Semester 1 Summary

Reaching the end of semester 1 I decided to create a summary post of what I've been up to since September 2019, which includes both what I've already blogged about and new content since my last post a month ago. I thought this would be a good idea as I could use this post to include additional content/info which I unintentionally omitted in previous posts.

At the beginning I proposed my initial ideas for this semester/year, which was to focus on developing South Asian fantasy content in video games as there is a huge gap of content in this area. This is/was a deeply personal goal as it relates directly to myself and my experiences with media representation. I grew up playing video games and living as an ethnic minority in the UK meant that I quickly adapted to the fact that I wouldn't see many people like myself in video games (and other media). Any representation that was present (no matter how butchered/ negatively stereotyped it may have been), I was told to be grateful for as depicting people from my culture was a choice that is usually not chosen.

Ironically enough, any criticism myself and others made in this regard was often push backed with the jibe "if you want to see content you like, make it yourself" (ignoring the fact that a lot of privilege comes with having game designers who produce content you like, rather than it being just the norm). I guess at some point I took that advice to heart: fast forward to September 2019, where I have made the decision to insert myself into a MA Games Design course in the hope of joining the gaming industry as a concept artist who makes choices that are usually not chosen.

I knew that I had a lot of catching up to do, so I started learning new software such as Maya for 3D modelling and developing my Adobe Photoshop skills for artwork. I sat down with my tutors at the beginning of the course where my ideas were discussed and how best to proceed forward with these ideas. There was a focus on artistic style and me wanting to develop a faster art style more suited to concept art and move away from my detailed, illustrative style that I was used to in traditional art. For my South Asian fantasy, I was given tasks such as developing a street scene which shows a glimpse into the world I wanted to make. 

I decided to tackle this by going back to what I know: architecture. I researched South Asian architecture and tried stylising the buildings into something that could be concepted and most importantly drawn quickly/effectively. From this a side aspect popped up which looked at colour schemes and why I chose certain colours to draw with. I tried to push this further by seeing whether people assigned colours to cultural architectural elements and started testing samples by manipulating architectural buildings with various colour schemes to see if people would fall into stereotyping environments based on colour coding. This is as of yet not complete as I haven't finished my sample set. 

Instead I focused on my literature review where I used my research to delve into authenticity of non-western cultures (specifically South Asian) in fantasy video games. This required a lot of academic research and I went more in-depth of my thoughts on that in a previous blog post. From this, I realised that my master's research would benefit more from looking at authentic representation and how to implement this within the design process, especially as concept art is crucial to visuals in the initial stages of game design.

I looked at world-building techniques from N.K. Jemisin who really helped with guiding me as to what I should be considering when concepting/designing. As a result, I realised I had been looking at concept art from a narrow point of view and the artwork I had been creating was coming from a place of uncritical research. Instead of simply creating a street view, I had to first create the world in which the street view existed - looking at politics, power, social structures e.g. what is the currency, what is valued, what goods are traded, what distinguishes the social classes etc. I ended up creating a new world of salt-armoured sea creatures who are being thrust to land territory due to sea water evaporating (thus their habitats disappearing) as a result of global warming. Since then I have been trying to concept artwork from this world with the creatures, characters and environments.

WHAT I'VE BEEN UP TO SINCE MY LAST POST (11TH DECEMBER 2019)

I have been using my world building concept of salt-armoured sea creatures to develop visuals of environment design and character design. Whilst doing this I have also been trying to implement an 'authentic process' to designing environments/characters which links back to my literature review topic and is one of the major bases to my master's research.

I continued to use photo bashing mixed in with digital painting to create faster concept art pieces and managed to develop on the jellyfish image from left to right:

For guidance on concept art I looked at online tutorials on YouTube, specifically an Illustration & Concept Art Master Course created by an artist I follow Ross Draws. I found this very helpful as (1) the videos are relatively short and easy to follow (2) I was able to learn techniques for an artistic style I am a fan of and (3) it was online and free thus easily accessible. 

From this course Ross used pose templates for his character design which he has available to download for free on his website here. I downloaded the templates myself as a guide to creating characters more efficiently and quickly by being able to draw straight on top of the models. The original template can be seen below:

When I downloaded the template, however, I was taken aback by the proportions of the models themselves as I found them to be thinner than I had assumed from the video. Now, I understand that this is pretty normal in character design as relative attractiveness plays an important role in design and for women thin = attractive. However, this is one of the many steps that need to be taken when considering authenticity in video games. Even Ross, an artist whose work I admire, is also privy to certain bias when designing characters. By using this single template alone, one would become used to drawing slim, curvy characters only. 

My attempt to revise this was to reshape the proportions of the models so I could have multiple models with various body shapes to design on. One example of my alteration can be seen below:

This brings a more challenging but necessary aspect of design - having to consider how the same clothes/costume design would look on different bodies and how to alter the design to make it work for all. This is a method I identified as part of the design process for authenticity and diverse representation in video games.

Here are some character designs I developed from the models:

Here I chose to depict what a military uniform may look like in this world, using references from gold plated armour which has a scaled pattern that reminded me of the scales of a fish - relating it to the sea creature world. Drawing upon historical references helped with designing clothing that is more accurate in cultural depiction and thus leads to a more authentic design that is appropriate to the geographical region of South Asia.

For environment design, I have been using nature and landscape references from Pakistan to help with concepting art from that region. I used the reference on the right to concept the image on the left as a quick landscape study, using colour schemes from previous concept art e.g. whale:

I have been developing my reference folders this semester which helps when needing visuals quickly to draw upon instead of having to research for it every time. Here are some of the areas I have been collecting references for:

CONCLUSION

I think that as I have spent a lot of time researching this semester to develop techniques, learn new software and understand how to concept from a gaming point of view. Consequently, I haven't been able to produce as much concept art as I had hoped to. Instead, I feel I have learnt more about my own artistic processes and how to critically analyse my artistic bias when creating artwork. I feel that I am fighting multiple battles as I want to become good at the design process whilst learning the art/modelling software, which I feel is hard to do both (i.e. create good design on digital software). I do feel pressured by my lack of experience in these areas which I know can only be developed through rigorous discipline and continuous practice. So, overcoming this personal barrier will take lots of time and perseverance and is something I hope to see come to fruition more by the end of semester 2.

In regards to my learning agreement, I feel that I am on the steps towards creating an authentic body of work for South Asian fantasy reference. This is because for semester 1 I have been focusing my time on research and analysing the design process so that when I started to create meaningful content, I was able to do so with a stronger foundation than when I started in September. The overall goal I set in the learning agreement is more focused on what I wanted to achieve within the year, so I believe that I have started achieving that and have managed to successfully do the sub-goals within my main goal. Of course this means that I am still on-going in my process but I hope with the following semester I can apply the knowledge and skills learnt this semester to creating more diverse and authentic South Asian fantasy content.