Weekly summary

This Monday we had a pub quiz in our lecture which was fun, the questions varied from the name of some characters in video games to releases of consoles and questions about some of the games industry's creators or artists.

In Z brush this week I didn't get much done of my model as I was watching my tutor show us how to retopologize our models with tools such as Z remesher. I spend most of the session listening and taking notes.

In contextual studies this week we looked at games as Experiences, such as using VR, flow and embodiment. Flow has been mention before in a lecture this is where the player is in the zone, so focused on the task at hand we were shown this with the game DOOM. We were also shown a game called 'Catacomb' which is a very disorienting game were the room is all coloured with no contrast as you move around the room it seems to change and then you can easily get lost and trapped.

In the workshop session this week I carried on with my final concept piece for the art test.

Art Test project Monkey Island

This week I have been very busy and managed to complete the project. I am very happy with the results and I think I worked hard in this project. I did enjoy the project a lot and believe I have been improving and getting a little quicker in my work speed.

This is my final twilight state character, as you can see I did stick with the barnacle design which I think works well. I didn't want to go to over the top with the differences from normal to twilight. The body shape has stayed the same and clothing, but now with added barnacles, starfish, crab, longer beard and eye design. I think this design looks a little creepy, this is what I wanted to go for making it look a little dark.

With the call out sheets I wanted to keep them well informed and easy to understand using colours and styled text. I also made the appearance on each using the same text font and adding a title for each with the font that I thought matched the theme, I also did his with the background.

This is my character in his shop in his normal state. I wanted to show the character behind his shop counter to make it seem more engaging with the scene. I added objects to match. I have also added lighting to this with the candles giving them a glow effect.

This is the twilight state shop scene, I have changed and added a few different objects to match the twilight state, I think both of the concept piece came out well. Overall this project has been very enjoyable I feel that I did well with the character design and have gotten good feedback from people who have seen my designs so far, which brings a confidence boost.

weekly summary

This week we were given our new brief which is to do fictional art test. We all got to choose to do which ever test we wanted. The options where to do a character or environment and asset pieces in 2D and there was also a 3D or development art test too. I chose to go with 2D character design, with this you had to create a shopkeeper character themed from the 1990's game series 'Monkey Island'. The character had to have a normal state and a twilight state. The project consists of two final design drawings of normal/twilight state, callout sheet for both and concept pieces for both characters in their underwater temple shop. The art style for this project had to be like from the Telltale gaming company. I am really happy with this project as I really enjoy the Telltale games and I really like the style of the games too.

In this week’s Z brush session, I added more detail to my model, it is now starting to gain characteristic and looking more like a creature which I am happy with. I have added teeth, to do this I used the displace brush and then used the move brush to place the teeth in their right place. I added scale like textures to the model using alpha brushes and I added with horns using the snake hook brush, I found this was the easiest way to achieve the horns. I made the stomach thinner also, as before it was too bloated looking and did not look anatomically correct with the shell. I have also made the neck longer; my tutor had helped me with this. I do really enjoy Z brush but I am still finding my way around the programme, there is a lot to take in at times.

On Wednesday we had a contextual studies lecture on games as sports, we looked into the history of sports as games as way back as the Romans. Games back then were entertainment, I guess the same applies today, but sports had a big social side to them, hundreds and thousands of people would go to the Colosseum in Rome to watch fighting in the arena. We also looked at the E sports market size, the total global gaming market in 2015 was $74.2 billion, with E sports a massive $892 million (2016).

On the Thursday we had our last anatomy lecture, we looked at sex differences, proportions, body types. This was a good lecture to end with I felt by the end of the lecture I had a better understanding of the human body and its proportions and differences I will take this knowledge with me. 

At the end of the week we had our workshop session, in the session I mainly did research for what my final twilight character could look like and what form the character could take. Also by the Friday I had the final design for the normal state drawn out. I was given some guidance on how to approach the painting process in a telltale style. I decided to go with the telltale walking dead series, with a touch of the game 'The wolf among us'.

Art test Monkey Island.

Because I have enjoyed this project so far I wanted to get straight into the project so I felt like I have gotten quite far this week with this project.

 These are the body shapes that I was happy with, my final image was based on these body types.

These are just some rough head designs for my main final shopkeeper character.

 This is my final normal state character. I am very happy with this painting and the design of the character in general. I tried to keep the Monkey Island theme going in this painting, by making the character have a bigger upper body and smaller legs and feet, by what research I did do on the characters of the game I found that most of the male characters had a similar body type. Overall on this piece I think I got the theme quite close to the brief, the art style in the form of Telltale I did try but it was a lot more difficult that I had hoped. Overall I think the Telltale style does show through a little by the adding of the solid lines on parts of the figure.

This was the mood board piece I had done in my workshop session this week. I have decided to stick with this idea for my twilight final state design.

These are just a few quick sketches of some Twilight state head designs.

Weekly Summary

This week we did not have a lecture on the Monday so on Tuesday we had a Z brush session. Last week I had trouble with mirroring the Z sphere because my first Z sphere that I placed down was not centered, this then cause the symmetry method to not work properly as it did not mirror and cause deformations in my model. This week I did managed to add Zspheres without any problems. I did get my base model down and started to create form to my creature model in the session, which I was happy with, as I do not feel like I am behind from last week now.

The design is getting there slowly, I would like to change a few things such as the neck area it will need to be a lot longer and the upper front legs look to chunky, this I will need to change in the next session. To achieved the detail that I have put down so far I used the clay build up brush and the move brush.

In contextual studies this week we looked at games as social spaces. The lecture was very useful as it was a topic that would relate to my essay. The lecture consisted of using online gaming as a social place. Because my essay will be themed on AR I did notice that the lecture did mention a game called 'Majestic' which was one of the first AR games to be released by EA in 2000/2001, This will be really good to use as one of my games in my essay as it will relate well to my AR topic.

The seminar was about last week contextual studies lecture that I could not attend on narrative in video games, Even though I did not deliver much in the conversion this week in the seminar because I could not attend last week contextual studies session I did not fully understand the topic as well as the group but I did listen to the groups discussions about narrative.

Also this week we had guest speakers,  Dan and Greg from the popular YouTube channel Did you know gaming? they spoke about networking and what they did in the past before Youtube. They used there skills in pixel art and editing that they learnt in university and spoke about how that help them with the success of their Youtube channel. It was a fun talk.

In anatomy this week we looked at the arm, elbow, wrist and fingers. I was very happy about learning this part of the body as it is an area of the body that I do struggle with drawing the hands.

At the end of the week in my session I drew some studies on hands, noses and mouths, as I felt I need to improve in this area, this was part of my development project.

The Christmas break begins.

Development project

 These are some hand studies that I have done in the week, hands are something that I really struggle with I hope to get better at them. I will plan to do more studies from now on. (The dark lined sketches are mine on the right side).

 These are some sketches of lips with expressions as I never really do expressions sketches. I really enjoyed doing these.

Another area of the body I don't draw often as I am not very confidence in drawing noses. (The dark lined are mine). Overall I think I did well with this study.

These are some rough mask designs for my tribal character.

The two above images are very rough silhouettes designs for the tribal warrior and samurai warrior.

 These are more detailed designs of what my 3 characters designs could include, or gather information on, to bring a final design to light.

I wanted to do some quick composition studies also to familiarize myself again.

This is my final design for my tribal warrior, I wanted to give her a sci fi look with the mask but the rest of her I wanted her to look like she hasn't got the technology like other warriors would have in a sci fi setting, and from being in a tribal area she would not have the luxury of advance technology or weapons. For my first final piece for this project I think it went well. As I am now starting to use Photoshop more regularly now because of this project I don't think I did too bad. I like that in Photoshop I could add different brush effects to the drawings, the tattoos for example, giving this painting a added finish. I'm still inexperienced with adding backgrounds, I hope to improve in this area.

ZBrush skill development

Here are some Z brush practices that I have done, created during the week. All are unfinished at the moment but I wanted to do these to practice and increase my skill. I hope to become better at Z brush in the near future, I plan to continue creating models weekly for my own skill development.

Workshop, Z brush 2

This piece was produced in my 2nd Z brush lecture. We were told and shown how to use certain techniques. We then had to use these new skills to produce a piece of modelling work. The main subject was our insect project, so me and a few other students created a model from an insect. I chose to model a beetle head because it was my final design in the insect project. I like the outcome but would like to add a lot more detail to the head design. I have added horns to this piece, this was a new sculpting technique that I had learn in the lecture.

Workshop, Z brush

These two images are my very first experimental pieces using a modelling software called "Z brush". The two examples are random pieces that I created while playing around with different tools in the programme, they are very alien like in appearance. I really enjoyed using Z brush, it was the first time that I have used it properly. I am looking forward to using it again during the course, I would like to become a lot better at using Z brush and to produce a completed model.