Art Style Mixing

The final assignment was to draw a character in three different art styles, specifically Marek Okon, Ashley Wood and Sean Galloway.

Marek's art style is highly detailed using low amounts of detail, relying on shading to create definition. Most of his work with humans are merged with photographs, but some of his other work is not.

Ashley Wood's style is the complete opposite, using heavy and light strokes in a wild fashion along with some colour shading and halftone patterns in some cases. 

Sean Galloway's art style is fairly comic-like, featuring minimal shading, soft palettes and distorted proportions. 

All of these styles are difficult in their own ways, but I found Marek's to be (bizarrely) the easiest of the three:. Ashley Wood's style was the middle ground, having some trouble replicating it, but making something vaguely similar in the process. What I really struggle with is Sean Galloway's. This style to me is near impossible to get right, to the point where I wanted to focus only on the shading. I will likely come back to this at a later date. 

Environment design

Environment design isn't something I am particulatly confident about doing, but it something I'm willing to try my hand with. 

Going around Manchester taking pictures of various perspectives and points of interest made things easier once I found a good shot of Salford Central station:. 

Then there was coming up with a decent aesthetic. This wasn't too difficult, as I really wanted to try Viktor Antonov's design points. Using a picture of the Combine APC, I had a colour palette and geometric shape reference to work with.  

After attempting several pylon styles, I made and duplicated a good looking one along the track lines, along with other structures that conform to the Fibonacci spiral..

After repeated experiments the base colours were added along with a sky colour to contrast it. 

After lots of painting in of the other details with the right kind of shading lights on a monolithic building in the background and some rain,  I managed to finish hwat turned out to be a really atmospheric landscape! 

Vehicle and pilot design

Designing a vehicle and the person driving it is something I like to do as well, but coming up with ideas proved difficult.

My first vehicle and armour design was based on a vehicle designed to traverse a desert environment.

I looked at several mecha designs, but could never come up with a suitable one until I referenced insectoid anatomies and found the right kind of shape.

Based on a wasp, this was designed to move quickly over sand dunes and hide in them if need be.

The pilot was designed with a similar theme, sporting visual equipment and a poncho. He was designed to give a childish feel but with an adult role, to make him seem like part of another species.

However, the tank was a little too close to a Tachikoma from Ghost in the Shell and the pilot was generally not drawn well, so I decided to do something different;  

The vehicle is based heavily on the ships from the wipEout games, something of which influences me in many facets of vehicle design. 

The pilot's design is based somewhat on designs used for anti-g suits, but the pose was found from this reference. Unfortunately, the design isn't as good as I'd have liked, but it works well with Marek Okon's art style. 

Weapon and armour design

Designing weapons and armour is something I really want to practice, and this brief was the perfect motivation to do so.

When it came to designing weapons, I didn't want to make anything that was too realistic, but that wasn't completely grounded in fantasy either.

For the heavy weapon, I wanted to make one that was man portable and that fired bullets. It was originally meant to heat the bullets to melting point upon leaving the chamber, but this was scrapped.

The standard weapon was an assault rifle based on the design of the P90. This kind of design is more futuristic than conventional rifles, which helps it stand out.

The light weapon is a scout pistol, designed to provide firepower in a small package where carrying too much is a bad idea. This was influenced mostly by the Steyr TMP.

The hidden weapon is a drone mounted to the accompanying armour. Two of these drones would hover alongside the user and attack targets with internal weapons.

The armour is influenced by various powered armour suits seen in fiction, namely the Fallout series' T-51b and Tesla armour suits as well as the Zaku II mobile suit. I wanted the wearer to look powerful, but still appear to be agile.

Cullis: Design critique

My first design was based on a part of the Epilogue where Cullis thinks he is wounded when he is merely covered in wine. I was to pose him looking at his hands in astonishment.

This design was difficult to do, because of the position of the hands and legs. Hands are not something I feel I am good at yet, so I had trouble drawing them effectively.

The position of the legs means that it is difficult to give the artwork depth and the placement between the joints make the torso contorted; the right leg is in front of the left, but the torso's shape makes it look the other way around. The head is also not as large as it should be and has much depth to the length of his head.

The second design was a shorter one with a stockier proportion. 

This design is for a more rugged look, using a similar boot design to Treize, although these are too thin for his body shape. His head is oddly shaped, but the angle works alright. His hands are under developed and too small, the fingers not being able to grip the bottle or the pistol properly. There is a substantial lack of detail in the jacket.

The final and most detailed design took a lot of influence from the former research pieces, and has a lot of detail added into it. 

This design can be critiqued by noting the arm poses. They are too straight, making this pose really odd. The pocket on his left is smaller than the one on the left, and there doesn't seem to be any emphasis on his genous proportion, instead having Cullis tall, built and pudgy.

Cullis: Initial concept design research

Cullis is a character who is introduced early on in the prologue and is shown to be a large, clumsy red-faced drunk with an armoured eye-patch. He is described as wearing a field marshal's jacket that is a size too large for him, suggesting he stole it. He also wears an eye patch that covers a gun installed in his eye socket (!!)

When devising an initial design, I looked at pictures of real field marshal's jackets. However, this seemed to ground the design of the character in our reality, whilst he could be a fusion of another aesthetic and our own.

What I looked at was a combination of the following reference images and characters.

This seems to be a British Army field marshal's jacket. This jacket is from around 1918, and is thus more ornate than more modern battle dress uniform.

Operation: Anchorage's General Chase wears a  stylised general's jacket, which is adapted to the Alaskan environment. It features oversized lapelles, belt and pockets. It also extends to the shins.

Treize Khushrenada, like all other soldiers in the Gundam Wing  franchise have uniforms inspired by older  Navy uniforms. It has contrasting epaulets and knee-high boots with knee protectors.

The duffle coat is essentially a field marshal jacket, they show how a range of lining patterns can bring out the monotone materials.

                                                   

Use of Weapons: character notes

Due to the layout of the book, it will be read from chapters one to fourteen first, then chapters XIV to I. Notes on characters will be added as and when they are discovered.

Epilogue characters introduced:

Cullis: A large, red-faced man wearing a field marshal's jacket (A size too large for him, suggesting it doesn't belong to him). He had grey hair and only one real eye. Cullis is somewhat of a blunt instrument, although this could be because he is drunk.

The young man (Zakalwe): He wore a shirt and open general's jacket; this doesn't belong to him either. His appearance is not alluded to in the epilogue.

Chapter one characters introduced:

Maikiril: Diziet's major-domo. Appearance is not alluded to.

Diziet Sma: She wore a formal gown and a black chocker. Appearance is described as a pale-skinned woman with blue-black eyes and hair. Body proportions would suggest a stocky build, but she remains thin regardless.

Relstoch Sesspin: A tall, pale-skinned and thin man whose eyes to some would be too close together. Does not value self as highly as he perhaps should. Appears to be nervous, although this could be because of Sma's efforts to seduce him in this chapter.

Skaffen-Amitskaw: a small, grey suitcase-sized hovering robot, referred to as a drone. Does not appear to have any visible means of propulsion or manipulating objects, seems to rely on manipulating the space around itself and objects. Houses weapons known as knife missiles, which can possibly utilise their own field technology.

Chapter two characters introduced: 

Riders: Bandits who attacked the inn Sma was staying in at the time. All of them meet gruesome ends at the hands of Skaffen (Knife missiles!?), much to Sma's anger. Appearances appear to be a traditional desert attire, possibly western themed.

Chapter three characters introduced: 'Disgarb' No other name given, speech is distorted with a cold. Wears a jellaba.

Xeny: A drone that represents the Xenophobe to the occupants. Can take on many forms, like most drones, but chooses a small furry animal. Could resemble a mixture of Eevee, Teto from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Dobby the house-elf.