Task 1 - Myself as a character

An introduction to design and pre- 

-portions. 

For a few years now i have been trying to make my drawing and designing skills better, i have been given this assignment about creating a character sheet for myself in my favourite game.

Having looked at different ways of looking at pre portions and faces it was a relief when i got sheets helping me and explaining the pre portions, although the following images are not the greatest quality it is my first attempt at using the guidelines i have been given.

This is the front of the first character that i have thought about generating, as you can see i have left the pre portion lines and notes on so we know that the pre portions are correct.

I also tried to draw my first figure at another angle for the character design sheet, i know it is not the best drawing ever done however i do see this as a starting point. I can see that parts like the nose and chin maybe are not out enough but as a first try i think its a good start and my drawing skills can only get better from here.

Finding Inspiration

We were asked too look at our favourite games, myself it was Uncharted 3 i think that the gameplay, storytelling and graphics are incredible. Also watching videos on the game itself i found out that research is a big part of naughty dog games, from location and settings to clothes and design of characters at different locations around the world.

So i thought that i would start by looking at different locations in the game and look at some design and get my inspiration for my character from there.

This desert location is one that i have always admired, the sky, the sand and even the ancient architecture.  I have seen videos of the Naughty dog team actually going to the desert too see just how people would walk and crawl over the sand dunes. So then i began looking at the characters that were used in this location.

Thugs

Chloe Frazer

These were a couple of the concept art images that i found of characters from the desert part of the game. I knew that it was important too look at both males and females to get an idea of what clothes they wear, like jackets and scarves.

I also noticed that the men wear darker colours than the women, and this could link into semiotics and what i have learnt about signs and meaning within games and the real world. For example the fact that the women are dressed in bright (red) colours could show they are desirable, but can also show their venerability in certain cultures.  On the other hand the men are dressed in dark colours like blacks and blues, this shows us their dominance and when contrasted with the womens clothes their power over the women in the game.

This is an early concept design that i found of Nathan Drake the main character, and i don't want too look at him in particular as my assignment was too create myself as a character too fit with within the uncharted world.  However it does give me and idea of what my character could be wearing, again as semiotics has taught me he is a good character so is dressed in bright neutral colours, unlike the thugs dressed in blues and blacks above.  So this will be something i will have to take into consideration when looking at myself am i good? or bad?

This type of scarf is used in the desert part of the game, i found this image off google and is the stereotypical scarf worn by locals and armies in the deserts.  We can also see on the image above that Nathan Drake and the thugs are wearing these which makes this a must for my character.

More Inspiration!

This is the second part of my research, i have chosen uncharted again, however i have gone with an entirely different idea. From the heat of the desert to the cold mountains of Tibet.  I have chosen to look at this as well so i can get a wider view on what looks good and what ideas work better than others.

Obviously if i was too choose this idea over the desert there are certain things that i will need to research in order to make my character look and feel authentic to the game. This idea feels less intense than the last, it feels that maybe i could be slightly more creative with my character.

Tenzin and Drake

As you can see from the image above that clothing is a big part of helping an audience not only relate to a character, but relate to where they are in the story.  We can obviously see just from the fur coats they are wearing that they are in a cold environment, and should i choose to pursue this path instead of the desert idea i will need too look at winter clothing in detail.

Final design ideas

This is my idea for the front view of my character, there are still a few developments that i need to make it better, i still need a holster over his shoulder and i need to make his shoulders and torso, however i really think this is a great leap from my last uploaded drawing.  As you can see i have gone for the desert look as i have added a scarf round his neck to protect him from the sand storms.

This is my as a character in drakes fortune that i created at the end of the module and i think it shows how my skills have progressed through the past few months.

Task 2 - My Scarecrow Model

Scarecrow design and model

Here is the inspiration that i took from Batman Arkham Asylum, i chose this image because you can see the full extent of what the scarecrow looks like, when showing a friend this image they thought i had traced the image however you can see that the preportions and posture are not the same i just left it in the background to show my refrence.  I really love this pose because it shows that my character is ready for action and is in a heightened state of awareness.

You can see significant differences from my last screenshot, my character now has all detail added from his hood, his body and his weapon, i chose to give my character a scyth and this is because this is a weapon that is generally associated with farming and that is where the scarecrow would be situated in the crops.  I also like the hood on my character i thought that it would be important for my character to be dark and mysterious.

This is just showing a little detail that i have added in the clothing and the cloak, i thought that it would be important to have the cloak ripped and torn and this is too show how scary he is, showing he is not perfect and that he has been in some fights with ripped and torn clothes.

This is showing the shading that i will be using, i have chosen to use these brown and light brow/beige colours because these are stereotypical of what scarecrows wear, it would have been confusing for people too see a model that looked like a scarecrow in blues and reds, and we can also see that i will be shading it from the bottom and middle of the left of the painting as the shades get darker to the right of the image.

As you can see from my various images of my model that it was not the best model ever created however i feel that it was a good result for my first try.  I think that the hand holding the scythe is too bold and big however by the time i had created it i was unable to go back.  However i do think that you can see it resembles my model i created inside photoshop, when cooking the model i did burn the top which you can see however i think that this just adds to the meaning of the scarecrow, as it is an entity from hell and an evil character so the burnt the top of him is fitting within the scarecrows world. 

Task 3 - Silhouettes and shapes

Photoshop characters.

My Zombie Doll

Inspiration.

I admittedly find it hard sometimes to create concepts in my head to maybe design a certain character or setting/landscape.  However when an idea comes to me i still find myself challenged to come up with great ideas however i have the drive to move forward and research what it takes to make a great character.  A big inspiration to me was silent hill and specifically silent hill revelations, my first character that i designed was a nice small turtle with a walking stick and with my second character i really wanted to take my design in a completely different direction.

This outline below is my original idea plan for character, i have chosen to have his head lay back and his shoulders relaxed, this is typical of the monsters/zombies that i am wanting to design, because of the posture of his head and shoulders i had to bring his waist out as if he is standing with his stomach in front of the rest of his body.  I have made his arms simple and relaxed because again this is stereotypical of the zombie look and body i am trying to re create.  I really like this body and it is my favourite because the pre-portions are correct and i feel that personally this is my best idea because of my research of zombie body posture.

All of my research for this character has really helped my imagine the character that i wanted to create, the clothes, the posture and the overall feel of the character.  I have researched clothes and this is an important part of defining a character as the way someone is dressed within a game changes the way the character is perceived.  It was images like the person below that inspired me to create my character in a suit, i think that the way that i wanted my character to have a life before he was a zombie.  This raises questions before you speak to a character like this in a game.

Below is my final idea and concept for my zombie, you can see the silhouette, the outline, the image without the line art and my final image.  You can see from my research where my ideas have come from and how i have got from just an idea of creating a zombie to actually having a character.  I have used the suit and smart clothes because i think it gives the player certain expectations, but also because i enjoy the way that clothing as smart and clean can be corrupted and ripped and torn, creating almost an oxi-moron, seeing the two contrasts the normal and the extra ordinary.

I really love the line art and the pre portions with this image, i think that because of the research i put in, into the posture and body language of a zombie really paid off when there actually isn't any blood on my character and because i researched about what was needed, we can tell the character is a zombie because of the posture and the clothing of the man/doll.

My Turtle Guru!

I began thinking about creating a character that was not of a humanoid shape, i began looking at the most famous characters from TV from the past 20 years and i really took inspiration from characters that i grew up with as a child.  I looked at the Teenage mutant ninja turtles because they were a big part of my child hood life, i chose not to go down the ninja route however and went down the teacher/guru route.  I did this because i did not want to end up copying the teenage mutant ninja turtles just take some inspiration from the characters.

I have chosen to show the image above because i have been taught to use silhouettes as well as actually drawing a character with pre portions, i love the image and it really shows how just by using silhouettes and illuminating the background we can create certain emotions just from silhouettes, there is no detail on the image and after seeing an image like this i will be using the silhouette route from now on as well as using my drawings and pre portions.

This is my final image for my Turtle guru character, and again like with the zombie doll we can see clear areas where i have taken my inspiration and used it too my advantage, obviously my turtle would be green however his belly is yellow, with this area i could have used maybe a dark green or a very pail orange, however after looking at my research and also referencing the colour wheel, i knew this would have to be yellow, like wise with the red shirt which is the contrasting colour opposing the green.

Task 4 - Heroes and Villains

Hero's and Villains.

Villain.

Above is the first screen shot from my villain that i am creating, i have chosen to have him this posture as a non threatening not only because i have not tried a pose like this yet but also because in his bio he is not a conventional villain, he is seen by most as a hero and only one 
person knows his true identity, so it was important for him to have a calm and welcoming pose.

As you can see that from my last screen shot a lot of detail has been added, scars have been added and this is to go along with the theory that villains are often scarred or disfigured in some sort of way, for example Darth Vader wears a mask to help him breath leaving him disfigured, i knew that with my villain i needed a disfigurement but as in the bio he needs to be a hero to the public so the disfigurement can not be too damaging so he still looks normal.

Here is where i began too add colour to my villain, i wanted him to be neutral but deadly.  I have chosen an ice cold blue to signify that he is a villain however i have chosen a neutral blue as again as i have said he needs to be seen as a hero to others apart from our protagonist.  I have chosen red scars as this contrasts with the blue and shows that he is evil and like i explained disfigured.



Design choices

As you can see from the image above i have chosen to give my character this satchel that he is holding and that is red because it symbolises the dangers that are within in, within the bag is a large amount of poisonous gases that kill people, and the hat has a yellow lamp on it, that is there because when he is in the gas after he has released it he can then see where he needs to go and work his way through the gases.  I have chosen to give him a scar through his eye as this symbolises a serious disfigurement and also the claw marks around his neck in a series of three showing possible collision with an animal in the past.

Here is his lower half, here we can see the lower half of the satchel that he keeps his poisonous gases in but what is most important here are the red syringes that we can see around his waist.  These are important because the gas that he releases in poisonous and will kill all who get caught in it, however the gas will disperse after an hour and this syringe contains a cure that makes him immune to the poisonous gases allowing him to move around freely in the gas.




final character and bio.

This is my finished villain, he was an employee that worked for the biggest gas company in Britain however after being faulsy accused of stealing dangerous gases from the science department, he lost his job and for not being able to pay the the bills he lost his house, wife and son.   He became determined on revenge against those who framed him for the theft of dangerous gases and in his search he became stronger and more powerful from exposure to these dangerous gases.  After he had revenge he still felt empty, it had not brought back his wife and son and with no where to go or anyone too see he found a way to capture these gases, control them and used his new found evil personality that had taken over him completely to rid the world of people and civilisations that he did not see fit into his warped idea of what a world should be.

He found an antidote that he could use in situations to make his body immune from the gases, over the years the gases became more and more dangerous making him have to use up more and find a stronger anti dote that he can use when the gases have been released.  When he was first discovering what the gases could do he took a trip to a small location out in the moors in England too see just how affective they were at wiping out small villages, he found a village and released a small amount of gas that worked its away around the village wiping out the humans as it crept through streets and houses, however in the mist he was attacked by a massive dog the size of a great dane, however obviously changed by the gas to have sharp claws, black eyes and razor sharp teeth, this is where the scarrs on his face come from.  The dog died from the gas however from this small village a boy would survive who hell bent on his own mission to find who killed his family when he was young and destroy the gas man himself.







Hero

On the screen shot below you can see that as i have chosen too use black and dark colours to represent my hero, this goes against conventions of having characters and heroes being in bright and bold colours to represent their heroism and bravery.  However my character is an anti-hero, he is perceived as being the villain that actually turns out to be the hero at the end, other characters like this that i could relate the character too could be maybe Dante, from the devil may cry series.

I had too invert the outlines so that i could see where the outline of my character was so that i could colour the character properly and to the best of my ability.

Final character bio

This is a man named Dexter Williams, he is a boy who grew up in a small village in the middle of the english moors until one night when a mysterious myst fell over his village.  As his parents perished in the gas that mysteriously appeared he runs out to the town square with his jumper over his mouth and nose.  He hears the high pitched squeal of a dog dying as he turns he see's a man...a man at the centre on the gas's origin wearing a shirt and with an open sack of gas pouring out.  He makes eye contact with this mysterious man who then vanished into the darkness.
He was about to take his last breath when the gas disappeared, with his life and his memories of his villages demise he began training and declared that he would find this gas man and take revenge for everyone he hurt.  In his older years he follows the gas man around the world, shadowing him and rescuing civilians when he released the gas making himself a hero, waiting for the perfect opportunity to take out the gas man for his family and his village.

Task 5 - Scar night

Scar Night!

For nine hundred generations, the city of Deepgate has hung suspended by giant chains over a seemingly bottomless abyss. In the unfathomable darkness below is said to reside the dread god Ulcis, ‘hoarder of souls’, with his army of ghosts. At the centre of the city itself rises the Temple, where  a youthful angel lives, Dill, the last of his line. 
Descendant of heroic battle-archons, yet barely able to wield the great sword he has inherited from his forebears, he lives a sheltered existence under the watchful eye of Presbyter Sypes, who rules the Temple. For despite his sense of purposelessness, Dill has a destiny about to unfold.

When first reading scar night i was not blown away with the story telling i found that characters within the first part of the book were too seperate and each chapter jumped from character to character, for example you would be with the character Dill on minite and with the character Mr Nettles the next, hich made it difficult for me to imagine the world of deep gate and the environment. One character that i did visualise rather well was dill and his spine assasin protector Rachel.




The Assignment!

After reading scar night i was given a brief asking me too think back to when i first saw and read about Rachel, i was asked to design rachel and create two character sheets, one of ideas and the other of the final idea.
So i knew it was important to go back to when i first saw her in the book and see how she was described!

" A young woman stood waiting for him by the fireplace, small, gaunt, her fair hair drawn back severely from her face and woven into a plait.  She was bereft of jewellery, and wore beaten leathers bristling with weapons. A worn hilt  jutted from the scabbard on her back, blue throwing knives and silver needles ran the length of her leather-sheathe forearms, while her belt held poison pouches, a blowpipe and three stubby bamboo tubes tarnished with age."

After reading this a few times i got a few ideas of what i would want her too look like, and it is very important that i take maybe not all aspects of the description on board but a lot of them i will.


My Design!


This is the design sheet that i created when thinking about designing my Rachel character, you can see that i have just quickly sketched a few poses that i believe her character would be pulling throughout the book.  The first is just a stood pose, the pose is strait backed and standing tall, this pose would show the respect that she thinks she deserves from her fellow assassins and also Dill, this could be the pose from when Dill first saw her. The second pose shows how quickly she is ready for action and could be a battle pose from her,  I drew a spine with a skull at the top and the reason i did this was because she is a member of the assassin group named 'Spine' and this could be a nice design for the armour that she wears or a spine design could even link all her pieces of armour.

I used a brush to add a splash of colour too my idea sheet, i have chosen colours that could be used for her armour, hair and other things such as her cape and accessories like her knives, needles and poison pouches.  I know that in her description she does not have a cape however the brief was about my interpretation of Rachel, i believe that her appearance such as her hair, her posture and her accessories are all a part of who she is and need to be kept when designing her, however a cape is used in fantasy films, books and games to create a mystical feel to a character which is why i chose to at least give a cape a go for Rachel.

This is a screen shot that i took when trying too add some detail to my character, as it stated in the book along her leather sheathes she had needles and knives, i decided to split the needles and the knives on to different arms and this is just to make her look more spread out and make sure there is detail on each arm, i have chosen however to add metal armour and sheathes.

The screenshot below shows the metal knives on the other arm, they are all connected with in the armour by a connector between the metal shoulder and mid arm armour.

I then began adding in the detail onto the armour, it had come to my attention that i have been so focused on getting my pre-portions and scale correct that i have on previous characters rejected adding in detail.  In my ideas sheet i came up with an idea that because Rachel was an assassin for Spine then maybe some parts of her armour could replicate that.  I simply used another layer too add the detail, as you can see the shadows are coming off the detail showing not that it is raised above the armour but also the angle of the lighting that is coming from the top left corner.

The Final Set!


I think that overall my final images of Rachel are really good, i think that my pre-portions and poses are getting better, as you can see the back view is darker, the reason for this is that the light is in front of her creating shadows and darkness, i have used shading so that it gives the idea of perspective and depth to my images.  I think that the detail is what needs working on the most, i think that the spine themed armour and the blood on the sword is what makes the images good but more details would be great!  Just getting used to adding detail is what is important.

I also like the way that i have used a slight shadow to show where the light is on the character, but all in all i feel that my skills are getting better with each assignment.

Task 6 -Weapons and Armour

I have been tasked with creating a suit of armour and array of weapons for a game, i realise that with computer games today armour and weaponry play a big part in not only recognising a game by its creative choices but also by the characters themselves and what they wear, creating a new demand for designers to create original and incredible designs for armour and weapons.

Inspiration and research!

I have played many games, and i have found that all have their own style however i believe that with certain genres there are more options available to designers, for example Assassins Creed has some great original weapons such as the hidden blade that is worn on the arm and extends out when stabbing an enemy.  However this is a game based on earth and reality, so is bound by the laws on earth, not allowing for as much leverage on the design since we could not have a weapon such as a plasma gun or lightsaber weapon as these are not real.  Where as game genres like Sci-fi allow the designer more leverage and input as more weapons can be created as it is not bound by the laws of science and reality.

This is an image from Dead Space, a science fiction game where the protagonist is cast into a world of darkness and the unknown, and because of the darkness a great symbol was created.  The armour lights itself, creating shape and definition from the armour itself.  This works well because of the setting, because it is dark we are able to see the armour more.  And we don't see the protagonist but because of the armour design and concept we get a grasp of the character anyway.

In this image we see a more detailed version of the armour and 'Plasma cutter'.  Dead space was different Isaac faced aliens but where in other games you are encouraged to just mindlessly shoot at enemies, Dead space encourages the player to find ways to dismember the aliens as this will kill them quicker and will save ammunition.  It because of this game mechanic and concept that gives even the weapons an identity of their own.  This is important as we can then become attached to weapons, and become better at using them and upgrading them.  In contrast to other games Dead space is original and different to other games because of its weapons and armour and gameplay.  Compared with other games based on earth with earth based laws such as physics and biology and even gravity weapons and armour seem dull when linked back with the Dead Space series.

With games such as Assassins creed, are earth based games set in the past, so here armour and weapons are what we would expect too see, because the armour is human made there is a lot of research into what it could look like, which differs to science fiction games such as Dead space where the imagination is used in creating weapons and original armour, i am not implying that games such as assassins creed are not creative because they are i am just stating that more rules are in place restricting what the designers can create.

As you can see from this image of Ezio from assassins creed 2, the armour is very minimal but very normal too us, with shoulder, arm and wrist armour, with shielded boots and legs. These pieces of arms look very aesthetically pleasing and the whole suit in general looks from the era that the game is based in.  However as the game is based at a certain point in history, so the design is also stuck in that era, making the armour for me not as inventive as in other games.
Also the weapons simple knives and swords, these weapons again will have to be stereotypical of the assassins creed era, i see a lot more detail in the Plasma cutter from dead space not because of the designers but because of the world that the game is set in is very restrictive. Which is why i have decided to create my weapons for a science fiction game, where the possibilities for design are endless as they are not bound by earth rules of science.









The plasma scythe and Plasma rifle.

I chose a scythe as my heavy weapon, and i did this because i have always loved the shape and colour of the scythe and i thought that it would be interesting to put a new and different spin on the weapon.  I have always admired the glow and the effects that this type of plasma glow has on the environment and again looking back at games like dead space where there is little ambient lighting, and so the weapons themselves become a light in the darkness which is what i enjoy about these weapons, inspiring me to create a plasma scythe.

I began by researching the grim reapers scythe and also farmers scythes that they use for farming and i found and used these as a slight reference for the shape of the scythe and the handle, however i began to think of interesting shapes for the blade and as you can see at the top of it there is a break in the blade, and i had a concept idea that a plasma beam would flow through the break in the metal however beginning too think how the player would use it in game made me realise this was not a viable concept.
However another concept that i had was that the plasma itself was running throughout the weapon, even powering it which is why i chose to have plasma glowing around the hold of the scythe, and also a concealed weapon is the bottom of the scythe where you can see it glowing, this  is a hidden plasma blaster allowing small bursts of plasma energy to be fired out the bottom, making the plasma scythe a formidable and lovely looking weapon.

My next task was trying to develop a design for a secondary weapon, as the primary (heavy) weapon was a melee weapon i thought to mix it up a bit and add some diversity to my designs i would design a plasma rifle, although the name is not too inventive it doesn't need to be as it does not differ that much from rifles at the minute, however i knew the plasma theme had to run throughout which is what makes it different from other weapons. As you can see from the screen shot there are two parts to the gun, the lighter part at the top that has the scope and sight is larger that the bottom half with the trigger and the barrel is slightly smaller, so i decided too add a glow of plasma coming from the top leaking out underneath the top of the gun, this keeps the theme running throughout the weapons.



Armour and aesthetics.

It was just as important to get the characters armours correct, it was important too me that the same theme of the plasma running throughout the armour, as if the player is special and only they can control the power of the plasma.

This was my final concept for the armour, this was my first attempt at hand painting a person instead of using line art to shape the body and colour.  It does slightly remind me of a super hero named Iron man with the heart glowing and pulses coming out his hands, however this was accidental and i feel that it still runs with the theme of controlling plasma. i think that the armour looks aesthetically pleasing with the padding to the left of the body and the glow coming from his eyes and body.  I have placed the plasma scythe on the back of my character to put it in pre portion with an actual character.

This is my final weapon design sheet, and as you can see all weapons have a certain glow too them, and because of the vibrant colour scheme that i have chosen, we can see that plasma runs through them all but also it helps the weapons look fresh and bold because of the glowing blues and greens against the harsh shades of black and grey.