Project 4 - Pixel Art Level
4/12/23
By far, this project was my favorite. Although at first it was a bit over whelming since it was hard to grasp as someone who knew nothing about pixel art, spirits, levels, or pixel animation. I decided on a top down 8bit game with a 5 color pallet, looking at games like terraria and Nintendo DS Pokémon to gather references. My references included individual tile breakdowns, how levels were designed and sprites.
I experimented around with creating a boarder with rocks because I liked the sense of keeping the area limited. I started making the boarder out of small rocks with limited shading, but as I continued and even flipped them, something felt off. I moved onto the main tiles which I wanted to keep to themes of rocks. I learned from the boarder that it looks better to space out rather than have them compacted like pebbles and less details the better.
(Boarder Version 1 and 2)
After messing with the main background and boarder tiles, I wanted to experiment with items like trees and animals. Starting with the trees, I liked the idea of the show Adventure Time and how they kept their trees simple and smooth. What's a level without a rewards chest, and while I'm going with a lot of rocks, you would probably find mushrooms growing near them along with old planks. And who doesn't like cats? So I hid a couple of little fellas around the level.
After putting it all together and was satisfied, I starting working on my sprite character. I stuck with original chibi art style while I was drawing my character. With the design sketch done, it was time to animate which I underestimated. I adjusted my drawing frame by frame for a walking movement, and wow was it hard to get the arms and legs moving at different times and for it to not look inhuman.
Now all that was left was to color my sprite and transfer the animation onto the level and it's complete. I can't express how much fun this was and how amazing it looked at the end. Compared to regular art, it's easier and looks better to make a pixel art version of a rock rather than to draw it. I felt all the colors really complemented each other and contrasted well. This was definitely one of my best works of the year.
Project 3 - Monsterous Landscape
4/12/23
(Reference from Made in Abyss)
Project 3 gave us a lot of freedom to create since the requirement was to anticipate a story and a character. I was really inspired by the anime Made in Abyss and Ancient Magus' Bride with their connection to magic and nature so I wanted to go for someone interacting with nature. After different sketches, I settled on someone laying on a man sized Lilypad.
To make this sketch more detailed and plain, I added koi fish that the main character interacts with, a moon to fill the sky, smaller lilypads along with lotuses. To start, I broke down each section starting with a dark background then contrasting the subjects in a brighter color, light green lilypads against blue water, yellow moon in the blue sky.
I was really proud of my moon because it was one of the most detailed parts of my project and I really enjoyed messing with different types of brushes and colors. I referenced the first full moon picture online and really felt like the yellow moon fit well with the koi fish and skin tone of the subjects. Like look at it, BEAUTIFUL, chefs kiss!
Project 2 - Landscape
3/27/23
(Reference)
The landscape project was the 2nd project of the semester where we experimented with tools and brushes. We got to pick out a nice landscape and had to limit it to not too much detail. I started with the foreground and middle ground specifically the detailed grass strand area, a dark green base then playing with brushes for lines then gradually adding layers of textures and smudging varieties of greens/browns/yellows.
Next I worked on the background, which I decided to do a gradient from purple to magenta to pink. Aiming for a dusk, sun gone down type vibe. After the gradient I smudged the whole thing so there weren't any hard lines.
Next was working on the background which were the mountains and clouds. Starting with a deep blue base, I added a grey/white with a light opacity and tried smudging around the "snow". Smudging didn't work out as I planned so I ended up only smudging with little strength then going in with an eraser with half opacity. The clouds were easy since I went with a slightly darker purple than the sky then stacked a lighter/gray shade of purple on top.
Lastly, we went into detail and animation. Things I animated were the clouds slowly moving left of the screen which was one of the easier animations since they only moved 1 way the whole time. Another aspect animated were the close grass and wheat looking strands which was a harder part for me since they bend and move left to right. I noticed that it looked unrealistic, so I broke the grass down into 2 animated parts that moved in opposite directions of each other. And since I was done a bit early, I added "fireflies" which ended up being green dots with an animation of low opacity for a glow like affect.
Project 1 - The Candle
3/2/23
This candle project was our first major project of the semester which reviewed prior skills involving lighting, shading and texturing. Starting with the wall and table made beginning this project less intimidating as it let me explore combinations of brush's and textures. One take away from this made me realize how important it is to use references.
Moving onto the candle was something I didn't think would be so hard. Using references for this object was very important as I had to reference how wax melted, how the flame showed transparency in the wax, and how a flame has so much detail.
The next 3 object we were given freedom to choose so I went for a painting, dice, and sea shell. Out of the 3 objects, the sea shell was the hardest for me. Even with the references I used, I couldn't find the right angle. Getting the right shades of pink to add depth was difficult because it made it look flat. A solution was pointed out to me that I should smudge the center of the shell upwards, to give a sense of "hollowness" and space.
Lastly, this project taught us the basic use of animation using the "timeline" tool in photoshop. As beginners we were told to animate the candle since it was the main subject of the project. Improvements overall I could have changed would be to go more in-depth with the shading and texturing.