After doing the needed research it is now time to move onto the design process. Instead of going straight into blocking out in maya or just drawing out the whole thing, I am working out the overall style of the scene with the asset design first.
The first thing I did here was silhouetting, I chose 4-8 year old girls and typically they like softer looking products so I had to find a way of presenting cacti as cute rather than dangerous and aggressive as dangerous and aggressive objects wouldn’t be suited for the demographic. I experimented with different ways of drawing out the cacti, spike size, sections etc. In the first few cacti I ended up making the spikes too thick by actually drawing them on, along with the separation of each section they just looked like a spiky turtle shell to me. All of this was done to soften the the look of the cacti and to prepare it for the style I want to do for my diorama.
I then moved onto creating a coloured test piece to use for colour and lighting experimentation. As well as this I thought it would be easier to paint on the spikes and detail in colour rather than drawing it out in black and white.
In my proposal I said I wanted to have a pink and purple hue over my scene to get the pink colours in for my demographic. While in theory it should work I don’t think the technique I used was the best, rather than casting a hue I made a sort of glowing effect which to me isn’t what I was looking for. The way natural lighting works is that it changes. Extra lighting isn’t added over already existing lighting in colour, the lighting itself should change colour and alter the overall hue of the scene.
I duplicated my cacti and cast over a redish pink hue, to me this works significantly better than the added pink and purple lighting as it doesn’t interfere with the lighting and shading already there and acts more as an overlay of tone rather than added lighting.
After this I moved over to cacti grouping and flower colours, I tried out red and purple as they were flower colours I found on my cacti mood board. At the moment orange, reds and yellows seem like the nicest as purple would clash with the green and oranges in the scene in a way that I wouldn’t want it to.
I was advised by my tutor to try going into thumbnailing for my overall scene. I created some layout ideas using the assets I plan to have in the scene. I tried different ideas and played around with space and positioning. Out of all of them I like the first and second ones (going from left to right on the top row). I like them as there isn’t a lot of negative space in the scenes and there is a nice balance between all of the different types of assets. The other four to me have a lot of negative space which hasn’t been used or left properly so they just look unfinished to me.
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, I really like the look of this as it enclosed the diorama to the right.
I then wanted to try out something else with the canyon idea and try to make it an actual canyon, and not just two small cliffs. I like how the cliff to the right goes back here since it shows the scene going back and it gives the scene a sense of exploration and depth.
I then tried to expand the left hand cliff to try and enclose the canyon more. I didn’t like how the left handed cliff looked as it felt visually cluttered and it looked like it was competing with the saguaro cactus at the edge for attention. As well as this the angle feels off to me here so the cliff seemed off that way too. I want to continue playing around with the actual size of the canyon as the size here looks a bit too overwhelming.
I then removed the cliff extension on the left and increased the opening of the canyon, I did this by removing the extra rocks and shrubs that were in front of the left hand cliff as it made the scene look visually cluttered to me. Cacti, succulents, the canyon and small rocks seemed enough to me and big rocks and shrubs seemed too much to me here.
I then decreased the size of the right hand canyon a tiny bit as the canyon seemed too overarching before and it was rather overwhelming, I like it a lot more like this as it looks a lot less overwhelming despite only decreasing it a tiny bit.
To understand the overall layout of the scene better I added a quick dash of colour. After adding colour to break down the scene I became unsure of the cliffs again as they looked blocky and overwhelming all the sudden. (Actual colour ideas are further down this page, this was just to break down the scene this colour use).
I tried to remove the right hand cliff to see if that would help at all incase it was due to the whole canyon in general being in the whole background, however this just made the scene bare after, this was when I realized it may be due to the colour I had quickly added to the canyon as in the west rocks and canyons are mostly oranges hence why it might not work here.
I then softened the colour of the cliffs and added a darker tone inside the canyon to break up the intense and blocked colours. I then liked the cliffs significantly more as the tone of the colours now fit in with the scene. (Keep in mind these aren’t the final colours, this was just done to create a clearer understanding of the layout).
To get a better understanding of this design I went into Maya to create a quick blockout of this design, blocking out can be done in concept art and design to gain spatial awareness of a design. Spatial awareness is very important in design and blocking out is a very good tool for this. Blockouts can also can be used to paint over and create your final product, it is an easy trick as the perspective is all done for you in a blockout. To me the space and layout works here and I am happy with how it worked out. My tutor gave me to advice to play around with the blockout a little more with height and scale as things like the cacti didn’t look right scale wise. I was also told to keep narrative in mind as the entrance of the canyon shows the beginning of a journey in a way.
I then went and had a play around with the block out so the scale was much more accurate to the actual design. I decreased the size of the cacti and increased the size of the cliffs. As well as this I decreased the size of the opening in the canyon. It looks better like this, the blockout I made here can be used to paint over in order to help with structure, layout and perspective.
One of my friends recommended bringing out the top part of the diorama like in the concept piece to make the scene a little more accurate to the design, I managed to do this by connecting the lower part of the diorama with two segments and extruding them out and bringing them up a little.
After going through this blockout process I made some test pieces in photoshop to understand how cacti could potentially look in the scene. I experimented with shapes, grouping, my style, and colours. I drew all of the assets in the painted style I have developed and am using for the diorama. I think the cacti have translated well into my style and I think I successfully softened them to suit the needs of my audience (4-8 year old girls). I played around with some of the colours on the flowers, something that can be changed and played around with. I used red, pink, an orange colour and purple with the flower ideas. I really like the red and pink colour ideas because these two colours would contrast well with green of the cacti.
I used my final thumbnail idea to sketch out a basic structure of the diorama. I didn’t go into too much detail as I like to add detail in as I’m painting because it’s easier for me to add it in during the painting process and I can just focus on the overall structure of the piece here first.
After creating this sketch I went in and painted over the sketch, this way I could add shading and detail as I went so that way I can build up the scene. While shading parts of the piece I would lock the layer so when I was shading I wouldn’t go out of my desired area with the shading. This is how I achieved the look in my style.
While painting the piece I added some extra rocks here and there as the sand here looked a little too much and I wanted to break it down a little with rocks. As well as this I placed succulents across the ground. You may notice the rock formation underneath the diorama is different here, I made the decision to make it rocky instead because I felt the scene would be much more cohesive this way that with soil, roots and water. The dark brown soil with the water didn’t suit the overall scene.
To me to rock formations went down too far so I decreased the length of the rocks to make the scene a little more compact and smaller. The rocks looking too long resulted in the scene looking too thin and too long with no balance of the scene. I changed it for this reason.
In my idea I said I wanted my scene to have sunset lighting, I said this because my demographic is 4-8 year old girls and research has shown this demographic likes pinks and purples so I wanted to incorporate these colours through natural but somewhat stylized lighting. I played around with the colour levels and painted in more prominent shadows. I really like how it turned out here. What I am going to try and change is how the light and dark areas contrast, since I don’t feel there is enough lighter areas here, the lighting is darker but the sun would still be out so there is both light and shadow.
A small detail my tutor told me to work on was 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.
After finishing the final concept I moved onto sunset light colour tests. My demographic is 4-8 year old girls so when to comes to colour pink and purple are known to be colours that draw young girls in. I changed the colour hue to a somewhat more purple colour scheme. I like this colour idea, it’s a little darker the first colour idea which may put my demographic off so I would need to consider that fact.
I tried more saturation here with brighter colours just to see how that would look. I personally don’t think it works here as the brightness and saturation is too exaggerated here for natural lighting (I understand you can exaggerate lighting here but I don’t think it works to this level here). It was good to try it out just in case though.
I took a small departure from pink and purple to see what a more orange light could look like. I actually really like how it looks here, it’s very warm and to me it’s a balance between the darker purple and the original pink I started with and I really like it. My only complaint is that demographic wise it would go against my colour research which I really want to stick with and use. As well as this it looks like it is in natural day light where the sun isn’t completely setting which isn’t what I really want in this diorama.
After having a think about it from an artistic point of view along with my demographic research, I have decided I will be sticking with my original idea for a few reasons. The first reason is the pink lighting, as I have said before young girls love pink and purple so if I wanted to successfully create a product for that demographic I would need to have the right colours for it. Purple was nice but I felt it looked a little too dark and I needed the colours to pop in order to meet the needs of my audience.
The last type of colour idea for me to work on was the flowers, although I said the red and pinks would look good together with the green because they are contrasting colours on the colour wheel, I feel that I should just try out the three flower colours I liked: Pink, yellow and the already used red.
The first colour I tried out was yellow. The yellow looks nice as it still contrasts and it looks a little bubbly and bright. The issue with yellow flowers is that they melt in with the sand too much.
I then tried out pink flowers. I don’t think it works here because the scene itself is covered in pink light so it makes it hard to distinguish the flowers here against other surfaces. The scene is just pinks so there is nothing to break it up for me and it may also be hard for others to pcik up the flowers if they are this colour
After pink didn’t work I tried out two different colours, I used pink and yellow in a mixed idea. I used pink on the barrel cacti as they are against the sand so they could be distinguished. I did the same to the flowers on the rabbit cacti and the saguaro cacti as they are against pink hued rocks. While I think it was a good idea to try out different flower colours at once I think the colors are way too much together. I like how they look but I feel that all of the colours together are too overwhelming for the colour palette for my audience.
In the end I have chosen the first lighting idea with red flowers as it fits my demographics needs, as well as this it all fits together and looks nice colour wise. This is the design I will be using.
Something I wanted to test out before moving onto the final product was texturing for the rocks. I chose then as I looked at the final concept and thought about whether or not I needed to add to the rocks at all. My style is very simple and stylized here so having realistic and detailed textures in my art for this project wouldn’t suit the final product. To me it looks nice but it wouldn’t suit the scene due to the huge about of detail in the art which would be found in the rocks.
Techniques from class:
We have been thinking a lot about effective ways of designing and presenting our final products when they are designed. During an art class we learnt about painting over blocked out models. This technique can be useful for a number of resons, the first reason is that the perspective is all there, you don’t have to worry about scale as the position is all there, and if you need other angles you can just go into maya and screenshot the scene from a different angle. Another reason would be that if you are working on colour ideas you can just paint over the model, there is no need to redraw it or duplicate layers etc. The technique is new to me and the perspective of the painted details is a little off (The tiles are too flat facing here) but this is a technique I would love to use in my product!
A lot of diorama art uses what is known as isometric art, this can be achieved using straight lines that follow the unique grid that can be seen in the image below. The image we are replicating follows the grid.
We then went ahead and created the inking for the scene, we followed the guidelines we made in order to keep the scene to scale. I had to redo a few lines as they went off the graphed lines sometimes, I really enjoyed this process of art.
I can’t do isometric art for my diorama as it goes against my chosen style however I can see myself using this technique in the future and I would love to finish this diorama off at home!
I then went home and finished the isometric art. I finished the flat colours and coloured the line art. I did this by locking the layer and painting over the lineart.
After this I decided I didn’t want line art so I removed the lineart and added shading to the scene. I really like how it turned out overall and I would love to try isometric art again.
Roxanne's Development Blog (Second year) 