This is a piece I drew before really looking into the project, this is the starting image or picture I had to start with, the picture is rough and not very good but it shows a progression of what I thought he would look like and what he does now…
Shot outside has obviously changed as the character doesn’t see the outside game level, I might however do a Illustration of all the characters outside in a “LOST” kinda of style.
As part of the main character I am going to create two Illustrations and maybe more if I have time after designing the others. I am hoping that these illustrations tell more of the character back story and personality. I am going for the more realism style however like said earlier its a very HL2 art style and so the character will be made realistic to an art style with the limit of modeller skill and technology.
This first one took a few hours and while I’m not totally satisfied with it I am going to leave it for now as you can get wrapped up too much doing details, I am hoping again it shows some of his personality and predicament. The chair is from the modeled Business class seats and he has taken advantage of the drinks menu available to him. He is located near the back of the seats as this would take less impact than the front, it also allows him to go forward and explore.
My next painting was more of a speed painting to depict the chaos of waking up in this crash plane environment, nobody is there and what is going on is unknown. It was also a test at some colour.
Below was the design I went with as a final, the reasons for my choices were on my previous tries at different clothing. I chose jeans as an option due to the fact he lives in this hot country so he is more used to the heat, a lot of times on holiday I see the residents there wearing jeans as shorts can seem informal. The reason I went against shorts were that the character almost looked to touristy for being a resident. The Hawaiian shirt I was briefed combined with shorts didn’t really look too great and made him look more of a fat lazy joke character where I wanted him to have a sense off strength to survive the crash. Due to the potential project of this becoming a game I thought to keep the items on him limited so they did not have to model too much. However I have given subtle items such as a Rio Olympics watch, which goes back to the storyline, and marriage ring and a cross necklace to show his religious beliefs. The religion could be played on with his drink problem and the situation he is in.
I have wanted a vastly different character after crash so you can see he has gone through the ordeal, while I watched a live plane crash on a channel 4 documentary, the dummies didn’t actually take too much damage other than the initial impact. There was a few debris that could have hit the dummies but altogether I have not added too much wear and tear on the character. He has too cuts/rips in clothing where I am suggesting it got caught on snags of debris. I thought a good way of making the character stand out was to have a huge wine stain down his shirt, this fits in with the character’s story and adds a very different style to the character that boarded the plane. His shirt is also popped open. The only problem would be telling the story that it is wine that has been spilled and not blood, this could be from a short cinematic or props around him that hint to this.
Working as a group designing a potential game, all the parts need to come together and look the same. The modelling is a quite realistic design of an commercial airplane, this means my character designs cannot be majorly far from that sort of feel. A cartoony character would definitely look out of place in this world. However realism is a two edged sword, it can look really nice however if it is the slightest bit wrong it will be seen as strange and have a bad feel to it. This is stated as “uncanny valley” when something aspires to realism but doesn’t quite get there and ends up looking horrible. This is due to the fact we as humans see real life every day, we know what things look like, what they should look like and when failing to look exactly like it should, it looks wrong.
The art style I will compare my characters most like to is Half Life, you can see from the image above of the real life to model sheet, that they were not going for a realistic look but rather to get as close as technology can get it in a exaggerated realism style. The faces don’t look real, but they look human and are recognisable. With this style I feel if it ever came for someone to model my character they would suit the environment and not look like a disfigured human being. I have created this by giving my character cartoony exaggerated features, he has a small forehead small eyes a large jaw and big mouth, things look slightly out of proportion (much like Team Fortress 2) but in a manner that looks human and more realistic in texture.
This image kind of shows how caricatures can subtly effect a face. I am heading for the middle ground in this, I want the design to be exaggerated out of realism but not so far it doesn’t fit in with the realistic environment.
For my dissertation I am choosing to compare two artists, the first being Richard Anderson, he has worked on a lot of book covers and most notably worked for 8 years in Arenanet on Guild Wars 1 and 2. The main reason I have chosen this artist is his unique style of painting, they revolve a lot around loose messy painting and custom brushes giving an energetic and lively feel. The way he conveys his strokes and colours mean the subject however is easily recognisable for what it actually is but with a beautiful feel to it. Below is some of his work so you can see for yourselves.
Artistsarena.org is a website created by Xia Taptara who is an artist I have followed for a while and used for tutorials. The website has regular competitions in which I will start to enter, the reasons this is good I believe is that it is not filled with professional standard artwork all the time, it is a lot about learning digital art and progressing, there can also be some nice feedback given. I have just missed the most recent one which was a brief of combining Red riding hood with horror. I might give this a go even though I’m late and see how people respond to the artwork.
Here are some rough designs started before painting the initial character design. I am working hard to try and improve my thumbnail sketching and designs as it is a weak point of mine at the moment, hopefully by the end of this module it will have improved. The idea of these sketches were to get a feel for the human form but also get a sense of how big, arm to leg to body proportions etc.
Here is the design sheets for some clothing, I created a few sketches of his body blocking out roughly and I have chosen the body on this page. The reason for choosing this is that while being overweight he is still quite muscular and strong, this implies his hard working background and also adds to the believability that this person could possibly survive a plane crash scenario given the right chances.
Here are some facial designs and the pictures I have used as reference and worked from. One character that I felt was similar to mine was the uncle in Ben10. While being overweight he has a major role in defeating aliens and this is despite his lack of magical or alien powers. This type of hero is seen as strong despite not being a skinny muscular hero, this is the look I want for my character. On the side of looks I am going I suppose a more exaggerated look when designing to give him a smaller forehead and a very large squarish head. I am also able to portray this character good nature with this face while when angry looking very mean, its a face that portrays his mood very well de to the exaggerations.
This was a design produced for a presentation and the team felt it necessary to show some design of the main protagonist. I am going to work on with this but try the clothing, small changes to the characters shape and work on the personality and how this shows. The first thing I want to nail down is his body shape and facial features after that I can work on his emotions what they look like and how he moves etc. I plan to show these in design sheets, I am finding this quite challenging and fun due to the fact I have not really had experience drawing a larger human being. Mostly in the past I have painted or draw muscular heroes.
I have pictured him with a small bag due to the fact I am planning on doing a before crash and after crash picture for most characters. This will help tell the story more and allow you to see what they have gone through… a crash landing.
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