Year 2: Visual Design Master Post (Life Drawing at the end)

So first is the projects I've done this year with a brief description of what was happening and what I was thinking at the time, then all my life drawing.

The Film Room project:

There wasnt much in terms of visual design here, mostly just figuring out what the objects we couldnt see properly looked like and where in the room these objects went, so it was mostly visual planning.

The room itself.

The Sentry Gun Project

This was actually quite a fun project for me as regarding visual design, I'll admit I made a few mistakes by being extremely stubborn with my design and not really acknowledging what looked better or what would have worked better as a model, I'll remember next time to actually take on board what people like, instead of what I like.

The final model.

The Character Project

Here's where things started getting a little messy on my end, the project was in shambles towards the end, but it was a harsh lesson I needed to learn and that was dont be precious with the idea and allow it to change.

These are some of the ragtag thumbs I had to mash together for the formative presentation, I spent too much time on these, needed to move on.

I clearly had one idea in mind and I stuck to it too much, didnt give myself space to be creative. Its a character we've seen a million times before, white dude with a sword and some armour. So after the presentation I went back organised my moodboards and looked at what was really going on with the character.

There was definately a trend here somewhere, it turned out to be that my original designs when I started the project we're too plain there wasnt much going on besides some armor plating and head tattoos.

It was an old idea, so I looked back at some even older designs, before the project even started and some of the thumbnails are great, I'm surprised I didnt look at them earlier. It gave me the style I wanted, a blend of Mongolian and Viking styles, with a hint of Japanese and slavic designs.

It eventually lead me to the final concept and character poster here:

Could use some better lighting and shadow effect but I'm glad I got the rendering down nicely, the materials look good enough.

I just wish the end result for the model was as good:

I loathe having to even upload it, but sometimes you have to own up to your mistakes. Its something I'm definitely going to try and remodel over summer, or rather I might try a different character.

Off The map

Off the map went much better than I expected, I was given a character artist role so I told myself to get my stuff together and give it my best and I think I did.

For Puck I wanted to push the goblin-esque look as he's described in the play. Its also hinted that the faeiries home land is India so that was also a major design influence for the faeries.

Designing Pucks face was the first task I gave myself, so once I had figured out his face designing the rest was easy, I wanted a fairy-esque Indian inspired hobgoblin, with an air of mischief surrounding him

We went through quite a few iterations, we even toyed with the idea that Puck might dress up as Shakespeare as if he was in on the fact he was in a game inspired by a play.

We went through several colour iterations all kind of crazy, eventually we settled on something less garish or blue and went to a warmer direction. The End result was a warm red and blue scheme with the neck ruff removed (because of Rigging the model)