Further Research - Thesis and Colour theory

Reading a thesis on world-building

I wanted to have a further look into world-building to understand the principles, and how to effectively build an engaging world. So I looked into Google Scholar for articles on world-building in games to get some further information.

Even though the articles will largely concern the actual games themselves, I think I will be able to apply some of what I learn to my illustrations. 

The thesis I will be reading and taking notes from is “Worldbuilding in Games: Creating a Functioning World For a Role-Playing Game” by Roope Sorvo. I have included a link following to this thesis:

https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/126785/Thesis%20Roope%20Sorvo.pdf?sequence=1


Notes from reading the thesis

I learnt about the terms ‘extradiegetic’ and ‘intradiegetic’. Extradiegetic is part of a story that is not told within the world, it usually refers to background information to a story or artistic elements that might help in setting overall tone. Extradiegetic elements are more external. Intradiegetic is actually within the world, elements that serve a purpose within the story. To build a world well, ideally, there should be a combination of intradiegetic and extradiegetic elements. This helps the world to have purpose.

Some areas which may need to be thought about when building a world are; conflict, population and history. While this is conveyed in multiple ways within games, through illustration I will need to try to show these elements through the art itself. I don’t need to communicate these concepts in an obvious way, they can just inform how I design the world. E.g. if I want a world which is in the middle of a war, this doesn’t mean I have to have tanks on display within the illustration, but the environment may show less obvious indicators like bullet holes in buildings and damaged terrain.

The thesis mainly goes over how the writer built a world for their own project, so not much other information can be found in it relating to how to build a world. But these initial points are useful, and I will be trying to keep these in mind throughout creating my paintings.

Colour theory

Colour theory is a useful way of making an illustrations more visually interesting. A well chosen colour scheme can help in telling the story of a world, it can also help in directing the viewer to notice certain parts of a painting more than others.

Marc Brunet is an ex-Blizzard Senior Artist that creates videos online on fundamentals of painting, character creation and various other topics. I used two of these videos in particular to get a better grasp on the basics of colour theory - this will help in guiding my illustration process.

I have included links to these videos below;

https://youtu.be/adQAGP68_eI?si=p6q4STOUQkJv4lzN

https://youtu.be/UfXgFw-wlV0?si=HQvZj1EjTKBJNabA

The videos go over useful information which will help in making my illustrations more interesting and how I can grab the viewer. 

I learnt about various colour harmonies that I didn’t know about such as; Diad, Split Complementary, Double Complementary, Rectangular Tetrad and Polychromatic. Over the course of the masters it would be good to explore these colour harmonies further to make my work more diverse.


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