DMUGA Week 18 - 'Boot camp': Visual Design

Before starting this, as I write this now I can truly say that I am very excited to hopefully experience that same learning curve as I did for Game Production. I know that we'll be doing work on perspective, graphic tablet (of which I've NEVER used before), and produce some cool concepts for vehicles.

Day 1 - Introduction

The first day in terms of timetabled lessons only consisted of the project introduction for the week. This involved some example work of Mitch and his amazing digital painting that didn't take very long (Would take me ages to produce that standard of work). I came out of the intro lesson feeling alright, maybe a bit worried as to what to do, but not too bad. I spent the rest of the day looking for a book to bring into the next lesson, drew some silhouettes of my chosen object (a slingshot), and put together a mood board to see what other things already exist in this area + maybe tilt towards what kinda of vehicle I might go for based on the silhouettes I already have. Here's what they looked like:

Silhouettes #1

Silhouettes #2

Mood Board #2

Mood Board #1

Silhouettes #4

Silhouettes #3

From these silhouettes, I brainstormed random things using either the whole silhouette or part of one - admittedly they do just look like 'doodles'...:

Brainstorm #1

Brainstorm #2

Now, as bad as these are, I could have picked almost any one of these and made them 1000x better through development. Although, to be honest I wasn't entirely sure as to what things we need to cover, so I moved on to Tuesday to see how others were getting on (which I know you shouldn't do; focus on your work and your work ALONE, look to others for inspiration and aspiration).

Day 2 - Lost in what to do & making a decision as to what to make

After the first day, I wasn't feeling great about the amount I'd done, but not completely terrible. Not sure how to go about this/what they want from us exactly, I made a quick mind map of many different types of vehicles I could potentially go for, and distilled which ones were the most appealing and fit with the shapes gathered from the silhouettes.

Vehicle type mind-map

Quick briefs for 5 chosen vehicles

 From the mind-map I chose 5 potential vehicle types and wrote briefs & very short spec points on each one. Some of the ideas didn't seem very viable, so ruled them out, and decided upon an underwater travel pod.

Idea #1

Idea #2

Ideas #3 & #'4

Idea #5

 My first idea was one of my favourites, it was aesthetically good, the function of how it worked seemed viable, and would probably be a good choice. #2 and #4 weren't amazing ideas, again viable, but they just didn't appeal to me as much. #3's shape as you can see was clearly based off of one of the silhouettes of my slingshot, and I think it would make a very nice pod for 2-5 people. #5 in my opinion was aesthetically the most appealing, and I liked everything about it and so that was my chosen vehicle.




Once I had done these and chosen which one I wanted to do, I knew the next thing to do was a little bit of research as to how it would actually work and if it could be done. Now, there isn't any new technology for this, so that wasn't a major concern. I did however look at how a submarine works to keep the occupants inside alive and well. The reason why this day is titled the way it is, is because of what I've already mentioned, and I was waiting until Wednesday's first lesson about the project to see what it was we needed to do (Once again, BAD IDEA... Never wait for something).

Day 3 - First lesson & did it just click?

 So, finally it came to the first lesson and I was excited to see what we were going to do. Basically, "you should have all already started your projects", so I was thinking "yeah sure that's ok, I've done a little bit, now what next?", and it turns out that obviously we should have already been well away with things and have done a lot of work. I was then thinking to myself "Ok, so I have a small amount of work and I know I need to develop my idea and do different variations, try different things, evaluate them etc..." But for whatever reason, once that session was over, I just didn't do that. Honestly, I think it was my body saying no to work from the unbelievable amount of time I put into the 3D project the previous week.

Anyway, during this session we looked at some more silhouettes and did some quick perspective drawings. Now, I know I can draw in perspective; I've been doing it since GCSE design, but it usually takes me a long time to get them right. However, from doing this short and quick exercise, something clicked and now everything I did after that I tried to put things into perspective a lot faster.

Lesson - Silhouettes #1

Lesson - Perspective #1

These haven't got the greatest perspective, but I'm glad that I did them all in a couple of mins.






We had to rush through these exercises in order to get to a lecture at 12 o' clock. This lecture was out of the blue and we had no idea what this 'TV Chef' was coming to us to talk about. It just so happens that the amazing "Crytek - off the map" competition work that some 3rd years had made, was being used by this man in his TV series that he's trying to get aired. Without going in to detail, he was looking for more work like that but of different places in history. I quite liked the idea and definitely think it would be extremely fun creating that type of work for this purpose.
After the lecture as I have said, I was supposed to buckle down and work until the evening, but all I managed was this:

Basic understanding of submarines

How my idea would work

An idea for the interior & floor plan

Final Draft

I am most definitely not proud of the amount of work produced, and at this point, all I was thinking about was us being able to use the graphics tablets the next day - I had no idea what to expect; would I be any good?

Day 4 - Working on a Cintiq = amazing!

Here came the day that for the first time in my life that I'd even touched a graphics tablet. Mitch gave us a very short introduction to them and just let us play about/get used to how they worked. Obviously, a lot of other people were used to graphics tablets, or had at least used one before to do digital painting in Photoshop, so they just got on with their vehicle designs. I on the other hand was sitting there for about half an hour doing sphere after sphere, shading it to try and get it to look 3D. I have to say that as basic as this is, I really loved the exercise and wanted to produce one that looked pretty good. Here's the first attempt, and my tenth attempt:

1st Attempt

10th Attempt

As you can see, there is a big difference between the two, the lighting is better, the blending is smoother, and generally a big improvement. Looking at it now though, there should really be a brighter spot towards the top right to use a better range/'make it pop'.

I then spent the next couple of hours trying to sketch out my current vehicle and this is what I ended up with:

1st attempt at the vehicle

This was not all of the ones I sketched, and I most definitely spent a good couple of hours 'playing about' with colours and getting more used to the tablet. I thought to myself that this is only a draft, and it's far from being a final. So, I got to work on the outline of my final one, being extremely careful about all of my lines and making sure the contour of it looked good. I then proceeded to put on a base colour, and then as it was already 6 o' clock, I left to make myself some dinner - Seeing as I don't have a graphics tablet myself, I didn't do any more work on it until the next day.

Day 5 - Final digital paints & project hand-in

Friday morning I was up rather early to scan in the work I'd done and made my way to the labs to finish off my final pieces. I literally spent all day doing these, and even though I'm slow now, I'll hopefully speed up the more I use them.

Final Digital Paint - Underwater travel pod

Underwater travel pod interior

From what I have said previously, I was looking for the same learning curve in visual design as I did in game production, and did I get it? Well, despite the complete lack of overall work, I most definitely did have a big learning curve in terms of perspective, and digital painting. I mean, in the space of one day, I went from that abomination of a sphere, to this; even though this isn't particularly amazing in comparison to a lot of other people's, I am proud of the improvement I have made.

What I will say that I do not like at all was how I handled this project. It is EXTREMELY vague, and rather sloppy. As previously stated, I think it must have been the strict hours I put myself under the week before in game production, and just ran out of steam for this week. No doubt I will get some choice words from Chris about how I haven't done enough, but I know I haven't, I know why, and I do actually understand the design process; it just hasn't been shown here.
I did Product design at A-level and it was drilled into my head with the coursework. So Chris, if you do read this, I apologise for the lack of work on this project, and at the end of the year during the exam period, this is one of the ones I want to revisit and do justice.
To end on a brighter note, I have just ordered a Wacom Bamboo tablet and am very excited to practice on it when I can and will hopefully make many more improvements. These past 2 weeks have certainly been interesting, I have learnt a lot, and wouldn't mind doing something similar in the future because it has been rather beneficial to my education.