BA1 - Final Character Piece

And now for the Final Character Piece. For this piece I really wanted to nail her personality and also make it look kinda like a game poster. Since I had spent so much time on making my face iteration I figured I could re-use some of the earlier paintings cause they were a bit too detailed just to be used for iterations. I reshaped some parts of the face to give her an expression and more attitude and remade all the lighting.

For the composition I used some tricks iv'e learnt by studying game posters in my time in Game Development School. By making the light source be behind her gave me a reason to give her strong back lighting which gave her a more intimidating and "Badass" feel. Also the burning camp in the background gave the illusion of the old classic "Walking away from explosions" which is the perfect example of being a Bad-ass character. To make sure you know she burned the camp down I added blood to her body and face from the soldiers she killed inside the camp.

Final Character Piece

Since I made this one without a thumbnail I figured I could show some progress shots of the making of this piece.

BA1 - Final Environment Piece #2

Since this one had to include the character in some way I tried to decide whether to use any of the environment thumbnails I had done or go with something new. After giving it some thought I got a pretty neat idea for my 4th thumbnail. I made the camp I first intended to be my characters home town into an Roman occupied camp, I would love to go back and make it a bit more obvious that it was Roman territory but since the time limit I couldn't do this unfortunately.

This piece changed quiet a lot from the thumbnail to final piece. I changed both the mood and some of the layout but I think it came out for the better. Since it now looks more interesting and also the background doesn't feel as empty.

The story behind this one is that the character is taking revenge on the Roman soldiers cause they burned her home village down. She takes revenge by burning their military camps to the ground by the help of fire arrows.

BA1 - Final Environment Piece #1

For my first environment piece i decided to continue on my 2nd environment thumbnail.

I choose to continue on this one because I think the perspective came out rather well. Also even without any people in it still felt rather alive thanks to the fire and the smoke effects etc. I was debating if i wanted to use this for my final character piece but decided in the end to just make this one a environment one.

I am pretty pleased with how this one came out, I think the colour scheme fit the mood I was aiming for with this piece. Later in the drawing I decided to change the weather to cloudy and added rain which added to the mood well.

BA1 - Environment Thumbnails

Up next was to create a environment fitting to my character. To start off with, since I got Iron Age as time setting I looked up references and tried figure out what in the environment was very typical for the setting I had been assigned. I quickly recognised patterns such as the huts and fences in cities and in the forests there were usually rock formations and mostly typical fantasy setting. Since the population in Britain back then were very few the nature was mostly untouched. My goal was to get two villages and two nature themed thumbnails. I ended up using two of those thumbnails for my final environment pieces.

Environment Reference Sheets

Final Environment Thumbnails

BA1 - Character Sheet

And now when my character's style and looks are done what's left is of course to give her movement! So next up on the list was creating the Character Sheet. This was really interesting because giving my character different movement really made her come a life and made me very tempted to recreate my character in 3D. Since I want my character to feel very fluid, one with the nature so to speak. I added a jump animation, cause if I added a running animation instead I feel like it would lack that agility I wanted out of her.

So as usual I started off by looking up various websites such as google, pinterest and tried to find pictures that matched the style i wanted to go for and from there created a reference sheet.

Reference Sheet

Finished Character Sheet

BA1 - Model Sheet

Next up is the Model Sheet. This one was very interesting to make, since my strength is 3D modelling I do have quiet a good knowledge what I personally want from a Model Sheet. So making clear defined textures and a clear understanding of what the different parts are was a must. I want people to look at it and understand what everything is without having to ask me. I think I nailed this pretty well from what iv'e understood since most people I have showed it too so far got a clear understanding of the character.

I kept the arrow in large size to easier be able to see the material definition of it and the details but I do wish I had also made a version where the bow and arrow was the right scale I want them to be for the character. I would also add a material sheet if I had the time, where I would go in deeper about the different materials for the armour.

BA1 - Life Drawing - Line & Form

This life drawing lesson it was our groups turn to draw using a real life model as reference. Like all the earlier life drawing lessons we have had so far i learned a lot from this one since it was my first time to ever draw using a real life model as reference.

We got the task to quickly copy the poses he did using charcoal, I was surprised when Will told us we only got about 2 minutes per pose since I as I said earlier never done this before I felt very stressed out at the beginning but after a few poses I was so into it that I really enjoyed it!

(Sorry for the bad quality, massive paper and no access to proper lighting)

After that was done we got a good 35 minutes to take our time and make a proper drawing of him, we got the option to either use charcoal or pencil and I chose charcoal since i never had used it before and found it very interesting to use. I was quiet pleased with the end result and surprised how I managed to keep the anatomy correct since that is one of my biggest weaknesses.

(Again, Sorry for the Quality.)

BA1 - Face Iterations

Before going on to the Model Sheet I wanted to create a face for my character. A lot of the personality in a character comes from the armour design, but I think the face does a massive job in this department as well so I wanted this done before I started detailing my characters armour.

I started off by thinking about what I wanted my character to look like and since I got the armour design down and that one was very inspired by wilderness and though I wanted a face to represent that as well. When I think about toughness in female face shapes I see harsh edges and a wide chin. I wasn't aiming for my character to look beautiful in any way all I wanted her to represent is being a strong female character just like Boudicca. I started looking up different references and I rather quickly found a face that I really liked and from there I started working on the face.

The main reference i used for my face

I really liked this face because she had everything I was searching for my character to have. Harsh shapes and a wide chin, also freckles since I had this picture in my head that I wanted her to have wild ginger hair. 

I had planned to draw about 3 faces but after spending way to much time on this one face I was really happy with the outcome, so I went with it straight away cause she looked like having the personality i was aiming for.

The next step was making different face painting for her. Since I knew she also would have bodypaint i didn't want to give her too much face paint so I went for some more simple designs. I also really wanted to get the feel that she used her fingers to apply it so I made them very loose and rough.

References i used for my face paint iterations.

The one I choose to use for my final character is the middle one. I choose this one cause I found it very fitting for the style I was going for while the other ones felt a bit too Viking-esque.

BA1 - Character Iterations

Next up on the list was Character Iterations. I picked 3 of my favourite silhouettes and from there tried to create something from them. Since this was my first time I have ever made 2D Concept Art my mindset when going into the iterations was a bit odd. I somehow got into the mindset that since I was supposed to come up with something original I couldn't look at references. This clearly showed in the quality of my work since working without references or inspirations makes my art alot worse and some stuff didn't make sense at all. So basicly what i did after doing my first few iterations after working on them for a week without progressing i decided to revamp the character iterations from scratch. This time around I looked at a lot of references and did proper research before drawing them and it clearly shows in the quality difference.

Old Character Iterations

As you can see i clearly struggled getting the proportions right and I was struggling more with getting lighting and other stuff right than the outfit itself which is not right when the main purpose is to brainstorm ideas of outfits. So as I mentioned earlier I did a complete revamp with proper research and here is what I came up with instead.

This first set of Character Iterations I had the theme "Fur" in my mind. I tried going for a "wildling" look and what I used as references was various images of people wearing fur and also for the last one I added some sort of Roman clothing.

References for my 1st batch of iterations

As for the second batch of iterations I wanted to try mix even more wildling feel to her, i did this by adding tattered clothing and try out some cloak designs to her. When I made the last one of those 3 I really felt like I started to get close to what I had imagined my character to look like so for the 3rd sheet you will see that i re-used the top part. 

References for my 2nd batch of iterations

As i mentioned earlier, the 3rd one on the 2nd batch of iterations realy stuck with me and i started to create stories in my head about my character. I started coming up with how her village had been pillaged and burned down by Romans when she was small and thus she became a wildling. So what i started looking up was Roman armor designs and tried to merge them to her design.

References for my 3rd batch of iterations

The one i ended up choosing was the middle one.

The reason why I choose this one as my final iterations was because I felt that she presented the wild feeling I wanted of her. With tattered red roman cloth and a improvised shoulder armor it really gives the feel of her not living in a city but out in the wilds. The fancy Roman skirt that she wears I got a story in my head about how she killed a Roman officer and wears it to frighten her opponents.

BA1 - Composition Fundamentals

Why plan Composition?

The reason why we as artists should learn to plan our composition of a art piece is so the viewer's eyes are directed to the important focal points of your piece. It's very easy for you as the artist to know what parts are important for you in a piece but if you don't lead your viewers eyes to it they will not perceive it as a focal point of your piece. I will go through some of the different ways of composition and show examples where they are used.

Divine Proportions

"The height of a well proportioned man is equal to his out-stretched arms"

-Marcus Virtruvius Pollio

The Devine proportions, or "The golden ratio" relies on the ratio 5:8. This is seen as the perfect ratio for proportions to be seen as most realistic and perfect by your viewer. 

Human Figure in a Circle by Leonardo Da Vinci

Devine Proportions can also be constructed by using different shapes such as squares, triangles and rectangles. I will now go through some of the different structures you can use to properly plan composition for your artwork.

Root 2 Rectangle

In this one all the shapes are proportional. Where the dotted lines intersects is where the eyes are led to.

Root 3 Rectangle Spiral Construction

This way attracts the eye to the key focal point by using the minor focal points of the image.

Root 3 Hexagon Construction

This structure can only be used in symmetrical shapes.

Rule of Thirds

To use this construction it requires you to split up your painting into a 3 x 3 grid. Where the lines collides, that's where your'e focal points are. 

The "L":

The "L" composition is used to get focal frames by creating a frame within a frame.

The Cross:

This composition is based on a cross, it requires your image to have different atmosphere on the different parts of your picture. For instance if at the top of your picture you have strong lighting and at the bottom half it's dark etc.

Iconic:

This composition is also called "The pay off" and relies on symmetry. It is pretty much simular to The Cross one but adds two diagonal lines to create the shapes of triangles.

Examples

Here I have chosen a poster from the game "Deus Ex: Human Revolution" and as you clearly can see that they use the iconic composition with the glass shards to attract your eyes to the main character in the middle. Some of the glass shards even fit precisely with the lines.

Here you can see a Concept piece from the game "Thief" where they clearly used the "L" composition. It is very common to use in Environment pieces like this to attract your eyes to specific key points.

BA1 - Silhouettes

And so the 100+ silhouettes are now done! Since I have never done silhouettes before, I decided to try out different techniques to find out what suited me best.

At the beginning my silhouettes were too refined. I struggled with painting without thinking about the end result, so it didn't turn out as random shapes. Instead they became silhouettes of images that I already had in mind, thus ruined the points of silhouettes.

I quickly realised I could not continue doing them like this. I decided to loosen up and just draw random blobs that slightly resembles a human shape and create stuff from there.

After trying a few silhouettes using this approach, I started to play around doing a 2nd pass of the characters. I then noticed that working with negative space allowed me to start with creating random blobs. I then explored the shapes and as a result made a clearer view of what I saw within those blobs. So I started to do the rest of the silhouettes with another brush and from there, picked my favourites and gave them a 2nd pass.

(1st Pass)

(2nd Pass, Using negative space)

When using negative space in my silhouettes, I managed to get out a bit more detail to the silhouettes without removing the randomness of it. As you can see, after a while I decided that my Hunter would be a female hunter and thus the rest are female.

(These are my five favourites so far.)

Of all silhouettes I made, the one below really stood out to me. I decided to base my final piece on this silhouette. I think this pose would be suitable for my final piece as it reflects my characters personality and portraits a sense of mystery.

(My favourite one)

BA1 - Light, Colour & Shadow Fundamentals

What is Light?

When working with art, light is one of the key components to get your artwork look one step closer to reality. Light can help us with colour, form and distance. In this post i will go through why Light is so important and how it works. 

How does Light work?

Since we perceive colour by the help of light it is very important what kind of surface the colour is bound to. To explain how light works we have to dive deeper into three main areas: Absorbtion, Reflection and Refraction.

Absorption

If the surface the light is bouncing to is absorb-able the colour itself and it's saturation will be effected. 

Reflection

If the surface is reflecting the light, it will effect the colours diffuse. If light get's reflected it will always bounce off the object with the opposite angle.

If the surface that the light hits is uneven (Bumpy) the light will still bounce off in the opposite angle it hit from. 

Refraction

Refraction means that the light is travelling through the object. The material of the object does effect the amount distortion that will occur. 

Those three are the main ways how lighting works. Using these different ways that light can travel through materials we can get different effects. We will take a look of some of these effects now.

Bounced Light

Bounced Light means when light bounces off a certain object/material and illuminates surrounding surfaces. As described in the picture below, you can see that the ball is originally not green but because of the close by wall is green the light that bounces off it makes the ball get a green tint to it.

Sub-Surface Scattering

Sub-Surface Scattering occurs when light travels through slightly translucent objects, like leafs or grapes for instance. 

Shadows

A shadow occurs when light gets obscured by an object. The shape and intensity of a shadow is based on the light's intensity and position. The shadow itself is always strongest close to the object and the shadow fades the further away from the object it gets.  This effect is known as Dynamic Occlusion.

Colour

To fully describe what colour is i would have to go on forever so i will try keep it as short and simple as possible. The very basics of colour is that it is light power versus wavelength. For instance the reason why we see the sky as blue is because it has the shortest wavelength so that is the colour our eye catches first from all the different colours wavelength's. If red for instance would have a shorter wavelength interval than blue we would perceive the sky as red instead. 

Colours are very relative and can be changed by many different factors. On objects the colours can be different depending on the material of the object, it's environment and the person's eye and brain that perceives the colours. Different people can perceive colours differently depending on their viewing angles and such.

Colour in Photoshop

When working with colour in Photoshop it is important that you know how the HSV picker works. I have made a picture that shows the basics of it.

Colour Tempature

Colour Temperature is the degree of warmth a painting has. It can have a great impact on the atmosphere of your painting. Here you can see a scale of the different warmth's. 

Light Analysis

For my first picture to do a light analysis of i have chosen a piece of Concept Art from the game "Dishonored" 

In this picture we can see various kinds of lighting. The strongest kind of lighting in this picture is bounce lighting. As there are no light source inside the building itself the only light source is the sky outside that bounces with the help of the water and uses bounced lightning to lighten up the interior. Cause of the mix of bounce light and the green murky water the interior also get's a green tint to it cause of the light. If for instance there would be no water and the chandelier in the roof would be lit this room would probably appear a lot less green.

As for my second picture to study i choose a concept art piece from the game "Assassin's Creed: Revelations"

In this piece we can see several light sources. We have a strong directional light coming from the roof and several torches lighting up the surrounding areas. While the lighting from the roof delivers a very cold light the torches delivers a sense of warmth to them. Having the cold lighting on top of the chest is a clever move to attract your eyes to it since it's so different to the surrounding areas.