One to One Lecturer Feedback (22/1/2013)

During this session I spoke with my lecturer in order to find out how I was doing in this module.

Below are bullet points of the notes and advice he gave me:

• Measuring future sketches may help me get the correct proportions for a person e.g. take the size of their head and measure their body with 7 heads.   
• Bleed shading together so as to make my cartoon like lines into realistic lines.
• Use lost and found lines as your eyes fill out the lines.
• Use Z-Brush in order to create my ideas before drawings them. That way I can get the right perspective and shape as I originally tried to do with my space ship.
• Don't bother doing poses for my credit card concepts as they don't really count. However, drawing different poses later on to get an idea of what pose to put the character in is a good thing. 
• Try and experiment with more realistic drawings and try and include shading in future works. Therefore expanding my style and creating more detailed works of art. 
• Try and do hair, clothes and accessories before the credit card concepts as you can then mix and match your ideas. Similar to how I did the space pilot and my recent character with her hair under her hat.
• If I find the time then I should go back and add darker lines to my original environment piece I drew as my lecturer thought the bottom of it was separate to the rest of it, almost like a comic book. Therefore adding the dark lines would give it the correct perspective as the closer something is the more clearer it should be.  

At the moment my lecturer says that I am looking at a 65 grade for my research which is a high mark and a 55 grade for my drawing which is a middle mark. This is because, although my chosen cartoon art style is very good, it does however limit me in a way as the characters seem too flat. Therefore, to gain a higher mark I will need to bring them out a bit more. I will also need to make sure that my final character piece for my current project does look female as my other character sketches looked male by accident. Therefore he showed me an art book that had good examples of how to draw women and said that in drawings they tend to have rounded shoulders, long legs and necks, short arms and wide hips. With this in mind I also asked the advice of my friend Bonnie who is very good at drawing women. She couldn't really explain the process, but she did do a rough sketch in my book on how she draws a clothed female character.

After the above discussion, I started new credit card concepts for my character rather than the skeletal poses I had done before.

You can see these sketches below:

My lecturer also recommended that I look at work by Chris Foss and Daniel Lieske in relation to my drawings to which I did.

Chris Foss does fantastic space crafts that not only look original but also have elements of building designs on them due to their bulkiness and great use of pattern and colour palette. Looking at his work could help me get a better understanding of how to shape my vehicles and buildings rather than the 'Minecraft' look they have at the moment. Maybe one day my work will look something like the example below.

Whereas Daniel Lieske has done some amazing drawings of characters and environments that look cartoon like but well detailed. This is something that I could do with learning in order to turn out more detailed versions of my own style and perhaps something similar to below.

On week 26.

Referencing:

• Foss, C (1981) Nathan [Online image]. Available at: http://cwarden.org/warden/personalPage/graphics/chrisFoss.jpg (Accessed: 22/1/2013).  

• Lieske, D (2010) Welcome to the Wormworld [Online image]. Available at: http://www.wallpaperhi.com/download/view?resolution=1600x1200&file=MTI4MHgxMDI0LzIwMTIwMzE2L2ZhbnRhc3kgY2xvdWRzIHRyZWVzIGRhbmllbCBsaWVza2UgMTI4MHgxMDI0IHdhbGxwYXBlcl93d3cud2FsbHBhcGVyaGkuY29tXzguanBn&name=ZmFudGFzeV9jbG91ZHNfdHJlZXNfZGFuaWVsX2xpZXNrZV8xMjgweDEwMjRfd2FsbHBhcGVy (Accessed: 22/1/2013). 

Genre Artwork 2 (15/1/2013)

For this session, after finally coming up with a name for my character I decided to work on the clothes and accessories that Elexia would wear. A woman who wears overly casual clothes that wouldn't necessarily match due to her mental disorder. 

I knew from the start of this project that I didn't want my female character to be a sex symbol as other women in gaming sadly often are. I also wanted to draw a female character as I find women harder to draw than men and thus wanted to give myself a challenge.

Even though I knew what clothes I wanted her to wear and hoped that they would be original, I feared her head wouldn't as I kept imaging her to either look like Jade from 'Beyond Good and Evil' or Faith from 'Mirror's Edge'. Both these girls have short dark hair as seen in my reference images below.

 

Therefore I started this session by looking at an assortment of messy hair styles and clothing as Elexia is meant to be a fun and causally dressed young woman, thus explaining why I always imagined her with baggy trousers and an XXL T-shirt.

With my first page of possible character designs I spent a long time looking at hair so as to capture the messy look I wanted whilst staying away from my reference images. Although the character would be mostly seen indoors I decided to draw designs for hats and accessories anyway as I just wanted to see if any of them caught my eye and gave me a new angle on what she could look like.

 

Within the second page I decided to not only draw the XXL T-shirt and combat trousers I imagined her wearing originally, but also an assortment of other designs so as with the other page I could see if anything 'grabbed me'. I also messed around with shoe designs although I imagined her to be bare foot and even symbols that could be on her clothing perhaps as she is obsessed with her TV and therefore may wear branded items.

Now, although I did draw a sports bra and vest on this page I would just like to point out that these would only be included under something like a T-shirt. Otherwise the flowing and large necked nature of an XXL T-shirt would lead to showing players what was underneath whenever the character does anything athletic. I also found from thinking about this design flaw that it would thus open up new ways to animate the character as whenever she swings the hammer she uses the T-shirt could billow in the air. Thus giving her combat grace and beauty.

After the session I then went away and drew four models for possible character designs that you can see below:

I found drawing numerous designs really helped as it allowed me to look physically at both my original concept (number 2 with a hat added instead of hair) and other designs I had thought of. Whereas I do like design number 4 I feel that it is perhaps more suitable for a male character. Personally I really like seeing people in turtle neck sweaters for some reason, however, for design number 1 I felt this design along with the tight trousers were too out of place for the character's casual nature. Now, whereas I really like the design and layers on 3 I feel that they would perhaps suit a male more and just can't imagine Elexia wearing them for some reason. Therefore I have decided to go with my original design concept of number 2, however, I will be including number 3's hair underneath the hat and possibly the same symbol seen on the T-shirt.

Although pleased with my designs I can see looking back at them that I made the shoulders for the female poses look far too broad and masculine. Therefore I practiced sketching some shoulder designs as seen below so as to be ready for my final design. I also went back and practiced drawing the creases caused by the layers and weight of the clothing she is going to wear as baggy clothes should hang off her more. Finally I practiced drawing her hair under the hat so as to make sure the design would work.

• Unknown (Unknown) Jade with her camera [Online image]. Available at: http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111107205908/theirisnetwork/images/thumb/9/9a/Jade.jpg/270px-Jade.jpg (Accessed: 23/1/2013). 

• Unknown (Unknown) Faith jumping [Online image]. Available at: http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR6nuU5GpcDyso2TjcqoygJnSkP0FZzd9d8FdOEngccjl5LjMVi7g (Accessed: 23/1/2013).

Genre Artwork 1 (8/1/2013)

For my next art project I have been given the task of creating artwork for a genre of my choice that I will in a few weeks time present through a power point presentation to my peers and lecturer. Therefore I spent this session researching my ideas for an action adventure genre that I plan to give a twist to so as to make it original. I will post the idea and the back-story for my next post as I have an idea already, but I want to give myself more time to determine all of its elements first.

With an idea in my head already of what my project will look like I hope to post my artwork as I progress throughout this project on a frequent basis and look forward to the end results and the feedback I get from it. Hopefully, I will be able to transfer the ideas from my head to my sketches as that can be a difficult task for anyone.

I also did an hour of sketching objects that you can see below. One was done with pencil and I felt at home using this familiar method, whereas using the charcoal was challenging as I kept smudging it by accident. However, overall it was a fun sort of challenge as it allowed me to mess around with the unknown.

After this session I went away and started to draw possible poses that my character might adopt. I tried a variety of poses as I wanted to capture as many aspects of her personality as I could. Therefore, I did stances that had her waving and relaxing to show her casual nature, doing handstands to demonstrate her carefree athletic side and finally fighting poses to show that she can take care of herself.

I then went on to designing a hammer for her that looked almost alive in nature or out of place as she would receive this weapon in the Monster World. This explains why number 2, 4 and 11 look monster like, although saying this I did try a variety of designs as I had flat surfaces, round surfaces and even spiked surfaces. When designing the hammers I also tried to come up with how they would change combat e.g. number 9 is a silly design that would imprint a smiley face on the enemy, 11 could perhaps stick an enemy to it, 1 could maybe be used to unhinge things, 2 could perhaps mind control due to its Cthulhu design and so on.     

I wanted her to use a hammer as I nearly always see the main protagonist in video games using a sword and thus the market is full of sword users, therefore I decided to be different.

Finally I drew a number of different environments as I can not decide which one to go with.

The first two are based in the high streets of the Monster World that the character enters through her TV. Its design was based on all the random stuff you find in your wardrobe as children are told monsters live in them. I also wanted the streets and buildings to be a mix of cultures as they would accommodate monsters from all over the world. Therefore I made the buildings a mix of western and eastern design and even included Chinese lanterns strung across wires in order to light the streets as they would be underground. And, even though I didn't draw them into the scene I can imagine the shops to be selling very random stuff such as cactus plants, garden gnomes and snow globes.  

Then I drew two similar concepts for one of the Monster Arenas that the player would fight in. I based these arenas on monster truck arenas purely because the word monster was in the title and I thought the open stadium nature would be a cool design as they are so big and the lights and sounds that come from them would be a good contrast against its dark backgrounds. I also included hills, spike traps and flares so as to show what the player could use to their advantage if need be. 

Finally I drew the character's apartment set in the real world. I wanted it to be a compact but bright environment so as to show a contrast between the human world and the monster world. I also wanted it decorated to mirror the character's taste for games and even included empty cans and other mess on the floor in order to convince players that it is lived in and not just on display. The first design I went with was calm and secure, whereas in the second I choose to include the limbs of monsters coming out of the screen and a telephone dangling on its wire in order to tell the viewer a story. Have these limbs abducted someone? Has the occupant just run out of the room? It is up to the viewer to decide.

Photoshop Session 4 (8/1/2013)

As you may of noticed the title for this post says number 4. So you may be asking "where is number 3?". Well everyone had to miss one of the sessions due to it running into the X-mas holidays.

As for the session itself sadly they isn't much to say about it. I was looking forward to it as it promised to show us how to draw characters on Photoshop. However, we were merely given an instruction sheet online and expected to do it ourselves. Personally I don't think this was a good idea as it meant that the session as a whole could have just as easily been done at home even with the odd words of friendly advice given. However, I did find out how to roughly shade a human face correctly, so I will be able to look back at my image when trying to do the same thing in the future. Unfortunately, no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't draw a realistic face as intended and instead kept going back to the more cartoonish/Manga style I am used to.

I haven't decided yet whether or not I will continue with these sessions or if there are any remaining anyway. Overall I just felt disappointed by this one and expected a little bit more from it.

You can see the process of my portrait drawn using a tablet on Photoshop below: