Salford City College Eccles Sixth Form Centre BTec Level 3 Extended Diploma in Creative Media Production

Games Design

Unit 78 – Digital Graphics for Computer Games HA3 – Transformation Production Log

Name Luis Vazquez

Date: 02/12/13 – 07/12/13

I have begun my work process by starting with the amalgam of the character’s model and the background that I will be tracing over to create the final piece. I removed the character’s model and placed it in a separate file for the moment, where I will trace over it separately, and then combine that with the traced background to create the final product.

I also add a new detail to the amalgam, adjust the placement of the buildings in the picture using the move tool, and edit the sky colour by using the hue/saturation tool to adjust the hue, in order to improve on the base design of the background and prepare it for tracing.

Date:09/12/13 – 14/12/13

Completed the platform on the bottom right of the image, where the character will stand. I created a separate layer that has higher priority than the reference image, meaning that it will show up over the background image, as seen in the screen shot. I will have a separate layer for each of the major elements of the image (each building, the background, the dragon, and the character), so that they are easier to manipulate and organise.

I used the pen tool to create the individual objects that make up the platform, and then used the eyedropper tool to select the colours that fill the objects, based on the reference image’s colours, and the placement of those colours.

Here, I’ve begun to work on the left hand tower. For the flat faces of the tower, my method is the same as it was for the platform, with using the pen tool to create objects and use the eyedropper tool to fill in the colours. However, I have made some design choices when dealing with some aspects of the tower itself. I have chosen to copy+paste the individual windows, as attempting to use the pen and eyedropper tools individually for each window was difficult, and was taking too long. There is an issue with this method that I’ve noticed, which is that the distortion of the image caused by perspective means that the windows don’t fit exactly on each face, and if I had more time to work with I would most likely attempt to remedy this.

Date: 16/12/13 – 21/12/13

I became frustrated by the lack of progress that I was able to make when working on the level of detail of the left tower, so I chose to progress by completing the trace of the right hand tower instead. Due to the simple shapes it was much easier to complete than the other tower, though the roundness of the top parts of the tower were difficult, and I’m not entirely happy with the result there. Therefore, as I continue the left tower I will omit and edit some parts to reduce the roundness, and make the shape more angular.

Date:6/01/14 – 11/01/14

As I have already overshot the deadline, I can no longer afford to spend so much time, developing the imagework for this piece, so I have chosen to increase my pace of work. This has meant a considerable drop in quality for the left tower, which I was working on up to this point, but my mismanagement of the project means I’ll have to focus on completion.

I have completely forgone the uppermost details of the left tower, simplifying the image.

I decided that because the dragon is relatively small in the image that I would simplify its shape and details significantly to save time. Despite these changes it has kept its overall distinctive silhouette. Next week I will need to finish the background, and then begin making progress on the character itself.

Date:13/01/14 – 17/01/14

Here I have finished the background in its entirety. I do not believe that the sky is of a good quality, the colours clash too harshly with each other, and the shapes are very rough and barely recognisable as clouds. However, I need to work on and complete the character as soon as reasonably possible, so I will consider the background finished as of this point.

This is my progress on the character. I decide that I would work on the underclothes first, then over clothes, then the human parts, then finally the robot arm. I chose this order to work mainly based on which layers would be superimposed onto the other ones.

I chose my character to have a neutral-warm colour scheme, based mainly on browns and light golds. I feel that the anatomy of the character’s clothes seem off model – a result of an, in retrospect, poor decision to not superimpose reference images for the clothes onto the base picture of the model I used as a reference. Instead, I had referenced my sketches for the clothes separately to the character as I worked.

Date:20/1/14 – 24/1/14

Here is my finished character from the traced reference. Originally, the robotic arm came out too small, due to working relatively zoomed in to the overall picture. This was resolved by selecting the appropriate objects and free transforming them.

Overall, I feel that character has come out reasonably well, although my lack of experience in using illustrator to depict human flesh is pronounced in the off colour shades of the face. All that is left is to add the character to the bg picture, and then present the final piece.

The overall piece, before presentation. The character was placed into the scene by bringing up both pieces, and dragging the character from one window into the background window. The character was too large, so I adjusted its size with free transform and moved it into the appropriate position on the uppermost layer.