Over the last 2 years, I have become much more proficient in digital art. Learning how to properly utilise layers, gradients, shading, rendering clouds as well as other effects in Photoshop and feeling a lot more comfortable with drawing characters in poses other than standing still. I’ve been able to play around with my art style until I found what works best for me. Researching art styles I liked, figuring out what I liked about them and using them as inspiration to my drawings. This helped me make work I was more proud of as it felt it has more life brought into it with the extra effort put into researching it.
Alongside my growth with art experience, my knowledge on how to prepare and plan for a project as well as manage my time, has been helped in the last 2 years. I have a rough idea how long something can take me and use my time accordingly to get it done. How to display my work in the best way possible and knowing how much is enough without it being too barren or too cluttered, is another skill I have slowly grasped over time.
Games have been a huge part of my life since I was young, and having the opportunity to study games development has been incredible. I have so much more appreciation for the medium than I did knowing how much has to be considered when making even a small and simple platformer level. To have my foot in the door ever so slightly to understand the process and being able to try out some aspects of it that I hadn’t been able to try before, such as programming, 3D modelling, and pixel art, has been an experience which will stick. Hopefully they are experiences that will help urge me onward too.
My choice in what to pursue has been fortified by what I have learnt over the last 2 years. With skills that have been sharpened in Photoshop and my better understanding in anatomy and body structure, my choice is to stick along the 2D art pathway. And with how I would love to pursue narrative design in the long run, concept sketches and storyboarding is a good way to keep my 2D art skills in practice while showing I can tell a story with what I draw.
For my aspirations, I plan to find an apprenticeship or junior job in the games industry. Alongside this I will aim to attend jobs fairs and events such as Rezzed and ComicCon to try and get more insight on the industry especially from Indie developers who are trying their own thing. Hopefully attending jobs fairs with a focus on helping those intrigued and fresh out of education into the creative media industry, will offer some good information and experience on how to get a leg in industry and how to develop from there. Steadily adding to my portfolio overtime will also be a task I will keep at. My long term dream would be to become a narrative designer or director for a game. To create a vision for a world, characters and a story and direct people into bringing it to life. Tetsuya Nomura, the director for the ‘Kingdom Hearts’ franchise, is a big inspiration for what I would like to achieve one day. If not in video game form, instead I would like to put my love for narrative into making a cartoon series like ‘Gravity Falls’, created by Alex Hirsch, or ‘The Owl House’, created by Dana Terrace.
My project is called ‘Our World Has Turned to Grey’. The idea is a storyboard for a cutscene that will occur before a boss fight in a hack ‘n’ slash style game. The cutscene will involve a confrontation between two individuals; one of angelic descent and the other of demonic descent. The base story of the game will be that war is brewing between celestial and fiend. The story would flip back and forth between perspectives of both sides, the player having segments where they play as the main angel character and then segments where they will play the main demon character. The two characters the player has been switching between then cross paths and engage in a fight; with the player deciding which one they would like to control during the fight. No matter the result of the fight, both characters part ways, though keep crossing paths. Eventually they warm to each other and decide to try and find a different solution to the war they’re in- one of peace rather than one that leads to one of the sides perishing.
The storyboards will be all visual, telling the narrative at hand using show don’t tell. Alongside the storyboards, there will be a full body portrait for both the angel and demon character for reference and to help paint a clearer picture. The storyboards will also be styled in a way reminiscent of a comic book, with frames being a variety of shapes and sizes and split screens. Alongside the storyboards, a full body portrait of the celestial and fiend characters will be done, as a reference to help me keep the characters consistent in the storyboarding as well as providing a detailed look at the characters too.
My project links to the theme of ‘Order & Chaos’ with conflict being the centre point. Oder and chaos are two halves of a conflict; one cannot occur without the other. This links it to the thought of light vs dark, which leads into the idea of angel vs demon. This is the chains to link the theme to my idea with their being a war between the sides of celestial and fiend. The celestial side represents the order with being calm, calculated, dressed in generic, neater clothing and the angel character designs in general being more symmetrical. The fiend side represents the chaos with being unpredictable, insane, dressed in uneven and unusual clothing and the demon character designs being more asymmetrical.
For my project, ‘Our World Has Turned to Grey’, I am going to create:
- 1 full body portrait of the main angel character that will be used in the cutscene
- 1 full body portrait of the main demon character that will be used in the cutscene
- Both characters will be posed in a way so you can understand as much of the design as possible and know the important features of each
These two full body portraits will help me have an understanding in what the characters in the scene will look like, so I can use elements of their designs to differentiate them in the storyboards and keep their look consistent. This also would allow those who would be modelling the characters and animating the final scene to understand what they are looking at and build on top of it throughout the process.
Alongside the full body portraits, there will be:
- Most likely 3 (but maybe 4) storyboards detailing the cutscene the two characters are involved in.
The base narrative is a short and sweet concept. The angle and demon character cross paths, have a light scuffle exchanging a few attacks before planting themselves in each other’s way, leading into the boss fight.
At the beginning of the process when sketching design ideas, I will start with pencil and paper for concepts, then outline the ones I really like in pen to see them a bit clearer. I will then be using Photoshop for finalising the designs and colour ideas, as well as Photoshop for making the final pieces of the character art and the storyboards.
During this project, I will keep a sharp eye on my work and evaluate my work by looking at what the most important part of each section is and reflecting on my decisions with it. Say I do some concepts for a character design, I will look back over the work I did and make sure I understand what worked well, did anything not go well, what I liked and disliked and if I am going to use the idea going forward with my project. I will be sure to reflect back on most of my sketches and moodboards that I will create so I can ensure it all is flowing together nicely and that I understand my decisions to include some elements and not include others.
I will use annotations as a way to keep track of moodboards or images as well as explaining how they are adding in my research for this project. Peer feedback from questionnaires will be good to use when asking others for their opinions on character design concepts as well as colour scheme ideas. While I may not follow with everyone else’s opinion over a matter, I can still look and understand why they may like a different idea to what idea I like, and maybe incorporate it into the work somehow if I like my choice too much to go with the majority.
When it comes to the end of the project’ I will take a long look back at the road from the beginning to the end. I will reflect back on if any major decision changed throughout the process that affected the project at hand. Look at my starting ideas and sketches and evaluate how they grew and how they became fleshed out as I took them further and they went from a concept to final piece.
Throughout the project, I will be sure to note down my decisions as soon as I can, regarding ideas for designs and what I have decided to go for when moving onto the next task. I will be sure to explain my reasons behind my choice. What my choices were, why I chose the decision at hand, what I like and dislike about the choice I have gone with, why I did not choose the other options, am I tweaking anything about my decision and so on. If I change my mind about an idea, I will think on why I changed my mind. Did it just not work out, did I think of a better alternative, did I grow to dislike it, did I run out of time? Whatever the reason I will be sure to jolt it down as soon as I change my mind and have a concrete idea as to why I did.
Following up with if I decide to change up something during the work process, I will make sure I have a good alternative option to replace the old idea or a good explanation for cutting it entirely. If I have an alternative, I will flesh out the new replacement change fully, what it is, what it is replacing and why. I will document why I think the change was for the better and showcase the previous and new idea side by side.
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Sasha Level 3 Games Dev 2nd Year 