Week One - Abbey Park

For the first week our visual design tutor decided to take us to a place called Abbey Park, as it was the first time we had all gotten together to draw I was feeling very motivated to get on with this brief. Now what I learned coming back this year is that last year, we had a set amount of work, so if we did what the tutors said (12 thumbs and 1 final) we would pass (just). If we did more, we would increase our chances of achieving higher marks. For 2^nd year it’s more about the learning curve, developing sketches from one level to another. Of course this does not mean to do an insufficient amount of work, but to focus constantly on your own progression as an artist. I began with pencil thumbnails on sight and from my own photos to build some good compositions and get my head around the area. 

Although it’s getting to that time of year where everything is wet, cold, and windy (perfect time to draw!..) the weather decided to be somewhat stable so some nice sketches and photographs were achieved. I was satisfied with my thumbnails at the park and determined what I would do from a select few; these were primarily the sketches with water reflections. Water at the park attracted me most because of its reflective properties, it seemed to be a challenge to repaint everything on the horizon back in as upside down reflections. I really enjoyed this trip and always look forward to the weeks where we have to go out to specific locations and make the most of what is around us; in this case these green landscapes and environments are very useful buildings blocks for designing your own work. Using traditional mediums did prove to be difficult, but quick mark making allowed me to explore colour aswell as understand how water reacts.

This task also helped me understand about colour, how it reacts when water is apparent alongside the time of day and weather/temperature of the environment. I think for these weekly briefs we are expected to work both traditionally and digitally so it gives us a chance to improve our digital skills. My final did take me longer than I hoped as I am still new to digital painting; but because of this I picked up some some new techniques and after the thumbnails I found a specific workflow that was best for me. It is important to know that environments are heavily reliant of perspective and lighting, as most things are, but specifically these attributes really have to be nailed when it comes to environment’s to present forms and depth of field accurately.

       

As a personal reflection on this week’s task I will probably add a traditional final and some more value sketching to solidify my traditional skills. Although I do not have the greatest interest in environments, Abbey Park is quite a unique place with flat landscapes and interesting areas to study, it seems like a great place to go back to now and then do study light in green areas. Digital painting is difficult when you have not had much proper practise. but after many more weeks of this I am getting more and more comfortable with it.

Elements of game design, part five: planning and concepting

Planning and Concepting. What’s that you ask? Let me explain in the most detailed and linear of ways so everyone has an equal understanding and can produce amazing work, equally. That’s just it. It is such an individual and personal process to produce high quality, successful designs and content that you can’t summarise it for everyone. We all think differently so in turn our thought process to solve problems through drawing will be diverse. However saying that, you can break it down to people get an idea of what goes on. At the same time, I feel as though this is a learning curve for me because as an art ‘student’ my knowledge can be limiting as I am still learning myself as briefs and projects come and go.

After reading through this huge rant with information here and there (my definition of it) called ‘Art Process Boot Camp’ I learned quite a vast bit about figuring out this process myself. Reading it all was a challenge in itself I must admit, but I gathered that everything must be referenced. This Idea I touched on in my last post about doing it WITHOUT reference is not something to be proud of. Yet so called ‘artists’ shamelessly brag about it. Another thing that annoys me personally is when people mention the duration work took them to do, as a sense of pride. These things should not matter at all to the audience, the first thing anyone will figure out about mine and every other ‘artists’ work is if it makes sense. Does it work? What is it? Why is it their? Fundamental questions like these should be answered by the viewer simply from a glance, especially when we talk about design.

 

Reference and decision making are key to successful work, and everything should fit the context of the brief or project. This does not mean search for your favorite artists work and leach of it, or find 1 or 2 images from Google. Looking at real life seems to work best, architecture, culture, history, various animal kingdoms, geography, physics, when concepting all this and more should be put through the ‘process’ machine. The thread/PDF file/rant goes on to say working out is a necessity, thumbnails and marking making is crucial to understand what works and what doesn’t very quickly. The quality of these should not matter a great deal as they are like mathematical equations, it does not matter how neat the handwriting they are done in is as long as you can read them. Once a composition has been established, details within should be addressed. Clothes, anatomy, accessories, depth of field, lighting, these and more have to fit the context, in terms of accuracy in portrayal as well as relevance. Again, looking at the ‘why’s and how’s’ of everything helps much more than throwing something in because you think it is ‘cool’ or ‘different.’

 

After spending hours and hours on a piece of work it is important to show it to others if you are not sure of it yourself, and this brings us to critique. Getting attached on a personal level to a painting/drawing/3d model can skew your perception of your own work, of course it doesn’t help if all your friends know no nothing about art so when they see your rip off sketch from your favorite anime that did from memory and tell you it’s awesome, it isn’t always the case. Building a critical state of mind towards artwork helps tons in situations like these as it means you understand your own work. When working in industry, it also matters primarily what the boss thinks, so understanding all this becomes essential when trying to keep your job! I found this brief definition of Art Direction that explaining the role so understanding that you alongside others will be working under an Art Director, it gave me a good insight towards what to expect

http://www.discoverit.org/art_director_game_design.aspx

After also reading through the critique part of the post, I realised that I myself can be very critical of my own work, it can never be good enough at times and because of this I end up not wanting to show it or not move on from it. A kind of perfectionist mentality like this or more severe isn’t healthy as it can cause a skewed perception of your own work in the other direction, where being good isn’t enough. It also made me understand that other people looking at your work might not even half get it, even if you do everything right there will always be people who want to see half naked women with guns, zombies, ninjas, or all of it blurred into one. Even if you have considered what the environment smells like, what a character is thinking and emotions successfully some people just won’t get it. Being too hard on yourself can hinder your skills and cause demotivation. Overall it was a very interesting read to say that even though you cannot exactly define the thinking process behind artwork, you can break it down into steps to HELP those who want to be artists, become more successful. The biggest things I picked up from it for myself were decision making (it if doesn’t fit, get rid of it), purpose, the why’s and how’s and material relationships with the environment (how something reacts to everything else)

Ambitions and aspirations for year 2

Let’s talk Ambitions! I think I am at the stage in my life and degree where it is time to decide what I really want from the industry of design and where I see myself in it. It has been 3 weeks into second year and I am already confused about what to do, more so in my personal time. I guess coming back to the degree all of us seem much more prepared for the work at hand compared to the scary times of first year. But at the same time, we need to start building portfolios of work and this means personal work as well, because you do not want your whole portfolio to be full of work you only did in class. Ever. My current thoughts on personal work are cloudy because I have no idea where to begin and with what. Setting MEGA-AWESOME project briefs could take up months to finish but at the same time you don’t want anime fairy paintings you did in 5 minutes with no ‘reference’. Ah yes, I remember the times where it was a bragging right if you did something without reference, only to realise 99% of unreferenced designs will most likely be crap.   

Also I really want to get to grips with learning some new software, when I came here as a first year my initial thoughts on 3ds max was that it would take years to achieve anything half decent, but with the teaching and regular deadlines in this course I’ve picked up everything quite quickly. We also are always looking for tutorials and other artists work to develop our skills frequently. Software like UDK and Zbrush seem to be popping up in conversion regularly and looking at the 3^rd years’ work really does put things into perspective. As software is only a tool, like a pen, pencil, marker, or paint brush, it is something I am not trying to play favourites with, so learning something new isn’t some scary taboo act but instead a helpful resource to my current working pipeline. It will be important in this year to develop my 2D skills to a professional level or as close as possible. Things like making mistakes in lighting, perspective, colour theory and anatomy have to be corrected so ideas and concepts can become more alive and accurate to what I have in my head. This will mean trying to draw every day and just building a scrap book studying all these factors.

I read artist interviews all the time on http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/ and this is where it always motivates me to be working on something personal or on the side as a student because all these artists tend to have amazing portfolios that suggest massive interests in areas unrelated to their 9 to 5 jobs. After being asked about the industry most say that as students it was this unknown world everyone talked about but had never been to, and you would hear stories about it, but after being there you realise how small you are and your ego is thrown out the window as you find yourself giving your all for the content your employer wants, as a team. As the 2^nd year will unfold we will also have group projects which we never did as 1^st years, so this will also be interesting to work on something as a team with other peoples input and opinions. Good or bad, I’m it will be a learning experience so I look forward to it! I just hope that guy who does no work and never turns up to anything, you know that guy, who constantly lets the group down with minimal input in everything, I just hope I don’t get stuck with that guy, I will of course, try very hard not be that guy! Group project? Come at me bro.   

Summer Reflections!

So we have been back for a few weeks now, but I want to track back to the end of the first year. When summer started I had so many ideas for both 2D concepts and 3D in mind and when the tutors said “you won’t touch max for 6 months and come back not remembering anything” I was saying to myself “not me!”… Hah, it’s never feels good being wrong. 

 Although I did do the summer projects Heather set us, I still felt a bit unsure of my 3D skills when second year started all over again.

So as the first few weeks of summer started, I had this idea for the 5000 tri limit character/vehicle brief. One of my favorite cars is the Nissan Silvia S15 which is commonly used for drifting with the typical Skylines, RX7’s, 350z’s and other Japanese imports. I thought modelling and texturing a drift machine would be something different and more of a challenge when compared to an everyday road car. Personally I do want to set my sights on becoming a vehicle artist which I am not 100% sure about yet, but find myself drawn to as this degree progresses. 

Modelling this thing was slightly difficult, I tend to find with all blueprints; nothing really matches perfectly. In other words, if you want an accurate model you WILL need to source some good reference of it in existence. Whilst progressing I also realised that I overly spending tri’s on the body which left little for the interior, I think it was something unfair like 500 tri’s for the interior. I think making these simple mistakes can be healthy so I left the model as it was but now I realise that with vehicles, there should be a balance of some kind. I had trouble with the wheels as each spoke of an alloy should be equal in size to the rest, I was not sure how to recreate this just by tweaking each spoke with nothing but human eyes. I now hear that the ‘array’ feature of max can duplicate forms equally in rotation so I shall be aware for next time.

After I finished modelling and unwrapping I decided it was time to find the perfect decals/livery for the drift machine! Here I did have a choice to make, make up a livery for the car unique to me, or turn it into an already existing S15. I decided to mix It up a little and… do a bit of both. As I was lurking around Google images I found an RC S15 with the ‘Coppermix logo’ and thought ‘that’s the one!’ I threw it into Photoshop, and re made it using the pen tool in my chosen colours, this also helped enlarge the image without pixelating and now I am not at risk for slapping something onto my model straight from the net :D 

Although I never got around to finishing this because of my own loss of interest and typical summer laziness (promise won’t happen next time!! …ahem). As far as I got, I guess I can finish this at some point for that good ol' portfolio :D

 However, In-between shifts of doing nothing at all and going out to do non art stuff (lol), I did manage to cram some doodles of cars in, and I am a big fan of Scott Robertson’s work so I tried to apply his perspective techniques after staring at his books for so long. The outcomes were not pretty but drawing is learning and learning is progress. I now tend to do a lot of these car sketches at lunch times/train journeys so there will be more to come!   

 

Personal review of the first year

Okay, so it’s the end of my first year!... well almost. There’s still the whole ‘get into second year’ part but as far as teaching and assignments are concerned, it has finished, and I’m still alive, which is always good. I learned so much this year I think its best I pick a few things which are most important to me. Having a weekly deadline, every week for both semesters is very difficult to keep up with, because at any point if you become lazy or distracted you find yourself with much more weight on your shoulders and this leads to rushed work. I learnt this the hard way and even towards the end of the year I found myself with too much work and too little time. Now that it’s all over I am thankful that it’s like this from the first year because it forces us to be consistent early on, a very important value for any artist in the games industry.

I think as far as art skills go, I have developed quite a bit and drawing assignments every week is the reason. Whether we like it or not were going to a different location or a brief is being passed to us every Tuesday for us to decipher in our own way. Also Critical Studies every Wednesday are definitely what I enjoy, (not just because it’s an hour lecture where you just sit, watch and listen...aha) but most of Mike’s talks are motivational.  We get given glimpses of the industry in all of them so every week were reminded what were aiming for and where were going. I think the course structure is very solid, no flaws on the timetable and teaching hours because I think there’s only so much someone can teach you 1 on 1 before you HAVE to go away and do something yourself thus learning to make your own decisions. The tutors also always seem to be available in their offices or can be contacted through email so it’s never a case where they set work and disappear for the rest of the week.  

Considering work ethic I have realised that when you get into the games industry as any kind of artist 2d or 3d there becomes no such thing as free time. If you have finished one assignment, another is waiting or right round the corner and this is where I self reflect most due to my notorious ways of leaving work last minute. I think this was my last time doing this and of course like most procrastinating students I have said this before. But it seems that I been leaving things late so long even before this degree that I’m genuinely getting bored of doing all nighters and pumping out work I hate because I gave myself so little time to do it. What I actually mean is my state of mind is becoming more professional about everything, so organisation and taking time to do everything is slowly winning me over. After all, I want to produce work to the best of my ability with the maximum time utilized.

Every year it seems I end up having the most ‘productive’ year of my life and this definitely has set a high mark even though I am not 100% satisfied with everything I did. Just by browsing through some of the second year’s artwork I can already see that next year will be filled with new challenges and it also raises the bar on productivity. At the level I am at now I know before I arrive there, I’ll have to put some hard work in to keep up with all those briefs during the summer. Now to dig deep into building some personal work!