Unit 78: Task 2
Unit 78: Task 2
Be able to generate concept art ideas for computer game graphics
I was tasked with creating some concept art for a 2D side-scroller game. Here I have documented the process I went through in order to successfully create my concept art and then later digitalise it using Adobe Illustrator.Stimulus: eg client brief, own brief, from market research
The brief for my piece of concept art is that I needed to create a sprite and environment for a 2D side-scroller game. This meant that I had to engage in extensive research into what a 2D side-scroller is and some of its main conventions. I also looked into what a typical 2D sprite looks like. I looked in particular at side-scrollers that had an element of horror as they linked closely to the initial ideas I had for my own character. One example which heavily influenced my concept art is the game Limbo which is a monochromatic 2D side-scroller about a young nameless boy. Researching more into this game has allowed me to adopt one of the main concepts of being lost in a foreign world. I was further influenced by the game Oxenfree in which the characters roam a small abandoned town trying to find out what had gone on previously which encouraged my idea to set the character within an urban area.
A trailer that gives a basic overview of the game:
Oxenfree's launch trailer gives a strong essence of the chilling overall nature of the game:
Ideas: brainstorming; mood boards; thumbnail sketching; concept drawings, eg character, weapon, vehicle, environment
In order to come up with my character, I began by considering their appearance. I focused, initially, on the outline of his body and used some images of cartoon children as inspiration for things such as the height of my character and their outfit. I took inspiration for my character's head from looking at images of Megamind. I really liked the head of the Megamind character as I thought it connected strongly with my idea that my character would possess some sort of magic within their head which made it expand drastically.
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These were the developed sketches of my character's front, side and back profile. These were initially drawn in pencil or ink as I felt it was important to be able to experiment with different positioning of lines and certain features of my character. This also made it much easier to go back and forth making changes throughout sketching my character until I had my desired result.
I also created a mood board that focuses primarily on what colours I would utilise within my character's outfit and additionally for things such as their skin pigmentation or eye colour. I found this mood board in particular extremely useful as it meant I could experiment with different colour combinations and gave me a better insight into how colours are used within the real world. It also allowed me to further consider the background of my character as I linked the clothing they would wear and the colours used to emphasise thing like their age and where they are from. Brighter colours like the red striped top accentuate my character's childlike nature and the sneakers communicate their active lifestyle which further accentuates that they are very young and nimble.
I have created a mood board to inspire the design of an environment for my 2D sprite to roam.
Many of the images feature quite dark and eerie atmospheres including things like mist and limited lighting. This is because I want to contribute to the chilling nature of my character's story in which they are stranded in a parallel universe.
However, after looking further into the pictures within this mood board, I realised that they weren't specific enough for me to generate the kind of environment I wanted. This meant that I had to look further into certain environments to get a clear idea of how I would design my own environment.
I created a new mood board and whilst I was still very interested in the darker nature of my environment, I had also decided to base the environment within a city. This meant that within my mood board I had a particular focus on the buildings present within the image as I wanted to recreate something similar for my own environment. I realised that I admired the fog and mist in the distance as I felt that it brought a mysterious and uncanny sense of the unknown along with it which would play into the horror element of my character's story.
Legal and ethical considerations: legal, eg copyright, libel; ethical, eg confidentiality, decency; representation, eg race, gender, religion, sexuality
I did have to make some legal and ethical considerations whilst in the process of generating ideas for my concept art. For example, whilst creating my character, I was influenced largely by Megamind, in particular, his head. Even though the character of Megamind helped me generate the ideas for the shape of my character's head, it was important for me to ensure I wasn't just copying the character's head as this could lead to issues with copyright.
Ethically, I think it is important that my character diverts from the norm when it comes to the appearance of game characters. For instance, I decided to make my character black as I haven't seen many black characters within the gaming industry until more recently and I believe it is important to introduce people from other races and cultural backgrounds to make for a more inclusive and welcoming gameplay experience.
Whilst creating my character and environment I also had to take into consideration the colours used with my character in relation to the colours of the background. As both the background and my character utilised dark colours I had to consider my characters visibility within the environment & If they could be clearly seen within the city at night time. In order to tackle this issue, I thought it was important to ensure my character had many features that stood out such as their bright green eyes and a red and white striped shirt to ensure they are distinguishable from the rest of the environment.
Computer game graphics: print media graphics, eg game poster, game packaging; in-game graphics (head up display graphics, sprite graphics, background graphics, image textures); concept art graphics
For my concept art, I had to create both the sprite graphics and the background graphics - both of which were digitalised - using Adobe Illustrator. I think it is important that I used software like Adobe Illustrator as it is an industry standard software which means it can provide very strong tools for the work I aimed to produce and will be easily recognised by professionals.
Graphics specification: client needs; audience; thumbnail sketching; visual style, eg colour, style, photorealistic, cel-shaded, anime; composition; typography; technical considerations, eg file format, file size, optimisation, file naming conventions, asset management, intended output
For this assignment, I used Adobe illustrator to digitalise my sprite and create the environment that they roam in. Within the software, I was able to use my prior research in order to create coloured representations of my sprite and environment.
I had to make some technical considerations such as what format my files were saved in to ensure I could access them easily and so that I didn't lose any aspects of my work. I saved my digitalised character and environment as adobe illustrator files (.ai) so that I could easily access all of the work I had previously done when I opened illustrator. I also made sure any pictures I scanned or obtained from the internet were saved as a .jpg file on the computer.
Overall, I managed to compile my ideas from my character mood boards and my environment mood boards into pieces of digitalised artwork. These are the finished pieces:
Character (digitalised)
Environment (digitalised)
I will go into further depth about the process of digitalising these pieces of work within my Unit 78 Task 3 documentation.
Zalika J English
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