Essay

Through the research that I have studied throughout the A2 graphics course I have experimented and responded to different kinds of materials and such as Etching, Water colour, Adobe Photoshop / Illustrator and sketching. The research I have conducted is how posture and colour can be affected to show mood in illustrations. Colour and posture works the best in fantasy games because of the need for the character to show emotion and the characteristics which is so needed. With the question, Concept art gives the view of the whole characters body and the posture and colour can give the designers something to work off and bring to life. The reason for concept art is that if there wasn’t any other artists working in other fields would only have a decryption alone to work on something that has not been visually mapped out for them, so they would then have to work with their own personal styles added that might not work well together. 

The Company that I have researched into is Blizzard Entertainment. The reason I have researched two pieces of artwork by them is because they are one of the biggest companies that have developed multiple kinds of games in the fantasy / roleplaying game genre. The artist Phroilan gardener was a senior artist at the company and has worked on both World of Warcraft and Diablo III concept art. The reason his concept art differentiates from others is because he uses the colours of the foreground and it matches to the background. His lich King Illustration has correlated so well to the history from the game World of Warcraft. There are other works to the Lich King and he has identically recreated the art work in another form of colours and postures. The next artist, (enter name if found) also works for the Blizzard entertainment but he has created concept art that has then been passed on to other foundations of the company to create a trailer for an expansion pack called “World of Warcraft: Mists of pandaria”. (The artist name) has created concept art to show the entire body for designers on the 3d rendering to evaluate the whole body and create a 3D model of it and animate it. If the design did not show the whole body it would be more time consuming and challenging for the 3d modeler to recreate parts of the body that may not be to the liking or level that the orininal concept artist thought it would turn out as.

                                                                                               

Conjunction to the blizzard entertainment’s Orc it’s drawn to use Bold and rough lines in order to create the spoiled and damaged armour that gives it an aggressive look. Whereas Phroilan Gardener uses the ridges on the sword and the tarnished armour to give it a battered and deteriorated look giving the viewer the impression that he has thought in many battles to achieve the look on his armour and sword.

With the Orc’s Muscle tone on his skin it’s organic. The shading on the bottom of the shoulder and his forearm gives it tone and a defined shape. The shadows also give him a more 3D look. Whereas with the Lich King Form is created by the rounded metallic armour. Instead of the shadows of his skin giving tone, it’s the reflection of the armour (shoulder plate / gloves / kneecap).

The placement of the images in the image shows that the orc is the focal point of the image and the surrounding of the illustration gives extra effect to the focal point by giving it a setting for the viewer of and it’s arranged to tell the viewer a visual story.

The colour of the setting is monochromatic and blends very well with the lich king . The monochromatic colour actually gives the viewer a understanding that the character belongs there since he is wearing armour that resembles the setting. Whereas in the Orc concept art the colours are not resembled as the dark red and burgundy to give anger and fear into their enemies. Alike to the Lich Kings illustration the monochromatic colour represents his tribe / faction. In both images the colour can show that it can represent a tribe and strike fear into their opponents.

In The blizzard Orc concept art Line has been used to give an exaggeration to the muscle tones and the veins to show how much brute force he has

This is my link to my Personal Study http://app.wisemapping.com/c/maps/166795/edit

Megaman 8 bit Response

I have created a response of a 8-bit Megaman using mosaic tiles to give a more lifelike experience to the picture, but still with a 8-bit style texture to the image.

When creating the image I had an insufficient amount of tiles. To resolve this I created small parts of the image (each leg and arm) with the tiles and then put them together by taking out the cutting mat and putting them all together with Photoshop.

What I could have done to have improved this is if I took the images at the same height and outside of direct sunlight, since the sunlight is reflected off the tiles.

Blizzard Entertainment Concept Art Analysis - ORC

This is a piece of concept art that was created by an artist working for Blizzard Entertainment. The stance that the orc is positioned is a standard pose for a character since it shows the entire model without anything being hidden. With his arms being both by his side, flexing his muscles  giving him the mood of having no fear of anyone and With him having no weapon, the stance he is giving can also give the feeling of him being prepared for a fist fight with an opponent.

The process of how this image was made seems like it was created digitally with a graphics tablet. With digitally created work the drawing looks shinier than materials such as paint or watercolour.

In this image the orc is wearing heavy plate armour on his feet and shoulder to signify his masculinity. The artist has given a minimal amount of armour because the orc uses brute force to demonstrate his strength so the armour will only slow down his heavy attacks and cause his mobility to be reduced. On the other hand the minimal amount of armour of the orc can give the viewer a view that the orc has been in a recent battle. The reason for this is that on one of his boots there is plate armour missing and the burn wounds give a further impression of him being in a battle that has caused him to have deemed his weapon or armour useless. Rough lines on the clothing can show meaning such as the gauntlets and his ripped cloth on his waist indicates that he has been in a hard battle and has taken a high amount of injury. From the rough and dark sketching indicates Wear and tear. Further burgundy red / maroon colours of his armour, since in the game the red armour represents the faction the orc is in. To the right is a flag of the orcs faction that is strongly dominated by the colour red. The colour red of the flag and the armour can strike fear into the enemies of the orc.  The use of the blending of the colours in the image gives the orc a realistic look of the armour and skin tone. when previously talking about the colour of his armour it gives a very angry look  to the image that is seen a lot in other games or films since orcs are not the most developed creatures and only focus on brute force and not defense.

The way the artist has created this word has influenced me greatly with my ideas of creating concept art digitally with a graphics tablet, This style could be created non digitally with paint to give it a more rougher look to it, whereas Digitally created illustration has given it a more shinier look which in my opinion does not represent a orc since in the image the illustrator has obviously tried to give the orc a rough and damaged look which paint would work better with it.

Okami Response

I have created a response on a piece of concept art for the video game Ōkami. I wanted to try to experiment with the same design but with a different animal. In the original design the artist has created this work digitally so the colours stand out more. the pattern used in the original design such as the circular patterns give the wolf a quite and gentle touch to the character.                                                                                                             with my response i wanted to try using felt tip pens since its a style i have not used yet. with using the felt tip it gave the picture quite a dull look and bland. If i was to recreate this, maybe with a different animal I will use watercolour.

Analysis of artist Phroilan Gardner - Lich King

 Phroilan Gardener is an illustrator based in America were most of us work is based on characters from Video games and other lines of work to do with concept art. All his work is done digitally were maybe a piece or two of his has been done non-digitally such as with paints. He used a graphics tablet on Photoshop to create the Lich King

This piece of work that he created was from an already known character named Lich King from the PC game World of Warcraft. The reason he created the picture like this was for a poster or concept art which I am really heavily interested on.

On his blog http://phroilangardner.blogspot.co.uk/ it seems like he barely uses just line or one colour in his work for his poster / concept art. He is heavily based on using texture, form, blending of colours in each of his designs.

The way Phroilan Gardener uses  the turquoise colours on his eyes and sword can instantaneously understand that this characters soul has been  consumed by something and the dull grey colours also represent that there is barely any life in him that use to exist. His use of the formal elements such as Visual texture were he has scratches on his sword or the holes in his cape can make the viewer of this piece know that this person has been in many battles.  The way he makes the viewer feel like the image is cold is because he used dull colours such as black and grey. Turquoise  depicts the coldness to the drawing. There is a small amount of line, but when he does use it enhances the life-like appearance to the image. Such as the fur on the Lich Kings leg gives the fur layers and depth to the image. Also the greaves that he is wearing on his leg has been created with lines to give each layer of the greaves layers as if they were overlapping.

The way Phroilan Gardener used a large brush to paint the simplistic background gave more focus on the focal point which is the Lich King since he is far more detailed than the few brush strokes behind him.

Phroilan Gardener did use some sort of shape such as the small white circles all around the image showing that it is snow falling at a high speed giving it surreal movement. Some of the snow droplets have a lower opacity to some to the others to give it even more form to the image meaning some snow droplets are further away and some are really close up. 

The composition in the design shows the Lich King to be the focal point of the image. Such as the way his leg is raised and the sword is at the front shows his dominance to people / undead followers. This can be further shown by the way his head is tilted down to him looking down. whereas before I was talking about the turquoise look on his sword and helmet show he is in a cold environment and he has been consumed by something, the hilt of his sword most of his armour has skulls of animals depicts that he is of an evil kind and even promotes my last statement where he has been consumed by something evil.

The mood of the image portrays violence and a negative feel of sadness and death.

UEL Workshop - Etching

On the 24^th October 2013 six students from the University of East London held a workshop for my A2 Graphics class were we took part in an activity and the classed learned a new technique called Etching that we could all use in our own work even after the workshop if we enjoyed doing it or if it was effective and correlated with their work.

How I made my own work with the etching tool

1)      I started out by taking my own drawing I made and expanded it in size with a photocopier. I then traced the design on a tracing paper with a pencil. After this I then put the traced drawing of my picture on a a4 sized silver sheet of reflected card.

2)      Now that the silver card has a rough outline of the drawing I used the ‘etching engraving tool’ to scratch away the parts of the outline. If I wanted to take out a whole space of the outline and create a much bigger line instead of a small line I would cut out a rectangular shape and then peel the silver card.

3)      After cutting all of the design out I covered the entire silver card with ink and used a cloth to remove any excess ink that I do not want to be shown on the final outcome. To get into the hard to reach spaces one of the University students recommended that I used a small cotton bud to erase the ink from the silver card.

4)      The penultimate step I used the copper plate press to press the card onto a piece of paper. Using high pressure on the card let all the ink transfer from the silver card to the piece of plain paper.

5)      Finally I peeled the of the paper from the silver card to reveal my final outcome of my etched drawing.

In my opinion this step is extremely useful for some parts of work but I cannot see myself using this for my theme of video games since for my final piece I do not want to use only the colour black.

Below are some pictures of the final outcome.

A2 marksheet assessment lesson 14/10/13

Stephanie - Development - With Stephanie's work her development is very limited with just working on typography. she has not been diverse with her development and has stuck to a small area of work where it comes to a standpoint where she has stopped with the idea that she created on the first or second creation. The ideas that she has created has been of a good level with original ideas in her sketchbook.                          

Victor - Experimentation - With Victors work he has not taken many risks with using materials and has only stuck with using digital media and sketching and has rarely used paint. Victors ideas  are abandoned after first response and it would be more better if he was more consistent with his work and re-doing the same response but with different uses of materials.

Molly - Record -With Molly's work she uses a broad range of formal elements such as line, shape and colour with some of her work correlating together. She focuses mainly on colour for every piece of work since it seems that is her main focus of her children book character. It would be in her favour if she used a broader range of formal elements such as patter and shape.

Queen of Hearts Response

I have created a response to the queen of hearts playing card using 'Adobe Illustrator' the purpose of the task was to illustrate the card in another way taking key visual elements and simplifying it down to the bear minimal.
I constructed the heart inside of the Q by taking the curl of her hair and adapting it to shape the heart with curls. The crown in the middle of the card represents can give the person looking at the card instant recognition to who the card is based upon.
The flower that the queen is holding does not give much  meaning to the card while my representation of it is a rose on  two corners of the card more identification that the card is for the Queen.

8-Bit Super Mario Bros Response.

I created a response to the 8-bit mushroom used in Super Mario Bros using TILES. The reason i recreated this image is to understand how such a small amount of pixels can create an image. 

The problems with using tiles is they are difficult to keep still  so the image can not be exactly like the original, unless it is glued onto the surface. Also there was not enough black tiles so i had to substitute them with brown tiles. The pattern i used gives it a unique effect that brings out the outline of the mushroom.

I had gained inspiration from and artist called Invader who creates characters from the video game 'space invaders'. He uses mosaic tiles to create the work. Invader focuses mainly on Space invaders were I  branched out towards doing a response to a Red Mushroom from 'Super Mario Bros'.

Earth Worm Jim Response

I have made a response of a main character from the game 'Earthworm Jim'. I found an image from the internet of a basic sketch of the outline of Earthworm Jim and used the application 'Adobe Illustrator CS4' and used the Pen tool to get smoothed curved lines for the outline of the image. after this process i used the pencil tool to give small details such as wrinkles on his face. I then used the Brush tool to colour in the eyes and face.

I thought the image was to too alike to the original sketch so I then used the application 'Adobe Photoshop CS4' and used the Burn tool to give the face more form and a 3D effect.

I was inspired by the image above where the artists used many lines to create a new layer of detail and form.

Respone To Artists

I made a response to the artist EvaWidermann's creation of  a necromancer.

When I saw this drawing the the brown and grey blend extremely well together to create a worn out and dirty character giving more realism to the piece since the character is undead. The focal point of this image is the long and spiky staff that the Undead is holding. The red colours catch your eye immediately when looking at this image given you an idea of what the character is.

 I started by re creating the staff and wanted to keep it as a sketch and to just add shading but, with water colours the Image will have more form and relism with different shades of brown and the red of the eyeball.

The image was completed by only adding water colour but when looking back at the Original image the staff seemed to have a black outline that made it stand out more. I went around the image with a thin black felt tip pen and when applying it aroun the spiky parts of the staff it made it gave it much more form and a 3-D effect.