silent hero

Hello everyone! This week has been pretty good except for the fact that I contracted a cold which has left me with no voice... The best thing is that I had to work on the DMU open day and talk to people. Anyway, this cold has slowed my progress down this week which means I am behind schedule in terms of what I should be working on atm. I do not want to skip any bits of process in order to finish the project, therefore it is time to step up my game and work harder.

So, I iterated some more, trying to push the high fashion theme and I really like some of the ideas in here. At this point though, because I hadn't spoken to anyone I wasn't very sure how to push the avant-garde concepts. I was afraid that my character would look like a fashionista rather than an armoured hero. In the end, I decided to go for the bottom right design as it looks like a safe yet cool design.

I did iterate a little bit the original design in order to find out what outfit would suit him better. I felt that baggy trousers were not the way to go for an agile sneaky armoured character and in the end the urban outfit was the one that appealed to me the most. I also struggled deciding what to do with the face 'glasses?helmet?headband?goggles?'

while deciding what to do with the face, my boyfriend who always gives me constructive critisism on my designs, had the idea of making my character wear a mask, like the Venetian ones. An expressionless, cold, mysterious mask. Then I took the basic concept and turned it into a futuristic mask. The idea was to have a predominantly metal mask with subtle neon lights going through it.

Once the design was complete, it was time for colouring! I created my colour palettes by picking them from my mood boards. Halfway through the process I realised that the colours that worked better were the ones that were close to each other in the colour palette with the addition of one or two complementaries. Also, my character is a city hero and being realistic, he wouldn't look like a neon sign for everyone to notice him. therefore I chose the more subtle, darker palettes.

And this is my final design, I wanted to do more texture exploration but a tutor came to see me yesterday and he said that I need to start working on the final illustrations and then come back to finish off my designs. He also said that he liked my character exploration and that I gave a wide verity of styles to choose from and from an Art director point of view, that's very good. Him an another teacher agreed that with some direction earlier on, perhaps I could've pushed more the avant-garde idea, but overall, they are happy.

Well, this is it for now, next step is making a cool illustration (hopefully more than one..), until next time, bye!

1,2,3!

Hello! I'm back here with plenty of things to talk about! ( I doubt I will be able to explain everything in this post). Summer was good, specially the two weeks I spent in Spain, it helped me switch off from everything and recharge my batteries for this coming year.

Throughout the holidays, I had an ongoing internal debate with myself about my future as well as my aspirations and ambitions. I had been so lost on my second year that I ended up quite torn inside by the time summer came. I wasn't happy, I tried to embrace every aspect of game art as a second year (don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the projects) but in the end, I didn't even know what I enjoyed to do anymore, I had lost my spark, my flame was slowly dying. If I were to survive 3rd year I had to do something about this situation and so I looked deep within me and eventually found the answer I have known all along 'I want to do 2D'.  I believe it was towards the end of my first year that I felt that my 2D wasn't good enough and compared to other people in my course, I had no chance to become a concept artist. I was afraid and intimidated so I tried to focus on other aspects of game art in order to find something else that I could do. Now I realise that I was a fool. I don't regret what I learned on my second year, but I am angry for giving up on myself and for not having the courage to carry on no matter what. But I will not run away anymore, I know I have a long road ahead but I am ready! I will face any obstacles head on, no matter what I have to do, I will become the artist I want to be, however long that process might be!

For the first time in a long time I feel like I am myself once again, confident and eager for adventure! Being chairwoman of the Taekwondo club has also helped me shine once again. So many people are dependent on me and my decisions that I had no choice but to (excuse me for the language) 'grow a pair of balls'. So I have dusted myself off and honestly, I have started to learn to care less about what others might think.

Well, emotional stuff aside, a good chunk of my summer has been dedicated to plan the coming Taekwondo year and being leader has been tough! It is hard to 'let go' of your power. What I mean by that is that sometimes I take on tasks that other committee members should be doing because it is easier to do it myself. It is also hard to keep a good balance of discipline and friendliness, but I always try to have a diplomatic attitude no matter the situation.

                         Yep, that's me (the red belt) on DMU's matriculation ceremony.

And because of taekwondo related activities + lack of money I have missed plenty of gaming related events such as industry workshops and EGX...It really sucks not being able to go to those places but I hope to go at some point in the future.

Last but not least I would like to talk about this first week back at uni, which has been...surprising.

I went into our first lecture with no idea of what my third year was going to be like and I came out very excited! For us third years, they have created this style matrix which means every single one of us can specialise either on 3D, 2D or VFX /UI. We have a wide range of briefs to choose from and each one of them is tailored to a specific style.
I have chosen to go for the 2D oriented ones and my goal is to do a realistic, a semi-stylised and a fully stylised project. I want to have a verity of styles on my portfolio which in theory, should make me more employable in the future.

The first project I have chosen is a realistic brief, to be specific, the armoured character project. The tasks are pretty straight forward, gather reference material, concept, iterate, colour test and create a final illustration of the character. The challenge is making it realistic. My drawing is slightly stylised (do to the many years drawing manga...) and I will have to try hard to stay within the realism realm.

Considering this year is about pushing myself and my skills I though 'because making a realistic character isn't enough of challenge, let's create a futuristic character!' I never do sci-fi, like ever. I always thought it's awesome but I am more drawn to fantasy, medieval and organic looking things in general. I have always struggled to draw futuristic things, but hey, I can't run away from this forever!

I started off with a military mood board to observe how contemporary armor looks like, and to understand how technology can enhance a soldier's strength. Then I moved into a more urban style of armor, more sleek and futuristic. And then I moved onto my ultimate goal, to make my armoured hero a cyber/arcade/avant-garde looking character.

And these are my first set of characters I created. I have struggled with every single one of them, I just didn't know how to draw armour. I used line drawing for all of them and some took well over an hour to make...I know, it is embarrassing. I could've photobashed images or work with silhouettes but I think working with a brush has helped me understand their shapes and their functionality better. Also, I probably won't get a better time to take my time to analyse what I am doing than university because once I get a job, everything will be 'produce stuff quickly!'.

Anyhow, my main concern is how much can I push the futuristic design before it loses its sense of realism. I was meant to see a tutor on Friday to discuss my project but no one came to see me (they ran out of time) and it left me with all these doubts on how to go about this project. I am annoyed because everyone got feedback except me...So I'll trust my instincts and carry on with what I had in mind, maybe I'll get to talk with someone next time.

I want to push some of my designs forward, once happy with them I will move onto material definition and colour testing. Finally I will make orthographic views of my character and a final highly rendered illustration.

And this is it for now, until next time!

Carla.