Write a critical report (1500-2000 words) describing the principles of your chosen profession exploring the following:
- Investigate your chosen profession and identify the work flows used.
- Investigate the historical influences of your chosen profession.
- Investigate the contemporary influences of your chosen profession.
1.2 Produce a bibliography.
Chosen Specialism: 2D Concept art
Investigate your chosen profession and identify the work flows used
Workflow 1 – From initial sketch to final design:
During the progression of my course, I have decided that I want to continue 2D concept art as my chosen profession throughout the duration of rest of the year; as this has become an area of interest, as well as my most developed skill set. When researching workflows used to produce this, I found a character concept artist that breaks down her work into six different areas. The first being preparation; she explains that this is important in ensuring that your brushes, canvas size, and tablet have been set up correctly for your piece of art, and most comfortable preferences. Beginning this, she suggests that her canvas should always be set-up to a resolution higher than 1000 pixels, as if she needs to resize this later, it would cause more work having to clean up the lines after, because she’s produced her piece too small. I believe this advice is helpful, and is something I usually do when creating work, to avoid blurry pixilation issues.
The next stage in her methods is creating thumbnails; this is a similar process to what I’ve been taught using silhouetting techniques. She explains this is purely used for generating ideas, and its best to keep this quick, and relaxed, as you’ll likely only be happy with a few of these designs. She also asks to think about negative space, as this means you can effectively use the shapes, and create unique character designs. This way of thinking is something that is taught to me in my course, although not a method I traditionally use.
Moving on, the next stages are refining and adding concept variations. She depicted the most important aspects of this, ensuring the anatomy is correct, and believable, deciding on your style (stylized or realistic etc.), and bringing out the main aspects; for a character it would be their clothing, hair style, and overall purpose. From this you can see which you prefer, and begin creating different types of concepts for that characters pose, such as, facial features, and varieties of clothing.
The final steps within this work process, is to add lighting and textures, and then finish the details within your concept. She refers back to using different colour values, and explaining that she usually works using grey-scale, as this makes it easier to add highlights, and show where the colour changes can be made. Lighting and shadows need to represent a rough direction, as this is the only way to make it look realistic. For the overall detailing, she starts with a small brush for the finest areas and works her way up, explaining that the most important elements are the ones that need the most complexity.
Workflow 2 – Mixing 2D and 3D in concept art:
For this second workflow, this person breaks his process down to its core fundamentals. He starts with gathering reference; and then moves onto sketching, block-ins, sculpting, assembling and rendering, and then finally painting for his artwork. For gathering his research, he gathers artwork that is relevant to his concept, and sorts them into categories, choosing a few as his main inspiration. This differs from the first workflow, as she didn’t mention how she gathers reference material, rather the artwork creation process. Secondly, he then moves onto sketching, where he explores a range of ideas quickly, similarly to the sketching process involved in the first workflow.
Blocking out is a much different technique then the first workflow; he uses it to examine composition, lighting, scale and proportions, to help him with the concept in the future. This artist specifically draws environment art, so proportion and perspective are specifically important in his work process. He then uses software called ‘3D coat’, to add detail to his block-outs, I’m more likely to create higher poly models using Maya for this section; he uses these detailed models, and places them within a scene ready for the drawings layout.
Finally, the last steps is the rendering out, and painting over the models to create his concept, he uses different cycles for the render, and even images as paint-over materials for his piece. The lighting and shading is also manipulated during the rendering stages, which he explains is important to gain the right silhouettes.
Investigate the historical influences of your chosen profession
The visual production of a video game is crucial for marketing and drawing the attention of your target audience. ‘Space Invaders’ was iconic during the 1970’s, and became popular by the 1980’s. Its art style was known for including pixelated enemies, which has become a pop culture symbol that is recognized as representing video games. Space Invaders is considered one of the most influential video games, inspiring different genres, which is not surprising considering its art style was influenced by media such as Breakout, War of the Worlds, and Star Wars; expanding video games from a novelty to a global industry.
Pac-man, created by Toru Iwatani and released in the 1980’s, was a coin operated arcade game. It stirred much attention, gaining a Guinness World Record, and was voted one of the greatest video games of all time. This video game led to sequels, merchandise, and has been remade multiple times even up to the present decade. This game racked up 8 million a week, and was addictive to adults, teenagers, children, and men and woman; this appeal made it a renowned success. The character development was inspired by the creator’s food, as he invented the character while eating a pizza. In Japan, ‘puck puck, or paku paku’, making the games original title ‘Puck Man’, people were concerned of the English profanity that could be associated with this, resulting in the name becoming ‘Pac-Man’ when brought to the US.
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, a prequel of the original game, was made for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), introducing advanced graphics and sound capabilities, which differed from other systems. The game also in-cooperated a variety of mechanics, such as using obstacles and Yoshi’s tongue rather than jumping in the traditional Mario games. In addition to this, its use of a stylized art and crafts visual style, introduced a Yoshi franchise, expanding the popularity of the Mario and Super Mario games.
Terraria, an action-adventure sandbox game created by Re-Logic, were released for Microsoft windows in 2011. It explored crafting, building, exploration and combat, and was notable for inspiring 2D pixel art worlds and games similar to this concept. Terraria reached 200,000 copies within the first nine days, and remained on steams top seller list, still one of the most bought games in the steam community.
Finally, Cup-head, a game released in 2017 by StudioMDHR, is an indie game developed using the Unity game engine. It was originally released for Windows and Xbox One, and is a multiplayer game where you have to fight through levels and solve puzzles to reach the end. The game was praised for its original and unique art-style, based upon Walt Disney Studio Animations, Fleischer Studios. The game was also appreciated due to its exceptional difficulty levels, something players in a team were encouraged to overcome together.
Investigate the contemporary influences of your chosen profession
Modern Practitioners: A practitioner is someone who is actively engaged in a profession and discipline; which for me are 2D game artists, specifically in the modern era. Both 2D and 3D artists inspire me every day to come up with different ideas, and develop on different styles. For example, some of the game artists for Blizzard Entertainment, specifically ‘World of Warcraft’, such as character concepts, sound production, and hand painted textures, including Samwise Didier, Glen Stafford, and Eimear Noone. These people motivated me to continue working on my hand painted textures, making me want to continue experimenting with a stylisation and cartoon-like developments within my own artwork. Additionally, I also gained an interest in pixel art when first playing Terraria, I realized this type of artwork could be created and look extremely effective when done correctly, as well as this, the artist Jim Tommy Myhre, was responsible for his diverse range of weapons, items, pets, mounts, and collectibles, making it one of the best pixel art games out at the time.
Technological & Hardware Development: The world of video gaming has developed immensely, from the 1950’s, when A.S Doughlas created the game OXO, and William Higinbotham invented the game ‘Tennis’ using an analogue computer for the use of two people. During the 1960’s, Steve Russel then went on to develop ‘Spacewar!’ a computer space combat game. From this, one of the most known developments of the ‘Brown Box’ was created which was multiplayer and allowed people to play on their televisions, which was later known as the ‘Odyssey’. Inspiring what many people still remember as ‘The Atari Pong’. The success of these games within the arcades, went on to inspire games such as Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Mario etc., which only moved further as we progressed with technological advancements, through consoles; (Wii, Play-Station, Xbox), and hand-held devices such as Game-boy, Nintendo, Sega Gear, and most currently Nintendo Switch. The invention of the first Virtual reality set in 1968, has massively developed, which has become a major mile-stone within the current gaming community, using VR sets to create realistic worlds and experiences.
Modern Software/Techniques: The progression we have made as a society, has really improved the state in which we work, and production of current equipment, artwork, and other skill forms of the modern era. This betterment’s are necessary to keep moving forward, specifically technology development and the software in which we use. The creation of software has been useful for mathematicians, architects, game designers, 3D printing, and other useful areas. For me, the development of digital art has allowed me to have different opportunities, and also different methods to how I would have worked traditionally. By hand, people would have to use oil pastels, water-colours, acrylics, and black and coloured pencils. Now, with the progression of software such as Paint, Photoshop, Illustrator etc., people are able to digitally create these techniques, as well as saving large amounts of time, as they don’t have to worry about mistakes ruining their piece as a whole. We also used to use cardboard, and other materials to create 3D objects, but now, we have the ability to create models in software such as Maya, 3DS Max, Blender, and its textures and coating in Substance Designer, Painter. The amounts of resources we have are incredible, and have expanded the possibilities of what we create, and how we can create art.
Social Issues: Many argue video games have a lack of diversity, which is definitely seen as a social issue due to the inequalities behind this. Games lack a representation of people from different cultures and races, which are an issue due to how many younger kids, play video games, look up to their characters, or use them to learn about the world. If video games only portray white citizens, it sets this as the norm, and the young people of today won’t learn about people of different backgrounds. Additionally to this, gender inequality is also one of the biggest issues within the gaming community, specifically the portrayal of females, and their over-sexualisation. This was formed on the notation that mostly or only men play video games, which is why they used this as a provocative way to gain their attention as a target market. This technique is not only morally unacceptable, but also factually wrong, considering females are accounted for making up half of the population who play games.
Rules and Regulations: The rules and regulations of video games are kept in place to ensure everyone is only exposed to the types of material that are appropriate for their age. Which is why all games are required by law to have a PEGI rating, ensuring that extreme violence, swearing, and the encouragement of breaking the law etc., are kept out of the hands of younger children? For example, the GTA franchise, known for representing crime, prostitution, and violence, is making the age rating 18+. Some areas might ban a game entirely, as they do not like the nature of its content; this is known as a Censorship, enforced by the government.
Morgan Clark: Games Development L3 Year 2 