During this project we were giving a series of art test to
choose from to help prepare us for the industry. As we were told, art tests a
usually projects given to interviewees to prove their skills; these could be
anything from creating a piece of concept art of a character/environment with a
strict brief (such as gender, personality, nationality, area, colour scheme,
situation, etc) to 3D modelling a piece of concept art on Maya/Zbrush.
With my project I was given the task to create a character
for a game created by TellTale games for the Monkey Island franchise. While
these were fictional art tests that the university had set, we were told to
take them seriously and imagine them as real. The brief stated how the
character was an underwater shopkeeper in a sunken temple. The game would also
implement a normal and twilight state, where the latter would be a spookier
setting and visuals.
When it came to designing my character I knew I wanted the
character to be female, as I had little experience in creating female
characters and wanted to push myself to do something new. I started by creating
a few silhouettes to get a rough body shape and what kind of clothes she would
wear. As I knew the character would be in a sunken temple I wanted to make her
of some ethnicity such as Mayan or Caribbean (to go along with the pirate theme
of Monkey Island). Once I had created some silhouettes to get out my initial
ideas; I started to create my reference sheet.
The images I collected for my references were to help build
on my first drafts as well as get some ideas of culture and colour for my
palette. As I was looking through numerous images I was beginning to imagine
how I wanted my character to look (or had a rough idea of what images I should
be using at least) and started adding specific images to my references rather
then random things I liked. After I had collected a large sample of images that
I knew would help me create my character, I took my one of my silhouettes to a
new page and began adding new amounts of detail.
From this stage on I realised it was starting to become more
difficult as I had never really tried to concept a female character before
which naturally have different proportions to male characters. However as I
start working on the rough shape of the character and adding clothing I was
starting to get a sense of how the character should look proportionately. I
tested a few different clothing designs before picking a final one and went on
to testing colour.
During this time I had recently had a lecture on colour
theory and different ways of using colour harmonies, such as complementary,
split-complementary, analogous, triadic etc. I found this to be very useful and
wanted to use this within my own work rather then using random colours. I
tested a few different colour combinations and harmonies before I settled on a
final combination. I used a colour wheel I found online and tested different
harmonies from it; while although I was aware that looking at them and using
them in my art are two completely different things, I was happy with my
eventual choice, however knowing this now I will later test my combinations of
colour and take more consideration in future projects.
Now that I had a better idea of my characters outfit and the
colour palette to use for her, I experimented different variations of colour
for different parts of her clothing. While each variant had its similarities
this was also to test how different harmonies of colours could work with the
design. After seeing one that I liked I felt worked with the character I took
it again to a new page to do a cleaner line art to get ready to paint.
After discussing with my lecturer however, he stated how the
character seemed rather masculine (this possibly due to me never creating a
female character before). After giving me some advice I used the liquefy tool
to try and make her seem more feminine (such as slimming her shoulders and
widening her hips). While naturally not all female characters would have this
kind of body type looking back on my first concept it was a much more suiting
design. Although I still needed to sort out some of the anatomy from after
using the liqufy tool within Photoshop such as her left arm, I was much happier
with the result.
Once her arm was fixed I moved onto painting the character.
This is when I felt like the character really came to life with the combination
of my colours from the palette, the lighting and as I could use colour to add
detail that previously wasn’t there with the line art.
Similarly to my product design project, I separated each
part of the character into different layers, such as her shirt, dress, skin,
boots etc, and using the layer function within Photoshop I was able to work on
each part comfortably and create shadows easily. I was also able to add her
tattoos now and found this to be the most effective way for the to work. I
slowly added colour working on each part of her individually until she was
finished. As I knew what I wanted to do with the character for her Twilight
state and that her overall figure would change, I was able to copy my layers
into a new document and began working on her Twilight form.
When creating the rough concept for the character, I took
some inspiration from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise such as
Calypso and Davy Jones’ pirates. I liked the idea of coral and sea life growing
on the character since she was underwater. Another idea I had for her was that
the skull she wears as an eye patch is actually her husband who used to run the
shop with her, but was killed by pirates. I thought it would have been
interesting that in her Twilight state, the skull would come off and her
husband would be alive behind her as a ghost. I also thought it would bring
some comedy to the piece as the Monkey Island franchise has comedy elements in
their past games, and it would be funny for the player to watch the main
character for example try to flirt with the shopkeeper, only to go into the
Twilight dimension to see her husbands still alive behind her.
For her Twilight form most of her design stays the same with
the exception that her clothes are more torn and water damaged and the coral
and barnacles growing on here. I decided to make her tattoos glow as well to
match the ghostly smoke of her husband. I still felt she didn’t look right
however so I looked at some design of hair underwater. As with her normal
version her hair is similar to dreadlocks, and thought it would be interesting
if in her Twilight form her hair would float as if it was underwater. After
trying a few different designs I came up with a look that I liked and stuck
with it.
As for her husband, I use the same colour palette, with the
skull being a much lighter and less saturated variant of the orange, with his
smoke being a combination of the green. One of the parts of this project that
has pushed my skills as a concept artist was that of anatomy. Although I
enjoyed testing my skills as an artist and improving on what I already could
do. Although it isn’t a main part of the piece, creating the bones for the
hands I found fairly difficult, as I didn’t want to be lazy and find someway to
get around showing each individual bone, particularly in the hand. As hands are
something I already find difficult drawing, doing the bones for hands are even
more difficult; however after looking at numerous references and seemingly
understanding the bone structure of a hand, I was able to draw and paint the
hands more comfortably.
After then using the colour dodge tool to create the smoke
of the husband, both versions of the character was complete, and was time to
create the back view of her for the Callout sheet. This was something I found
extremely difficult, as I was now conscious of making the character seem to masculine.
Also drawing at an new angle but still keeping the proportions the same was
something I found very difficult. Once again I had to look multiple different references
to start to understand proportions and figure. Once the basic outline was
created used the same process of drawing out her clothes and adding colour.
This time it didn’t take as long as the first version as I already knew what
colours went where and I was able to colour pick certain colours from the first
painting.
From there I did the same as with the normal and Twilight
variants by copying the back view and adding her Twilight details, this time
doing two back view versions as the ghost’s smoke would cover up most of her
back. Once all of these were done I found images representing what the
character would wear as real life objects, clothing and textures and created
the callout sheets.
The final part of the project was to create a conceptual
painting showing our character in their environment. This initially was
difficult for me, as it would mean for me to struggle with anatomy again in
redrawing my character. After discussing what to do with my lecturer I began to
create thumbnails. I knew I wanted the character to be in her Twilight state as
I felt it would show off more as well as the dynamic between her and her ghost.
Once I had created my thumbnails I choose the one I found best fitting and
began to create my painting.
I found this to be fairly difficult as rather then just
drawing and painting a character; creating an entire scene was fairly
frustrating as I needed to not only think about the characters but also their
proportions to everything else, multiple sources of lighting, reflections and a
many other things. I feel that the palette I was using for my piece worked well,
with the sea greens and warm oranges working well together, which I felt
brought out the best in this piece.
I feel that I could have done much better with the
conceptual painting, however I do feel that I portray the relationship of the
shopkeeper well. Originally I was going to have her with her feet up while the
ghost does all the work, however I felt that that kind of scenario didn’t suit
their characters. I changed it so she was looking at him and was only leaning
back in her chair, which I felt made it more of a relationship then boss and
employee.
Looking back I feel that I could have added much more detail
to the final painting, or even doing an entirely different piece all together.
However I am happy with the final result in regards to being able to show the
characters detail in the model/call out sheets, and (while having much less
detail) able to give the concept a sense of character in the final painting.
Throughout this project I have tried to push myself as far
as I can in regards to learning different skills. I have branched out and tried
female anatomy, as well as being able to create much more detailed work in
comparison to my first year concept art. While I would like to improve my line
art and environment art, I am happy to see
have improved and plan to polish my skills as a concept artist.
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