be black or dark brown. Glowing orange will also return as the space ship's slip stream and lighting as seen in the centre of the circle on the ring and possibly on the window of the cockpit as reference to the pilot's helmet. Otherwise I may make the window a shiney black. The rest of the space ship will then be white as I personally feel that this colour best suits its ultra modern design and I can visualise this as the space ship's main colour.

Final Piece:

With my object finally completed I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about it. Its not that I am unhappy with its design, far from it, I am very pleased with its slick and unique appearance. However, I feel that I could have chosen a better palette of colours, or rather, chosen different colours for individual areas of the space ship as I feel that the red does exactly what I set out to avoid i.e. make it look too much like a toy space ship. This is typical as I decided against making its wings white as I had intended and instead made them red. Therefore I may want to replace most of the red with gold or white when I find the time as I feel these colours blend well together. I also felt a bit disappointed with the orange glow affects as it seems to only stand out on the engine's exhaust and not on the round orange lights in front. This is probably due to the lighter colours surrounding the round light as on the pilot the glow showed up better on the darker colours of his uniform and legs. Perhaps I just didn't make the glow strong enough.

This is not to say that they is nothing about my final drawing that I don't like. As stated before I really like its design which I was also able to clean up using Photoshop as I had originally drawn mistakes with pen on my spaceship and therefore wanted to rub them out in order to make my final piece look more professional.
I also feel that its neck looks better at the moment as not only do the colours blend well together, but the rubber looks like rubber. This was something that I really wanted to get across in the same way as the rubber looks like rubber in the character image from Shigenori Soejima which I used as reference for my last piece of art.

Outside my final piece for the space ship, I was also able to add the shading that I had originally intended for my character art on his legs and back as you can see below alongside a quick poster of the pilot and space ships side by side. I hope to go back to this mock poster at some point as due to fears of copyright infringement I decided to get rid of the space background I had originally found online and due to time constraints quickly added the black background with white dots and the rather poor flight streams as seen below. Therefore I will want to correct these and also go over the pilot in both images with a dark outline so as to not only make him stand out more, but to also bring out his cartoonish/anime look which sometimes tend to include this feature.

Overall, I feel that maybe next time I would like to challenge myself even further as even though I am not used to drawing objects I feel that I may have chosen a design that whilst slick wasn't perhaps detailed enough. Therefore when I next draw an object I will make sure to add lots of great detail and also come up with the perfect blend of colours.