Sketchbook
This page is a sketchbook of tasks that I undertook to try out some of the things I researched into, it covers shape theory, colour theory, and some practice of the styles of some character designers who inspire me.
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First of all, Shape theory. I made a female and male design for the three basic shapes of shape theory:
Shape Theory: Circles Amane and Duncan
On the left is Amane, and on the right is Duncan.
I designed Amane as a potential protagonist for my work experience project that I was doing at the same time as this project. I designed her with circle theory in mind because one of the main things associated with circles in shape theory is life, which she is supposed to embody, as the game was meant to be a game about recycling. Also, she was supposed to appear friendly, and is made entirely of water, so I wanted her to look bubbly. I feel this design came out quite nicely. I chose the name Amane as it means water in Berber.
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As for Duncan, I wanted to create a very simple, Rayman (Ubisoft 1995)-Esque character based around circles and having a rounded, square-ish body with detached limbs. I wanted him to look friendly whilst also looking overly tired and fed up, which I feel I accomplished rather well. I called him Duncan simply because I felt that name fit the character well.
Shape Theory: Squares Jon and Violet
On the left is Jon, and on the Right is Violet.
I designed Jon with the intention of him being a strong, reliable character, so I chose squares to design him around as Strength and reliability are two traits that are commonly associated with squares. I wanted him also to be some form of Lumberjack, hence the large axe and the flannel shirt. I simply named him Jon because he had an unintentional slight resemblance to Jon Jafari. I think This design came out quite nicely, but could look a little boring among a cast of colourful characters.
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Violet was intended to be some sort of rapper or gangster, hence the scarf, backwards cap and darker "colour scheme" (It's still black and white, though I did have a colour scheme in mind when drawing this) of sorts. I decided to try a mix of squares and triangles in this design, as I wanted her to look reliable, but also to look slightly cool and dangerous. I used squares for the hat, boots and trousers, and triangles for the hair. I chose the name Violet as when designing her, I had a black and slightly purple colour scheme in mind, and Violet as a name partially means grace. I think this design ended up being one of my favourites I did for this.
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Shape Theory: Triangles
The Masketeer and Sabrina
On the left is The Masketeer and on the right is Sabrina.
The Masketeer was a character designed to look scary, having a tall, slender body, covered in sharp points, with a scary tribal mask with spiky, unkept hair poking out the top. I wanted to incorporate triangles into the entire design, whilst not making it too overbearing to look at, so I kept the body one colour, with a central triangle that would be a different colour if coloured. I chose the name "The Masketeer", because a large part of the design is the mask he wears, and the name Masketeer gives a sense of mystery. I think the design came out quite well, other than the design without the mask.
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Sabrina is an anthropomorphic anglerfish-human combination. I wanted her to look friendly, whilst also keeping the scariness of an anglerfish, so I had her design be primarily triangles, with some circles here and there. I didn't want the design to be too overbearing, so I made all of her clothes black. I chose the name Sabrina simply because I felt it was fitting for the character. I feel like this was my favourite design of all of them, and it came out the best among the others.
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Practice of style of artists that inspire me
(Note: For each, I simply looked at their works for reference)
Tsukumizu
Tsukumizu (Pseudonymous name) is a manga author from Japan who's art I like due to it being simplistic and somewhat abstract. To practise the style, I mainly wanted to try recreating some of the basic facial expressions of some of their characters, and trying to draw some of the creatures from their series, and creating some new ones myself. I feel I captured their style quite well, creating 2 female characters and a male character of my own, as their series usually contains primarily female characters. If I had to improve on anything, I think I'd try to improve on the shading, as Tsukumizu usually uses hatching when shading, which I tried to recreate in some of the drawings, but not all. Other than that though, I believe this came out quite successfully for style practice.
Edmund McMillen
Edmund McMillen is a game artist that I've always been inspired by due to the overly simplistic nature of his character designs. To practice this style, I simply drew a lot of characters made by Edmund, and then tried to draw some original characters in the same style, and then drew a few of my own existing characters in the same style. I feel that most of the drawings came out quite well, but some could definitely have had more time and effort put into them, or just be more consistent with Edmund's style in general, as I feel some of them do not match the style as well as some of the others. Another thing I wish I could have done is recreate Edmund's more developed art style, which is basically the same thing, but with a lot more detail (I.e. Cleaner lines, shading, etc.). Other than that though, this page came out quite nicely.
Toby Fox
Toby Fox is a game designer that I've enjoyed since late 2015, and his character designs are no exception to what I like about his games, so I decided to do a page based around the concept art and just general character designs of Toby Fox. I feel this page came out quite nicely, though admittedly I would have liked to have done more, but ran out of space. I also tried practicing Toby's style on my own characters, and even just faces on random circles. I think this page came out quite nicely.
Colour Theory
For this part of my practical work, I took one of each pair of characters I made for the Shape Theory task, and tried out different colour schemes on them, based on the colour theory research I did.
Sabrina
Sabrina was a character I had a general idea for the kind of colour scheme I wanted when designing her originally, which is the colour scheme on the third column in the middle, but I tried other colour schemes based on colour theory anyway. I tried a colour scheme based on nature in the form of the orange and purple, and the rest were based on complementary colours, with the exception of 2-3 of them, which were based on analogous colour schemes. I feel like most of these colour schemes look appealing in their own way, but only some of them really work for the design, as (for example) the red and black colour scheme looks quite nice, but doesn't really suit an anglerfish. Other than some of them not really working though, I feel this came out quite nicely.
Violet
Violet was another character I had a slight idea for what I wanted to colour scheme to look like, which was a dark black and purple colour scheme, hence the name Violet. All of these colour schemes were based on complementary colours and colour schemes I thought looked good on the character. Though I still prefer the original idea, I think the rest of these colour schemes all came out really nicely.
Amane
Amane only really works in terms of context as blue, as she is made of water, but I decided to try out different analogous colour schemes on her as I thought it would be perfect to practice them on a mostly one-colour character. I feel like in terms of the main body of the character, everything came out quite nicely, but I feel I could have picked some better colours for the core, as I wasn't 100% keen on how some of them contrasted to the body. So whilst this did come out quite well, I'd say it has the most room for improvement among the rest of the colour theory practice sheets I did.
Summary
In short, I managed to practice a large portion of what I wanted to from this project, but feel like I could have maybe put more time into it given a second chance, and maybe have done more different types of tasks, such as covering voice acting and writing of characters. Overall however, I am pleased with how this turned out considering I had to deal with two project at the time.