J C Leyendecker Viking Characters

Name: Amanda Bruce

P Number: P13210344

Email: p13210344@myemail.dmu.ac.uk

Project Title: J C Leyendecker Viking Characters

The company wanted to create a semi-stylised Viking game based on the artwork of J C Leyendecker. The lead character, a spritely young girl is what I had to work off and create a main enemy, with a collection of lower enemies and 3 supporting NPC villager characters. I started with some research into Leyendecker's style and research into real life viking attire and daily living. I began creating the main enemy from silhouettes and general character ideation. I then moved it into more iterations as I played around with colour palette and clothing. I finished this character off by painting it in Leyendecker's style and making it into promotional art. I followed this process for the rest of the supporting characters too.

Before starting on research and moodboards I created a simple time plan for the entire project.

I also made a more intricate and detailed project plan Gantt chart. I'll post my progress as I go through the project.

Research/Moodboards:

I started off with inital research into Leyendecker and the techniques and style he uses. I then annotated and used them as references for when I actaully painted my character in his style.

I also did some research into real life viking people (Nordic) to see how they would actaully dress as I wanted to keep it kind of realistic and not stereotypically Viking. I took a lot of inspiration from this clothing for all my characters, keeping it quite simple and realistic yet putting my own twist on it.

I decided to put together an artist and style moodboard too to help me come up with ideas for characters. I had a lot inspiration from these images for my main enemy.

Development:

My intial concepts for the main enemy started off as simple quick silhouettes which I then did a quick line drawing of to get a feel for the character. I then brought it into clothing design and getting a good character. I found that these inital designs didn't create a good silouette and were kind of all the same so on the next stage I changed the character up a bit.

The colour palette ideas for the main enemy with different clothing designs. I chose the top middle as feedback was really good for that design.

Final Design:

For the other NPC characters I decided to do quick silhouettes as well as some inital line drawings that asre easier for me personally. I actually brought a lot of these inital line drawings into final characters.

I took the line drawings and quickly ran through some clothing ideas just in greyscale first.

I then put the ones I had chosen together to make sure they work as a group and had a good dynamic.

NPC enemy characters:

For all characters I changed the inital drawing slightly and worked on colour palette and clothing designs. Once I had chosen a final design I iterated it more as I went into the final stage.

NPC villager characters:

Once again I went through the same process for the villager characters. They were slightly harder to come up with interesting designs as I wanted them to show the realism of real life vikings and they had very simple attire. I also iterated these characters on the final stage after deciding on clothing and colour palette.

At this stage in the project this is how my project plan was looking: I was fairly to plan and was managed my time well.

I decided to change the pose into something more dynamic and interesting for the young boy villager.

After creating all the characters I went straight into trying to work in Leyendeckers style. First of all I did a study of one if his paintings that I could take techniques from and transfer them onto my main enemy character.

When working in Leyendecker's style I found he builds layers up gradually and adds lots of blue tones for shadows and uses a lot of warm yellow and orange. Like a lot of the work I've taken inspiration from of his, in this piece he uses a lot of very light coloured brushstrokes for the highlights even on clothing.

This is my final main enemy character painted in Leyendecker's style, I'm really pleased with the outcome of this painting as I spent a really long time getting it to a good standard. I tried my best to transfer Leyendecker's techniques onto my character, making the skin more orange toned and adding lots of light coloured highlights.

I also did some quick studies on the villager characters to get some ideas for my promotional art, taking his style of painting the white background with strong brushstrokes and adding dark lines in the background and circles.

At the final stage my project plan was all filled in. I realised that the Gantt chart had helped me a great deal and I will use one to organise my time in future projects.

Final Portfolio Piece/ Promo Art:

J C Leyendecker's magazine covers were the main inspiration for the promo art as he uses these large orange circles in the background as well as using horizontal lines to border the character. I really liked the way he had done this so I transferred it onto my characters in the promotionl artwork.

Overall I think my time management and organisation has been a great deal better than the previous years. I feel as if I'm closer to third year standard, and I've improved a lot. I'm pleased with most of the outcomes. The promotional artwork is a bit rushed however I think they still turned out good. I'm most proud of the main enemy character as I spent a lot of time refining and iterating that characters' design.

I've learnt a lot about digital painting from this project as I've studied the artist J C Leyendecker quite heavily and did some studies.