Task 4.1 - Ideas & Test Pieces

Task 4.1 - Ideas Generation & Development

Ideas Generation can come in multiple forms, and is intended to prove that you can design an idea from scratch:

Sketches

Colour & Mood Ideas

Photobashing

Silhouetting

Blockouts

Prototypes

Turnarounds

You are expected to complete several of these for each visual asset in your project in order to plan them out properly.

For example, you could create sketches, colour ideas, photobashes, turnarounds and silhouettes for your main character as one visual asset.

To help with my time-management and to keep track of what I have left to complete, I have created a schedule that I will follow to keep my workflow streamlined and efficient and to ensure I will have everything completed by the deadline.

Wed 24th Jan - Finish photobashes, sketch over silhouettes
Thu 25th Jan - Create blockouts, sketch over blockouts
Fri 26th Jan - Colour the blockout sketches and experiment with colour ideas
Sat 27th Jan - Create some final, more detailed sketches that will be used for my final designs
Sun 28th Jan - Complete lineart over the sketches and apply colour
Mon 29th Jan - Begin adding shading and effects to the design, begin presentation boards
Tue 30th Jan - Finish shading and effects, continue presentation boards and start on final evaluation
Wed 31st Jan - Complete presentation boards and continue final evaluation
Thu 1st Jan - Complete final evaluation and check over work to see if anything was missed
Fri 2nd Jan - Check over work to see if anything was missed.

These are some photobashes, silhouettes and rough sketches of 6 designs that I could use for my mechanical creature. All the images used were sourced from my mech, animal and robotic animal moodboards. Out of these six, I would say that my favourites are the squid in the top-middle and the beetle in the bottom-left as their designs feel the most unique and fun to experiment with, as well as the squid in particular having a very distinguishable silhouette. Additionally, I think they fit really well into a mythological theme with the beetle having heads on its tails like a hydra or chimera and the large squid with wings being reminiscent of the kraken or a seraph. After reviewing the designs with others, it seems that the spider-like design in the top-right is also a popular choice and it was also one of my favourites as I think the back-heavy design with a very small head gives it a unique appearance similar to a hermit crab as well as the wings that cover its turrets giving it a majestic yet powerful appearance.

These are some low-poly blockouts I created for my three best designs. I tried to match them as closely as I could to my sketched silhouettes to help me imagine how they would appear in 3D. I will be using these blockouts to help me when drawing my sketches for my final designs to make sure I keep the proportions mostly accurate and to help me gain a better sense of depth and perspective.

I'm very happy with how these turned out as although they're quite messy, they are for the most part very consistent in shape with my photobashes and they don't need to be too high quality as I will only be using them as a reference to draw over, so I think these should work really well. The only small issue I have with them is that for the squid's tentacles and the beetle's tails, they are completely straight with no curves or bends as I couldn't figure out an easy way to achieve that effect. However, it doesn't matter too much as I probably wouldn't need to trace these features too much anyway due to their flailing and loose properties giving them a lot more flexibility in how they're positioned.

These are some designs I created over the blockouts to experiment with different colour ideas. For each design, I tried to vary the colours used to find what mood and theme they gave the character and to find which colours worked well together in these designs.

To decide which colours I will be using for my final designs, I will find multiple palettes for each design which I and others think work best, then combine them, keeping my favourite colours for separate parts of the design and tweaking them so that they work better together. This will hopefully lead to a design that is eye-catching, looks nice and fits well into my theme.

Immediately, some of the designs that stand out most to me are designs that incorporate blues and whites. I think these colours work together so well as they feel very plastic and metallic, making it clearer that these creatures are mechanical. On top of that, they are very bright, clean colours which are associated with science and technology, fitting well into the sci-fi theme I'm going for.

4.1 - Test Pieces

Test Pieces refer to prototypes, in-progress work and/or first attempts at creating your visual assets.

You are expected to provide test pieces for each visual asset.

This is the progression my designs went through to reach my final design, starting with the blockout, then continuing into the sketch, lineart, colour and effects. I created this board to help display my work process on my ArtStation.

I'm really happy with how my final designs have turned out and I definitely believe that the test pieces I did to reach this point are a large factor of that. The colour scheme I ended up choosing is a mix between the two colour schemes that seemed to be the most popular when I asked friends and peers for their opinions, and I think the colours do work really well for the theme I was going for as the whites and blues help to make the design appear very futuristic and sci-fi.

These are the final two presentation boards I created to display my design. I tried to really highlight the sci-fi theme with glowing, light-blue colours with a lot of glowing effects and a sleek design to make it appear like it's being displayed on some kind of tablet or monitor screen. I expanded on this further in the second slide where I applied a blue, grid pattern onto the design and created a transparent blue circle behind it, making it appear as though it was being scanned and analysed, which I think turned out really nicely. I ended up not including the colour palette as I had initially planned, as I felt there wasn't really a good space for me to place it as well as me deeming it to be unnecessary.

I also tried to include a lot of description to help explain certain design choices contained within the character, explaining how its purpose is for resource management in environments that are too dangerous for humans to explore. I go much more into detail about this in the second slide, where I annotate each feature of the design and explain their purposes. To add a little more character and storytelling to the design, I created the name Winged Mechluse (Mech Recluse), and gave it the scientific name of Araneae Pteromekhos, which essentially means winged, mechanical spider. The inclusion of a scientific name was done to try and link it further back to my initial idea of a mythological creature, as scientific names often include words from ancient Greek and Latin languages.

This is the thumbnail I designed to display my project on ArtStation. I enlarged the front-facing view to be larger than the canvas, making it more visible and impactful as well as enhancing its pre-existing glow effects and adding some new ones, especially around its eye, to make it appear a lot more bright, vibrant and visible.

I also re-used the background I created for the presentation boards, warping it a bit to fit it into the smaller resolution, as I felt it did a great job at conveying the futuristic, sci-fi theme I was trying to achieve.

For the title of the project, I used a huge font with thick, blocky letters to help make it readable and noticeable. For the smaller fonts, I used a less blocky albeit still pixelated font to remain in the sci-fi theme and to help the title of the project stand out against them.

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