BA3a - Week 12 Summary

This week was the last week before Christmas break. I had finished most of the work I had set out to do, so I talked to Kaleigh and she said to try to do some character sheets and some sheets where they're put into a scene, depending on the creature. For example the bubble fish pet would not be very active for a character sheet so it would be better to put it in an environment and light it etc.
I decided to first work on the dog monster character sheet as I thought it would be one of the more difficult ones, and also Kaleigh was talking to me about how dobermans 'stalk' and how that would work with my dog monster.
Below is the dog character sheet with sketches, lineart and finished sheet:

The top two show two poses from the 'stalking', bottom left shows it in gallop with paws marks that are left in the ground, and bottom right shows glowing teeth and close up of head. I like how it turned out though I keep finding it difficult to represent quite how big the creatures feet are supposed to be whilst still keeping the anatomy of a canine. I think it works well with less details as it shows of the poses better and doesn't distract from their actions.

Below is the video I used as reference for the stalking doberman poses (link also here)

 

Also some photo references for the head shot.

(x)

(x)

I also finished the cat pet character sheet seen below.

This one was a quicker one to complete as three are the same drawing but using liquify to 'glitch' it. The top three are what happens when the cat is still for too long, it 'glitches' and loses its original form. The bottom one is the cat running with the paw prints of different colours left over, and the bottom right is the TV head in more detail. If I had more time I would have like to put more effort into the glitching and make it more effective but i think it puts the point across well. Reference photos below.

(x)

(x)

I also worked further on the model sheets, adding touches like shadows and arranging them in a more pleasing way.

With the bubble eye fish I added glowing reflections on the floor from the bubbles to highlight that the fish floats behind the character a couple of feet off of the ground.

I added a simple circle shadow below the cats body to highlight the poses.

With the deer, I wanted reflections similar to the fish bubbles so I highlighted below the head looking down in green to show the glowing nature of the heads. I also added more simple shadows to draw out the poses of the deer.

Similar with the deer, I wanted the lions mane to have some colour highlighted on the floor and simple shadows.

As the monster creature would not have shadows, I wanted to only highlight its glowing claws with reflected light.

The boss has a simple round circle beneath it.

I'm pleased with how they all look, and the additions of shadows and highlights from the glowing areas on the creatures helps these stand out and make them more unique. Each one has a different coloured background as these are the colours I thought helped the creature stand out more and complimented its colour scheme.

BA3a - Week 11 Summary

This week I started finalising the boss design. Feedback I had received in the presentation pointed out that my boss creature looked like he was leaning over and it was taking away from the overall design. I thus decided to firstly looked at changing the designs pose and positioning of the limbs. The left is the original design and the right is the altered one, which I feel looks far more feasible and he actually looks like he is realistically holding his own weight. 

I then moved on to the model sheet for the design. Below are the sketches I started with, lineart and the finished designs.

This is one of my favourite designs overall, with a kind of guardian of the woods aesthetic but more sci-fi orientated to fit my theme. It was a lot more difficult to rotate to show the different sides of the creature as it is less inspired by existing animals like the others, and more my own creation so I had to myself figure out what was happening in each area. It was a fun challenge however and I feel like each pose conveys mostly what I envisioned. The side view was especially hard as I couldn't quite get my head around the electricity antlers and the form of the body itself, and I'm still not sure I like how it turned out but otherwise I am pleased with this design.

I moved on then to one of the monster model sheets. The robot monster is a design I am still not sure on so I'm pushing that to the back and focused on the dog design.

I am very pleased with how this design turned out. When colouring it, the idea was that its form is only revealed by surrounding lights. The tail and paws/claws would be used to entice the prey, resembling food or something similar. It would be essentially glitching in and out of existence. Similar to with the cat the dogs paws/claws and tail are a computer data glitch. I found this design quite difficult to recreate in each pose as I wanted to keep the doglike anatomy whilst pushing the front paws further. I don't think I quite managed to portray how large I wanted the front paws to be but in some angles it didn't make sense and the dog may not have been able to move properly, so I would have to work further with the anatomy of the design to work certain features further. Overall however I do like how this came out. 

Here are the references I used for the dog model sheet:

(x)

(x)

(x)

(x)

When showing my work to Merlin he gave some feedback and told me to try to desaturate the deer body to help the heads pop more. Below is the desaturated version versus the normal version.

Desaturated

Saturated

I feel like the desaturated version looks a lot better and help the colours of the heads draw your eye first. I also didn't realise quite how orange the deer looked before too as I'd only been working on it in my laptop so when I got on the uni computer it was way more saturated than I expected.

We also had two lectures from Jake Gumbleton, a Games Artist, who talked to us about his career in the industry thus far. He also had another lecture where he went through peoples work and gave critique. I submitted task 3, the paintover of the mannequin lady. He gave advice about the colour composition, saying that the background ends up taking away from the characters clothes especially as a lot of the colours are muddy. He also said to work on the shadows, and practice hands, but I know the hands were bad as I tried to draw over the mannequins hand. If I get time I would like to try and push the piece further, but because its a task I do not have time for it currently.

BA3a - Week 10 Summary

This week I started working on the mounts and nailing down their final design. The lion design I am more comfortable with so I decided first focus on working out the deer mounts final look. I hadn't yet drawn out the final idea with the RGB colours as the three heads so I started with that.

I started off with the body and one head as a single colour with the heads coming off as two separate colours, but then I got advised to make the body a normal deer and the heads be the different colours. I also wanted to have the mixed colours be shown too between the heads as if they're glitching together and mixing up.

Below is the sketch, lineart and final piece for the deer model sheet.

I'm still not 100% sure on how this one looks as the deer heads don't seem to 'pop' enough. I may need to rework this one further. I also struggled with around the heads, and decided to add small particle like effects using the outer glow layer effects I already had set on each head to show that the heads are not real heads and are in fact something like holographic. Overall however I'm pleased with the design.

Below are the photos I used as reference for the deer:

(x)

(x)

(x)

(x)

(x)

I also worked on the pixel lion mount designs model sheet. 

Overall I am extremely pleased with this design, it is one of my favourites. To achieve the look of the mane there are many layers of colours that I used the mosaic pixel settings to create this large pixelation effect. It was quite difficult to get the result I wanted at first but I started to layer it up and it started to build a nice feeling to the mane. On some of the layers there are also effects with outer glow settings. I really like how the colours worked together in this piece and am happy with the end result. 

Below are the reference images for the lion:

(x)

(x)

(x)

(x)

We also had a task this week as usual. The brief was between a character and an environment design, so I chose the character one. It was as seen below.

I decided after some research to reinvent the Krampus. Below is my result with the thumbnails.

I decided because Krampus is usually a "- horned, anthropomorphic figure described as "half-goat, half-demon", who, during the Christmas season, punishes children who have misbehaved" (x) and is most likely seen as a male character, I would make mine a more goatlike female character who instead of punishing bad children, she makes mince pies for the good children. People don't know this however due to the staining on her apron and her scary appearance. The Krampus also usually has a lolling long tongue so I took it further and made her tongue very long. This is another piece that felt extremely rushed as we had to get it in by the evening, but I feel like with the time given I am somewhat happy with the results. I feel like the character isn't very dynamic in the scene and looks a bit cut out from the scene, but overall a good piece.

Here are the images I used as reference:

(x)

(x)

BA3a - Week 9 Summary

This week was independent study week, and I was focusing on finishing the two pet model sheets. Below is the model sheet and lineart for the fish pet. 

I decided to go back onto having orange and purples as the main colour scheme, but I also really liked how the blues contrasted with the fishes colour so I kept blue for the wiring idea on the body and a touch of it on the eye bubbles, and also the fish silhouettes in the pouches. I went with blue silhouettes for fish inside the bubbles after trying out a koi fish design first and I felt it had too much detail and it distracted from the fish itself. I am happy with the end result and feel like all the different elements I had to change worked out in the end.

These are the photos I used as reference for the fish:

(x)

(x) 

(x)

Below is the TV cat pet model sheet with lineart and final designs. 

I was making sure I kept the glitch/ sci fi aesthetic and the familiarity between the two pets whilst still having them as two separate creatures, similar to what you would find in an MMORPG with a strong theme. I wanted to also have some of the colours from the TV face be somewhere else on the body of the cat, so I had them on the paws and more wiring on the back. I felt like the cat would leave glitchy pawprints wherever it walked. I am happy with the result of this design and feel like it stays in touch with the aesthetic I am going for. I think for both of these model sheets I still need to work on the backgrounds to make them more interesting and make my creatures stand out more such as adding shadows.

Here are the photos I used as reference for the cat:

(all TV images from x)

(x)

(x)

(x)

(x)

(x)

(x)