Digital Art

Week 9

Idea Generation:

Before I begin this project, it's important to have a clear idea of what you want to create. In order to clarify the concept I desire, I will create mood boards representing a few themes with other artist's assets and models from games to understand how other creators tackle the concepts; compiling these ideas will assist me in the early stages of development, with many references to work from.

Dev Log Evaluation:

With these two concepts in mind, both considering visual theme and practical trade, I've attained clarity in this subject. While I found the blacksmith concept interesting, seeing how it succeeds in the game the Legend of Zelda: BOTW, I feel hesitance in pursuing this idea; I believe the rock-clad structure resembles my previous treasure chest project too much. I learned a lot from painting rocks and lava in that block, but I want to prove myself able to have artistic range and challenging myself with a bright and cutesy concept like the gingerbread house.

Week 10

Developing Ideas:

With the gingerbread house concept selected, I began to develop these ideas by visualising potential props. There are two routes I could take this concept; a manmade gingerbread house with drizzly icing to connect walls and the roof, slightly imperfect markings of frosting for the windows and chaotic sprinkles of icing sugar, crumbs scattered all around. The other route is to have a house situated in a world enveloped in sweets with traditional house structure but all the materials made of sweets instead with trees made of candy floss, wooden beams of chocolate, biscuit plaster walls, glass made of hard boiled sweets and a chocolately brick pattern for a foundation.

I found myself really leaning into this excessively saccharine world, examining other examples in Nintendo games as they succeed in this concept thanks to their young target audience that allows for a vibrant colour scheme with highly stylised environments, not a single detail left unadapted to the candy world. At this point, I had to consider a form of trade for this house and since a peer was already doing a gingerbread house sweet shop, I felt as though I couldn't pursue a food related trade and therefore considered other concepts.

(The Shopkeeper)

My first idea was a wool shop; I sketched up this shopkeeper concept of a sheep, his woolly coat made of soft candy floss. I also had the idea that this sheep made premium balls of wool from his own coat, which could be morally debatable and realistically unrealistic but it explains his place of upholding a shop in this trade. Prop wise, I considered a large centre piece on the house to visually represent the trade, through a bundle of strawberry lace protruding from the walls to resemble a ball of wool which effectively communicates the trade. Although I was still unsure due to the trade's niche.

Week 11

Trade Concepts:

At this point, I was still feeling conflicted about the shop's trade. I went on holiday to a seaside town and visited a small gem shop, which sparked inspiration in me.

While the gem shop was full of interesting sights, I was unsure how it would apply to a gingerbread house. For the gems themselves, they could be made of hard boiled sweets such a popping candy, ring pops, and konpeito. The last image in this collecting greatly resembles konpeito in shape, which is a sweet made of sugar - very fitting for the theme. This concept could certainly work for the interior, but I'd have to include an extruding stall featuring the products to communicate the trade.

In the anticipation for Christmas, I felt drawn to this theme for my house; I find that Christmas and festivity in itself is a very thematically strong event with lots of food and objects associated with it, making it easily recognisable and communicated. I decided to explore the concept of a Christmas ornament shop selling tinsel, baubles, intricately decorated stars atop the pine trees that grow in the backyard.

I used this mood board to explore potential props for this Christmas ornament shop, taking from previous ideas and annotating each idea's purpose in the scene. With my conflict for the concept resolved, I was ready to start exploring the house's layout in itself.

Week 15

Silhouette/Layout and Value Experimentation:

Following Christmas break, I began artistic work on my house starting with practicing isometric work, creating iterations in layout to gain familiarity in the isometric format and attain a visually intriguing composition structurally. I also began working on applying value to these to understand how the distribution of a primary secondary, and possibly accent value could work for the thumbnails before I apply colour.

Week 16

Colour Iterations:

With the layout for the house decided, I started experimenting with applying colours. I considered a primary, secondary and accent colour since I had the values decided already.

Having the colours decided meant I was finally ready to work on the final artwork of the house. Previously, I felt conflicted about the colours due to my hesitance about it too heavily resembling my classmate's concept who was doing the traditional gingerbread colours with white icing, so I'm very happy to have found a good scheme that feels unique but fitting to the theme.

Week 17

Creating the Final Artwork:

This week, I began working on the final piece with an isometric grid to ensure the angles are all accurate and presented correctly in this format. I started by drawing straight lines following the grid for a correct foundation before applying the curves and details.

Next, I implemented detail to the layout by adding curves, beams and dimension; I also added some of the props I plan to include.

At this point, I began working on the textures I'd be using to repurpose throughout the artwork that adds efficiency to the rendering process.

To create the chocolate biscuit, I started with a soft brown and added to it with a chalk brush of lighter, cooler colours and darker, warmer browns reaching red to add hue variation. Then, I blended it with a "scratch blend" brush to establish the biscuity foundation.

Next, I created a layer above the foundation and filled it with a solid brown colour. Going to the "Filter" dropdown tab and choosing "Noise", I applied some for some fuzziness. Lowering the opacity of this layer created subtly in the texture, resembling the grainy surface of biscuits that combine with the softness of baked goods.

For the final touches, I took a near-white colour with a brown hue and a special effect brush known as "Splatter" to sprinkle in drops of icing sugar to create the dusted effect. The brush itself is likely used for liquid splatters but using it at a low opacity and selecting the "Size by Pressure" option, drawing lightly with my pen, allowed for gentle sprinkles of sugar.

For the biscuit beams, I started in greyscale to ensure the baked nature of the beams, so thin that the edges are darkened, showed strong contrast. I used the same "Chalk" brush to create the grainy texture in a lighter tone, showing the baked edges which I used a darker tone to emphasize. Finally, I added subtle splatters of sugar to finish the texture in greyscale.

I used a gradient map starting with muted orange and finished with light beige to imitate a shortbread beam. I followed this up with more pronounced splatters of icing sugar, and painted on dark and light splotches to show crumbs. Finally, I create a clipping mask layer above the beam with the "Overlay" blend mode selected to change the hue. I used a vibrant coral pink, since it alleviated the warmth and coziness of the shop.

For the chocolate wood beams, I started with a flat brown colour, adding cooler, darker streaks as shadows will always be cooler. Next, I used an oil paintbrush with a warmer brown to blend the streaks for a blended look with more hue variation. I went in with the original brown to thin out the streaks some more, and using the darkest brown of the scheme very thinly to define the streaks' depth. Next, I added short, light and dark highlights to show the smoothness of chocolate. Finally, I went into "Adjustments" in the "Image" dropdown menu, selecting "Brightness/Contrast" to lower the brightness in order to define the beams as the darkest value of the composition.

I received feedback in Game Production that my old windows, supposed to be hard boiled candy glass, looked like human flesh and the bubbles looked like pimples; due to the short time I had to redo them, I whipped them up with a layered gradient of bubblegum pink, using streaks of an airbrush with a light pink to mimic the diagonal shine of stylised window panes, followed by sparkles made with an airbrush ~80% hardness. The white chocolate icing was made using a hard brush to paint the foundation, followed by a lighter coloured airbrush to create its soft look.

For the candy floss foliage to represent tinsel, I used a thick ink brush to create the soft and fluffy foundations.

This was followed by using a "Cloud" brush at a small size and lighter green to create depth, the original colour making the shadows.

I added onto this with an even smaller size and warmer green, nearing yellow, to show warm light where the highlights are hit by the sun. Finally, I used an eraser with the same "Cloud" brush type to erase some edges to attain that thin, wispy texture of candy floss.

I also changed the hue in a duplicated version to a cream hue and increased the brightness a lot to match the other white chocolate icing assets.

I used the default brush with pressure by size selected to create the piped look of melted chocolate. This was followed by a soft airbrush of a lighter, warmer colour to create dimension in the chocolate, finalised with a thinner airbrush of a much lighter colour to create highlights that portray the shine of melted chocolate.

Week 18:

Finalising the Artwork:

Using the textures I previously created, I applied them to the house to establish the base colours and build upon them.

Next, I added the painted props, created a layer above the base colours with the "Multiply" blend mode selected and a clipping mask applied to only affect the base colours layer. Using a solid purple colour at a low opacity, I establish a core shadow that fits with the warm colour scheme and implies a warm lighting due to the cooler tone of purple, which has both cool and warm in it.

For a finishing touch, I filled in a light blue background with an airbrushed gradient using yellow underneath to indicate a sunrise in the environment, followed by using an ink brush to paint in a grassy plinth, using a colour close to the candy floss tinsel for cohesion's sake, finally adding soft clouds with a fluffy "Cloud" brush to help implicate the sunny skies.

Dev Log Evaluation:

With this project finished, I have strong feelings about it; I conducted my research well in the visualisation of ideas through mood boards, annotated well. I believe my experimentation came together well for a good concept that represents the Christmas spirit and utilised the warm colour palette to achieve the appeal of food, which is visually most appealing in red and yellow (warm colours), and approachability which narratively promotes the thriving business of the shop.

I do feel great regret and shame for my inability to manage time sufficiently to give myself enough time to paint the final piece, which I know I could've done much better if given the time. I believe this is in part due to my irresponsibility, but I've also experienced difficulty in working efficiently, missing digital classes in the morning due to sleep deprivation mostly and travelling back home mid week and at the weekend to see my family and friends. The commute often tired me out and I couldn't work effectively. This is no excuse however.

For the next block, I have plans to increase my responsibility by waking up early consistently no matter what time I went to sleep as this will help me attend morning classes, and I will try to stay in Leicester for the whole week as this can keep me in the work mindset, meaning I can still go home at the weekend to relax, as long as I work consistently in the week. I know I can do much better so I look forward to proving my worth in the following block. Time management is my enemy I will conquer.

The end.

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