2D Digital

Project Analysis - Bug

The finished armoured sports bug.

Material call outs. Contains 3 of your 5-A-Day!

Material matches between front and back views.

Photobashing timelapse.

Colour Analysis:

After doing some intense colour analysis I discovered the interesting fact that my cool-looking but previously unjustifiable colour choices actually made a really nice triadic colour scheme. This is not at all apparent when looking at the image at least to me but I suppose it makes sense. Even though the colours are quite intesely contrastic they still work really well together to form a harmonious image. I think it also helps that the largest proportions of colours are greens and oranges/browns which are highlighted by small amounts of more intense reds and blues.

I think the values are very readable - even when squinting the forms are still clearly separated and the silhouette reads well

Overall Analysis:

Overall I think this project turned out incredibly successfully, especially given that it's the first time I've ever tried photobashing. Now to tear it to pieces for the sake of self-reflection!

I think my initial intention of making a hockey player was completely lost beyond the initial silhouette. This bug is in no way dressed for the cold and he's not wearing ice skates. I think the final read is much closer to an American football player which is still reasonable. The colour scheme is much more reminiscent of a superhero costume than a sports uniform, I think mainly due to the intense saturation and variety in hue. Most sports uniforms are only one or two colours to make it easy to differentiate teams on a field. They also don't tend to be grass-green for the same reason but I really think that taking liberties with that part of the creative brief has paid off because the variety makes the character much more interesting to look at. I decided at the start of the year that I wanted to be more adventurous in my projects and trust myself to use a bit of artistic license every now and again and I think I definitely achieved that here.

If I did do this project again I would probably spend more time in the initial research phase to build up a better understanding of the features key to a sport. I think the only thing reminiscent of hockey in the initial design was the wide shoulder pads and the long hockey stick like extra legs - once those legs were gone there was nothing specific left to tie him to that sport ergo he is not an ice hockey bug any longer.

I think the decision to add in a logo was a good choice. It does help the character feel like he's representing a team or at the very least adds an iconic and recognisable impression to the narrative. Who is this guy? He's the bugman! What does he do? I'm not sure but he looks strong and colourful so probably something fun and athletic! That kind of read is not as well thought out or specific as I normally like to make my pieces but again I don't think that is a bad thing. I think I'm reiterating this to try and convince myself it is okay sometimes to make something that looks good even if every aspect isn't justified in 17 different ways. Sometimes plausibility and the suggestion of a purpose is enough as long as the overall design is fun, and that's the main message I am taking away from this project.

Project Analysis - Apocalypse Vehicle

The finished Apocalypse Vehicle

Photobashing timelapse

Analysis:

This project worked really differently to my other work. The idea came to me almost fully formed, built off the narrative of my backpack project I knew I wanted an ice cream truck run by grown-up scouts in the apocalypse. My initial design iterations were quick and simple and I blocked it out in 3D ready to go. However, when it came to the photobashing I really struggled. Most other people had taken a basic car and then built on top of that. I hadn't done that because I had blocked it out in 3D. I think I could have saved time by making a simple shader for the basic metal of the van maybe, but once I had gotten over the initial struggle of assembling the base vehicle the rest of the photobashing came quite easily.

I think the overall impact of the vehicle does read as post apocalyptic. The type of apocalypse isn't entirely clear but I think there's enough information in the weapons and the high suspension to indicate it is a hoard of small somethings that have destroyed the world. I think the design would probably have benefited from some more gore or dead rats to help communicate this but frankly I didn't want to go googling for anything of that nature and I didn't think drawing it would work either so I don't regret the choice not to include it.

I think the design is fun and camp, in an 80s B-rate sci-fi movie kind of way. If I did this again I would incorporate some more narrative aspects, such as a torn up scout bandana as a flag and some solar panels and antennae. Some of these items would probably need to be drawn on rather than photobashed which is something I stayed away from in this project not trusting myself to match the style of photobashing with my own drawing abilities. This was probably overly-cautious as I think I could have gotten away with it. I think the tyres still look too clean as well and actually in an apocalypse scenario who is finding matching tyres? This truck would probably have an old wagon wheel on one side or something just out of necessity.

I think I made the right choice of colours for the vehicle. The cream and pink in contrast with the mud, blood and giant canon on top reads as almost comical to me. For the overall mood of the piece it works, but I do wonder if I had gone with a darker colour scheme, whether that would have altered the mood of the overall piece significantly.

Blog Task - Comparative Critique

The purpose of this task was to get us comparing our own work to something really cool that we like of an industry standard. I chose to use a piece of character concept art from Mass Effect 2's Shadowbroker DLC. The original artist isn't credited in the art book but an image of the full page can be found here.

I think the biggest thing to take away from this comparison is that it seems like everything was considered when making the Shadowbroker design. Nothing happened by coincidence, it was all thought out and justified during the design process. I think part of that probably comes from having a team of artists each with their own considerations to bring to a project, but realistically it is somethign very achievable for me in my future projects. When I designed my bug guy's anatomy I didn't put any thought into why he would be build like that - why would he have evolved this way - where as it seems the Mass Effect team put a lot of thought into that part, at least from an outside perspective. So for my next project I will be considering why stuff is the way it is, not just how it would work or how it would look.

Week 11 - Finishing photobashing the Bug

I wanted to make the wing material match the pattern on the shoulders and forearms. I found a grasshopper with similar striations across the wing but it was very washed out in the image so I darkened the wing and then increased the contrast and red levels to bring it more in line with the rest of the material.

I may need to darken the wing further or reduce the contrast to push it back in the image depending on how it looks further into the photobashing. It is meant to be obscured behind the majority of the characters body so I don't want it to be so high-detailed that it distracts from the overall impact of the piece. It is mainly there to add to the silhouette not to the tertiary detail, but I don't think I will be able to judge this until I have the majority of the bug complete.

All of the blue aspects were taken from the leg chitin of a koppie foam grasshopper. The benefit of this is that a lot of the basic form shading was already in place as it's cylindrical so I only needed to make the pieces match the overall lighting of my scene with only minimal warping required.

For the oblique-ish panels I knew I wanted another muscle-like striated material but the celerely wasn't appropriate as it was just one flat plane. So instead I opted for banana peel! The yellow was overpowering, and I tried to remap the colours but it still looked strange. My work around was lowering the brightness and inverting the colours then applying a gradient map to match the celery.

I ended up duplicating an distorting the chest plates to form the ab plates. This was an idea I got from the N7 armour from mass effect of all places - the chest and ab pieces look like one flowing form in a V shape, so to avoid the torso looking disjointed I recreated this effect and it looked far superior to the original red/blue plate I tried.

The hips were the most challenging area to fill. I think this was partially because everything around it had already been filled in so in addition to it making sense it also had to match everything around it. I decided it needed a similar striated texture but getting the distortion around the form right was very challenging and I think I must have redrawn the wireframe about 5 times.

After splitting out the belt and hip area by changing the direction of the line flow I needed to choose the right colour. I knew it would either be green, red or brown because I needed it to contrast with the blue of the piece sat on top of it. I decided against red because the arms already heavily feature red/blue contrast and I didn't want to overdo that.

The green was blending into the leg and obliques too much so brown was the best looking choice. I colour picked this from the chest material which really helped with the overall cohesion of the piece. I also added some rudimentary shading to show where the legs sit in the hips by creasing the form.

For the face I chose to use a lobster tail material to work some more of that red into the piece. The small flecks across the arms and torso were interesting but they seemed almost tertiary without a larger area of red to anchor them. I did darken the red to more closer match the rest of the form as the initial lobster red was way too bright.

I changed the eye sockets to match the blue and split the forehead into three wrapping sections. I think this is a much nicer look and balances out that red/blue ratio in a much more satisfying way.

I added some highlights around the rim of the eyes to show the flattening of the form

Acting on feedback:

At this point the feedback I recieved was to touch up some of the details such as by darkening where the plates intersect.

With shading this looks much more plausible.

I was also told to help differentiate the knees more so I added a subtle rim lighting just to help stop them from fading into the wings.

Lighting and cohesion:

Here you can see I also added some hints of blue to the celery-thighs. This change is incredibly subtle but it makes the whole colour scheme of the bug seem so much more cohesive. It implies a growth and an organic nature to the different colours and overall just helps it seem like all these different contrasting areas are part of the same creature.

I also darkened the side of the bug slightly as it wraps around the form. This was another really subtle change that has a significant impact on how the overall form reads. The character now looks much less flat. this is especially apparent around the chest and on the right calf where the shadow really helps add depth.

For the final finishing touch I decided to add some logos and branding to the character. Initially he was supposed to be an ice hockey player but now I think he looks more like a superhero. Unfortunately, superhero-ing is not a recognised sport but a lot of hero outfits are based on sports teams anyway, featuring flags and iconic colours to communicate allegiances.

Logos and Branding:

Listen, I'm not going to pretend this is smart but I noticed that a lot of sports affilliation logos are just... letters in a shape. The NFL logo, the fifa logo even the EA sports logo are all just words and letters in shaped. They're really not complicated, their graphic designers must have been thrilled. So I decided to reflect a similar effect by making my bug man's logo stand for Bug Man. He is a bug man and he plays a bug man sport.

For logo placement I went generic and did a chest badge and a belt buckle brand. Most sports shirts have the logo across the top of the chest on one side and as for the belt I'm not going to lie for some reason my first thought was of mermaid man and the wumbo episode of spongebob. That was iconic for a reason so I ran with it! Plus a lot of sports award belts as trophies anyway, most obviously wrestling which now I think about it - bright colours? Muscles on display? Mask on face? CAPE? I may have unintentionally designed a lucha libre-esque pro wrestler.

Week 10 - Photobashing the Vehicle

For the wheels I ended up using some from a toy truck as these were the closest perspective match I could find. I think they look passable but might need some work to make them look more used and worn. I plan to overlay some dirt noise and paint on some wear and tear to make them look less plasticy.

I ended up drawing a cage over the truck to help with the perspective as an unfortunate side effect of making the base in 3D is that it is in 3-point perspective and not 2-point as I discovered is standard of concepts like this.

I've also started saving small surface details like vents and panels to add some noise to the sides of the vehicle where there aren't any greater details.

As much as I would to leave Tom and Jerry in my final piece I like to think I have marginally more respect for image licensing than the average ice-cream truck designer.

I knew I needed to cover the back window as well as once again remove the quiestionably licenced cartoon images.

Once I had finished the base truck I could just focus on adding the apocalyptic elements like the spikes, bars, speakers and weapon.

For this vent detail I split the planes off to photobash them individually to minimise distortion

Knives in the bonnet because this is the apocalypse. They need some AO and maybe some mild gore.

For the ice cream cone liquid nitrogen gun I decided it would be shooting pods of the stuff that would shatter on impact so I used ice-spheres to represent them. I then used a metal bakers piping tip for the cone and added a pipe. However after feedback I realised this pipe looks off, the scaling is clearly overblown and it isn't attached securely so this is something I will change.

I changed the pipe to be an aircon tube and added a conduit vent into the side of the roof to more securely attach it. I think this definitely looks better and also makes more sense as the pipe is large enough to be insulated as it would need to be.

I also added some ice crystals around the mouth of the cone after widening it so that the orbs would realistically fit through.

At this point based on feedback I also darkened the wing mirrors which added some more contrast within the main body.

Before and after darkening the suspension; this made a massive difference in the overall read of the piece, it suddenly looks a lot more cohesive overall.

Final render with/without grunge effects:

Week 9 - Blocking out in 3D

Blockout of the apocalypse truck created in 3ds Max.

To make life easier I decided to block out my truck in 3D and use that as a base to work from. I ended up making a relatively accurate layout of the suspension based off some blueprints I found online. Initially, there wasn't much vertical room for the suspension to move around in without the wheels smashing into the hull so I adjusted this before beginning to photobash.

I'm not sure yet whether to draw over this model or use a filter in photoshop to call out the edges and then work from that. I think either way I have saved time by modelling it out and hopefully this will make the photobashing process much easier overall.

In terms of materials I will start by using the basic metal of a normal van before adding on the retrofits the kids would have made over the years.

Week 8 - Reference gathering

Photoshop moodboard of icecream truck aesthetics.

Ice cream trucks can be broken down into 3 key elements:

The boxy silhouette
Use of large sections of bright colours
Tertiary detail overload in the form of ice-cream menus and questionably-licenced cartoon characters

I think the silhouette will be easy enough to replicate. Choosing the colours will be the most important part - primary colours seem to be the most common with yellow, red then blue, as well as pink making an appearence often. The base of the van also appears to be white however I imagine after several years in an apocalypse it's going to be looking a lot dirtier and more worn down.

Whether or not I include the ice cream menu or change that aspect to something more thematic like some scout badge symbols or battle tokens of some kind remains to be seen.

Week 7 - Apocalypse Vehicle Concept

I wanted to play off the apocalypse scout idea I had all the way back in my Backpack project for first year in 3D. I think the idea of a bunch of kids who were on a scout retreat when the apocalypse happened and therefore have grown up in that extreme environment is fascinating and funny. If I was a kid and I needed to steal a vehicle it would obviously be an ice cream truck and I feel no need to justify that. I imagine that as the kids have grown up they have slowly retrofitted the truck with more and more advanced technology to defend against the growing apocalypse. The aesthetic of classic british ice cream vans have remained relatively unchanged over the last 50 years so with only the van itself becoming more modern. As a result, I imagine this apocalypse taking place in some ambiguous point in the early 2000s. This way I can incorporate nostalgic elements from my childhood if it seems fitting.

I created these initial sketches while bored on a train and that is why I love my iPad. I do feel sorry for the guy sat next to me who seemed very concerned when I started researching the efficacy of a liquid nitrogen canon. Visually, I don't think any of these ideas are good enough on their own, but by combining aspects I think I will be able to create a really interesting piece. The ice cream canon is definitely a highlight, and the armour plating and defensive front cover are both very practical additions.

Week 5 - Photobashing the bug

My initial idea was to use chitin material to create the texture of the bug but then I thought that using something with fiberous strands for the areas which mimic human muscles might look cool. I settled on using celery which I think has ended up looking very interesting. Next I wanted something nodular for the armour plating on the legs - I first tried using tree bark but immediately it was too recognisable even when in greyscale. I then decided to work off of the celery idea and try another vegetable - this time cucumber. This looked really cool! In addition it was already a curved surface which meant warping it to match the thigh was much easier.

I swapped out the cucumber shoulders for some cool Lubber Grasshopper chitin. I then worked on transforming a cool Foaming Grasshopper thorax into rib plating.

I used warp and painting over to fit the plating around the form. O then used content aware fill to fill in the small triangular sections at the top and bottom of the section and painted over the seam it created.

I'm not sure how but I could tell that this was upside down. I think it was most likely lighting cues but I decided to flip it anyway so it didn't look so strange.

I flipped that pec and warped it a bit more to create a more dramatic curve in the right perspective. This has lead to the image looking slightly lower quality when zoomed in - if this is noticeable in the final image I think I will paint over the area to sharpen it up.

More chitinous additions. This leg section had strong highlights on so I had to use a new linear light layer to tone that down.

Leg section with the highlight intensity reduced.

Week 4 - Refining the Outline

The next step was refining what I already had. I cleaned up the sketch and decided that I wanted to mimic human musculature for my bugman. I used anatomical references and built up some basic sections based of the common muscle groups. I think this has lead to an interesting plated-effect but initially it looked very flat as there isn't any edge information to add depth where the sections overlap. This is something I will have to bear in mind and compensate for when photobashing.

Rough outline for the character. While the silhouette is okay I definitely needed to add some more variation inside the outline to break fown some of the larger shapes. I also decided to reduce the secondary limbs as they just looked like they were hanging limp and wouldn't be of much use. I swapped them out for some more active looking pointy limbs which could be used more defensively.

After refining the sketch into cleaner lines and changing the extra limbs I extended the antennae and added the wings to make a more imposing silhouette. I think this has changed the read of the character from mostly funny to mostly intimidating which is a much better fit for an athletic character.

I think this is definitely the superior version, it has much more gravitas. Have you ever seen Darth Vader without his cape?

In order to show the forms better I decided to add a wireframe across the surface of my outline. Initially I had planned to add values and shade in the whole bug but considering it would all be covered over by the photobashing I decided this would be a much quicker way to get started, then if I need to refine any lighting later I can do that on a lighting layer after the base is down.

Crit Script & Peer feedback session:

During this lesson we got to reflect on our work critically with our peers by following a list of questions:

What’s their identity? - He is a bug dude. He looks like a Jeffrey.

Personality type? - Strong but not the smartest

What are they wearing and why? - Some kind of cool muscle bug armour, he looks like he's about to break up a fight

What is their role in the narrative? - He looks like a protagonist or the kind of guy who thinks he's a protagonist

What are the dominant shapes? - Squares and pointy ovals

Are there any repeated shapes? - yes, lots in the plating

What is the silhouette like? Basic? Interesting? Could you pick it out of a line-up? - Definitely interesting, he looks iconic

Is everything clearly readable? - not really

Is there a focal point? - not really

Is there a flow? - yes all the panels seem to flow nicely into each other they don't feel disjointed

At this point my bug doesnt have any values, colours or presentation considerations so I didn't include those questions. From this session I mainly gained the idea that I need to make sure my values are really clear and readable because there's quite a lot of small segments so if the values aren't clear this guy could quickly become a muddy mess. In terms of a focal point I think I could add more detail to the face as that is typically the focal point for a character, but I think having his head being small means that would make less sense. I might add a pattern or contrasting colour to the chest so that area draws more attention and becomes the focal point. I could also just make the eyes a really contrasting colour to the rest of the face as intense contrast will also draw focus.

Week 3 - Anatomy & Perspective

Shoulders on the same level leading to a distorted perspective

Adjusted arms and shoulders, and rotated the lower legs

While the overall silhouette of the bug was successful and gave a strong athletic impression, the issue soon became that the perspective wasn't quite right and this lead to the torso looking distorted.

My first step was to imagine the horizon line around the waist of the character, and then the vanishing point in the distance to the left of the character. This meant I had to bring his back shoulder lower to be in line with the perspective. Interestingly, I had already done this with the knees automatically, so once I changed the shoulder position the overall silhouette was much more cohesive.

At this point I also rotated the extra leg joints to properly align with the torso at a 3/4 angle, and shortened the back one accordingly. Overall these small changes have made the character look much more grounded and plausible.

My next step will be to draw over the sketch to create cleaner lineart so that I can easily fill in the armour segments when I start photobashing.

Week 2 - Sports Bug Sketch

Iteration #1 started by using fairly standard human anatomy with the addition of a bug head and extra set of arms. This wasn't as visually interesting as I'd like; I thought the silhouette could be pushed further.

In the next iteration I gave the bug person digitigrade legs and inflated the width of the shoulders to give a more athletic impression. However I still thought it looked too basic so I decided to push the proportions even further.

I increased the width of the shoulders firther and elongated the torse. I also shrunk the head which looks absurd in the funniest way so I'm going to keep it like that. I also increased the length of the second arms - maybe they could be used like hockey sticks?

Week 1 - Introduction to Photobashing

Idea generation & Mood Boards

The brief for this project is to create an insect-inspired armoured sports character. My initial thought was to check my natural history book which has a whole chapter about cool looking bugs. Through this I found the Foaming Grasshopper which I decided to use as the general inspiration for my anthropomorphised bug. In terms of the sport I wanted to draw inspiration from, I knew I wanted to pick something bulky and armoured, so I looked into both American Football, Ice Hockey and Baseball. I think I am going to start by working off of basic human proportions and adding bug-like aspects as my idea develops.

After last years work I have realised I have a strong tendency to play things safe and logical when it comes to my ideas. For this project I really want to push myself to prioritise being creative and use my artistic license more, rather than overly focusing on the plausability of my ideas all the time.

The process of photobashing seems really interesting to me. I think as a skill it is going to be really valuable once I am able to use it to quickly iterate on ideas. My main concern is that I will struggle to detach the textures and items in photos from their original purpose. My instinct for this bug character would be to only use images of chitin but I think this might limit the impact of the final piece. I want to at least look at a wide range of images to increase the chance of me finding some interesting atypical textures to include.

Google Sites

Report abuse