Week 3 We're getting there
- amandabruce49
- Feb 7, 2016
- 3 min read
The third week into fmp and we've got 2 weeks after this to get all concepts completed for the Japanese section of the project. How am I feeling about this? Not too bad, I'm a bit behind but I'm getting into it more and more every day.
This week I spent most of my time in Wales which was a bit of a set back however I did get a start on a lot of the inital sketches for characters.
I enjoy doing rough sketches mainly in biro on paper or digitally to get started on coming up with a unique concept. So I basically do rough sketches for every design before refining the design and completing iterations.
Here are some of the inital sketches I completed while I was away.
I started designing the Kirin which is a majestic animal in Japanese folklore. It is unicorn like and it is one of the rarest and most powerful creatures in Asia. It is often considered a god, holy and highly revered. These are the rough sketches and where my idea began.
After these designs I was just messing around on my ipad and trying to come up with something different and unique I drew in a style that I really like so I decided to take the design forward and add in elements of the Japanese dragons.
I began designing different horns for the Kirin trying to make this creature look etheral and powerful.
The designs which have a green dot are the ones I took forward into iterations after feedback from Georgia.
Value studies have become an important part of my concept pipeline as it is a hell of a lot easier to see which tones work, which also makes the colour design easier.
After picking value studies I tried to put different patterns like scales, spots and stripes to see what would be appropriate for this creature. Finally I completed the colour studies and in the end together me and Georgia decided the third colour design is the best design to take forward.
Another character which I had to get started on designing is Teke Teke which is more of an urban legend but still a part of Japanese folklore. This is a young woman who has been chopped in half by a train, she crawls around the streets of Japan with her scythe and if she finds someone she will make them just like her and cut them in half. For this character I am exploring the more creepy route. So once again here come some sketches.
On the right here is also a sculpt I did on my ipad using an app called forger, it's pretty cool for an app to be honest. I then painted over the scuplt. I picked a very pale pink for skin tone adding blood for the creepy look. After feedback from Georgia we both kind of decided that the sculpt needed to be more feminine and personally I want the character to show more expression.
Lastly Georgia contacted her mentor, Jason Kaehler and had a skype session with him to dicuss the project and get any feedback. After reviewing what Jason had said we decided that the narrative should bring the three cultures together instead of separating them.
We decided that the little girl who is the protagonist and main playable character game wise, should traverse throughout these different cultures, meeting new people, fighting monsters and weird creatures.
We agreed that we should also write some notes of each of our character/creatures for example what their role in the game is, if they are good or bad, NPC or playable character.
Overall it's been a mad week and I've fallen a little behind however we have had a lot of help to refine our project and now it definitely feels more coherant and more managable.