How has your diorama/Level design met the needs of your audience?
The demographic I chose for my diorama project was 4-8 year old girls, several things had to be considered such as colour, shape and style. To help understand my audience I collected a range of research about colour, spending and interests.
The research was done in order to understand the demographic so I have guidance on what colours, shapes or themes to use. The research shows that girls tend to lean towards pinks and purples (Although girls have shown that they enjoy a wider range of colours compared to boys). While I did choose a pinky sunset in the end I was able to explore a few more colour ideas because of this (Like orange).
The style is also something I considered with my demographic. I used a painted style I worked on over the summer that was influenced by children’s illustration, something that is aimed towards children. Te style includes blended but also blocky shading, bright colours and various values in the scene to make it pop.
The topic of cacti with flowers was chosen to add a cute look to a western environment. A lot of Western environments or media is dark, gritty and for an older audience so I had to find a way around that. I included cacti and flowers into the scene to make the scene less dry and cuter for my audience.
How did your audience research inform the development of your idea?
Like I said before, demographic research on colour and products was used to help me create this product as well as inform changes and decisions made in the process. A huge difference in the final concept and final product is that the rocks in the final product are much softer on the eyes. The sharpness of the rocks appeared aggressive in a way, this is an issue I had to resolve with the cactus design at the beginning. The shapes had to be considered and softened so I could cater towards my demographic, I made sure to use bright colours for my demographic along with the pink tinted palette. The actual idea (Cacti) was chosen due to it being a better fit with the demographic as well. The other idea was a mine filled with gems, I thought this would be a nice idea but it would be dark and dirty which typically doesn’t appeal to 4 – 8 year old girls.
Something I would have done a little differently looking at it now is that I would have added more cacti and flowers into the diorama so that they are the main focus of the scene. While there are a fair amount of cacti I think it would have been nicer if there were more cacti and flowers in the scene. The scene looks a little dry to me because of this.
Review your research and final product and identify how it reflects the identified characteristics and contexts of a Diorama or Level Design.
To understand what a diorama was meaning wise and visually I did what is known as initial research, it is broad research of a topic, for us it was dioramas. I learnt about a type of diorama known as Frank Wong dioramas, they are like dolls house scale rooms and islands which are enclosed spaces (The term for diorama). They are really cute and it helped me understand dioramas and what they were visually.
After I understood the concept of a diorama in general I had a look at dioramas in game production. I looked at concept art, level design and final products diorama wise, this helped me understand how they relate and how they can be used in a development process of a game, film or TV show.
Kotaku.com. (2019). Thirteen-Year-Old MMO Gets Its First Expansion Pack. [online] Available at: https://kotaku.com/thirteen-year-old-mmo-gets-its-first-expansion-pack-1619349178 [Accessed 11 Sep. 2019].
When designing and creating the final product I was able to create it understanding what a diorama is, an enclosed space or environment (A room, island, cut off location etc,). I made the diorama a floating island to make the diorama appear as natural as possible. All of this was done successfully because of the research I did beforehand.
You can see the environment is a cut off space (A floating island) which is considered a diorama by definition.
Reflect on your learning and skills – What you have done and why you have done it?
When it comes to what I have learnt the number one thing would be my shading, I think built upon is a better word as I already had a shading style to use and knew how to use it but I was able to build upon my shading style and improve during this project. I learnt about overblending and how I can avoid it consciously when painting in the future.
The painting style itself is one I began developing over the summer in my environment work and I have been using it on my work since (both in character art and environment work). I watched tutorials, speed paints and played with different brushes and ways of blending until I found something I liked. Along with this I followed various artists on Instagram and artstation to find inspiration for my style. I chose this style as it seemed like something you would find in an illustration book, something my demographic likes.
The project also served as a good refresher on designing environments, the last time I designed an environment was for last years FMP. I was able to try blocking out of a scene to understand the design in a 3D space, it was really handy to see how it would work (or if it works).
A new theme the project has taught me is demographic. This is very important when designing any kind of product or asset for a project so it can be marketed and consumed by your intended demographic. We had to go and do thorough research for the demographic and apply our findings to the design of our diorama, this can be done through colour, shape language and the idea. Like I said I chose the demographic as it would be easy to cater me style towards them.
My research on my demographic influenced my idea (cacti and flowers), softening shapes later for my demographic and my colour choice (A pink sunset).
Sum up your ongoing evaluations/opinions/reflections that you documented during the project.
Throughout my whole project I have been documenting the process and how I have felt throughout the project so I will try to sum them up here.
Our project was to create a diorama, the meaning of a diorama is a model that represents a scene with 3-Dimensional qualities to them. They can be a room, a closed off environment, a leveled environment etc. Our brief is to create a diorama based on the theme of western.
I looked into a range of ideas like a saloon, mine, cacti, teepee etc. An interesting part of this project was the demographic element, the project had to be catered towards an age and gender. My choice was made because of the artstyle I was going to use. Over the summer I developed a painted environment style that I thought would really appeal to a 4 – 8 year old girl demographic, the style was nice and it was within my ability which is why I chose to do it like this. I have no regrets on the style I chose and my demographic actually informed my idea in a way.
I had to research and annotate research on my demographic. I found that my demographic likes animation over live action most likely due to colours, design and themes.
This graph just shows that young children like animation over live action films. Girls gravitate to Disney due to colour pallets and art style. My colour research gave me more advice and backed up Disney’s marketing colour wise with their use of pinks and purples along with yellows and greens. Young girls gravitate towards pinks and purples, although girls have been shown to enjoy a larger colour palette than boys.
After creating a range of audience research I moved onto the design of the diorama. I began with simple thumbnailing and got feedback from tutors to understand what would look better and why as I was stuck and had no idea what idea would work the best. I worked from there to create a final layout and moved onto test pieces and colour ideas for the final concept. An issue I was able to resolve was the flat sand, my tutor gave me advice to add ripples into the sand to give it a little more depth.
The colour ideas were made taking my audience research into consideration, with the pinks and purples but also having some room to play around.
I then took my final concept and created my final product around it. Some changes were made to the final product, for example I softened the edge of the rocks since the sharp edges in the concept art wouldn’t have been something my demographic would have liked. I made sure the colours were nice and bright so they appeal to my demographic (Along with the pink sunset).
What do you feel has worked well and what did not work well? What could you do to improve your work?
Out of everything I think the shading and colouring of the diorama and assets was the best part of my work (Even if I struggled a lot with some of the elements). The shading was deep and showed the form of the diorama and the colours were vibrant which appeals to my demographic. My research on dioramas and my demographic went really well as it was able to help me create a diorama I am happy with. I’m really happy I actually enjoyed the western theme, when I heard it was western I didn’t think much of it but I’m really happy I managed to find something in the western theme I could enjoy making.
Like I said earlier I was able to appeal to my demographic with my idea choice, shapes and colours thanks to the research I did for the demographic. I think the demographic side of my project was successful due to the end result in my diorama (colours and shapes) as it ticks all of the boxes I discovered for my demographic.
When it comes to what I struggled with overall the thumbnailing of my diorama along with a lot of the shading on the final product were both things I struggled with.
With the thumbnailing process I struggled as I was going back and forward between ideas and I didn’t really know what I wanted at first. I spent ages playing around with the layout and I really didn’t know what looked good of not.
I struggled a little bit with the shading of the cacti and the rocks. With the cacti I had to make the sections of each cacti separate and cylindrical objects. I kept redoing the shading and lighting over and over until I got it right in the end. It took a lot of patience however I managed to make it work thankfully!
If I could change anything about my diorama it would be how many cacti and flowers I had in the scene, I would have added a lot more in order to make the scene have a bigger emphasis on the cacti (As they seem a little overshadowed by the canyon). Along with this I would have tried to have fitted more flowers into the cacti scene as flowers would have made the scene a little more cuter.
Reflect on peer and tutor feedback.
Throughout the project we give and receive peer reviews from other people in our class, we got one peer review before each interim (There were three).
In the first peer review there was a lot for me to fix, I had to add in a screenshot of the definition for a diorama, explain the mood boards and explain why I have chosen my demographic. I created an action plan to help me get everything sorted.
In the second peer review (For my ideas gen) I needed to add some more blockouts, annotations and different colour ideas. I then went back into maya and created two more blockouts and I uploaded more colour ideas of my dioramas, along with this I finished my annotations. Most of the time with my peer reviews it’s just adding more to what I already have.
The final peer review was for the final product. At this point the product itself was all finished and it was just annotations and the final evaluation to do. I made a plan to finish all of my written work and to also add my peer reviews.
Along with peer reviews I got feedback from tutors throughout the project.
After asking my art tutor for advice on the layouts of the thumbnails and where I should take them next she said that she really liked the first layout however the canyon concept in idea 3 interested her as well. She told me to try out the canyon concept on idea one and to have a play around with the sizes. I opened up idea one in a new page and created a new cliff next to the first on. The advice really helped me understand where I wanted to go next with my diorama design.
When painting out the final concept my tutor told me to work on the structure and form of the sand. The sand looked rather flat and I was shown sand with ripples in it. To show the sand was sand and had depth it I added lighting and shading to form ripples. I put light on the forward facing parts of the ripples and put shadow at the back as the light is coming from the front. The sand was just flat before and the added ripples gave it more depth. I remembered this with my final product.
What have you learned during this project?
I have learnt a lot during this project. The biggest thing for me would be appealing to a demographic and having to design your product around the demographic. The demographic had to be considered in every decision: Colour, shapes, ideas and style. It restricted me in a way but it also gave me a guideline so I knew what I could do so I was never stuck. It’s prepared me for designing products for a certain demographic as that is a very important thing to consider in industry.
I was able to learn more about shading and I got to explore my own style throughout this project. I made several mistakes that I managed to fix throughout the project which really helped me.
I really enjoyed creating a rocky diorama with a dryer environment as it showed me how to approach the different surfaces like rock, sand and flowers, I haven’t used a range of different objects in a scene like this before so it was very fun to do.
Roxanne's Development Blog (Second year) 