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.   

Perspective Part 2

Here is a drawing I've done of the front of the McManus building here in Dundee. The weather is getting colder and wetter in Dundee so I highly doubt I'll be able to do any more sketches outside, which is a shame. I do however, live on a 4th floor so I could try and do some more perspective studies from my flat window where it's dry and warm. 

With this study I feel like I've failed miserably, perspective has never been my strong point seeing as I've only really started studying it when I entered university. This sketch was supposed to be a warm up but it started raining so I couldn't continue. I also tried adding in some white pen to try and add highlights but it literally ruined life so I tried to erase them. All of my lines are wrong with this picture, especially the steps, everything seems to be going off in different directions and altogether is doesn't actually look like its part of the same building.    

I think that I should just sketch what I see outside my flat window and take my time and actually study what I see, not rushing because of the weather or getting distracted because of passers by trying to talk to me. I should make the time to look and reflect on the lines I see and try to incorporate that into my drawings. 

Looking Further into Character Designs

Below is some silhouettes I've made from Bob Rafei's characters so I can get a better look of the shapes and poses of the characters without all the details. All of the characters here look very varied and different from each other, which is something I didn't think of in the last post. Even with the varied designs you can still see the clear connection of the species, mostly because of the ears. 

Here is some of Ashley Wood's characters from his paintings. The first 3 characters silhouettes look like they could easily be the same person and its only the last 3 where you can see clear differences. Most of the characters seem to wear big and bulky clothes apart from the female character where you can see clearly her body without any apparent clothing there. Also the pose is far more over the top than the other male characters where they just tend to stand there and lean about sometimes.

Here is some silhouettes from the characters from DOTA 2. With these silhouettes there is clearly a lot of variety and a lot to look it, each character is very busy with their shape. Again like I said with the last post, lots of triangles and you can clearly see who the strong female characters are and who are the over sexualised character is. I do particularly like how the 3rd silhouette is a female but you can't really tell, her design is very strong and powerful.

Looking into the Character Designs

Below is some of Bob Rafei's character designs with some of my annotation. what I notice a lot with Rafei's work is that they adopt the same/similar pose, both male and female. This isnt exactly a bad thing, just repetitive and it doesn't show the characters personalities, particularly if they're all wearing similar clothes. I do like the diverse faces which still comply to the species as well as the different body types.     

Below is some charter designs of DOTA 2 as well with some markings I've made. What I notice a lot with these character designs is lots and lots of triangles! I personally love triangles, the more angles you can put into a character the better, it just keeps my eye interested. I did notice that with the female characters a lot of them a very strong in body and stance as well as some of their attire made to look powerful (the two female characters 1 from the right). However with female characters that are over sexualised, there are still some triangle aspects in their design but followed with more soft curves or the body and attire. 

Below is some of Ashley Wood's artwork and some colour blobs (what I call them) of each of his paintings. For a lot of Wood's paintings his usually picks a 'theme' of colour and sticks to it, such as brown or green. But somethings there's hidden burst of colour which I really enjoy as well as all the texture in his paintings. For the character designs, some of them adopt the triangle pose and a lot of his character wear huge baggy clothing, making them appear quite bigger that what they most likely are.  

Character Design Mood Boards

The brief that I have chosen for this module is the character design brief. In this brief I am a freelancing character designer and have been selected by a new AAA development studio where I will research, develop and produce concept character designs for a game based on one of three main sources of inspiration. I will create a protagonist of my own design that will fit the role of a 3rd person action/adventure game as well as a antagonist. 

Within the brief I have been given a description from the client: 

‘Project ‘Odyssey’ is a 3rd person action/adventure game for the new generation of consoles! Set on a sprawling planet far from our own solar system, the game will be free from our ‘natural’ conventions. You are free to design fantastical elements and styles uninhibited by earthly restrictions. We have a few key design inspirations we would like for you to explore.

We loved Bobby Rafei’s work on the classic Jak n Daxter series! But perhaps it is a little too cartoony by today’s standards. We also absolutely love the unique twisted-but-humorous character designs of Valves ‘DOTA2’ franchise.  Further, this is wildcard, but, we’re long-time fans of the work of Ashley Wood and we’d be interested in how his crazy style might affect your vision for our game.

The first source of inspiration I can take from is Bob Rafei's work on the Jack and Daxter series. Rafei's work is very clean and precise and he uses a lot of traditional mediums such as pencil and markers. The client is worried that his style is too cartoony for this project and I agree, I believe that it is also quite dated in terms of style. If I were to use this as a main source of inspiration I would have to do a reboot of this style and possibly take inspiration from something more modern too. 

Bob Rafei

The second source of inspiration I can take from is the work of valve's DOTA 2. The client has stated that they love the unique and twisted-but-humorous character designs. The silhouettes of the characters really appeal to me, I quite like drastic shapes and angles so DOTA 2 appealed to me. There's also a huge amount of colour that would make for a very interesting world, it might need to be toned down though as having every character with such variety of colour could be too much visual information for the player - less is more in some cases.  

DOTA 2

The last source of inspiration my client has given me is the work of comic book artist and illustrator, Ashley Wood. They described him as the wildcard for this project and that they are interested in how his crazy style might affect my vision for the game. I really like Wood's style of painting and his use of colours and textures, he is certainly an artist that I want to look into more. I think his visual style will make for a very interesting and fun game.

Ashley Wood