Task 7 - Evaluation

FMP Evaluation:

I begun my final outcome for this project by getting an A3 paper of a high quality and then sketching out the basic principle of the design, at this point I knew what I was doing since I did a lot of planning before, so initial sketching went by fairly quickly. I then started to draw on more detail as well as consider the perspective, what exactly I wanted within the drawing and where exactly I wanted it. This took me a couple of hours since I really wanted to get the look right the first time around so that I wouldn't have to drastically edit the drawing later on. I then started to draw more and more onto the piece of A3 paper. Adding more and more detail until I was happy.

I then took the A3 paper and scanned it into a computer, then I begun using Adobe Photoshop to start to edit the image out, first, I used several "cleaning" tools to make the image look as sharp and as crisp as possible. I then separated each piece of the drawing into different "layers" allowing me to edit them them later on much more easily if need be. Then I started to paint on the details using the brush tool along with tools associated with it (different styles of brush etc.). I made sure that I paint each layer properly and use a variety of different colours, I used a lot of colours, a lot of them matched closely together to give the shadow effect to a lot of figures. I used different sizes of the brush as well as different styles of the brush to make the image look interesting and alive.

Of course I had to consider how much detail I want in each thing, and thus I decided that some of the characters will be made to look typical, without adding any specific details to them, but then to add much more detail to different things such as the up close robot, the catapult and things that are going on in the air within the image.

In terms of how the image ended up looking, I think I did quite well, I put a lot of time into many different little details within the image and I feel like those have paid off. I also considered my colours well and used them well to create a colour theme for each of the factions present on the image, this made the image far more interesting to look at in my opinion. I also feel like I have made a good use of the tools available to me.

To conclude, I think that the work done by me is on a good standard and I've spent a lot of time working on it. I feel like I've learned a lot while doing this project and there are still many things that I can improve upon. In terms of other parts of the project, I feel like my research and mind mapping was very good and in depth, I also feel like the surveys that I conducted were up to a good standard and were unbiased and had relevant questions all in all. I am generally happy with how this project turned out overall. I believe that all the work I've done have steered me in the correct direction towards creating this final piece of digital painting.

Task 6 - Presentation

This is my final piece that I did, I used Adobe Photoshop to create this piece. within Photoshop I used many different tools, but I mainly used the paint brush to create this, I used my graphical tablet for drawing. Overall, I am pretty happy with the results of this, I think that I picked colours especially well and that the general scene blends in together and works well together. In the future however, I feel like I should improve on my sense of perspective and scale as well as simply draw better. This scene represents a battle of two armies from two completely different time periods, one medieval-fantasy, another one from the far future. 

I then created a survey to find out what other people think about my final work, this would allow for me to measure myself on how well I did with the work and just generally how I can improve on things, feedback is important since different people have different tastes and thus the more people comment on my work the better it will become in the future.

The first question asked if the piece of artwork that was presented to the person answering was good in their opinion or not, 80% of people here answered that yes it was. This made me feel happy and relived at the same time since most of the people liked me work, and of course the few that did not, but that usually happens. not everyone will like everything. Overall however I am pretty happy with the results for this.



The second question asked if the piece of artwork was created on a semi-professional level in their opinion, this was another important thing to ask to the people answering since my project specifically required of me to work to a professional standard. Here the answers were quite balanced, this tells me that in the future I will need to do more research on more artists as well as pick up more industry practice to make my work better and more of a professional standard.



This third question was target audience specific, since I gave out the questionnaire to my target audience (teenagers, both female and male.) Overall the results show that my market research was correct and that teens do enjoy this type of genre within an art piece.



This question related back to work again, I wanted to know how the people that were answering the questionnaire felt about having to change something drastically within the piece, this would give me a good indication as to that there is something wrong within my piece, the majority however said that nothing is needed to change drastically, some people were unsure and some people indeed agreed.



This last question was simply a comment box allowing the participants of the survey to tell me exactly what they would like changed within the piece of art. This gave me a great insight into what people felt like and what they would like to see changed. Most people wrote to simply add more detail into things as well as add more things into the image.

Overall this survey was pretty good for showing me what I need to work on and improve. It also told me my exact weak points and strong points as well as about my ability to research into target audience well. Overall I found this survey to be pretty useful to me and the project.

Task 5 - Production

Task 4 - Planning

This is my progress update and my financial table, in those two documents I have kept a track of my progress and how I am going through the weeks, as well as established my projects finances and how much money I will need to suffice my needs for the project. Both of these pieces of documents were very useful and allowed me to organise my project well.



I also create a schedule for my project so that I would always know what I need to do in what time frame. This gave me a clear indication as to how I need to progress and when something has to be done for, thus allowing me to stick tightly to deadlines.

Task 3 - Pitch

The idea:

The main idea for my project is to have a dark and mysterious forest environment, with a little bit of a twist, not only will I create a compelling and good looking forest environment but I will also delve into some character design and architectural design by including both characters and buildings from the past and the future. So, have a forest environment, and mix it up with some futuristic buildings and militaristic units, but also include the ones from the past. I feel like this will create a very compelling and interesting environment to look at. I would also try to use some man-made buildings that will also fit into the environment, such as Stonehenge. In terms of the specific place, I feel like it is better if I leave the exact location of where the scenery on the art-piece is happening out, since I will have a lot of different architecture and characters I would prefer to leave the exact location out as a mystery so no issues or difficulties arise from that.

Media Used:

I would like to work on quite a large sheet of paper, either an A2 or an A1 sheet of paper, I would do most of my work, at least at the start, in pencil and use extensive shading to give the environment good characters and looks. Later on, as the situation develops, I will either paint everything in acrylic paint, paint only certain parts of the environment, or take the environment into a digital software such as Adobe Illustrator and then safely paint it there, knowing that a mistake can be reversed.

Target Audience and Marketing:
When it comes to my target audience, I wouldn't necessarily focus a certain group, but rather I would have it open to both genders at all ages as I feel like that my art piece would appeal to anyone, since it won't include any kind of violence or anything of sort it won't need to be filtered. But even when I feel that my art piece would appeal to anyone, I would try to focus on the adult group as they can appreciate such work the most and can understand everything that is happening on such an art piece. In terms of marketing, I would definitely present my art piece as something that is appealing to everyone and as something that is quite unique and interesting to look at and comprehend.

Constraints:

In terms of constraints, I feel like I need to get the balancing right, as in have enough forest but also have enough of the characters and architecture that I want, but not overload the art-piece by any of them. Another constraint I feel like is of course my ability to properly represent everything in the art-piece, thus the reason why I want to create everything using pencil only first as to make sure that everything is correct and if anything isn't then it can be easily corrected, after that think about if I want to add paint onto my art-piece or not.

Artists that I looked at:

I have looked at several different artists for inspiration for both my environment, scenery and the character design that I will do.

Jakub Różalski:

Jakub Różalski is a Polish artist that creates artwork, combining future and past into one art piece and creating some stunning sights.

http://jakubsan.tumblr.com/

http://jakubsan.tumblr.com/

http://jakubsan.tumblr.com/

Sarah Morris:

Sarah Morris is a Scottish concept artists currently employed by Lionhead Studios, she has created concept art for several games in her past.

http://artysmorris.com/

http://artysmorris.com/

Edgive Faini:

Edvige Faini is a Concept Artist from Milan, Italy. Her primary focus is Concept Design, Matte Painting and Environment Design for films, games, commercials and other entertainment media.

http://edvigefaini.com/category/concept-art/

http://edvigefaini.com/category/concept-art/

http://edvigefaini.com/category/concept-art/

Task 2 - Ideas Generation

I also tried doing different artist samples to see how different styles work/can work together with different ones and how I can use them in my own work and towards my own advantage. It also gave me an insight into different things such as perspective, scale and applicability of different mark making techniques to correspond with other ones.

However, during my planning period I have decided to move away from standard painting and instead move into digital painting which I find far more flexible. I find that standard painting can be really unforgiving if you make a mistake while painting, you can't exactly easily erase paint from one of your precious drawings, with digital however you can simply reverse the paint applied. It also offers several different tools that can be used to easily create images of even a higher quality than those that would have been done by hand otherwise. I therefore started experimenting with digital art, and I started doing some drawings and then digitizing them one by one.

I also had a go at colouring in digitally one of the drawings that I did that was a sample itself from a picture taken in Poland. I found that it was much more easier to do digitally and I really liked it.

Task 1 - Research