Francis Varley: Games Art 2024-25

Project Management Real Worlds: Research Dossier Real Worlds: Character Design Process and Turnarounds Real Worlds: Key Art Production Real Worlds: Game Character Presentation Real Worlds: Client Review Real Worlds: Final Character Art Real Worlds + 2D Toolkit: Composing Scenes Real Worlds: Forge Father Ward Ship Ideation Real Worlds: Environment Art Thumbnails Real Worlds: Building Blockouts Real Worlds: Beginning the final piece Real Worlds: Developing the Final Piece Real Worlds: Completing the Final Piece Real Worlds: Evaluation

  Industry Practice: Introduction Industry Practice: Initial ideas Industry Practice: Case Study - the art style of Don't Starve Industry Practice: Presentation Work and Character Ideation Industry Practice: Presentation Reflection Industry Practice: Meeting and Next Steps Industry Practice: Foundational Research: Self-Forgiveness Industry Practice: Contract of Engagement and Thumbnail Sketches Industry Practice: Market Research Industry Practice: Role Research Industry Practice: Sound Brief Industry Practice: Legal and Economic Frameworks Industry Practice: Scriptwriting Industry Practice: Ren'Py Development Industry Practice: Character Development: Memory Industry Practice: Professional Online Presence Industry Practice + 2D Toolkit: Critical Hits Zine fair Industry Practice: Developing Background Character Art Industry Practice: More Development Industry Practice: Developing Environment Art Industry Practice: Game Feedback Industry Practice: Evaluation

ZBrush Introduction ZBrush: Transpose, Masks and Subtools 3D Toolkit: Deformers, Polygroups and Clipping Tools 3D Toolkit: Base Mesh Continuation 3d toolkit: Zmodeler and Extract 3D Toolkit: 3D Artist Research 3D Toolkit: Character Creation (2D Toolkit Character Design principles) 3D Toolkit: Curve Brushes 3D Toolkit: Sculpting the Alien Torso 3D Toolkit: Modelling the Alien Legs and Append Tool 3D Toolkit: Clothing Alien 3D Toolkit: VDMs and Alphas 3D Toolkit: Rigging Introduction 3D Toolkit: Creating Rigging Controls 3D Toolkit: Rigging the Spine 3D Toolkit: Skinning & Weight Painting 3D Toolkit: Job Role Research: Texture Artist 3D Toolkit: Artist Research and Comparison: Warframe 3D Toolkit: Game Ready Character: Pre-Production 3D Toolkit: Retopology 3D Toolkit: Creating the Character Base Mesh 3D Toolkit: Sculpting atop the Base Mesh 3D Toolkit: Retopologising & UV unwrapping the Mesh 3D Toolkit: Baking the Mesh 3D Toolkit: Texturing, Rigging & Weight Painting the mode...

  2D Toolkit - Character design practice exercise 2D Toolkit: Perspective 2D Toolkit: Digital Perspective 2D Toolkit: Anatomy, Contrapposto and pose tracing 2D Toolkit: Human Muscular Anatomy 2D Toolkit: Drawing Environments from Reference, Photobashing and Values 2D Toolkit: Hands 2D Toolkit: Clothing Folds 2D Toolkit: Charcoal Life Drawing Real Worlds + 2D Toolkit: Composing Scenes 2D Toolkit: Lineless Art Techniques Industry Practice + 2D Toolkit: Critical Hits Zine fair 2D Toolkit: Hunterian Trip 2D Toolkit: Inclined Planes 2D Toolkit: Evaluation

2D Toolkit Evaluation Developments I have made throughout the 2D Toolkit module have shown clear areas of improvement I could make in my work. Over the course of the year, I have practised fundamental art skills such as perspective and anatomy: I feel that my skills in these fundamentals, as well as my understanding of complex processes, have improved.  Several of these processes were largely new to me,  such as drawing equidistant forms in perspective, digital painting and photobashing. I have tried to use these new skills to improve my artwork: throughout personal project work, as well as in the Real Worlds project, I have tried to use elements of digital painting. This is mainly seen in my digital paintings of planets, though I also used these techniques in value paintovers in my Real Worlds character piece and in texturing the metal seen on the Ward Ship in my Real Worlds final piece. Using this new technique has shown one key area of improvement in my work that I wish to ...

Industry Practice Evaluation Our game has been completed and has been uploaded to itch.io.  Tempus Fugit by Luminol Arts On the whole, I am very pleased with the end product I have developed with my group over the course of the Industry practice module. Considering the brief's focus on mental health, I feel we have created a unique and interesting IP which fits strongly into the theme we have chosen. The research aspect of out project was straightforward and informed our decisions, and our frequent meetings ensured that we stayed on track as a group and managed the work we had to complete.  As for the skills I learnt in this project, I believe I have progressed in my ability to work with others as a group. The majority of prior personal and uni projects were solo: as such, being able to work in a scenario with others, and having to work with others to produce assets for a game, was an incredibly informative experience. Communication was an area of strength in our group, I beli...

Real Worlds Evaluation The Real Worlds project, I feel, has been a solid project for me in terms of art creation and study, particularly in regards to working with an IP: I feel that I was able to follow the brief well and create art that fits with the IP, and successfully implemented feedback that improved the quality of the pieces I created.  I am happy with my selections for the factions and believe that they appropriately challenged my skills: from a character design perspective I am particularly pleased with developments on the Veer-Myn, as drawing animal heads and digitigrade characters are not areas of design I have practiced in the past. I feel that my studies on rat anatomy helped greatly in the initial design stage of the Veer-Myn, though that I could have also spent longer on designing the armour and body of that character.  Of the two designs, then, whilst I feel that the Veer-Mn design developed my skills more, I feel that the Forge Father is the most successful: ...

3D Toolkit Evaluation 3D Toolkit has been the project I have struggled the most with over the course of the year: though I have been consistently challenged by all projects I have worked on, 3D Toolkit has been the one that has pushed me the most. This is in no small part due to the nature of the course. Learning ZBrush, a software I came into the year without any experience with, has been a definite challenge and learning it from scratch was incredibly difficult, especially considering that the skills and techniques of 3D sculpting are completely different to anything I have done before. As such, I feel like there was a sharp learning curve when practising ZBrush, and feel that the final outcome of my sculpting project is the most lacklustre of those I have completed this year. Nevertheless, I feel that time management was an area of strength in this project, as the sheer amount and variety of work I had to do for the final piece - sculpting, retopology, rigging etc - seemed initially...

Final Piece Development Following on from previous developments, I was given feedback for as to how my final piece could be improved. This largely hinged upon the Ward Ship and its shape hierarchy - feedback indicated that more shapes could be defined in its form, breaking up the large and flat plains to add more detail and help enforce the previously added greebles. This could also influence the silhouette of the ship: the addition of the greebles could add to or take away matter from the exterior silhouette, again breaking up flat lines and enforcing their presence.  To do this, I went back to the line art layer of the ship and outlined several panels on each major face of the ship, adding some within others to maintain a hierarchy of shape.  I then followed the lines of these panels and erased areas that fell underneath them, taking chunks out of the silhouette of the ship. Though subtle, I find this has added a great quantity of detail to the form of the ship and believe i...

Game Feedback We have presented our game to the group as a whole and have gotten feedback on what we have created. This build of the game included the whole path we had created, the Health Anxiety path, with all the final art we had produced implemented into the game. This included the final environment scenes I had coloured, as well as the teacher and bathroom student sprites, and the other missing environment scenes drawn by Holly. I implemented these into one build, with unused and in-game art also being available for display. The responses from our feedback form go as follows: I was pleased with this response, and am glad the font was legible. I feel it contributes to the game's identity and was glad this was communicated. During our next team meeting, we discussed feedback relating to the script: I had no issue with changing it to be less wordy and communicated this to the group.  However, we discussed our target audience and compared this to what we had for our script. In our...

Inclined Planes Another technique we have studied this year is that of drawing inclined planes in perspective, at different angles and on different axes. This is a type of technical perspective drawing that encompasses the rotation of objects in perspective as well as using some techniques from duplication and drawing equidistant objects. It is possible to rotate cubes in a precise manner in perspective: by drawing a one-point perspective cube and subdividing its lowest side twice, new corner points can be drawn in upon the subdivision corners and joined together. This creates a duplication of the shape slanted at a 45 degree angle. Subdividing this face again will create the points necessary to draw a rotated duplicate at a 22.5 degree angle. Due to the new rotated shapes being subdivisions of an original, the rotations are constrained by the original planes of the shape. This means that the new rotated shapes are somewhat smaller than the original: as such, if I were to use this tech...

Texturing Prior to texturing my model I had created a colour palette for my character, which I would use as a reference whilst texture painting. I had created this at the end of initial character development and as such, when I began the texturing process, expected to change it in order to abide by the sculpted model and UV unwrap. This is because, though I tried to keep the model as close to the intitial design as I could, I was aware that imperfections and differences would remain: I intended on adapting the design to fit the new model, and expected that - with my UV unwrap - certain ornate details would be difficult to adequately impliment. Though I had used Substance 3D Painter to create the normal map for the model, I wanted to use photoshop to create the textures, directly painting over the UV map to add detail and colour. As such, I would only be working on one channel of the material used in the model. The material determines and specifies the different attributes that can be a...