Creative Research

For this module I will be trying to improve both the quality and quantity of work I can produce. I know that if I'm going to have a chance at working in the games industry I'll need to be able to work quickly and efficiently, while still keeping up a high standard of work. Here is one of the most recent images I completed towards the start of this module.

While I am pretty happy with it, I know there's a lot that can be improved. The main problem I find though is that it took far too long to create. In that time I feel like I should have been able to get several images done. Studying things like composition, colour theory lighting would all help to make a better image. And I think it would be hugely useful to look into methods and techniques used by artists working in the film and game industries to produce work as quickly as they need to. In these industries there are constant deadlines, and being able to stick to them will be very important.




Looking into ways I could improve my workflow I noticed that something a lot of artists creating concept art do is to take photographs with the textures they are looking for and work that into the images they create. This would save a lot of time and be very useful to 3D modellers and texturers. Giving them the details they need to know, like what an objects surface is meant to be like. One problem I noticed with my first picture is that the rocks all look very similar. In real life there would be far more varyation in the amount of cracks and scratches on the surface, while areas exposed to a lot of water might be smoothed down over time. Or maybe there would be moss or limpets attached to them. This kind of detail could take forever to do if the scene I'm painting has many different elements within it. And I don't think spending hours on these small details would be the best use of a concept artists time.  

My first attempt at using photo textures in my work. I was reasonably happy with how this turned out at first. But now looking at it I can see so many problems with blending the different areas together. I think at the time I was trying a bit too hard to be quick, rather than learning how to use this method first. I also felt a bit guilty using these and not hand painting every detail, so I tried to paint over many of the textures. However, the point of concept art isn't to just paint pretty pictures. It needs to convey the idea and details of a scene to whoever might be using it. Whether its a film director planning out a scene or a 3D modeller who needs to know what exactly they are meant to be making. And having spent a lot of time trying out this technique I feel it works perfectly for that. 

Here I started using textures a bit more freely, however I think they need to be finessed a little more.I did think it worked pretty well for hinting at small details like flowers and the long uncut grass though.

In this image I felt overlaying the textures proved invaluable, really helping to sell the idea of a cluttered environment and hinting at the all the equipment without having to go into too much detail. This particular image would most likely be geared more towards selling the atmosphere and feeling of a scene rather than giving specific info to set designers or modellers etc.

Here I decided to try a more subtle way of using the textures, blending them slightly better to add just a little bit more detail to help get the material of certain surfaces across better.

Again continuing with this idea, here I only used a very low opacity grass texture while everything else was painted in Photoshop. I think it works pretty well, and although the image would have been much the same without it, the extra texture reinforces the idea that it is meant to be grass.

I feel like this painting was the most successful use of photographic textures I did. I feel like the textures here are subtle enough not to distract from the overall image, but at the same are clear enough to give anyone looking at it a good idea what each surface is supposed to look and feel like.

Another area I spent some time looking into was the use of 3D models to block out a scene and find the best composition to show the scene from. This freed up a lot of time once the image was rendered out and ready to paint over. There was no need to worry too much about composition or perspective as that had already been sorted out earlier. This would leave more time to focus on making sure things like lighting and design are done properly. 

I did find that my main problem with this method was that I found it very restrictive. Once the layout was set I found it difficutly to bring myself to change anthing, even if I thought it would actually improve things like composition or design. I felt like if I did change anything it would mean that all the work I had previously done in Maya was for nothing. In this first attempt I feel like the design ended up being very blocky rather than the sleek look I had originally intended to go for.

In this second attempt I made a more conscious decision to let myself change things if I thought it would benefit the scene. I feel like while the actual painting isn't as well done as the previous attempt I was glad not to have been so constrained by the 3D blockout. I imagine that with more time spent trying this technique this issue could be overcome, but for now I don't really feel like it helped me all that much.

In scontrast to the previous efforts, these next few images turned out much more like how I wanted. I entered the 2014 Scottish Game Jame with Pixel Blimp and created concept art for them there. As the game jam was only 48 hours, and most of the concept art would be needed much sooner than this, there was absolutely no time to spend on pointless detailing or unnecessary polish. This was far more rewarding than I had imagined it would be. Due to not having to worry about making highly technical images I was able to make much more of the time I had and focus more on design and iteration. This is a lot more like how I would imagine a concept artist working professionally would work, with more emphasis on the actual subject than on presentation or flair. 

In one of the Creative Research labs I talked to Brian a bit about how I could work towards becoming an environment artist while still making exploring the use of concept art. We talked about textures and the effect that they could have on a model. And how I could try and tie my 3D environments and concept art more closely to each other.

Having not yet started on my Spatial Constructs module I felt like that would be the perfect chance to do this. But rather than base it off my own art I instead chose to take inspiration from one of my favourite painters, John Lowrie Morrison. Or Jolomo as he signs his work. Looking at his and other Scottish Colourist's work, as well as Impressionist Painters like Monet I decided that the main thing I would aim for was the think, expressive and free brush strokes, and their bold and often bright colour pallets.

I found that the best way to get across the painterly brush stokes was to overlay a photo of the style of painting that I would like over the coloured diffuse map. And then create Normal and Specular maps from this. These were especially important as they got across both the thickness of the bold paint strokes as well as replicating the look of wet paint straight out of the tube.

One area I would like to have done better was the colours.In Jolomo's paintings he uses very bright and saturated colours, often in unlikely places, but still manages to capture the feeling of what or where he is painting. I found it very difficult to apply this within a fully 3D environment as some angles might look the way I had wanted; while others would look absolutely awful and make no sense at all. One way this might be fixed could be if you were to design the environment in such a way that it funnels the player into certain locations to view objects at the best angle. But otherwise I'm ot sure what else could be done. I enjoyed trying to get that effect though and would definitely consider trying again with less of a deadline looming up