Pumpkin Carving!

Thought I'd just throw in a picture of this year's pumpkin effort.

Sketchbook: Perspective Drawing

This week we were tasked with creating an urban landscape in 1 point perspective, using a tutorial if necessary. I've studied perspective a lot in the past in both Fine Art and Design, ranging from 1 to 3 point perspective, but in terms of putting it into practice it's been kind of few and far between, so I felt a little rusty. Because of this, I decided to follow the tutorial loosely just for this one, to get my back into things. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, I'll have to do more perspective environments when I can.

Sketchbook: Sci fi Gun

Our brief this week was to create a sci fi gun, either one handed or two handed, that shoots projectiles. We were tasked to create a mood board, sketch ideas, and present a finished image of the gun from a side profile view. This is the mood board I worked with. I took inspiration from artist concepts, as well as concept art from the Borderlands game series.

Using this as inspiration, I then proceeded to sketch out a few ideas in pen, paying close attention to making the designs crisp, precise and most importantly, believable. Here is a selection of the designs I sketched. I particularly liked the look and feel of the top one, as it seemed the most authentic and possible, whilst still looking suitably futuristic. I did like the second design, but since our brief outlined that it should be a projectile based gun rather than laser or energy, the organic flowing design seemed less appropriate. The bottom design seemed quite generic, so I decided to focus on developing the top design more, making it more futuristic and adding a more unique twist.

Developing these sketches, I ended up with this design. I decided to add a blade to the weapon to make it more unique, as well as to add depth to the design and give it multiple functions. With this in mind I started to develop a little backstory whilst I was colouring in Photoshop.

This is the final design for my sci fi gun. I call it the Notched Blade Rifle. I decided to make it quite gritty with a hand made, scrappy feel to it. I showed this through the small details like the messily applied blue trim that borders the gun, and the tape that is wrapped around the handle and trigger of the gun.

'Born as a makeshift weapon during the final moments of Commander Thorne's legendary battle against the Emerald Army, the Notched Blade Rifle, or more commonly nicknamed the Rebel Thorn, is now standard issue for the rebel army of Old London. The rifle, famous for its unrivalled power, small clip and agonisingly slow automatic reload comes equipped with a long blade cast from thundersteel, allowing the fight to continue whilst the weapon reloads. Emblazoned with the colours of the rebel army, they wield the rifle in battle, allowing deadly accuracy from afar and brutal aggression in close quarter combat. It truly is the pinnacle of weapons technology, and the deadly edge that will turn the tide of the war.'

Quarantine: One Sheet

The one sheet is finished! and due to some weird saving issues I'm having right now, I've had to screenshot it and get it up on here before everything crashes.

Tinkering.

After a bit of tinkering in Photoshop, I combined Domino with the character I drew for my Unity One Sheet. The results were interesting, I could use this for my character design?

Personal Work: Domino Sketch

I've never really done a lot of digital drawing and painting straight in Photoshop so I figured I'd get some practice in between tasks. This is a character sketch for a bounty hunter called Domino. I reckon I've got more plans for this guy in the future.

Unity Project - Quarantine: One Sheet Progress

Progress on this one sheet is rolling on nicely: I sketched out a quick character concept. Even though you won't see him in-game since it's a first person game, it's always nice to know who you're playing as and what they look like. I went for a shell like armour for the 'militia' and gave it a lick of orange paint so they look like a sort of hazmat contagion unit. It just adds a little bit more to the personality of the game if you use visual cues like a vivid orange to show their purpose; it makes them seem more authentic I think.

Photoshop: Crustacean Silhouettes

We tried out a silhouette method of creature creation which involved blocking out solid black shapes to create the silhouette of a creature. We then used different values of light and dark to add detail and define the shape more.

Maya: Turret

Just got around to uploading this turret I modelled on Maya last week. I was really happy with this one, so much so that I ended up incorporating it into my Unity level, it sort of influenced the whole quarantine idea.

Unity: Preliminary Level Design

Here's some screenshots of my current level that I'm putting together in Unity. The idea is that it's a quarantined section of a city and you have to escape. I tried to make the screenshots match up with my original concept sketches which I'll be uploading once I get them scanned in.

Social networking pays off...

So today was a pretty great day. I've been a fan of the Lego franchise of video games ever since the original Lego Star Wars back in '05, I think they're incredible games and their core attitude towards fun gameplay experiences has remained intact for almost 10 years now. A big bunch of developers, artists and designers from Tt Games, the company who makes the Lego games, joined Twitter a year or so ago, and being a huge fan o their games, I started tweeting Arthur Parsons, the Game Director on a number of Lego titles, as well as a few other employees, and eventually I got talking to them quite often and communicating regularly. So anyway, I've been posting drawings and sketches on Twitter for over a year now, both of my general artwork and my Lego character designs and ideas. Recently, this past summer I was doing a lot of character designs for the upcoming game Lego Batman 3, and I drew up a design for this really crazy obscure character called Music Meister, and requested for him to be in the game. Today at the Comic Con panel for Lego Batman 3, not only did they reveal an official screenshot for Music Meister (who looks uncannily similar to my original design and plays excellently), but the Assistant Game Director Stephen Sharples mentioned my drawings and one of the drawings I'd done in particular over the summer, in front of the entire crowd and panel of DC Comics legends and voice actors no less! So yeah, I guess social networking payed off big time in regards to this link to the guys at Tt Games I've been working at for the past year or so! I think I'll keep this blog updated with any other happenings in regards to Tt Games, especially since it's proving to be an ever growing link and I'd love to work there too!

Sketchbook: Tentacles

We were given a task to create a 'tentacle creature' this week. This is my current mood board which is going to direct and possibly influence my final design. I chose to focus on how tentacles have been presented both in artwork as well as films and games.

My first design is this ugly swine, I quite like the mouth but the body is mainly obscured by thick mud and water, so there's not a lot to the design other than the tentacles. The design was influenced by The Kraken and the mud worm creatures from King Kong. I like the style and line work, maybe he is some sort of living tree, with tentacle-like living branches that ensnare victims and drag them below the bog? Either way, I think I want something a lot more octopus-like, I like the classic suckery type tentacles, so I'd rather create an octopus or squid like creature or something with personality, rather than a thrashing death beast.

After a few sketches and ideas, I've settled on this design for my tentacled creature. I love this design, I like the bony structure of the body and the posture, and the way the tentacles are implemented. As I mentioned before, I wanted to make something with a little more character, rather than just being a beast, so I gave him some personality by adding in the 'clamtern' (lol ocean puns). Maybe he's some sort of ancient guard of an underwater sunken treasure?

Photoshop progress report... Decided to implement some of the skills we learnt yesterday, got a base colour down first (you would not believe the amount of colours I went through before I settled on this), then I blocked in the shadows on a different layer to add a little more depth, and combined the two to give me the third picture. Really useful technique, if only I'd known this when I'd first started using Photoshop, would have saved me a hell of a lot of time! Just a case of painting in details now and adding some more colour and texture... Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

- - - Here is the final design, after some painting in Photoshop to add some lighting, texture and detail.

'Deep within the ruins of Drenchhold, an ancient treasure lies hidden away, powerful enough to turn tides and master the ocean itself. The Drenchguard, a grotesque species of tentacled guardians are the sole protectors of the Eye of the Sea, ready to seek out and destroy any who breach the sacred fort in an attempt to claim the treasure. Their luminous clamterns light up the pitch black depths, allowing them to keep a vigilant eye on the hallowed halls of their fortress.'

Sketchbook: Robot Design

Some robot designs we did for the first sketchbook task at Uni. Concept sketches followed by a final design, pretty happy with the result.

Sketchbook: Old Jak Concept

Just a little warm up sketch of an aged and angry Jak from Jak and Daxter, about to attempt some tentacular creatures...

Digital Painting Practice: Bug Creature

The first blog post of many! A Photoshop painting practice. Shiny shiny.