FMP
The theme for the fmp is data.
My idea for my fmp is concept art for a game which is an open world action adventure.
On Kawara
Kathy Prendergast
What three words: ///earpiece.limbs.meanest
Mark Dion
Josh Begley
Liam Brazier
Maya Book
Development: Evaluation & Reflection
photoshop experimentation
i chose an image relevant to my FMP proposal which was concept art. I then looked for text relating to it as well and overlaid it onto the image and altered the text to make the words compact then using the magic wand tool, selected everything outside of the text and then reversed it so only the text was selected. I then went onto the image and copy and pasted whilst the selected text was still there and then removed the original text and image and put a black background with a blue glow where there’s a glow in the image in the writing.
visuals
Due to a recent change in circumstance, moving home, I’m facing a problem with the continuation of my work. The internet at the new home is still yet to be connected and seemingly won’t be for the foreseeable future. To mitigate this problem I will venture into college and use my connections to others to gain access to the internet and assistance from tutors where needed.
initial sketches
To begin my projects development I have started to produce initial sketches and rough designs for my intended outcome, a concept character for a near futuristic action adventure game. To help illustrate the themes of action and excitement in the characters design I have included a Katana style weapon and to fit with the near futuristic setting I have designed them with a techwear clothing inspiration.
I decided to us paper for my initial sketches as opposed to going straight into digital work as I personally prefer to develop basic sketches through this medium as it allows for faster access rather than having to boot up a pc and load photoshop.
I envision these characters as a “Whispers”, a kind of messenger in this games world that would transport sensitive data from someone selling it to the buyer for a fee.
Primary Research
Secondary Research
progression of character concept
reference images
evaluation
In the context with the theme of data I decided to create concept art of characters for a open world video game set within the near future in Japan. This idea for a game would link to data because I envisioned it as a kind of spiritual successor to Watch Dogs with a futuristic dystopian world in which information is seen as more valuable than currency itself and can be traded as such. The player character would be a “Whisper” someone who would take hard drives of sensitive information from an information broker to the buyer. The target audience is 16-25 year olds who enjoy games such as watch dogs and the visual style associated with anime. Anime was particularly influential when creating my second design. I tried to follow the style and look of your typical anime characters and I feel like the final outcome has done this with good effect. I searched for some images of Japanese weaponry to assist me with the development of my own character. It allowed me to make a weapon similar to this that added to the Japanese theme. The mask on the second design has slight similarities with traditional Japanese masks and gas masks. The outfits for the first design is based off of a type of fashion called tech wear and the second design carries some inspiration from this type of fashion whilst still keeping to the original style of the anime its based off.
For my research I looked at different artists styles and references for inspiration. I wanted to go for more Anime style art for my work as I was inspired by games with similar aesthetics like Code Vein by Bandai namco. For my first final design I researched and collected some reference images of different Tech wear outfit styles to base my drawing off of and to help with body proportions and clothing details. My second final design mostly relied on references and concept art from an anime called ‘My Hero Academia’ (BNHA) as I really like its style and character designs and wanted to implement something like that into my work.
During the early development stages of my FMP I moved house and ended up being stuck with no WIFI, this became a problem as it interfered with my work and I ended up falling behind and missed some online lessons, so to get around this problem I went into college to try and progress my online work but this wasn’t really enough as I had a lot of time at home being wasted as there wasn’t much I could do, so I stayed at a friends who had the equipment I could use for my FMP and begun to catch back up. Another problem I had encountered was the realisation that I wasn’t going to get my environmental concept art done in time due to me being busy outside of college and getting held up, so for my second concept design, I used a character sheet I was drawing in any free time I had outside of college as it was being made during FMP and it could relate to my original design and was much closer to being finished than my environment design.
When I started the planning for my FMP I made a mind map with different things that could be linked to data to try and find something I could do. I eventually settled for concept art of a game idea I had come up with that could be linked to data. I then looked up other games that were similar so I could get some ideas and inspiration, the game that had gave me the most inspiration was WatchDogs by UBISOFT which had both a similar story/world but also was set in a time not far from what I decided to go for in my design. When developing my character ideas, I started with simple sketches on paper before transferring them over to photoshop to make a cleaner/ better looking version of the original which I then added colour to to try and get a better visual idea of what I wanted. I then started to look for references to help me make a more detailed character. For the outfit style I wanted to go for something a bit more futuristic whilst still looking a bit modern, I knew of a clothing style which fit this but I had to do some research to find out the specific name of the fashion so I could find better references to help with my design. Eventually I was able to find out the name of the fashion which is Tech wear after finding a couple images with the name in its title, after finding this I was able to narrow my image search to more specific images which greatly helped with finding ideas and inspiration for my character design. I used these images to help me with drawing the basic sketches of my first final design, most specifically the shape of the clothing at different angles and the basic outline of the clothes. My second design which was heavily influenced by ‘BNHA’ primarily used reference images for the show and a few concept pieces for a movie based on the anime. I chose to go for a more anime art style for my FMP as I like the style and wanted to see how far I could go with it in my final designs, and I was inspired by other games with similar styles like Code Vein by Bandai namco which was mentioned earlier on. When making my final designs, I started by making the basic outlines of the characters with the help of reference images, once I was happy with how it looked I then started colouring them, with the colours I ended up going with mostly greyscale looking outfits for the characters but with the pattern on the clothing being a bright colour as a direct contrast. On the first final design I decided to add shading on the character, I did this by using a layer mask to add the dark shadows to the design, after I decided to duplicate the mask with the shadows to another layer and took a screenshot of that as it looked similar to how manga’s are usually drawn with the black and white contrast. Once I had finished both drawings I exported them as png’s before uploading them to my WordPress.
When I look back on my progress throughout my FMP I believe there are a few places I could improve, mostly time management and the presentation of my WordPress, but I also believe my art skills have improved a fair bit as well as I usually avoid drawing anything humanoid as I often find it difficult to get the proportions and shape right, but my final two drawings prove to me that I have improved since I first started. As mentioned, I still believe my time management could have been better despite the problems I’ve encountered over the course of the FMP as I ended up having a fair bit of work to catch up to near the end of the project. The presentation of my WordPress also has room for improvement, though I did fix some parts of it that where in the wrong locations.
Overall I believe that as improvement goes in the presentation of my final pieces, I have improved since the last FMP though there is less content this time, partly due to the many unfortunate circumstance that have happened over the course of this project and this year.
Digital art 