Last minute inspiration

Stone Rage is a prehistoric indie game, that has a lot of aspects that I should've included in my work.
http://www.stoneragegame.com/
There are YouTube videos showing the scenery of the place.

Project Proposal sheet.

The audience for this game would be more or less 12+ due to a bit of violence but a cartoonish nature to it.

More sources:

http://10steps.sg/tutorials/photoshop/a-realistic-water-reflections-photoshop-tutorial/

The tutorial where I tested out some water effects ect, and took the pictures from.

https://www.artstation.com/artist/alberto_vangelista

An artstaion of one of the artist reasearched

Evaluation

FMP Prehistoric Scenery, Evaluation:

My project theme is Prehistoric Scenery, which was developed by thinking of an Anubis, and developing it as it’s partly what I did for my last project. I have developed my ideas by making a mood board and pushing myself to not keep the image the same, always looking for improvements. My development started as a form of just ideas, making something new in each developing idea, but keeping one main aspect. Which in this case, is the tree, as each idea was being developed; a small aspect of each was being put into the final design. As the water flowing and the rock on the first idea to the “world cut in half” feature that it looks like on the second, more developed idea.

More development was made on the final project with the trees and the rock being first made as a 2’d flat brush over it. As I got a little bit of help and developed my drawing with little tweaks, I was then told how to make an easy circle with it, shaded, I then used the liquify tool to move and sculpt the object in Photoshop. After  sculpting the objects, I began to move them into place and merge them into the work itself. After that I had to change around the water testing out different types of water, making sure it looked as it was supposed to, getting tips and tricks from my tutor.

A few reference images were found. But more so in real life as a tutor sent me pictures of a lake near them. That helped to give me a light understanding of what I was going to do. References from a person called Jeff Le Bars who really helped me out, they gave me a few ideas and a great art style, they really helped me develop my idea with their simplistic but effective and great art. The water pictures were extremely helpful as it made me look at my work differently and helped me progress with the picture as a whole. This affected my project by making me change my work for the better and inspiring me to improve and develop my drawing with a few different ideas and small tweaks to my work and way I do things. By testing GIFs ect I could easily make my own from now on, maybe make full animations overtime with (hopefully) some help from a professional as I did get a bit of help from a professional for my Maya work and a bit of Photoshop. 

The only artists that really stood out to me, are the tutor’s that I am lucky to have and the Jeff Le Bars, who has a very clean and interesting style, even if it’s animation it really does help with seeing how to draw things ect. All of the inspiring artists that I had mentioned use traditional, Photoshop and 3D softwares respectively. I only used colours and brushes with the technique of following the lines without going different ways unless it’s a layer over to make detail or is to create a pattern. I also used a technique of making a circle and liquefying it, which helped me a bunch. This really influenced my end design as it made sure that the grass ect wasn’t everywhere and had odd sticking up bits out of nowhere.

As I started out my idea was just a simple small rock with a tree that was extremely bad, but as these computer crash a lot some of my work from that has gone but I did redo, making a little bit of a better start. This ended up being my first design idea, and then I developed that into a slightly more developed idea. After everyone did the peer assessment they gave me ideas to make the clouds better and soon develop it into what it is now. I wish I did more research into even more artists, but not liking that much art lead me to just research into a few, but the artists I have seen most have been very good, style wise I’m not a fan, and that’s what I search for.

I wanted to convey the prehistoric feeling across, or at least partly pre-historic, having the bones pretty close to land as if they recently died 100-200 years ago. I feel as I did get the meaning out pretty well, because of the preserved grass, tree’s and rocks, as well as untouched soil (Which might not be as obvious) as this was supposed to be when dinosaurs were there/dead for a couple years.

I am relatively happy with my final piece as I made it, I figured it was good, for art made by me, my other art doesn’t compare to what I had done. I’m proud of my rock, as it had the biggest development process and the development that was told by my peers and a bit of researched showed development of how they improved by the start to the finish by testing out different, more difficult or easier ideas to make their work better, testing out different ideas, making improvements and overlooking what they have done, then trying to develop more and more.

I would change my idea all together. Not because I don’t like it or anything, generally because I’d have more fun designing a character. But that’s how I think, changing my mind on what I want to do, unless I’m set on something  as I was with this project. But I want to do more, doing a character, a biker etc. Would be so fun to just relax and sketch out many different designs, I could maybe get 100 in a week if I was given no time limit, and did it when I felt like it.

I learned how to make different objects out of a circle, how to use Unreal engine and would like to use it more in the future. I also learned how to create grass, make more realistic looking trees and develop a bunch on my small knowledge on how to make waterfalls and water. Which judging by how it turned out, I did a great job for a first time drawing waterfalls etc.

I think this is important to get layouts correct, to create a scenery for the world that is going to be created in the game, it gives everyone a base to build from. When you have something to build from it can expand, become a world on a game, or even the whole game together.

I did give this assignment my best effort, up to a standard of what I could and couldn’t do. As I had a few trips to the hospital I say I did try my best with the time I had, but I should’ve spent more time at home doing things for this project as I made it too hard on myself.

I feel as I made my ideas very decently, making sure that there was one distinct asset in each idea and final design, as you would be told to make something with a certain asset in or to have a certain theme, genre etc. to the world around it.

The mistakes I made were that I didn’t use my time too productively. I spent a lot of time trying to do one thing (The rock) that wasn’t working out too well, so I hadn’t progressed too much. After figuring out about the circle technique I really enjoyed making the rock again it definitely turned out better than its original design.

I would have made a better plan, having a reminder on my phone or something like that to remind me of what I’m doing that day/week until I have everything done. I should’ve set a limit every day of what I should have completed, that would’ve helped a lot.

The most helpful activity in the class was the one on Unreal, helping me get into new software that I enjoyed testing in as it seemed a lot simpler, easier and more professional than any other programs I’ve used for game design.

I had not used the circle technique before, not knowing you could even do that to begin with, making life a bit easier. This could be used in most if not all of my work from now on for how easy and good looking this is to creatue.

I had very few problems in my work, but one main problem was that the computers are a little slow; the brush would take time to get to where it would normally be as I would create my own brushes that might have been more complicated for the computers (Somehow). I fixed this by simplifying the brushes and making sure that the computer I was using could handle it by testing it out on a different file so I didn’t do anything I’d regret.

I had one other problem that was the water I was trying to create never looked right, the patterns, the techniques I used just weren’t working. I made a gif of one of my water experiments that didn’t work very well for my project, so I had a little help to make the water that is on there now. It does look a whole lot better.

(Words: 1,559)

New water/Final piece.

After adding new effects and making sure that I had made the water as correctly as I can I improved the water and it took a while to try and get it right, with a little bit of help on the side. But nothing on my actual work.

  

Small development gif

Developing the tree and rock

I had made the tree and rock not very well to begin with, so I had a little help with it. I made a ball with shading and then pulled it out with the liquify tool to make different objects. That is what I did to the trees as well as the rock. I used colour correction and changing the hue to make the colour look as it does as it makes for a better effect.

Start to finish

At the start my first initial idea was

and it has become a lot better than this since the beginning.

After a couple of different attempts that is what I ended up with, the water going through a few minor changes and a few tests to get a better look on the water itself, having changed not just that the clouds were bad and also the cave was very amateurish.

You can tell from the assets of the first idea. 

I should have named the layers, but that would take a bit too long and when I drew the items sometimes it was just shading so I could move things and change it easier.

Artist Reply

Having an artists email to be able to reach out and ask them questions is helpful, I did email a favourite artist of mine. He does animations and told me about how he started.
Jeff Le bars he has a website of his own with an amazing showreel at his own website jefflebars.com/ .
After making contact with him he told me about the programs he used and how he started off.
I started the conversation by sending an email to him, this was when I was 17 and I'm not anymore,

He responded saying that he used paper to start with, sculpting and animating traditionally, he said the 
programs he uses,
"Photoshop, 3DsMax, TVPaint, After Effects and Premiere respectively for : backgrounds, characters,
 traditional animation, compositing and editing." He also said that he used a Wacom tablet. Which is the
same of the one I bought at home. 

He went on to explain that it takes a very long time to traditionally animate and it's a lot faster on the 
computer. He went on to explain that "Photoshop is good for making backgrounds or assets for After Effects
animation".
Then he explained that he uses TVPaint and that he's happy with it, which is what I want to now look into,
if you see the quality of his work, it's very very good, I recommend looking at his showreel.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbQgXeY_zi4

Proof of the conversation. I'd rather not show the emails themselves because of privacy. But he did say that

I could show the college the conversation, but I'd rather not just show the emails sent to me.

(3rd artist)

Water testing and animation.

Water testing was just me messing around with brushes to try and get the right water for my project.

Using a couple of different techniques I ended up making a brush and using it to make this water like gif.

The brush I used was one with lines in and circles which made the light blue parts as the circles were overlapping. I used a bunch of different colours at first started looking like this.

Then I added a colour correction and changing the hue to get what I have here. 

I then used "Transform" in the edit menu to find perspective and played around with that till I had a nice view of what water should look like, I made the gif by just using the frame animation like I did a while ago on my old project.

This is the finished water texture for my piece but I did do more experiments.

Which are here but they didn't turn out too well:

except for this one:

Then I got a few which weren't so good.

As these were all tests I would rather show my development to what my work is today then leave this in the files.

Final design and improvements

As I experimented with brushes ect, I had a little help making changes to the clouds and refining the tree's. After doing this I can only now think to change the water, make it more realistic as well as the ground, looking up pictures and reference images to help me along the way.

In my personal opinion water is very difficult to even try and create, making a waterfall was a lot easier with a reference image, so making the water itself should be just as easy, right? Well not exactly... Trying to make the water is very difficult not knowing where to start. After having a small idea to restart the water maybe I could just try it out first on a blank page. As then I could probably copy the image almost exactly. Therefore making it easier to draw the water myself. As I could also change the underground a little. It would help to create the underground by making a small layer after the grass, darker than the rest.

Video of Unreal test

Testing out Unreal editor.

I have made a small "Office" that was a little project to make on the Unreal editor. I made mine a little off. Adding an odd background as if it was a sandstorm in the background that actually is animated like the clouds it starts you with.

On this image the floor is chrome and I added a little too much gold, but it was just testing the textures. The reflection on the chrome seems really good if it's on something else. Like a car or maybe a chain ect. All of the objects in this scene were taken from a Maya file that we were told to use. It was a little easy to transfer from Maya to Unreal, just by exporting the selection as an "FBX export" which then could just be imported to Unreal, tweaked and sorted into folders to make everything easier to access and control. There wasn't many problems with this software, except for maybe lag which was caused by the computer and nothing I could control except for changing the graphics down, and up for taking a high resolution screenshot. Which is what I did here. Making the scene look a lot better. In the little fort thing made of tables and two golden doors there is 12 generators because I was enjoying messing with the copy and paste tool, as it was really easy, just hold alt while moving the object.

Communication and Presentation survey

Testing brushes

To start this small testing page I used just triangles to make the background.
This process started as I was looking for something to help me create the waterfall as I was struggling deeply. I tried many different brushes and went through a bunch of different options, but this one being the most interesting, I decided to show, the simplistic pattern gives it a certain vibe that makes it actually not look bad,

 As the little art piece is used to test the brushes, I tested this brush by covering the whole page, seeing how it would look and how I would implement it on different objects and signs ect.
This particular brush, I saved as this could be used on a pattern, as a border and maybe even as a far away sign, giving the illusion of it saying something that you cannot read. I feel as this brush has the right amount of randomness and looks to actually be used.

I actually created this background as a test itself and thought it would be suitable to test out other brushes. This means that I will probably have this up a lot, so I could have my own little testing board that I could then even post to the blog to see what brushes that I made and used.

This was me using the background to test out some brushes. I was testing these by changing certain preferences and mostly using dual brush as it seemed to make the brushes look and feel a little better to use for different situations in Photoshop maybe even other drawing programs if I can transfer brushes.

Photoshop comp

An extremely silly Photoshop piece where I used http://eu2.flamingtext.com/ To make the words and cows from just searching "cow" on Google. I would send the link but as almost everything is blocked, it doesn't matter.

I made this game a couple years ago on scratch here: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/20517317/

Room plan

The black table is if we can get another one. The work being on a board.

Feedback on the blog from peers.

Pinterest link

https://uk.pinterest.com/cgouldney/prehistoric-scenery/
I used this website to pin all of my inspiration.

Project plan!

Project plan:

Week 1:

Get some ideas out for the project, mind map and such.

Week 2:

Start a design and pick an idea from the mood board or mind map.

Week 3:

Experimenting with different brushes in Photoshop.

Week 4:

Make a quick idea with the brushes and experiment with the texture.

Week 5:

Finish a couple of ideas and make start on practicing animation.

Holiday Week 6:

Start an animation that is more relevant to the scenery

Holiday Week 7:

Finish the animation.

Week 8:

Start making parts of the scenery starting with one small bit at the start but use a bunch of detail on one bit.

Week 9:

Expand the scenery and make sure that the tiny bit that I started or finished last week as I’m trying to get it as detailed as possible.

Week 10:

Start on making a different asset and make sure that it’s detailed enough.

Week 11:

Look back on what I have created so far and either carry on or use what I have got so far, making sure that you have enough detail.

Week 12:

Try to add animation to the work so far, if not add more to it bit by bit.

Week 13:

Use what has been given as feedback and expand on what I have.

Week 14:

Make a conclusion and explain on how I could've done better ect.

Animated gif attempt

This was a test to try out animating in Photoshop, seeing how long it takes really makes me appreciate animators. I have a lot of layers and frames to create this simple animation. This is a test so that I can do something like this in my scenery.

Art development

My art is developing slowly, I made the water more white as that's how the light works after looking at pictures of waterfalls I think if I made the impact on all of the scenery, that would create more of a atmosphere.