Environment Prep. Work

Our next task is create an environment that could possibly be used as an environmental concept piece for a video game. The image must be a full colour 300dpi A3 Print size and we've also been asked to experiment with complimentary colouring as well.

And with that we were released into the wild for an hour and a half to collect first hand research of environments, in this case, buildings around Manchester.

My initial thought were to try and create a fairly realistic looking environment photo of a building during say a post apocalyptic war? Maybe not necessarily post apocalyptic, but I think it'd be interesting to completely change the scenario that a building is in and I also think it'd be really cool if people could recognise the building I've used as well.

With that here are all the photos I took with stunning iPhone quality (sarcasm)

 

Manchester definitely has some great architecture within it, although I never saw any real potential in any of them as I felt that they were just a little bit too dull and I didn't want to paint just a building.

So for the project I chose this picture as my main reference.

I felt that it was an interesting photo with lots of activity and also showed off a lot of the Printworks building and I can easily imagine some survivors huddling around a fire in a barrel with a little checkpoint at the junction in the road as well and possibly at night time or dusk with blues and oranges.

Here I have also reconstructed the scene using Google SketchUp where I've also added a couple of wholes in the building as well as the checkpoint and a couple of barricades. This will greatly help me with the painting as it'll act as a very useful template although there are a few things I will still edit when it comes to painting, namely the height of the lamp posts.

And this is what I will actually be painting over for this project.

Now I am well aware of a certain post apocalyptic piece of Printworks that someone has already done which I will surely look at for tips and some influence, although if I'm honest I see this piece as a rival piece rather than inspiration so hopefully I'll be motivated to create a superior piece.

It is very good though so we'll see how my piece fairs against it.

Character Turnarounds

In our next task we were asked to create a character turnaround, as a 2D artist, we may sometimes be asked to create a character turnaround for the 3d artists to use as a template when creating the character within a 3D modelling program.

At the start I wasn't terribly sure what character to create as I wanted to make someone who actually was a real character. For instance, if you look at the Team Fortress 2's classes, they are all real characters, each with their own physique and distinct voice.

Originally I was at a lose with coming up with an original character, so much so that it was starting to really irritate me, so much so that I then went for the first thought that came to my head. Which just so happened to be, "John, the Intimidating Office Worker".. It's original at least.

For his physique I wanted him to be big and bulky but maybe slightly too short legs, cause he's an office worker after all, not an athlete. For a little bit of help I also looked at the Heavy from TF2 and how his proportions vary around his body. However I maybe should've looked a little closer and paid more time into the side view as he's a little too upright and he does seem to be a little too skinny as well.