Week Number & Date – Week 1: 30/12/2019
List of tasks I plan on completing:
- Create Hover-boards for City Roads
- Create Rubbish scattered across the city floor
- Create Street Lights for City Roads
- Render out shadows in UE4 for lighting
Current Position – What did I do this week and why did I do it?
Documenting the development stages of my work, I created two different sketches for the design of a hover-board. I took inspiration from media such as Back to the Future, as well as my research that defined what types of texture and shape elements of the science fiction genre have. I preferred my first design over the second, as it was more fitting to the old school technological implications I was aiming for, rather than a futuristic sleek board which you would see later in development. I based my colour palette ideas on the overall setting on my city, being vapor-wave and neon vibrant tones. The one I like the most would be the yellow and blue combinations, as these are bright and easy to see, which would draw more focus; additionally, I also like the standard blue and pink, as these colours compliment each-other, and work well with the design. I do believe that my second concept sketch looks nice with the simplistic addition using colours, although would suit artwork much more science fiction rather than cyberpunk.
Moving in, I wanted to add some details to my city, to show that people would be living there. For this I wanted to include rubbish that would be scattered across the floor, as the theme of cyberpunk is known for depicting a rebellious atmosphere. I began this design by creating a basic bottle, although I wanted the label to be bold and stand out, as this would make them much more visible for a smaller object. I adjusted some of the tones, to create a light and dark contrast, although found that the bottle did not look transparent enough; for this reason, I changed the blend mode to overlay. I needed a Japanese word that would be found on a bottle, which is why I chose ‘Rum’, this fit well and was appropriate for this generation. I changed the colours a variety of times, so I could receive different colours of the bottles, but also the label. My favorites were the pink bottle, as this was a dark colour that would stand out in a neon environment, as well as the blue, as it made the label look as if it has been painted like fireworks.
I experimented next with the lighting, looking at different saturation’s and hue’s to manipulate the colour schemes of my city. In addition to changing the colours, I used different blend modes to receive unusual results, I discovered I liked colour dodge the most, as it brought out the main colours, without ruining my actual designs. I considered using luminosity, although the brightness was too high, and the colours were no longer visible, this would work for a different setting, although wasn’t the theme I was aiming for within my product. I discovered that I really liked the pink and blue change made to the roads, and the colours, although I may consider adjusting these slightly so its not too heavily dominating the other colour tones.
Once I was finished adjusting the colour balance to my chosen theme, and vibrancy, I began scattering my bottle designs over the city floor, this had a great impact, although I may consider making them slightly smaller next time, as I overestimated how much they would be decreased in size, making it slightly pixelated. Although this wasn’t much of an issue, as the bottles were quite small, and this was hard to notice. I chose the pink, yellow and blue bottles, as they stood out the most when playing around with the positions and the contrast to the city.
By this point I was almost complete adding additions the artwork. I sized down the hover-boards of my chosen designs, and placed them along the path. I had to use the ‘skew’ tool to adjust this properly, as the angles were not quite right fitting to the angle of my road. Once this was completed, I was happy with the positioning and moved onto adjusting the cities presentation; for this I used the blending options of the floor and added an outer-glow, this just separated the grey build of the diorama from the background, and made my piece look much more defined and finished.
To improve the quality of the diorama further, I made the sides that were visible a much darker tone, as this gave it a more accurate 3D perspective, as well as viewing the lighting source better. I also added an overall drop shadow below, as this once again exaggerates the diorama much more realistically, and adds effective lighting to my concept piece.
I modeled a basic street light, so I could position this at a correct angle within my city blockout, I took inspiration from a variety of different concepts from pieces that I found in my research, I new I wanted this to be quite old fashioned, as these types of street lights give a mood lighting, and are shown throughout films within cities with rain and fog atmospheres. I also thought there general aesthetic would work well with the overall theme, as its old fashioned but still technological (which differs from the science fiction genre). Once these were created, I took the screenshots into Adobe Photoshop, and began sketching over them to create my concepts for my work. Once the overall colours and shapes were created, I used the same glow process to add some shine to my lights, so they appear as if they’re emitting.
Once my street lights were completed, I scattered them around the sides of the road, making sure they were evenly spread. This worked nicely, and gave my environment that civilized feel it needed. I was quite happy with the results, meaning i’m ready to move onto the shadows from the lighting of the lamps, as well as the buildings. I liked this addition, as I thought it wouldn’t work well with the style of the road that I used.
Once most of my artwork was completed, I wanted to experiment with the presentation of the boards. The first process of this was the style of the title. The name of this project board is ‘GLOW CITY’, although the l and o are exchanged for 10. As this is the chemical symbol for neon, which I thought a clever adaption that some people may pick up on. I attempted to make this 3D, by using the 3D title option in Photoshop, although this made it pixelated and I didn’t like this clash with the sleek look of my artwork. I also made this initially white, as the background is black, making it visible and creating a contrast.
I moved onto using a new font called ‘Mono-type Corsiva’, due to the italic and old fashioned style of this. The outer-glow that I added originally worked well with this theme. I still wasn’t completely satisfied with this font, as the typography wasn’t as futuristic as I wanted, meaning it didn’t fit as well with the Cyberpunk city aesthetic I am aiming to produce. I really liked these street lights, as they are typically shown in films to convey a eerie atmosphere. In addition to this, I began by adding a motion blur to a 45 degree angle, as this began creating the theme of the board, I was aiming to make this a set of two blended colours looking almost like a aurora glow.
I added some notes to work with, the same as I did previously, as this was a nice way of being able to see what work or changes I needed to make within my work, and different ideas I can experiment with to improve this. I wrote instructions such as rendering block-outs, as this is a process that would allow me to see the directions of the light using Unreal Engine. Additionally, I considered adding elements such as fireworks, inspired by new years, as I wanted to see if this would work well for my final board presentation. Here I was able to tell myself about elements I need to fix, such as the fog, as I was told it wasn’t realistic enough to depict it being located in one specific area.
I then added some pink glow to this, by creating some ovals, and putting a Gaussian blur over these shapes to give them affect that they’re glowing. I was happy with this, although it needed another colour so the background didn’t look so bare. I was torn between adding blue, or adding a lighter pink, as these are the two I thought would work well with this tone, as well as the tone of my overall city.
I went with the blue, and began adding ovals and Gaussian blurs using the same process as the pink, I really like this, as parts of the black still shone through, so it wasn’t too extreme to look at. I liked this combination, as it stuck with the colour themes of my original proposed concept, as well as looked nice with the colour schemes shown throughout the neon lights. The black aspects separated this out nicely, although I may consider adding something underneath this to remove the negative space around the board.
I followed along this tutorial, so I could discover how to make a hologram projection of my city. I wanted this, as I thought it would not only make my concept board look more cyberpunk and futuristic, but also take up some of the space around it so my scene wouldn’t look so empty. To create this, I began copying and merging my whole city, and using a linear light. Once this was applied, my cities light was very vibrant, so I added a motion blur; this made it less focused so it looked like the technology was glitching. Once this was added, I contracted the image and added a Gaussian blur so the entirety on the city looked more blended in to the background, rather than completely clean.
Once this was completed, I used the blending options to add an outer and inner glow, as this just highlighted the outline of the city itself. Something that I was new too, was using patterns, which was the next step in my production, he used the ‘half-type pattern, in the sketch folder, and changed the type to ‘line’ so it appeared to have strokes across it. I then added a clipping mask to the motion blur and glow, so it blended it with the layers. Finally, I merged the layers together, and opened the photo filters to change the overall hue to blue, giving it a hologram effect. I really liked this idea, and was happy I experimented with this technique, although I wasn’t quite sure on this layout.
My final board of my city was almost complete; but I wasn’t happy with the hologram that I originally created of the full city, as this wouldn’t fit on the board, and the positioning didn’t work well with the scene. For this reason, I moved this below my city, and spread it across to look as if its bel ow it. This worked much better, and made the board look much more interesting than before, it removed the negative space, and fit well with the Cyberpunk theme, being as this is futuristic.
I uploaded my block-out to unreal engine, and moved the camera in the correct position so that the lighting would be the same angle I wanted. This render highlighted which sides of the building are darker, and lighter and how the shadows look on the ground. This was useful, as now I was able to see realistically where the lighting fell on my city, so I could create the light and dark areas much more accurately.
I began using this to first see where the shadows on the street lights were, I began sketching them in using pen pressure on my graphics tablet, which was the easiest part of the shadows, as these were only straight lines because of the shape. This simple detail made the street lamps look much more life-like, giving the impression the shadows are life-like.
What did I find difficult or easy?
What I found easy:
As I was using a much larger range of software than usual (such as Unreal Engine and Maya) these tools were helpful when building the structure, proportions and lighting of my scene, which if I was just generating myself, would take a lot more time, and I would experience a lot more issues. Expanding my range of software used to create my artwork, made it much easier, and meant I struggled less with perspective issues and positioning the lighting in the correct angles.
What I found difficult:
I found keeping up with my work production challenging when I had to fix my proportion, as this meant going over all the work I had already completed. Because of this, although it was necessary to improve the quality of my work, it meant I had less time to focus on the details, to complete my project. Furthermore, it was difficult to position my city on my board, as the shape left lots of negative space. This is something I plan on fixing during the final stages.
Planning for next week –
How do I plan to catch up:
I need to make sure I get the rendering finished in the next week to ensure I am caught up with my tasks, although I am virtually on track with the time management I set of my project. I also need to ensure that I move onto my weapon design next week, so that I give myself enough time to complete everything.
Do I need to change anything about my work or planning:
I need to work on the shadows and lighting of the street lamps, as they need to emit much more light on the ground if I want this to look realistic.
Week Number & Date – Week 2: 16/01/20
List of tasks I plan on completing:
- Finish creating shadows and lights on city floor and street lamps
- Begin adding the gradients and glow to my sword concepts
- Begin and present final Swords on presentation board
- Begin finalizing and adding shading to my cyber guns
- Begin and present final guns on presentation board
Current Position – What did I do this week and why did I do it?
To complete this piece, I finally added some shadows to the bottom of my buildings to give the impression of a light source and shadow-casting of my 3D city. Additionally, I also added some light circles below the street-lamps, as this was necessary to make them look as if they’re emitting a source of light. This was the final details that I added to my city board, as I wanted to focus particularly on lighting and proportions during this project, something I struggled with in the past. I really liked the outcome of this board, as I worked on the glow and lighting, and the important of creating realistic shadows and light.
I began developing my second board for the production of my swords. During my last development, I created the basic and final shape, and began looking at a variety of colour combinations that they can use. I decided against using my second sword that I designed as one of my test pieces, as I didn’t believe this fitted the cyberpunk theme that my others did; rather was much more science fiction and fantasy. From this, I started changing the colour balance, and adding shading to emphasis the light areas on the blade. A large portion of my swords development was produced here, so I duplicated this four times, and changed the colour tones using hue and saturation, to create a variety I could use on my board. Finally, to complete my sword concepts, I added an outer glow to fit the presentation theme used in my city.
For my second set of swords, I again changed the hue and saturation, this time only using the colours pink and blue. Once this was set, I increased the vibrancy of the swords to make them appear much more shiny. Moreover from this, I then added a gradient going straight down the center, so the blade would appear to look as if its made of metal. The reason behind changing the vibrancy on these ones, is changing the colours alone looked too plain, and it needed something to bring out the colours. Once this was finished, I added some glow effects using the oval gradient tool, and then added a white outer-glow to the finished blades to match accordingly.
Now that my swords were completed, I began creating a backdrop for my presentation board. I used the same steps that I followed to create the aurora background for my city, this time using purple ovals and applying a Gaussian blur. I created these horizontally from each-other, leaving space for another colour. I used this to create a theme throughout my boards, so they appeared as a set of concept pieces.
I then used a mint green tone to fill in the remainder gaps with this colour, again using a Gaussian blur. Once all of these glows were placed, I added a motion blur over the ovals so they looked more blended together, and completed the look of the background. I liked these colours the best, as I tested out others which didn’t contrast well with the colours on my swords. These also kept the theme without taking the detail away from the swords to keep my work interesting.
Finally, I again used the mono-type Corsiva font to create my title ‘cyber swords’, highlighting the name of my piece. I really liked how the outer-glow fit with this font nicely, although I wasn’t sure if this matched the theme of cyberpunk well, as its rather old-fashioned. I may need to consider changing this in the future, so it matches the themes of my concept pieces.
Moving onto my last concept piece, I began to create the clean line-art from my gun, so this appeared much more finished. Once I completed this to a reasonable standard, I added the basic grey and neon pink and blue shaded alone the trigger and top parts of the gun. This was similar to my ideas generation, although I wanted to make sure the outline was sorted out before moving forward with my design.
Once I fully completed the line art, I moved onto finishing the lighting, I wanted to include a balance between the pink and blue, which I believed really worked nicely with this design. I highlighted the areas of neon that I realistically thought would be placed along a gun of this type. By this point I was happy with the base concept, and needed to add the shade and shadowing to complete my design. These coloured were specifically chosen, as it followed the vapor-wave theme, as well as contrasting well with the style of my cyberpunk weapon.
By this point I took the main body of the gun, and added a lighter gradient to the front, this worked really well as it was clearly visible within the scene, and gave my weapon some dimension. I decided against adding some shade to the neon parts of my gun, as this looked strange, and looked much nicer clean and bold all around my product. From this, I took my concept and changed the colours to themes which I thought worked well with a cyber-world and science fiction style. I placed all of three of these designs on a landscape canvas, and added an outer-glow.
Once I completed my guns, I began creating the board. At first I only used pink and blue, but I didn’t want this board to look too similar to my first, so I added a tone of purple to add some variation to the colours. I always like to leave some black around the edges, as this means the aurora effect will look much clearer. I again kept this design consistent with my other boards.
I once again applied a motion blur, which I was very happy with especially for this board, as it looked rather futuristic and high-tech, which was the theme I was going for. Adding the additional purple tone made the colours blend better, I also liked that some of the colours were less blended such as the blue, as this made it appear more natural. Once this was completed, I moved onto experimenting with the typography on the board titles.
I stuck with using the Mono-type Corsiva font so it matched my previous cyberpunk boards, but the problem was that this didn’t work well with this piece. I began rethinking the font style I wanted to use, as this wasn’t working effectively with the themes. Additionally to this, the colours needed changing, because the blue I was using faded in to the background, meaning this ruined the quality of both the title and the artwork itself.
For my final piece of work, I decided I needed to redo my war-hammer, as it didn’t fit the style of the rest, being as its not very detailed, and lacks shadows making it look like vector art. I took aspects of this design, and began reconstructing a more realistic looking weapon, elements such as the metal plating texture at the side. I changed the overall shape, making it more dynamic and 3D. Although I wanted to keep the neon elements around the outer edge of the hammer itself. I decided to add a blunt point to the top, as this made my design look more science fiction; a point was then also added at the bottom of the weapons handle.
When applying the colour, I took a lot of inspiration from my original piece, using pink and blue to keep with the vapor-style. I did not find constructing this weapon challenging, as I already had a guide as to what I wanted to create, and the colours to use for this. I decided to make this darker than my original, as it contrasted better with the neon pink and blue, and brought this out more. I removed the spikes that I used for my first design, as this didn’t fit with the realism a war-hammer would have, and would rather be impractical to a character or person using this.
To complete my hammers, I added gradients to create lighting, and to emphasize the light and dark areas this would have. Once this was completed, I used the oval gradient to again add a glowing effect to the center part (for this being blue). I wanted apart of this weapon to use neon as a light source. Once this was completed, I duplicated this, and changed the colours using my original test piece to colour pick. Once these were completed, I began constructing my board, using pink and green ovals with an applied Gaussian blur, and then adding a motion blur over all of this. Although I was happy with the positioning of the ovals, I didn’t like the chosen colours as they took focus away from my actual product.
I decided to redo this process, this time changing the ovals to blue and purple, which were much darker than that of my war-hammers, meaning they didn’t blend in, and it also wasn’t too bold to look at. Once I applied the motion blur, I was much happy with the results of this background, I removed one of the hammers temporarily so I could how the background appeared. Additionally to this, these colours were much more beneficial as they blended much better. being as they were not too extreme in difference, unlike the pink and mint green.
The final addition to this board was to add the title, although I still wasn’t sure on the font. When looking at this board structure, the title stands out, but the style doesn’t match well with the futuristic and cybernetic feel to my weapons that I was going for within my project. I was still debating whether or not I should change this, but I used this just to ensure that all of the titles used the same font. This was a hard decision for me, because I liked the font, and how clear it made the text, but it did not look as if it was science fiction or cyberpunk, which was an important key aspect when matching the theme of my project.
I decided it was important that my font fit well with the project, as well as the work itself, as the presentation is a key factor in the overall quality of the work. I used the website ‘Dafont’, to try and find a science fiction typography style that matched that of my project, I found one called ‘Neon Future’, which I liked as it Incorporated a futuristic feel, as well as being clear and easy to read. The problem with this, is that when applied to my project title, I wasn’t able to change the number, which really created a strange dynamic to the title. It was important to me to find a font that did to this, as the ’10’ was an important symbol in my design scheme to show the chemical symbol for neon, which is what I based my project around.
I then found another called ‘Galactica Battlestar’, which was bold and clear, and again followed along a futuristic style. I applied this to my project which was perfect, it adjusted both letters and numbers. When applied, it was first just originally white and black, but I added an inner glow that changed the tint of this to purple, as this fit well with the backdrop I used within my city. I kept the original settings that I used on my previous font style, such as an outer-glow as a stroke.
Once this style and adjustments were decided, I made this change to all of my boards, which I believed made it look increasingly better. Not only was the title bold and clear, tit also fit the style I was trying to show within this project. From this, I also changed the colour of the inner glow for all of the bards, making it a light blue for my guns, a darker purple for my swords, and a darker blue for my warhammers so the contrast worked well with the colours of the board itself.
What did I find difficult or easy?
What I found easy:
As most of my production was already completed by this stage, I found it easy to work on the board presentation, as I was just working on experimentation rather than producing my concept work. Additionally, I just had to work upon creating the lighting and tones, and finer details, which I enjoy by this point, as you are worrying about the details rather than the main build of your concepts.
What I found difficult:
The most difficult part of this week was creating the shadows for the buildings, I had to attempt this a couple of times to find the correct angle, and depth of the shadow itself. As there are a large variety of how you can produce a shadow, I wanted this to fit correctly with the style that I produced my city in.
Planning for next week –
How do I plan to catch up:
I have completed my project, meaning all I have to work on now is portfolio work and ensuring that this is up to scratch with my unit 12 products.
Do I need to change anything about my work or planning:
I may need to plan my portfolio products much more effectively, as this needs to be finished soon, and many of my portfolio pieces still need to be enhanced and adapted before uploading to my Artstation.
Morgan Clark: Games Development L3 Year 2 