Evaluation

Evaluation of the Final Major Project

The theme of my project was Warriors from different ages fighting in situations they could not have been in in real life. My idea has been developed from the original in two major ways. The first difference is that instead of focusing on a purely martial arts themed fight it is now just warriors. The second, and most significant, difference is that my FMP is no longer an animation and is instead a Photoshop project as it was not as time intensive and allowed me to focus on other parts of my project as well.

I did not find much reference material to inspire my work aside from a few art pieces on art station which are all referenced in my bibliography. The images that I have found were useful as they allowed me to see and experiment with other peoples styles of drawings similar to my own FMP. The images I have used as inspiration helped to affect my design by showing me what type of armour and places my characters would have worn and lived in.

My entire project has been inspired by many ancient cultures. These include, but are not limited to; the Roman Empire, Sparta, Medieval Europe and even Ancient China. Many of the artists that I have performed my research on were inspired by either Ancient Nords/Vikings or English Knights. All but one of the artists that I researched used Photoshop as their main way of painting. The exception to this was Keith Haring who used screen printing. He was also around before Photoshop.

I myself used Photoshop to produce my Final Piece as it is the easiest piece of software for me to use. Some techniques I used include blending my colours and the liquefy tool to give the fire a semi-realistic touch.

I do wish I had researched more about Vikings and knights as if I had I would have been able to put out a more historically accurate representation of the two breeds of warrior.

All in all, I am pleased with the way my Final Piece came to be in the end. The parts I am most proud of are the characters and the fire/smoke. I am happy with the characters because, as well as shaded well, they are very dynamic and do not look as stiff as some of my earlier attempts at dynamic poses. I am very pleased with the fire and smoke because the fire has managed to blend in such a way that it looks semi realistic, and the smoke helps add to that effect.

One thing I am quite disappointed with is the very unrealistic and matte style colours. The other artists that inspired this project all have ways to give a very realistic feel and depth to their characters, making them seem like people who could possibly be real. My characters however are most definitely cartoony and fake. With practice I hope to overcome this limitation to my art style and next time change my style to that of a realistic art piece.

Throughout this project I have learnt many new Photoshop skills including; Blending, The liquefy tool and using Dynamic poses.

I believe this type of work is important to my games course as it allows me to demonstrate my ability to produce concept art for games and films.

I did not give this assignment my best attempt. If I had I would surely have been able to produce the animation that I had originally planned to make. This, however, turned out not to be the case as I did not manage my time efficiently enough. By the time I had completed everything else it was much too late in the project to even fathom producing a high enough quality animation. This led me to fall back on my secondary idea of my Photoshop concept piece.

The class activities that benefited me most during this project were most definitely the       lessons on dynamic poses earlier in the project. The technique that I used most in this project that I had not used a lot before is using soft brushes to blend colours. This gives the colours a more natural look when they shift into one another.

Nearly, if not all of these techniques could be used again in future Photoshop projects as they are very useful skills to have.

One problem that I had with my original sketch was that the poses were not dynamic enough. I managed to solve this by adding shadow and making the robes flow to give it a look as if he was moving. In the end I moved on to a new piece that went on to become my FMP.

A second problem was when I was trying to get the poses correct in my FMP. I managed to solve this by getting two models to stand in my desired poses and took a photo to base them on.

Ian Gofford.