How has the development of your project been influenced by your research on working practices for your chosen profession?:
My projects development was influenced by workflows found while researching professional workflows, one of the techniques I picked up was working in greyscale for my furniture ideas. In the professional design workflow the artist paints in greytone which is something I tried in my furniture design, this way the shape and form of the ideas rather than the colours.
Something I picked up from the video was tracing, while I’m still unsure on tracing other peoples work I decided to trace my own work to speed up the final process of my work, alterations were made to the process of inking to make the shapes in the character design rounder.
Has the development of your project been affected by your research into historical and contemporary influences for your chosen profession?:
The historical research I did along with the cultural research I did for my written report didn’t effect my work as much as the work flow research did, but some parts of my character design were influenced by fashion norms being broken. I made my male’s outfit feminine and gave him makeup along with my female character so that the characters don’t look grounded in today’s fashion ideals. As well as this strong shapes were used in the design, something that is popular in modern character design.
Reflect on your learning and skills – What you have done and why you have done it?:
Through this project I actually learnt a lot during this project, mainly texturing, effects and quicker ways of working.
Texturing was something I learnt from one of my favourite youtubers called Anya Butler, it was this video specifically that I got the idea of applying textures over my work for a final effect, it really gave my work the final wow effect that it needed in the end.
Before my character art was rather flat without any textures. It wasn’t that interesting before and the textures gave the pieces a little more depth wich made it better in my eyes.
Another thing I learnt and did in this project was use tracing in my work flow, I learnt this from the character work flow video. Like I said I’m not sure about tracing other peoples work but I traced over my designs to speed up my workflow, which really helped me out.
Sum up your ongoing evaluations/opinions/reflections that you documented during the project.:
Overall I really enjoyed this unit, I learnt a lot more than I usually would about workflows, techniques and how to work quickly because I challenged myself. Drawing different designs over the same asset was a quick and easy way to produce a large amount of design work.
Designing furniture in greyscale helped out a lot with understanding the dynamic shapes to identify what did and didn’t work, I picked this up from the character work flow video from unit 11. I also learnt about how to use overlay textures to make my work pop more and have more depth, these are thing sthat have helped me both inside and outside of the project.
I also challenged myself to create an urban environment, I took what I knew and what I had already learnt about textures and structure and applied it to my work, I was surprised but it turned out really well in the end.
Overall the unit has really challenged me to think outside of the box with how I work and has taught me loads about work flows and how to speed up my work process.
What do you feel has worked well and what did not work well? What could you do to improve your work?:
I think the overall tone, style and shading style of my character sheets worked really well. It was sleek, smooth and clean, along with this the added textures really helped the pieces pop. My quick workflows really helped me get loads of design work done in a short amount of time.
I liked my environment but it doesn’t seem to be as polished as my other work, this could be due to me painting in a new style that I haven’t tried yet. It just don’t look as clean as my other work which is the only thing that didn’t work out as well.
Reflect on peer and tutor feedback:
The only official peer review I had was for the the written report, I didn’t get to do the peer review as I was off the day it was done (they day before hand in) so I wasn’t able to do the ideas gen peer review. I did however get the grades I wanted in the end for ideas gen which makes me happy, I went through a check list to make sure I had everything multiple times.
The only thing I needed to change was where the bibliography was in the section.
I don’t know whether it can be considered feedback, but my art tutor showed me a character design book which had information on poses that helped me out with the final character poses on my reference sheets. It gave information about how to communicate personality through posing and things to consider about anatomy.
What have you learnt during this project?:
In this project I have learnt more than I usually would on the average project due to the tutorials I have watched.
I have learnt about texturing in art to create a deeper and interesting effect that can’t be achieved with flat shading and brush strokes. Textures can be used for environments and characters. I learnt this from Anya Butler’s texturing video during this unit.
As well as this I have learnt that it is possible to design in greyscale (A technique I used for furniture design.) It’s easier to understand shape and form this way. I took this technique from the workflow video I used in my unit 12 report. As well as this my work could be used for colour ideas, as colour can be applied underneath.
I learnt about creating work at a fast pace through practical work and practice. My way of drawing and using photoshop has improved greatly since starting digital art at home (Last May), part of this improvement is my speed and final product which have come hand in hand to create a good amount of work with good quality in a short amount of time.
Roxanne's Development Blog (Second year) 