Aamina Khan MA Games Design

Following last week's tutorials I had to work on the fantasy side of my design as they weren't fantasy enough. At this point having to work from home is getting tiresome and I am struggling to work every day. For anyone in the future looking back on this blog (whoever you may be) this is the time that we uni students had to still do a whole MA in the midst of a national lockdown due to a pandemic (Coronavirus). I feel increasingly exhausted and I have little hope of what is to come next. Sometimes I wonder if this degree is even worth anything?? Anyway here's the work I managed to do since last week: First is the work I showed to my tutors already, alternative designs for the mage class. Still pretty basic but I wanted to play with various colours and try to implement the flower designs I had created into some designs to see how they looked. Playing with colour helps with trying to create eye-catching designs, and I particularly liked the lighter version on the left of ...

To finish off my design for the jewellery mage class, I attempted a colour scheme which I felt fit the aesthetic of the class by using royal colours blue contrasting with the gold: After designing the mage class for jewellery specialists I moved onto other specialism which involved mages/magic users using embroidery as their medium for magic. As I decided these specialisms are also tied to regional differences, I researched Kashmiri embroidery for inspiration as it is considered one of the best in skill for execution of a single stitch. Some examples of Kashmiri's renowned artistry which I used for inspiration can be seen below: I replicated the shawl design in my own character design for the mage class. I thought having a shawl as part of the outfit would be both practical for the region (as during winter Kashmir has very cold weather and heavy snow) but also help distinguish its style from the jewellery mage class. I noticed that flowers and fruit are ...

I continued to develop further with the character I created last time in terms of outfit style and weaponry. I also started exploring potential background lore for the world this character exists in. The first stage of my development was making alternate versions of the outfit I decided on to see which looked best: Although I kept the same cut of clothing, I changed the pattern of the clothing to fit the concept better and played around with contrasting dark/light coloured fabrics. I even removed the staff weapon on the image on the right as I contemplated the usefulness of having a staff as my weapon concept was shifting to enchanted jewellery. I tried to take on board my tutor's (Josh's) advice to make my design more fantastical by adding more intricate embroidery and also exaggerating features such as extending the hair strands, making her bracelets more pointed/dagger like and adding the moon and star facial tattoos under the eyes.  I also addressed the unclear aspe...

Since my last post I have been quite busy (especially during reflection week) where I had work and family commitments which prevented me getting as much work I'd like done. Instead, I chose to focus on the Design Research assignment as I wasn't able to put much time into my practical work. I had to email people working in my chosen field (concept artist). So far I have gotten 2 responses who are willing to answer my questions and look over my work. I have also started writing up 2 of the 4 class lectures to use as a starting point for my essay. I think doing the essay in small parts would be a better use of my time as I can also focus on my practice work at the same time. Last semester I ended up using 2 weeks of my time dedicated to the essay which I feel hindered my practice progress and I was overly invested in the essay writing to the point where it was the source of my stress.  I have been focusing more this past week on trying to concept a new character from scratch as ...

Finishing the last nine images of Mehr took longer than expected, but rather than spending more time on each image (in fact I spent less time on each one in comparison to the first nine), other plans simply got in the way of time I spent drawing. Anyway, I was able to finish them to make a total of 18 images. (I'm sure Jim would be happy that I managed to finish one of his tasks.) I tried a different approach to the first 9 as there wasn't really a clear structure to getting them done in a quick, effective way.  The poses I used this time are all from posemaniacs.com. This time round I chose to sketch all 9 poses first before doing any line art/colouring. I thought this would help as I could focus on one stage at a time and do them quickly. I wanted to see if this was more effective than my previous pattern of sketching, line art, colour, sketching, line art, colour etc. (i.e. not focusing on one pose until completion before trying to sketch out the next pose). The followin...

As mentioned in my previous post, I went ahead with picking a book character to concept from the description provided in the book. I went with Mehr from Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri. I thought this would be a good start as the book is set in a fantasy South Asian inspired environment and Mehr herself is South Asian, therefore it fits nicely into the type of characters I want to depict. I started by re-reading key parts of the book which described Mehr's appearance and making notes to help me visualise her. One of her key appearance's is her ritual clothing which she uses to dance Amrithi rites as part of her belief as a person of Amrithi heritage (a fictional race). Below is my first attempt at concepting this character. I tried to not focus on detail too much and also was mindful of how quickly I drew. I wouldn't say I am that happy with how it turned out as her pose looks awkward and I admit I was focusing a lot more on the colours than anything else: Afte...