Project 1: Trittonia Silhouettes

 

image courtesy of Creative Juices

 Uh oh, it's a BIG SISTER!!! Concept art by Colin Fix for Bioshock 2

Design Brief 1: Trittonia

Welcome to Trittonia, a small planet where plants have merged with animals and insects to create strange new life forms.

Deliverable 1: A clean page of 20 character silhouettes that show possible inhabitants of this exotic place.

Deliverable 2: A clean sheet of 20 reference sources that you used to develop your characters.

Deliverable 3: A one paragraph written description of your inspiration and approach to Trittonia.

Post all of these to your blog by Monday, January 11.

Suggestions.

·       Develop a method that lets you move from loose and exploratory to more definition as you go.

·       You don’t have to make them all on one sheet. You can always synthesize your characters onto the same sheet later.

·       Color correct and clean up all final presentation work.

·       Save all of your work and let yourself do more than the minimum. Focus on quantity first and then quality. Get rough ideas for several characters down quickly.

·       Visual research is critical. Do it early and often. It’s probably the quickest way to producing better work.

Lotte Reiniger's great cardboard silhouette animation!

Michel Gagne's digital silhouette animation...

Project 5: Concept Treatment

I shall build a mighty village!! Despair, fools! Despair!!!!!

Recent rebuild of the Model of Maastricht, c1750

So, what are you working on?

We discussed in class on Tuesday the wide range of projects you could begin to develop.

• An animation
• A live-action film
• A web show that combines voice-over, screen-caps, and original footage and animation
• A video game... a board game... a card game... etc.
• An action figure line
• A theater production design (for a particular play, opera, etc)... Sets/props/and/or costumes.
• A pop-up book
• A picture book
• etc.
• etc.
• etc.

On Tuesday, February 17, bring in a one paragraph description of your project along with supporting visual material, a working title, a work schedule, a visual research list, a one paragraph description of your working process, and a list of things you feel you still need to know/issues you need to resolve in order to make the magic happen. We'll do some small group crits and brainstorm through how we should set up the rest of our class sessions.

Project 4: Environment Design - Composition & Color

Project 4: Environment Design - Composition & Color

Alex Munn, The Orchard.

1. Working from a thumbnail sketch, create three color environment studies. If you're working digitally, make sure each drawing is at least in the vicinity of 2000 pixels x 2000 pixels. 
2. Write a one paragraph description of the world you are starting to create and tell us how each of your drawings shows a different aspect of that world.
3. Blog 'em, print 'em and hang 'em on Tuesday, February 10.

Bring drafts of everything to class on Thursday, February 5. We'll crit 'em, have a discussion, and do some more techno-demos. Think on these good things:

• Foreground, mid-ground, background.
• Atmospheric perspective
• Warm/Cool
• Palette studies
• Visual references
• Contrast: value, intensity, hue
• Visual hierarchy

Concepts & tile sets for video game, Atman, 2014, Miles Inada & Adam Callaway

Set design for Parcel Post by Miles

Franscisco Pulpo in the Studio, Miles shows his color mastery...