Composition

There are a number of composition concepts that can be taken advantage of to help make an image more appealing to the viewer. Here I'm going to look at a few artworks and analyse their composition of colour light and forms.

Jason Chan, Deadspace 2 illustration for Game Informer magazine cover.

You can see in this image that orange and blue has been used to form a divide between the cold left side and warm right side of the picture. The right side also hosts all the light sources in the picture, with the left side being considerably dark as light is blocked by the monster. The eye is primarily drawn towards the brightest point on the picture, being the flash emitting from the gun.


Here I have overlayed the rule of thirds on the image. You can see that several elements loosely follow the guides. The focal point of the gun 'barrel' lies on one of the intersection points, with the blue lasers following the top horizontal line. The highlighted edge of the monsters arm and shoulder follows a L line.

Andrew 'Android' Jones, Digital painting of female.

There is really only one subject in this picture, the woman in her vibrant orange dress against a dark background, lit by a moon-like light in the upper left corner.



Here I've overlayed some green lines to show the simple yet effective L composition of the piece, broken by the flowing white silk or cloth to add interest.

Jamajurabaev, Imprisioned

The towering, intimidating form of the alien/monster fills the centre of the image, lit behind by cool blue causing it to cast a dark siloutte, a few details revealed by green ground light infront.

In this image I think there is a t compositon down the centre of the image, but the creature also seems framed by the darker envirionment not lit by the cool blue light. It creates a powerful image perfect for the

Lighting

Conan illustration by Frank Frezzetta


There is a clear lightsource where sun is entering through the window in the picture, but the harsh shadows on Conans back would also suggest another light source close by, also suggesting this are the dark, crisp shadows of the chains holding Conan. A lightsource that is further away would result in weaker, blurryer shadows. You can see light diffusing down across the snakes scales.

J.P. Targete 'Another Thieves World'

In this picture the foreground is in shadow, midground being lit with the background growing faint in fog or mist. The faded colours in the backgroun give an impression of distance with the darkest areas of the picture being closest to the viewer.

Joseph Wright 'The Blacksmith'

The orangey-yellow glow of the hot metal illuminates the scene, bathing the surrounding characters in  warm yellow light. Soft shadows curve around the peoples bodies while hard shadows form from the blacksmiths legs so near the heated metal.

Concepting a Vehicle: Initial silhouettes

I am going to design a vehicle that exists within the fantasy sci-fi world of my digital game concept. To start the process I am going to create some quick silhouettes to use as a starting point for ideas. These silhouettes are just to inspire ideas that might not be the initial ideas that would normally come to mind.

These first 25 silhouettes are very rough shapes drawn while thinking loosely about real vehicles such as planes and motorbikes.

These next 25 silhouettes were created using a program called Alchemy. The program is designed very specifically around that stage of creating inital ideas and drawing insperation from shape. It even goes as far as to remove any undo function, forcing artists to be loose.

More loose blocky silhouettes.

Final 20 silhouettes

After creating 100 silhouettes I chose 20 of the ones I thought were most interesting, drew over them a little to help me to visualise what direction I could take them, then chose a final 3 to develop slightly further.

Vehicle Development

I took the three silouttes I choose and drew simple sketches of possible designs that could arise from them.

After drawing out some simpel sketches from each one of the previous three siloutte choices I think that the top, bike like design could be taken further in a manner that could suit my game concept.

Here I take the siloutte and simple sketch I created and explored and played with designs and ideas.

While using all my previous scribbles for referance I came up with a fairly finished side view of the vehicle, trying to focus on getting the overall shape and proportion to my satisfaction, possible extra detail could be worked on.

Once I was happy with the side view I worked on back and front views and put together the first rough model sheet of my fantasy-sci-fi hover-bike.

Final Vehicle Piece

I used the model sheet as reference while creating a final 2d piece of my vehicle.

Here is the final 2d piece displaying my hover bike type vehicle.

Here is a revised version with some added illumination to try and illustrate the hover-bikes rear engines and thrusters.

Concepting a Character: Initial Silhouttes

 I'm going to concept a character to play as one of the main selectable classes that the player can control in my game. The main principles behind this character is that he has good manouvering abilities, able to jump and bounce off and around envirionments better than other delectable characters.

I start designing the character by creating 100 quick and loose silhouettes to tryand give myself some interesting and alternative ideas.

Most of these silhouttes are drawn using a basic digital brush on high, but not full opacity.

This fourth set of 20 silhouttes was created in the drawing application 'Alchemy'. I begin to get some very interesting ideas for more abstract designs here.

Developing the character silhouttes

Here I've taken 20 of my character silhouttes and began to draw over them to give me a better idea of how they could look if I developed them further. I lowered the opacity of the base layer and drew over with a smaller brush to that initally used to create the silhouttes.

I leave fiddly details such as hands and facial features for later, still playing around with basic outlines of the characters possible clothing and body shape.

 I've settled on these five silhouettes below as my favourites and will play around with them a little more before deciding on which one to take through to a final design.

Developing character silhouttes further

Here I play around possible outfits and features of the five silhouttes I picked out as possible starting points for the final design of my character.

I do several draw overs ofthe base silouette while ocnsidering outfits for whatever this may have been. I don;t feel particulary inspired by any of the quick ideas though and so move on.

This second silhouette is already pretty interesting, I experiment withcolour schemes and ideas for a head. While interesting though I feel that the design gives off the impression of too powerful a figure, which I don't feel the personality of the character I have in mind would suit.

My third silhouette design begins to feel a bit too similiar to a previous character I have already created for my game so I decide to look at developing other concepts first and come back to this later if need be.

My fourth concept gives me ideas about making the character some kind of insect based creature, I draw some experiemental pieces of insectoid-like armour and while my game is based in a science fiction world I consider some clothing that appears quite historic and theatrical. This could perhaps be combiend with some science-fiction type bits.

My fifth silhoutte works great for a insect like character and I like the idea of having some looser clothes and armour rather than some kind of full body metal suit. I look at a few insects and experiement with possible designs for a head from them.

Final Design and Model Sheet

I've picked out my 5th design to be taken on as a final concept. Before I create the model sheet I first play around with and finalise the design and details, drawing a final detailed design that I will then draw a model sheet from.

Since the character is supposed to have good jumping abilities I design some features around that of a grasshopper, such as the legs and feet. The head, while insect like is not based specifically on any insect and is largely imaginary in overall shape and structure.

I then draw my character from different angles in the final model sheet that could be used as reference for a 3D model, I will also use it as reference for a 2d coloured piece of the character.

Final Character Piece

Here is the final artwork of my insect like character designed for my game world.