The art of laying out concept art: Character Sheets

A short study to aid me both in technical skills and understanding.

Concept art for characters and creatures are always set out clear and concise, in able to aid the programmer/3D artists/director etc. of what the character model should look like. Every angle and little details should be included. Concept arts technical designs and layouts will vary if the character designed is for a game, a movie, an animation, a comic, etc. I will focus mostly on video games, so everything I've stated about detail is necessary. I'll be focusing on character sheets here, rather than illustrations.

Concept pieces for characters and environments differ, but I will most likely dabble into environment paintings/portraiture for final concept pieces for my project (to show my species' living in different environments)  Examples of characters in environments:

As part of Space Budgie - a new company trying to establish itself in Dundee - I plan to do concept art for an up-an-coming game from us, with the help of (hopefully) prototype. I'll upload them soon.

Personal Development - Feedback/Critique

I asked academic tutor Ryan Locke to give me regular feedback on my digital art, and he said he will. So I'll be adding this to my list of personal development. His most recent feedback to me:

I will revisit this piece in the future and apply his feedback into future pieces.

Revisal of Aim/Objectives/Project

Moving away from species/races > to cultures.

As 2nd semester rolls on, I've finally clicked things in my head of where I want to go with my project, dissertation, and digital illustrations. I focus so hard on species and races, and I started realizing this is not what I want to do. Instead, I want to focus on cultures and faith, rather than biological appearances.

I proposed the following to Robin:

"To create and show multiple characters showcasing a range of different cultures, religions and backgrounds neutrally and realistically, co-existing and interacting with one another suitable for a fantasy videogame."

to which he responded with:

"To examine cultural, religious and spiritual factors that impact on human appearance, and to embed this knowledge in the design of original characters for the fantasy genre"
Title - 'An investigation into culture, religion and spirituality in fantasy character design'

My reasons for this direction; all characters in video games that belong to one race (in this case from henceforth, human) look the same, dress the same way, believe in the same faith, and live in the same environment, believe in the same government system, etc. I personally believe this is stale and doesn't allow for individuality. This is not the case in reality. And fantasy is limitless.

Critical framework post will much clearly explain where my research will go from here.

Supervisor Meeting of Semester 2

From now on, me and 4 other fellow artists will be meeting with Robin Sloan on a weekly basis, Friday. I will probably not blog about it weekly, as I'm filling out weekly Supervisor Meeting sheets instead to keep on track. But I felt it appropriate to blog the first one :)

Agreed/talked about points:

Lit Review - The feedback is more important than the grade. Things can be bumped up! But I have to very carefully follow my feedback.
Dissertation - We can submit drafts to Robin more regularly, and I should take advantage of this.
Semester 2 - The course didn't start in January, it started in September. Remember all my previous research! Read this blog over and over.
My personal project direction - I felt that the transition from 'race' of cultures to 'interaction' of cultures was going to be scrapping everything. But in truth, I've learnt much from the past semester and it's still very relevant.
Critical Framework - I finally understand!! :)

Things to do for next Friday:

Critical Framework
Critical Criteria
Pipeline of work
Continue Story/Illustration studies
For blog: Personal style development

As I have a 48 hour Games Jam this weekend, updates will be slow this week.

Personal Development - Speed Painting

Mix of good tunes and sudden urge to paint! I wanted to focus on speed painting. I need to:

- Get faster at my work
- Know when to stop
- Try not to zoom in and detail one area too much. Time consuming, less is more, and it sits unevenly with the rest of the picture

Also practiced some lighting, but did not adhere to proper anatomy or a reference.

Initial sketch (afew minutes):

Half an hour mark:

An hour:

Not happy about the legs/feet, which I started to try cut off. Hair took 3 fresh attempts, which usually isn't allowed in a speed paint! About 5 layers. Wish I did more with certain areas, but happy with the subtle lighting and skin :) All practice!

And a cropped zoomed up version:

DmC: Devil may Cry

Finally got to play this long awaited game! Filled with angels and demons, I knew it would be to my tastes and pretty relevant to my angel/demon religion  but what I've found most interesting so far about the game (still playing through) is the subtle mind-control techniques of demons, and how a simple visual trick (rotating the camera) reveals these messages to the player.

The game is only a few days old, so there's no clear examples to show exactly what I mean, so I've taken some screenshots from a Walkthrough on Youtube. You can see everyday signs such as "Fast food" and "Jackpot!" on the signs transit to "Gluttony is good" and "Spend". There's also "Submit to Debt", and in later missions in the game, especially one taking place in a drinks factory created to dumb and docile humans, the words "Stupidity", "Obesity" and "Poison".

I loved this subtle play of demon influences, and can relate it to my own demon creatures, Belphegor and Mammon.

Story Study - Development sketches

Process of my "story/illustration" piece:

Story Study - Final

My final illustration. I moved away from doing two, and focused my energy and time into completing a singular image that could portray both the good and evil in both creatures.

Of course, I wish I had more time to refine my illustration, and awaiting feedback from Ryan Locke, I may revisit them in the future, as I hate time constraints to be the reason for my lack of showing art skills. Learnt alot about staging, colours, and lighting and happy I was able to put my new knowledge into these pieces. Got to look up some interesting references too, such as "body sliced in half"...

My goal with this piece was to show not everything must stick to the norm, and that there is no set pure good/evil. This case study/test became a personal learning experience and test of skills. Very interesting experience, my favourite so far I think!

Story Study - Premise

Long overdue, but I wanted to wait until I was 100% ready with my very own species' to use. I have finished all my angel and demon work, and will be using them for this study. I want to experiment with showing story and it's impact on viewers. I may show my final pieces to individuals and ask their opinions for how "impactful" they found the piece, and then rate the two different beings (angel/demon) on a scale of "good" "evil" "neutral". I hope to achieve a neutral stance, with no bias to "angels being purely good" or "demons are purely bad" or vice versa.

I want to do two illustrations, both of them vilifying either angels/demons. They're both equals, a balance, so I want to portray them as BOTH good/bad. I'm hoping this exercise/study will show my abilities to express story through illustration and evoke emotion and thought, portray my angels/demons in a grey neutral light, and improve my own technical skill especially with a strict time limit.

Yuumei is one of my favourite inspirational artists. Such powerful story, symbolic, and impactful works!!

Next post I'll hopefully have afew thumbnails or at least afew sketches for my two illustrations :)

"For the love of Raphael, I've ran out of blogpost titles."

So, how do the angels/demons work in my world? As sayings. As mentioned before, Voices and Swords & Shields class angel/demons will be rarely or never seen/represented on Earth where my characters will live. So, why did I create them? How will they be relevant?

Just as we have religion in history with little to no evidence, we also have alot of faith, art throughout history and stories and sayings. And that's exactly what I want in my world.

I find this a hard topic to explain in words. So here are drawn examples of how they will be used in my world. Please note I've drawn everyone in a human shape, but this DOES NOT reflect my final characters. I will probably redraw these in the future when I've defined my cultures and fantasy species and their stances to the angels/demons.

Research Proposal Feeback

While I'm unhappy with my Grade C14, it makes me strive to do better. I'm unhappy because I feel like I could do better! And I think I can, reading the feedback, I can see 100% where I've gone wrong. I hope that by following my given feedback I'll be able to achieve a much better grade when it comes to Dissertation. :)

Premise: The introduction covers the details of the project, but could be further refined to more closely link the idea of human cultural variety, representation in visual media, and the problem of stereotype fantasy races. The connection is not quite made here... you could for instance start with the basis of real world reference points (the human differences you identify), build into visual representation in media (introduce cliches and the problem of stereotyping ethnicities) and then build into you own particular area of interest, which is imagined fantasy races. The research problem can then be clearly stated - the problem of visualising fantasy races free from stereotypes and sensitive to real world human cultures.

Context: Overall there are many good references here and there is some good discussion. However, the ideas you discuss are not quite connected together - i.e. no strong connections are made between each of the areas you look at. Firstly, it is unclear why the first section on fashion is relevant - the topic is cultural differences and stereotypes in race design for games. A section on dress and fashion would be fine, but it ought to focus on cultural differences in fashion and dress. In this case, references are likely to be from anthropology and cultural studies. The remaining sections are more coherent, but they could still be more closely connected. Consider how you will compare studies of race representation in visual media with race design in science fiction and fantasy. What are the comment elements, what are the differences, and what might fantasy concept artists learn from more progressive representations of human cultures in modern media?

Appropriateness of Methodology: The case study and practice-based approach is appropriate. Some development of your critical framework is required. Could you present your analytical criteria in table form?

Clarity of Methodology: More clarity could be offered for the strategy you intend to use for selecting media for analysis. MMOs are identified, but this left open to be a range of fantasy MMOs... this is a lot! And beyond this you also identify that other media (note media is plural, not medias) will also be discussed. Think carefully about your selection of MMOs. Quality is more important than quantity in a case study - are you going to compare two MMOs, and how will you select these MMOs? What is the rationale? Is one a bad example and one a good example of representation?

Predicted Outcomes:  The expected outcomes of the research somewhat align with the proposed methodology. The extent to which these outcomes will address the project aim should be considered further (I think it cut off here by accident??)

References: Note that some of your references are not fully provided - instead of identifying and providing the full reference, a link has been presented instead. An example is the last reference in the list. A link to academia.edu is provided - this is a networking site for researchers. The paper itself is in conference proceedings for Situated Play (a simple google search picked this up). Make sure that you provide full and accurate references for the main source - journal papers and conference papers are available online, but in most cases you won't provide an internet link for these types of references.

Presentation: Overall this is a good proposal, with a very interesting subject matter. Some refinement is required to work towards a quality research project and dissertation in semester 2. Given the subject matter, it may be necessary to define terms in your writing. Do this in the Introduction or when you first use terms - for instance, race is a problematic word as it has different meanings. You need to use words consistently throughout, so define how you are using terms. In particular, associate words of race (racist, racial) are problematic.

My Fantasy World

My world will be Earth. As a character concept artist, I sadly do not specialize in or have the time to create new fantastical landscapes. But what this does allow me to do is look into beautiful different types of environments already available to me. My current options are sand/dry/hot, tropical rain forests, forests, mountains, snow climates, man-made cities/metropolis, etc.

While there is no "time period" in my world, it's still undeveloped and basic. Remember they refuse to sail on sea because they're scared of a Leviathan!

I'm excited to start individually examining these environments, their ecosystem and their inhabitants, and using my case study knowledge building a new race that will interact within themselves, their environments, and the other races I will create.

Although a while away in terms of thoughts a quick note; A city/base/central town where all of these races live and get along is an idea I would love to work on and maybe even focus my final aim/artifacts on. It shows all the races outside of their natural habitats, living peacefully with others of different culture. It's not an original idea though - I think of Dalmascus in FF XII and Republic City in Avatar: Legend of Korra - but I feel those shows don't embrace the idea of inter-species peace/union and they rather focus on social divisons of classes of - for example - abilities (Korra) or species (FF XII).

But that's much much later on :)

Angel/Demon Hierarchy

As mentioned in last post, this is a visual representation of the myth/lore/religious aspect of my world, Angels and Demons.

I've created this hierarchy using all the case studies and research I have made. My greatest influences are angels/demons from media, "Paradise Lost" by John Milton, religious books/articles/portrayals, and finally visuals from across different platforms e.g. nature, fashion, etc.

The middle represents the world, surrounded by Virtues/Sins that influence its inhabitants, surrounded by symbols representing the Swords and Shield angel/demons, in the 4 corners are the Voices; Metatron, Seraphim, Lucifer and Lilith, whom represent the Sun, Moon, Stars and Atmosphere of the world.

It's time to start focusing on cultures that will inhabit my world. From now on, a lot of posts on research :)

Angel/Demon breakdown

I'll upload the visual representation of this hierarchy tomorrow. For more in-depth and visuals/art for my angels and demons, see sketchbook.

This will be the religious/higher power beings/lore/mythology for my created 5 species on Earth. They will all respond differently, have different levels of faith, and will interpret the symbols/angels and demons in their own way. What I have written is me - as the creator - 's personal absolute structure:

Angel Hierarchy

Voice:
Metatron ♂ - The one who watches the balance. Sun symbol.
Seraphiel ♀ - Metatron's shield and protector, the second watcher of balance. Moon Symbol.

Sword & Shield of Peace:
Michael ♂ - The greatest angelic warrior. Prefers not to descend to Earth. Many cultures will use Michael as a symbol of loyalty, justifiable rage or an idol of righteous punishment/war. The loyalalty of the Voices.
Gabriel ♂ - The second warrior. A more merciful fighter than Michael. The reasoner of the Voices.
Uriel ♀ - The third warrior. The warrior with the ideals of Michael and Gabriel. A female symbol of strength. The light and fire of the Voices.
Raphael ♂ - Dwells on Earth, a traveller who teaches medicine to inhabitants, heals those who need and deserve, and governs the Gifted Virtues in order to better themselves for others benefits.
Azrael ♀ - Angel of death. Dwells on Earth, hanging near to those on the verge of death. Her appearance and colours are beautiful and soothing, and she can be regarded as either a positive or negative being.

Gifted Virtues: Humility, Kindness, Patience, Diligence, Charity, Temperance, Chastity

(Human-shaped creatures with wings and adorned in jewellery. Some are nude, some are clothed in local/cultural clothes. They are small in number, but there are several different angels of the same virtue. They aim to serve all inhabitants of Earth to better them in their virtue being. They are of flesh, and can be killed.)

Demon Hierarchy

Voice:
Lucifer ♂- The one who watches the balance. Stars and Planets Symbols.
Lilith ♀ -  Lucifer's shield and protector, the second watcher of balance. The Atmosphere of the World Symbols.

Sword & Shields of Chaos:
Leviathan ♀ - A shape-shifting sea demon. According to lore can transform between a beautiful mermaid and serpent, but cannot be on land. The Leviathan legend still scare many inhabitants today and sea travel is feared and almost non-existent.
Beelzebub ♂ - lit. "Lord of the Flies".Associated with disease, and decay. People believe Azrael the angel of death sometimes leaves those to die by the hand of Beelzebub, or their corpses to be devoured by him.
Asmodaeus - Demon of Lust. Genderless. A demon that people call the "test of true love". Blesses those that resist it.
Mammon ♀ - A demon that dwells on Earth, and shares to Earth's inhabitants ideals of success, wealth, and vanity. Said to shapeshift into different species' to gain trust. Therefore, the creation of mistrust is hers.
Belphegor ♂ - A demon that dwells on Earth, and shares to Earth's inhabitants ideals of laze, lack of self-worth, and empathy. Emotionally teaches shame and insignificance of individuals, driving them to give up life. Depression of self can be described as "Belphegor's Influence/Whispers". 

Poisonous Sins:
Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Greed, Gluttony, Lust

(Human-shaped creatures with wings and adorned in jewellery. Some are nude, some are clothed in local/cultural clothes. They are small in number, but there are several different demons of the same sin. They aim to serve all inhabitants of Earth to better themselves in the eyes of Lucifer, and to be more successful as an individual. They are of flesh, and can be killed.)

The wheel/cycle of this will be up tomorrow!! I will annotate it just incase, but 2 other hierarchys also pre-exist in my sketchbook. I'm hoping this new version is the most clear and visually attractive :)

Symbols - Final pieces

My final images for 3 different symbol representations for Michael, the angel of war, justice and righteousness. They represent 3 different cultural influences, and are suppose to show/mean the same thing. I'm unsure if this is the final styles as I've yet to develop my styles for the cultures I'll create, but with this art case I've identified essentials to creating symbolic pieces that can convey a story/meaning/purpose, and will apply it in the future in connection to my research on communication between my fantasy species'. I feel like my basic-style technique colouring and ability to work under-stress have improved slightly, but also feel I still had a lack of time to improve my skills further. I think if I had created more thumbnails, I'd have maybe had more diversity and knowledge too. Now looking back on it too, I wish I expanded more on the Asia mood board, as I can see now I've stuck mostly to Japan and samurai's. Also wish I did more with the Africa one. Oh well, next time, I'll be more focused and time (hopefully)!