Research and Concept Art
LO1 I came into the group wanting to be a concept artist. I wanted a challenge and I knew drawing anything historical and much less Egyptian would be a good challenge. I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and I had never drawn anything Egyptian, so drawing anything from this world would be a lesson.
Research
The director, Liam had a very clear and quite a solid view of how he wanted to do his game trailer. There were elements he already knew he wanted, and the whole game premise was already set, but it was the actual look of the game that had to be a bit more solidified.
LO2 I was at first tasked with doing clothing design for the background wealthy people. So it was all about the richer side to the Ancient Egyptians. So I started researching Egyptian clothes for wealthy people as I didn't even have a reference in my head. I found the Egyptian clothes to be really beautiful, and the wealthy mostly wore golds and more colourful than the poor.
LO2 I was at first tasked with doing clothing design for the background wealthy people. So it was all about the richer side to the Ancient Egyptians. So I started researching Egyptian clothes for wealthy people as I didn't even have a reference in my head. I found the Egyptian clothes to be really beautiful, and the wealthy mostly wore golds and more colourful than the poor.
Concept Art
LO1: Here are the various roles given to the people interested in the group. I was given the task of doing the clothing for characters and well as weapon designs.
LO6: In terms of schedule, our director, Liam, was quite laidback about when things were done. He just needed most things done by the end of November in time for formative and before the Christmas holidays when he was planning to model everything. Of course most of us would still work weekly, rather than save everything for last minute.
LO6: In terms of schedule, our director, Liam, was quite laidback about when things were done. He just needed most things done by the end of November in time for formative and before the Christmas holidays when he was planning to model everything. Of course most of us would still work weekly, rather than save everything for last minute.
LO3: (Above) Here are some sketches I did of wealthy people of Egypt. Designing their clothes was really fun to do. I incidentally made them look quite evil, but I really did not mean that.
(Below) I coloured one of the images to get a feel on what the colours would look like. I used a texture overlay to give it a more papyrus-like and Egyptian feel.
(Below) I coloured one of the images to get a feel on what the colours would look like. I used a texture overlay to give it a more papyrus-like and Egyptian feel.
LO3 + LO5: I also made sure to update onto the group. However, I found that with this group, it was more updating on dropbox and then the director checking the uploads. I didn't get much feedback as I guess these were background characters and Liam would choose clothes based on what he felt like.
LO3: These were further guard designs. They were meant to be dead and zombie-like, so I made them have rotting flesh etc.
(Below) A standing shot of a guard. My proportions are rather terrible here as I am not used to drawing topless people. Especially muscles.
(Below) A standing shot of a guard. My proportions are rather terrible here as I am not used to drawing topless people. Especially muscles.
LO3: I was then asked to do some character poses for Haalima. This was actually during the time I was asked to do storyboards so I wasn't able to do amazing or many poses for Haalima. I tried though and these were some of the results. Below I did two shots to show both of her sides. Her more sneaky side and her warrior side.
I didn't actually get to do much concept art as the majority of my time was then put on creating the storyboard for the intro.
Storyboarding
LO1: Me, Lisa and Niel were tasked with each storyboarding the piece and then Liam would pick and choose certain things from the storyboard to make a more finalised plan. I was prepared to do storyboards for at least one of the groups and I was asked to do a mock up for this group. The three of us were asked to create a storyboard and the best one would go forward to draw the final boards.
LO5 + LO6: There wasn't much of a schedule. As mentioned earlier, Liam was really quite open to when things were done. However, he did need certain things done by certain times. For example the storyboards needed to be done by the weekend so he could nail down a few angles etc. So I made sure to give him a quick draft by then.
LO5 + LO6: There wasn't much of a schedule. As mentioned earlier, Liam was really quite open to when things were done. However, he did need certain things done by certain times. For example the storyboards needed to be done by the weekend so he could nail down a few angles etc. So I made sure to give him a quick draft by then.
LO3: Here are the very quick drafts I did for the storyboards, I even added descriptions etc. I made sure to give different camera angles and tried to portray the story well enough.
LO5: We met on a thursday to discuss the stoyboard drafts. Liam liked mine and asked if I could do it but now a cleaner and finalised version. The animatic will most likely be a mix of mine and Lisa's work as she had done some environment shots that would be good to use.
He also posted a map of the route Haalima takes to make it easier for me to determine how she gets from A to B. This will help with boarding as I definitely know where certain walls and paths are.
LO5: We met on a thursday to discuss the stoyboard drafts. Liam liked mine and asked if I could do it but now a cleaner and finalised version. The animatic will most likely be a mix of mine and Lisa's work as she had done some environment shots that would be good to use.
He also posted a map of the route Haalima takes to make it easier for me to determine how she gets from A to B. This will help with boarding as I definitely know where certain walls and paths are.
We had formative and the feedback I got from my tutor was positive and made me more pumped for the rest of the term.
LO5 + LO6: The schedule over the next two weeks was posted on the Duality group page by the director. I had to finish the storyboard by the group formative. and give enough time for Liam to make it an animatic.
LO5 + LO6: The schedule over the next two weeks was posted on the Duality group page by the director. I had to finish the storyboard by the group formative. and give enough time for Liam to make it an animatic.
LO3 + LO4: I am really proud of this storyboard as I took a lot of time to make it, colour it and determine some of the angles. In a way I got to play director for a bit because I was helping to determine shots. Whether or not Liam follows it in the end is up to him, but I tried my best and I got positive responses from my peers and director about it. Some of these images are not used, but some are. I think so of the scenes are actually taken away from a story point of view to make things clearer.
LO3 + LO5: I actually had to redo a few images from the boards. Below is just small part of some problems I faced. Sometimes me and the director would have differences, and this is a good example of our confusion and miscommunication for one simple shot. We didn't understand each other (and this is only half of all the messages) and we had to compromise at the end as we could not get each other still. I think I got frustrating for us both, so we just moved on.
LO5: Another example of communicating and changing things. I always prefer to make my changes on the spot when given changes as I don't like waiting and hving the work hanging over my head. It was always important for me to make the changes asap so the director could get it back asap. So I would send an image and I would get feedback, then I would send him the changed piece. It worked out most of the time and made sense.
(Below) Here was more confusion. I think we got confused a lot in this because we both had different ideas and we clashed at times. I knew what I drew, but he wouldn't understand. That meant I was doing my job wrong! So we would have to discuss it so I eventually knew what to change it to. Every panel was a challenge because it had to make sense as a single shot, but also in a sequence with the other images.
(Below) Here was more confusion. I think we got confused a lot in this because we both had different ideas and we clashed at times. I knew what I drew, but he wouldn't understand. That meant I was doing my job wrong! So we would have to discuss it so I eventually knew what to change it to. Every panel was a challenge because it had to make sense as a single shot, but also in a sequence with the other images.
LO3 + LO4: (Above) Here are some more shots added to the piece. In the end I had drawn more than 70 different boards. Some of these extra boards were to replace other boards or to add within the whole thing. I actualy drew these boards a bit differently to the first set I did. I used a different brush on photoshop and I felt things came out better this way. I was certainly more comfortable using this brush.
(Below) I put all the shots on pages so you could see them a bit clearer.
(Below) I put all the shots on pages so you could see them a bit clearer.
LO3 + LO4: Again, there were still more shots to add. By this point I was getting confused on how these shots were going to look in the final animatic as Liam was the one to put everything together.
Animatic
Here is the final animatic pieced together by Liam. This is a mix of mine and Lisa's boards. It has some of her environments early on, but most of the character stuff is mine.
Evaluation
The experience of doing the storyboards was really quite frustrating. I had never drawn so many images in such a short amount of time. I think when it got to the point that there were more images added after the first storyboard, I was getting confused (as a lot of shots were being done out of order) and unable to really picture the final outcome. It was quite successful in the end and I know it wasn't mean to be extremely perfect or polished. It just needed to tell the story and it did. I am still proud that I made it all in time for the group formative. It was a good experience and it may have changed the way I look at storyboard. They take far longer than I expected.
The biggest challenge for me was doing everything from background, to character and perspective. I am not too strong on perspective and background, but I'm getting there. So having to draw a ton of boards involving the two was a challenge which I believe I succeeded at.
However, despite all this I was happy with the work I had achieved so far from all my project by the time formative came around again.
The biggest challenge for me was doing everything from background, to character and perspective. I am not too strong on perspective and background, but I'm getting there. So having to draw a ton of boards involving the two was a challenge which I believe I succeeded at.
However, despite all this I was happy with the work I had achieved so far from all my project by the time formative came around again.