Interesting Character Design.

The course has now shifted into looking for at the creative processes involved in making good designs, the first project was to create an interesting character using the people of Leicester as inspiration. The end results would be an orthographic and a clay sculpture.

To begin with I went out into Leicester again and sketched the different people, I'm use to this now after doing so many for one of the previous assignments. I was on the look out for anyone who looked a bit different, and I know for certain Leicester has a few characters who like to roam about.

After spending a few hours drawing across a couple of different days I definitely found a good selection of people, the wet weather didn't help though, most people were in coats.

During one of the nights I also gathered reference from the internet of characters. To me an interesting character doesn't need an over the top outfit or suit of armor, instead they could be plain clothed. Look at Brad Pitt & Edward Norton in Fight Club, both have every day cloths on yet their characters are fantastic, or there's the main character from Memento, again a normal looking guy yet his various tattoos tell a completely different story.

The next thing I did was take a small selection of my quick sketches and reproduced them to a higher quality. Maybe this was a bad idea because this could have cornered my mind into thinking about these characters too safely which will be apparent soon, but I had fun doing these nonetheless.

Out of these sketches I then tried to shape them into an interesting character but I feel I didn't push them far enough. I thought about turning a homeless looking guy into an almost The Last of Us survivor [1] but looking back this was way to easy. I really should have played around more to see if anything more unique could have been done, obviously I did not want to throw tentacles on him but I could have pushed it a lot further. 

I tried another character, this time a Big Issue seller and the idea of a Rorschach like person came to mind, hiding in plain sight with his costume in his bag but I quickly ditched this idea as I felt I was really bringing anything new to the design. Towards the end of the project I saw something in one of the sketches I done, the large coat collar around one of the women reminded me of some of the crazy neck ornaments some the African tribes wear and this sparked the design below of a Village Priestess or something, turning the handbag into a basket of shrunken heads. I only wish I had thought of this early.

In the interest of time I pushed forward with the Apocalypse survivor guy, thinking of various outfits. I again don't think I explored this enough, with my characters looking more like he's gained a new piece of equipment rather than a different design entirely. I tried to think of what it would be like to survive during an apocalypse, clothes would be torn or broken, things would be missing and as for weapons, they'd probably be rare, especially guns and ammo. I also should have used reference for base figure!

I dived straight into doing the orthographic without trying any colour variations and again I should have used reference for the figure.

The entire process of designing a character is a new thing for me and I without a doubt made a number of mistakes through out this project. The next character project that I've already done (I'm slow at posting this stuff!) has benefited from these mistakes and I'm much happier with the whole work flow and I think this has without a doubt improved the quality of my work. Next up though is the sculpture for this character!

My experience with sculpting is very limited so being asked to make an entire character was a bit scary. The only thing I knew was that I needed Sculpey and some modelling wire for the frame. I looked for videos on creating a frame because I have never actually created one.

As you can see my frame wasn't the best as it couldn't stand up by itself, this was a huge problem later on when it came to doing finer details. I now understand the importance of a good solid frame and won't be making the same mistake again!

Once I got to use how the Sculpey handled i really enjoyed modelling, if my model could stand up I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more. Adding nice details then to only flatten them out a few minutes later was a real pain. I am about to make another sculpture and again the mistakes I made with this character will help improve it, I will be making a good solid frame so I don't have to man-handle my model every 10 seconds.

This entire project was a huge learning process for me, learning about designing characters in the 2D space and 3D. I am pleased with the final outcome of both but I feel the design could have had more thought put into it but I think this is to do with my process more than anything. The best thing I have taken from this project are the mistakes that I made, because for the next character project I didn't make them again, leading to a much better end result, I'll post up the other character soon (hopefully)!

References & Notes
[1] http://media1.gameinformer.com/imagefeed/screenshots/TheLastofUs/TLOU_Gamescom_ConceptArt_1.jpg

Road Map: Concept Artist.

Our last Critical Studies sessions had us look at applying for jobs across the industry and what various skills we would need to attain the jobs, we also looked at the sort of things we would see from the applications themselves and this post will compare a job application's requirements to my current skills. Once done this will also serve as a road map to help me achieve my ideal job role.

My ideal job at the end of the course would be a Concept Artist, being a Concept Artist has been a dream job for a long time now. The first thing I noticed is that there are basically no Junior potions going, I found a Senior CA job role, and 2 middle-weight roles, one of them being from Remedy, the creators of Max Payne and Alan Wake.

I will break down this job application and compare my skills to the required skills.

"Do you have a playful mind accompanied by a high degree of artistic skills? Are you able to produce inspiring and mood setting concept art for projects regardless of their visual style? If so, we would like to hear from you!"

I certainly have a playful mind but this is the only thing in this paragraph I am certain of, my artistic skills are good but they certainly need improving.

• Minimum of 2-3 years of experience in creating concept artwork for animation, film, or videogames

This requirement is the only one that is completely out of my reach at the moment and that's because this isn't a Junior role position, this would be more than likely replaced with a grade requirement which is realistically more attainable.

• Good understanding of color, composition, architecture and human anatomy

I have some knowledge of each of these but I would not be confident in them, especially my colour theory. All these need work!  

•  Ability to create believable character concepts from stylized to realistic

I'm confident in my character creation abilities, as I always like to base my designs on reality while trying to avoid the clichés (I hope anyway), however the creation process and the artistic skills required to visualize these ideas are an area I need to improve on.

• Thorough understanding of 2D paint packages

My understanding of Photoshop is quite good, my digital painting ability on the other hand isn't but hopefully this will improve as I do more paintings.

• Clear verbal and written communication in English

I am happy with my ability to communicate my ideas to people, but obviously this can always be improved on!

• Great looking online portfolio

A great looking online portfolio is something I am missing, which is really, really bad. I have a small portfolio from my previous job but it is rather simple hasn't been updated since I came to Uni.

• A bachelor’s degree in arts or relative field (Applications from self-taught candidates will also be accepted)

If I complete the course I'll have this done, +1 to me!

After going through this I now realize how much work I need to do, all my 2D skills need improving in practically every way as well as the process of creating 2D work. Thankfully I've got over 2 years left to improve and I certainly think that's enough time if I use it well. I also need to set up a new online portfolio that can showcase all of the different work I've done which will improve the chance of me getting a job. This will certainly be a tough road map to follow and complete but I really don't know how to give up so there's only one way forward!

Visual Design Intensive Week.

I mentioned in the previous post about the intensive, week long workshops that we had. This blog post will cover everything that I done during the Visual Design week and a couple of extra things that are related to it. The entire week was really a crash-course in the whole design process, something that we'd look at more in-depth later on in the course, so this was something to sink our teeth into. The entire week was really a huge learning experience for me and was much harder than I was expecting it to be.

Silhouettes into Vehicles

To kick things off we had to grab a book containing images that we liked and some sort of an object, I chose James Gurney's Color and Light and a desk tidy wheelie bin, we then had to create silhouettes from both the book and the bin.

Using these silhouettes we then had to design some sort of vehicle. It then hit me that a wheelie bin was a difficult choice, it's mostly square, the only 2 interesting features are the lid and wheels and I'm using the word interesting lightly here. I spent a large amount of time just staring at the bin and my silhouettes and the only thing I could see was the bin, eventually I reach my boredom limit and grabbed a pen and some paper,then I began tracing/scribbling over some of the silhouettes to try and get something rolling.

Once I put pen to paper ideas began to flow, the frustration vanished and I really began to have fun with it. I wasn't concerned with how ridiculous the idea was at the moment, which is why I put things down like the police zapper, a potential new anti-riot vehicle? It probably would have been a good idea to produce another 2-3 more sheets like this, just dumping anything my brain was thinking out on paper, any number of great ideas could be hiding in there! After a few hours I did have a few things there were grabbing my attention, so I pushed forward with them and made more refined sketches of them.

Refined sketches

Wheelie Bin to Aircraft

My mind was made up after doing these sketches, the monolithic, almost foreboding shape of the aircraft on the right had captivated me. I wish I had shown more love to the other designs too though, I think the middle 2 especially could have been really interesting with a little bit more design thought behind them, the irony of a wheelie bin being used for a street cleaner vehicle design was also pretty awesome! 

The tiny, middle doodle had sealed the idea for me

Try & Try Again

This is where everything for me took a wrong turn. I started to work out the design of the ship and how it all would operate but I simply didn't do enough of it, the deadline for the final was looming and I knew how slow I was at digital painting so maybe that's why I rushed through this stage. On another note I found it odd how a simple doodle can really make an impact, on the upper page, the right, center doodle was all it took for me to know that the thing I was designing was actually cool looking, which is why that pose has been repeated for other drawings. Overall though at this stage, I knew the aircraft design was missing something.

Aircraft Final: Version 1

That missing feeling carried over to the final and despite having help with the digital painting I was still lost. Looking back I can clearly see what went wrong, for starters where are my thumbs for this? I should have done a few dozen quick thumbnails to get a feeling for the piece, make sure everything was were I wanted it to be, instead of realizing mistakes half way in. This was a massive lesson for me and I wasn't going to end this with me being unhappy with it.

Everything was handed in on time, but I had to redo this piece for my own sanity, I knew I could do better. I hit the internet for inspiration and help, not just with the painting but for the design of the craft too. This should have been done from the start so that's another lesson learnt! I had redesigned the aircraft to my liking and had also produced a few quick sketches to get an idea for the final composition, I simply enlarged my favourite one and worked straight from that.

Aircraft Drone Final: Version 2

When the good examples from that week were shown, the focus was not on the fanciest of visual or finals but mostly how well the vehicle was explained and presented. I know I can figure out how things work pretty well and I can also present my work to a high standard so that's exactly what I did this time around. The final visual I think is also a massive improvement over the previous one.

Now Build It

The next Visual Design class after the Workshops gave us the task to build our design out of what ever we wanted. I wanted at first to do card with paper mache but I found some card with really good thickness, probably too good as it was a pain to fold how I wanted so I dropped the paper mache idea.

I spent an hour trying to figure out how to create a decent net, because I wanted my model to be fairly accurate with some interesting details. My paper was beginning to wear thin from all the rubbing out... then it struck me to use 3DS Max to make the net.

Final net of the body

Making the net in Max worked well, I forgot to take into account the folding thickness of the card so when it came to sticking it all together some places were off but for the overall complexity of the model it worked wonders. I even managed to add in a few moving parts, using a few split pins. I'll post a few development and final shots at the end of this post. 

The Visual Design Intensive week really showed me how hard concepting can be, but also how rewarding it can be too. I was really surprised how much I learned over that week. Additionally it showed me how much extra work I need to do to even have a chance at being employed in the industry, not with just my drawing skills but with my design process too, thankfully I've still got a few more years to improve both aspects!

I kept everything open until the end to make sure I had easy access if I needed it

The side thrusters attached with split pins

Most of the extra parts cut out and glued, just need to attach them

The back wings added a lot of weight, making it tip over. You can just about see the stack of pennies I added to the front for balance

Vans & Streets.

A little 3D update now, with some information on what I have been doing over the past couple of weeks. After the Christmas break we were given the project to create a Transit Van in Max, this would be our first vehicle and I was looking forward to having a go at it.

During this period we were also given 2 weeks of intensive workshops for both Visual Design and 3D, I'll be posting up the work from the Visual Design when I've worked on it a little bit more so for now I'll just show what I did during the 3D week. The entire week was a sort of recap/catch up and I learnt a lot from it, the stuff I picked up should also improve my future 3D models. The final outcome of the week was a street scene.

Total Tris: 2,581

I got to retry making a telephone box, but this time with an interior plus many other things. I found creating the small details in the rubbish very rewarding, and seeing it all pieced together is worth some of the stress of 3DS Max. I did add my tree and building into the final scene too.

My Transit Van has a few mistakes that I've seen thanks to the workshop, like my polygon flow, there are sections of the Van that are really messy. I tried to fix it as best I could with what resources I had left but I had already spent too much time on it to simply scrap it and start again. I felt this was definitely a lesson learned and move on situation, along with a few other things. Despite this I do like my final van, it looks like a Transit and I think I have captured some nice details within the 5,000 tri budget.

Below I've added the transit into the street scene and also added the 3D viewer so you can explore both!

Van & Street Scene from Braden May on Sketchfab.

Quick Contour Drawings of Leicester.

The assignment after Christmas was to practice our contour drawings, using the city of Leicester. The length of this project was altered slightly to last 2 weeks, instead of the usual 1, this meant it was larger than other tasks. We had to do 12 finals with 12 thumbs each, that's a lot of drawing, luckily these had to be all fairly quick, trying to replicate various war artists using only pens and magic markers or ink washes.

Over the 2 weeks I explored Leicester, sitting in some odd places, fighting the wind and cold and also meeting many of the locals, who were all very accommodating considering I was more than likely just in the way. I even had one person offer me money, they were either very generous or that means I look homeless... fantastic. I had to decline the money.

I've put the drawings in the order that I did more or less, because I think you can see some progress as I get use to the techniques. I have noticed that the perspective is off in some of the finals and that a couple of the thumbs are better than their finals but I think I've managed to capture Leicester quite well in some of these!

Leicester Town Hall Park

Leicester Market

Leicester Bus Station

Leicester Cityscape, looking East

Leicester Highstreet

Along the River Soar

Leicester Cathedral

Welford Road

New Walk Museum & Art Gallery

Highcross Shopping Center

Dirt car park on Walnut Street 

Underground car park