BA2a - Final Evaluation

In BA2a I feel like I've gained more knowledge of myself and maybe taken in a bit more of what I want to do in the future in this industry. In a bit of a panic when choosing specialisms I chose the indie dev one, with animation as well, but in the end I felt like choosing this taught me a lot about myself and what I really enjoy doing, and I also learnt a lot more about UE4 and blueprinting which will help me in the future if I want to ever make my own games.

In the first task, the indie dev task, I felt like I struggled a lot with the blueprinting of the game and figuring out just what I wanted my game to be about, but after a bit of work I started to get ideas out there and felt a bit better about what I was going to do. I really enjoy pixel art/animation, so I decided to work with this in that game to further improve my skills and get a better feel for the style. I was happy with the final game I made, even though I felt like I needed a lot of help for the blueprinting as I still couldn't wrap my head around it. The next indie dev task was to make a protoype for a game, and were essentially given the freedom to do whatever we wanted, so I decided as a fan of final fantasy/rpg games that I wanted to try out a turn-based combat system to challenge myself. This was indeed a massive challenge for me, as I was still not hugely comfortable with the blueprint system, but I got help from George and in the end made a working turn-based system which I am very proud of. Because UE4 is not really meant for 2D/RPG style stuff it's a great achievement to get something like this working for me. I also really enjoyed making the art for it, again focusing on pixel art as I really enjoy working with pixels. 

In the next task we were allowed to chose whatever one we wanted, so I decided to do the Monkey Island/  TellTales one. I had never played a TellTale or Monkey Island game so I had to look more into them with things like lets plays and I even bought two TellTale games, but never got round to actually playing them. I focused more on working in a TellTale style as I was a bit more familiar with it, but in the end I felt that I didn't have a good enough idea of the style of both TellTale and the Monkey Island games, but I'm still happy with what I produced and feel like I'm improving as an artist. 

The last task I chose the Starbound art test, though I was very tempted by the Starbound boss/monster one as well as it would have been working with pixels. Very early on in this project I started panicking about my skill level and didn't feel like I was good enough and had a couple of bad breakdowns about myself, especially judging myself very harshly and comparing myself to all the friends around me who are much better than I am. Thus I feel like this project didn't go as well as I'd have wanted, and felt like I could have done a lot better. I also have had my eyes on Starbound for a while as it has some really cute designs and I would have liked to have done a better job. I'm still somewhat happy with the final design that I made, but I had other ideas for the way it would have looked so I wish I had more time to work on it.

This year I've vastly improved on using my time management, making sure I'm using the time given to me in the best way possible and making sure that I finish everything when needed. This, mixed with my terrible procrastination issues and my fluctuating mental health is something that I've had problems with for a while so I'm very glad that I'm starting to get it together this year. 

BA2a - Week 17 Summary

This week I focused solely on working on the promo art. I started working on the shading on top of the base colours I had drawn.

I also went to Kalieghs sign up session and asked her for some advice, and she helped me with the lighting and colours and I ended up with the one below which is already a lot better than before. 

Here is what I currently have, not sure if i'm 100% happy with it yet but I'm going to leave it for a bit and come back to it so i get a fresh feel to it. I also added the Starbound logo below to see what it'd look like.

Here also is an update on my rigging of the character below in animation, with stuff like the IK and FK handles.

BA2a - Week 16 Summary

First character I tried to draw from the pixel art is this novakid girl. The left drawing is my first attempt at it, before researched more into it and realised that they are heavily influenced by the american wild west so drew the second design on the right.

I also tried out these two floran designs, trying to get my barrings with the style of Starbound.

After doing a couple of thumbnail designs for the promo art, looking at using caves as the main idea, I decided that i wanted to use an avian character and a novakid character.

The avians seem to worship gods in a similar way to egyptians, and their design seems to be based around this so I tried work around that.

Once I got my bearings around their design, I made more in-depth thumbnails for the promo art looking at the colour and composition of the piece.

I decided that I like how this one looks, and it works well in terms of space and colours. I also added the Starbound logo to see how it would fit in.

I've started working on the final promo piece now, so that I can give myself more time to make it look as good as I can. I also want to give myself time to work on its composition if I decide it doesn't work.

Concept Art Colour Theory

Recently we had a lecture on colour theory, and at the end we were given a task -

'How have they balanced the colours? Consider colour proportion. Consider saturation. Consider temperature. Consider values' 

This character design on the most part consists a lot of greys over the armour, but what makes those greys look good is the highlights of very light blue and green where the light is reflecting. To also balance it out there is a prominent area of blue/green behind the character with its cape, underneath its head, top of the boots and over the crotch. This all allows for a good balance of greys and blues/greens throughout the characters design.The armour is very desaturated compared to the colours of the cape especially, and the area of colour on the cape is much more saturated and larger than the rest, meaning its one of the first things you notice. Its a very cool picture, there are no prominent reas of warmth at all, though the armour has a tint of red that contrasts with the blues.

This colour is very desaturated in this piece, using only one prominent light blue/grey area of colour. The foreground and the character are very darkly lit, comparing to the background where the sun seems to be brightly shining on the rocks ahead. This makes the character and the bird very prominent in the scene, as they stick out over the lighter background. Darkness of the character is almost reflected diagonally by the light area in the background, which makes the drawing seem to be symmetrical in composition.

This image uses opposite colours on the spectrum, orange and blue. This works really well for a huge amount of contrast in the image, with the lighter blue areas being the cooler feeling parts of the image, and the oranges / bordering on reds being warmer and where more of the action is happening. The character is in the upper center area, near the red areas. The image to me feels a bit cluttered, I never know where to look at first.