Skills Development

6/3/2019

Course Review

In order to Identify our current strengths and weaknesses, we filled out a course review sheet.

Filling out this sheet has helped me analyze what I still feel I need to work on. I feel that my Coding, Time management and researching skills need work. I also need to improve upon my reflective writing. However I am quite confident in my artistic skills. 

2/5/2019

Developing my Art style

The initial Idea for the game's art style, truth be told, began as a bit of a mystery to me. The general look and feel of the art style just seemed to come to me, however, I have a feeling that I've seen something similar before. But although I don't seem to be able to remember where the idea really came from, I do believe I was influenced by the things I described on my art board in the reflective journal section. 

I made my first sketches after touring through the Museum of London, as the clothed mannequins from the 1850s had really inspired me with how I started developing my main character. 

In the first sketch I tried to capture what I had been seeing in my mind, by putting down the things I was sure of. For example, I knew I wanted her to have a round face and hands, reminiscent of a simple mannequin design for example. I also knew I wanted her to have pigtails, just because I love this hairstyle so much and I wanted her to look deceptively cute and innocent, so I drew a first sketch of those. I then used the clothes reference photo I took at the museum to get the first draft of the outfit, which actually stayed mostly this way through each revision.

In this first sketch I had a few things I wasn't yet sure on, like the body, the Hair, the feet, the neck and the body, basically most of the sketch. So, first and foremost, I made an alternative sketch for the body and face. 

The way I drew the body here, although it is closer to what the end result ended up being, wasn't really speaking to me, however I was not opposed to the Idea of bigger more cartoony eyes. I then made another Sketch where I went back to the old body, but kept the big eyes. I also slightly shortened the neck which was a big improvement. Lastly I wanted to see how it would look with no mouth and was promptly torn between the two options. 

Before moving on to my next full character sketch, I needed to make another sketch for the hair, as I was really unhappy with the other one. I just drew the first thing that came to me randomly, but I liked it so much I decided to stick with it. I also took this opportunity to experiment one last time with the beady eyes, However this time without the mouth. I really loved how innocent and cute this made the character look, as opposed to the cartoony eyes, which add an essence of humour. 

After a bit of pondering, I took the parts of these sketches I liked the most and put them together to another full character sketch. I gave her the beady eyes and no mouth, the slightly shorter neck, The new hair design, and an improved version of the alternative body design. Right away I was so much happier with this version of the Character and felt like I had really made some progress. I made a few notes, such as that I wanted the head to be smaller, the neck to be even smaller and the pigtail shape to be different, but I really felt that I was reaching a final form.

To add these small changes I made another small thumbnail sketch of the character, but I was finally completely happy with it and even found a name for her.

As the art part of this process is my strong suit, I was really trying to get my best work in, so it could make up for what I might lack in other areas. However I managed to surprise myself with how well, I found, this art style turned out. I was able to create a new art style, I feel like I can work well and do much with, and that I am very proud of. 

When looking at what the character finally turned out to be, I feel very happy I was able to have this experience and create this style I adore. 

8/5/2019

One of the things I did, in order to explore my Character more, was Vectoring. Using Adobe Illustrator we vectored and then laser-cut out a stencil of sorts. At this point in time I had not yet designed my main character yet, so I did not do this with my Alice design. I used a drawing I had made shortly before, of a psychotic anime schoolgirl. This characters personality is very similar to my games' main characters', even if the Art-style differs immensely. 

After vectoring, we were left with a cut-out of our characters that we could create something with. First I tried to stick the pieces that had been cut out onto a piece of paper, so as to recreate the line art of drawing. Ths did not turn out well as these pieces were very fragile and thin, making them hard to place and not loose.

After laser-cutting out the line art pieces, I ended up with a stencil of the drawing, which I decided to transfer onto a large piece of paper, using spray paint. This turned out significantly better, although this experiment did not lead anywhere further.