###### tags: `3D Anatomy Component Weekly Journal`
# 21385886_Journal
### Character and Environment Art (21385886)
### Games Art BA(HONS) L5
### Rachel Forshaw

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### Week 1

#### Metropolitan Ludotopia
The aim at the end of this component will be to create 3D and 2D pieces for a character and environment that fit into the theme of metropolitan ludotopia. My intent for this topic is to develop and complete a final piece of 3D art for my character design, and a 2D final piece for environment with some 3D pieces worked into it.

In order to have an effective workflow I needed to first do some research into the theme; the definition of metropolitan ludotopia is a city where gameplay happens. My first impression of this component was to emulate a city in which a particular inhabitant lives, but to match the civilian to the city that they live in. For example, a witch in a swamp, an elderly person in an ancient city, etc. which is where I had my idea.

#### My Concept First Look

My first initial response to this thematic was to surround all my final ideas with the hip-hop subgenre - recently I have been exploring hip-hop music and so I thought I could work this into 3D Character and Environment. I would like my character to be a black woman in her 20s and I'd like to design her with warm tones. The era I'd like to emulate would be 90s America, somewhere like Chicago or Atlanta City because I know that they have a lot of hip-hop influence and history. I think the city should be full of colour and vibrancy to match the vibe of hip-hop fashion.


This is the first concept...

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#### Example Research

After this, in the first week I decided to find some initial inspiration from games that are based in cities to give a jump start to my own project. The first and most important game I thought of researching was Watch Dogs. This is because it is set in San Francisco which I intend to take a lot of inspiration from, especially because of its bright seaside aesthetic. The high rise buildings and beachy architecture are the perfect kind of example I wanted to include in my own concept art. Throughout my game the concept would be to transform the metropolis from sketchy and greyscale into a beaming city. I loved the colour palettes of the concept art and the combination of rundown and lively, so I found some and cited them below:


- A few pieces from [Michel Donze](https://https://www.artstation.com/mdonze) in 2015, the main concept artist for Watch Dogs. He is an inspiration for me because his concept art has the ideal balance of dark and light and I aspire the emulate the same balance in my own work.

The second game I looked into for metropolis inspiration is Marvel's PS4 Spiderman; initially I was not going to research into this concept art as New York City is not directly an inspiration for my concept, but for a generam metropolis it is the closest to the definition as you can get. I'd like to take specific areas of this game and use them to create a more effective and bustling city aesthetic so that I can create a more effective metropolis.

Dennis Chan was the main concept artist for this game - he is an artist currently based in Sweden who practices a sci-fi, futuristic style. I looked into his concept art for Marvel Spiderman and these are a few of my favourite pieces I found on his [Artstation](https://https://www.artstation.com/dennis_chan):


### Week 2

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#### Anatomy sketches


During the first week I wanted to prepare for using ZBrush by sketching out a bit of anatomy as it will be vital for my final design production wise. Last year I definitely struggled with more specific parts of anatomy like hands and feet, so I wanted to improve my skills for this project especially since we will be creating 3D character art.

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### Silhouettes


I used Procreate to create some male and female silhouettes to give myself an idea of what direction I wanted to go.


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#### Pre production pipeline integration

Due to the fact we were taking on 3 projects at a time, I started to research the videogame production cycle at this point for our Pipeline project so I started to work that into my own project a little bit for our Character and Environment Art component to improve my own workflow.

What am I building? Who is the audience? Which platform would my game be on? I feel like going through the stages of game development will help me flesh out my game and give it depth. I intend on building a freeworld console and story game aimed at teenagers and young adults.

I started to create mindmaps for all of these things to broaden my mindset.


#### Anatomy practice in ZBrush

I sometimes struggle with anatomy flowing together to look completely natural - in our lectures with Ashley we explored human anatomy step by step, and in the first week we started to sculpt the general shape of the skull and nose. To do this, we used dynamesh spheres along with primarily the move and clay buildup brushes. These were some of the first attempts in the first weeks.


We also experimented with a couple of textures.


### Week 3

### Metropolis research

During the third week when starting to explore environment art, I realised I was undecided on which city I wanted my work to be influenced by. I was stuck between Chicago and Amsterdam. I was lucky enough to take on some primary research after visiting Amsterdam and realised that it was a great city for my inhabitant. Amsterdam is a very creative place with no space for dullness. The high, compact buildings with intricate architecture is pleasing to the eye and fits what I see my character as. There is also a lot of art intertwined into the city in the form of both paintings and graffiti. I took some photos of different types of graffiti I saw there.

Amsterdam was built around canals by the people in around 1275...

#### Primary images Amsterdam

##### Graffiti

##### Architecture

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#### 90s Fashion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_hop_music#:~:text=Hip%20hop%20became%20a%20best,selling%20music%20genre%20by%201999.
https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/Suddreth_uncg_0154M_10066.pdf
https://hellogiggles.com/90s-hip-hop-fashion/
Clothing is important for identity and especially when designing a character for this brief as I want my character to be the embodiment of the metropolis she lives in. Music and culture have been a tremendous influence on style, in particular hip-hop has been identifiable with its sound, style and subgenre. Hip hop emerged in the United States in the 1970s, but truly became known in the 1980s-late 1990s. As a subgenre, hip hop has a few main defining aspects; rap, graffiti, DJing and dance but also remains an important era for society. It gave an alternative to gang culture in the (first appearing) Bronx. New York has been massively influenced by hip-hop due to names like Jay-Z, Tupac, Quay Dash, etc. The main reason my character is a graffiti artist is because of its importance in the hip-hop subgenre.

Going onto style, the 1990s held some of the most influential pieces of clothing and music artists ever known - the 90s were defined by gold jewellery or chains, pantsuits, baggy jeans, and colourful varsity jackets. I wanted to research primarily female trends and icons because that is whats relevant to my character. I found that baggy denim and crop tops with thin straps in particular were extremely popular with famous celebrities wearing these on television and music artists in music videos/interviews.

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Queen Latiyfah brought african designs to life in the 90s in her full body suits.
I would love to do some further research into African patterns and maybe incorporate them into environment concept art.

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T-Boz, Left Eye and Chilli had a big influence in making colourful overalls and baggy pants (metallic in particular) a big thing.

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The athleisure trend was undeniably started by Baby Girl aka Aaliyah in the 90s as well.

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I intend to include some of these trends along with gold jewellery into my character!
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.highsnobiety.com%2Fp%2Fhip-hop-jewelry%2F&psig=AOvVaw3WD9YJafcLbIpe0o4p2You&ust=1673647959618000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CA8QjRxqFwoTCMjemNSGw_wCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAF

### Week 4

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### Character Experimentation

I wanted to experiment with some different looks to emulate different personalities (intelligence, rebellion, doe eyed, intimidating and focused).


I then used my favourite face to experiment with piercings. I think that this was an important part for my character as some different piercings give the idea of rebellion e.g. snakebites, eyebrow piercings, etc.


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#### Thumbnails

After attempting a couple of thumbnails...


I found that I struggled with the shades and angles and so I did a bit of research on it in order to improve.

I watched a couple tutorials and learned a lot about values when creating thumbnails - there are 3 main values: foreground, midground and background and the closer that the assets appear to be in the image, the darker the colour should be. I found that it is also helpful to stick to 3 colours that are applicable to the values and to create thumbnails quickly in large batches as they are only supposed to be an exercise to give a vague idea of intention. It is important to experiment with shapes when creating thumbnails as it's not the finished product. I learned that sometimes it is effective to also sculpt the drawings in a way that point towards a focal point to enhance the thumbnail.

[Video research](https://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hAJNzUE3WE)
[Video research](https://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LREZ2dSTZLQ)


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### My Concept in Full

Marianna is a graffiti artist in a greyscale city - when her parents died and her friends moved out of town, her only choice was to move as well. She couldn't have chosen a more worthy place. Set in a which emulates a combination of Chicago and Amsterdam is a city stripped of colour. A bored conurbation in need of someone who can change its ways. She begins to do what she knows best - art. Slowly she transforms the city from a dull city past its time into a bustling museum of colour with the help of its surprisingly intriguing residents.


### Week 5

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### Outfits experimentation

After deciding on what my character would look like, I wanted to experiment with some different outfit ideas.

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#### Block ins

During week 2-3 we spent some time doing a blockout, an industry level practice which will help me to do my own block in of my own environment in later weeks. We used a The Last of Us image as inspiration.


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#### Character Concept Art Process

I firstly intended on making a whole scene of concept art with a background and my character posed.


After I sketched it out and did some of the lineart I realised that it would not be industry standard. In this brief it was important to practice industry standards and so I started again.



I used this image as inspiration for the pants.


This is the final concept art piece.


I wanted my character's colour palette to have a variety of colour to fit into the metropolitan - it also replcates the style of the 90s because of the gold jewellery, baggy pants and crop top.

### Week 6 and 7

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#### Developing my 3D Character

This is the skull that would have been in the original model. Unfortunately due to time and no access to ZBrush over Christmas I decided to use the premade model and edit it into my character.

This image is when I smoothed out the original face and started to model my own.

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Outfit process

I used the extract tool for the bottom layer of the clothing.
I used ZBrush's look through tool in order to make shoes. This was by far the most challenging part where I encountered the most issues. Unfortunately I was unable to finish the shoes' details due to time and struggling with the extraction tool and had to leave them very simplified.

Pants process

I then used the Cloth Hook tool to make the creases on the pants of my character, I also mostly used the move tool to make them baggy. Using new brushes was so helpful as ZBrush is an industry level program and I will be expected to know how to use it in the future.
The pants appeared to be floating on top of the shoes so I used the move tool and reused the Cloth Hook tool to fit this issue.
Final greyscale pants.

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Hair process

I first started by creating a dynamesh sphere and using the move tool to morph it into a hair shape that I wanted.
I then started to add texture with clay buildup when I realised that a different tool may be more useful.

I used the rake tool to create strands of hair so that it looked slightly more detailed than the previous image.

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During this process I practiced smoothing out aspects of the character so that it flowed.

### Week 8
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### Graffiti environment asset development

I wanted to incorporate graffiti designs into my environment to add colour and to demonstrate the lore behind my concept.


After drawing these I did some research on graffiti typography. I watched a [video](https://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LANBe-FJIkY) on the types of graffiti to further my understanding of a variety of styles. I then recreated some designs...


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Polypainting

Before polypainting I ZRemeshed all of my subtools individually so that I could paint my character. I colorized the subtools and selected the fitting material and after colour filled them so that I could have different materials for some subtools.



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### Environment Concept art final

For my environment concept art I attempted to combine a real photograph and my drawing - I think i could definitely improve in future projects.


### Weeks 9-11

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### Blocking in

I used Maya to demonstrate what my street corner concept art would look like in 3D and in the game if it were to be made. I used a free image plane to insert the lineart of my concept art and used a camera locked in place on one side of the screen to give accuracy. This is a simplified version.



This is what you would see walking down the street of my game/if you looked up at the buildings in game.



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### Finals


Unfortunately I was unable to do a full rig because I struggled so much with it and did not have time at the end.