Final Piece

Below is my final promo piece show both the antagonist and protagonist in combat.

For this piece I wanted to include lead-in-lines by using the dust cloud leading the viewers eye from the right towards the darker dust cloud up to the antag, through his arm to follow the bullet back through the protag. I believe that using this technique I have given the viewer a clear path to follow in which they will see the whole painting.
I believe that I have shown these two characters well, the viewer gets a good view of them both.

Sketches for Final Piece

Below are some quick sketches for my final promo piece. I decided to focus on the movement and flow rather than detail while sketching. I wanted to have both characters clearly visible, which I found a challenge as well as creating an interesting piece.

Antagonist Posed Character Sheet

Here are some sketches I made for the antag pose sheet.
Overall I had to rush through these so I had time for my final piece, so I'm not happy at all with them but I do believe that the poses and sketches help show to type and movement of this character.

Antagonist Painted Model Sheet

Here is my final painted model sheet. Again like I've done in the protag painted sheet I have made texture samples to show the viewer and to get a better look at the underling textures that are on this character.

Antagonist Visual Interest Design Sheet

Here is my final visual interest design sheet for my antag. Again, the same with the protag I want there to be more light towards the top of the character and slightly darker towards the bottom.

Antagonist Line Art Model Sheet

Here is my final line art model sheet for my antag. I've designed him to be shorted and more stocky than the protag with a quick temper and wider shoulders - his weapon of choice is a pistol.

Antagonist Colour Tests

Here are my colour tests as well as my finished protag to help me compare the colour schemes together. Overall I think the darker colours - bottom row - will look best and my favourite out of the is number 4. I feel like the lighter colours sort of loose the sherif feel whereas the darker colours don't.
My next steps will be to do the final outcomes for my antag and create the line art and visual interest design sheets etc.  

Antagonist Design

Here is a visual design interest pose of my final design for my protagonist. I designed him to be 5'5 and to be a bit more stocky than the protag. Also, because of his height he has a 'short man' or 'Napoleon Complex' and seeing a character new into town, standing at 6'2 trying to change things, he's not too happy about that. 

My next step will be to start creating colour tests on how this character will look and to try and create something that will also look well against the protag.

Taking the Antagonist Silhouettes further

Here is the silhouette that I have chosen. I tried using drapes and lots of cloth the same as the protag but I didn't think it sat well on the character. The designs that I like the most are numbers 3 and 5.
My next step will be to choose a design that I feel works well with the character and start creating visual interest and colour tests.

Antagonist Silhouettes

Here are some of my initial silhouettes I made for the antagonist. I already had a theme in mind to shadow the protag which was a sherif style. However I did allow myself to stray away from that when silhouetting to see what I could come up with.
There are a select few that that I feel have a strong stance and potential for strong design. My next step is to do that same that I've done with my protag and take the selected silhouette and design from the inside out.

Protagonist Posed Character Sheet

Below are some sketches for my posed character sheet as well as my final posed character sheet.
While sketching I thought about how this character would move in-game and because I designed him to be tall, lanky and fast I thought I would push the pose while he was running. As well as the shooting pose I thought how this character would stand while firing. Either a standing or kneeling pose would work in game but I thought because I have the painted character sheet of him standing I thought a kneeling one would show more variety.

Protagonist Painted Model Sheet

Here is my final painted model sheet showing the character from the front, side and back as well as
showing some texture samples and a close up of his weapon.
I decided to create the texture samples because the actual textures are not meant to be very heavy or standing out in this design, more implied like the work of Ashley Wood. Therefore I created these texture samples for the viewer to get a better look at the underlining textures that are on this character.

Protagonist Visual Interest Design Sheet

Here is my final visual interest design sheet. Using greyscale - nothing absolute black or white - to show where the lightest and darkest parts of the character are. As I've said again, in previous blog posts the lightest part of the character will be towards the top much like how they teach in the DOTA 2 visual style guide.

Protagonist Line Art Model Sheet

Here is my final line art model sheet for my protagonist. This character has pushed proportions in the legs and arms, having them stretched. His height is 6'2 making him a fast and nimble character. Ammo is kept on the belt and he carries a double barrel shot gun.

Protag Colour Tests

Below are some colour tests that I've made for my protag. I just wanted to focus on the colour scheme right now and will add in the textures when I have my colour final design for character.

I wanted there to be lighter colours towards the top of the character as I've discussed in later blog posts, taking inspiration from the DOTA 2 visual style guide on having more saturated colours towards the top of the character. I shared this image on my Twitter account and I got some really good feedback on numbers 3, 4 and 5. Number 4 got the most attention so I decided to go with this colour scheme for my protag as I find it very fitting for the 'good guy' role as well as the good feedback I got.
 

Protagonist Design

Here is a visual design interest pose from just the front of my character. I'm planning on doing some colour tests before I start creating the final turnaround sheets etc.
I wanted to keep the lightest parts of the character towards the top, gaining more interest and attention from the viewer but keeping the design simplistic as to not to distract the player from the game itself.
Next I will work on creating various colour palettes and themes for this character and see which one works the best.

Presentation

I've decided to blog my presentation that we had to do for class, I choose to talk about the animation studio Pixar. 

Originally Pixar started out as a division of Lucas Film in 1979, was then bought by Steve Jobs in 1986 and renamed it Pixar. Then finally bought by Disney in 2006. 

working as an artist within Pixar, they create hundreds and hundreds of drawings within the first two years of preproduction of a film. For character design, the artists are given script pages that give a description on a character and the artist will create a variety of sketches. A fun fact is that for the character Roz from Monsters Inc, only took one sketch, the artist thought of one perfect design for her and the director loved it. 

Pixar also love to do their research for their films and often take their art department on trips so they can get a better visual on certain aspects that will be in the film. For example going to Scotland to sketch landscapes for Brave. Another fun fact is that when creating the film Finding Nemo, they originally wanted to take their art team inside a dead whale - it never actually happened, I think because they couldn't find a dead whale and at how uncomfortable the artists would be. 

I personally want to work in film as a Visual Development Artist and what attracted my to Pixar is there innovation with 3D film making. I couldn't find any specific information on artists jobs in their website but found some points on Visual Development Artist jobs in other companies such as:

"Show a portfolio that demonstrates a wide range of experience and technique with strong sense of composition, design, colour theory and story telling." 

Within university I've started to choose my modules to what will help me create a better understanding in visual development and also help me to create a stronger portfolio. Pixar isn't my main goal either, I'm pretty much open and I'm also open to moving to different countries. 

Taking the silhouettes further

Here is one of the silhouettes I've chosen which I then drew over them to work on their design more. I decided to just work on this silhouette because it had the strongest stance and proportion compared to the other 3 silhouettes I've chosen - which looked more like companions rather than protagonists.

With this character I wanted to go for a desert wanderer theme so lots of clothing especially around the face to protect it from sand/dirt etc. I've shared this to my friends and on my twitter to see which ones got the best views and they seemed to like all of them, but 2 and 8 got the most attention. Number 2 is actually my favourite as well so I'm happy with the result. 

My next step is to do some colour tests of number 2 silhouette and repeat the process to get more feedback on them. 

Protagonist Silhouettes

Here are some initial silhouettes I made. For these I made sure not to really think about the design too much but to just reflect on what I've learned through this project and let my mind go. I can tell that I've struggled with the first page as some of the silhouettes look too much thought out and they don't resemble each other, but as I drew more the silhouettes became more and more relaxed. I think I've create more silhouettes for a protagonist than a antagonist so I will create more silhouettes for that character.
For the story/theme of this game I was thinking of a journey, seeing that the game will be called Odyssey. The first things that came into my mind were and on the page resembled Greek, Cowboy and tribal African clothes. Therefore a very hot, dry planet which the characters/game will be based on.
I haven't decided if the characters will be human or not but there still plenty of the design process to go.

Here are 4 of the silhouettes that I like the most and the ones I want to develop further. I feel like there's enough new/original design and still have that feel of familiarity which the Skillful Huntsman suggests.
With these silhouettes I will take them into photoshop and paint over them with a soft white brush to try and get some patterns and design from the inside out.

My overall design plan

After all of my visual research I have created a brief visual and design plan for myself.

Visual Style Plan 
How I want my characters and my paintings to look like.

• Sharpness style of silhouette from Ashley Wood
• Drastic and unnatural proportions from Bob Rafei 
• Rendering style of DOTA 2 

 Design Plan
How am I going to create my characters and what techniques will I use.

• The use of silhouettes, sketches, thumb nails, paintings etc
• Designing from the inside out - Skillful Huntsman 
• Value painting and experimenting with colour 
• Lots of happy accidents  

The Skillful Huntsman

I've recently read the Skillful Huntmans by Scott Robertson, Felix Yoon, Mike Yamada and Khang Le. There are some aspects in this book which I find interesting and want to include in my work for this project such as the work of Mike Yamada where he takes his silhouettes a step further by putting them into photoshop and painting over the top of them in white, creating many different characters with each silhouette. There are many other techniques I've learned from this book such as the Lost line technique and the importance of the characters pose and clothing them right for purpose etc. 

I want to use these techniques throughout my project to help create individual and unique characters. 

"Most young designers don't realise that graphic design is a huge part of entertainment design. At the core of designing anything visual, you can always start with the proportions of the objects silhouettes and then move inward by adding the graphics." 

       - Scott Robertson 

Looking at the design of already existing Heroes and Villains

Here are some mood boards with some annotation of mostly game characters and one or two film characters analysing their design. The first mood boards if on the heroes and the second is on the villains.
Overall there are some interesting finds, such as the triangle mostly added to villains to create danger and fear within the design can also be incorporated into the heroes designs too. Its the same with circles added into villains design.

Heroes

Villains

Final Visual Test

Here is my final test in visual research where I tried to combine all 3 artists. I'm planning on taking inspiration of all the artists starting with the sharpness of silhouette from Ashley Wood, the character proportions of Bob Rafei and the rendering style of DOTA 2.

Below I've used another one of Ashley Wood's characters and started to render it with value patterning like in the DOTA Visual Style guide. I plan to use this approach when creating my own character designs for this project to help me get a sense of where I want my viewers eyes to go as well as the first step of rendering.      

Below are the final rendered artworks I made where I blended the value patterning by painting it in - no blend tool! - and then started to add colour overlays etc. The one thing I feel I've failed in here is trying to convey more colour in the final render. Even though a lot of DOTA's works have a one main colour with two complementary colours lightly added in, I feel like I struggled a bit to get this to come across. This is however, something that I can easily work on and evolve throughout this project.

Overall, I feel like I've come to an end with my visual research and that I've got a comfortable mix of influences of the 3 artists. My next step will be to move on and start creating my own designs and applying everything I've learned from my visual research into my designs.

Coloured Ashley Wood and DOTA 2 design and visual style

For this colour test I used the DOTA's Visual Style guide and continued on from my drawing on my last post. I firstly blended all the value patterning together so there wasn't any sharp lines or value etc. I then started adding colour on top of my image keeping in mind that there should be some level of high saturation of colour on top of the character and very little towards the bottom like the visual style guide says.
I've chosen my 3 colours by taking them from the original artwork, brown being the most dominant colour in the painting with red a close second. There are also hints of a green in the painting too which I used to dot around my own interpretation of it.

Overall I have learnt a great deal from doing these studies and visual tests, some of the techniques I've learned I will continue to use throughout this module and in my own personal artworks too. The next and final visual research will be to try and create the final look for this module that I can take and carry on to create the final character designs that the client will love.

Value Patterning an Ashley Wood's character design in the style of DOTA 2

Here is my first step into creating one of Ashley Wood's characters into a DOTA 2 style. I've been using DOTA's visual style guide to help me create this first step in exploring DOTA's style.
With this I started with the value patterning making sure not to use any absolute whites or blacks and started establishing contrasting blocks of value to highlight the characters form.
I also added the value gradient to create more visual interest by having the upper parts of the character the lightest and the darkest towards the bottom of the character.
Doing this before adding colour will help to make sure the character is recognisable and the most important features draw the eye of the viewer which is why I intend to use this technique for my own designs in this project.  

The next step I will take with this painting will be adding more detail and colour to it taking information from DOTA's visual style guide and create the colour schemes to help me with colouring this character.

DOTA 2 Visual Style Guide

Here are some screenshots I've taken from the DOTA 2 Visual Style guide. I've taken screenshots of what would help me the most in terms of character design in 2D as there was some slides on 3D modelling which wouldn't be appropriate here in this blog. The slides speak for themselves and I intend to take what I've learned to help me creating a Ashley Wood character in the style of DOTA 2 as well as creating my own character designs for this brief. 

What I noticed the most was the use of gradient in DOTA's designs which I didn't notice before as well as the colour palettes and wheels which will most certainly help me further on in this module. There is a lot I can take from this visual style guide such as the value gradient, colour schemes and mixing items for each character.     

Ashley Wood Visual Style Palette Test

Here are some colour and texture palettes I've painted to try and get a better sense of texture and style of Ashley Wood's art. I used several brushes and painted without thinking of anything in particular. It was quite fun and I get the sense that Ashley Wood wouldn't have an image or specific character in his mind while painting, but just let the colours, textures and his had move and see what he creates in the end. 

I can see myself using this technique in the future and in this project to help me create character designs and silhouettes. 

Overall, I find Ashley Wood's style is very fun and appealing to me, but I don't think have this sort of heavy and complicated textures and paintings could be taken into an actual moving character into a game. I could however, use the techniques and character designs I've learned and studied into my own work for creating my own character designs for this module. 

  

Bob Rafei's Character Design in Ashley Wood's style

Below is a visual style test that I did which was taking a character design and pose from one of Bob Rafei's drawings and painting it in the style of Ashley Wood. 

There was obviously some difficulty in producing the style because Ashley Wood paints traditionally which for me painting digitally, was difficult to get that tradition painted feel into my work. I do feel that I incorporated his use of colours well and how some of his characters tend to blend into the background like I've done with this characters lower legs. I do want to create another painting, maybe just a colour palette of textures and brushes to try and get Ashley Wood's style across.

Overall, I feel I've incorporated the two artists well, I do however think it will be harder to get the textures of Ashley Wood's paintings onto a live and moving character in a game engine.