week 19

This week, in terms of formal sessions the course felt quite empty, there was no game production lesson or critical studies. Although this opened up this week for me to concentrate on my character iterations I did feel as if I would’ve possible liked some sort of session on developing good topology. This is something that I have struggled with in the past and I would’ve loved to attend a formal lecture on topology.

Visual Design

In visual design our characters were reviewed by our tutors to keep us on the right track. My feedback for my character was quite positive however I was told that my character didn’t meet the style guide constraints. My character being a moor barber surgeon his aesthetic is quite northern African however it is clear that the village is more European than Middle Eastern. How my tutor best described it was say if I was in industry and I was asked to design a medieval character and I was to hand them my Moorish character although he is in fact from medieval period he doesn’t quite communicate the stereotypical look of medieval clothing which audiences would understand. Understandably I comprehend what my tutors are saying although I wasn’t pleased that this wasn’t mentioned in the style guide; what I’m referring to is the time frame of what medieval is and what region of medieval culture we were attempting to depict. I wanted to try and think outside of the box with this project and produce an interesting character whilst also making it personal in the sense of my cultural background being from Africa. However this I believe will not be the case for this project. Perhaps another project in the future I could possibly attempt to execute this initial idea.

As a result of this I decided to redesign my character as a Scottish barber surgeon, to keep the drapery and the silhouette of my previous design and push it with more of a highlander look.

Below is my progression of the character so far.

Mood board part 1

Mood board part 2

Head anatomy research

More anatomy research

Sketches of people around Leicester

Quick doodle to get an idea as to what I may want (step taken before thumbnail sketches)

Moodboard part 2

moor digital sketch (understanding moor clothing)

Quick thumbnail sketches (moor character)

character paintover and some silhouette study

Silhouettes

silhouettes part 2 (moor)

Head concepts and aged face

Head concepts 

head concepts part 2

Moodboard  Part 3 - exploring colour and developing my character
as a scotts man

Starting anew - Redesigning the moor into a scott

Colour swatches for character

Scottish Barber surgeon character

Value iterations

 Orthographics for character

saw accessory - orthographic

Colour block in