Category: Uncategorized

Reflective Online Portfolio Blog 3

Since starting my 4100 animation course at Sae I have realised what my key weaknesses are in drawing. My main weakness is drawing a lot of things in a small amount of time as I like to take my time when drawing and make everything look as good as possible. This has been a big problem for me as we often go out to museums and have to draw a lot of small objects in a limited time and most the time I end up only having finished half of them. This isn’t the only weakness I have realised that I have however as when working on my technical document for my assignment I noticed I struggled to do small little sketches as I had been used to drawing more complete pieces before that and had a lot more time to spend on them but with these I only had around 10-15 minutes to make them look as good as possible.

However I have also noticed what my strengths are in my time drawing at Sae. I would say my main strength is the precision in my drawing as if I take my time and have a reference picture to follow I can get it to look almost just like the picture. I also like and think that my finished pieces come together well and are one of my main strengths as I like the fact that after all the thumbnails and drawings I have done before hand come together and make one big final drawing.

 

Reflective Portfolio Blog Post 2

At the beginning of my Game Art Animation course at SAE I wasn’t completely sure which type of career I wanted to move into afterwards however liked the idea of character based work as this is what I had the most experience with.

When studying Higher Art in my 5th year of school we had to design a character for a game or movie, I choose to design a dragon for a kids movie which gave me a lot of different skills as we had to complete a great deal of different thumbnails and background stories. This experience allowed me to see just how much work goes into designing a character, however also boosted my passion for it at the same time.

During my short time at SAE I have also had the chance to create my own character which is for my first Practical Assignment, this helped show me how it would actually be done in a professional environment as not only do you have to have the drawings of your character you have to have a technical document to go along with it which has to show everything you did and why.

So I would say my main interest is still character design as this is what I have most experience with so far, although I am looking forward to working in different areas throughout my course.

Rockstar

  • ACME was founded in 1984
  • In 1987 they changed there name to DMA design and lemmings
  • DMA at this time were working on the first Grand Theft Auto which was released (1997)
  • Take two saw the success that Grand Theft Auto was and in 2001 after the release of GTA 3 DMA was bought over by Take Two Interactive and renamed them Rockstar North
  • Take Two also bought another company (BMG entertainment) who were then also merged into Rockstar
  • Ultimately Take Two own Rockstar however due to the recognisable brand they decided to make them a subsidary company

Quantitive and Qualitative data

In an article written by Emil Agarunov she said “Andree Wallin is an exceptional digital painter”  which is a Qualitative statement as its just her opinion. However this statement made by her can actually be backed up in a Quantitive way as Andree Wallin has been nominated for the excellence in Production Design award 3 different times which shows just how exceptional he is as it isn’t easy to be nominated for these awards.

Andree Wallin has also worked with many different companies which proves just how good of a concept artist he is. Wallin has worked with World renowned companies such as 20th Century Fox, Legendary pictures, Warner Bros and Universal pictures all of which are known house hold names.

 

Principles of design & composition

Rule of Thirds

Rule of Thirds is a technique of composition in which a medium is divided into thirds, creating aesthetic positions for the primary elements of a design. In an animation sense it is most commonly the positioning of the images inside the main image, for example if it’s a game poster and the designer used the rule of thirds the character or object would be on one of the power points, along the lines of the thirds.

2000px-Photo_3x3.svgrule of thirds

Golden Ratio

There’s a common mathematical ratio found in nature that can be used to create pleasing, natural looking compositions in your design work. It’s believed that the Golden Ratio has been in use for at least 4,000 years in human art and design. However, it may be even longer than that as some people argue that the Ancient Egyptians used the principle to build the pyramids. The Golden Ratio number is 1.618 and is the number that designers use to plan out their compositions to make them as aesthetically pleasing as possible.

goldenratio023877b6cb6aa78bb68d35c925c77b51-650-80.jpg

Framing

Framing is a technique that influences decision making and judgment by manipulating the way information is presented. In an animation sense it is the layout in which something is presented. For example when there is a very close up image around the edge of the image so that you can really get a sense of depth into the image to see how far away and how close some objects really are and draws your eye right around the image.

 

 

Perspective

The term perspective refers to the representation of objects in three-dimensional space (i.e. for representing the visible world) on the two-dimensional surface of a picture. Basic, or linear perspective rests on the fact that although parallel lines never meet, they appear to do so as they get further away from the viewer towards the horizon, where they disappear. The sides of a road, railway lines, are some obvious examples.

1pointperspectivepoint perspective

You may not think all of these are linked together and relate however they actually are. This is because they are all principles of design & composition which means they are rules you have to obey if you want your designs to be the most eye catching and visually pleasing to the audience.

 

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=l0QPECGQySYC&pg=PA108&dq=Principles+of+design+%26+composition&lr=&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q=Principles%20of%20design%20%26%20composition&f=true

My Preferred Learning Style

From the test I took on how I learn best it was clear to see I like visuals which I strongly agree with as I have done similar tests in the past in school and they all said the same thing. I also do notice this in my day to day life and not just when studying as I would remember a picture or video I had seen days before, however I would not remember a piece of information from a book or from someone saying it to me.

Inspirational practitioner

Shiek Wang is one of my main influences as he is the lead of the 3D Character Art team working with bungie on Destiny. He is the person that has lead the 3D Character Artists to create the beautiful game of destiny with his input as well. He went straight from college into bungie in 1998 and worked on early games that made people fall in love with bungie like the Halos and says the best day of his life was when he joined the bungie team, showing just how much this company means to him. This is very impressive and shows just how talented he is as he was able to leave college and join a huge company such as bungie straight away.

Shiek Wangs main influence for destiny was Game of Thrones and as it turns out, Rise of Iron and Game of Thrones also share a more direct link as there is one literal tie that he used from Game of Thrones which is that he used the exact same dog for the “Ghost” that Game of Thrones used for the dire wolf that is a key part in the program. Shiek Wang said “We had the same dog do motion capture.” which shows just how much he liked it in the program as he wanted the exact same one. However in order to get the game how he really wanted he was influenced by sci-fi art from the 1970s and that is what gives the game its vintage look. Artists such as Zdzisław Beksiński and Peter Gric heavily influenced his work that he put into destiny, along with ‘70s and 80’s manga.