#AND I got to try out lineless art which was definitely difficult but it looks so cool!

[lothbats9000]

Happy last couple days of Pride Month!!

And also since I missed it, happy late birthday Sonic!

[socialfairytale]

Evaluation

My project has changed a lot throughout the course- my final outcome has differed greatly from what I set out to make at the beginning, mainly due to the fact that I was trying a lot of new things and they didn’t all work as expected. But i’m glad that my project evolved. 

The social issue I decided to choose for this project is the Environment and Climate Change- I wanted to make a game concept that would encourage people to fix the planet before it’s too late. There are many issues that are affecting and changing our planet currently, most of which are direct result of human activity. We are responsible (directly or at least for the majority of) for the Earth’s changing in climate- we release too many greenhouse gases through various means such as transport, factory farming and deforestation. 

One of the things that has remained consistent in this project is that the social issue being a key part of the game - I haven’t diverged much. The character design and game themes definitely incorporate some fantasy themes (such as the main character) but the underlying issue about the world being uninhabitable and ruined is still a very obvious feature. I would have created a project that more subtly related to climate change, but it’s something i’m very interested in so I thought it would be a good idea.  I was aware that a game based very obviously on a social issue may not attract a lot of attention as people tend to avoid things that are ‘politcal’ but I think it works - I tried to make the character design and magical elements very visually appealing so the game so that it would appear more interesting and attractive to play upon a first glance. 

The work I have created - Echo - is for a game concept. I created some concept art for the character and landscape, made some pixel animations to show how the game could potentially look, and made a model of the main character’s head. The model was created so I could get a better idea of how the character could look from all angles, thus making it easier to draw. I am also very interested in modelling so I thought making a model would be a lot more interesting than just two dimensional artwork.

The Character Design/Concept

I wanted to create a concept for the game’s main character. At the start of the project I envisioned them to be a cute & brightly coloured animal - to try and contrast with the bleak reality in which the game is set. I made a pinterest board to try and establish the kind of look I wanted it to have, and came up with some concepts. At the time I was also really inspired by Kitsune & their magical connotations in Japan so I wanted it to look somewhat fox like. 

I jumped straight into the character design without really considering the rest of the work I wanted to do which would involve it - which is where I started to make some questionable choices. I decided to give Echo four ears to make them look very unique and otherworldly - but didn’t really consider the practicality of having these, nor did I think ahead to when i’d actually have to make them later. I also have a tendency to design the character’s appearance first before coming up with their personality - which also meant that the second set of ears didn’t really have a purpose of being there. Alongside this I also gave them an enormous mane and extravagant tail to help them stand out - this was also annoying to animate. However, despite the impracticality of their design, I really like how the final appearance turned out - it definitely looks aesthetically appealing and different compared to something you’d expect to find on Earth.

Another problem I had when drawing the character was trying to establish their anatomy and keep it consistent when creating the concept sketches for them. I wanted to make Echo walk on two legs yet still have an animalistic appearance so I made them anthropomorphic with shorter digitigrade legs than those of a human - this made a lot of poses quite difficult to draw as his body proportions were very different than the references I used - so in some sketches his legs are far too long. 

I created several pieces of game art featuring Echo although I’m not totally happy with any of them- this is due to my experimentation with new programs and different techniques. All four of the artworks were created outside of my comfort zone - 3 of which were created using Procreate and a shading style which I am not as proficient in - and the final one was created in Paint Tool Sai with a wacom intuos (which was a vastly more complicated task than using my Cintiq). I felt that some of the work just didn’t have atmosphere I was trying to create- some of the pieces looked flat, and using the iPad to paint meant that I didn’t have access to my usual tools for painting. To improve next time, I will practice more both with procreate and the Intuos tablet, but also try and create some artwork that i’m actually happy with by spending a lot of time on it rather than giving up after 2 hours - which was very common with a lot of my work in this project as I felt like the deadline was approaching too fast. 

I really like Echo’s overall character design but I think that it could have been developed a lot better if I had spent more time on it, and used more realistic animals as reference material. My favourite parts about their design are the glowing colourful ears and tail, as well as the mask, which I think gives them a very mysterious and ethereal appearance (which I think it suitable considering they’re meant to be a space deity). If I could design them again I would have also created a wider range of concepts before creating the final design so fast, as I ended up having some really cool ideas later on. I would have also reduced the number of ears and made the tail/mane smaller to try and make this character actually easily reproducible. 

I did also design Radio and Pix, the other two main characters, but these were done very quickly near the end of the project so they are also not as developed as i’d like them to be. I think my target for next time would definitely be to not try and rush my projects as much and actually put thought and consideration into them. It would have also been nice to do more environment design as this was something I was really keen to explore at the start of the project but didn’t have enough time to explore - I would have rather put more time into this than trying to create finished artwork of Echo. 

Pixel Art/Animation

For this aspect of my project I aimed to design some animations and sprites/environments to show what the actual game would look like if it was made. This was one of my first experiences with pixel animation and sprite artwork which made it quite a challenge for me, especially in the beginning.

Animating in pixel art is a really different experience, as I found that almost every pixel had to be placed perfectly to make the movement look smooth - quite often I found that just by changing a few pixels on one frame completely changed the shape of the head in another - but this paid off as I got used to it. Overall, i’m really happy with the way my weapon summoning animation turned out - I think the movement looks really fluid and even though it’s small and pixelated, you can still make out the individual parts of the character.

Some parts I should have done differently were definitely the smoke animation and effect - I made the smoke and staff Glow using an overlay layer on Photoshop - which messed up the transparencies of the finished sprite. When I tried to export it as a gif with no background, there were white pixels surrounding the body due to the partially filled in pixels from the glow layer, which the PNG could not interpret properly. To fix this, I added a grey background to the animation when exporting it so that it would display correctly on my blog - but this was only a temporary fix, as It would have had to be transparent to import into Unity, for example. I think that the glow could have worked if it was added afterwards once imported into the games engine rather than as part of the animation, but it worked to show my ideas.

Another problem I had was with the animation cycle itself - this was another project which I rushed into a bit - as I ended up not being able to loop it due to Echo taking a step forward midway through, so ending up in a different location to where they started off. I should have also made the overall pixel sprite smaller I think and maybe tried a lineless style - as the 120ish pixel height of the character meant that it took a while to replicate for each frame.

In term of success though i’m happy with the actual artwork of the pixels - I also really like how the icon of Echo and the dialogue box turned out, as they fit together well and match the aesthetic of the game. As well as this, the text animation I created also looks really cool I think - there isn’t anything I would change about that. The pixel art backgrounds I created also turned out pretty well, but I think it would have been nice to create a more refined and clean, lined background rather than the sketchy lineless style it ended up having. 

Model/Mask Attempt

This was the project I had the most difficulty with out of all three I attempted. I started off wanting to make a super sculpey model of Echo, which soon changed into a wearable mask of his head, and then finally changed into a small model.

The first thing I tried was making the mask in Blender - which I have no experience with - which may have been the cause of some of the difficulties I had. I first sculpted the shape of the mask and decided to try and print it out as a pepakura file - which didn’t work initially due to the high number of polygons. if I was to make another pepakura mask I would instead work with a very low number of polygons instead to start with rather than trying to retopologise the model later which was also rather tedious. 

After retopologising the model, the option to 3D print it was available - unfortunately since I hadn’t planned this from the start my model also was not suitable for this. I think that all of these attempts didn’t work properly since I hadn’t researched them enough and built them with these results in mind - I had to strongly rework my model again to get it to work in a 3D printer. Despite this difficult stage though I do really love the look and anatomy of the model I made - it actually looks how I intended it to and has the perfect cartoony/realistic mix I was going for. The 3D print had to be split up into sections and then printed one at a time. This process had some flaws which I would execute differently if I had more time - I didn’t realise how difficult it would be to make the 3D model look presentable (sanding and filling etc) so I should have printed it in a higher resolution to start with, as it was too low res to make a smooth model out of. On top of this, there were some scaling issues which meant that several pieces were very slightly different sizes to each other. To fix this, I should have kept each piece on the same document and scaled them all up together rather than each one individually. That being said, the mask I did 3D print did end up fitting my face which I consider a definite win, as I measured it all beforehand in the hopes that it would not be too small or big for my head. I should have done a lot more research into 3D printing before rushing into it. 

Unfortunately due to the quality and mishaps with the 3D print (the hollow surface meant it could not be properly sanded, and one corner was missing due to the supports collapsing during the printing process - causing it to droop down and break off), I had to move to a different method. My main regret during this stage was my time management - I tried out 3 different techniques during 3 days and none of them worked to my standard so I scrapped all of them. The first was the EVA foam patterned model. I really like how all of the edges are crisp and fit together really well but unfortunately the pattern was not able to capture the exact head shape, which ended up looking a bit weird. I think this could have been remedied if i’d kept working on it and made manual adjustments. The foam I used was also far too thin (5mm) which caused the model to be very weak as it kept squashing and changing shape. It would have worked a lot better if i’d used 10mm foam I think. 

The two upholstery foam attempts were actually probably fixable, again if i’d spent more time on them. The carved block head especially, I think it would have worked a lot better if my electric knife had been sharpened. I like the way which they started to turn out but I got a little too ambitious and removed too much material too fast. These two attempts were another case of me not doing enough prior research into them beforehand, and could have turned out a lot better if I watched more than one tutorial for each.

The last thing I resorted to was a super sculpey model, which has turned into one of my final outcomes. While it is unfinished, I am really really pleased with how it looks for the most part. I used my original 3D sculpt as a reference to model the head out of super sculpey, then sealed and painted it with acrylics. I’m really happy that I used sculpey as the material as it keeps its shape well and was very smooth - although I think it could have been smoother if I had used some sculpting tools or turpentine to help even out the surface.