Project Brief- FMP (Final Major Project)

For my final unit of the year, I have been told to use my skills and produce a unique product that demonstrates what I’ve learnt over this past year. I have been given themes to research into and create mind maps of. Overall I should aim to create something I am proud to call my own.

Tasks(overview)

Task 1

• Project Proposal
• Pitch Proposal

Task 2

• Visual Research
• Artist Research
• Contextual Research

Task 3

• Idea Development

Task 4

• Final Piece(s)

Task 5

• Research Evaluation
• Design Evaluation

More in depth explanation:

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TASK 1

PITCH PROPOSAL

FEEDBACK

 

From this feedback…

The feedback I have received helped me in many ways, the first being, now I have double the confidence going forward and when researching further into this unit. My feedback has also made me realise I need to do more research on my target audience, as I needed to be more ‘specific’. It also has made me want to research into opening, within that I will research into journey and research into the artists and art styles I mentioned.

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TASK 2

What is Opening?

My Opinion:

Before I do any further research on Opening, I want to input my opinion first, so at the end of my opening research I will be able to look back and see how much difference there is in the two opinions. So, what exactly is openings? I ask myself…

When I think of the word Opening, I almost immediately think of discovery and journey, possibly because ‘Opening’ as a word, seems like a fresh start or new experiences. Opening can be used as simple as “opening a door”, however I think that this word has a deeper meaning behind it too. As of right now, it will be difficult to put them thoughts into words, however hopefully during my research I will have a better understanding of this word.

Internet Research:

Though there is a lot of meanings behind openings, this will be a good start for my further research. looking at the meanings behind this word, I can see that there is a lot of reference to ‘first’ or a ‘gap’. I will do further research on this word when I interview others on their views. However as of right now, I haven’t learnt anything that I didn’t already know.

Interviews

I gave the word opening to four different people and asked them to give me the first thing that came to mind, I’d then say that word back to them and ask them to give me the first thing that came to mind, I’d repeat this until they couldn’t think of anything or until we came to a solution.

Interviewer No.1- A Retired Craftsman (RED)

When I gave him opening as the word, he immediately thought of tunnels and pipes, it’s ironic how he immediately related it to his job. From that he thought of smoking and fires, obviously leading off into arson and jail. That was the closure, however being in jail, though it’s bad, its still full of opportunity and it’s a journey that would impact anyone, whether it be good or bad.

Interviewer No.2- Retired Office Worker (PURPLE/PINK)

When I said opening, she immediately said closing, the complete opposite, this could be the result of a pessimistic mind set. Still it is very interesting that she had picked the complete opposite, as they still relate to each other. She then related it to closing down and recharging then going forward, obviously leading into journeys, from this she said maps. This is one I asked for her to explain her reasoning as I didn’t quite understand how she got from journey to maps, she said that you’d look at a map to find guidance on your journey, she also said that shes an old soul and she isn’t comfortable using GPS. We eventually stopped at road trips to avoid going in circles, I also think this was a good stopping point as anything could happen on a road trip.

Interviewer No.3- Office Worker (GREEN)

When I said opening, she said opportunities, chances and moving, I asked her to expand on what she said and she said, that opening is a good word for the start of a fresh journey. She also gave me vacation and said that she really wants to have more free time to do things for herself. She then said music, I did ask her to elaborate, and she then replied, she enjoys listening to music whenever shes in the car, whenever shes going anywhere. We ended on life, and she surprisingly she couldn’t think of anything, which  I think is ironic as you can relate life to anything, however I did say it was a good stopping point for this reason, so as she couldn’t relate anything to it, it gives me the freedom to do just that.

Interviewer No.4- Chef (BLUE)

I gave her opening, she said almost immediately food. this made me confused however, I asked her to explain and she said that opening your taste palette to various foods you haven’t tasted before, which made more sense. She then said restaurant, which still confused me, however maybe ‘opening the restaurant’ came to her mind. She then started making a lot more sense, her next word was people, this can relate to culture and understanding a persons beliefs. From there she said room, then walls, then space. Space confused me a lot, she explained that, if you have a room, you have space inside that room. This really opened my eyes as I didn’t look at the word like that, and it’s very ironic how she looked at it that way as she is Claustrophobic, I’d expect her to say lack of space or no space. Eventually we ended full circle as we came back to food, either she really enjoys food and can relate to anything or relating it to her job was easier.

SUMMARY

How did the interviews impact my views and how did it help?

I have learnt so much from this exercise, it has definitely expanded my knowledge on this word, most of the replies I was getting I was full of questions so I’m happy I did it like this as then I could input questions as I went along, unlike if I had done a questionnaire. I got a good insight of how people think of this word and I also got good examples of words that branch from this word. I picked up on a lot of things I necessarily wouldn’t have thought of or couldn’t relate to, such as relating the word to their jobs/past jobs, space or fire. I found it really interesting that the two office workers related it to travelling and getting away, that could mean that they really need a vacation or that they dislike talking about their job, however the other two (chef and craftsman) seem to mention a few things we can relate to their separate jobs. This was a good example of the differences in jobs too, though it’s not related to my research, it just shows how a creative workplace can help the worker enjoy their job more, especially since these are very good examples of creative jobs compared to the mundane jobs.

How am I going to use this information?

I got a good understanding of a persons immediate reaction to this word, so now I will research into a word that re-occurred and create a questionnaire with a couple questions for my peers to complete so then, they have slightly more time to answer the questions. I also want to see the difference in answers too, as in my interviews they all apart of an older generation, so it will be interesting to see my peers answers as they are apart of a newer generation. I also want to keep in mind that whatever I aim to create I want to relate it to my personal life in some way, during my pitch, I said that I wanted to relate it to music, I still hope that I will be able to relate it however I do think that it is a shot in the dark, but then again nothing is impossible. I will aim the create something I can relate to myself, or has a hidden meaning.

 

What is Journey?

(One of the words from the interview)

SUMMARY

Putting all the words I associate journey with on a page really helped by giving me some ideas on what to focus with when researching. What I was interested most in was discovery, city and music, however putting them together could be difficult as I previously said, so for now I will focus on discovery mostly, and hope that I can implement music and the city with my ideas later on.

 

 Artist Research

Temmie Chang+Undertale

Temmie Chang, or Tuyoki Chang, is a freelance animator and illustrator, who is famously known for being the main designer on the popular game Undertale. In this game there is also a character based on her, along with a whole ‘Temmie Village’. This isn’t the only character she created she has created six others along with a characters armour set.

Visual Analysis

 

As you can see they all are in black and white, this is because they are in ‘fight mode’ during the game you enter fights with these creatures, and the fighting interface looks like:

This is a non boss monster, a boss looks like this:

This is one of the many bosses, notice that the green grid is gone and I also notice that bosses have a lot more detail compared to just the average monster. Now more about the interface. From this screenshot of the game you can see that there are four options at the bottom of the screen; FIGHT, ACT, ITEM and MERCY. While playing you will be able to click on one each turn (the photo before this one shows when u choose FIGHT). Just above this there is player stats, it shows your player name, your HP and LV (LV stands for LOVE=Level Of VolencE). That means levelling up isn’t a good thing in this game. The white box above that is where you will be dodging various attacks from the monster. For example, in this attack you would need to jump over the bones to avoid any damage.

While not fighting, the characters and world looks like this:

Much more colour and livelier, this section of the game is called ‘Snowdin’ a pun on snowed in, we can see our main character centre of the screen, wearing a blue and purple striped jumper. We can also see various other monsters ranging from a bear wearing an orange jumper to bunnies either side of the screen. There is also something we can recognise as a Christmas tree, however when you interact with the bear placing presents, it tells you how this just ‘came about one day’ after they dressed reindeer monsters up with lights and gave them gifts, he also explains how it’s tradition now. So this is their version of Christmas. The trees and house in the background help to fill the space in, and the trees are nicely detailed, however one thing I have noticed about this part of the game is that as this game is based underground, how is there snow underground?

The characters also have less detail when compared to the up close fight mode versions:

 

Surprisingly this is the same character, just one is slightly less detailed, it still carries over the distinctive characteristics, such as; The boots, eye shape, scarf/bandanna and we can clearly see that both are skeletons, due to the head and body shape.

The one less detailed is obviously easier to create, so if I was ever to create in Pixel art format, this is the style I would definitely start in as then I can grow confident in this style. The second one includes more detail, such as an expression using eyebrows and a mouth shape, something the latter couldn’t convey, it also shows a difference in posture it’s slightly ‘sassier’ than the previous one, this is shown by the hands and the slight turn of the hip bone.

SUMMARY

Though my research was originally supposed to only be artist research, it also changed into game research too. I think I should have split this research into two (artist and game separately) as then I probably would’ve focused much more on Temmie Chang as an artist and not the main designer for Undertale. Yes it was good research, meaning that I have obtained some knowledge of how a character or place needs to be displayed in order to grab the players eye, but I think that I should have looked into some more of her art other than Undertale, even though Undertale was the reason I chose to look into her work, I think she deserved more recognition.

 

Kenze Wee Hon Ming

Kenze Wee Hon Ming is a “19 year old Singaporean. Pixel artist. Currently studying information technology at Singapore Poly.” – said on his Behance profile. His art work really interested me a lot as I could tell how long it must of took him to create each piece. Most of his pieces are animated, so creating them and also animating them must have taken so long, even if he is skilled.

Visual Analysis

This is one of the many pieces he has animated, however, I chose to analyse the still form as them I can appreciate everything without getting distracted by the moving lights.

This piece has been created in steps, he created the smaller buildings towards the bottom of the picture first, then worked up from there, adding in the details and highlights as he went along. As it’s been created in layers, some artists might worry that, when the layers come together and create the finished product, if the piece looks consistent or not. However in this case he doesn’t have to worry about this, as even though we can tell it’s in pieces, it is in harmony with each other anyway.

The one thing that caught my eye about this piece was that, when I first looked at it, I didn’t realise it was Pixel art, when I looked at it again then I realised. As the piece is so detailed and as the square brush is so small, it gives the illusion of a normal piece. The colour scheme of this piece is purple hues, light blues and some red toned purples, which I really like. Sticking to a set range of colours can be difficult for the artist as it can limit what they use, however the use of different purples to shade, really is genius, as there isn’t any harsh shading. Each building has a different sized window, meaning that the artist thought about the piece more. Once again even though, the buildings/windows are different in shape ans size, it still works in harmony with each other. It also shows how unique each building is. The buildings also have two or more tones, it adds way more detail and personality to each building. The bright blue helps the eye adapt to the surrounding of the art piece, the background doing the same. The brightness also adds a large contrast that the piece would definitely miss if it wasn’t here.

SUMMARY

Though this artist was unexpected, as I just stumbled on his Behance page, I’m very glad I decided to research his work, and this piece specifically as it was the first one to grab my attention. As I have said it was made using Pixel Art something that I want to look into further as it has sparked my interest. This early on into this project, nothing is set in stone so I will take a look at some art styles I had mentioned in my Pitch and after that I will look into Pixel art and possibly attempt at creating some in the process.

 

Art Styles

Contemporary

Contemporary art is the ‘art of today’ the definition behind this word is a difficult one to describe as the interpretation of ‘today’ can differ from each other, that’s why it’s so difficult to give a set in stone definition. Contemporary art comes in different mediums, such as, Paintings, Sculptures, Photography, etc.

Contemporary art has a long history, these are some of the movements that helped build contemporary art today; Pop Art, Photorealism (very realistic art based from photos) Concetualism and Minimalism.

Contemporary art is anything created in the moment. It’s the art of right now.

Pop Art

Pop Art is a art movement that began during the 1950’s, originally it was a revolution against traditional norms of art at the time. Young artists hated the classical art and found that it didn’t express them as people, so they decided to take inspiration from things they found around them in their daily lives, such as; magazines, product packaging, music, advertising and movies. The art took the form of pictures, posters, street art, graffiti, etc and was usually bold and bright, standing out from other conventional art.

Something I found interesting while researching Pop Art was that, I didn’t realise that there was a difference between English and American Pop Art. English began early 1950’s, gaining inspiration from American culture, while American artists grew inspiration from the cultures within America.

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural art movement that began early 1920’s in Paris, however in the late 1920’s Surrealism went viral worldwide, attracting artists from another movement called ‘Dada’ a movement in which the artist expressed anti-capitalism, irrationality and anything that isn’t coherent. Surrealism is similar, the art movement bases itself on the sub-conscious and unconscious side of thinking, they found more beauty in dreams and the artists wanted a reaction, they wanted the surprise factor.

Surrealism is an intense art movement to look into, I have looked into this before, however I discovered the Dadaism movement from this and I can tell that this is a massive movement with a lot of history.

Surrealism is often normal objects presented in a way that we usually don’t see them, for example, Salvador Dali’s ‘The Persistence Of Memory’, we wouldn’t see melting clocks like that normally.

SUMMARY 

Researching into these three art styles really gave me a good insight of their history, I didn’t realise that they had such a long history. As we go through our life journey our tastes and appreciation changes, another thing that changes is trends, something that was relevant then might not be relevant now. Researching this, I understand that some of the thing I researched might not be relevant, however learning about art is all about opinion and perspective, as long as you explain why you researched it, it lets others know your opinion and how you think.

The reasoning behind why I chose these three to research was because; firstly contemporary art really caught my eye, it reminded me how anyone can be an artist if they just believe in themselves, to me contemporary art might be one of my favourite styles just because of that reason. Though I gave it a vague description, I think people will understand where I am coming from, like I said, it’s the art of right now, meaning it can be anything as long as you put your mind to it.

Secondly, Pop Art was something I grew up loving however my tastes changed and I grew to like darker pieces. I chose to research this since I think I was getting slightly bored of using darker colours, this could help with either gaining back my love for darker colours, or maybe giving me a new outlook on the brighter colours for a change, or even using both darker and brighter shades to my advantage.

Finally, Surrealism, I have researched Surrealism before and while doing so, I found my love for creating skylines and I think it was something about creating skylines upside down and right side up etc. that made me enjoy researching Surrealism the first time. This time I was looking for more of a set in stone definition, however since researching I have realised that Surrealism, and all art styles don’t necessarily need a definition for people to understand them, as long as the piece shows the artist through the art. As long as we have opinions, art can be defined as art, something that is hard to describe in words and better through other mediums.

To further my research, I will choose three pieces of art, and visually analyse each.

VISUAL ANALYSIS

CONTEMPORARY

I chose to analyse this piece for contemporary art as it has many parts which interested me. This piece overall consists of black and the use of rainbow colours. Obviously not the solid colours of the rainbow, as you can see there are multiple different shades shown which create the shaded clouds look. There is also a strong skyline, making sure you know the ‘floor’ or ‘ground’ is reflecting the sky, meaning that it could be a river or a lake of some sort. What I find interesting about the reflections to sky is that the red and purple of the sky do not show up in the ‘lake’, instead they are green and blue, fitting, if it actually is a lake. It can be difficult to incorporate all the colours of the rainbow+, however in this piece, they used it to their advantage and blending out colours like this can really bring colours and pieces like this together. The use of the black/shading really made the piece, if there was no black it would look slight obnoxious. 

The centre of this piece is definitely the main eye catcher (the Sun+sky) however my eyes are directed towards the tree almost immediately as it’s the strongest colour on the piece, as well as the skyline, black. I think this is more eye catching because of the lack of colour and the fact that the branches of the tree are still visible even after fading into the colourful background.

POP ART

I chose to analyse this piece for Pop Art as pieces like this one really represent Pop art culture.

Though there isn’t much to say about this piece I do enjoy looking at it, it is pleasing to the eye, to some extent. Mainly because it has a lot of contrast and boldness about it.

This piece consists of four brightly coloured squares, light blue, yellow, green, and purple/blue, on those squares are a single pair of lips, slightly opened showing bright white teeth, that are the same on each square, just a different lip colour. The piece has slightly less detail compared to others, however the bright colours make up for it, in some ways. The lips are the most detailed part about this piece, where the lips have highlights and do actually look very realistic, without the highlights they would probably blend into the piece. The forth pair of lips remind me a lot of the ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ trademark which is a pair of bright, red, coloured lips, contrasted with the shiny white teeth, just like in this piece, the only difference being the position of the lips, this are open, however in ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’s their bottom lips is being slightly bitten:

I hope you can see the resemblance too! Whenever I think of bold lips like this my immediate reaction is this.

SURREALISM

I chose to analyse this piece for surrealism as it was the first picture to catch my eye, mainly for the contrast of the light blue to the natural brown background.

Beginning with the background, it consists of large pieces of wood on a dark sand floor, further into the picture you can see a blurred ocean, you can tell from the reflection, and some small mountains. Overall the background looks very realistic, it probably was a photo, unlike the light bulb, that was obviously edited. The light bulb placement looks slightly off, it doesn’t seem 3D unlike the rest of the picture, however it does bring the picture to life, as it would be boring with only the wood pieces in view.

The light bulb shows an ocean, with fish swimming and pandas sitting at the bottom, surrounded by rocks and a small lighthouse. Though I did say I like the contrast of this piece, I don’t think it works as well as some, as it’s a surrealistic piece it should be very surreal however, it needs to look correct too, and in my opinion this isn’t the best surrealist piece.

SUMMARY

I want to include something I have thought after this analysis, in the Pop art analysis, towards the end, I spoke about my immediate reaction when seeing those style of lips, however what I didn’t realise that at the time was who’s art was I analysing. I ended up analysing a famous Pop art artist, Andy Warhol. I had showed a peer my work and she had mentioned, why didn’t I include his name. This got me thinking about a persons immediate reaction when they look at a piece of art. What I have realised from my peer, was that, not everyone but a lot of people, when they see a certain art style they tend to reference back to a famous or a known artist in that field of style. In some cases this can help to categorise a piece of art, however it can also drown out a lot of hard working artists that deserve more recognition. In some ways I am very happy I don’t think this way, however I do seem quite un-knowledgeable when speaking about a famous mans work, when I didn’t even know it’s his. However I do know that my opinion wouldn’t have changed either way.

I see art and relate to other things that look similar, or reminds me of it, and only realising this now makes me confident to say I think a certain way when it comes to art.

I will attempt to create some art using these pieces as inspiration:

 

SUMMARY

I enjoyed creating pieces in these styles, I did find surrealism to be my favorite, possibly because I used traditional media and I know that I’m more confident in this format. However, I did also enjoy working in a Pixel Art software: Pixilart to create the contemporary piece. Creating the Pop Art piece was also very fun, using a lot of the bright colours I’d not normally use in a piece I actually ended up happy with was surprising. I was happy to come out of my comfort zone and use bright colours in this style.

Pixel Art

Pixel art is a type of digital art made up of individual pixels, giving the visual appearance of blocks/squares. When it was created, it wasn’t classed as an art style, only a way for artists to create images using such low graphics. Only then, 10 years later it was given the name ‘Pixel Art’. Early 2D video game developers were the creators of ‘Pixel Art’.

SUMMARY

Personally, I really find Pixel art more visually appealing than other art styles, that’s why I chose to research it. I really want to implement Pixel art into my final piece, as I think I would do a good job creating it. Especially when I use Pixilart, as my software of choice.

The reason why I didn’t choose to do any visual analysis on this art style, is because I have analysed Pixel Art for my artist research, Kenze Wee Hon Ming. It will also give me more time to focus on what I want to create.

This was my first time using a Pixel art creator, I found it easy to use and I will attempt at adding colours to my pieces next. As you can see I have experimented with making various things including; Creatures, typography, a robot and a skyline. I like the look of the skyline and the characters, especially the girl in the corner, I’m interested in the typography and the skyline, so this could possibly help me further down the line.

 

POP ART INSPIRED SKYLINES

I attempted to create some Pop Art inspired skylines using bright colours, either for the skyline itself or the background(1-3). I found that when looking at the coloured skyline it doesn’t look good with a white background(3), and looks much better with a black one(2). Though I really like the colourful skyline on a dark background(2), it just looks like a upside down black skyline, so there may be some confusion if I use something like this. Though I think the colourful background will grab attention(1), I don’t think it contrasts better than the black and white skyline(4).

I really like the visual appeal of the silhouette style, I also have used silhouettes to my advantage in a previous unit (3/4). However I should experiment further with implementing colours, even if they are slightly darker than the Pop Art inspired ones above, I will just need to find a good contrast between colours. Like I said previously, I have used skylines in the last couple units, I think it’s because I’m confident in creating them. Now I have the confidence to use the pixel art creator, I should have no problem creating any rough designs.

TASK 3

So I have finally established that I’m making a poster for a game, here’s my thought process below:

I realised that I wanted to include a few things into my work, starting with the skyline, I will need to further look into the type of skyline and colour etc, however I do want to include one, in the style of pixel art. Another thing I wanted to include was traditional media of some sort, this is because I want to show that I am able to work in both digital and traditional media. I have also established that the traditional work I create will be the background. On top of this background I will include the skyline/s I mentioned earlier. I will also create some rough character designs and then develop my favourites in the pixel art style, I will also create some of these developed characters in the silhouette form along with coloured characters to see which I like better. I was also torn between creating concept art and a poster, originally I wanted to create concept art as in my pitch that’s what I said, however, I thought that creating a poster and including a game concept would give me a good chance to experiment with typography, something which I haven’t considered during the previous units. I think it will be a good learning experience and I will get to be slightly more creative. I’ll also have to consider when creating the rough poster ideas; where do I put the typography, what style/font, should I create my own? I think creating my own will make my poster more personal, I also think it would work better as then I wouldn’t have to waste time finding a font that fits, when I could just create one. With this I can identify what I’m looking to create, it also gives me a better direction than before.

ROUGH CHARACTERS

 

I’ve created roughly thirty character designs that vary in style, some are cute and simple, and some are more detailed, I should keep in might when creating the poster templates, which character do I want to put here and there, I will most definitely develop at least 4/5 giving a rationale to each. The designs themselves as of right now are extremely rough and all very out of place, however with this in mind I should be able to create very unique characters all within the same style, that unites them all together. I have based a couple on the first time I created Pixel art, mainly because I really was proud when creating them and they technically they are rough ideas.

ROUGH POSTER IDEAS

 

I’ve created 5 rough poster templates and included some annotations to help me out when developing. They are definitely rough, however they do give me an idea of what I should aim to create, with the flexibility of change if needed. When creating these ideas I did like the idea of showcasing one large character however after thinking about it, I want to showcase my characters together, so maybe the single character designs might have to change. However I do like the look of the third and fifth, as I was saying, I possibly could include 2-3 in the fifth design, as I don’t want the space either side to look too empty. However another one I like the look of is the first one, the character would be too big, so I’d have to add another character or two to make it look more harmonised. They all look rather similar all things considered. Nonetheless, I will develop two using Photoshop and choose one of them to further develop and become my final poster along with developing at least 4/5 characters to implement into said poster. I do have to think about a lot before then, These things are the things I will focus on before development:

• Characters- I will develop at least 4 characters to choose from.
• Skylines- I want to create a couple Ideas to use as inspiration for my final skyline(s)
• Typography- I will experiment in various fonts to create something I’m happy with for my title and slogan.
• Background- I will need to create some traditional media background pieces in order to determine the posters background as well as the overall theme.
• Target Audience- One thing I have been avoiding looking into is target audience, I should find my target audience before I develop anything.

CHARACTERS

I chose to create fifteen characters in the Pixel art creator, and as you will be able to see, I have separated them into three groups, mainly because then depending on which group I choose I will go forward to either develop further or use them as the final characters. I also might not use all characters that are in the group I choose, as my poster designs say 1-3 characters maximum, and especially since they have at least four in each group means that I wouldn’t be able to showcase all of them, however I will choose the ones that I like the most, or that fit with the concept.

GROUP 1

Compared to my previous experience with Pixel Art, I think these characters are slightly more complex and detailed, most of them are also not silhouettes, I think I should have added colour however in the end as you can see I didn’t, I do think they would have looked better with colour, and I can still do so if I choose to go ahead with these. These characters are very diverse, however I put them together since they are more complex then group 2 and as they dont have any colour to them they didn’t belong in group 3. I do have some problems with them, one being that if you stuck them in a game, I don’t think it would look harmonised, they all are very unique and in my opinion, they look too different. When you have characters in a game, there’s always a reoccurring theme, making them look together, however this ins’t the case for these characters, I think I should have designed them better either giving the the same eyes or something that could tell that they belonged together. To me it seems as if they have been pulled from separate games and I think that it would be difficult to fix this problem without changing the characters drastically. Some of these characters have way more detail than others, and this could have raised bad opinions if this was a real poster I was creating for a games company, the opinions could say that I spent longer on some, and not enough for others, this sort of situation could be avoided if I had stuck with reoccurring facial features.

 

GROUP 2

These are the next group of character designs, and you might recognise one from my previous Pixel art work, when I created her, I immediately fell in love with the design, she is the only character I’ve created and liked straight away, it normally takes me a lot of convincing from peers to say my ideas are good, however this isn’t the case, I didn’t need my peers reassurance, I really like this design’s personality, after creating her, I realised she resembled a Asian girl, which I didn’t plan, however I love the end results nonetheless. However the group as a whole are very unique, they have some differences that I dislike, and that could have been avoided when creating them. One difference is, the characters with legs, their legs aren’t the same width which bothers me, however lets say the fifth character was in the centre on the poster, she would look slightly in front and with the other characters slightly behind it might work. When choosing these characters I wanted a variety of them to choose from and I also chose my favourites, and ones that I thought would fit together well. However I think the one that doesn’t make much sense is the last one, I didn’t know what I was thinking when creating this character however it reminds me of a plane on wheels. Their one trademark is that they are all black and white (for now, I could change the eye colour at a later date), I also think that if I were to put the correct ones into a poster I think it would look very harmonised and together, it would work.

 

GROUP 3

 

As you can see I attempted to add colour to some designs, I believe they turned out well, I also have taken the the girl character i really liked and changed her art style, she now is wearing a purple kimono, however she still has the trademark ribbons I intended to keep, however while creating her I completely overlooked her fans, this was because I found it difficult to recreate them in this style. Looking at the Demon creature on the end I realised that adding colour to a character can really give it a personality, however I think it would be difficult to cooperate so many colours into a poster, however, I will figure that out further down the line, so for now, I’m very pleased with these characters. As a group I don’t think putting them all into a poster would be a good idea, mainly because the egg creature and the devil creatures are slightly more basic and have less detailing compared to the girl and Demon. However if I chose these as my characters I think I would be able to work around that, similar to what I said about group 2, If I made the less detailed characters smaller to give the effect of being slightly behind, I could place the more detailed ones in front, making it seem as if I meant to create them less detailed for a reason. One thing I do notice is that, like group 1, they do look as if they have been pulled from other games, they do look slightly too unique as there is no running theme within them, if I were to choose these I’d have to find a theme for them, as of right now they don’t look together.

SUMMARY

I will need to keep in mind my target audience, though I haven’t discussed this yet, I think it is very important to know who I’m aiming my Poster at as depending on the characters I choose it would be effected largely. Group one seems more mature and by that I mean I think it would appeal slightly more towards older teenagers and young adults, because of the added detail, they also are slightly more creepy compared to the others, possibly because of the lack of colour and more detail. One thing that would’ve helped me out was if I added colour to the first group, however when I was creating them I wasn’t thinking about experimenting with colour on the characters, still I think I should have done it. Group two are the less detailed out of the groups, they also have various consistency problems, such as the difference in leg size etc. However I do like that they all have a unique aspect, even if they don’t have much detail they are noticeable if seen, even if it wasn’t intentional I really liked how they turned out. I think these characters could appeal to any aged teenager and maybe some younger kids too, though that is less likely as younger kids are more attracted to bright colours, however I do think the character style would attracted them. I created group three to appeal the the younger generation, thinking that using bright colours could appeal to them compared to my previous characters. However when creating and colouring these characters, I noticed that after I added colour to all of them, I could notice that, even though they are bright and would attract a younger audience, they didn’t contrast well side by side. On their own they would look good, however once placed next to each other I could see no harmony, they just didn’t look good side by side. Overall I like all the characters separately.

 

SKYLINE IDEAS

I started in the pixel art creator and began by creating some ideas to help inspire me, as you can see they are all in different styles, including one that resembles upside down icicles(3). I wanted to base the skyline on a country I liked so I went with Korea, within Korea I chose Seoul, their capital, to recreate in pixel art. I used this picture as reference:

I chose a couple buildings to base it off, however as I chose to create this using little detail, I struggled creating some of the buildings and for some I couldn’t include. I do like the end results, even though I based it off of this skyline, it does have my own improvisation too!

though, I like the black, I will test with different colours too.

 

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I experimented with multiple colours, ranging from dark/er colours and electric bright colours and some shades of grey. Though I liked some of the coloured ones, such as the dark red and purple, going forward I will keep it black for now, meaning that I do have the opportunity at a later date to change it.

I tried to create a second skyline using a light grey colour, I chose grey, for now as I don’t know what colours I am aiming to use, therefore using grey, it can easily be changed into something different at a later date. However I do really like the contrast of colours, they work well with each other. Unlike the first skyline the grey one isn’t based on any city and merely my improvisation.  

Once I showed a peer my work she really liked it, however she said the colour difference was slightly too ‘drastic’, she said maybe try creating a harsh gradient, meaning that there’s no blending between lines. so from that feedback I adding another skyline and darkened the second tier and gave a lighter grey to the third tier. I really like how this turned out. Once again the third skyline isn’t based on anything however I did attempt at giving it a icicle look.

SUMMARY 

I think I should have used smaller pixels(made it with more detail), however depending on the characters I choose they could either fit very well or not at all with each other. I think I might keep the skyline these colours for now until the theme and colours are clear. I do also like the colours I’ve chosen however I know full well that they can change to adapt to the poster, characters and title.

TYPOGRAPHY

TITLES IDEAS:

• Heat/Cold
• Fever
• City
• City Diver
• Freeze City
• Temperature
• Thermo
• Thermocity
• Thermosity
• High/Low
• Low Temperature
• High Temperature
• High Fever
• Fever City
• High Freeze

SUMMARY

I wanted something that was ironic to the game, I also wanted it to be something that was slightly confusing too, High Freeze is one I created that caught my attention, it seems almost perfect however I noticed that if I were to use this I think people might find it boring as they could take it as a weather game. I decided to go for High Fever, High Fever is also one that I was attracted to when I came up with this list however this name has also given me ideas for future slogan ideas as well as game ideas. I will next experiment using different fonts using this title. 

 

I was experimenting with different font types, including creating my own (Left) and using the ‘Type’ tool on the Pixel art creator (Right). I liked all styles however nothing caught my attention, however, I will ask a peer for feedback and get advice on what to do next, as I feel like I need a second opinion.

My peer stated she liked the first one the most and she also said she liked the ‘boxed’ ones I had created, she also said that, including another title in Korean would make my poster unique. I really liked the idea.

Including a title aimed at English readers as well as Korean would help boost the audience as well as it would increase its uniqueness and personality. It also works with the rest of the poster as I’m already using a skyline inspired by Seoul, in South Korea.

This is 고열 it’s Hangul for High Fever, I still kept the same title, you would pronounce it as Goyeol, (고=Go열=yeol) Goyeol is the Romanized version, which means using the sounds of the Hangul characters and turning them into a word we can pronounce, this helps us to understand the characters of Hangul better.

I decided to create this, putting emphasis on the Hangul (고열) and leaving room for the Romanized version (Goyeol) so people who don’t understand Korean can pronounce the Korean name. I have also included the English name in its own small box, using a very simple and easy to read font, the same goes for the Romanized version too!

When creating this I struggled when creating the Hangul. Trying to get each consonant and vowel to match up together and look correct took great difficultly however I think I did a pretty good job doing this.

I really like this design and I think it will go well with the skyline I created. Once again depending on the colour theme I choose I will be able to adapt it to any colour, however I do enjoy the black a lot. 

SLOGAN IDEAS:

• HAVE YOU EVER WISHED FOR A HIGH FEVER?
• DON’T CATCH THE COLD
• ARE YOU SURE YOU CAN AVOID THIS HIGH FEVER?
• TRY AND BEAT THIS HIGH FEVER…IF YOU DARE
• TRY AND BEAT THE COLD…IF YOU DARE
• DON’T AVOID THE COLD…EMBRACE IT
• THIS COLD IS GIVING US A HIGH FEVER
• ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO ESCAPE THE COLD?
• ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO ESCAPE THIS HIGH FEVER?

SUMMARY

I do like the thought of a rhetorical question to attract the audience, however I don’t want it to give too much away. I also want it to confuse the audience. Ones that I like are; DON’T CATCH THE COLD, HAVE YOU EVER WISHED FOR A HIGH FEVER? and DON’T AVOID THE COLD EMBRACE IT. All three have the ability to confuse the reader and they all are memorable, as this is the second thing the audience will look at I will need to choose the best one to stand out and be memorable. I decided to go for DON’T AVOID THE COLD EMBRACE IT even though it is not a rhetorical question, I do like the questions it leaves the audience once read, for example; Why should I embrace the cold etc. I think it leaves good questions and it also has a large amount of confusion to it.

DON’T AVOID THE COLD EMBRACE IT

I experimented with different fonts using the ‘Type’ tool, I have only now discovered, it came with various styles as seen above, I will choose the one I think will suit my title and future poster.

I chose to use the first font for my slogan as it is the easiest to read. I also did a small change to the T slightly on DON’T, I brought it closer to the apostrophe as it looked too far away. I also chose to add more punctuation to see how it looks however I’m not a fan on how far away the ellipsis is to each other. I also expect my slogan to be on a black background so I will need to create a white version of this too.

Before I go ahead with the slogan I thought I might be a good idea to create some other Slogans using the same font to see if it would sway my decision, though I do really like these, especially the third one, I will go ahead with the slogan I chose because of the same reason from before, the questions that come after reading this, just like before it will leave ‘Why should I embrace the cold?’  in the audiences head.

 

This is how I expect it to look on the poster. It is easy to read and can easily be changed, colour wise, to fit the poster more. I have also taken away the ellipsis and full stop, mainly because I didn’t like the spacing of the punctuation and I must agree with myself and say that this looks much better.

I added the slogan twice, with a slightly darker opacity, making it look grey, I did this so see if it would add to the poster, and as I have both to choose from I will be able to use the one I find fitting. It also gives off the vibe of a reflection however that would only work if I added a refection to the rest of the poster, including the characters and title.

SUMMARY

I think the title is really good, I’ve included three ways to understand the title and make it look good in the process which is an achievement in itself, I think I should have created the Slogan font, like I did for the title to keep consistent, however I do realise that by using a pre-made font means that the slogan can look correct for reoccurring letters, which means that by using this font I wont make a mistake or a different shaped letter etc.

The one thing I should have done was added in a Korean translation for the Slogan, like I said the title is really good, showing three different ways to understand the title, I feel as if I didn’t add as much effort into the slogan compared to the title. So I should have included a Hangul slogan for Korean speakers so they can understand it too, I really want this poster to be 50/50 with Korean/English. So possibly in development of the posters I could add a Korean slogan too.

 

BACKGROUND

I began by experimenting with watercolours, testing with and without white, deciding that the lighter colours would fit better, being that everything else so far has been black, and I didn’t want the black and other dark colours to fade within each other.

From the watercolours, I next experimented with Acrylic paint, I chose to only use pastel colours as I didn’t really think it would fit with the characters and skylines.

At this point all I had to do was create the background options, however I was stuck on how to create them, so I asked a peer for inspiration and she said, why don’t you use one of the colours that mean something to you. At first I found this difficult, however eventually I chose Blue.

Why did I choose Blue?

I chose the colour blue to link it to music. My favourite genre of music is K-Pop (Korean Pop) and my favourite band is BTS. With K-pop each band’s Fandom (a group of fans) has a theme colour, in BTS’ case it’s silver/grey, however people associate Purple and recently Blue with the fandom. Recently there has been a page going around which is titled ‘BLUE for bangtan’. It is a non profitable charity made by fans and approved by UNICEF to raise and donate money under BTS’ name. Most participants either dye their hair blue or donate, or both! To me the colour has a special meaning and using it with this meaning will make my poster more personal to me.

As I have to think about other people to, I think finding out about the colour might help me out.

What Does Blue Mean?

After reading through a very thorough blog post, It is said to have positive effects to your mind. Blue is said to cause the body to produce a chemical that can calm a person down. Overall it is seen as a very positive colour and I’m happy that I chose it, However, too much blue can cause sadness, depression, stubbornness. I could find a lot of words that are related to the colour blue:

• Loyal
• Confidence
• Tranquility
• Peace

Light Blue:

• Honesty
• Trust

Dark Blue:

• Rich
• Intelligent

Bright Blue:

• Exciting
• Dramatic

SUMMARY

I am very happy to be using a colour I have a meaning behind, it makes it so much more personal, and to people who don’t understand my reasoning they can think of the colour as a range of things. I should aim to use a range of shades to avoid too much of one shade of blue.

I find it much easier when all the colour options are in front of me, hence why I create these pages, Pg 26 are all the colours I could create with the materials I owned, Pg 27 are the two colours I chose to see if I could create a gradient, as you can see it didn’t turn out as well as I hoped. With this information I will experiment on the next pages in different ways and use my favourite ones to make larger pieces with, possibly to become my poster background.

 

I experimented with these colours while using different techniques mostly all using a brush in a different way (PG.28&29). As you can see on the first page I used Acrylics and on the second I used watercolours, I found when using the Acrylics that I could get a stronger colour, however as I use them less often, compared to the watercolours, I wasn’t able to get the best quality. When I used the watercolours, I struggled when blending, as I used paper that wasn’t compatible with watercolours. Overall I found that the tones of blues I was using wasn’t what I was looking for and I ended up getting sick of looking at the colour blue, so for a while I was stuck for what to do.

I took some time away from the art however, I also used a make-up sponge and tooth brush to create a different texture, and I ended up liking these way more than the normal brush I used on the two previous pages.

 

I eventually made the 3 candidates for my background. I aimed to create them to fit an A5 piece of paper however as you can see, things didn’t turn out like that. I did attempt at creating these pieces again on A5 paper, however I struggled a lot when trying to recreate the 2nd piece, though it’s simple I really liked it the way it was and my recreations was nothing compared, I also should have kept these mistakes, however I  did throw them away unfortunately. Another piece that was difficult to create was the 3rd one (Pg33). As it was created using a toothbrush you can imagine the struggles I had with the paper, I used paper that wasn’t suitable for watercolours and this type of treatment so the paper after was very rough, it’s much better in the photo as I brushed away all the excess bits. I also believe that this piece didn’t turn out as well as my experimenting piece, however I do not know what I did differently to correct this.

 

TARGET AUDIENCE

In my pitch I left my options open when it came to my target audience, and I have also avoided speaking about it up until task 3, this is because I didn’t want to follow a path that I couldn’t come back from. However now that I think about it, I think instead of avoiding it I should have ’embraced it’. I really should have given my view on who the visual analysis pieces were aimed at, I think then I would be more comfortable speaking about my piece now.

Over a lot of thinking, and going back to my Pitch proposal. I do stick by to what I said;

“I am aiming at keeping it child friendly as the younger generation is the future and I want my product to stay relevant.”

I believe that this poster will be appealing to older kids as well as teenagers, mainly because as of right now I do have a lot of darker colours, however if I do choose to use the brighter coloured characters I will have a better chance at attracting the younger kids too.

 

SUMMARY

Referring back to what I said in the Pitch will keep the Pitch relevant, as I’m using that to help me figure out such things along with the art I’ve done so far. I also need to consider, after my developed designs, the set age range I’m aiming at, as then I will be able to give a set in stone answer. The reasoning for not being able to say now is because depending on the characters I choose it could change the age group from 10-14 to 12-17 roughly. This means the characters play a large part in attracting the audience so after the developed designs I will have a rough age group I’m aiming towards.

 

CHARACTER RATIONALES

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How did I obtain such a design?

I began with the rough design and the small annotations I wrote by the side of this character, I wanted to keep its test tube-like body and I kept to the rough design, only tweaking what I created, I had changed the head shape making it smaller. I created this character using a Pixel Art creator online called Pixilart. I wasn’t sure what I was thinking when creating the rough design for this character, however I do know that I wasn’t focusing on what it is supposed to be, I wanted it to be a strange character who gave off the visual looks of a girl or a dog. This way it can let people decide what this character is. Overall, the reason I developed it was because it was just too unusual not to, it’s shape is just too unique and that’s the reason I like this design.

 

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How did I obtain such a design?

Starting with the rough design I knew I’d struggle to develop it. When I started to create it, using Pixilart online, I began with the ‘main’ characteristic, which was the horns, I think they had turned out well, moving on the the body and arms was difficult, I stuck with the idea that this character needs hands and I think I didn’t do too badly, though they do look slightly ‘blocky’ I think that adds character to this horned creature. Speaking of character, when creating the rough idea for it, I based this character around the idea I wanted a horned, ‘chubby’ and long legged creature who was cute. As that was all I had in mind I think I was able to bring the character together nicely with a cute face, it’s the only character with a face mainly because I thought it suited one, I am aware that, that could effect consistency through these characters however I’m sure others would agree that he suited one and other characters wouldn’t. Overall it’s a simple yet cute design that would help any main character on the poster, he surely isn’t the main character but a supportive role is equally important.

 

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How did I obtain such a design?

When I created this design it was towards the beginning of research and I had created a version of this and a couple of other things to see how if I liked creating Pixel art, the first version of this was slightly smaller, with a shorter neck and slimmer head, when creating this version I didn’t realise the difference until now when putting then side by side:

 

 

They obviously look similar however the final version looks older than the first version.

 

 

Back to the overall character design,when creating her I didn’t have any set idea, just knowing that I wanted to create a girl with a fringe, obviously that isn’t too visible, only I would know that. I also based the rest of the body according to her head and hair, in my eyes I see a Asian style girl wearing two buns of hair either side of her head wrapped with ribbons with small fans attached to the ribbons. After I created the head I tried to create a body I liked, finishing with a squashed circle shape. I also created the hands without thinking and ended up with a character that suited them. For the final design I feel like the legs and arms could have been better, the legs should be slightly smaller and I think there should be more room between the hand and body, like the first version. I think the fans and the hair are my favourite part of this character, and I definitely believe that she had enough features to be a main character. She was the first character I created using Pixilart so I might be bias, however I really do like this character more than others.

 

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How did I obtain such a design?

beginning with the rough ‘ghost’ design, as it was a simple design I wanted to keep it that way and just make it fit within the other characters in the same group. The one thing I added that wasn’t in the rough design was the neck, though it’s a simple change it looks much better with a neck. I realise now that compared to the rough design this characters hat is much shorter, I think it suits the head shape much better. when making it, I kept in mind the rough idea, I wanted to keep it a ghost without any arms and legs. It’s a simple design without much detail and though it isn’t main character suitable, as it’s quite a long character, I think it would look good side by side with a main character. I don’t think there is anything necessarily wrong with this character, I think to improve it I could have added slightly more detail. Overall, I think this character design is very simple yet appealing, it has many confident spots such as, the hat and body. It is also the only developed character not symmetrical due to its ghost like body.

 

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How did I obtain such a design?

When I created the rough design I wasn’t too sure what I was creating, however looking back at the rough design I can see that it’s changed for the better. I’m aware that this character compared to the rough design have changed a lot, beginning with the biggest change which is the body. The body design before was very disproportionate and stuck onto a head that didn’t seem to fit well. I might have changed the body however I did try and keep to the design for the head, horns and ears. I only made a simple change to the head shape making it slightly more triangular and pointy towards the chin. The body has changed drastically, now it looks far more realistic, considering the head shape, it’s way more proportional and it just fits better. As it’s the first coloured character I must mention, while doing the colour for this character, I didn’t have much confidence in using colours however after adding the reds and oranges, I felt like I had more confident in something I hadn’t done before. As you can see, I did attempt to create shading using the colours to my advantage, though it looks slightly strange, I think It suits the creature very well. Overall I think this character has a lot of personality enough to be the main character on the poster. I did also create this using the same Pixel art creator as the other character, however while creating this one I took use of the ‘Mirror’ tool, which was making it ten times easier to create a complex character like this, using this tool reassured me that I wasn’t making a mistake, it meant that I didn’t have to mirror it myself and this way I have no room for error.

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How did I obtain such a design?

When creating group 3 I wanted to find out what my favourite character from group 2 would look like in a different art style, so instead of following a rough design I followed the developed design of a young Asian girl. I focused on the key feature of the character, the hair, I began creating the head and hair’s outline struggling to create the buns however once I created them I moved on to the ribbons, I knew that they were something that was going to show off  the character so I gave them a darker colour compared to the clothes. The neck is simple, and the body looks more relaxed and realistic compared the the other design. A couple things changed such as the fans in the hair, I wasn’t able to recreate them in this style, as well as her hands, I opted to creating them like this instead and I think they suit the character better. I did also change her body as I wasn’t too sure what to create with that shape. I made her to fit the description of a stereotypical Asian girl, and with Asia on the mind I created a Kimono for her, known as a formal dress. I did attempt at creating a Hanbok (Korean formal dress) to stay within theme of Korea, however I struggled with colours, so I opted for this instead. Overall I really like this character, I’m happy I recreated her in this style as she looks very good, however if I was to choose from them both I would choose the original, maybe because I’m bias and this one looks slightly too happy for me. I do really think that this character could be the main character she stands out well and comes with a bright personality. This was another character I created using the ‘Mirror’ Tool, once again it gave me peace of mind when creating as I know I didn’t make any mistake and it’s all symmetrical.

 

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How did I obtain such a design?

I’ve created another character I really like in this style, originally this design is another developed character however, I recreated in this style to see what It would look like. There are multiple differences from the original however I aimed to keep the rough idea the same. I kept the face and horn shape the same as well as the shape of the body, only making it slightly rounder. however I wanted to see whether it looked better with or without arms and it turns out either way it suits. I think I do prefer without arms as it makes it look cuter, however I think the lack of legs helps that too. I didn’t add any long legs, only stubby ones because I wanted this character to look cute, that was my original idea after all. I chose the purple one to speak about because it fit with the previous character, however when choosing the characters colour I wanted a bright and bold colour that contrasted well. I picked purple knowing that if I put this one side by side with the Asian girl I think they would look great together. Overall yet another cute and simple design, however I think it would bring cuteness to the poster. Another character that was created using the ‘Mirror’ tool.

TYPOGRAPHY RATIONALES

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How did I obtain such a design?

I started designing the title, using Pixilart as my online software of choice. I began by experimenting and creating the consonants and vowels separately, keeping in mind that I will need to put them together, however as of then I just needed something to work with. After trying to fit them together, and after many failed attempts I finally created three titles, all with different visual assets, lengths, thicknesses and different ㅇ’s. When I created this all I focused on was getting the correct thickness correct, I also opted to a simple font mainly because then I can focus on bringing the title together, such as the borders around the words. After finishing the Hangul, I then moved onto the Romanized Korean(Goyeol), creating it to fit within the Hangul wasn’t my intentions however it fit like a glove. The English was created before I was aware of the ‘Type’ tool, meaning that I did create the English as well as the Romanized, hence why some of the letters are different from the slogan such as the ‘R’ and ‘V’. However looking at them now I do realise that they both have a completely different shape. With the font I created I kept each letter at minimal pixels as possible, width wise, height wise I kept it at 5 pixels high. after creating everything, I then decided to complete it with a border, I think it brought the different titles together. Giving the English its own boarders because I think without them the Korean would seem very ‘Floaty’ and it also makes sense since there’s a constant 1-2 pixel space between the border and the words. Overall, I have a few negatives however the positives outweigh them, hence why its the final title. It is indeed a simple font, however this will allow me to add effects on top during development without having to worry about things being too ‘loud’ and too much. Another thing that bothered me for a while was that it doesn’t look like a normal title, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, the bad thing is that titles normally have more length to them e.g:

Titles are usually more horizontal like these, however mine has almost even length and height, closer to a square shape. Using the title I created means that I will struggle to keep to the rough poster designs I created, as I created them in mind that I was going to use a horizontal title, I will just need to focus on the placement slightly more when using the rough designs as my template.

 

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How did I obtain such a design?

After deciding on the slogan, I experimented with different fonts that were available to me within the Pixel art creator. I chose this one because it was simple and easy to read, knowing that, as it’s a poster it will most likely be put on a wall, meaning that I didn’t want the font of the slogan to be to complex, otherwise it wouldn’t be readable from afar, however the simple text can be seen further away. I also added some punctuation, but I later got rid of it, due to the fact that I didn’t like the spacing of the ellipsis. After I tested other slogans with the same font, reassuring myself that this is the slogan to use. I then created the white font on a black background. I realised it look very bright, however I also recreated that slogan with a lessened opacity to see if that would be a better fit, however seeing them together like this make me want to include them like this, for example the greyer one can be a reflection or a shadow of the main slogan. Overall I’m pleased with it, however I think it will be my least favourite part of the poster, my reasoning is because I really want to keep the poster 50/50 with Korean/English however obviously this is only English. I possibly might have to keep this in mind when developing because as of right now this will be the slogan going forward.

 

 BACKGROUND RATIONALE

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How did I obtain such a design?

I had some trouble creating traditional media for the background so when I began I was using pieces of loose paper, as I don’t have enough confident to paint straight into my sketchbook.

I began by testing out some colours, I started with watercolours testing out different shades of colours I enjoyed (Rainbow colours). I then went on and tested Acrylic paint mixed with white, making them pastel, the reasoning for this was because everything so far has been quite dark so I thought changing it up might help. I was struggling to create a background, or even think of a theme for that matter, and I asked my peer for advice, she told me to go with a colour that ‘meant’ something, I was obviously was confused at first, however I ended up going with blue. I went with blue because it is related to my favourite music group, BTS and also a charity based around that group made by the fans of said group. After researching the colour blue, I was happy I chose it since it is a happy colour if used correctly. I then tested all shades of blue I had at my disposal and also created pages of experiments. Up until this point was all very helpful since I was so lost at the beginning. I finally began creating pieces for my background, I did struggle on ideas however I created this piece using a cheap triangular shaped make-up sponge with a square base, I used the square base and various blue watercolour shades to dab onto the paper repetitively building up the colours and making sure to use just enough water onto the sponge to see the harsh lines, still with a slight blend of colours. Overall the only problem I have with this background is that I think it’s too dark, however depending on whether I keep the typography black or change it to something else, the background could level the black out, however if I do change it then I will lighten the background to fit the other pieces on the poster. I am pleased with this, especially since when I was creating the designs I was struggling, creative wise. So I am very happy that I ended up with something that looks good.

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Developed Designs

POSTER 1

-RATIONALE-

How did I obtain such a design?

I started with the blue background using Photoshop, I positioned the skylines to fit the bottom of the screen, lifting it slightly and filling in the bottom of the screen with black so it would fit the slogan in later, enlarging it in the process. I then went ahead and placed the various characters originally from group two in the centre of the poster using the third rough poster design as template. The characters being in the centre of the page will help attract the audiences attention. I have included the three characters that I think would suit, firstly you have the ‘main’ character, the young Asian girl, who suits being ‘leader of the pack’. Along side her we have the ‘ghost’ character, like I guessed previously he definitely looks great side by side the main character. I also wanted to use him to show not all my characters are symmetrical. Then we have the horned creature who also looks great next to the other characters. After placing all the characters in their places I then turned my attention to the title, which I contemplated placing it to the left and right before ending up in the middle. I think I had nothing to worry about when I previously spoken about the placement of the title in the rationale, I think it ended up in a nice place and it suits the poster. It also is very centred which means that the audience will focus more on the centre. I then added in the slogan, I think out of the whole poster this is my only problem. I have spoken about this before however I think addressing this now will help me through development too, I wanted to keep this poster 50/50 (Korean/English) so once again if I decide on this poster and any of the posters, I will need to keep this in mind. Overall, this design gives me a stereotypical poster feel, just because of the layout of the template, the title at the top, the characters towards the middle and the slogan at the bottom, a lot of posters have this layout, so yes it’s not unique in that factor, however this layout can let people know it’s a poster, though I don’t think there will be a need for that. I think so far this poster design is really good.

 

POSTER 2

-RATIONALE-

How did I obtain such a design?

I began with the blue background, in Photoshop. I started by adding in a skyline, sizing it up to fit the bottom the the poster and then copying and pasting it, rotating it around and lining it up with the poster borders. Once I had finished that I placed the title in, I must have struggled for space since I chose to add that first before the characters. Once I added in the title, I realised I would need to decrease the size of the characters to fit in. After I decreased the characters, originally from group 2, I placed them around in really no order, which I believe made it look messy. I was using the second rough poster design as template, which also stated that I was only planning on using two characters, however I wanted it include a lot of characters to see how it would look. I’m sure that if this was executed correctly it could look ten times better, I think mine looks very rushed, as if there was no thought put into the placement at all, I also feel that there’s too much going on, it’s not only the characters but also the skylines, the poster to me is too claustrophobic, I think that yes it’s very unique however that doesn’t cover the fact it looks very rushed. I think the main focus of this poster is the centre, the focusing point is the blue, especially since black is covering everything else. That is another problem, I think as a background it should complement the assets well, however as everything else is black/grey, the assets bring down the poster as a whole. It also doesn’t include one of the most important features of the poster, the slogan. I didn’t actually have enough room to include it. Overall, I do like the idea of the poster, the skylines covering the top and bottom, the title in the centre, etc. However I think it was executed poorly, the character placement is messy and there’s too much going on. I think to improve this poster I could lighten the poster some way, maybe adding in highlights, or change the colour of some things. Also maybe change the layout of the characters, as now I realise sometimes less can be better. 

 

POSTER 3

-RATIONALE-

How did I obtain such a design?

When creating this poster I used Poster one’s layout, which is also the third rough poster design, I just switched out the characters, once again still in Photoshop. These are the characters from group 3 the colourful bunch really do bring this poster to life. I reason I chose to use the same rough poster design was because I really did like that poster template, and I wanted to keep that traditional look for this poster, as well as using three characters, if I wasn’t going to use three characters I probably would have used the first rough poster design, as It would have showcased a single character well, however since that’s not what I’m going for I chose this one again. I think the characters add a lot to this poster, it brings a lot of colour and it definitely brightens the poster however, I don’t think the poster has a good harmony, meaning, I think that on their own the characters are great side by side, however with the posters darkness, I think that they dont stand any chance of fitting in. They seem very out of place and to fix this I think I’d need something that would tie both the characters and the poster together, I could possibly tint the characters slightly blue, or bring down the brightness. I could also increase the vibrancy of the background and maybe add in small pops of colour here and there to increase the colour to the poster to fit with the characters.

 

SUMMARY

I really like all the ideas I used in these posters, however I think I could have executed some better, such as the second one, I feel like yes it does have some good pointers, such as a good template and it’s unique however the cons outweigh the pros, it’s messy, all the posters assets don’t compliment each other well and it looks very rushed, like no thought was going into it and I will only be proud of a product that has a lot of meaning, so if I chose this template I would need to work on it a lot more which could mean loosing this original idea. My target audience will change, not by much but still will depend on the characters chosen as well as the development after this. I think that if I went for the third design I would have to change so much, that’s not necessarily a problem however I do like the fact that the first one is good, just needing small adjustments and the fact that I really liked it even before thinking about improving it. However the third one might be a good chance to experiment changing the vibrancy, hues and contrast. Overall I’m glad I have a selection to choose from, I also am glad I chose to create coloured characters too, as originally I wasn’t going to.

 

 

FINAL POSTER DEVELOPMENT

I show you step by step how I created my final piece:

After taking a photo of the traditional media from my sketchbook, in good lighting, I moved it onto a computer and into Photoshop. I cropped and made the canvas A4 sized, so when I print it will fit the page.

I then added in the skyline, enlarging and lifting it slightly, then filling in the bottom of the screen with black so it would fit the slogan in later. This is also where I made use of some snowy brushes, and added some to the background to create a cold effect, I used a very pale blue, closer to a white colour, with this brush. I chose to use very light blue because white is a lot more harsher than a blue. Also in the process I reduced the opacity of the brush tools too.

I wanted to tie the skylines with the background and give extra detail as the skylines looked plain. I added in some of the same brushes in the same light blue colour to the skylines.

I then proceeded to add in the characters in the same order as the developed designs. I also then realise I need to give them an eye colour.

I also tested out different colours for eyes, I ended up picking colour that blends in well. I chose to keep the eye colours the same due to consistency. I also wanted the characters to tie in well with the poster and choosing brightly coloured eyes could ruin the harmony of the poster and the eye-catching part of the poster. This is also where I added in the title.

Can you notice the blue eyes? I added some of the same brushes, the same ones I added to the background and skyline, to the title making it tie in very well. I also added another layer of snow brushes, a different style, much larger to add detail to the characters as they looked bare. The reasoning behind choosing this style of brushes is to keep my original idea, which was having the characters in the front, and doing this will help the characters stand out and not get taken over by the snow.

I then decided to show love to the title by adding in triangular highlights to some of the corners, I honestly didn’t know how to do this and I tried my best, I think it could have turned out much better however for probably my first attempted at adding in highlights like this I’m proud of it. I also ended up increasing the opacity of the brush effects slightly as I really wanted to see harsher lines.

I finally added in the slogan. however as expected I hated it, it kept annoying me, the fact the piece isn’t 50/50. I will attempt at creating a Korean slogan. I aim to create something similar to the title, I will use a simple font for English and a simple font for Hangul, making both work together could be difficult however I think it would help to have both languages, mainly because it will keep the title choice relevant as well as keep the whole poster consistent and in theme.

 

 

I attempted at creating the slogan just like I did with the title, however each time I went to translate it would change from the original, what you can see above is the words needed, however they are jumbled up and as I am not fluent in the language I found it difficult to un-jumble them.

I used a text generator to create the font compared to scraping it completely.

추위를 피하지 마라. 그것을 받아 들여라. – Don’t avoid the cold… Accept it.

As you can see the translation isn’t spot on however it’s the closest it’s going to get. While using this site I also made it to fit the other slogan, however I do think they look slightly off, however I did want to create my own but as I’m tight for time and needed to improvise, hence why I used a site.

 

I finally added it to the poster, I also moved the other slogan around too. I chose to keep the lower opacity English slogan because I think it looks better along side the Korean as it doesn’t look too obnoxious and bright.

 

WHAT COULD THE GAME BE ABOUT?

What could the game mean, based on the poster and my ideas throughout creating.

The main character wakes up feeling chilled through, she looks outside at the city where she had lived all her life and doesn’t recognise it. The streets and buildings are covered in snow and ice, there are no people around and the light from the streetlamps reflects eerily from the snow. Follow her to find out what happened, see the creatures she meets along the way and help her discover her own dark secret.

 

TARGET AUDIENCE

I will target my poster at teens in the age range of 13-17. It’s a wide claim however the reason for choosing a wider range is because, the poster I’ve decided on can appeal to a lot of teens depending on the concept behind the game. I think the younger teens would enjoy the simplicity of the characters and also possibly the games setting, it’s based in a city with a simplistic style of game. The game also tackles a lot of world problems such as global warming, so I would also like the older teens to understand this and the younger teens to pick up on it as well. The poster is suitable for anyone who it appeals to, however like I said I’ve aimed it at 13-17 year old’s. It’s suitable for everyone as well, however I did aim it mainly at Korean and English people, however if this were a real game I’m sure there would be translations of it once in the game.

FINAL DISCUSSION

Looking at this piece all together really makes me proud. Of course there are imperfections however I think that it gives it personality as well as the fact this poster is a massive improvement from a previous unit. I do always will have my problems with the posters consistency things like, the different fonts for each slogan and the width of the characters legs etc. They are just small things that over time I will understand to correct these things. The highlights to the title was something I struggled with, I got a lot of advice from my peers this unit and I truly have them to thanks for giving me the motivation to finish this unit. The titles highlights are another thing I’ve never done before and I did try my best to create them so I am definitely proud of this product.

EVALUATION

 

RESEARCH

Though this unit was a great chance to expand my knowledge on the given theme, I ended up staying in the safe zone sticking with journey, however I was happy to learn that I wasn’t the only one who think of journey. After my interviews, I was reassured with my theme (journey) When going through this interview I was very happy I had the chance to ask more add on questions, in the style I did so. It’s a very unique way of asking a question, though it cant work for all questions it did for this, so I’m pleased with the outcome, especially since it reassured me a lot.

In my Pitch I spoke about using things from previous college trips, however I didn’t include any. I think I should have found something that related, however at the time of gathering primary research it completely went over my head, I forgot about it completely. I should be more mindful next time.

I can see how some could be slightly confused by my secondary research. It is very ‘all over the place’ as I didn’t know how to lay it out any other way. The artist research became game research real quick and some people could confuse the game to be hers, however I did realise this at the time and I should have separated it. Kenze Wee Hon Ming was a creator I stumbled on after realising I didn’t want to research Kate Orcutt. Looking back at it now I didn’t even mention excluding her from research, and I should have at least given a reason to why I chose not to. I explained why I chose him instead, but didn’t give any thought to include a reasoning behind removing her. He introduced me to a form of pixel art I didn’t really pay attention to before. He inspired me enough to look further into Pixel art. I am very happy I chose to research him.

I did very little when I researched art styles, it was very basic and I should have included more, however I learn about the ‘Dada movement’ and I eventually got an understanding of the confusing Contemporary art. My visual analysis could have had more background research, I should have looked up the pictures to see who created them. However as I didn’t know who’s art it was I had unbiased opinions and it gave me a good thought to keep a hold of, a persons immediate reaction. The pieces I created based from these art styles, were completely out of my comfort zone. The contemporary was messy and was a jumble of things I created, I should have created it with better thought. The pop art one is slightly better, however it personally bothers me due to the fact that it isn’t symmetrical, that’s a personal preference though. Surrealism was okay, there wasn’t anything necessarily bad but there wasn’t anything that screamed good either. Something I regret not doing is visual analysis for pixel art, at the time I thought it was unnecessary, however it could have given me some pixel art techniques for a later date. The pop art inspired skylines where neither good nor bad, just simple, easy to create and mundane.

I think the research played a large part in the designing phases, it helped me identify the art style I was going for as well as give me inspiration for when I did start creating. I think I researched a good amount, I possibly should have included a third artist. I learned about a lot when researching it gave me many new and creative ideas to expand and I also learnt something about more artists I can grow to love at a future date.

IMAGES

 Rough Characters-I think the rough designs are suitable for what I wanted to create, they are certainly rough, I added no colour to them to keep my options open and especially since I was struggling when picking a theme colour. The rough designs haven’t seen any improvements from previous work. I was able to create a lot of characters, I was pleased with the random bunch, if I were to do this differently I would most likely choose a theme for the characters, similar to a genre, to test my limits.

Rough Poster Designs-The rough poster designs are suitable for their use, they are used for a template and I used them with ease, they were simple and easy to follow. I would say they are well made, they have small annotations for easy use. The last time I created posters I designed them small and with very little annotations on some, so I believe there has been some improvement. If I would do this again I probably would have gone for a completely different product, I would like to text my skills and make a video game box.

Developed Characters- The characters I chose to develop are suitable for the poster idea I had. I think the designs are well made, however there are small details I had to look past just to finish the unit, such as the width of some things not matching up to other characters, small things such as that. I think the colours I chose were great however some didn’t suit the background. I think from the last characters I created in previous units, there has been a massive improvement, I’m still a long way to go but I think I’ve taken a large step in the right direction. Once again I would have a set genre and different matching colours if I were to do this again.

Skyline- My Skyline designs are suitable and relevant to the product. I think the designs are well made, I probably should have added more detail to them, such as lights or windows. I did make a skyline during a previous unit and I do have to say that there has been a massive improvement from then to now. I think they turned out great however if I were to do this again I would probably increase the pixel size making it a lot more detailed as that is another thing that could have helped its appeal.

Background- The backgrounds needed to be blue and created using acrylic or watercolours, as they all come under that they are suitable. I used scrap paper to create my designs, the paper being different sizes, meaning that if I had chosen the smallest I would have had to stretch it to fit A4, which could have been a graphics problem, it would have looked terrible quality. I don’t necessarily see any big improvements only I’m showing more of my creative side when creating these pieces. I would definitely use the same sized paper for each background, I would also fit it to the size of poster I have too.

TYPE (TYPOGRAPHY)

I designed and chose the typography to fit the poster and all the posters assets, so I believe it is suitable. All fonts I used/created are readable, I made sure especially since I struggle reading even some ‘readable’ fonts. They are some of  the simplest Pixel art fonts you can read. All fonts are in the Pixel art style expect one, which was the Korean for slogan, and even then it’s still very simple. They fit the purpose of titles, slogan and Korean slogan. I made sure not to make any spelling mistakes especially since that’s another thing I struggle with. I think the title ended up amazing compared to the slogan, I do have to be fair the slogan did get better however it still is my least favourite part of the poster. I think improvements to keep in mind for next time are to keep everything very similar and to create my own fonts as then I wont have trouble with consistency issues.

TARGET AUDIENCE

My audience is 13-17 year old’s, everything I’ve done would suit that age range, once again I made my final design to appeal to that age range. My project does fit the brief. I was asked to create a unique product that demonstrates the skills I gathered through this year, following one of the themes, I chose Opening, which I ended up linking it to Journey and from journey we went to skylines and the city. I’m not to sure whether a lot of people will understand the reasoning behind choosing the colour blue, I also hope there wont be any misunderstanding when it comes to the main characters hands, it’s not something I’ve mentioned however they do look like guns, however, I can assure they are supposed to be finger guns, a cute cheeky thing included in her personality. I think the poster is appropriate to everyone, though it is aimed at 13-17 year old’s, it isn’t offensive as far as I know.

TECHNIQUE

I chose to work in Pixilart, a online app for free pixel art, traditional media, for the background and Photoshop, because it’s the easiest to use to put things together in. I chose to work with these because I can use a lot of skills I have already within Photoshop and traditional media, however I also enjoyed the Pixel art style, I had a look at a couple other websites however they weren’t for me, Pixilart really helped me build my confidence and whenever I created anything on the app I was never put off, I didn’t have the thought to give up, because then I knew how easy it was to restart and easy to get a better version of what I created. The final quality of my work is much better than my rough designs, over the development stages I think it improved a lot. It looks much closer to a poster than a previous unit’s poster. In some bits my blog is messy, such as the artist research. There is a lot of texture on the final poster, in the form of snowy brushes. The shapes have mainly pointed edges since each shape is made out of smaller squares. The colours I’ve used are blue, black and greys, depending on how much blue is used it can have a large impact on the emotions of the poster, however, as black is such a powerful colour it can sometimes drown out other colours on the page. The width of the title and the width of the skyline skyscrapers, are thick, I think for a title that’s a good thing, however for a very slim skyscraper I think it should has a skinnier pole. To improve such a problem I could increase the amount of pixels.

CONCLUSION

Looking at it all together, really is something. I can’t put into words how proud I am to come this far, during this Unit I struggled a lot and to finally see it all together really shows that hard work pays off. If I were to change anything, I would really enjoy at attempted to create a video game box, I would also change the theme, as I think there could be a lot of learning coming from something I’d have to research deep into such as Opening. I have improved a lot in many ways, I have become more confident when expressing my opinions and ideas, I also learnt how to create pixel art which is something I extremely enjoy creating. I wasn’t able to follow the weekly schedule, I got very sidetracked easily and took longer with some things. I think for this project, I increased the amount of everything I put in, I worked very hard to get to were I am, I just hope now that it was all worth while. One peer was making something completely different to me, she was creating a 2D animation, and another peer was creating a video game poster, but for make up, she wanted to get a reaction out of people. I think all work is unique and we should all be proud of what we’ve created this year.

ACTION PLAN

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RESEARCH LOG