Week 9: More Character Art

Last week I accomplished a lot on this guy. This week, I accomplished just as much, but it's not as apparent because this is the rendering phase. I want to make this illustration as polished as possible to demonstrate my rendering and finishing abilities to prospective employers. Here's the progress:

Getting warmer.

He's not quite done yet, but I'm still considering this a victory because I'm really coming to understand what goes into game art like this:

Copyright Riot Games

 In need of a break from the Flint King, I also started the design stages for another piece of character art. This guy is Ko. Ko is a samurai. Ko is a triceratops. Trisamutops?

Thumbnails for fun and profit.

Hopefully next week will see the completion of the Flint King and some significant progress on Ko.

Week 8: Enough cutesy stuff!

It's time to shift gears away from Seven Bear Itch in this blog. Back in my January 29 post, I made a commitment to improve and polish some work that I started in a previous class. Well, this week I did just that, and below are the "before and after."

Before.

After.

I'm happy with the progress that I've made on this piece. It's slow going because this is the furthest I've taken a full-color digital painting. I'm still defining my process. I'll be working on this more next week and hope to have it finished at the next blog post.

Some things I learned from my work this week:

• Some kind of background is important for both presentation and seeing color/value relationships. 
• I benefit from a "painterly" process. I can't treat concept art the same way as photo compositing.
• Custom brushes are amazing once you know the brush engine. I would rather use a custom brush made from a texture photo than said texture photo as a layer. With enough time, I'd rather build my own textures using brush strokes.

Cheers!

Week 7: What I learned at GDC

I spent this entire week working as a Conference Associate at GDC. It was a valuable experience, both as a networking opportunity and in terms of helping me pick a direction for my portfolio. Here are the core things that I learned:

• The Game Industry wants you to be specialized.
• I should have a separate resume for Artist positions and another for Game Design
• Even Game Desigers have specalizations. There are Combat Designers, Encounter Designers, and Systems Engineers. These are all subsets of Game Design. 
• A Systems Designer focuses on mechanics and manipulation of data for game balance and interesting user experience. This 
• There are no Game Designer/Artists outside of the Indy Game sector, and even within it, someone who is so generalized in their skillset is rare, and so their value is not implicitly understood.
• I need to choose a focus, and I'm a little further along on the Concept Art front.
• If I'm going to show Game Design work, something small and polished is way better than something grandiose and unfinished.
• The above probably goes for Concept Art as well.
• I need to learn Unity.
• I need to do more coding.
• There are more Artist positions available than Game Designer positions.

...So that's a lot of to-do list type stuff. The bottom line is that I should focus on concept art. I need to spend the rest of the semester producing 5 or 6 polished art pieces that show the best of what I can do. If I complete one every other week for the rest of the semester, I will achieve that goal. Here goes nothing!

OMGDC!

This week I spent every available moment updating and reworking my resume in preparation for GDC. I had intended on uploading some additional items to my portfolio here, but the 14 hours I spent designing my resume and uploading game design info to Wikia for project samples was enough, I think.  It's crazy how much work it is to present yourself! I'd rather be arting.

Here's the first resume I made:

 And here is the one I made after I pulled my head out of my ass:

Which one tells a better story about me and my qualifications to design games?

Actually, I can't take all the credit for performing my lower intestinal craniectomy. I heard a talk from three alums who now work in "the field," and my conversation with one, Nathan Harling, was particularly helpful in figuring out what matters when you're writing a game design resume.

Let's hope the wisdom pays off!

Week 5: The Variety Show

I am quickly learning my limits in terms of how long this artwork takes. I think I'm in denial about the length of time consumed by this process. Finding reference eats up quite a bit of it. This week, I worked for about 7 hours and produced these:

Itchy Bear design progress

Woodpecker rough

Extra Bear.

The squirrels, rough version.

A stag. His hindquarters will be hidden behind a tree.

Ideation of the stag's design. I kind of fell in love with antlers.

 Still not quite hitting my goal, but there are definitely some things I'm happy with in here. I'm learning some good things about the process of concept art generation for 3d assets through this process. Modelers are pointing out inconsistencies that I wouldn't have noticed on my own. Next week, I'll be polishing some old work and posting a link to my portfolio in preparation for GDC, which I will be attending March 1-6. Wish me luck!

Week 4: More SBI Concept Art

Well, I didn't hit my goal this week. Part of that is an excess of ambition: I don't want to admit how long this stuff takes. Another part is that I am avoiding or have difficulty following the workflow that I know will give me the most quick and efficient results. Doing a lot of rough sketches, most of which I know I won't use, is draining for me. I want to make something I'm proud of, now. This is what I made this week:

Squirrel head variants. Designing the head helps influence the body.

Squirrel bodies.

Bear body. Scope that caboose!

Last week, I said would finish roughs of:

• Five animal characters (heads and arms only) for the final group shot
• The squirrel
• Two adult Woodpeckers
• Two juvenile woodpeckers
• 5 more tree designs
• 5 more rock clusters
• Complete Sven Model Sheet

I think it's a reasonable goal to finish all that next week. After that, it's a week of portfolio polishing for GDC!

Week 3: Seven Bear Itch Concept Art

This week, I focused on defining the visual style of Seven Bear Itch through digital paintings of environment assets and a model sheet bust of the main character, Sven the Bear.

Occidental Juniper

Black Oak

Rock Formation Sketches

Sven the Bear

With the shape language and color palette for the short well-defined, next week I will be producing a large volume of asset art, not fully rendered, but developed enough so that modelers can work from it. This art will include:

• Five animal characters (heads and arms only) for the final group shot
• The squirrel
• Two adult Woodpeckers
• Two juvenile woodpeckers
• 5 more tree designs
• 5 more rock clusters
• Complete Sven Model Sheet