FMP Evaluation

I believe that the progress I have made throughout my FMP has been significant to me in a number of ways relating to not only design, but marketing within the video game industry. Through my research I have discovered ways in which designers can create successful concepts that are central to a project and ways in which these are perceived by the public. I have strived to create designs and concepts which could be plausibly marketed to real-world consumers and I believe that with further time for development I could produce a worthwhile project which could be backed by an audience which spans several demographics.

I have reached several goals that I set for myself with this project. I began working with the intention of developing a number of skills in design; many of these were character-based. These included creating a successful design which has a unique number of recognisable features; developing my skills in traditional media, such as drawing; and producing digital work for the final piece which maintains consistent themes.

I believe that I could improve on my consistency within drawing a figure multiple times. I did not have the time to expand on my figure drawing skills within the project, but if I were to develop this further or engage in a project of similar density in the future I will be sure to improve in all areas of figure drawing if I am hoping to focus on character design. While I believe the final design was mostly successful in portraying a consistent set of features, I struggled to produce many separate drawings and graphics of him which is something which would be necessary for a full video game project.

I was hoping to be able to create an instruction booklet in addition to another item for the final piece but ultimately decided that it was less graphically significant and that I would rather work on commercial skills such as advertising and box art covers. These are the most iconic aspects to a game as they are the primary items that would attract their audience; next time I will consider these aspects of marketing before engaging in a project.

While I believe that experimentation is key to finding the most appropriate ideas and the most effective designs, I believe that I could have benefited from deciding earlier on on a set design and creating more finalised images and layout trials which feature it. I produced many logo and character variations which were all useful and significant in my development and they helped me to refine my idea of what the character consisted of, but in the future I will attempt to manage my time more effectively in order to result in more complete assets within the project.

The research I conducted regarding this project was useful for me upon analysing particular aspects of visual game designs. I enjoyed analysing sprites in more depth and understanding how sprite artists created depth of field within gameplay. I have realised that I believe pixel art and sprites to be an effective mode of communication within video games and I aspire to develop my skills in this area as well; this is why I created a pixel-based portrait for my final piece poster which featured my main character. 

FMP: Week 7

The following week I continued to finalise concepts and experiment with media in order to find other plausible design principles for the logo and character. Below feature a series of medium experiments I created using a brush and black ink. The game is based upon a series of Japan-based franchises and I wanted to take this into account in terms of design principles. I believe that if this game were to be released it would also be released in Japan due to the style of the game being very popular in Japanese media. Thus, the logo experiments take inspiration from Japanese calligraphy - poorly-loaded brushstrokes, angular designs and a mixture of thick and thin lines to comprise text were all features I experimented with in an attempt to find a consistent looking design. I then decided to try using actual Japanese text, which the second page shows. 

In Japan there are two phonetic alphabets - "hiragana" and "katakana" - and a selection of Chinese characters named "kanji". Due to Inbound being a foreign word, this would be written in Katakana, "インバウンド". I attempted to emulate Japanese calligraphic styles to write this and I believe it was effective when paired with the image of the character. 

Upon completing the fully inked portrait of the character's face, I believed that the contrast of a dark helmet colour plus the lighter skin tone would prove effective in future experiments and drawings and possibly the finalised colour scheme. It is also from this point that I decided to experiment with items extending from the sides of the face in order to create a more complex character design. I had not decided at this point whether or not to keep this as a design principle.

Continuing from this, I decided to do some final colour tests using the previous sketch as a base. I decided on a contrasting mix of black and red for the final piece and used water colours for another media experiment. I believed that the leftmost design is effective as the red being featured on the face of the character provides a contrast while being definitively red in colour scheme. While watercolours created a new shading effect which I could potentially utilise in my final piece, I decided that I would be using digital software to colour my final designs.

FMP: Week 6

The following week I decided to experiment with layouts of box art designs. Again, I experimented with 30-second drawings first in order to get a sense of composition and style and find ideas that I liked. I developed a number of split-composition ideas between the main character and the antagonist, as seen in the second and third pages here. While I believe that the split composition is effective, it may have become cliche in recent advertising terms; I saw a poster on the underground recently depicting the same design principle for an advertisement on ski holidays or something similar. I decided to further experiment with designs which were more unique in composition, or perhaps designs which did not feature the antagonist, due to the main character being the mascot icon for the franchise.

Back to creating logos and experimenting with logo designs, I decided to experiment using black paper in order to achieve contrast. I decided that the italicised and capitalised typography was the most effective out of what I had designed so far, and decided to experiment with these design principles in particular.

I employed the use of split designs for a more "ragged" and dynamic effect. I decided that while this could be effective for a certain other project, it did not fit the mechanical-themed nature of the game's protagonist due to the cut-paper effect. My favourite out of the left page was thus the middle design; while I think the top-left character silhouette is effective, that paired with the eye silhouette within the text was not consistent and I believe that the eyes underneath the logo suited it more definitively. Thus the right page utilises the basic line-driven italicised logo; this page is another series of experiments with primary colours in order to test the effectiveness of previously tested colours against a black background.

 The ideas featured left are experiments upon the decorative style of William Morris whose work I consider to be inspiring. As annotated, I don't believe that these fit the style of the game and the graphical themes that are central to the project, but decided to experiment with them in case there was something I could use within the experimentation. I realised that within the game there may be a "level" or "world" which is grass- or plant-themed, which may use intricate and curved decorative designs such as these; if the character were to take up an inspired form from this level it may result in something that looks similar to the bottom design. 

FMP: Week 5

After completing some sketches for the main character's design, I decided to focus on typography and logo creation the following week. I realised that the logo is central to a game's recognisability and that it should encompass various established design principles within the game. Here I focused on sketches and creating a rough finished product.

These pages depict trials of logo designs I created. The initial page depicts rough sketches I completed quickly in order to get a feel for a number of ideas I could expand upon. It turned out that the first idea I attempted was one of the most coherent as a design and I developed it in the following pages.

I felt that the facial expression (defined by the specifically shaped eyes and eyebrows) and the ear-style helmet were a defining graphical feature of the character and that it should be emphasized within the logo. Having one set of recognisable characteristics or design principles makes a franchise memorable and unique, and my main character is going to be the poster character for the series, so I based it around that. I decided to make the text slanted as opposed to the upright text of my initial sketch on the first page; the italicised capital letters depict movement and energy as opposed to a static upright stance.

FMP: Week 4

After experimenting changing the colours of the sketches I tried to depict the character in a different style. I came up with a facial style for the character while drawing him in a new stance and with a different style of shading. I wanted to make the character more androgynous in body shape; I feel that an androgynous character would reach a wider set of demographics. In Sonic the Hedgehog, for example, the character is male but due to the highly anthropomorphised look, and lack of a particularly gendered body shape, he appeals to any gender of consumer. The character in this image is more rounded and neutral, while maintaining the same design principles of the large ears helmet and the cross. I decided to implement robotic joints, taking inspiration from the Megaman series, which features a mechanical main character.

The picture featured left shows photocopies of my developed sketch with some rough weapon designs and colour schemes superimposed. As the annotation explains, I attempted to change the perception of the main character through the use of weaponry. Ultimately, I did not go with any of these design trials due to the clash of shape types. The sketch I was drawing on had a more rounded look and these designs did not complement the qualities of the shapes due to the sharpness. I also experimented with a blue colour scheme over the sketch to check if it was an improvement from my previously considered red colour. After these sketches I decided to experiment with logo designs,.

FMP: Week 3

On the third week I began to create original designs that stemmed from the research I conducted in previous weeks. The following page features my first sketch of a main character concept. 

This was my first concept sketch of my main character. I have taken into consideration the points of interest of previous video game characters I have studied here; he has an anthropomorphised look, with a set of consistent design principles (large head, distinctive ears / hat and cross on chest). I hope to make this design into a set of sprites in the future and indicate movement within the character.

On the page featured left, I experimented with some plain, base colours for him. I have decided at this basic stage that red is the most fitting due to the "heroic" nature of the colour; many video games would indicate that blue is the most appealing and "neutral" colour for a protagonist - one example being the aforementioned Sonic the Hedgehog - but red is equally appealing as a colour choice and suits the image I have in mind for the character.

FMP: Week 2

Following my focus around Kirby Mass Attack, I further looked into its visuals and found sprite sheets for the characters that are used in-game. The following page (left) features these, in addition to a screen-capture to demonstrate how they are used within the background of the game.

I found sprite sheets very interesting as a point of study as they provide frame-by-frame details regarding how movement of a given character is depicted. In this instance, Kirby (the character featured) is jumping, and there is a different fully completed frame for each aspect of the movement. Sprites are generally interesting as they demonstrate how a character design can be simplified into a very limited space or number of pixels. Application of colour, proportion and composition of design must all be taken into account when creating sprites.

The first image shows many of the Kirby sprites in a background from one of the stages within the game. One can see how they stand out through the colour scheme: the background was drawn without the black outlines prevalent in the character sprites, and uses a less saturated palette.

Following the train of interest of pixel and art and sprites from Kirby Mass Attack, I decided to look more deeply into games of a similar genre. The first example of this is the series Sonic the Hedgehog, as it is an iconic and well-known series within gaming which has maintained a set of design principles since it started. The following is an example of a sprite sheet of the main character, Sonic, and some of his concept sketches.

This page demonstrates the good design principles of the main character. He has a clear form, as it is evident through the sketches - the circles demonstrate a straightforward composition. This form can be minimised into a set of sprites, as shown in the sheet; a simplistic and comprehensible design is needed to make such a successful set. Sonic's colour scheme is also significant; the hues of blue and red provide contrast, the white oversized hands are also distinctive, and he has a clear and unobscured face. I aim to create a successful character such as this one. Anthropomorphic designs often tend to be easier in this sense, as they can be stylised more effectively and personified in imaginative ways, easily sparking interest in multiple demographics.