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Exhibition

For the exhibition I have in place a frame from my final animation and my two character designs printed separate. The character designs are printed onto A4 and the finished frame is on A3 on mount board. The finished Animation reel consists of the finished final animation, all character animations for both characters and the looped animations for both pixel backgrounds.

The animation is on a empty USB playing through my Blu ray player setup behind the television. For the animation to loop the file on the USB must be selected, then using the options button on the players remote, select loop title.

HOW TO VIEW THE FINAL ANIMATION AT THE EXHIBITION!

To view the final animation the TV and player must be turned on. The player will go to the main menu when the user will navigate down to video and USB and select the only file on the USB ‘Curiosity Final piece William’

From there the animation should play. To loop the animation press options on the remote and select playback options and press loop title.

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Final evaluation

The context for my second year final major project was to create a self-lead project relating to the idea of curiosity. The brief itself had no set theme so I could go anywhere with the project as long as it could be linked back to curiosity. The problem faced by a self-lead project was that everything needed to be done independently with considerably less support than in past projects. This meant that I had to create work using the skills I had learnt over the past two years and do all my own independently source research. Then with the research collected, create work in response and relate it back to the overarching brief about Curiosity.

My initial thoughts upon reading the brief was that I could go anywhere with this project. I started thinking about what I was curious about which lead to the objects I brought in that would later become my display box. After mind mapping my assortment of curiosities, I then decided that I wanted to create something relating to video games.

I had chosen to pursue illustration and animation as my specialisms for this final major project as I believe they were my strongest areas of work in the past projects. I feel my animation and illustration skills have evolved since the first year and I wanted to use this final project to create a well-rounded final outcome incorporating elements of both of my key skills.

The purpose of my project was to create my own video game concept consisting of a unique character design and environment. I decided to relate my final project to video games because I am quite passionate and knowledgeable about them. I planned to investigate the design and development of iconic characters and levels from classic video games to see what makes them so iconic and timeless and hopefully gain a better understanding so I can implement that into my own work.

My research for my project began after visiting the design Museum in London. During the trip I took photographs of everything that I believe was curious and interesting to me that could possibly be relevant to my ideas. After the trip I created sketches based on the photos I took and collaged them together in a piece based on the work from Michael Craig-Martin. This is where my research began. Michael Craig-Martin was an artist who would always create his art in the same way. There was a consistency that meant you couldn’t tell if the piece was newly made of from multiple years back. This gave his work a somewhat timeless quality which is something I aimed to achieve with my own designs. His work used very bright and bold block colours which would usually be unrelated to the originally associated colour of the object. This created a sense of intrigue which I took inspiration from when I designed my background from my final outcome.

The photos I took from the Design Museum were of items such as a headset, old fashion TV and original Playstation and a fruit juicer made by Philippe Starck called the Juicy Salif. The TV and console reminded me of video games and the Juicy Salif inspired the villains for my concept as the juicer looked like a UFO from Men in Black and War of the Worlds.

Early on into my research I took various stills from some of the video games I thought were most visually appealing and decided to attempt recreating the scenes using various different media. I took stills from The Last of Us, The Witness and Journey all for the Playstation 4. I recreated these scenes via dry point etching and then used the pieces to create projection-based paintings. I did this so that I could look in-depth into the worlds and their landscapes/environments to see what makes them so appealing. I began to consider how these environments could look if they were retro based graphics and that started my investigation into classic game designs.

During the project I researched Tomohiro Nishikado who was the original creator of Space Invader which inspired me to go for a retro look with my final design outcome. I also looked into Susan Kare and how she expressed emotion through her icon design. This made me consider how I could potentially convey emotion in its simplest form. What initially got me interested in retro game designers was my curiosity into the creation of Jak and Daxter and other similar games. Charles Zembillas was the original art director for popular video game icons Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot. These characters are what inspired me to what to create my own for this project.

The retro appearance of the original space invaders had that timeless look which I planned to replicate with my design. I wanted to create something simple and stylised so that it can be recognisable as my own work. Incorporating elements that make a character and environment iconic.

When it came to my final design I went out and collected primary images of environments that I could possibly translate over into pixel backgrounds. This was relevant as video games environments are most commonly based on concept art that was sketched up based on real locations. Mario and Sonic for example have aspects of their worlds that link to our own, which contains that link to reality when you’re immersed in the virtual world. I collated all the images I have taken over the years of interesting views and landscapes and selected some for use in this experiment. The experimentation consisted of Dry point, inking, projection-based art and digital pixel media. This allowed me to see real locations in different styles and decided moving forward which was most successful and interesting. These processes were chosen because they all produce interesting outcomes and were some of my favorites during the first year. For example, dry point in a process that requires you to etch over the top of the piece you intend to ink. Then when inked and printed the outcome is a mirror of the original piece. This gives a new perspective on the environment and helps with considering what an outcome could look like if it were inverted.

When showing research, I display each piece of my work in my production file showing the research compared with the piece I created alongside it. I also compare the research to the work I create on my college blog. Analysing what worked and what needs improvement. The primary research was more beneficial when it came to design my own environment as I used my photos as a template for my ideas. Whereas the secondary research was more beneficial when it came to design the character as I needed to look into other designers and their designs only to understand how they created their characters.

At the start of the project I began experimenting with collaging, screen and block printing. These pieces were originally typography based and formed the start of my curiosity work and acted as a basis for ideas. This got me thinking about what might interest someone else, and how can I make my work appeal to others. The typeface I originally created went towards the cover for my project and from that formed the title for the project.

Moving on I creating pieces based on environmental research which lead me back to the print room where I returned to the dry point process used in the first year. This was one of the first pieces of independent workshop I had done, and this gave me an insight into landscape design and from this I began thinking about scale and manmade cityscapes vs natural environments.

A natural progression from this was projecting the dry point pieces onto the wall, enlarging them giving me an opportunity to further study them in closer detail with an enlarged view. Recreating these landscapes A2 was a lengthy process that I ultimately realised was too complex for my ideas, I wanted to create something more basic as a starting point so I went out and took some primary research photos of environments in my local area to try and transition into digital graphics.

Returning to a pixel-based workshop I had looked at the previous year, I created my own characters inspired by Tomohiro Nishikado’s 1978 ‘Space Invaders’ I created two simple designs to test animate and a larger head to focus on more detailed facial animation. Digitally recreate these on Illustrator was essential to ensure a high quality, as it would be created from digital blocks which could be resized and maintain quality. I also created environments based on the primary photos I took and then created a looping animation. This was an important piece for deciding if I wanted my character stationary with the background moving or vice versa.

What I proposed was to create my own character design and environment and after these workshops I felt I was confident in creating my own unique design concept that I could create final animation and illustration based on. Alongside workshops there are also sketched potential ideas and mind maps in my sketchbook to help keep a consistent vision for my idea. Effectively managing my time during lesson help me to create a body of work that could be developed on after lessons. After lesson development was imperative to improve and make more pieces before making a final design.

The main strengths from these workshops was being able to develop and refine preexisting skills such as dry point was less messy and more concise, and the projection pieces had a better quality of line when adding water to spread out the ink. Additionally, having a dry brush with thicker ink gave the trees income pieces a sharper look early on in the paint process. Most of the pieces I experimented had trees in which solidified the idea of a more natural style of environment for my piece.

The pixel characters design was defined multiple times to make it less symmetrical and the final design ended with using a shield and Sword. The idea was conceived from the sonic screwdrivers in my display box inspiring the idea of a character and their associated tools or weapons. This then led into the environment being designed as a war-torn world design. During the refinement process I learnt how to properly use illustrator and all its features such as pen tool and snap-to-grid.

Building of the finished designs I moved them into Photoshop and made one of my most intricate Photoshop animations including multiple moving objects on each layer for over one hundred layers. This was by far my most sophisticated animation and took the longest to create. Using the knowledge I had gained from past projects such as ‘Glitch’ I was able to create multiple frames and move each object on each individual layer without changing every frame in the animation. This was a problem back in the past projects but now is easy to fix because I have learnt from the past experience.

The aim for this final major project was to create my own video game concept and I believe I have achieved this. I have created a character with an iconic look and an alternative version of the character to interact with each other, along with creating 2 different backgrounds with 2 variations of each. The piece shows its own unique world with its own set war torn theme. Creating a sense of conflict with the characters clashing over the burning environment.

I believe the choice to use digital media was the right one as the finished outcome more accurately resembles iconic video games of the 80s and 90s. After experimenting with more traditional processes compared with that of the digital final outcomes, I believe the digital pieces was more effective. The use of snap-to-grid on Illustrator insured that all pixels of the character and background were all perfectly inline and were easy to line up when combining the finished pieces. They worked appropriately and looking visually engaging during the final animation. Vectorising my original design was beneficial when moving and resizing as the vector version maintained the high quality whereas the original pixel would stretch and blur.

 Reflecting back, I think it would have been more beneficial to focus more on sketching out ideas and creating more pixel variations using analog processes on pixel paper. I could have been more efficient with my time management using digital workshops to priorities digital experimentation opposed to the analog processes I worked on.

The most successful aspects of the final design were the character and environments use of colour. The alternative version of the main characters design was made using negative colours, inverting the standard colour pallet using light blue and white. Reminiscent of the character design of Jak from Jak 3. One of my inspirations for designing my own character. Improvements to my development of the final outcome could have been to create a higher resolution non-pixelated design for a comparison with more traditional high-resolution character designs.

The background colours adhere to the rule of three. With the sky being a standard yellow transitioning into orange then red. The landscape in the piece made with a thick black and a second layer to add detail in a darker grey. I believe this worked quite well as the sky isn’t normally these colours. The closest to this would be during sunset which is what I based my piece on for my first year final outcome. Taking what didn’t work about last years design helped create a more cohesive and well-rounded final outcome for this year.

Overall I believe I achieved my goal and created two iconic pixel characters of my own along with a successful environmental piece that had a range of different uses from looped animation to experiment with movement to the final piece with it being stationary and the focus being on the movement of the characters. the final animation accurately captures my vision of a world on fire with a character fighting against a hostile invading force.

Tutor feedback has helped me realises there needs to be more of an emphasis on research. Previous projects have been slightly lacking so for this final project I have aimed to have a range of primary research and artists to look at and draw inspiration from. Peer feedback has assisted in finalising designs. With classmates giving feedback on what needed to be improved with my original pixel designs and when they were translated into digital pieces.

If I could change anything I would change the final animation and the amount of assets moving on screen. I would add additional animations to the main character including the sword equipping animation and the swinging of the sword. I would also add the animation of the guns firing. This would be on the larger designs and not the smaller ones as they wouldn’t be big enough to see.

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Final piece

Character designs. Good and evil. Positive vs negative.

Finished background. ‘A world on fire’ and shot from the Invasion.

Add link to youtube video

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Animation card

This animation is one of my final outcomes. The physical version of this is in my A2 portfolio. For this piece I purchased a gloss print of my background which I then mounted onto foam board. I then printed my two character designs and glued them to some thin card to give them a more 3D look against the background. Once stuck onto the card I then careful cut around the characters with a scalpel. The piece above is an animation of the printed piece which is a close up to the characters fighting over the burning world.

The name for my final outcome environment is called ‘A World on Fire!’ With the characters being named ‘Attacker’ and ‘Defender’ somewhat paying reference to my inspiration from ‘Space Invaders’ 

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Tomohiro Nishikado and Susan Kare research

When deciding to create a piece based on pixel graphics my research included a look into Space Invaders and its creator Tomohiro Nishikado. I also looked into Susan Kare and here icon designs which influenced how I conveyed emotion in my pieces. This first being evident in the mouth movement piece in my first experimentation into pixel graphics. I then later went onto look into colour and how that can influence peoples opinions on what is good and evil.

In my production file I compare the work of  Tomohiro Nishikado and Susan Kare. While also analysing each of their work individually.

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Change in landscape

When it came to creating the final animation slight changes needed to be made. As i made the transition from Illustrator to Photoshop I realised the pixel snap-to-grid feature was no longer necessary as my characters were going to be different sizes and more around in the frame. After noticing this I made some changes to the the environment. Making a small platform for the character to stand on after entering the frame as well as adding additional smaller pixels to the background and sky along with the fire to make some of the blocks seem more attached opposed to just floating beside the others. The final shot has all the characters inserted but I decided to move away from this piece as it became overcrowded and ruined the simplistic aspect of the piece.

I later went for a lesson packed scene creating more of an emphasis on what was already visible. That being the main character and the small opposing force.

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Inspiration for the appearance of the final piece

I gathered an assortment of images of characters looking out over environments and worlds. I chose to do this as I wanted my final design to have my character overlook the world he inhabited. This was so that the audience of the piece can see the world from the characters perspective. Some of the games I looked at that did a similar shot are The Last of Us, Spider-man, Batman and Ratchet and Clank.

I chose these specifically as the are all high quality modern games. I wanted my piece to encapsulate the same kind of look without having the level of detail these modern games have. Taking inspiration from whats new to create something inspired by games of old. 

Furthermore after watching Avengers Endgame there was a shot near the end of the movie that inspired me. The shot was of Captain America standing against an army. This idea of one against many was something I found really interesting and i wondered how I could create something similar in my own work based entirely in pixel graphics.

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Primary images of landscapes

Here are some of the photos I gathered the were considered when creating my pixel environment. All photographed by me with some being recent and others from past holidays. I chose these as there was a range to pick from. Varying from darker more natural landscapes to portrait photos of cliffs and buildings.

I was important to take into consideration these photos as some of these might have worked well in pixel form. And example of this would be the portrait photo in the bottom right which i didn’t use due to its orientation. I did however experiment with portrait pieces to see how the outcome would look.

This however wasn’t the best idea as it was designed landscape and changing the orientation lost a lot of the detail the piece had. I wanted to see how a portrait piece would look as the original Crash Bandicoot games would be viewed from behind, I thought it best to see what my piece would look like at this angle. And if I was to continue with this design more emphasis would have to be place on items within the background to give the piece the necessary depth.

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Looking into character designs

I was looking into the Crash Bandicoot Character design and found this video talking about his 3D model over the years. This video was part of a series called ‘Low Poly’ where they look in-depth into the components that create these gaming icons such as Crash, Sonic and Mario

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3Rjg8JGa9w - Crash Bandicoot Low Poly

This series talks about the creation of iconic video games and in this specific video looks into Crash Bandicoot. Originally conceptualised by Charles Zembillas and then modeled by Jason Rubin who was the founder of Naughty Dog. In the video they talk about how the design changes over the years based on different designers, animators and studios creating for the character. Along with the natural development of technology. I found this video fascinating and would like to possibly explore a higher resolution version of my own design.

The Crash model was an inspiration for me wanting to create my own character. Along with characters like Jak and Daxter. Progressing forwards I would like to incorporate more elements inspired by some of my favorite Characters.

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Looking into 3D level designs

Here I decided to look into the levels of Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon. Both video games which have 3D aspects to them. Crash gives the illusion of 3D with the game following him from behind in a fairly linear fashion. This was done due to hardware limitations. What limitations have I got with working with pixels? I have to create moderately simple designs so that they can be recognised by people. For example the sword being easily recognisable.

Spyro however is a fully 3D open world which makes full use of the environment. In Spyro you have free movement and can look up-close to objects whereas in Crash the camera is locked in a certain position and there isn’t an opportunity to look any closer at the environment. These limitations are the reason some people break the boundaries of video games to look closer at hidden detail and get a better insight into the creation of the games.

Boundary breaks on Crash and Spyro (Links below)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFtuEQQ2mjk - Crash Bandicoot 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNlnlEObLhQ - Spyro the Dragon 2

These allow the viewer to see all the hidden details within the game while also seeing how the developers created them. This was intriguing to me and would have been quite important for designing a more high resolution world in a 3D space.

The bottom 3 images show the creation and evolution of Spyro the dragon over 20 years. The first photo shows the game in development, revealing how the world was put together via the use of the wire frame. To the right of this you an see the final product and the final images showing the game at its full potential in the remaster 20 years after the games original release.

Seeing Spyro 20 years later gave me the idea of what my character could possibly look like had it been designed for a higher resolution. A more defined design would compliment a higher resolution 3D world well if that was the direction I intended to go.

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Looking into level designs

When thinking about my final outcome I looked to pre-excising level designs for inspiration for my ending game concept. I had already looked into video game environments but I wanted to look at more retro designs to see what limitations they had and what the worlds looked like when working with these limitations. 

Here are some shots from the original Mario and Sonic games. Both have very iconic and timeless looks. Both containing things people associate with the worlds for example the blocks and pipes in Mario and the green hill backdrop for Sonic. I looked online for images of the full levels to see what they look like in full and both use different levels of elevation. Moving more high ground to low ground. Sonic using this more prominently. This is something I would like to consider when making my final design. 

What area will my character come from? Will they appear from high up in the sky or on ground level? And what about the acting force? These will all be taken into consideration when finally piecing together the final design and animation.

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Defending character design

This design is a pallet swap with some adjustments made to the head to distinguish the two character designs. The attacker character has green blocks on the head and chest to indicate the green team or opposing alliance to this design which bares purple gems on the head, chest and in the sword and shield. The first animation shows the defending character drawing his sword and shield. I created this to counter the attacking character with the guns.

This animation was meant to show the character swinging the sword but due to the pixel based nature of the piece it can be hard to interpret. The legs also retract to show the character is hovering.

The next animation is a combination of the first two showing the character drawing his sword and shield and then using them to defend himself while also attacking the opposing force. Defending with the shield and attacking with the sword.

This animation shows the sword being drawn and then retracted. I created this animation in the even the animation ended and i wanted the character to put away his weapons.

This final animation similar to the other combines the previous ones to create a final animation outcome. These might not all be necessary for the final outcome as it might vary in length and might not need to incorporate the bobbing or retracting of the weapons.

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Attacker character design

After making some slight alterations to the characters chest and lower half I began considering animation. The changes to the design were to keep him from looking so symmetrical. The first animation I had already experimented with. This was an animation of the character turning his guns and pointing them in a certain direction. I intend for this animation to be used alongside the opposing character. 

The next animation if of the guns going up and down which I plan to use to indicate that the character is firing his weapons. This was one of the most important animations to create as this will be used against the defending character.

This animation is of the character bobbing up and down. This works as the character has jet boots and the decision behind making the character do this is so that there is always something happening and that the character doesn’t just stop after the initial animations. This is also to keep the audience engaged as if the character keeps moving it keeps the viewers attention opposed to them just being stationary afterwards.

This final animation is of all the previous put together to possibly use in conjunction with the defending character. This would have the attacker turning and firing his guns while bobbing up and down. 

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Pixel attacker character

I finished creating the pixel characters body in illustrator. And after started looking into colour. I looked at the character of Jak for the inspiration of good and evil. As Jak has a good and evil side. One represented in-game using purple and black white the good side would be white and blue. I also looked at Mr Negative from the Spider-man PS4 game as his design is inverted colours which give him a menacing appearance. The first colour experimentation I did was using red and black as inspired by the Krimzon guard.

The image below shows the development of the colour design. Transitioning from black and white design to red, purple and eventually negative colour.

The following animations were tests for my designs. They show the attacker character in red and black turning his guns to shot. This animation might need to be flipped depending on the way the character enters the frame in the finished piece.

The final test animation shows the attacker character in his final colours. Ready to be adapted for the final animation piece. Slight changes will need to be made from feedback on how symmetrical his design is.

These designs I created today are an evolution on a piece of pixel art I had previously experimented with. The two characters are the villains for my game concept. The first design was intended to be quite menacing, I tried conveying this through the use of Black, grey and red for the colour scheme. The second design was the original but changed to negative colours. I feel this will work well against the red, orange and yellow background.

The next step with these designs would be to apply them to the environment and see how they work against it. Then afterwards i can begin animating.

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First animation pixel piece

I went on a walk one evening to take some photos of the local area. I took a series of photos but two stuck out that i wanted to try working off of. I initially thought about creating dry-points but this would be time consuming and I believed that It wouldn’t work well with the pixel based character I had been working on. This lead to me straight away attempting to create pixel worlds for my character based on these photos. 

The first photo is from the field near my house and the second photo from outside my front door. I chose these photos because the first looks over a natural landscape of grass and trees and the second looks over more man-made structures.

I chose to make a pixel world of photo from outside my house first. As buildings are square and rectangular and this would work well when pixel making them. I felt the final outcome was too fine, with individual squares representing whole buildings and I felt i could create a better piece using the knowledge I had gained creating the first piece.

I wanted to create something with a more smooth pixel look, with less emphasis on smaller parts of the piece. I feel I successfully made a better pixel world the second time around. focusing more on the larger picture. I used the rule of 3 when creating the background, adhering to 3 different colours. Using 3 different shades of blue. i intended for these to be daytime pieces but eventually decided to add starts to the sky indicating it was turning night time. I felt I could add more with a different setting so I decided to create a version of the world on fire as if it was under attack. This was in part inspired by the game ‘space invaders’

Here I added red blocks to the top of most buildings to give a fire appearance. Making it seem as if the buildings were burning as a result of an attack. I plan to look into creating a narrative/story for my work and the character within it. 

I created a world on fire for both pieces and feel this final one was the most successful and the one i want to move forward with. The backgrounds I created I took into photoshop and placed them beside each other and shifted them a bit to the left while creating new frames to create this looping animation effect. I am unsure if this should be in the final outcome as it might become disorientating over time.

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Development of pieces, Michael Craig-Martin session

In this workshop I returned to finish my pieces I started based on the photos from the Design Museum. In the style of Michael Craig-Martin. Michael Craig-Martin was known for consistently making his art within the same style, meaning that a piece he created 20+ years ago would be indistinguishable from something he created today. With the small difference being the pieces within the work such as something from the 90′s in his work could possible indicate the era the piece is from. 

For my piece I took the trace piece I had created and made a zine out of and scanned them in to vectorise. Making them digital would help keep them at a consistent and high quality. This would be useful for resizing to make them all fit together when composing my piece. Below is my piece coloured in with the colours associated with the items. This would be my first steps when thinking about colorisation of my artwork.

The next piece is coloured in the style Michael Craig-Martin would do his pieces. This was interesting as I would colour in each piece using colours not usually associated with the item. This was a fun piece of experimentation which would lead me to consider more what colour means to the piece I am creating. 

Here was an inverted version of the piece. This was vert interesting as I never intended for them to be coloured this way. I think the white outline works well against the background to help define each piece. Also the puzzle game looks almost in negative colours consisting of white and blue similar to light Jak from one of my favorite video games. I plan to look into his character and the colours associated.