Research for the Contextual Review

Contextual Review Notes

For the contextual review I have to cite five events, this can include;

• Digital presentations
• Events
• Exhibitions
• ‘Works of Art’
• Performances
• Environments

So I have made notes on the work I have looked at so far, I can refer back to these notes while writing the contextual portion of the essay.

Video by Marc Brunet - Colour Schemes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfXgFw-wlV0&t=589s&ab_channel=MarcBrunet

Marc Brunet previously worked at Blizzard Entertainment on concept art and 3d art, he creates content on YouTube to give tutorials and guides to various aspects of digital art.

In this video Brunet goes over various colour schemes and how they can be used to make a piece more interesting.

Beginning with Monochromatic 1:21, remaining within one hue, but altering value and saturation within. He mentions that ideally you want the area the audience should focus on to be a high saturation, as it helps to draw the eye. Put simply, “Contrast is exciting, no contrast, not exciting” 2:58

He goes on to explain a Diad harmony 3:12, this harmony consists of two colours separated by one within the colour wheel. He mentions that warm colours on the colour wheel generally are more appealing to the eye and ‘pop’ more, whereas cooler colours don’t as much. When choosing colours for a Diad it is best to have the dominant, lead colour be a warmer one, by decreasing the value and saturation in the secondary colour it will appear more cool next to the lead colour.

Next he describes Complementary colour harmonies, two colours at opposite ends of the colour wheel 6:01. When using this scheme, Brunet suggests using the warmer of two colours in a small amount, this creates rarity which also helps in catching the eye. Split Complementary is the next harmony mentioned 6:41 while usually not as eye catching as Complementary, it can be easier to use, rather than choosing colours opposite each other, the two colours surrounding one of the ones usually chosen for complementary is used. This allows for a bit more flexibility.

Next he discussed the Triad 7:15, this is three colours at equal distance from each other on the colour wheel. Analogous 7:49 is also three colours, but directly next to each other, because of how close the colours are to each other here it creates really natural transitions and isn’t very eye catching to look it, but can be useful for creating calm scenes.

Double Complementary 8:18, this colour scheme works like Complementary but it is instead of one set of opposite colours, it is two next to each other. This is useful for pieces with multiple elements involved. Rectangular Tetrad 8:51 is also similar to this, but a colour is skipped on both sides, giving the name as when a line is drawn across each colour used on the colour wheel is creates a rectangular shape. Square Tetrad 9:14 is the same but with a further space apart from each colour, creating a square shape.

Polychromatic 9:36 involves using five or more colours from across the colour wheel at equal distances from each other, again very useful for busier scenes. Brunet warns that the more colours used in a piece the more important it becomes to properly determine the colours that are the lead and those for the background, this way value and saturation can be tweaked as well.

Art Direction Summit: The Art of ‘Arcane’

https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1028956/Art-Direction-Summit-The-Art

Maisie Yang is a Principal Concept Artist for Worldbuilding at Riot and Arnaud-Loris Baudry is Production Designer on Arcane.

6:34 Baudry discusses that 2D matte painting seemed like an interesting approach for Riot to take in terms of the art direction for Arcane, it also stands out as unique compared to what other companies were doing.

11:34 Yang begins to describe initial paintings for the location ‘Piltover’ and how they had to rework their vision multiple times for what the city looked like as they wanted it to make sense that the character Caitlyn who used a sniper rifle was in the same world as characters that used swords and magical items.

Yang made a good point at 17:03, “If we could pick Piltover out from a line-up of other futuristic cities, at the end of the day, if we couldn’t then we would have to start over.”

19:33 Yang begins to explain the creative process, starting with saving reference images, explaining that they mirror and collage these images first, encouraging play and making it easier to create unique ideas rather than just directly using parts of a reference photo. Next, when beginning the sketching process, they work with shapes and mass first 20:40, before moving on to linework 20:59.

Whatever are the finalised ideas move on to the next stage where the ideas are used in designs to see what looks best 21:34. Finally landing on a shape language for the city design that could be referred back to in future tests and pieces.

35:04 Baudry explains they wanted to ensure in designing Piltover there would be landmarks, large buildings so no matter where the viewer is looking they know where they are based on the placement of these landmark buildings.

They talk about as they were working with another studio they created visual libraries for any prop, race, building etc. This way rather than the other studio working from scratch off of reference images on Google, they could refer back to the visual libraries already created.

41:50 Yang discusses the design rules created when putting Piltover and Zaun together, these foundations were important to understanding the design for each area and how they are different.

‘Dead Space’: Harnessing the Power of Light and Darkness

https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1029020/-Dead-Space-Harnessing-the

Guillaume Goudreault is a lead on Motive’s lighting team and leads this talk.

2:35 Goudreault details how important it was to begin the project by determining the main pillars of the design, the team settled on three pillars they felt were the most important to it; horror, immersion and believability and a lived-in world.

As horror was an essential pillar, if the design team were stuck on a decision, it would often fall to what is the scariest option.

5:05 following on from describing the art pillars earlier on, Goudreault goes on to explain the three pillars for lighting design; horror lighting, limited colour palette and diegetic lighting. Goudreault goes into detail on how important it was to get inspiration showcasing examples of each pillar done well. Using both games and movies as reference points.

After looking at inspiration points for horror lighting, Goudreault states they found four key components; pools of light, hard light, dark environment and atmosphere 6:58.

He describes pool of light stating, “It was such an integral part of our lighting that at the beginning of every level, we’re asking what is the player trying to accomplish? And answering that question, allowed us to control the player visual field and direct their attention to different part of the environment.” 7:13

8:30 He explains a dark environment can make the environment more scary to explore as it feels more oppressive and is harder to see what is around the player. Hard light then gives more contrast and can also create focal points.

When looking at the limited colour palette pillar, they determined two main components; neutral lighting and colour code. 10:24 the lighting team wanted to use neutral lighting to it was closer to reality, making the setting more believable. Colour coding was also used to help communicate with the player, an example given by Goudreault describes if the player enters a scene with no oxygen how they would communicate through the lighting “there’s multiple amounts of ways to inform the player, but for us, it’s a desaturation of the colour that help convey the absence of oxygen.” 12:05

The rest of the talk more so goes into specifics on how different lighting effects can be achieved in engine and the specific code behind everything which isn’t relevant to my essay so I didn’t make notes for that portion.

Art Demonstration by League of Legends Artists

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osnTFCm1hlc&ab_channel=RiotGames

This talk features Director Tad Lechman, Character Artist Josh Singh, Illustrator Evan Monteiro, VFX Artist Shannon Berke.

Monteiro describes splash art illustration for League of Legends as, “the definitive visual portrayal of a champion in the highest fidelity, it’s kind of like a window into a champions narrative and place in the world” 5:30

He explains some of the tools to make an illustration effective in what it needs to showcase 7:43, using spotlighting or focusing the bulk of light on the area the viewer should focus on. Contrast and size are also useful tools.

8:50 Monteiro explains that when creating illustrations for certain characters with an iconic move or memorable moment, it is a bit easier to have a focus on what type of piece to create. He goes on to talk about the character Kindred, and how when creating an illustration for this character was a bit more challenging. Monterio states, “all of those other approaches felt like things that were fitting for characters that wanted to look imposing or to feel threatening, but death doesn’t really make threats, death waits. Because it knows, at the end, your time will come and it will claim you.” 10:05

11:30 the cycle of life and death are portrayed in many ways in the illustration shown for Kindred, Monteiro explains that areas in the scene that are in the light are move alive in the way they look, and bright, whereas the dark things appear to start dying. Warm colours are used for things within the light and cool colours go into the background.

12:15 Monteiro explains that thumbnails are initially created to get a feel for composition of a piece before even beginning a proper sketch. When creating the thumbnails, Monteiro states they wanted to keep as close to the core pillars of what makes the character.

After Monterio’s segment, the rest of the talk goes over character modelling and VFX, so I didn’t make any notes here as I likely won’t need them for the essay.

Notes of a Bloodborne piece

https://www.iamag.co/the-art-of-bloodborne/

After looking at the previous sources, I wanted to move on to look at illustrations for a game that I feel set the tone well, and are engaging to look at. The work I wanted to look at is from Bloodborne.

Within this piece the viewer can see a cloaked figure with a weapon standing in the centre of the frame, the viewers attention is then drawn to a large, long armed monster clinging onto a building, it seems to be looking down at the figure. The moon to the top left is the only light source in the scene, the majority of light falls on the character in frame and the monster on the building.

The muted colour palette helps the viewer of this piece to not get distracted by varying elements of colour, the piece is largely made of cool tones but a more orange hue is used on the moon and the eyes of the creature on the building. The use of colour here will focus the viewers eye on the monster and the moon, with the character in the centre of the frame it also draws the viewers attention to them.

While the buildings aren’t the focus here, they help to set the scene, they seem to be heavily based on gothic architecture, making the world feel more real. But the presence of the monster ahead shows the viewer that this is a dark, unnatural world.

Based on everything I have researched so far, this piece uses a lot of the methods I have learnt about to create an effective illustration.

Next Steps

Next I will need to work the notes I have taken on all of these areas into my essay, once this is done I can write a conclusion and hopefully send a draft to my lecturers to see if I am going in the right direction.