Wednesday, 23 October 2013

Media Tests: Silhouettes

Since the presentation, I've striven to do more practical work as suggested while finishing reading The Art of Game Characters. I started off with these silhouettes, but only for practice at drawing with my tablet, which has only recently been working properly. As the pipelines in character design tend to be increasingly digital, I thought it best to push myself into the medium. The figures are simply basic poses and not truly design related.


When it came to do my own character silhouettes, I found the idea of going digital a bit difficult still, and given practical work has had me stumped I decided to go traditional just to get me going then switch over. Here, I used inks and watercolour pencil to create these designs. As shown by the blank splash on the bottom left, I started with a wash of colour to take away the white background, then a darker wash to give a basic shape. I then took the pencil to sketch the design based on that shape. I finished with another darker wash of ink for the shadows to give more depth. Overall, I'm quite pleased with the process. My aim was to just let go and stop thinking of and planning the design, and this really helped to do that. I didn't use references, but I can already see influences from existing products shining through. I find this interesting, and figure down the road exercises like this will help flush out stereotypical traits in character design.


I've decided to try and go to the extra life drawing classes that are on every Thursday, in another attempt to loosen up and produce art just for the fun of it. My first few quick poses were as terrible as expected, being out of practice as I am, but once the longer poses started I could really get into getting the models features anatomically correct. This class is in high demand, so I know I wouldn't be allowed to go every week, sometimes not even every two, but I will apply as regularly as I can as it truly helped.

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