Digital Art

Week 27

Initialising Ideas:

In this block, we are being asked to design a prop and primarily consider function for a fleshed out and practical design; form follows the function so I'll be sure to consider the visual elements of the prop being cohesive with my character's design as it is her own utility tool/weapon. For this session, I'm going to consider what prop I'll create and produce a mood board to visualise realistic examples and stylised renditions of the prop I choose.

Skinz-N-Hydez (2011) Brass Plated Bracer. Available at: Brass Plated Bracer by Skinz-N-Hydez on DeviantArt (Accessed March 2025)

Catalola (2017) Star Guardian Ezreal [League of Legends]. Available at: Steam Workshop::Star Guardian Ezreal [League of Legends] (Accessed March 2025)

David Hua (2020) Fantasy Bracer. Available at: ArtStation - Fantasy Bracer (Accessed March 2025)

I produced a quick sketch over Silver Lining to envision the prop on her as she's using it. I used tones to suggest the different layers - I'll go more in depth on structure when I start drawing but I imagine there's a main layer that clings to the arm, followed by another layer that would likely define the shape more, projecting outwards to embed the magnifying glass in. I think the latex sleeve could have heat resistant properties which is why she wears the bracer on this arm, preventing burns from the light refraction.

Dev Log Evaluation:

I think I've got a solid idea conjured up and the concept makes sense. I plan to have a bracer wrapped around the arm with the backside omitted, replaced by leather straps with star shaped buckles that form the shape once connected, adding cohesivity to the design with her star motif. The next layer would protrude outwards with tertiary detail like metal scoring with sharp lines to maintain consistency in the shape language. For next lesson, I plan to experiment on silhouettes to explore the primary shape of the bracer, like how I want a similar shape for the top to the yellow areas on the trouser bottoms.

lenas birthday is 13th of july :3

Week 31

Considering Function:

With the prop of a bracer decided, I aimed to explore its purpose and use in this lesson. Since bracers are fairly limited in design thanks to its function of protecting the forearm, I wanted to spruce up the visuals by implementing utilities that would cause variation in the design and complexity in its function rather than being a plain old bracer.

Quick Exploration Sketches:

A 3D construction of the bracer fitted on an arm. Just the shape without design points or straps underneath.

Quick sketch of a comet-like design for the bracer with a gem embedded, reflecting the materialistic nature of silver lining. This may play into the magnifying glass idea, although a magnifying glass could not absorb heat and reflect it to damage people if it were embedded in the bracer.

Some milkyway iconography, perhaps these are some sort of spinning mechanism like blades. For now, it's just simple exploration of shapes to implement on the design.

Visualising a stylised bracer on Silver Lining to see how it would fit - straps connecting the back and the bracer covering the forearm's front. I believe the bracer needs to be shorter because otherwise it'd stab into her upper arm and restrict her movement.

This next set of sketches portrayed the idea of a set of magnifying glasses or blades that pop out, perhaps with a button press or magnets like Bakugan toys. The silhouette gets strengthened as the previous 4-point star becomes 8, increasing the sharp and vicious shape language which aligns to Silver Lining's demeanour.

After speaking to my tutors about my design, we decided that the embedded magnifying glass wouldn't work as it needs both sides exposed to work. I could do a mechanism like those on a rotating stand used by professionals but I wanted to keep the function simple (it's too much thought for my brain to handle).

I aimed to have a simple function, but something at least present to show a level of thought and complexity in the design. Therefore, I tried to design a bracer based purely on function as I'd explore the visual features in my silhouettes later on. I drew this in an exploded view to show how each layer connects in the design.

I drew a 2D projection from the side with each part labelled here.

A: The bracer itself.
B: The extruding pillar that holds the blades and uplifts the top layer.
C: An underneath layer that strengthens the stability of the topmost layer.
D: The topmost layer that mostly acts as eye candy with a visually appealing design, hiding the mechanics underneath so her look still feels sleek.
E: These are the blades attached to B's pillar. I imagine their handles are constructed like clips on toys so they only come loose if they're strongly tugged on. The knives are lined with metal that hold a layer of magnifying glass within so Silver Lining can slash with close combat and reflect light with the glass to burn her enemies from afar.

This is the kind of toy clip I mean, but it'd be made out of something more sturdy for the sake of lasting in battle. I imagine the number of blades that are attached stack on-top of one another so they aren't loose and swinging about.

Silhouettes:

With the general mechanics of the prop figured out, I would begin exploring silhouettes; this is in order to gauge what shapes communicate the prop's purpose, shape language and therefore personality, and finally, sufficient reminiscence of Silver Lining - the prop's user. I mostly focused on iconography and recognisable imagery, specifically those occurring in Silver Lining's design, such as the four-pronged stars, comet-like curves, and generally sharp, vicious shapes.

I was aiming to capture something of a traditional armoured bracer with silhouette A, having the usual cylindrical shape with sharp prongs protruding from the each end. For the top layer, I drew a 4-pronged star with curved blades underneath. This mixed the sharp and threatening shape language and personality of Silver Lining with her curved comet-like hair. The darkest value in this iteration represents armour reinforcement at the edges that are slightly curved so SL doesn't accidentally harm herself.

For B, I wanted to created something vertically strong, seeing as a lot of SL's clothing like her latex sleeve and trousers appear long and graceful, therefore I wanted to emulate the same effect in her bracer. The bracer itself is diamond-shaped, conveying her materialistic and superficial personality through the iconography of valuable gems.

Iteration C represents SL's secondary shapes in soft arcs, representing comets and space. Therefore, this bracer utilises the softer implications of the silhouettes to function more as a shield with an embedded mirror-ball used to reflect light projectiles. This iteration resembles a milky way, supported by the curved daggers.

D focused most on resembling a comet to follow Silver Lining's theme through recognisable imagery, sporting longer blades. The rounded edge meeting her elbow is to prevent harm to herself, while the sharp end by her hand is used to attack up close, like that of a bayonet.

E had a similar image-based purpose, aiming to reinforce SL's bitter personality through the abundance of sharp prongs with two long blades peeking out. The topmost armour plate implies the glowing of a shooting star, the surrounding layers being the accumulation of heat, implying the anger and resentment bubbling inside of Silver Lining.

I tried again at the traditional bracer concept for F, with a subtle take on the shooting star shape for the base with Silver Lining's signature logo lying atop. Instead of daggers, I implemented throwing knives for a more elegant look to support the idea of SL's focus on beauty.

G is a combination of sharp edges and curves to connect them, taking from the sharpness of Silver Lining's clothes and the arc in her hair; this prop is an embodiment of her overall design.

I started to trail off and try something new with H, with an assortment of shapes with chaotic placement, the wing emblem is definitely cool but it was unintentional and not suited to SL.

The next iteration, I, is another rounded shield design with swirling tertiary lines. This resembles a black hole, perhaps symbolising the lethality of Silver Lining and her violent nature. I wanted to add an "S" to stand for Silver in her name, communicating her ego as she plasters self-advertisement on everything she owns.

J is rather simple, resembling a traditional star, with better close combat abilities with all the spikes. I imagine the bottom-most star shape is another load of knives.

K has a focus on materialism again, bolstering a large, shimmering jewel as the top layer, perhaps with mirror plates on-top to use light-based projectiles, while possessing six thin, elongated, and sharp daggers. These knives support the resemblance of the jewel shimmering, like a silver lining in the sky (see what I did there).

Finally, I made L to support the silhouette of the latex sleeve it sits on with two large spikes diverging and leading upwards to support the sleeve. My aim here was to add both initials in Silver Lining's name; the dual-wielded blades attach to the bracer, resembling a large S with an emblem atop that reads "L" in an elegant embossed font. Together, this makes "SL", but with the blades detached and reading just "L", it symbolises the person underneath the alias. The weapons removed give this prop a purely defensive purpose, suggesting that "Lucille" underneath sports this dramatic persona to distant herself from intimacy, love and connection.

Dev Log Evaluation:

Exploring silhouettes has helped clarify the design of this bracer, being able to visualise it better with these iterations. My personal favourites are B, E, F, G, and L for the visual connotations and narrative implications beneath. With these preferred iterations, I'll aim to combine their best aspects to make a final silhouette that I can develop, adding tertiary detail and material callouts too. Then, I'll be able to explore value and colour iterations, hopefully all within the next week.

Week 32

Refining the Silhouette:

With my silhouettes complete, I aimed to refine the prop's shape and appearance so it's ready for the value/colour iteration. I wanted to be looser with this so I doodled it on paper.

For the first attempt, I incorporated features from silhouette C, D, and E. I extracted the curving, rounded shape of C, the combination of round and sharp in the comet concept of D, and the sharper "shooting star" idea of E that harbours multiple daggers originating from the star itself.

I aimed to create the recognisable comet shape that aligns with Silver Lining's hairdo. This helps add cohesion of shapes within her design, as this curvy form is the secondary shape within the design - less present, but reoccurring throughout.

For this version, I enlarged the topmost layer to bring emphasis to it with the embedded gem, drawing eyes to it for communicating SL's focus on glamour and material properties.

I added a few lines to the area of the embedding to callout the metal texture. For the curving knives attached underneath, I made two short and one long for flexibility in combat; the dark outlines serve as the transition to a different material better for handling the daggers. I envisioned tertiary design in star-like iconography lining the knives although this isn't set in stone as I wouldn't want to disturb the function of the magnifying glass the dagger holds.

The dark outline of the whole bracer is likely a sturdy metal, allowing for shield-like properties. The darker area leading down the bracer from the top layer is where the pillar upholding the top layer originates; so instead of another round shape, I dragged it downwards to strengthen the comet gesture. This also goes for the tertiary design of the plain area on the bracer, as this will likely follow the contour for the same effect.

Dev Log Evaluation:

After refining the silhouette, I've concluded that the 2nd doodle is stronger so I'll take this one forward in the design process. I much prefer the large emphasis on the gem representing the comet, symbolising the star theme of SL along with her superficial nature. Following this, I'll carry out the value/colour iterations and finally render the completed design.

TUTOR FEEDBACK: keep the silhouette by adding hinge towards end to allow movement for wrist; this keeps silhouette without harming hands.

Added protective padding in the form of a sleeve ending at the wrist.

I found this protective fabric sleeve on Amazon said to prevent injury such as skin tears, therefore perfect for the sharp edges of the bracer.

Fabric components: 89% Polypropylene, 8% Nylon, 2% Spandex, and 1% Elastic.

This one ends at the knuckles to protect the wrist too, with different material properties with 96% performance polyester and 4% spandex.

I considered the placement of the bracer with the new hinge function in mind, along with some iteration on the strap although I scrapped that for the protective sleeve. I drew the prop on a straight and bent wrist to demonstrate the way it shifts with the hinge. Thank you stock images <3

Here are the values redone to accommodate for the hinge and protective sleeve.

Dyed aluminium can account for the protective wrap around the bracer and the top layer below the embedded gem; this metal is lightweight and therefore practical, the dye allows for colour exploration, and it's also corrosion resistant (SL would want to keep it sleek and squeaky clean). This material can work for the hinge too.

Metal clay can be used to embed the gem as it allows for tertiary detail.

Shaped magnifying glass for the daggers.

Carbon fibre dagger handles.

The dagger's shape and function is basically a karambit.

Whole bracer is made of thermoplastic, torched and sculpted into shape with the aluminium protecting the edges. This is commonly used for cosplay props and therefore, can be painted to add shine or any colour.

(Prop Creators: Christopher Tock, Sammy and Chad Van Wye.)

Polyester protective sleeve.

Ideally a smooth tumbled gem embedded, but a carat cut one may work too! They work for the sharp shape language but may be complex to render. I'll decide in the rendering stage if I'll do smooth or cut.

In testing my preferred iteration on my character, I tweaked a few values to ensure they were harmonious with Silver Lining's design and that no values were random or clashing with the design as this needs to look like something fitted to her appearance.

Dev Log Evaluation:
I've explored value iterations and reworked the bracer with a hinge on the end to maintain the silhouette but allow movement in the wrist. With the function finalised and material callouts made, I'll aim to do colour iterations and create material IDs in thumbnail form. The colours should be easy to do since my palette is limited as SL is a generally dual-toned character with accents of blue.

For the next session, I'll aim to have all of the exploration complete and the prop ready to draw and render.

Colour Iterations:

With the value distribution sorted, I was able to start my colour iterations; I wouldn't be exploring colour too crazy, given that I want to maintain the primarily dual-toned theme of my character who consists mostly of yellow/gold and purple. She has accents of orange and a tinge of blue in her cloudy, blinded eyes that I could also use to strengthen the appearance of this colour.

This first iteration was super cluttered, I just colour dropped from my character and hoped for the best. The bracer itself having gold (dyed aluminium) plating and a light cream thermoplastic base was really strong and truly comes across like lightweight armour, but the rest of the colours were all over the place. The deep orange applied grossly and there wasn't enough of it to be consistent in the design.

My aim in this iteration is to replicate the dual-toned design of Silver Lining, to achieve recognisability of who uses this prop, and also to decrease messiness. Being limited in colour usage, sticking mostly to gold and purple allows for a cleaner design that makes sense and doesn't overwhelm the viewer. I tweaked the value of the gem and knives slightly to get a blue tinge on the knives and maintain the magnifying glass material. I darkened the gem ever so slightly so saturation comes through as an area that pops in the design and draws eyes towards it.

The third iteration was somewhat of a reverse of the second, but introducing orange too. I distributed the colours with gold as the major tone, followed by orange and purple, and finally the smallest accent of blue. The colour distribution mirrors Silver Lining well with purple as her primary tone, followed by gold, then orange and blue as the minor accents.

Four is another dual-tone attempt with orange instead, but this feels a little too warm and inviting for Silver Lining's villainy.

The final iteration is a combination of all my favoured features on the previous versions; I kept the gold-plated armour appearance of the first but I distributed this tone across most of the bracer, with purple appearing just on the knives and sleeve. The final touch is blue within the gem, which perfectly works for the primary gold, secondary purple, and accent blue that is distributed greatly. I desaturated the warm purple of the sleeve slightly to distinguish it better from the dark indigo latex sleeve SL wears. This is my pick!!

Week 36

After ensuring everything for game prod was done in due time, I could use the final week to prioritise digital; I decided to scrap the 3D model blockout and sketch out my prop.

I gave the bracer a slight angled tilt to distinguish it from the front view, and give it some dimension before the rendering process. I used a box primitive to establish the perspective by fitting the prop into the box to ensure its rotation is correct as it'll align with the box.

I imported the sketch to photoshop and started blocking in each component on its own layer. From here, I put each part into a group and ctrl + clicked the layer thumbnail to select everything, adding a black mask to the group. This meant anything drawn in the group would only affect that particular element.

The black mask separation made rendering easy; I started with the aluminium armour around the edges, separating them by 3 values, calling back to the "1-2-3 read" technique which adds distinction to each face on the object, clearly portraying its faceted edges. I strengthened this idea with highlights and shadows on the edges as they collect uniformly on sharp edges. The major highlight is blocked in largely to show the material's reflectivity.

For the fabric sleeve, I used a chalk brush and a dithering effect with my pen to get a rough, woolly read.

To get the carbon fibre texture of the upholder, I set the tone with an airbrush followed by a splatter texture brush for the grainy nature of carbon fibre. I used a light value for these grains to depict the smoothness of carbon fibre despite the grain.

I placed the values of the gem flat before using gaussian blur to soften and unify them.

The highlight area can be found at the bottom as the light is absorbed and bounces through the gem; the local value and core shadow are found in the middle, technically the top too, as the surface highlight obscures them.

Most of the components are rendered at this point, starting with separating the faces by value and then rendering the shadows and highlights.

To implement realism and improve the plausibility of this prop, I used an airbrush to add cast shadows. This shows how the components all interact with one another and are unified.

In tackling the magnifying glass daggers, I considered how the values would occur. They'd be magnified (no way) and blurred too, seeing as these are made for practical combat with light manipulation rather than observing. I added the tone beneath and blurred it, followed by soft highlights.

Before colouring, I added the cast shadow by duplicating the group with all the rendering and flattening it. I used the transform tool to position the duplicated layer to support the front-facing light source, followed by filling it in grey and blurring the edges.

Gradient maps supported me in the colour process, using linear maps to establish the hue, followed by overlay layers to bring depth and tonal variation in.

Final Render:

With the render complete, I added the flat orthographic turnaround with measurements to support it.

Post Mortem:

I was aware digital would be a lower priority within this block thanks to game production's heavy workload, but I wanted to give it my all anyway; since I would be going abroad on the final week, I aimed to prioritise game prod and finish it all before then so I could do digital on my laptop while on holiday.

In tackling this issue, I concluded that I must focus on keeping time management in check. I followed the optional weekly goals we had to ensure I kept up with the workflow and had all my design exploration complete early. This meant I could focus on 3D until going away. From then, I prioritised digital exclusively. Even with a week left, I was pleasantly surprised at my improved efficiency in rendering. It took me less than a day to complete the final render, which makes sense due to the low deliverables expectations, but I could tell my efficiency was better. I believe this is due to the consideration I made before the final render, for materials, value and colour.

I've found digital to be my weakest point throughout the year, in terms of confidence, so seeing the result of this block is encouraging! I've improved at rendering and definitely combined all of my previous knowledge into this project - the material studies from block 1 were a major help, knowing how metal/fabric/gems interact with light and reflect. The magnifying glass was definitely a challenge, but the stylised approach took the pressure away with vaguer blocks of colour being magnified. My narrative consideration also reflects in the prop, Silver Lining as the owner is visible thanks to my use of cohesive colours and familiar shape language, with star-like iconography and silhouettes. Functionality was another challenge since I don't consider myself an engineer, but creating an exploded view helped greatly. This is a bonus since it's a common industry practice in prop creation!

Overall, I've found this to be a great conclusion to the first year. My skills have come a long way, seeing improvement in perspective consideration, rendering in grayscale and applying gradient maps, therefore consideration of colour, and overall stylistic decisions. I've found many projects to be satisfactory, detailed and believable but not pleasing to the eye. I'm glad that I finally feel good when I look at this piece, both feeling plausible and being aesthetically pleasing. I look forward to furthering my skills in the second year!

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