Progressing from the Silhouettes

After completing the 100 silhouettes it was time to progress into more detail.
The silhouettes that most suited the character brief were chosen. White was then added to show detail and clothing.
The white was used to also show negative space, which suggested where lines of clothing would be, similar to some of the sketches in The Skilful Huntsman.

It was then possible to show different types of clothing within the same silhouette.

The idea of the character covering up their face was explored, with either a hood or bandana; this is because the character wouldn’t want his/her face to be recognised by the enemy police.

Through research it became apparent that a lot of science fiction clothing is either tight and shiny or loose like robes. Combining the two types could be interesting and original.

The idea of a billowing cape was mused over, however, a cape is very cliché. Another problem with a cape is that it would hide the jetpack, making it confusing for people viewing the character for the first time. The character needs to be easy to read from one look, so the jetpack needs to be on show.

Experimentation took place with ribbon on belts and fabric attached to a hood or long bandana. I also used the silhouettes to show either the front or back view of the character.

Below are some character progressions.

Character Silhouettes

The character silhouettes were much quicker to complete than the environment silhouettes,
this was due to a number of reasons.

The recently purchased design book The Skillful Huntsman was inspirational in the project; it also contains silhouettes as part of the character design process.

With the character brief in mind, the silhouettes were started. Off brief design also occurred, designing a few bulky characters and some women. When drawing the silhouettes focus was placed on the expression and look of the character, as well as focus on proper proportions.

A similar brush type was used to the one in The Skillful Huntsman, it’s a thin brush horizontally but thick vertically. This allows for easy silhouette making and allows for some detail. It also mimics flowing clothes better than a round brush.
I found it difficult to only draw the silhouettes in black, it was a constant battle not to add certain white parts like a belt or the arms to show more detail. The point of the exercise was to choose the most dynamic looking outer edge and then work inwards.

Certain silhouettes were drawn to show what movements the character would do. As the character has a jet-pack to move between buildings and walkways, some movements would entail taking off and landing. The character stalking and shooting was also drawn.

Below are some examples of the silhouettes, they best represent the character I had in mind.

Character or Asset?

The 2^nd half of BA5 is the same as the first, with a choice to do either character design or asset design, using the previous project as a starting point.

To decide weather to do characters or assets, some questions were explored.

• Which would be easier to make original?
• What would be more preferable?
• Which would be more beneficial to a career in the industry?
• What hasn't been done before?
• Which would be more useful? Which lends itself better to the designed game?

Characters best answer these questions because…

• Characters can easily be explored within the context of the game.
• This would be the first time creating a character would be attempted by myself, it would enable more understanding of the design process, which would help in the game design industry.
• Creating game assets like gadgets and weapons could be attempted after the University course learning about characters from the teaching staff could be more beneficial.
• Characters also include assets to some degree, weapons or items carried, focus however would be placed on the character itself.

The game design document only contains a few images of characters that were designed. There is not much emphasis on characters and there was not much design process, this gives a larger scope to explore and design with relative ease, this is a dream scenario from a game designer aspect, a lot of freedom to explore the design process.

The protagonist character in the game design is

• A rebel (gorilla warfare with the government)
• Male (no reason why cannot be a female)
• Can move between walkways and buildings via a jetpack
• Has weapons to fight the government police (could be anything from a pipe to a sophisticated laser gun)
• Living in poverty like most of the rest of the planet (this would to some degree determine appearance and posture)

With this brief of the character understood, the next stage would be to create 100 silhouettes, as was done in the environment part of the BA5 focus 2 project.

Silhouette city with different weather

A series of final concepts were created using the silhouettes from the first part of the project. This was done to show how the architecture may look once combined in a scene.

Emphasis was placed in creating a picture with a number of different weather and lighting conditions. Therefore three levels of buildings had their own layer, which could be manipulated individually. this process was a direct learning outcome of the tree in a tube final concepts, and the trouble found when creating the different weather conditions in them.

time was spent on ensuring only 1 visual style was produced in the piece, not combining software packages ensured this.

The piece could benefit from more fine detail and depth to the buildings, to make them look more run down. this could also be done by adding vents or tubes or more wires.

The series of pictures only took a few hours to produce; it was a great improvement on turn around time in comparison to the tree in tubes concept pieces.

The settled snow on the buildings was created with only 1 stroke of a soft chalk brush on Corel Painter, this greatly increased productivity time.

The rain affect was achieved by using the colour dodge tool on an overlay layer, enabling the raindrops to take on the colour of the windows (another direct improvement from the tree in a tube pieces).

Tree Tube scene with mist

Below is a misty version of the tree tube scene.

To make the scene appear misty, an environmental fog render from Maya was used; this was then used as a layer in Photoshop that was placed on top of the finished tree tube scene.

Greyscale was then used to determine how much of the scene was in fog. This was difficult as some of the scene was painted in Photoshop and so did not come through in the same way as the rest of the scene.

If this piece was to be created again, foreground, midground and background layers would be created which would have their own individual opacity, to give the impression of mist or fog.

Creating different weather conditions of the same scene was defiantly a learning experience, in future I will insure the necessary parts and correct layers are created in Photoshop, ready for manipulation.

Tree Tube scene with rain

Below is the rainy version of the tree tube scene.

The rain was created by importing a rain texture, drops and white detail were then added with Corel Painter. A white reflection of the rain was also added on the people, the tree tubes and buildings.

The rainy version of the tree tube scene is more effective than the previous piece; this is because the white reflectivity of the rain blends the detail with the abstract to give a more “watered down” look to the scene. it appears more like it was created with 1 visual style in mind, it brings the 2D and 3D together.

A texture of rain was used because of time constraints, adding the drops individually on a overlay layer would have been more effective, this would have picked up the colour detail behind the drop, this would have looked more affective around the tubes, if the drops were reflecting the light, however due to time restraints, this was the next most effective way of achieving the look of rain.

Tree Tube Scene

Below is a fully realised concept depicting trees in tubes so as to pipe oxygen to where it is need the most in the dystrophic world.

It was made with a mixture of 3D modelling in Maya (tubes, foreground buildings, tree stumps and gangway) and 2D software in Photoshop and Corel Painter (background buildings, people, hover car and sky).

Textures were imported in Photoshop for some of the key features, (fan, tree tops, detailed windows and rust affects).

I am pleased with the overall look of the scene; it depicts the futuristic world fairly well. However, if the process were to be repeated again, some key changes would be made. The buildings either side of the street would be more closed in, making the scene feel more claustrophobic.

The scene is a mix of fine detail from the imported pictures and modelled content with more abstract and suggestive buildings painted in Corel painter. The image needs to appear as it was made in one way with only 1 visual style, not several, to give one overall look to the piece.