Francis Varley: Games Art 2024-25

Developing the Final Piece When receiving feedback on my final piece, several areas of improvement were located. These included the rendering of the metal, the values on the ship, and the contrast between the ship and the rest of the scene. This encompasses an area of art that I wish to further develop in future projects: values. I often find that when developing pieces I keep the values very constrained together, and that this dampens the depth and contrast in the piece as a whole, making it less visually distinct and sometimes making the colours seem muddy. I identified this in my previous character design paintovers, and tried to rectify it when initially developing the scene. Ultimately, I found that I had to push these values further. To assist in the development of the piece, I looked back to my benchmark references and analysed what they did successfully that I could implement into the piece. Looking at the Megaship illustrations again, areas of sharp and almost glowing highligh...

Baking Having retopologised and UV unwrapped the Mesh, the next step in creating a game-ready model would be baking and texturing. These techniques would impart detail and colour into the mesh, enhancing the detail of the low-poly mesh and re-imparting the detail that was lost during the retopology phase. Prior to beginning the retopology process, I used a Smoothing Group to enhance the topology of the low-poly mesh. Though this did increase the geometry of the mesh, it did not add an amount of detail even remotely close to the high-poly sculpt. To keep some areas of definition, I used crease sets, which pinched some areas of the mesh such as the eyes, nose and mouth. This would mean that, when smoothed, these regions would retain some tightness and would not be flattened in the universal manner of the rest of the mesh. I smoothed the mesh to create a more even surface across it: though I was pleased with the retopology I had made, its jagged and angular nature would mean that, when th...

Environment Piece Development With the blockout scene complete, I went about the beginning of the development of my final piece. This would show all elements of my scene, including the hero building, the Ward Ship, as well as the different pieces of "street furniture" that would populate the background. These include the planet, the asteroids and the distant mining frigates. Of these components, I wanted the Ward Ship and the Planet to be the most noteworthy, with the Planet taking up more canvas space than the ship whilst also framing it and putting focus upon it. Of the elements displayed in this scene, the Ward Ship was that which I was the least confident with. This is because, in the past, I have worked on numerous pieces of art that include planets and asteroids in a variety of styles, and I am comfortable in a workflow when it comes to creating such pieces of art. Examples of prior work of planets I have completed. I was able to use what I had learned in these to impro...

Hunterian Trip: Partway through the year, I went on a trip to the Hunterian, a museum in London that contains extensive samples of preserved human and animal anatomy, including bones, muscles, tissues and organs. These samples, though being largely medical in interest, pose a unique and interesting drawing exercise. This is because they show physically what these elements of anatomy look like, isolated from the rest of the body. Set up in exhibits, you can also see how said specimens look in a variety of angles.   Below are all the sketches I completed throughout the visit to the museum. As I was in the museum with others, and as others were moving through it, I tried not to linger on any one drawing and instead tried to focus on overarching shapes and silhouettes. As such, the drawings themselves vary in quality: most are sketchy with feathered or jagged lines. I did this because I wanted to quickly build up the rough shapes of the masses. I occasionally followed the outline ...