Tuesday, 15 May 2012

Game On! Final Pieces

My Game On brief is done for this year and i have produced three final pieces. Previous posts have shown the process of designing multiple dresses, weapons and characters for my final pieces and ultimately i chose to just focus on three costumes and weapons and will carry the characters and other dress/ weapon combinations through to my final project next year. Below are screenshots showing the process i went through to create my three finished pieces and the finished pieces themselves.
First I scanned my images in and outlined them in Corel Painter
I then coloured all of these pictures using the same programme
I then added the character turnarounds and the a large circle
The circle contains a hint of the environment the dress would feature in
And now for my final pieces for the Game On project:
Overall i am pleased with my final pieces, these were some of my favourite weapons and dresses i designed and i think they all work well together. The first dress would be worn in a journey to the underbelly of a giant laboratory thus the bio hazard sign behind the character. The second dress is an aptly names tulip dress that would be seen in the forest zone and the scythe seemed like a perfect weapon choice for cutting down overgrown foliage. The third design sees a nautical themed outfit with a huge anchor as a weapon, the anchor is one of my favourite weapons as the idea of whacking your opponents with an anchor somehow amuses me! There were a lot of designs that are not present here but can be seen in older posts, these designs aren't forgotten and will be featured in my next big project.

Originally i had chosen to focus on three to four characters and do finished pieces of them in fight scenes or posing but after the introduction of the different outfits and weapons i decided to focus on them instead. This is why the character above does not have any facial features other than lips, i wanted the outfit to be the centre of attention as the character will play a big part in my next project anyway. This way it looks more like a fashion design which is the look i was going for.

Although the images could be better, i am pleased with them as i am still getting used to Corel Painter and it was being a real pain to work with - constant crashes, ridiculously complex ways of rotating or resizing shapes... it left me highly irritable. However, Corel Painter is a programme i will conquer and i am still only a beginner so i can only improve.

I feel this project has taught me a few things:
  • A better understanding of Corel Painter and digital painting
  • I had to draw a woman from life for the first time since last year all we had was a male model - it is unbelievable how helpful even fifteen minutes with a female life model was
  • How to develop a basic story into an interesting one with lots of characters and twists
  • How to draw a wider variety of costumes that range from highly imaginative to functional
  • How to develop my style and improve on it
  • How to transfer my sketches into digital art - i seem to have a really big problem with transferring my sketches into digital art and making it look good, and i feel this process has improved my capabilities
As the end of this project marks the end of year two at university this blog will probably be a little inactive for a while, but with my recently acquired equipment - Corel Painter, my scanner and bamboo tablet, i hope to practice a lot over summer and hopefully return more skilled in digital art in September.