Games Design Masters

With the degree show approaching, this blog post will cover final preparations and will also include my show reel.  Below is the show reel I have created to display my work. I ordered my final prints for my physical portfolio, while my paintings are made to display best digitally, I still wanted an option available for people should they prefer physical portfolios. I added in some basic title pages to separate each section, below is some images to give an idea of what the physical portfolio looks like. Ultimately it is just all the work in my online portfolio organised into a physical one. I also updated and tidied up my online portfolio both on my website and on ArtStation. I have included some screen captures below to show the additions of the recent projects. I now feel ready for the upcoming degree show, I will continue to do what I can to promote the event and my work in hopes people might come and take a look at it!

I finished the concept for my retro futurism inspired character. I wanted her colour palette to fit with the props I have designed already within this theme, and then I added in features I liked most from my previous concept sketches of the character. I tried to give more information on materials used so if this was given to a 3D modeller they would better understand the textures on the clothing. I also used a pose reference to sketch over on the back view to serve as a quick base to build on top of, this was much quicker that doing a body posed from scratch again.  Next, as the degree show is approaching, I will be working on making sure my online and physical portfolio are up to date. I will also need to create a show reel to promote my work, I will do a blog post going through these updates once they are complete.

I worked on some sketches following on from the thumbnails I did previously, I am happy with how these sketches turned out and I think I got to explore lots of ideas. It helped me establish things I didn’t like and design elements I would want to potentially take into the final concept for this character. To speed up my process, I sketched over a reference image of a person standing posed and designed the character on top of this outline. Below is a picture of the concepts, and a timelapse of the process. Next, I went through each design to see elements I liked and things I thought didn’t really work. Effectively asking “Does it look good?” and “Does it serve a function?”, generally if the answer to either of these is yes, then I find the design element has potential and might do well in a final concept. If it doesn’t make a design look good or if it doesn’t make sense, then there’s no point in taking it further.  Elements I like I circled green, elements I didn’t like I circled red. I

I worked on creating some thumbnails for the character I want to create, while I have created thumbnails for props I haven’t done this process for characters before, but as it is a very widely used process I wanted to try it. At first I didn’t think this would be helpful, but the constraints of only having effectively the outline/silhouette of a character to work with forced me to think of different designs to make this basic outline more interesting. The top row of thumbnails I looked at 50’s references first then added in more futuristic influences on top, I then switched the order I looked at references for the bottom half of the page, looking to futuristic influence first, then adding in 50’s inspired elements. I felt this was a good way to push me to explore lots of options and avoid sticking in one type of design. Below is the image of the thumbnails, as well as a 30 second timelapse, moving forward, I will continue to create some sketches exploring my designs further.