Using the tools

While creating the environment silhouettes, experimentation took place with the curvature of the pen brush to create curved tops to buildings.

These two silhouettes illustrate a concept idea of tall thin

round-topped buildings, possibly with a reflection on the bottom.

As well as using the curve of the brush as a tool to create a design, the rounded eraser was used to create dynamic silhouettes of buildings. It’s useful for breaking up straight lines with a curve and sharp point.

These 3 sets of towers show the iterative design process specifically using the eraser to create different shapes, and a progressively an industrial look.

This process is used within concept art as it is a quick way to produce detailed images. a lot of concept work is only an impression or feel of a finished product. This is because of time and money restraints. It is in the best interest of the studio to get the most amount of work out of an employee for the littlest amount of money, and therefore time.

Silhouettes

The fist part of the project was to create 100 silhouettes of either environments or vehicles.
This was to empty all the creative thoughts on the project and get all the pre-thought ideas onto paper in a quick and easy way. It also enabled interpretation of abstract shapes into potential cityscapes and environments.

The thumbnails that were created could then be sought through and the best pieces selected to begin the iterative design process.
The reason for this process was to end up with an end product that is far removed from the first conceptual ideas.

At first, it appeared that creating silhouettes of environments would be challenging. This is because in the previous project, there were mostly interior or tunnel pictures. Silhouettes can only be used to outline and object, person or scene. None of the interior detail could be shown.

This restriction created a diverse number of results within the thumbnails. Experimentation took place with the idea of either the black or white parts of the thumbnail being the physical environment and the void. The idea of not being able to tell which was the environment and which was the void aided the visual ideas of a busy futuristic dystopia, creating a sense of confusion and uncertainty.

The silhouettes also helped refine any pre-thought ideas into more striking visual concepts, buildings, walkways and tunnels were iteratively designed by reworking them and changing parts to create a different look than the original concept. The buildings that were originally designed became more jaggedly with acute angels. Ropes and cranes were added to give the buildings a more industrial and sinister feel.

I understand that It is industry practise to create several thumbnails of characters, objects, assets, and environments as a starting point on a project. Chris Goodswen advised this in his lecture at the University last year.

Choosing environments or Vehicles

For BA5: Focus 2 I chose to create environments of a futuristic dystopian city because:
I was pleased with the environmental concepts in the previous project and wanted to continue to create more.

I enjoyed making concepts by combining modelling in 3D and texturing and adding weathering affects in 2D afterward. I want to develop this method of visual and see where in the creative industry it could fit.

My previous project didn’t have a distinctive visual style; I want to create a distinctive look for the futuristic dystopia.

I feel that environments have a greater opportunity to look original in comparison to vehicles.

In the previous project, modelling and texturing vehicles took longer to do than the environments, it would be more productive to develop what I am currently quicker at doing, especially as iterative design is a large focus in this project.