Drawing for Games at PCA

Design Brief 3 - Character Design - Digital

2011-12-15T21:51:00.003+00:00

Right, So I am going to 'Digitally Realize' my character. This is going to be fun!

I am using Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 and a Wacom Bamboo Pen (New black square thing)

Stage 1: Import picture into Photoshop

Stage 2: Drawing her again

I used a hard brush of about 5px in black for the outline. The Bamboo pressure allowed me a more natural feel.

I also added a while background on a separate layer.

Step 3: Colour

I used 2 methods to fill in the colour; The select inverse method and the brush method. The brush method is easy. Just paint the space. The select inverse method is as follows;

- Go to 'outline' layer

- Using 'Magic wand tool', select all areas which you don't want to work on (eg, If you want to work on the dress, select everything which isn't the dress)

- Press Ctrl+Alt+I

- Go to new layer and fill with colour.

I keep each colour on a separate layer. This is for ease of editing later

Step 4: Shading

It is a little difficult to see in this picture, but various areas are shaded in slightly darker colours.

Step 5: Re-realization

I looked at my above image and something didn't feel right, So I went back over her and redrew the head to have the hood down and to make it look like her head is further forwards, like she is creeping towards the viewer

Step 6: Face

Using methods I have previously described, I drew on her face

Her face is a little reminiscent of a pop art picture I saw once before by Roy Lichtenstein

Step 7: Hair

I have spent a little time trying out different hair on my character (See - Character Design - Faces)

I adjusted her face a little more and added the hair like style 2

Step 8: Finalizing her

I dirtied her feet, added a subtle skin texture to the whole body and added some texture to the dress

Fin

Design Brief 3 - Character Design - Faces

2011-12-10T14:12:00.001+00:00

I have always had trouble with faces, which is why I normally focus on the clothes of a character.

Looking around online for tutorials and studies, I came across the following;
http://mytherea.deviantart.com/art/Everything-Concerning-Lips-213922565?q=gallery%3Amytherea%2F24217040&qo=0
and
http://mytherea.deviantart.com/art/Everything-Concerning-Noses-213802175?q=gallery%3Amytherea%2F24217040&qo=1

I found these to be really helpful and I would highly recommend them.
Using this new-found knowledge, I have set about drawing my own studies.

If you read the tutorials, you would realise that the nose and lips are made up primarily of circles. Above is just a quick sketch attempting to cement this idea in my mind

Above is my attempt at noses using the circle method. I have done straight on, angled, side and from below. I think this method works very well. Moving the nostrils closer together would make a more feminine looking nose.

Above is my attempt at lips. Like before, I have done front, side, side angled and from below. These lips are very feminine; removing some of the definition of the top lip and smoothing out the cupids bow would make for a more male mouth.

Hair! I need to decide on a hairstyle for Thel' so I drew up some ideas

aaaaannnnd on closer inspection......

"Centre parting. Left side over shoulder"

"Right side parting, all behind shoulders"

"Right side parting. Right side over face, left behind ear, front of shoulder"

"Centre parting, left side curtaining left shoulder, right side behind shoulder"

"Ponytail?"

In conclusion, I believe the styles that demand the most consideration are styles 2 and 4. 4 is quite sultry while 2 is, although plain, out of the way and face-defining.

Design Brief 3 - Character Design - Thel'alain

2011-12-10T14:09:00.001+00:00

Glass Elves

Appearance;

The original elven race; has an extended life. While other elves live for 300 years, Glass elves live for thousands. Reason for shortened life spans of other elves is because they are cross breeds of Glass elves and other races, reducing the life and changing the skin-tones and abilities.
These elves are not unlike other elves in appearance; similar ear shape and prominent cheek bones and jawline. They are average in height. Their skin however is what gives them their name. It is slightly translucent, as are all of their internal organs. Their veins are clear and so is their blood, meaning that it is difficult to tell if they are bleeding. Because of the unique way their bodies deal with incoming light (to protect their organs from UV damage) the water cells in the body reflect and refract light before it reaches the dermis which make it seem like they are more opaque, or to making them practically invisible in the dark.

Because of long life, they own magics which have been lost to the other races over time. They have not shared the abilities because they have been removed from society as a whole, living underground due to a grudge. They have great abilities, not due to natural skill but because of their life span. The ability to learn has been passed down to the other races in forms of natural skill. The different races the Elves bred with affected the skills they inherited based on the races own skills.

Culture;

They are a non-traditional race due to the vast length of life, as they see many races come and go. They act more like advisors to races; pointing them in the right direction but not influencing directly. They integrate into other races societies and adapt to their culture to form the path of least resistance; to ensure that others are not offended or threatened by their longevity and archaic knowledge.

They have a form of family/clan system which keeps the races free of incest and keeps them equally distributed. Each new generation of child is moved with their mother and father to a new family elsewhere in the world. The mother and father are sent to raise the child and impart knowledge of other customs to the new family while the child is sent to breed with an entirely new family. This system can be used as a bartering system or a peace offering between families.

Their History;

They have a proud streak which caused the downfall of the race. The Leader of each clan family is responsible for their entire group. Their responsibilities include living arrangements and locations. When the leaders have a grudge, they may force the family to retreat into seclusion until the grudge has been sorted out or forever.

One fateful day, the Gods themselves decided to change a decision of the race the Elves were counselling and had worked hard to achieve this decision. The decision to over-rule the Elves had angered all the leaders; not because the decision had been changed, but because the Elves and Gods had a long-standing agreement that the gods would keep out of major race choices. Both the Elves and gods could direct, but not force and the Gods had broken this agreement. So the Elves retreated. And as the gods refused to remove their decision or acknowledge their wrongdoing, the Elves stayed there. The races they were counselling fell and disappeared without them. The gods cursed the Elves for their pride and made it so the females could only birth one pure-breed child and die in the process. Cross-bred children would survive and so would their mothers but the Elves were too proud to forget the grudge for the sake of the race.

The race dwindled and no family knew whether other families still survived as contact had been cut off. Finally, the leaders died. The more zealot of the successors kept grudge of the predecessors, while the more forward thinking decided it was time to go. The remainders emerged 4000 years from the Day for Retreat, to find a world so different from what once was. Some of the elders retreated again to the land they knew, while the younger few (700 years old) decided to explore.

Thel’alain (th-ell-al-ayne) is one of these elves. She is of the Family of Qoravan (koor-a-van)

Before you start, let’s decide what she is good at.
Strength – Affects weapon damage
Dexterity – Affects trap detection, evasion and escape
Charisma – Affects how others perceive you
Luck – Affects how lucky you are

For a standard of working, I use a proportional body 'template' I drew a few years ago. It is a front back and side of a woman I used when studying fashion design in College. The way my model stands allows for clothing movement. Below is my first attempt at my character;

I drew a front and side for this attempt. I considered movement in Armour and came to the decision that a solid breastplate and Tuille would slow down movement, be difficult to move in and very heavy. I instead opted for small, overlapping plates attached to a mail vest; this is similar to a snakes scales, allowing greater range of movement. I reduced the Tuille down to a small, triangular patch over the groin to allow the ability to crouch and sneak. I didn't opt for the scale direction when designing the Vambraces, Cuisse and Greaves. These sections of the body have no movement throughout and it seemed wrong to have the same build there too.

The front view. The Greaves stretch from above the ankle to below the knee and the Cuisse from above the knee to the upper thigh. The Vambraces are from above the wrist to below the elbow on the back of the arm. The underside is left open

The side view. As you can see, the breastplate, Tuille, Cuisse, Vambrace and Greaves all stop halfway around the limbs and are secured with leather straps. This is to allow for ease of movement. The character is not designed for a rear attack and is heavily vulnerable from this point. The cloak not only keeps the character warm, but also hides this fact from others. It seems like the character is nude under the armour, but that was not meant to be the case, I just didn't draw in the clothes as I moved onto another character.

New Character!

Using the same template, I redrew the front of my character but this time abandoning the entire idea of Armour. I placed her in a dress and corset, with the cloak still. Under her dress is a pair of shorts to keep her dignity when climbing and creeping.

In this picture, she has a few leather belts around her waist holding a knife and a medium sized satchel which would be where her inventory is kept. She also has a leather strap around her lower left arm. This is for when she uses two handed weapons, and it would act like a form of shield, deflecting blows from her forwards arm. She has a bow and quiver on her back. The dress is knee length and has a cut up the left side to allow for movement. The dress was supposed to be cream coloured but the paper was the same colour so I used yellow to make it stand out. The corset is red and has no boning, just folded fabric where the bones would be. Steel boning would restrict movement and would really hurt if it came out. The corset is just a aesthetic piece.

Above is a crouching pose of the character. Her dark shorts are visible behind her arm. During this drawing and the one below, I forgot that her dress had a slit in it and didn't draw it in.

This picture is the one I am most happy with. It is a crawling/creeping pose similar to Spiderman or Catwoman. Here the shorts are clearly visible and thought of for this very reason. None of my characters have faces as these images are fairly small and a detailed face would be difficult to do. I have decided to study faces a little more.

Design Brief 3 - Character Design

2011-12-02T10:19:00.001+00:00

Design Brief 3 - Character Design

"Generate pencil drawn sketches for planning and developing a character appropriate for use in a games environment, then realized though digital based imaging software. the sketches and images should show silhouette poses and action poses from front, back, side and top reference views and can be generated for modelling. Annotate the images with notes regarding design choices such as materials, textures, body mass, shape, anatomical observations, personality traits, props and any other considerations"

So, in short;
1 - Draw a games character sheet (front back side top)
2 - Have some action poses, not just standing still
3 - Make it digital. NOT 3D
4 - Annotate everything about the character. Heigh, weight, clothes, personality etcetera.

For another session in the course, I am writing a "Choose your own adventure novel" (Well, if a Novel is 4000 words or less) and the character from that would make a perfect drawing subject. In the book, I have described everything about her (I will have to cut my descriptions out as I have barely finished the first act and I am at 2000 words). The one thing I have not described is her outfit as I have given little thought to this as it is not important to the story.

Design Brief 2 - Texturing

2011-12-02T09:47:00.001+00:00

Design Brief 2 - Texturing.

"Create a library of designs that reflect both human body parts and urban environment to reinforce the use of drawing for game design and its relation with 3D modelling"

Now, I'm a little unsure on this. We have had this brief since 30/06/11 and we have done basically no additional digital texturing. Our sessions have either been traditional drawing, 3D in Photoshop or making a Billiard ball or Iris; neither of which I would really call 'texturing'.

However, I am fairly good at textures so I will put some ones I made up on this blog. Some are Wood and wrought iron, some are brushed steel and damaged steel, and some are skin. The textures are meant to be tiled and are at sizes 512px x 512px (The standard size for console gaming by the company Bethesda)

Skin. Created with flesh coloured background and black custom brush with opacity lowered to 11%

Brushed steel. Created with block grey background. Filter>Noise>Add noise (Monochromatic), Filter>Blur>Motion Blur

Wood. Brown background, darker brown secondary colour. Filter>Render>Fibers, Medium variance, High Density

Doors with wrought iron inlay. Created with Wood texture (As described above). Iron was a custom brush applied in Photoshop. Added embossing and drop shadow.

Barrel texture. UVW mapped a 3D barrel of my own creating, added wood texture as described above, metal rims is grey with grunge styled damage from custom brush

Design Brief 1 - Staging - Cityscape

2011-11-25T10:38:00.001+00:00

I am going to research cityscapes.

I am a fan of sharp perspective drop-off's and prefer single point perspective images, and city streets are fantastic for that

From these kinds of views, you can see many types of building as well as people and that gives the whole image more of a perspective in size rather than depth.

Above is a screen of a Google Maps view of GTA. The buildings size reduces drastically over a very short space as the large buildings on the left and right of the street blocks further view down the road.

As cities are built and rebuilt in the same space over history, the architecture is varied. In one street, there may be architectural history ranging from 1500's churches to modern-day sky-scrapers. They have materials relevant to their time period; large granite blocks and stone for the older buildings, brick for the more modern houses and glass and steel for the hyper-modern offices. Many new build office buildings are inspired by architecture of the ages, such as a 1950's style building with glass walls and ceiling.

My attempt at a single-point cityscape

Above is a close-up of the vanishing point in the centre of image and below is a close-up of the different architecture. The large glass building in the background and the fascias of the smaller buildings below

and the aerial view

I have mixed up the architecture slightly. The rounded building on the right is reminiscent of a 1940's building while the large glass building on the left is a newer building. I would imagine some of the buildings to have granite fronting like boutiques, and the others to be plain concrete, in varying colours of grey and cream. I've added character 'placeholders' to indicate action of the residents.

Design Brief 1 - Staging - Landscape

2011-11-25T10:11:00.001+00:00

So I am going to look at some landscapes in games. I am currently playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and am very well acquainted with the scenery so I will choose that as my research point.

Skyrim is the new game from Bethesda and Zenimax Media Corp. An RPG with an open world, seasons, weather and open quests (and dragons) The terrain in the world is all unique and expansive

I decided that I wanted to do a landscape similar. The land in Skyrim is wild, but had the work of local humans dotted around, showing it is inhabited.

This is my run at a landscape.

It is a field scene through a fence near some trees at dawn.
It is one point perspective image with the vanishing point to the right.

The sky iis a mixture of red and blue to show the dawn.

My shadow skills need improvement

It is based off of a real location. The fence is a newly painted, old wooden fence. It is smooth to the touch due to years of cows and horses rubbing themselves on the fence. It has a few old staples and nails in it from years of wire being placed and removed from the lower half. The trees are oak and are roughly 80 to 100 years old and fairly weathered for that age. The grass was wet with dew and the air brisk and chilly.The sun was not visible over the hills yet but was still casting a cold light. The fence stretches the length of the 4 acre wide field.

Design Brief Stage 1 - Staging

2011-11-25T09:44:00.001+00:00

Right, so here are my first quick sketch ideas of cityscapes

I used the idea of my quick short story about a man working in a city for these sketches. I used the City Of London. More precisely, this image......

I tried to make it look like he was looking out of his window in his office building and seeing across the city.

The architecture of London is very varied. It has the very 1930's building next to Tower 42, while St Marys Axe is overly modern and covered in glass and steel.

The other image is of a 1960's style office building with some modern features. This was my first idea for his office building. I based the design around a building from Bioshock in the city called Rapture

The building is of the third one on the far left. I had to re-design the bottom of the building as it was out of shot.

My idea of the building is a modernised building. The sloped roof made glass as well as the main body. The 'ribs' of the building being concrete with windows between the ribs. The lower part of the building would be made entirely out of concrete with smaller windows inlaid into the body and the lowest part having a glass front and glass doors. I would imaging the concrete to be quite rough, unlike plaster fronted buildings and probably cream in colour.

The view from above looking down is just a comparison to other buildings about its height. I would imagine this building to be much bigger than the surrounding buildings and probably the only one of its architecture style in the area.

Design Brief Stage 1

2011-11-25T09:18:00.001+00:00

So then, Stage 1.

Staging

Generate a pencil image of a landscape and city scape in linear and aerial view for use in a game environment.

Annotate with notes about materials, time period, scene, lighting, props etc.

Digital Texturing

Create a library of designs of human body parts and urban environments to reinforce the use of drawing for game design and it's relation to 3d modelling

Character Design

Generate pencil sketches for planning a character for Games, then digitize it. Sketches should include silhouette poses and action poses (front back top and side) Annotate with ideas about materials, textures, body mass, shape, anatomical observation, personality, props etc.

OK. So here we begin....

2011-10-21T09:26:00.001+01:00

This whole thing is a journey. And I'm captaining this ship.