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Concept Work Contrast

Some concept work can be extremely different to one-another, for example Call Of Duty environment concept made by Jean-Pierre compared to The Binding Of Isaac.

The artist most likely called photobashing (Photobashing is a technique that consists of using multiple digital assets like pictures, textures, and 3D models to create realistic-looking artwork.) giving it a realistic look similar to the final product of the game.

Comparing to The Binding Of Isaac, the styles are completely different in style and concept work. Binding Of Isaac heavily relies on art-style other than using photobashing.

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The Binding of Isaac Artbook

A 40-page artbook featuring Edmund McMillen's design sketches of The Binding of Isaac was included in the Unholy Edition of the game. The artwork includes various Bosses, Items, Monsters, etc.

Looking upon the sketches it gives me the idea the concept work doesn’t have to be clean and rendered properly. This reassures me that even though I haven’t been proud about not being able to finish my concept work, it still a outcome even if its a simple sketch and gives a variety if I do end up coloring it and such. I have a bad habit of trying to perfecting all of my characters I do which holds me back on making more outcomes.

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Amanita Design

Amanita Design is a Czech indie game developer. The studio was founded in 2003 by designer, artist and animator Jakub Dvorsky, and is known for its emphasis on surreal worlds, light-hearted humour, hand-crafted appeal and audiovisual experience.

Amanita is currently operating in several small teams, working on a bunch of new games for various platforms.

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Pixel based concept art

Pixel based concept art is usually for games that rely on pixelated style. Something I am more familiar with is Minecraft. From my point of view it seems a bit more easier than making a scenery by scratch because the artist can use already made programs as a base and paint over it like voxel.

Even though my game isn’t pixel styled I do think using voxel can help me create environment concept art because I can paint over the base pixels.

Shown below how Mariana Salimena made the environment illustration using voxel as a base.

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Side Character - Progress

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Side Character - Progress

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Side Character - Eloise

Eloise

Age: 23

Gender: Female

Species: Shapeshifter (Etherian)

Height: 5′9″

Ex-Reaper : Was kicked out her job as a reaper due to putting her co-workers in danger and harming innocent civilians.

She is now work partners with (Working under the council)

She usually always resorts to violence

Her in-game purpose is to also chase down Mishka and he will have to always avoid her because Eloise always resorts to violence, meaning she would not hesitate to drag out trespassers bodies from the forbidden land.

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Character Designs - Rinotuna

Rinotuna is a character concept artist and illustrator that hasn’t stated whether to not they have been hired or not. The only software they state they use it Photoshop.

Out of the artists I have researched I am more familiar with their work because I have been following them on instagram for a while and their humanisation of animals/objects have gotten popular on different media platforms. Also I enjoy their work more over everyone else that I have researched because I adore their style and illustrations, the way the character poses are all different and expresses the characters personalities and being somewhat dynamic. Their work is what I want to achieve in the future with interesting character designs followed by illustrations to show off the characters. 

The only thing I would suggest for them is to show how their character designs got to where it is and show the progress on how they pose the characters.

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Character Designs - Camille Peyrebere

Camille is a concept artist that has worked for; Airborn Studios GmbH, Envar and Phoenix Labs. They only use Blender, Photoshop and ZBrush stated on their artstation.

Amongst their work I am conflicted whether or not I like their illustrations or not. Personally I like their designs but not ‘love’. Mainly because their designs aren’t overly detailed like I enjoy but the characters still look distinctive.

If I had the decision to hire them for my project I would accept, however if there are other artists that show they have heavily detailed designs then I would not accept. 

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Character Designs - Julian del Rey

Julian is a senior concept artist and illustrator that is working with Riot Games since 2018, famous for League Of Legends. They use variety of softwares like Illustrator, Photoshop, Krita, Unity and many more.

From seeing their illustrations and designs on their Artstation they mainly work with early explorations costume concept work and sometimes actual characters for League Of Legends characters. Early exploration meaning beginning stages of coming up with a design.

Out of all their work I really enjoy their concept work for a in-game costume called Fright Night Renata because of the halloween styled outfit and the colouring. From the early exploration all designs looked appealing with the bright colours against the dark colours. Another reason why I enjoy it and also Julian’s other work is because there are VFX (visual effects) explorations and turn-arounds for the characters and weapons. Highlighting in a different colour to show small details that aren’t easy to see.

If I was producing a game I would very much hire them because how they develop and vary their concepts in early stages. Also, they show how the character would appear in-game from front, behind and how their attacks would appear.

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Name Ideas

Once again there wasn’t any name that interested me or feel like the name associated with my character. Nicholas was close because I think of old fashioned but it just doesn’t sound like it fits my child character.

While trying to figure out a name a online friend suggested the name Mishka. The Russian version of Michael, a biblical name that means "who is like God." Mishka can also mean "little bear," since it's close to the word for bear in Russian. Reason why I will be going with this name is because it can also mean “little bear”.

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Name Ideas

To decide a name for my main character I would look up popular names or look up names that have meanings similar to the characters trait, appearance or where they live. This case the main character is calm, not mischievous, and mature even though he is a young child. 

I don’t like the names stated above because the names don’t somewhat match the character. Like William sometimes means "resolute protector" or "strong-willed warrior" or Matthew meaning “gift of god”.

The only name that interested me here was Timothy because you can short it down to Timmy as a nickname and I usually think the word ‘Timothy’ as small or tiny. I didn’t go with Ronald because people usually associate it with a clown or Kevin that makes me think of football that probably screams.

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Social Issues

The main character relates to a social issue based around lack of adult supervision and involvement and illness in family for children. These children are usually emotionally unstable; they frequently develop conduct disorders and have low self-esteem. 

For the main character his mother had fallen into a coma due to a fatal head injury and a father who was never present throughout his life. Due to lack of any parental figure, his relatives hired a someone to take care of him. However, this caused him to grow up feeling abandoned, lonely and in constant paranoia  because he worries that he will lose his only parent and be left with people he does not know. 

Later on in the story he is taken to a strangers place (though the stranger is friends with his caretaker) and wanders into a small door located in a closet. This small door takes him to the afterlife of Etheria and he has to find a way to return back home to his mother. Since the sudden change of environment, this can cause high-levels of anxiety and loneliness. This problem is somewhat similar to how children have to frequently move homes that can be traumatic because of having to make new friends and adjust to a new area again. 

(https://www.talkspace.com/blog/the-emotional-impact-of-frequent-moves-during-childhood/)

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Main Character - Progress

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Main Character - Progress

From the start I set the sketch layer to multiply and underneath I started to outline the base colour. This makes it easier to clip other colours onto the base colour to prevent colours going over the lines. After that just fill them in.

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Main Character - Colour

Referencing from the colour swatches using markers, I decided to make a digital version mainly because I was not able to get exact colours I wanted with the markers. Also, to save time I took a picture of the paper sketch and set the image layer to multiply to then colour underneath. However, the colours appear only a little darker then they originally are but I prefer the slightly muted colours over the ones underneath.

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The Adventures of Tintin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Tintin#Settings

The Adventures of Tintin is a series of 24 bande dessinée albums created by Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under the pen name Hergé. The series was one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. By 2007, Tintin had been published in more than 70 languages with sales of more than 200 million copies, and had been adapted for radio, television, theatre and film.

The series first appeared in French on 10 January 1929, in Le Petit Vingtième (The Little Twentieth), a youth supplement to the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle (The Twentieth Century). The success of the series led to serialised strips published in Belgium's leading newspaper Le Soir (The Evening) and spun into a successful Tintin magazine. In 1950, Hergé created Studios Hergé, which produced the canonical versions of 11 Tintin albums.

The series is set during a largely realistic 20th century. Its hero is Tintin, a courageous young Belgian reporter and adventurer aided by his faithful dog Snowy (Milou in the original French edition). Other allies include the brash and cynical Captain Haddock, the intelligent but hearing-impaired Professor Calculus (French: Professeur Tournesol), incompetent detectives Thomson and Thompson (French: Dupont et Dupond), and the opera diva Bianca Castafiore.

The series has been admired for its clean, expressive drawings in Hergé's signature ligne claire ("clear line") style. Its well-researched plots straddle the action-adventure and mystery genres and draw upon themes of politics, history, culture and technology, offset by moments of slapstick comedy.