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Evaluation

Media and techniques:

I learnt a lot about how designers create concept art in this project through my research and improved my skills through tutorials as well.

Photobashing was something I was aware of before, but didn’t know quite how common it was. Two out of the four art books I looked at used it in their processes and I really love how it can be used to create entirely new artworks from existing photos. Although I didn’t get to explore it as much as I would have liked to, I am glad that I did as it is something I will look at in the future.

I really liked working with the AI tools (wombo and artbreeder) and drawing over the generated images from artbreeder was really effective in my opinion. I love how they turned out and it really aided my work flow and speed.

I learnt a ton about nomad and an iPad 3D workflow too because of my research. I learnt how to UV unwrap in nomad, add in textures using alphas created in procreate and creating the fish definitely improved my skills on adding colour into 3D models as it is very different than the 2D I am used to.

I used mostly procreate for this project and I think that was the right choice. Not only am I used to it, but it is a professional industry standard program which is incredibly versatile. I made some of my own custom brushes on there as well which was something that is much more difficult to do in other programs.

I think I was successful in creating concept art.

Purpose, theme and concept:

The two day challenge we did in the first week really helped me to set realistic expectations of the amount of work I could achieve in the time given. I think without that, I would have been too ambitious and would have had to go back and edit my idea.

Originally, I wanted to create several 3D models but after seeing how long it was taking me, I am glad that I changed that to be only one as it gave me much more of an opportunity to learn about the programs I was using.

I do wish I had gone with another one of my ideas however because although I think my idea and concepts meets the theme of elements well, I think it would have been more enjoyable for me to design more pokemon like creatures instead.

Outcome:

I completed roughly the amount of designs that I wanted to which isn’t a bad thing by any means but I wish that I had time to create more of them and create more of a completed world idea like I described in my proposal. I also added in a lot of research videos and in hindsight, it probably would have been better to write these up in either note/bullet point form or in my own words rather than just linking the videos.

I would have loved to look at more avian animals like swans or cranes as I started concepts for them but never finished them unfortunately.

Conclusion:

If I were to do this again, I would have gone with a more simplistic style overall so that I could create more designs to add into a portfolio and I would have allocated more time to designing a player character and companion robot. I would also have liked to look at exploring more programs that aren’t on the iPad as I think that would take my project to the next level in terms of tools research.

I presented some of my work on youtube as well but I would post them onto artstation as well.

I did find google forms really helpful though and I will be using this much more in my other projects as it is really easy to get feedback from my peers that way as sharing it on discord with my classmates and friends can get me a lot of poll responses or constructive criticism.

I think I presented my work and outcomes really well and I think this was a successful project.

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Ferret robot design and research pages video

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Ideas I didn't get to design

Robot turtle- monitors water quality and if it needs it, adds in various chemicals to get the correct PH values, salt and oxygen levels. Water affinity

Robot otter- Collects various metals and scraps that may be useful when repairing robots or creating new ones. Fire affinity as it can heat the metal into liquid

Robot swan (tundra swan)- Ice and fire affinity, monitors weather and changes in temperature.

Robot crane- light affinity. used as surveillance previously but now is used soul as a defense robot, attacks by shining bright lights and has sharp talons and wings. Could also have a version that keeps the natural fish populations in check, shock affinity

Robot salmon- monitors the numbers of the fish species, ground affinity?

River dolphin- Doesn't have good sight in real life but could have it's whole head as a camera. Light affinity, maybe water as well

Cat or dog- used to be used as a low maintenance alternative. light or water affinity

Bison- used for transporting metal and other valuables safely across the land. earth affinity

Coyote- fire affinity

Vulture- locates scrap metal or robots that have been damaged and are now offline, shock affinity

I would have loved to look at all of these, particular the birds, however I didn't get time which is a shame.

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Presenting- artstation

Artstation is a great site for creating a portfolio and I used to use it myself. You can post artwork, animations, models and anything else concept or games art related online. It functions as a digital portfolio and there is even a way to let the site create you your own portfolio site too to show off your work to potential employers.

Artstation was acquired by Epic games recently and they made the artstation learning courses free so I had watched a bunch of them before this project and they were all really helpful! There is also a marketplace where you can buy and sell prints, digital brushes and other tools. Some of my favorite brush packs were purchased from there, namely a watercolour one (which is no longer up unfortunately), which is what I used to create the background for the creature pages.

Artstation is used by loads of professionals in industry to aid with getting a job or finding potential employees for projects.

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Land animals

This animals is loosely based off a ferret. It can clean pipes and vents and shoots water out of it's mouth which can be warm water, cold water or soapy water. It's fur is usually white but picks up lots of dust and dirt which turns it a grey or brown colour. They tend to travel in small groups and clean area by area. A lot of the time once they have finished, they will clean each other before moving on. Their tails can poof to act like a feather duster. They also have very sharp retractable claws to aid with climbing.

They aren't hostile at all but if they spot you, they will create a loud noise which will alert other robots and animals. This was in place before to let people know if there is something broken or blocking their path that they can't clear.

This is based off of a goat and was one of the first designs I completed. It can communicate messages across long distances and has an ice and earth affinity as it does light terraforming and can freeze the ground to help slow down ice melt if it needs to. The horns can fold out to become straight like a gazelle so it can dig.

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Aquatic animals

These fish were really colourful when I designed them so I thought they'd fit really well amongst tropical fish in coral reefs.

When I designed these, I always had the theme of lava or magma in my mind so it only made sense for them to be fire affinity. I decided to add in light as well as real magma glows. If it did ever become a real game too, I feel like it could have a lot of visual impact when swimming like fireflies often do in media. (a film that comes to mind as a good example of this is the last dinosaur)

One thing that I saw a lot in my game research was designers creating recolours for variety as it not only saves on resources, but is an easy way to make a world feel more populated. A swamp biome is something I don't see often in media but I feel like it is really underappreciated so I had to have a swamp biome. Swamps often have a lot of water and a few different fish species can thrive there. When I looked at the design, I realized that you could interpret the darker markings as tree bark.

I picked earth affinity for these guys as I didn't feel like any others fit and having a water affinity fish sounds boring, especially in a biome like this.

I made them larger than the other version because they only have one affinity rather than two. They feed off of bark and moss found in the swamps which helps to maintain the health of the plants in the area.

This robot is based of the real life orca which is currently endangered due to overfishing creating a lack of food. They are incredibly important to a lot of indigenous mythologies and cultures but have a reputation outside of them for being killers although they are completely harmless to humans in the wild which is where the nickname "killer whale" comes from even though they are dolphins. The genus name Orcinus means "of the kingdom of the dead"

"The indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast feature orcas throughout their art, history, spirituality and religion. The Haida regarded orcas as the most powerful animals in the ocean, and their mythology tells of orcas living in houses and towns under the sea. According to these myths, they took on human form when submerged, and humans who drowned went to live with them. For the Kwakwaka'wakw, the orca was regarded as the ruler of the undersea world, with sea lions for slaves and dolphins for warriors. In Nuu-chah-nulth and Kwakwaka'wakw mythology, orcas may embody the souls of deceased chiefs. The Tlingit of southeastern Alaska regarded the orca as custodian of the sea and a benefactor of humans.The Maritime Archaic people of Newfoundland also had great respect for orcas, as evidenced by stone carvings found in a 4,000-year-old burial at the Port au Choix Archaeological Site.

In the tales and beliefs of the Siberian Yupik people, orcas are said to appear as wolves in winter, and wolves as orcas in summer. Orcas are believed to assist their hunters in driving walrus. Reverence is expressed in several forms: the boat represents the animal, and a wooden carving hung from the hunter's belt. Small sacrifices such as tobacco or meat are strewn into the sea for them"

Real life orcas range in size from 5-8m so I chose to make mine the largest in that range. This is so that they are easily spotted and not disturbed by anyone. Their colouring is also reversed from what you would typically see in order to make them more visible as well. Unlike a lot of the robots in this world, these weren't adapted by the AI and always had defensive mechanisms in place so that they were more likely to be left alone.

Their quickest speed is 34.8MPH but I rounded that up and made a range instead as it makes sense for them to be able to swim quicker as robots.

Unlike their real life counterparts, these travel alone rather than in groups so they can cover more range overall when cleaning the seas.

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Creating diary entries and info pages

I wanted to create some diary entries for the player character to write as the game progresses and the player can look back in one of the menus to read them and get a little more insight into them and the story. I personally love it when games have a feature like this. It also means I can use it as a way to get info quickly about the creatures and robots as all you have to do is pull up a menu to look back on what the character has learnt. I would really love to present each creature and robot for the project like they are entries in a research book along with smaller study sketches and notes. In order to give them this hand drawn look however, I would need a handwriting font. I went on Dafont and picked out a few free to use ones that I liked the look of and asked for feedback.

I feel like the character wouldn't have used a pen much before as on the spaceship, everything is digitalized but they like to draw studies of the plants and animals and kept their own paper diary there too so they can take it down to the planet. Everything can be done digitally but I like the aesthetic and think it would give a lot of personality to the character.

Option 1, Jaspers handwriting was the most popular by far and once I had started creating the entries a bit more, I have to agree!

This is the paper texture I created for the presentation of my work. It uses some watercolour paper scans and I used my custom brushes made in procreate to create the texture on the top of it. The brushes are also made using scans of actual watercolours and inks. I then drew some lines in the corners and partially erased parts of them to add to the older weathered look.

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part 2

This is another very quick concept I did of a city. I also used one of the artbreeder pieces for this, but this time I drew over the entirety of it. I do really love this technique for getting down ideas quickly.

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photobashing and artbreeder pt 1

The first thing I wanted to have a go at was drawing over the top of one of the images I had generated. This meant that I could easily edit it to look how I wanted it to but also was very quick and efficient. This took less than 45 minutes overall from generating it to finishing drawing over it meaning that it can be used as a quick way to get ideas down, even quicker than photobashing is.

Photobashing is often seen as fairly controversial in the art world outside of professionals as people think it is "cheating" but it is used in concept art all the time. Below are a few tutorials I watched as although I have looked at using the technique before, I haven't ever used it for a full piece. Below is also a very quick one I made using images from Unsplash combined with one from artbreeder. I can definitely see how it can be great for a lot of teams but I need a little more practice with it I think.

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artbreeder

Artbreeder is a website where you can use an AI to generate images. It has a lot of different settings like character creation or portraits but they aren't as good as the landscape tool in my opinion. You can pick to generate entirely new landscapes or you can pick ones to combine together to create something entirely different. There are a whole load of different sliders that can dramatically change the look of the image and each and every one is unique.

These are all landscapes I generated as potential ideas for my project, you can view them by following this link. https://www.artbreeder.com/erin.stone85

These are three completely random images I generated and how much they change simply by changing one of the many sliders on the right.

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Wombo dream

Wombo dream is an AI tool that generates images based off a prompt word and an art style. It doesn't do well with characters or animals but it is really good with landscapes and abstract prompts.

Here are a few images I got it to generate. These can be used in photobashing like I will with artbreeder, or can be drawn over which I have personally done a few times in my own time.

Abandoned city:

Fantasy art, etching, S.Dali

Robot city:

Dark fantasy, blacklight,

Abandoned temple:

Rose gold, fantasy art, dark fantasy, dark fantasy, fantasy art

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Google article

This is an article that I saw pop up on the homepage of google today and I thought it was really interesting. It is a collection of artists visualizing climate change.

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Wall-e

Wall-e is a Disney Pixar film and by now, I think everyone has probably watched it at least once in their lives. It has a reallyimportant message as in the film, humans had to leave as there was so much rubbish and litter that they could no longer survive there. This has a few similarities to my idea and The visual style is something I really enjoy.

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Designing a main character (or two)

One thing I decided I needed to finish before the hand in is the design of at least one main character so that is what I decided to tackle after Easter break. I know from the start that I want the main outfit to be fairly futuristic and high tech, provide a decent amount of protection against the elements, but also have an element of nature in it. The main character has lived in space their whole life in a very high tech society so it only makes sense for her to have clothes that reflect that, but I would also like them to have those nature elements as it would only make sense for them to be curious about things like that. Maybe in the spaceship, there isn't much plant life or animal life outside of agriculture so the main character. For the main character to be sent back down to the planet to explore, they would naturally have to be very curious so I would also like this to be reflected in the outfit in some way.

One thing I notice a lot in character design is this method of creating lots of smaller sketches using black and white (and/or grey). This forces you to focus on the silhouettes rather than detail and helps you figure out contrast. This is something I personally find myself having to consider but doing it right from the start means I wont have to as much.

One idea I came up with whilst designing was that I could simply come up with one or two main outfits and then you can pick between a few different hairstyles. This would be a really simple way of giving the illusion of customization where there isn't much of it. This way I could have consistency in the world too as anyone send down to the planet would obviously have similar outfits anyway. I also love the idea of the characters having some kind of really sci-fi looking headphones/mask which also means that the eyes become more of the focus in the character's face. On top of that, it means that I don't have to spend lots of time designing facial features as in my opinion, a lot of the time that can make or break a character.

One major issue I came across when doing these initial designs was figuring out a way for the designs to not look too modern. For practicality, it makes sense to not wear skirts and things like that, nor does it make sense to wear shorts if you are exploring abandoned cities where it is very overgrown. I personally really like combat trousers as they have lots of pockets. The problem with them however is that they feel too modern in my designs and not futuristic enough which may change depending on the rest of the outfit. I also was inspired by the designs in Horizon yet again where they have this "skirt" type thing which can hold various tools. I made a couple designs using this concept and I do quite like them but they also don't feel futuristic enough. I will be looking at sci-fi outfits, post apocalyptic style fashion, "futuristic" outfits and just general practical outfits.

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Player character customization?

One fairly important decision that has to be made is if there will be one set playable character or the ability for players to make their own. Sometimes this decision can be fairly obvious, like in multiplayer games, almost all of them allow the player to create their own character so they can stand out or have a large amount of playable characters to choose from. Overwatch and League of legends come to mind for the player choosing a character from a large selection, and splatoon comes to mind for full customisation. On the other hand, games with sequels or story based games come to mind for ones where there is a set character. Most of the time when they are so story driven, it doesn’t make sense for there to be customisation. For this, games like life is strange or the Last of Us come to mind but there are also a couple that do have customisation. Then you’ve got RPGs which seem to have a decent mix of both.

The Ori games have a set character but it is a little different in the sense that Ori is just a plain white spirit with no dialogue but a lot of emotion in their movement. This allows the player to either see themselves or someone else in Ori since they are so ambiguous. This makes certain scenes feel much more impactful as humans naturally fill in gaps about characters like personality or emotion where there isn’t one.

Animal crossing and Stardew valley are both games where it is important for the player to feel that they themselves are playing so that they feel more immersed. They wouldn’t be nearly as popular I don’t think if they had a set character or a few to choose from as the main draw of those games is making your farm or island/town feel like your own.

Games like the modern pokemon games let the player choose between a couple of characters and then from there, they can customise. Usually they let you change most things apart from the gender and skin tone which is half like creating your own player character in the sense that you can customise a lot but you are still fairly limited. This however works for pokemon where there is a very simplified style. It is fairly similar to the amount of customisation in animal crossing which means that the player can still see themselves in the character but it doesn’t need a billion customisation options like in more realistic styled games.

Then you also have Strategy RPGs like fire emblem or triangle strategy where some allow you to choose between a few characters for your “player” or simply have a set player. A lot of the time, loads of customisation isn’t necessary as they are fairly story driven.

In games too, I feel like it is important for the designers to consider the community that may form around their game online. I find that games with one or two player characters get much more fanart of them apposed to something with customisable characters. You don’t see much fanart of the player characters in animal crossing for example but you see loads for the villagers. It can backfire however if you have a player character that the players can’t connect with as much because if you are playing a game with a player character you find annoying, you won’t continue to play, so a lot of the time, the player character may not talk much or at all (Link in the Zelda series), or will have a fairly “blank” personality in the sense that they don’t have that much outright individuality. By this, I mean that they won’t have as strong of a personality as side characters. One thing that jumps to mind with this is Aloy (where she has a personality but it isn’t overly eccentric or anxious for example), or Byleth in Three houses where she has almost no personality in comparison to the very colourful cast of side characters. With this game in particular, it does tie into the story but it also serves as a way for the player to see themselves in the character without them being customisable.

I think for mine, I may end up going with one or two player characters to choose from, partially due to time but also because I personally prefer games with a strong world and story to have much more fleshed out player characters. I love games like the Last of Us, Fire Emblem (three houses) and Horizon for their main characters as a few examples.

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Animal robots irl

Over Easter break, I did a lot of research on real world inspiration points and restumbled upon Boston Dynamics which is very famous for it’s robot dog which went viral a few years ago. Below are some linked videos about them.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlL_rsmcRMZfmX7bWzLVadxzE0Giuy887

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlL_rsmcRMZfg0JSQq4xNuPxXH5b5j1Qi

https://youtu.be/uhND7Mvp3f4

https://youtu.be/tF4DML7FIWk

https://youtu.be/Rdm2ggtFvmQ

https://youtu.be/y3RIHnK0_NE (this video is by corridor crew which is a fake but it is still interesting!)

Another thing that I looked at was how real animals are used to inspire engineers as there is no better reference for the artificial than nature itself which has been proven time and time again. Before I even did any research, I already knew about planes having the upward part on the end of the wings being inspired by birds of prey in flight, and how the Japanese bullet trains use kingfishers as inspiration as they make almost no splash when diving into water and they needed to find a way for the trains to be streamline but also not crush when going into tunnels at such high speed.

https://youtu.be/SkF5gDZZvw8

These videos also show how animals are already replacing animals for a more ethical way of keeping captive dolphins

https://youtu.be/PjQL_k68FUg

https://youtu.be/AZeyHTJfi_E

https://youtu.be/B2mMq7U7T1o

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Nomad, learning about more features

One issue that I noticed that was my models were looking a little flat, the fish in particular. They are very smooth and that doesn't make sense if they were real creatures. Originally, I was going to try and import them into substance painter to add them in but I am unable to open the program on my laptop at home without it crashing. After this, I started to explore Nomad a little more and by complete chance, I stumbled upon a hidden menu that allows you to use Alphas to add in texture! From here, I looked up a couple tutorials on it and realized that I could create my own in procreate to use on my models.

Since the fish was the first one I had finished, I decided to add texture to that first. One of the tutorials I was said that they blend better for scales if you don't use the whole square when drawing it so I made a few scales and went from there.

These are a few tests I made using a few of the scales that I had created using the same methods that I used to create the larger ones that are above. Once I have finished adding in the scales, I will reimport it into procreate and add back in the colouring that I have done. I have leant a lot from this and I am almost glad that it crashed because now I know that Nomad has so many more features than I thought it did! Below are a few tutorials I used after this to check my knowledge of the program and so there aren't any other features that are handy that I may have missed. I also need to have a look at my reference board I created for the fish again to look at where the scales are on a fish. They may face different directions or be different sizes depending on where they are so I need to think carefully as to where to place them based on my references so it looks a little more realistic. I am really glad I figured out how to do this as it makes Nomad a much more valuable tool for me personally as I can’t get substance painter to work at it definitely improves the look of the model overall.

https://youtu.be/oTauxO8Eio0

https://youtu.be/SKHqAIqunu4

https://youtu.be/QBGEnQGefHQ (this is a video about a full iPad 3D workflow which is incredibly useful since most of my work is done on the iPad)

This video was the one I first used to create the texture and learn how to add it in. Unfortunately, I can't export the model on here from my iPad into procreate to add back in the colour which sucks but at least I know how to add it in. These are some screenshots of the scales I came up with, the second one was my attempt to give it less detail for exporting but it didn't work. Regardless of if I could add the colours in, I am overall fairly happy with the model. I know it could be more realistic but with the limitations I have on the iPad, I think I would be spending far too much time on it. If I were to attempt this again, I'd love to try modelling it in Maya and adding the UV maps with photoshop/procreate.