Assignment Evaluation

A wise man once said to not judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree and I have struggled many times to remember that saying through out this module. I am not the artiest of people nor do I have much natural ability when it comes to traditional art, there is a reason why I took graphic design as an A-level rather than generic art, and as a result I found this module to be particularly difficult. With respect to the quote I am far more assured in my ability once a computer is put in front of me, so I have tried to remember that just because I may not feel as though I am particularly gifted at traditional art, it doesn't mean that I have no artistic ability whatsoever, and I believe that the work I have produced for the module shows that, I believe the digital art made in Photoshop is far and away greater than any of my life drawing art or any traditional art I have thus produced. That being said I have enjoyed the creative freedom that this module allowed, while daunting at first, the ability to create practically whatever my heart desired was a breath of fresh air when compared to the other two modules.

Initially I found it difficult to get traction when producing my artwork though I attribute that partly to my inexperience with Photoshop, I found the multitude of options and tools a mite confusing and I didn't initially understand many of their purposes or their true ability to assist in the creation of quality art work. However once I gained experience, and with the help of many of my peers, I have come to respect Photoshop as a powerful creative tool despite some continued apprehension towards the more complex systems and tools.

In regards to the artwork itself I feel that once I had gotten to grips with Photoshop I was able to more quickly and more efficiently work through my pieces, getting them to an acceptable standard, I never felt that I had to compromise my vision for what the end results should be and I was more or less able to realise them in an acceptable manner. Perhaps if in the future I were given more time, or perhaps if I had better managed my own time, I may have been able to produce additional works that would fully display the variety of poses, props and environments that my character could enable. I however feel that at the present time my work is to an acceptable standard and, while not entirely happy with the limited diversity, I am content that they accurately show my ability and understanding of artistic techniques such as colour, shadow and texture, as well as more complex principles like proportion, perspective and three dimensional depth.

Character Model Sheet

The model sheet for my character took suprisingly shorter than expected, I firstly used guidlines from my existing character pose to detail the relative locations of specific joints such as the elbows and knees and drew them in, I then proceeded to add shading and texture to each angle, using the same techniques in the initial model. I used the clone stamp tool to copy the textures from the boots and hat across to their angled counter parts.

Character Expression sheet

This is my characters expression sheet, it was made by copying the head from my beauty shot before re positioning crucial facial features such as eyebrows, eye lids and the mouth, or more specifically the facial hair surrounding the mouth. I have found that these are the the most prominent features that detail an expression. After moving the features accordingly I then went in closer and touched up the edged to make sure the colours flowed evenly and blended well.

Environment Development IV

Finally I gave the islands a bit of work in terms of shading and depth with the shades of green, as well as some more added detail such as the barrels , bucket and ropes.

Environment Design III

I have added some further detail to give the image a bit more noise, such as cannons and rigging and nets, added some basic island shapes ad gave them texture with a combination of blur and noise filters finished of the low opacity brush shading

The foliage was actually making use of a brush pack I found online which give basic leave shapes, I then made my own brushes from these into sort of tree top shapes and started painting them over the top of the island

Many thanks to this link: http://dierat.deviantart.com/art/Foliage-Brush-Set-159781059 for the leaf brushes.

Further shading and proportions

This piece is experimenting further with shading and proportions, the second piece in particular makes use of single colours to create shadows where as the top piece makes good use of lighter colours to show of highlights, in reality it makes the piece look far too shiny but it is still a good proof of concept.

Environment Development II

To further develop the environment I began to shade the deck as well as add a few minor details such as bolts in the timbers and rivets in the metal. I also added a sea and sky to the canvas. The sky is made fairly simply using a custom created cloud brush and using varying opacities and shades of grey to build up a believable cloud layer. The sea is made up entirely of filters and uses the perspective transformation tool to give its 3D depth.

Many thanks to this tutorial: http://www.webdesign.org/photoshop/special-effects/ocean-photoshop-tutorial.6966.html for the sea design