Wednesday 11th

I spent today looking at ideas for my backgrounds i came up with the idea of having grass on all the bug images for time numbers and for the final set, totem polls. As you can see below after spending some time making these and wasting a day i decided that when looking at them they took away from the images instead enhancing them and instead went for a simple gradient related colours. Although bitter as i spent a day converting all my images  until i realised it was a mistake i know i have made the correct decision.

Monday 9th

After having finished my final piece i spent today looking at work that I've done seeing what i want to return to change/finish or make look better. Everything received a little polish up but in particular i looked at finishing off my time piece final piece as it didn't have a background and didn't look very done! So i put it on a ledge maybe a mantle piece where you might find the item in a game! I also tried to distort the image by painting in the distortion around the glass in the hope to give the illusion of real glass on the snow globe. I also had another stab at the bug projects character page as i believed it needed a look at as it really wasn't a good representation of what i can do. Below are the updated images.

Sunday 8th

The last few days i have spent working on my final piece for my character project for the final piece we were asked to pose to emote. So keeping this in mind i posed my character in the way i would imagine my character would be seen like i.e. i went with him sat cross legged lent against his staff with his bird. For this image i really tried pushing myself and decided to bring in the wind in my final piece as i thought with his cloak the imagery could make for an interesting image and pose. Im really happy with the way it turned out with the darks on lights in the sky and in the cloak and the cloak.

Thursday 5th

After completing my model sheet yesterday the next thing for me to look at doing was my character sheet. This posed some real difficult decisions to make as i believed that a character sheet shows off characteristics that aren't common amongst over humans for example not facial expressions. So i decided to show off a characteristic of the staff that wasn't explicitly clear in some of the previous drawings of the staff. The staff is designed to act like a "magic tree staff" i.e. when the shaman goes into the trance to control the bird's (dogs from the story). He plants the staff into the ground and instantly it grows into the earth giving the shaman something to lean against when he's not in control of his body. I also did an image of him whistling as this acts like the tinder box and allows him to take control of the birds and enter the trance. After doing this i thought that i should show the process that the eyes take from normal into the trance. 

Wednesday 4th

After all the iteration of the last few days I put all my decision making to the test and make the model sheet for the shaman character using the face of the old native american, the clothing iterations i had made. Overall i think the character sheet came out really good especially as i drew it from eye not using any stock photos of people standing in the correct stances.

Tuesday 3rd

I focused on  more iterations today looking at what colour variations i could do with the fur around the cloak painting i did yesterday. I decided just to change the colour of the fur because of the fact that i really like the bland colour of the grey brown cloak as it looks like it could be leather from an animal on the planes that a native american would have lived on. I also thought that maybe the fur could change due to the animal that was hunted and the fur had came from. The other iteration that i had looked at today was the shaman eyes of my old native american. After looking at the black and white eyes i decided to go with the white eyes due to the fact that the native american's idea on shamanism is to walk amongst the spirit realm and so i thought white was more of a correct image choice over the black.

Monday 2nd

I spent today focusing on clothes design, as id decided that i was doing the shaman and he was going to be an old native american i decided to look at old native american trinkets and began with a neckless design. I ended up going with a wooden bird design as the neckless as I'm planning on making the native american spirits a big part of the design of my native american due to the fact that i might represent the dogs in the form. After i moved on to clothe design, i started with a civil war uniform design and a traditional native american outfit design. Once i'd finished designing each i decided to go with the traditional native american outfit as it didn't have as many constraints that the civil war uniform had. I then did a variety of outfit designs chose the best and made that in high detail adding in  the neckless as the focal point of the design. I then moved on to looking at the spirit animal for the design i chose two too sketch up quickly a wolf with three eyes for each dog which i felt was too on the nose and a falcon with eyes the size of tea cups. Due to the wolf feeling to on the nose i went with the falcon drawing it in colour not going into too much detail due to the size that the image would be but enough for depth. I also made the wings red that refers back to the red in the neckless. In the idea that maybe the native american carved it in the mind of the falcon.

Thursday 29th

As i want to keep to some form of a formality In the civil war uniform i.e keeping them very standardised and keeping in line with regulations. So some where i thought i could maybe be a little creative and something that is of great importance as it represents the tinder box is the drum so are below are some drums looking a traditional native american drum iterations and some civil war drummer boys drums.

Tuesday 27th

Today i focussed in on my face paint doing in colour on the black and white faces. I then decided it was time to bring my character to life painting in skin colours and the white hair and eyes for added shaman affect, I'm really happy with the way they turned out with some real life and character.

Monday 26th

The last few days I've spent doing more silhouetes looking at the witch character as some food for thought. I decided the way i could interpret this character into my time period could be to use her as a native american shaman that talks to the wolfs. I did some silhouettes and one that looks rather similar to the guy i did with drum from my previous post. After this i decided i wanted to do a guy for sure, i just wasn't sure on wether or not to i wanted him to be young or old so i did some silhouetted faces of an old native american and a young native american. Later i did some musical instrument silhouettes due to the fact i know that i want my native american to be using the instrument like the way the tinder box works in the book. I have now been working on some different hair styles and face paints and i also decided that i wanted to go with the older native american due to the fact i really want that to be the feel of painting making him more ancestral rather than young.

Tuesday 20th

The final task is to create a character that is from the time periods we have been given my time period is 1800s America. The character however has to be from the book Hans Christian Andersen's "The Tinderbox", that character then has to be taken into our time periods. Some of the characters that stood out to me are the soldier, witch, the dogs and the princess. Below are some initial silhouettes the soldiers are some soldiers from American Civil War i also did some soldiers in the form of Indians these could also be perceived as the princess too.

Monday 19th

I spent today working up my model sheet. Im not initially happy with my model sheet, if i get any spare time at the end of the project i will probably spend it on this making it better and working up each visual direction and making them closer to the concept art finished version than the sketches at the beginning of the project but the next task is here and i need to move on.

Sunday 18th

The past few day were spent finishing the final concept art image of the snow globe. I really like how the image came out in the end. I may come back to this image later to add some background or maybe some text describing the snow globe as I'm not entirely happy with the white space around the object but i really do like the image as a whole.

Thursday 15th

I spent the last couple of days working up the image with colour and giving the entire image a grounded look, although i did make an artistic choice which was i wanted the image to look like a snow globe and is why i have give bricks a very marshmallow effect. Instead of a more realistic effect with lots of little bricks. When getting to the top and drawing up the cogs i decided i wanted to do a couple of colour variations to see what suited best, i also added more cogs for depth and then grounded the image with some large bricks on top. After doing the colour variations i went in favour of the gold as it popped the most and added some colour where it was needed most.

Tuesday 13th

 After deciding that i wanted to go ahead with the snow globe design and idea. I wanted to do some iterations and on the top of the castle's design as i wasn't too happy with the initial design as it seemed crowded and didn't show off any of the time elements. So i did two more sketches for the top of my keep one with a more traditional feel with bricks running around the top and one with a cog showing off more of the time aspect. I decided the cog was my favourite of all the designs due to the fact that it shows off more of the time aspect and highlights the middle sectioning that is turning in the keep design.

Monday 12th

After drawing my original idea up, i decided that i ought to try something different just to expand on ideas. So today i worked up one of my silhouettes that i did with time and weapons, the bow. I chose the bow as it was the most interesting and intricate design. Although i enjoyed painting up the bow design the idea behind the snow globe design was more interesting. My idea for the weapons however might be that the weapons will be in the keep of the castle and you can use them inside the keep against some time inspired creatures inside.

Sunday 11th

The last couple of days I've spent sketching up the design for my time piece, i decided to go with my snow globe maze idea which hopefully can be understood in the sketch below. The idea is that when you touch the snow globe it sucks you in and you have to scale the inner keep to make it to the top, in the bottom of the snow globe is a watch and every fifteen minutes the keep changes much like a rubber cube would creating the maze. The only way to exit the maze is by getting to the top.

Thursday 8th

Today i did some more weapon silhouettes/ iterations on what i have previously done. These included iterations on my wind up robots including one wind up nut cracker toy. I then did some more work on time weapons. The last thing i did was some very basic iterations of my globes. The idea behind the globes are that they are an object that if you touch you get sucked into, and as time goes on in the places like a castle the corridors change like a maze and the only way out is if you can work your way too the middle.

Tuesday 6th

This morning started with a workshop with Nigel after getting an email about task two, to create a time piece, yesterday i wanted to wait until today to begin because i was a bit foggy about the second task and how creative we were allowed to be. So instead yesterday i did my contextual studies and got them out the way. At the workshop Nigel told us we could be as creative as we pleased and so i begun the process again. Below are the beginnings of my silhouettes ranging from a typical sun dial to a key that changes shape as time goes on.

Contextual Studies Task two

1980-Pacman

This as far as i can tell is the first character in video games and so is the reasoning behind why i chose this character.

Wikipedia (2001) Pacman [Internet] Available from:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man#/media/File:Pac-man.png [Accessed October 2015] 

1986- Samus Aran

I chose this character Samus due to the fact that she was the first prominent female video game character created by Nintendo. She first appeared in the NES cartridge Metriod and is still in games these days. 

Wikipedia (2001) Metriod Prime [Internet] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samus_Aran#/media/File:Metroidprime3_1.png [Accessed October 2015]

1992-Scorpion

This choice was made more based on the game, Mortal Kombat. There was a lot of controversy at the time when this game was released due to the gore in the game and the use of digitalised graphics with the this then resulting in the introduction of age-specific content ratings for video games.

Wikipedia (2001) Scorpion [Internet] Available form: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpion_%28Mortal_Kombat%29#/media/File:ScorpionMKXRender.png [Accessed October 2015]

2008-Online profile

This ‘character’ was chosen due to the fact that this was one of the first times I'd heard of you using face mapping on an online character to create this was in the game  Rainbow Six Vegas 2  i.e. you coud use the camera add on for the Xbox 360 and it would take a photo of your face and then map it to the blank character screen. This wasn't perfect and could result in some funny images.

Pixel Robot (2012) Face Map [Internet] Available from:http://www.pixelrobot.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/vegas2_ash2.jpg [Accessed October 2015]

2013-Joel

I chose Joel from the Last of Us as my last character to show the graphical quality that video games have made in there short life time. For this character you can see in game how motion tracking has been done and how it has improved the overall quality of the characters overall quality of animation. 

Wikipedia (2001) Joel [Internet] Available from:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_of_Us#/media/File:Video_Game_Cover_-_The_Last_of_Us.jpg [Accessed October 2015] 

Contextual Studies Task one

Caillios's Classification of games

	Agon	Alea	Ilinx	Mimicry
Last of Us	X	X		X
Destiny	X	X		X
Skyrim				X
Red Dead Redemption	X	X		X
Uncharted; Drakes deception	X	X		X

Why?

Last of Us- I put an X in the Agon box due to the fact that this game has a competitive online aspect. I choose Alea for this game too due to the fact that there is a set narrative that cant be changed, a ‘destiny’. I also ticked Mimicry due to the fact that you role-play in the game as Joel and Ellie seeing this fictional post apocalyptic world through their eyes.

Destiny- This game also has an online competitive multiplayer scene like the others but is more heavily emphasised than the rest. This like the others also has a predetermined narrative that can’t be changed but it also has a chance system when it comes to loot. You collect loot in the game, unlike the others it is by chance if you get good gear over bad. Also like the others this game puts you in a fictional world but unlike the others you play as a character of your choosing not a predetermined avatar like that of Joel and Ellie.

Skyrim- For this game i could only put it into the Mimicry box due to the fact that you can make decisions for yourself that alters the future narrative. This game however does put a massive emphasis on the Mimicry due to the fact that the developers Bethesda Softworks wants to immerse the gamer into a fictional reality focusing heavily on the details. 

Red Dead Redemption- This game also supports an online multiplayer. I put this game also into the Alea section due to the fact that this too does have a set narrative but it does support decision making but on small scale. I.e. if you were to kill someone this would trigger a bounty but there would be no long time affect in the story. This game is set in a fictional cowboy time period and emphasis heavily on the small details to immerse the gamer i.e. playing poker.

Uncharted; Drakes Deception- Like the previous NaughtyDog title this game has a multiplayer attached putting it in the Agon box. This game is known for its narrative set pieces and is why its been put into the Alea box due to the fact that there is no decision making done by the player. Like all my games this game has been put into Mimicry due to the fact that you play as Nathan Drake the protagonist in the story and you follow him and see the world through his eyes. 

Sunday 4th

After finishing my shift, i began the character sheet, i found this to be easier after doing the final piece as it allowed me too really think about its environment what it eats, how it eats and got an idea of how to make it move and how id want it animated.

Final Concept of Insect