Jake Brooks: Games Art 2024-25

 Toolkit Evaluation 2D Toolkit For 2D toolkit, I felt it was really beneficial towards the start of the unit, as many of the things we were covering massively improved the way I approached certain aspects of art. I think over the entire unit we were taught several ways to deal and think about art too, which affected all projects for the better, especially things like Real Worlds, where it helped the way I approached both the character and environment aspects. In terms of the specifics, we looked at and tried things like photo bashing, perspective types, and life drawing. I am not really happy with how I approached toolkit this year - my biggest regret is not completely forcing myself out of my comfort zone and attending the nude life drawing lessons. I think these would've massively helped with my approach to character creation and anatomy, as well as just being more life drawing in general. Throughout my projects, the things I have learnt through 2D toolkit can be found as I have ...

 Toolkit 2D - Life Drawing For life drawing, I got a friend to come round my house and got them to recreate poses from Pinterest. I did this because then I get to see the pose in real space, and am able to rotate myself around the person to capture multiple angles and the depth of the person in question. Here are my warm up sketches: To ease me back into life drawing, I started with some quick 2 minute wireframe drawing. Moving onto the next sketches, I changed from my real life model to looking at online references, for the variety of body types and poses involving props. I did 1 minute gestural drawings. I should also mention that I did not undo at any point - every line counted, which made me begin to put lines down more confidently. With the one minute exercises completed, I feel more confident with putting down the lines. I still feel like I'm bad at getting the form down in such a short amount of time, but this is something I will improve at over time again. Now mov...

 Toolkit 2D - Inclined Planes Within a perspective grid, there is a way to create shapes at an incline. Due to the way perspective grids are made with lines making up the grid, objects can be placed at an angle originally not accounted for by the lines within the perspective grid. Firstly, I implemented this within a 1 point perspective grid. To start off, we construct a shape, with lines going between all the different corners inside of the shape. After this, we can construct our inclined shape. In this instance, it is created at a 45 degree angle. This style of incrementing can be done repeatedly. If we wanted something at a 22.5 degree angle, we could take the guidelines we just made here, and make more guidelines within those ones to calculate where exactly our shape should be. It is also worth it to note that every time this is done, the new rotated shape is smaller than the original. Because of this, it is worth it to make the original shape for the guidelines bigger to offse...

 Toolkit 3D - Gantt Chart Overhaul When I was getting through the sculpting process of my model, I was unsatisfied with my current method of scheduling. There were multiple reasons for this, such as how it didn't have much information or specifics on it, and how what I was using for the schedule wasn't really sufficient for what I wanted. That is where I changed my method of scheduling for this project to a Gantt chart. I went back and added everything I have already done, as well as things I am yet to do.  There are multiple reasons this is better than my old method of scheduling - Firstly, I can now create subtasks - I colour coded these blue and the main tasks green so that I could easily tell them apart. If I want to hide them and complete the whole task, I can press the arrow. Another great thing about this is that it works on a calendar, and I can also change the percentage I have completed of a given task, which is great where I have allocated my time to doing rigging f...

 Toolkit 3D - In-Engine 3D Character Modelling Process This blog will include the timelapse, and timestamps referring to said timelapse with explanations. I normally take screenshots as I work, and annotate those, but I feel that I want to try a different method of documenting my process since screenshots can be disruptive. Firstly, as a refresher, my final design for my character is below. Normally, I would bring this into the 3D software so I could have the reference there, but I opted not to do this. I find references in ZBrush to be disruptive more than anything towards my workflow, and I prefer working with the reference in another monitor whilst sculpting, rather than it being in the software. Here is the timelapse, which I will reference when giving a timestamp and explaining my process. STEP 1: CREATING THE MESH The Body For this model, I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone a lot more than last project. Last time, I heavily relied on Blender, only really using ZBru...

 Real Worlds - Project Overview and Evaluation Part 1: Character Creation For the first part of this project, we started by creating multiple blogs - for scheduling, for research and others for our character art. We were also introduced to the fact that we were working with a client for this project. Overall, my initial impression was that this project was a lot more organised, and we in turn had to maintain a good level of organisation, scheduling and time management to stay on track. For this project, we had to create a game idea for an existing IP, and were going to design characters and environments based off of that IP. We chose two different factions to work with for character designs, within the given IP. The IP itself was Deadzone by Mantic Games, and I picked Forge Fathers and Matsudan. These were two different factions, with two completely character designs and body types. I really liked this, having to experiment with different types of shape language, colours, and anato...

 Real Worlds - Illustration Moving onto the illustration, I had a particular plan for what I wanted to do - this involved 3D, so I went into the 3D blockout and placed some lighting around it to give me a rough idea of what to do with the illustration lighting. I knew I wanted to carry on with the theme of a wide perspective from my character key art, so that's what I started to do. For my illustration, I began by brainstorming and pinpointing exactly what mood I wanted it to set - which I decided on a moody and darker tone. This is because It would look similar to my Forge Father character key art, which would be a nice connection between the different art there. I wanted to bring in the same element of a lightning strike from that too, this time hitting one of the pylons on the roof. Below is my final illustration. Below is the timelapse of the illustration. For this, I drew over 3D, which definitely pushed me away from what I am comfortable with, but I felt myself becoming faste...

 Real Worlds - Design Sheets With all prerequisite work on my schedule complete, I now move onto creating my design sheet. For my Hero building, I focused on the dimensions and geometric nature of the building - due to having the 3D blockout complete, I felt like it was so much more accurate due to having a model I could use for reference. Due to this being a design sheet, I created an isometric back and front view so all dimensions of the building are visible. I included technical annotation of what different main components of the building are meant for, and a colourway for the final building design. For the street furniture, I had also blocked these out in 3D, but I wanted to re-model them so that I could have a higher amount of detail on them, and more easily translate this into a design sheet - I also wanted to keep on doing this "sketch" process within 3D, since it made the workflow of creating design sheets much more consistent. To start off with this, I began by model...

 Real Worlds - Observational Drawings Before creating the final design sheets, I wanted to practice drawing some detail that would fit the Forge Father architecture. For this, I started by looking up Forge Fathers and seeing what I could find, and if there was any available backdrop art to see. After searching for a bit, I couldn't find any backdrop art, but I could find Forge Father vehicles and box art. I want to give my building a factory-like appearance to match the mechanical aesthetic the Forge Fathers have on their armour and weapons, so I decided to practice drawing materials similar to the vehicles they have. I made a small moodboard of materials I wanted to practice. After this, I started by drawing primitive shapes so that I could learn to adapt the texture and shading style. For the primitive shapes, I tried creating a base shader for the building on the left - I used a cube for this since most of the building is cubic. On the right, I created a metallic shader, which I...

 Real Worlds - 3D Blockout Using the feedback and the development from my thumbnails, I wanted to create a 3D blockout. This would help with my design sheets accuracy, the illustration, and the general placement of the street furniture. I record ed my entire process of modelling and blocking out the model. It is important to note that I wasn't trying to create a fully fledged and detailed 3D model, as I was effectively using this as a 3D developed thumbnail to help with my final assets. I was not focusing on renders, topology or texturing at all - instead opting to visualise how the building would be placed and look in 3D. Below is the timelapse of the modelling process. The 3D blockout process was something I felt really efficient with. I used my isometric view thumbnails, which massively helped to visualise what I was drawing and which dimensions it was in. I think I will most likely draw the design sheets in isometric view as well when I get to that part. I added some detail to ...

 Real Worlds - Environment Thumbnails Going into the thumbnailing part, I needed to get some things certain first. For one, I needed to know how I was going to go about thumbnailing these consistently - the reason is that I want the most accurate feedback people can give, and thumbnails for buildings are most likely harder to do consistently than characters. Secondly, I needed to get the basic information and details for the building written down so I could come back for reference if I needed to whilst thumbnailing. Basic Information Faction: Forge Fathers Environment Name: Forge Rod Tower Function: Major area/boss outpost Game: Souls-like Hero Building Thumbnails Going into the thumbnailing process, I had a plan - I first started by blocking shapes out in black, and then I slowly add detail with a greyscale block brush. This makes the building thumbnailing process quick and consistent, which like I said is what I am aiming for. I was going to draw some from the front, but I also w...