Slumpbusting

It's safe to say that, for the past few months, I've been in a bit of a slump, creatively. To get over this slump, between September and December 2012, I experimented with a few ideas while trying to find something to focus on in my MA.

I took a step back and looked at my interests, what I was really interested in at the time and chose to try and create characters for an existing world. I had a look at the already designed races and focused on the characters role and personality. I ended up doing about 5 characters based on the Mass Effect game series by BioWare and EA in my own, comfortable illustration style.

I quite enjoyed creating some of these characters, making their personalities. It might even be fun to attempt 3D modelling one or more of these characters in future.

After these and still looking to try out a few new things, I decided to try and create characters in a way I hadn't done before. A friend of mine is really interested in animals and anthropomorphised characters. It inspired me to give designing similar sort of characters a go.

At first, I tried creating anthropomorphised characters for my own themed world, looking at adventure games and movies. Pirates was a... common theme.

I also tried doing similar sort of characters in a more modern, less fantastical setting.

It was really fun coming up with some of these characters and developing their personalities, definitely something to consider for future designs. Doing these also gave me some ideas about what to do in my MA.

December 2012

By December I had... Kind of lost interest in the dwarves. I attempted to designed some post-apocalyptic superheroes. Well, a post-apocalyptic superhero.

However, I largely concentrated on completing my contextual studies essay.

November 2012

Still struggling to find designs or something that really motivated me, I continued with the dwarves. I attempted to 3D model Grumpy.

I got as far as the UV mapping stage but, between financial issues and the impending contextual studies essay, I got increasingly distracted.

October 2012

I started playing Gearbox Software’s Borderlands 2 in October and I love its art style. It mixes cell shading with hand painted textures, trying to maintain a comic book style and really reminds me of John Romita Jr’s artwork. This briefly inspired to make an attempt at designing a character in that world.

After that I thought about looking at genres and fitting art styles to them but it was suggested that I take something like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and attempt to redesign the dwarves. I thought about it and had a go by making them dwarves on some sort of space mining rig, partially inspired by Visceral Games’ Dead Space.

With Grumpy, I went for a chunky body with jagged hair. I even made him look balding to imply that he may have pulled some of his hair out in frustration. With Doc, I wanted to try something more rounded and flowing. Sneezy was an attempt at making him look sickly, diseased or plagued. Happy was made to look very jolly, maybe even a little flamboyant or camp. Dopey was made to look, well, dopey...

I took a couple of these characters and played with colour. I decided on reds for Grumpy, to represent anger, and went for a more clinical look with Doc, to represent the possible ability as a physician that his name implies.

I then took Grumpy and played around with shading and lighting.

September 2012

Starting in September, I came on to this course with a very vague idea of what I wanted to do. In my third year, I concentrated on character design and I want to expand on that in the masters. So, for starters I wanted to attempt to design a load of characters and model them in 3D to put in to my portfolio.

With that in mind, I set out looking into what inspired me; where I draw my influences from. I love looking at all the fantastic digital painting that comes with games design but they've always leaned towards realism. I’m honestly not a big fan of realism. A lot of games that associate with the real world often look brown and bland to me.

I've always preferred stylised games over realistic ones, largely because it draws from my influences and interests. I’m a big fan of traditional animation and comic books. Artists like Bruce Timm and Mike Mignola, amongst others, have inspired me heavily over the years. It would be nice to draw some of this influence into my design. Disney and Dreamworks animation also have a lot of art and design which I love.

Even with so many influences, I’m still struggling to find something I enjoy designing at this point. I did do some doodles at this early stage: